even more about networks…and some examples

Having described all these characteristics of networks, it is not hard to see this is exactly how the Early Church and the Chinese Church operated. Look at the diagram again. The hubs would have been places like Antioch, Jerusalem, or Rome or people like Paul. The nodes could be house churches and clumps of people involved in various dimensions of life. Nodes could become hubs depending on their relative importance in the network. Antioch and Jerusalem were certainly hubs in this view. When the New Testament writers articulated the foundational doctrine of ecclesia, this is what is meant, not buildings and institution, but a fluid body of Christ dynamic involved in all there spheres of life. It is within this structure that Apostolic Genius seems to manifest most fully. And due to the missional situation of our era, the time has come to rediscover the church as a dynamic network beyond the institution and in every arena of life and creation.

Stadia is a network based, organic, church multiplication movement in the US. Its mission is to find, train, deploy, and network church multiplication leaders. In turn these leaders build regional networks of planters, multiplying churches, and support personnel who together build a church multiplication movement that is sustainable and reproducible. Their goal is to establish 5,500 new churches across the US.

Another remarkable organic movement that follows these approaches has been evolving in California and around the world called Church Multiplication Associates. This network is led by Neil Cole, a pioneer in developing organic church planting and someone who has clearly articulated a movement based on movement dynamics, multi-channel networking, and organic reproducibility although the language is somewhat different. This has been translated into a leadership training system called Greenhouse, which coaches leaders from various contexts in organic methodology. The movement has grown exponentially as new expressions of incarnational church break out in car parks, cafes, houses, clubs, etc. The Korean movement associated with Paul Yongi Cho is built on similar principles-Cho always maintained that the real church existed in the cells and the rest was frills. These are just some examples of many such movements being generated around the world.

An Australian expression of this is in a new Pentecostal movement called The Junction led by Kim and Maria Hammond. This network has incarnated deeply into their local area. They meet in the neighborhood school where they have become part of the actual functioning of the school, in the local pubs and cafes and are involved in many of the projects their contextual community is involved in, including walk-against-want, mentoring disadvantaged kids in their area, and feeding the poor. There is no center and no circumference…it just exists in nodes, hubs, and enriching relationships and is built squarely on the fabric of friendships. Third Place Communities in Tasmania operates on the same principles and looks remarkably like the network diagram above. All these new missions demonstrate a recovery of a latent potency which bodes well for the future of the church in the West. We do well to give thanks.

September 4, 2008 | Filed Under organic systems, the forgotten ways |  

Comments

One Response to “even more about networks…and some examples”

  1. Rogier on September 7th, 2008 6:31 pm

    Hi Alan,
    Do you have any examples of such movements in Europe (outside our own organization? I keep wondering to what extent we can project examples from early Christianity or Communist China - or even the (more Christian US) on Europe… It would encourage me to see movement-like faith-based groups growing and spreading in post-Christendom Europe.
    Rogier

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