This was one of the questions I proposed to the open house at our last community forum. What would happened if the open house just stopped gathering all together? And the answers…well some actually said that they would stop going to church all together.

At that moment I had to ask myself the question, whether that was a positive answer or a negative one. And I have to say I found that response filled with truth. Truth of where those toh’rs we at, and truth about the niche we fill as the open house. Sure it would be easy to look at it negatively, but I am choosing not to. But feel free to add some negative thoughts in the comments if you want.

I made mention at the meeting about whether our church should become a website entirely. A space where people post when they gather, post when they want to get together, a space for resources and leave it up to each other to get together. Now that may be a little too loose for some, but I have this crazy feeling that we might need to consider going radical on our concept of gathering.

The truth is our crew is transient, x-y generation, random at best, but “community common” (thanks Randy) and actually does these types of relationships well. So maybe what we need are some rhythms? What I mean by this is perhaps some phases of when toh meets and usually around a type of teaching, experience, service, or need in certain lengths of time. For example, what if we met all together once every 6 weeks for a meal and some worship (whatever that looks like) and then in between we had 6 week rhythms? Say 6 weeks of teaching of a certain book of the bible, or 6 weeks of serving at a local mission, or 6 weeks of absolutely nothing? and each participant is required to come up with how they would like to spend or give to the rhythm? Then we get together for a party at the end of each rhythm..

I doubt I am coming out with anything new here, in fact something in me thinks this is similar to how the Jews gathered before the synagogues were built into the culture. Every certain amount (perhaps 6 weeks) of time there was a feast and a celebration of the lead up time. Similar to Passover, Yom Kippur, and other Jewish feast holidays.

So for now we are still gathering regularly, but I have a feeling some changes might be coming. Perhaps we should get that leadership team together before we make any decisions.

Oh Leadership…thats entirely different type of post.

more to come.