Dear Simple Friends,It was about 9-10 years ago that we came up with the term "simple church". Neil Cole had coined"organic church" as an alternative to house church because "not all churches meet in houses". I liked that a lot! Then, one day this thought wandered into my mind: "Simple church - a way of doing church that is so simple that any believer could say, "I could do that!" ".
In that one phrase, we took a quantum leap towards the priesthood of all believers.
MRTs are much the same... a way of doing (being) regional leadership that is so simple that any two apostolic people could say, "We could do that!"
Sean and Chris, in their story below, are a wonderful example of this principle. I love this phrase: "We held our first meeting before we really understood what the MRT process was." The fact that the MRT idea is so simple tells me that there is great potential for it to also be viral. It will be fun to see if that is indeed the case.
One other thing to point out. Once they had read the Invitation, they "began to explore the MRT blog". In other words, they began to read your stories and comments. Keep this in mind when you find others you want to invite into the MRT Experiment. Encourage them to explore this blog and see if it's the kind of community they would want to be a part of.
In the comments section, I hope you will welcome our two friends from England and share with us all your observations about their story.
Simply,
John
Hi everybody, we are Sean (Diviney) and Chris (Jefferies) in the western part of Cambridgeshire in England. We joined the MRT experiment a little late and are not very far along with it yet. However, the way we got started will make a good story so we'll tell that for now, we can share other information later as we learn more about Father's purpose for us.
We have been doing CO2 together since the first week of December and it was a blog post about CO2 that encouraged John to contact us with an MRT experiment invitation. We held our first meeting before we really understood what the MRT process was. Chris had watched John's interview with Kent before we met and we talked about that, we discussed three connections we felt drawn to make with local people, and we prayed together.
Afterwards, as we began to explore the MRT blog and understand it more thoroughly we realised that we had already held our first session. What a revelation!Everything we have seen and heard so far resonates with what we've been seeing and feeling for some time as a result of spending time in CO2. We think CO2 leads naturally to mission. Both of us had already felt driven towards some form of outreach and we thought the Luke 10:2 approach would be the way to go.
In particular we already felt that mission would come through listening, that what we do would be driven and guided by what we heard. Now we had been invited to join a considerable number of people who felt the same way. This was awesome!So here we are.
So far we have three possible 'leads', one new and two older ones that we want to try to 'refresh'. The new lead is a Muslim couple who live about a mile from Chris, they published an article on a Muslim website and we spotted it and feel we should follow up on it. We will try to make contact with them.And finally there's a good chance we'll repeat a kid's camp that we were involved with last summer. This may give us links to parents as well as the children.Meanwhile we plan to meet weekly to chat and pray. We'll keep you posted on developments.
Hi Guys,
ReplyDeleteI like the way you heard the Lord lead you to NEW leads. I forget to think of new pre-Christians sometimes, and too often I focus only on praying with those who are already believers. Either way, in listening to Papa, He shows us how we can be vibrant families in each neighborhood, and we affect those to whom He leads us to birth new vibrant families. Thanks for continuing this simple, missional heart from listenng. It encourages me. Glad you are here!
Thanks for the encouragement Peg. How simple it all is, really. Do in the moment what we hear our Papa tell us and... nothing else!
ReplyDeleteListen and obey leads to deepening individual life, relational community life, active missional life, and the body building itself up in love in every way.
Yahshua IS the Way, the Truth, and the Life! He's building the church as he said he would. Yay!
I love him and I love you guys on MRT :-)
I like both words: "organic" and "simple" I like to use them both as words to describe our values.
ReplyDeleteIn my listening time with a friend this morning the words keep ringing out--I know I've already shared them--"relationship is the currency". This idea of an electric current came to mind. There is something about relationships and the Holy Spirit tag teaming together that provides movement and energy. That is for whatever it is worth. Thought I would share.
Grace and Peace.
Isn't it an intriguing and challenging insight that mission emerges from listening?
ReplyDeleteGood stuff.
-James
Yeah - I agree with James. Mission coming from listening... it should be the most obvious thing in the world, but for most believers it's an epiphany. We made it way too hard - it's supposed to be EASY. We listen... we HEAR... we DO... we repeat.
ReplyDeleteI love what you guys have going - keep us posted on the "leads" too!
Great to be connected with you guys this way! I'm praying with you today that God will show you bases of operation out of which to do mission--Luke 10 style.
ReplyDeleteAmen! Great stuff - listening to and obeying Jesus is so simple. Will it really work? :)
ReplyDeleteSean and Chris,
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I used to live in Ham (western London) in the 90s and served with Agape as chaplins at Imperial College, UCL, etc... I am thrilled you are part of the MRT representing western Cambridgeshire. We still have good friends living in Wesbech and working in Peterborough. Praying whether to mention simple church to them. Cheers.