Red Pill Brethren

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.

Marie Flora is Radical Hospitality & Event Director at Ginghamsburg Church.  She presented a workshop on Orchestrating Excellent Events at the Change the World Conference.

Marie handles all the hospitality aspects at the church. She coordinates the servants (volunteers – Ginghamsburg doesn’t use the term volunteers, all are servants) who help with hospitality.  Servants are essential to providing a quality visitor experience.

Here’s an example of how servants are treated at Ginghamsburg by Marie.  This is a confirmation postcard sent to people who signed up to serve in various roles for the conference I attended.  One of the Ginghamsburg slogans encountered at the conference was “God doesn’t do suck."  Everything is done with a level of excellence and professionalism.

Here are Marie’s elements of a successful event:

• Attendance
• Feedback
• Energy level
• Returnees
• New faces
• Level of outreach
• Amazing atmosphere
• Excitement
• Servant support

 What do you need to do to put on your event?
 
1. identify your vision for the event.
2. Determine the budget for the event and who needs to approve it.
3. Plan the marketing strategy…how do I get people to my event?

Who is the target audience and how do you reach them?
4. Determine the key ministry leaders leaders that will be essential support for the event and how the need to be involved.
5. Identify servant (volunteers) needs. Determine what you need to provide to your servant support for them to be able to serve (and help you) effectively.
6. Determine method of servant recruitment.
7. Identify a point person for the following support pieces:
Food
Coffee
Decor
Media
Set up/break down and details
 
8. Identify team leaders for each unique component of the event.
9. Determine signage needs. Remember –  signs point the way.  People show or demonstrate the way.
10. Determine if there will be any special features of components such as live music, inflatables, car show, etc
 

Successful missional churches make some fundamental assumptions about how they operate. Perhaps the biggest one is: mission is the reason the church exists. This controls everything from how worship is done to what leadership is and how decisions are made.

For example, before the 40 members of Fort McKinley United Methodist Church voted to be assimilated by the Ginghamsburg Church, a Q&A sheet was sent out by Fort McKinley Pastor Dave Hood to the members of Fort McKinley. It consisted of the 20 most common questions he was getting about what will happen if they voted yes to be received by Ginghamsburg.  Here are couple of interesting questions and responses.

Q: Will there be a Christmas decorating party and a Christmas pageant?

A: At Ginghamsburg there is a core value that “Christmas is NOT your birthday.’ For the last several years there has been an intentional focus on the Darfur mission (Ginghamsburg has sent over 5$ million to Darfur relief) during Christmas to focus people away from the attitudes of selfishness and consumerism and towards justice and mission…”

In response to how people will have a voice in their church after the merger, the answer was something that would turn not a few mainline church heads.

Q: How will I have a voice in what happens after the merger?
A: Members are encouraged to share their input, feedback, and wisdom with the pastoral staff and Leadership Board through a variety of forums. for example, each spring and fall, Senior Pastor Mike Slaughter meets with the “Kingdom Investors” of the church to deliver a “state of the union” address, cast a vision for the future and solicit feedback. However, decisions about ministry and mission are made by the leadership team as directed by the Holy Spirit. Decisions are not made by consensus, majority rule or committee vote.

My initial reaction to the Ginghamsburg answer was, “Ew, how undemocratic."  The longer I reflected on it, however, the process described above provides as much or more input than some democratically run congregations I’ve experienced.  I’ve experienced congregations, congregational in polity, where the congregation as an assembly has the final say on important matters, but do not go through the listening, feedback, and wisdom forums. I’ve known congregations that do both,but certainly didn’t consider their decision making process a spiritual discernment practice.

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts, dear readers, as I am sure I am not alone among Gen X (or younger) ministers who feel there is little place for visionary and missional ministry in the Unitarian Universalist Association or other mainline churches. I see few if any examples where ministers are allowed to cast a vision. I see many examples where ministers are the scapegoat, the point of blame or the identified patient in a system, but few places in congregational polity settings where ministers are allowed to cast a bold vision and call the people to a mission of great service.  Is a form of polity, once so democratic and participatory in its inception as a reaction against episcopal hierarchy now preventing bold new ways of being religious community among liberal congregations because it locks out the spiritual process of discernment and the requirement that people buy into mission before being part of the discernment process? Is that a good thing?

Senior Pastor of the Ginghamsburg Church, Mike Slaughter, believes that the ordination process is another thing hurting the church and church growth.  I can’t say that I disagree.  Like most professional processes, it is about minimizing liability for the body responsible for credentialing, not about promoting creativity and innovation and  passion and energy for what works and what meets people’s needs.

Slaughter says "I’d rather have 40 people committed to missional church  than being spiritual hospice chaplains in a codependent congregation."  How familiar does this sound, my mainline friends? Where are our most energized, creative, mission-oriented souls? Doing paper-work for their credentialing bodies or creating disciples and sending people on mission to heal a hurting world and fight social and economic injustice?

It’s hard to question Ginghamsburg’s results. They have 1,200 members and 5000 attendance on Sunday. Fort McKinley has 250 attendance on Sunday and 500 members. Ginghamsburg runs a huge 501c3 non profit and they’ve given $5 million to Darfur relief among other efforts.

Perhaps  congregational polity is getting in the way of our liberal theology in terms of changing the world?

The equation of a missional church is quite simple.  It involves the interweaving of two types of commitments through the church system.  First there are the spiritual commitments of the faith, the second are the cultural commitments of the people you’re trying to reach.  The equation looks like this:

Faith + Culture + Church = a missional church.

Simple.  The unique struggle of UUism, and what I believe the source of its possible demise, is that in most of our churches the cultural commitments have become so predominant that it has become confused with the faith itself.  This is evidenced almost every time you hear your average layperson talk of UUism, for example: “this persons a UU without even knowing about it” is not a theological comment, but rather refers to someone’s cultural status (politically liberal, listens to NPR, middle-class comfortable, has a college degree etc…).  In many congregations if you stripped out the cultural commitments, there would be nothing left.

So when UUs talk of reaching out to different segments of the population, one issue that we share with other churches is cultural relevance.  The other, is theological.  If reading Mary Oliver and supporting NPR isn’t a spiritual commitment, then what’s left?  What is the content of the faith? What is the Gospel?

Our unique challenges that are preventing us from having an impact in our world is that our churches are not only dealing with a cultural issue of how to reach contemporary generations, but a spiritual issue of what is the gospel we are trying to reach them with.  For mission, growth, and impact both of these questions need to be answered by the local church.

Workshop on Lay Leaders and Mission

Missional Church empowers apostles.  Remember that a disciple is a follower and an apostle is one who is sent.  I encourage people to reclaim and/or use this language.  A disciple is not a blind sheep,but a servant and student of the mission.  I am a disciple of the love of God, the gospel (teachings) of Jesus and the five smooth stones of religious liberalism.  I also consider myself an apostle of the love of God, the Gospel and the five smooth stones.  Their mission sends me into the world to create the beloved community, the imperial rule of God, the commonwealth of all people.

People who are empowered for mission need to be granted permission to follow their passions and live and serve out of their strengths .

The first workshop I attended at the Change the World Conference at Ginghamsburg Church was about ministries started by lay people in the church.

Ginghamsburg encourages people to find their burning bush – the place where God sets them on fire for service and encourages them to serve the community.  The workshop was largely a presentation of various ministries started when people pursued their burning bush.  I learned about.

All benevolent ministries at Ginghamsburg are listed under one 501 c3.

The New Path Inc., a 501©3 non-profit organization based in Tipp City, Ohio, serves the greater Miami Valley area in Ohio by assisting with the basic needs of families to build community, support stability and foster transformation.  As an affiliate, non-profit partner with Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church, New Path has grown from a food pantry, opened in 1980, to 19 program areas that provide for physical concerns within the community ranging from food, clothing, cars, furniture, medical equipment and other material assistance to feeding pets in need and providing budgeting and other life skills training designed to provide a hand up to those seeking new life opportunities.
New Path, a United Way agency, also works to engage the entire community by building bridges of understanding across socio-economic lines.

“Donna” started a  women’s support group two and a half because she had a burning bush: the Lord kept speaking to her about what to do in a society where women struggle with men who struggle with infidelity and pornography.  Her husband was one of these men.  She started a supported group for herself and other women.  The group supports women in relationship with men struggling with infidelity and pornography.  Ministering out of strengths, she drew on one of hers, which is empathy.   She started a small group.  It grew and grew
and she was strong in her recovery and that helped. Donna says:
The group is a place of trust forgiveness, seeking God, and it is
Not therapy, it is place of mutual support and spirituality.

Donna’s husband Reed was the cause of her pain. He says: I had other addictions as well. I came to know the men’s sexual addiction group
Through the 12 step that met on another night.

“Evelyn’s burning bush started in food pantry making thousand with sales of clothes, she asked: why don’t we do it all year? She started Anna’s Closet.  She thought to herself, "We needed a building, looking for places to rent and God led us the entire way. We found a building – a former dog grooming place  for
$250 a month.  We  came up with a name The Gleaners and we  made 32k$ selling things people give away. Everything is donated. We have 30 servants and not all go to Church here (at Ginghamsburg).
You don’t need experience to serve. I never had retail experience. I’m a biology teacher.

Charlie and Monty  started a Bible study with men released from prison. the noticed that men released from a local jail had nowhere to go.  Charlie said "We saw a need. You know,  – You are the light of the world –
If you don’t know who you are how can you help broken people?”
Monty said “At the jail we saw guys being recycled.  As pastor Slaughter said,  ‘You got to hang out with the sold out.’

Another woman whose name I missed spoke of losing her job to finding herself and working with women who now find themselves where she used to be.  "God took me on a journey through poverty to teach me about poverty.”

The key to having a large, vibrant, missional church is to have a lot of small, vibrant, missional churches.  The Ginghamsburg model relies on a simple organizational technique familiar to many congregations for their missional success: small group ministry.

I sat in on a workshop with Ginghamsburg’s Small Group Ministry Coordinator Kevin Applegate and picked up a lot of insights into not only successful small group work, but successful community and mission oriented church.
 
In order to understand the small groups at Ginghamsburg, it’s necessary to understand membership in the church.  Ginghamsburg has a main campus sanctuary that seats 900 and averages an attendance of 5,000 at its variety of weekend worship services.  The church only has 1,200 official members, however, and the heart of the church is the small groups which meet every week.

There are four requirements for membership at Ginghamsburg:
1. Attendance at worship
2. Participation in Small Group
3. Tithe 10% to the church
4. Serve the Community out of your strengths

Ginghamsburg presents this as three C’s:

Celebration – bring
Cell- grow
Call – serve

Ginghamsburg requires a 12 week membership class, 4 weeks of which is the Strengthfinders program and Ministering out of Your Strengths.  All members must meet with the ministry staff and talk about how they will serve out of their strengths.

Service is, as Applegate said, “ingrained in the Ginghamsburg DNA. If you don’t want to serve, you won’t last long at this church.  You can’t get there saying it or talking about it. It (service needs to be in everything you do)."  Service is in everything at Ginghamsburg. It is even in the terminology.  There are no volunteers at Ginghamsburg.  Volunteers are called Servants.  If you are helping out with an event (such as the folks driving vans or making coffee or helping us find rooms at this conference)  you are serving.  

Ginghamsburg encourages small groups to serve as groups.  People are more likely to serve with each other and when they do things together.  Serving in this way, helps people in their goal, which is finding their purpose and call and finding it in the group is part of the purpose of being in a group.

Ginghamsburg currently has 2600 people in 250 groups. The continuously offer a Self start 4 week class for starting up new small groups.

Applegate spent the bulk of the workshop explaining Ginghamsburg’s Four goals of small groups:

1 Create authentic community
Work through relationship issues and flaws

2. Life transforming Bible study. Where truth meets life. (In a liberal church setting, this can be either a liberal approach to scripture study, world scripture study, or other spiritual or study curricula. The important thing is that there is a spiritual and not just a social focus of the groups.  more on this below.)

3. Serving together as a group.

4. Connecting to god as a group – prayer practice as a group. (In a liberal church setting  – and really Ginghamsburg is not a fundamentalist bible church, but a rather mainline Methodist community – this could be a circle of trust journey sharing group a la Parker Palmer or other type of meeting where people’s religious journeys meet real life).

Applegate stressed that action is the key to the structure. Small group ministry is active and there must be accountability (everyone has refrigerator privileges in each other’s homes was one phrase used over and over again).

Service and study keeps groups from becoming stagnant or becoming social groups or dinner groups.  It can be easy for small group ministry groups to turn inward, but keeping an outward focus prevents that.  Outward focussed service doesn’t prevent building community, but along with study, it is one way to develop community.  Always keep an open chair or empty chair at group meetings. It is not to represent Jesus or Elijah, but to represent those in the world we serve, to remind us that we have a mission beyond ourselves!

Group size:  8-10 people is max for a small group.  Groups at Ginghamsburg remain constant, some have been together for decades. They develop deep and lasting community.  People are encouraged to start of join a group as soon as they come to the church and do not need to be members to be in a group.

Serving strategies and goals for small groups:

1. Serve each other. Many people have not done any service or have done any in a long time. Serving each other in a small group setting is both a community builder and the first way to practice serving the world and making it a better place all at the same time. The group also becomes the primary place of pastoral care.   When person goes into hospital, the call goes to the small group, not the pastor’s office.  The reason? It’s a huge church. Do you want a pastor who may not have even met you coming to the hospital or do you want a couple of people who meet with you and pray with you and serve with you all the time coming to visit you and support you and pray with you when you are in a time of crisis?

2. Serving together in mission at least once a quarter.  Serving together binds groups together and reinforces individual and group as well as congregational mission.

3. Offer abundant and promising opportunities to serve.  There are no volunteers at Ginghamsburg Church. Everyone and anyone helping out with anything at the church is called a servant because they are serving the mission of the church "Changing the World, One Person at a Time” whenever they help out.

4. Lead by Example.  Provide inspiration and promote service and mission by giving your personal testimony. Pledge and fulfill resource promises (be a good financial steward and make good on your pledge to the church). Encourage group-inspired and God-inspired projects – seek to see the spirit moving in others and support it.  Be active in serving.

Ginghamsburg gives people a lot of freedom to do ministry and serve. It is a permission giving church. There are no committees, only a governing board of twelve.  A staff of 24 and service from the small groups get everything done.  If the staff seems large, think of this:  A small mainline congregation with 100 members and 1 minister, a part-time administrator and a part-time DRE has a member to staff ratio of 50:1 (1 full time staff, 2 part time staff = 2 full time staf / 100 members)  while Ginghamsburg with 1200 members and 24 staff also has a member to staff ratio of 50:1, but figure in that Ginghamsburg has an ATTENDANCE of 5000, the attendance to staff ratio is 208:1 while our mainline church usually has less people in attendance than it has members   so lets say our attendance is 75 on Sunday and our attendance to staff ratio is 38:1.

In the bulletin and newsletter there is always a place for the small group to serve, but it needs to be doable stuff. So what can people do to serve? Ginghamsburg offers these suggestions (among others) to its small groups:

Food pantry pick up and distribution
Have a Yard Sale and donate proceeds to mission (not the church!) Ginghamsburg has donated over $5 million to Darfur relief.
Clothing Store pick up, sort, organize and distribution
Nursing home visitation
Block parties for children
School Aides and tutoring, classroom help
Christmas gifts drives
Homeless shelter food preparation or serving
Thanksgiving food preparation or serving
Church site needs: mowing, space design, parking lot, repairs
Church ministry needs: bulletin stuffing, greeters, office administration help
Elderly home needs: repairs, furniture repair, support, visits
Community Park Activities
Gateway Cafe Cooks
Short term mission trips: overnights, overseas

Ginghamsburg currently has 2600 people in 250 small groups. The church continuously offers a Self start 4 week class for people who want to start a new small group.  The class is four 60-minute sessions. The sessions are 30 minutes of teaching and 30 minutes of doing or practicing what being in a small group is like.   Applegate said “We tell them what a small group is and then we do it so they experience the power of it.”

Ginghamsburg also uses periodic campaigns where they offer an open signup for six weeks and hope at end of six weeks the groups they put together then stay together for the long haul.