Month: November 2011

We, the Red Pill Brethren, reclaim the word “servant.”

 It speaks to what we aim to do – serve others. It evokes the wisdom of Wu Li – Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water – and Jesus, kneeling to wash his disciples’ feet. Dasa, Obadiah, Abdullah … so many religions name and respect the one who serves.

Some will want to argue that it brings to mind fundamentalism, or colonialism, or any number of other isms. “It is below my dignity,” others might think. Some, who would accept being called a volunteer, will recoil at being called a servant.

That is, perhaps, another benefit. It works as a filter. If the word servant is a deal-breaker for them, then they probably wouldn’t be happy with the type of work we want to do.

Would you wash a homeless man’s feet?

We Brethren joke about a tiny clip in the (horrible) movie From Dusk Til Dawn.

Seth: So what are you, Jacob? A faithless preacher? Or a mean M*** F*** servant of God?
Jacob: I’m a mean, mhm mhm servant of God.

Then they go off to slay vampires.

 But in our own way, we want to slay vampires, too. And frankly, they’re a lot scarier than toothy undeads. Hunger, shame, sex-trafficking, poverty, destruction of neighborhoods … they’re pretty big adversaries.

 But we’re mean mhm mhm servants of God.

The servants of the Most Gracious are those who walk on the earth in humility, and when the ignorant address them, reply with (words of) peace. – The Quran, 25:63.

For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves. – Luke 22:27

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” Isaiah 6:8

Mooresville, North Carolina may just be the textbook sample of a booming exurb. Just a few decades ago, it was a small town of textile and furniture plants near Lake Norman. I imagine they felt fairly remote – Charlotte, NC was much smaller then than today, and Mooresville is almost 30 miles north of downtown. But in just the last decade, Mooresville almost doubled in size, to nearly 33,000 people. A drive down River Highway feels surprisingly familiar – the road is lined with all the same big box stores and chain restaurants found in any well-off commuter town, and the only thing striking about them is how new all their buildings appear. You might think this town would be the last place you would find a missional church.

You’d be wrong. God is doing a new thing in Mooresville – and God’s partners in this new movement of the Spirit call themselves, simply, "West.“

That’s Williamson’s Chapel West, to be specific. It’s a satellite campus of Williamson’s Chapel, a large (and, I think it fair to say, attractional) United Methodist Church across town. West is semi-autonomous – they do their own worship, and it is pretty much its own congregation – but they still technically are part of the "mother church.” West gathers every Sunday morning (at least briefly! …I’ll explain later) at a high school on the west side of Mooresville. West formally launched just 14 months ago, with 40 members of the mother church and a pastor with a passion for mission. This month, their average weekly participation was over 250 people. I had the wonderful experience this past Sunday of traveling to Mooresville, to worship and to explore how this satellite of a traditional church in a well-off town could succeed in taking the Red Pill.

If this sounds vaguely familiar to the millions of you who faithfully read every post on Red Pill Brethren (and by “millions,” I mean half a dozen), that’s because the Brethren have already spoken here about our fortuitous encounter with their truly awesome pastor, Andrea. Yes, brothers & sisters & transgender siblings, this is the church of the “no-huddle Sundays,” where you cannot always be sure when you walk in the door if you will find a worship service, or directions to a service project in the community.

Worship started with a video of a kid trick or treating. Knocks on the door, gets some nice toys instead of candy, forgets to say “trick or treat.” So he knocks again, and this time the man gives him a baseball and glove. But he forgets to say it again, so he knocks again, and gets cash this time. Finally the dumbfounded boy gets out the words “trick or treat.” The response? “You don’t have to say it.” I’ve oversimplified it a bit, but the messages are clear: grace abides, regardless of our efforts to earn it; and giving extravagantly need never be tied to whether the receivers did what they were “supposed” to do. 

The worship had no creed, no hymnals, no order of service (the paper you’re handed by the greeter coming in, is a weekly devotional guide – they also have an online version), no offering plates passed as an anthem is played on the grand pipe organ (they have donation boxes set out as you leave the auditorium). No pipe organ. The worship team led a few songs (w/ lyrics projected on the screen, of course), plus one prayer (John Wesley’s Covenant Prayer – you can keep some traditions while doing missional church, ya know). The lesson was Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, recited in a film clip of an alarm clock with images superimposed over it: war, peace, reaping, sowing, etc. Then came Andrea’s message – I could say many good things about it, but do yourselves a favor and watch it for yourselves. Toward the end, she introduced one of their mission partners, who had just flown in from Uganda the day before. West is supporting his efforts to build orphanages in one of the most war-torn areas of that country. (Andrea and several church members had planned to travel the week before to Uganda to support the work, but the trip was cancelled due to armed rebels stirring political unrest. Being missional does not mean being martyred.) Prayer, another song, then out to have coffee and snacks (after dropping something in the donation box…but nobody mentioned that; it was just there by the door).

You may have heard of “church in a box;” West takes this to a whole new level. Their “box” is two trailers, filled with multimedia equipment, hospitality supplies, signs w/ directions to the bathrooms, etc. Every Sunday morning at 7 AM, someone drives the trailers over from the main campus of Williamson’s Chapel, and the set-up team spends the next three hours getting ready for the 10 AM worship and children’s ministry. Then, after 50 minutes of worship and 25 or so minutes of fellowship, they tear down, re-load the trailers, and drive ‘em back to the mother church, only to do it all over again the next Sunday.

Andrea and her family, along with one of the founding couples in the church, kindly joined me for lunch afterwards. It was a chance to pick their brains, and learn what made West tick. (Yes, it was at one of those chain restaurants, but as an ex-pat Texan, I was overjoyed to find a BBQ burger w/ sauce made from Shiner Bock, the national beer of Texas, in exurban North Carolina. And thank you, Andrea, for picking up the tab – most gracious of you.) Great insights on how to make a missional satellite campus tick. Some highlights:

1) Andrea was Associate Pastor at the mother church for almost 7 years before they spun off West. Her main areas were heading up the Worship team (I.e. the band and audio/video people), and heading up missions. (This is important; you’ll see why shortly.)

2) The Sr. Pastor at the large church was totally behind the new church start & its missional focus, and lay leadership was also supportive. There was no micromanaging from the mother church to derail their focus.

3) Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of supplies fill those two trailers, much of it paid for by the mother church, to help the launch. Those first 40 people could never have afforded this on their own.

4) The people who came over from the mother church for the launch self-selected themselves; they did not get assigned, sent, recruited, etc. They were all people who had worked closely with Andrea and had trusting relationships with her. They included the bulk of the Worship team, and people who had been on mission trips w/ Andrea. She mentioned being in Jamaica on a mission trip, just a few weeks before West’s launch date, looking around the dinner table one evening, and realizing most of the people who had come on this mission trip from the mother church, were launch team members who were about to move over to West.

5) This, I think, is the greatest key to West’s success at going missional: because most of those 40 people who launched West had already done missions work, they were already missionally-minded. So things like the no-huddle Sundays actually made sense to them. Put simply, the red pill minister at the blue pill church said, “I’m gonna launch a red pill church; who’s with me?” …and all the people who joined her had already taken the red pill themselves. Morpheus didn’t even have to offer Neo the choice; they had already gone down the rabbit hole.

There are many implications here, but I leave it to you to weave those conclutions together. I feel blessed to see this wonderful example of a missional church plant bearing fruit in the seemingly rocky soil of a booming, somewhat affluent suburb/exurb. From our Unitarian tradition are those of the Ames covenant (see #472 in our grey hymnal): “In the love of truth and the Spirit of Jesus, we unite for the worship of God, and the service of all." I pray the ministries of West continue to multiply, and that they continue to worship and serve in the spirit of the one who called upon them to "follow me,” the one to whom they respond in every missional act of service.