and

Seattle’s Fremont Solstice parade/festival was this past weekend.  Rachelle and her neo-monastic community monkfish abbey (formerly known as ThPM) participated in the parade as a funky recycling deally.  As they wove through the crowd of parade-onlookers they gathered trash embodying an exuberance and an earth friendliness that was most contagious.  They had no church signs, or anything like that, they simply served our city and seemed to be having fun doing so. 

The Freemont Abbey were also present at the weekend event as they had a booth at the festival.  The Freemont Abbey is the community arts center that Karen Ward and the folks at the Church of the Apostles are helping birth.  The Freemont Abbey promises to be an incredible gift to Seattle.

Also I know of two new churches that are starting in metro-Seattle.  1) Rob and  Melanie Gillgrist held meeting last night to talk and pray together about the creation of new faith community.   2) Joel & BrookVandenbrink, Jon & Annie DeWaal and Tim Sorens are have been meeting for a while and are in the process determining where and how to indigenate. 

peace, dwight

I’m not even sure I see much Biblical support for church planting. I see Christ sending people as bearers of the Kingdom of God, and as heralds of the good news of the kingdom, as people able to spot the kingdom of God that is already at work and help people name it (like Paul on Mars Hill). And in helping people see how God has already been at work little Christ-communities are formed and are naturally indigenous.

In our practice of church planting (yes even our pomo plantings) we start with a “vision” of what the church might look like. And depending on how type-A we are (and the work of the spirit) we craft a church into looking like we envisioned. That doesn’t sound very Christ-like to me. But that’s what we do - or that’s how I started at least. I had a clear vision.

I no longer believe that God gives clear vision. I believe that the clearer the sense of vision a person has, the less likely that vision is from God. God seems to lead us to places of uncertainty, dim glasses where faith and trust can be formed. And an invitation to depend of Christ is extended.

Increasingly the way the modern church uses “vision” language sounds like little more than marketing crap. It sounds spiritual, but it’s odd that the person with the “vision” usually stands in a place to receive credit, power and acclaim. There isn’t much vision to decrease that Christ may increase.

I’m not praying for more church-planters, I’m praying for Kingdom bearers - and maybe along the way we’ll see some accidental churches spring up as we did in the NT.

Peace, dwight