How are you going to feed?
I think anyone that’s planning on planting a church understands the value of asking the right questions.
-How are we going to do service?
-When are we going to teach?
-What people group is God calling us to?
-What is our mission?
-Why start something new?
-etc. etc. etc.
Asking the right questions, the ones that expose deeper rooted issues and the deceitful desires of our hearts, is vital to living as Kingdom people. This gives us an opportunity, early on, to correct/repent from some ideas that will lead us in the wrong direction. These ideas that we wrestle with early on usually are the determining factor in the type/amount/frequency of the “fruit” from our plant.
The temptation is to not wrestle with the deeper things and worry about the minutia of the operations when things are hard and when we get tired.
So a question that I’ve been wrestling with as I move forward:
How are we going to feed our sheep?
*Now I must preface this that I don’t think it’s healthy to create consumers. I don’t believe that one can be consumeristic and a Disciple, but consuming and being consumeristic aren’t necessarily the same thing. I need to “eat” and so do those that I serve.
So here are some of your opinions (but you aren’t limited to these):
1. 5-Star Restaurant.
Ideology that creates this: Excellence is the most important attribute.
What you need: This type of setting has to have the best lights, best sound equipment, best musicians, and best speakers. When they aren’t the best, they need to be replaced. The environment is so incredible that you feel like you are in Heaven itself. Mistakes begot repentance because the polished environment is the goal. You are going to need “professionals” as well, which will mean that everyone isn’t qualified to preach, pray, or serve the food (sacraments)
What you get: Very satisfied customers that get the best preaching and “worship” money can buy. You also get people that realize they could never reproduce church because they can’t recreate that experience in their living room. Usually they’ll receive rich “food” but they won’t know how to cook it themselves and it will leave them unfulfilled as they have to eat at home the next day.
2. Fast Food Restaurant.
Ideology that creates this: Quantity over quality.
What you need: You still need good facilities but you will spread out and sacrifice the one experience to have more people. You might create franchising. You will also need to use gimmicks to try to mask the call of Jesus to get more customers. (You know… things that will not even scratch the surface of the message of “dying to yourself”***) A fast food analogy for creating unhealthy correlations: Playing Monopoly to win a cruise at a burger place.
What you get: Converts that fit church into their busy schedules because the church will give them options to come whenever. They’ll also be expecting the church to be open 24 hours a day and always have what they want. They’ll receive quick “meals” that are meant to give them a sense of fullness so that they leave happy even though what they ate wasn’t all that healthy for them.
**You will need to fear the reality that #1 & #2 always produce a possibility that if they have a bad experience being feed, they will either 1) never come back 2) get mad if you don’t do everything you can to make them happy or 3) tell others to not go there to eat.
3. Grocery Market.
Ideology that creates this: Variety, understanding that they can do it at home, but with a desire to keep them coming back to get the ingredients.
What you need: Good variety so that you can give people the right ingredients. There will need to be some frozen dinners or other quick meals for those that have no margin. The good news if you’ll need healthy food to because some will come for that too. You will need to be prepared to answer why you don’t carrying some obscure foods that some will desire.
What you get: Some healthy people that still need you to provide for them. Some of the food they’ll prepare will have to be shipped in, so some of their diet won’t be “in season” and some will have preservatives.
4. Community/Farmers Market
Ideology that creates this: We eat what’s growing now and we only have as much food as those farming in the area are producing.
What you need: Men and women that are actively planting and cultivating. Those working the fields will need to know what to plant, how to plant, and when to plant. You’ll also need some that work the field and bring it to a central place. You can’t have a lot of structure because you never know how much the harvest is going to be. So you have to be able to feed if there is little and if there is a lot.
What you get: Healthy people that are eating what is growing right now (no “out of season” or *preservative filled foods). Everyone understands through experience that if few are planting/sowing then many are going to have to survive on less. On the flip side, we will have the ability to support more if more are planting/sowing.
I realize that this isn’t all encompassing but I think we need to realize that we are going to need food to survive. Our church plants will have to decide that how we will feed and that will determine how we disciple.
The temptation is always to make them need us for food and it’s easy because they will pay for the food. But if we are giving them unhealthy food or only food that the “professionals” cook we are going to see less and less eating the “bread of life”
***By the way, there is a correlation between fast food and dying to yourself, but let’s save that for another time.
Meta-Annoy-Ya 