By Nathan Marshall
Nathan Marshall, our Church Health and Engagement Ministry Leader, reflects on his time with micro-church movement leaders in Melbourne, connecting the dots between our agility as a network and the way this form of church planting could awaken new expressions of missional community amongst us.
“You go first. You eat last. You never graduate.”
These were the words emanating from micro-church leader Jeremy Stephens, part of the founding leadership of The Underground from Tampa, Florida. Jo Huntington and I, along with an ally and micro-leader Glen Smith, spent two days in community in Melbourne, hosted by Director of Micro Movements Bree Mills and the Sent Collective crew, participating in workshops with some of The Underground team.
A few of Jeremy’s one-liners inspire me about the potential of smaller, agile, missional communities in our network.
“You must recover the place of risk – the place of faith; otherwise, you’ll die.”
These words are jarring and radical, and they echo in my ears. Two decades after the genesis of the micro-church movement, its posture and practice are modelled on the experience that its founders had living among the poor in the Philippines. Recognising that the missional shape for followers of Jesus does not necessarily lie in North America, their exposure to Filipino church practices led them to reimagine their priorities and vision and inspired their ‘manifesto’ for a more incarnational approach to following Jesus.
Micro-churches are designed for participation in the mission of God, inverting a form of church that can often create passive, consumer ‘observation’. Some micro-churches hold a specific mission, such as walking alongside specific marginal groups, while more distributive micro-churches focus on fostering a missional focus within their local contexts, jobs and schools.
Nathan Marshall beside Jeremy Stephens and Stacy Gaskins from The Underground.
“We elevate the voice of Jesus – and then we get low in the way we live and serve.”
Cultivating environments for living out the Lordship of Christ, accepting liminality and failure, and encouraging exploration into people’s calling have continued to generate these small, agile churches as they multiply and deepen. Australia is experiencing its own movement of micro-churches, with Bree Mills advocating for diverse expressions under different banners, avoiding the lure to institutionalise these networks.
She said, “We are seeing micro-churches partner with established churches as a way of strengthening and encouraging one another. The touchpoint is not, ‘Come to our service,’ but, ‘Let’s partner in mission.’ This is a great way to stir missional imagination amongst an existing community.”
“The ecclesia – the elected ‘civil body’, didn’t exist for themselves. What is our meaning in the world as the church? We are not just a gathering but called-out ones!”
Recognising existing micro-churches in our midst is perhaps a great place to start! Members of our existing churches are often within spaces that already have a clear people group and could develop into being a micro-church through coaching and support. This way of thinking could catalyse a paradigm shift for the way we ‘be the church’. It echoes Doug Paul’s message at Collective Conference, our annual gathering of CCNSWACT leaders, in 2021: “How do we find the bright spots and pour fuel on them?”
“The mission is always an extension of our intimacy with Jesus!”
One of the strengths of 20 years of micro-church expression has been The Underground’s deep commitment to their ecclesial minimum, anchoring their expression as people of worship, community and mission. Their ‘dual operating system’ allows for the organisation to exist and serve the micro-churches, keeping the board and all the support systems as ‘deacons’ to those ‘eldering’ these communities. Mobilisation happens with a lot of ‘permission giving’, empowering people through a radical bias towards ‘yes’!
“Limit your engagement with Christians!”
Jeremy reminded us that there are pitfalls. Relying on never-ending ‘training’ becomes the means, rather than being in ‘relationship’ with people who don’t yet know Jesus. We can’t call people to practise what we don’t do ourselves. How are we continually making room to listen to the voice of Jesus, creating spaces to listen to His call?
Our scorecards, whether spoken or unspoken, persist in numbers-driven metrics. Jeremy offered an alternative scorecard that asked:
On the drive home, I spent 24 hours with MissionHeart in Canberra. I was nourished and shown rich hospitality at MissionHouse, I walked through Civic with some of the team as we connected and prayed with those sleeping rough, and I experienced church ‘in the park’ as we worshipped in the rain and engaged with the story of suffering in Job, which drew us to see the meta-narrative through the lens of the God who knows our suffering.
Nathan’s experience of ‘church in the park’ with MissionHeart.
We shared in a community lunch, and I got to bear witness to a community that is not afraid to be uncomfortable. Sitting in a café with Kelly and Jason Hayduk on Sunday afternoon, we sipped hot chocolate and thawed out from the cold, and I listened to two people who have given their lives to hearing and obeying the voice of Jesus. I drove away with the awareness that I had been in the flow of something; incarnated into a community that continues to follow Jesus, prioritising the poor and the outsider, that tabernacles in places where people are – people of worship, community and mission.
As a network, we are poised and incredibly designed to foster different ways of missional community. Through this trip, I was filled with great hope for our churches! I wonder if we could ask ourselves some questions:
