Church Rearranged

It all started in a Starbucks, by accident. I’d been working as a barista in a huge Starbucks in a Borders bookstore, finishing up my Master’s degree, paying my bills, and trying to make my way back home to America after serving in Wales as a missionary for seven years. After being asked so many times about The Da Vinci Code while working behind the bar, I decided to start a reading and discussion group about it for “one night only.” Thirty unchurched people turned up. At the end of the night, they said, “Can we do that again?” When I asked them why, the response floored me, “We were able to drink coffee, ask questions about Jesus, and nobody yelled at us.”

They wanted to come back and talk about Jesus because we respected them enough to listen to what they had to say. When this reading group became a church, our two-hour gathering incorporated a two-way discussion for the final 30 minutes.

John’s gospel is filled with conversations between Jesus and other people. It’s not a collection of polished sermons that Jesus preached, but a record of discussions. That’s why so many people connect with it. Discussion allows unbelievers to raise questions, and it gets to their obstacles to faith. When you listen to people, you can respond to their questions, struggles, and dilemmas instead of merely rehearsing a monologue. When Paul went into the synagogue in Corinth, he sat down and presented the gospel in a blend of teaching and discussion. As he reasoned with Jews and sympathetic Greeks in the synagogue, the Corinthian church was born.

Primed for conversation

The Internet seems to connect us, but only in trivial ways. People are becoming less authentic in their communication. They can watch a girl cut herself to the bone, but they’re unable to help her in any way. The reaction of most in the pixilated e-arena is to mock or post crass comments, because they’ve been desensitized. It’s their only choice; their ability to act compassionately has been stripped away by the glass barrier of their monitor. In the area of conflict, things aren’t much different. People say things they wouldn’t dare say face-to-face, because the Internet provides little or no accountability. Yet an illusion of fellowship is created in this virtual community.

As I survey the cultural shift of recent years, I hear my heart echo Jesus’ parable: “an enemy has done this” (Matt. 13:28). There is a demonic agenda to keep us from talking face-to-face by giving us a false sense of connectedness in a virtual society. Genesis demonstrates that man was made as a relational being. It was not good for man to be alone, yet since the Fall, man’s disconnectedness from others has been the direct result of his inability to connect with his Maker. Man is still hiding, but this time it’s not behind a bush; it’s behind a computer screen. He’s still ashamed, and the Internet takes away much of the social pressure. Pseudo-intimacy in a cyber community will sabotage interpersonal relationships, and from the enemy’s point of view, that’s ideal. If the gospel is anything, it’s social. It takes root through community and interpersonal communication.

True ministry is incarnational. If this wasn’t true, then Jesus wouldn’t have come in person. He’d have been content to share his opinion through the spoken and written word. But true ministry is done face-to-face. Jesus, who took on flesh, was proof of that, embodying the word he’d spoken long ago through the prophets. Jesus literally “fleshed out” his ideas. Paul too emphasizes the irreplaceable experience of face to face communication: “We were orphaned by being separated from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you” (1 Thess. 2:17). “For I long to see you … that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith” (Rom. 1:11-12).

This generation is crying out for things found only one place: the church of the incarnational God. He’s not content to have a superficial relationship with us; he comes to dwell within and among us and participate in our daily lives. The Holy Spirit in us provides an intimacy unlike any other. It’s the only thing that will truly meet our souls’ cry for intimacy, love, and acceptance.

Spectators or participants

Returning to America after 12 years in Wales felt like stepping off a time machine from the future. Because Europe is decades down the post-Christendom path, ministering there was like ministering 50 years into America’s future.

In the late ’70s, a phenomenon called the Alpha course took Britain by storm. It started off with a meal prepared by the hosts. After small talk over dinner, the dishes would be cleared away and the host would present a few questions that were open for discussion, such as “Why don’t people believe there is a God?” Then there was a 40-minute video in which a guy named Nicky Gumbel masterfully presented the gospel. This was followed by a time of open discussion that lasted another 40 minutes. It was powerful. Churches that hadn’t seen conversions in decades began to see professions of faith after launching the 10-week course.

But when the new converts went to church on Sundays, they found the experience nothing like the approach that had connected with them in the first place. They were asked to sit down, shut up, and listen—quietly.

As long as the church is set up as an audience on Sunday mornings, there’s little to say to the departing youth. They sit at home in the neon light of their monitors because all they need in church is ears and eyeballs. All we ever ask them to do is sit. We never ask them to use their mouths. This is where we’re blowing it.

When you go to Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), you get to interact. When you go to Starbucks, you get to talk. But our services are wired in such a way that people have no opportunity to do anything but sit back and enjoy the show. A.A. knows that people need to talk about their “dark and dirties.” Starbucks got the nickname “Fourbucks” because it can charge you four dollars for a cup of coffee by offering something a diner doesn’t: interactive atmosphere. If we geared church toward participation, we’d have something special.

The Puritans believed that the organization of church furniture preached a nonverbal sermon. Prior to the Reformation, the altar had center stage and communicated the need for the priest to mediate between you and God. The Reformers scrapped the altar and placed the pulpit at the center of the room to emphasize the centrality of God’s Word. The only other pieces of furniture in the room were chairs or pews set in straight rows, but that communicated that congregants were an audience. What a mistake!

In the New Testament, people prayed for one another, sang songs spontaneously, engaged in the activity of communion, brought words of encouragement to one another, and responded to prophecy, among other things.

Rearranging your chairs

For interaction to occur, we’ve got to set church up for participation. When I accidentally planted a church out of Starbucks, we sat in a bunch of half circles or “horseshoes” with the open end facing the pulpit like a magnet. Circles communicate participation. Facing each other tells you that you’re going to be a part of what happens here. Your contribution matters. It’s not just welcome, but expected. Watching people minister to each other, evangelize, and help the hurting is a lot better than observing Christians shuffle in, watch the show, and then elbow each other during the post-sermon race of death to the parking lot. No wonder our youth stay at home. Nobody is going to listen to their problems. If anybody talks to them, chances are nobody is going to ask them anything meaningful beyond, “How’s school?”

Picture walking through the doors of church this Sunday and seeing 11 groups of coffee tables with eight chairs in half circles around them. Taking a deep breath, you make your way to the table. You are nervous, but here’s the beauty of it—everybody at the table is relaxed and smiling and talking. You hear people laughing, and somebody asks if you’d like to have coffee or tea. With a cup of coffee in your hand, you start to relax when somebody asks your name. You get the small talk out of the way until the singing starts.

After the sermon, three simple, open-ended questions are presented on the screen. Coffee, tea, and cakes have mysteriously arrived at your table during the post-preaching song, and you’re eager to talk about some of the thought-provoking, convicting, and encouraging things you’ve heard. As you talk with the other people you realize that everybody else is as human as you. They struggle, just like you. They get impatient with their kids, just like you. They get afraid and unsure of themselves, just like you. But they lean on God in good and bad times. After listening to them, you conclude that he’s helping them.

Sit by the well, have some coffee, and talk with them about God. That’s how Jesus did it.

Peyton Jones is the founder of NEW BREED Church Planting and author of Church Zero (David C. Cook, 2013).