Beginning with the Pastor and a core group of disciples, personal discipleship to Christ spawns Vision.
Vision spawns groups of disciples and conflict within congregational systems in areas that are not discipleship-oriented.
Conflict leads to maturity or destruction.
Discipleship flows from discipler to disciples, from leader to leaders to led, who then become leaders.
Transformation begins in small groups, flows to worship, flows to leadership, flows to congregation, flows to finances, flows to growth.
At least in my experience.
Other thoughts?
In other words, it’s viral. But I think you had a few people who were very suseptable to your bug!
That’s exactly it. It’s viral because it’s organic. While the authors of the New Testament will, at times, refer to the Church as something structural, usually they refer to us as a Body. A body is naturally organic, and when it is infected with a virus, the virus begins to alter the DNA of the organism. I think our congregational DNA is changing, eh?
I was reading something yesterday that argued for a similar organic behavior in the early Church. Because most early Christians believed in the imminent end of the world, they didn’t spend very much time setting up rules and bureaucracies for the Church, and were far more concerned with the actual practice of being Christian. As a result, you got a more vibrant, growing, organic community that would have been impossible to create from the top down.
I thought that was a pretty interesting perspective to take.
[...] My post the other day generated some comments that draws out the theme of Christian unity and church governance as an aspect of the church’s organic growth. Ben suggested that due to the immanent eschatology of the early church, (i.e., that the Age to Come was going to show up any day), they didn’t spend much time setting up structures that would last, which created a “more vibrant, growing, organic community that would have been impossible to create from the top down.” [...]
Ben –
In response to your comments, check out my post here.