Kingdom Outposts

Posted on Dec 4, 2011 in The Church | 8 comments

In my post yesterday, I both commended and challenged David Fitch in his missionary vision.  The basic disconnect for me in many of the more missional expressions of church planting is that emphasis is still on “building a church or gathering of Christians” and not on “building the Kingdom.”  Perhaps the disconnect is in how I define Kingdom Building.

For me Kingdom Building means ushering in heaven here on earth.  It means living out Jesus mission and continuing his work of bringing sight to the blind, good news to the poor, freedom to the captives, and proclaiming the year of the Lords favor.  It means entering into the broken places and simply being Christ presence in the darkness and allowing the spirit of Christ to heal the brokenness.    If a worshiping community forms out of that presence, that is wonderful.  But even if there is no worship gathering, no discipleship groups, no bible studies,  the Body of Christ still exists in that place.

However, it seems to me that for many in the church planting circles, “Kingdom Building” is synonymous “Church building.”  I read a comment on David Fitch’s blog that used the term “establishing Kingdom Outposts.”  I loved that image.

This week I spent some time talking to Kathy Escobar about her church, The Refuge.  She built her church in partnership “with” people in recovery, not “for” people in recovery. Kathy said a significant number of the people she considers her “congregation” do not come to her weekend gatherings.  Her ministry happens where they are, in recovery communities and on the streets.  She has established a “Kingdom Outpost” in a deserted part of the kingdom and in her words the “chapel” is an important part of the outpost, but is not the center piece of her Kingdom Building efforts.  She shared that the hardest thing for her has been Christians insisting that her ministry start a “real church”.  These Christians were blind to the Body of Christ that was already there.  They could not appreciate the outpost itself, only the chapel.

I had the privilege of also spending time with Hugh Hollowell a few weeks ago.  Hugh shared a similar concern as it relates to his ministry, Love Wins Ministries.  I asked Hugh why he chose to start a worshipping community. One reason he gave was because no one would take him seriously as a pastor if he did not have a “church”.  However, Hugh said the same thing Kathy said, his real “church” does not come into his worship experience.  His “real ministry” is not at the worship gathering.  It is in the park with my homeless friends.  His ministry happens under bridges and on park benches.  Hugh has established a Kingdom Outpost in a deserted place and he has a chapel as a part of his broader ministry.  Now that Hugh has a small chapel on his outpost, he is seen as a pastor but few see the broader ministry as the real heart of his church.

I think Kathy, Hugh and I are kindred spirits.  I think there are many more Christian pastors out there who have developed “fresh expressions” of a Christian Community but who are often discounted and dismissed as not being “the real church” or a “real pastor” because “church” is narrowly defined as a worship gathering.

While I challenged David Fitch to broaden his definition of “missionary” to include the saints who are already in the community, I also want to commend him.  His call to stop planting churches and start sending missionaries honors and lends credibility to the kind of ministry that Kathy, Hugh and I are doing.  It recognizes that missionaries are ushering in the Kingdom often better than church planters.  We are also building lighter weight, lower maintenance structures that can build up instead of cannibalize existing churches.

I have another kindred spirit whom I have gotten to know through Twitter and Facebook – Jamie Arpin-Ricci.  Jamie is the ideal candidate for the kind of missionary model that Fitch envisions.  Like Kathy, myself, Hugh, and others, Jamie has a vision for joining God in what God is already doing.  To do that, he had to leave the institutional model of church.

Jamie recently described his church to me as “a home for orphans”.  He ministers to a large number of young adults who find a sense of family in his home.  The one thing Jamie thinks his community needs the most is older more mature Christians to help him nurture and grow his family of orphans.  But Jamie is not a “real church” in the eyes of the institutional church and thus has found connecting older, more mature Christians to be very difficult.  So his orphans remain orphans.

By being on the fringe of “the real church”, Jamie, Kathy, Hugh and I, have all felt a sense of abandonment by “the church.”  We had to leave the institutional expressions of the church in order to follow God’s call, but I don’t think any of us ever intended to leave “the church.”  The reality is that many Christians do not see what we are doing as “real ministry” so we are left pretty much on our own.

All of us were idealistic.  We all thought the church would see the good work we were doing and would support that work.  All of us have been disappointed that the church at large has not joined us on mission to the extent we had hoped for.  Of course, there are exceptions to this.  Each of us have a handful of congregational partners and it is those partners that have kept us alive and make us hopeful that someday, the broader Christian community will embrace ministry beyond the walls.

I hope David Fitch’s attempt to shift the paradigm away from church planting and toward a missionary sending mindset is wildly successful.  I think Jamie, Hugh, Kathy and I would all be embraced as missionaries and would once again feel a part of the larger “church” community.

So, in my post yesterday, I was not slamming Fitch’s idea, just suggesting a tweak.  Today, I want to jump up and down and say, “Go David Go! Please open the eyes of the church so that they may see the Body of Christ at work in their midst.”

Please pray for Hugh, Jamie, Kathy and other ministers like them all across the world who had to leave the safety and security of the institutional church in order to go on mission with God.

How does your church support missionaries?

Does your church support any missionaries in your local context?

If God calls someone in your church to the local mission field, are they seen as “missionaries of the church” or are they on their own?

How can the local church create structures for releasing people into the local mission field in a way that nurtures and supports them as missionaries?