Ecclesia grows, goes etc...

I am not sure if I ever really wrote much about what I do, or what I am trying to do. When I first started this blog, I was clueless about the "emergent conversation". I did not know who was who, and what anyone was trying to do with this emergent church thing. I just knew that if we did not start to reach the growing number of unchurched people in DuPage county WBC would be dead in 50 years, or worse.

In the meantime, I was flamed by Spencer Burke, and mocked jokingly, (I think) by Doug Pagitt for calling myself an emergent Pastor on my blog. What else was I supposed to call myself? 8>) 

in the beginning...

I went to emergent conference 2 and 3 in San Diego. At the first one I had zero clue about what was happening, and why everyone thought it was cool. I heard all of these wild ideas and conversations. And that was just from Dallas Willard. Kidding. Once the conference started I was mystified by most of what I heard. Especially in the plenary sessions. I tried to stay on the onramps, honest. I think I walked out of one of the sessions out of sheer boredom. I was thinking, "look I just want to reach people in my community who would feel uncomfortable attending our contemporary evangelical church". Not because our church is doing things wrong, but because the culture is changing is changing faster than a 75 year old church can keep up. What we do week in and week out at WBC is not wrong, on the contrary it is right for reaching a large part of the culture in Wheaton. But it is not reaching the growing culture of post-Christian, post-modern, post-church people of DuPage county. Is this  going to be so hard? Do I need a drum circle? A new theology? Do I need to be a new kind of Christian? Was I mystical enough? Is my meta narrative knowledge enough? Do I need to buy a Mac?

Ecclesia Begins

Shortly after emergent convention 2 (which was better than the first one, but than again, I skipped most of the evening sessions to read or sleep) we began Ecclesia. I started with a group of like minded people, and co-opted our than college intern to join me.

My wife and I were the only married people, and most of the people who came were refugees from our singles ministry which if I remember right had just disbanded, and high school upperclassmen who still liked me from their days as me being their junior high pastor. Maybe they thought we would be playing deathsticks? I think we had about 120 people on opening night. We leveled off to around 60 a month or two later. It was very much a fly by night operation, and I was not even allowed to give my full attention to it. About the same time we started Ecclesia our senior pastor asked me to head up our compassion ministries, now known as local impact. Until that point we did have anything organized in this area.  I feel is critical to the life of the main church and Ecclesia so I am excited about this ministry.

Our than college intern has become part of our student ministries staff. We than managed to hire Ted, who was looking for a ministry after graduating Wheaton College. We "snuck" Ted in by making him a part time administrative assistant and part time Ecclesia. Fortunately Ted is a awesome and we quickly were able to move him into full time Ecclesia. Ironically, I am only part time. Although I really spend about 60% of my time with Ecclesia, and the other 60% with Local. 8>)

ecclesia matures

Now two years since the start we are starting to see maturity in our little community. We have many more people playing important roles in our community and others catching the vision behind it.

This Fall we are taking some important steps. We have moved from the youth room, (which is an old Unitarian Church which is kinda cool, although horribly inadequate for good sound and tech) to our fellowship hall which is actually just a gym, with carpet. 

We also moved up our time from the very emergent 6:30pm to 5:00pm. This will allow people who work on Monday morning to come, for more fellowship time afterwards, and for families to bring their kids and get them to bed at a decent hour. Which means we will be starting a children's program this Sunday. Yikes.

Ted and I have worked hard to create teams of people who are handling so many important tasks. We have a connect squad, set up team, worship team, creative team, service team, prayer team, and now a children's team. These teams are made up of talented but mostly inexperienced people, which means they are made up of people just like me.

our model

From the beginning the model for Ecclesia was to be another worship language of WBC. My thinking was, we have a traditional language, a contemporary language, and a Hispanic language service. Ecclesia will be another language reaching a different culture than the other languages. I was not interested in creating a sub-ministry a la the now defunct Axis. This was something that the core leaders at the time (and still around today) were firm on.

WBC is a missional church. We have 92 families in the mission field around the world. For a church our size that is quite amazing. Few churches in the world have had such an impact on the world. WBC gets missions always has always will. That is why adding a contemporary service in the 90's happened, (ok we were not the first, but we were not the last either, a couple larger churches in our area still have not seen the need to make this change which is fine, for them) and why we now have the largest evangelical Hispanic worship service in Chicagoland. Different languages for different people. Reaching people where they are at is something we have always done at WBC. We might not be the most effective, the slickest or innovative, but we are willing to learn and change.

Yes many in our congregation need to be educated about the importance of living a missional lifestyle where they live. Missions is not something you do, it is someone you are. We are getting there, and I think the local impact team will make some large strides in that area.

Dan Kimball told me that Ecclesia will one day have to separate from the church if it wants to keep its values. I disagree for the above reasons. In fact, Ecclesia might never have happened apart from the support of WBC which understands what Ecclesia is accomplishing.

where we hope to go

Today Ecclesia has a regular attendance of over 100. This is not a sign of health, but it is a sign there are many people who are resonating with what we are doing. This year we hope to go deeper as a community and we hope to see more people become disciples of Jesus.

We are encouraged about our first week at our new location and new time. I am encouraged that we now have 14 married couples attending. Although the only children so far will be mine.

All of this to say, I just want to reach people for Christ. The  "emergent conversation" is not as mystifying as it was before. I get it, I understand most of the insider language. I get missional, transformational, reformissional, and espresso. I see so many people in the mainline tradition desperately trying to reverse the course of their shrinking churches by deconstructing church. I fear the one thing that they need to be changed is the one thing they won't change. Their low view of Jesus, the Bible, the necessity of actually going to church, and basic creedal Christian beliefs is what is killing them. Not because their pastors put people to sleep or because their relationships are not authentic, although those things need to changed as well. I stopped reading the ooze, and stopping by the emerging village, or reading Pagitt or Tony Jones, not because I do not respect them, hardly, but because they were not helping me in my journey. In fact, I find those people and sites very interesting, and I hope the can find what they are looking for and share it with us. In the end, their are millions of young people growing up in our youth groups who are ticked off at the church. There are millions more who don't know Joseph from Josephus from Jesus. I am not trying to reach the millions but just the thousands that live in DuPage county. That is where I want to be, and where I want Ecclesia to be.

Comments

[Adam Heise]

It's a shared vision, Chris. Love you, man.