What is a microchurch?
A microchurch is a small community of worshipers committed to providing mercy ministry that has been designed to benefit a specific people group. As part of their day-to-day lifestyle of worship, the members of a microchurch are involved in direct relationship with a specific people group, say a neighborhood or a certain demographic, loving and serving them as a tangible blessing, and also as live presentation of God’s character and his heart to care for them. By doing so, the MC embodies the gospel in real time.
Why such a focus on mission?
Mercy ministry is primary to the work of a microchurch. But the members of a microchurch are also committed to living worship filled lives for Jesus as well as intimate, restorative relationship together as a community. These three things – worship, community and mission – are the primary purposes of church. Some churches focus on community or worship as central, but we believe such an approach tends to leave mission in the margins of church life. We believe making mission primary is, first, the way of Jesus – his ultimate purpose for the church. But we also believe a body that is pursuing service to the world as their primary mission will be desperate for God and his people. The spiritual skills, courage and fortitude needed for living on mission 24/7 can only be found through pursuing Jesus and living in encouraging, gospel-centered relationships. That’s worship and community. Our commitment to mission drives us to ever deeper worship and community.
Does a microchurch do worship and community?
Yes. Worship and community are experienced as a consequence of our obedience to Jesus’ call to go and make disciples. A microchurch will have meetings with traditional singing, some form of liturgy and hanging out together for fun and encouragement. However, we don’t meet to sing and practice a liturgy and we don’t meet to hangout with like-minded friends. When we meet together, it is either with an explicit or an implicit goal of pursuing or preparing to pursue mission. This more often than not includes seeking to be emotionally and spiritually positioned to follow Jesus into love and service in life’s unscripted circumstances. Worship and deep community are necessities of our missionary lifestyle.
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Nothing will change the world more powerfully than the love of Christ shared with a world that so desperately needs it.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
Even a small light holds back darkness and a group of small lights can banish it completely.
Merely attending church doesn’t make you much of a church because sitting in a row, consuming church doesn’t make you very good at being the church.
If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit mercy, then it isn’t mercy.
By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.
You can’t build the future of the church on passionless, disengaged people. Nor can you build it on consumers.
The difference between humanity and all the rest of creation is that men and woman were made to relate directly with God.
Genuine spiritual knowledge lies in the union of the believer’s life with the truth of God.
To exist without the pursuit of God’s mission in the world is to exist as something other than the church.
As we worship, we enter, touch and are touched by the presence of God himself. We were created to live this way.
C.S. Lewis