Is "megachurch discipleship" an oxymoron? I'm a pastor at a suburban megachurch where 3,000 attend weekly, and we've been asking that question recently. Does our large program-driven structure actually create more obstacles and distractions to spiritual growth than it removes?
Although megachurches are now becoming giga-churches, and large church pastors have achieved celebrity status in our culture, we're having a hard time programming people into Christian maturity.
We are starting to see a subtle meltdown in the megachurch model. Research shows that young people are leaving the church in increasing numbers and never returning. And the Willow Creek Association's REVEAL study uncovered the limited impact of programs on spiritual growth.
So, should we sell the suburban ranch and redistribute ourselves into smaller communities throughout the city? Or is there a way to be large and not lose our souls? Surprisingly, the answer for churches both large and small might be found in an approach to spiritual formation associated with the monastery.
The new monasticism
I was first introduced to monasticism while taking a spiritual formation class taught by Dallas Willard. I began using fixed-hour prayer and the lectionary for my devotional time, and I introduced these practices to other leaders at Church of the Open Door. In time we found ourselves being influenced by the writings of the Desert Fathers, Augustine, Patrick, Benedict, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, and more modern writers like Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen. And apparently we're not alone.
In Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's book, New Monasticism, An Insider's Perspective: What it has to say to today's church (Brazos, 2008), he explains that "new monasticism" is not an organized movement but something God is doing across the American church. It is spontaneously springing forth from reexamination of the fragmented gospel that many churches model. He urges a more biblical understanding of the gospel, which leads to a quiet revolution of God's Kingdom.
"The greatest enemy of intimacy with God is service for God."
Wilson-Hartgrove cites small monastic communities as examples of this revolution. These communities share certain traits. They often locate in the "abandoned places of Empire" like urban centers. They share resources, and they seek intentional formation through a "rule of life" and disciplined prayer. They also draw from monastic orders of the past by practicing hospitality for strangers, pursuing peacemaking and reconciliation, and by living in submission to Christ's body, the church. One example of such a monastic community is The Simple Way in Philadelphia (best known for one of its leaders, Shane Claiborne).
Our church is light years away from a group like The Simple Way. In many regards, Church of the Open Door looks like your average megachurch. It has a big building, a big staff, and a big budget. But we are also seeing many of the same traits outlined by Wilson-Hartgrove in our community.
Contemplative prayer
The monastic influence may be best illustrated by our annual staff retreat. For ten years, we have taken our entire staff, from the senior pastor to the facilities personnel, to a monastery for a prayer retreat we call, "Wasting Time With God and Others."
Days are not filled with planning, presentations, teachings, team exercises, or professional training. In fact, no work is allowed at all. Our focus is simply on being with God and others. To maximize this, the retreat is scheduled during the busiest time of the year—the week before fall kick-off. To outsiders it might seem like an irresponsible time for a getaway, and that's why I quote Dallas Willard at the beginning of the retreat each year: "The greatest enemy of intimacy with God is service for God."
Being quiet for a few days is not what our staff finds normal, but they have come to look forward to the retreat. It sets a baseline of dependency on God for the whole ministry year. We teach them the need to create sacred space and time in their lives and sacred rhythms of regular disengagement from ministry to reengage their life with God.
The impact of the retreat has spilled over into the lives of our staff members. An administrative assistant has started turning off the radio in her car to practice silence for her whole commute. Our senior pastor uses contemplative prayer during his sermon preparation. Staff meetings and even board meetings have incorporated the practices so that our business is grounded in a sense of God's agenda and not our own.
Starting our meetings with five, or even twenty, minutes of silence is quantitatively and qualitatively different from the quick, perfunctory prayers typical at the start of most meetings. Before the retreats we were rarely stopping long enough to hear God's voice above our own.
A life of prayer and reflection isn't limited to the staff. We invite our members into these practices through workshops, classes, and by setting aside a prayer room stocked with resources about contemplative prayer.
We've found that few people have really been trained how to pray. They may have learned head knowledge about prayer from books, church, or seminary, but a life of prayer has rarely been modeled for them. We've been taught to talk at God, but not how to be with him in silence or attentive to his voice. We believe this is one of our most important responsibilities as leaders.
Intentional community
Our elders, the senior management team, and the staff are beginning to live according to a written "rule of life" that is frequently referred to throughout our ministries. Church of the Open Door's rule isn't just a set of guidelines for prayer and confession; it's a call to live in Jesus, in transformation, in community, in mission, in reconciliation, and in good speech.
We've become so serious about the importance of community in formation that we have hired two staff members who lived for five years in a community governed by a "rule of life" to help us. They're teaching us how to cultivate these intentional communities within our church among friends, couples, and families. We're now using our website to link online messages with suggested experiences, practices, and relational activities built around the rule of life.
There are also plans to apply these principles to the next generation through our junior and senior high school and college programs. Rather than the typical worship/speaker and small group model, we're moving toward linking each student with a mentor and placing them in service environments for learning.
Some of our members have been so deeply impacted by living in intentional community through a rule of life that they left Church of the Open Door. With one of our staff members, and our blessing, they started Abbey Way, a Benedictine ordered church that is a partially closed community opening occasionally to allow "visitors" to consider joining.
Engaging the margins
Church of the Open Door had been meeting in a gym for several years. When we finally entered our building in the suburbs, we had an opportunity to add services and begin a second site. Instead, like the monastic communities mentioned earlier, we felt led to engage the "abandoned places of Empire." That meant partnering with other churches and crossing denominational and ethnic barriers to help launch Sanctuary Covenant Church—a multiethnic, urban church in Minneapolis, led by Efrem Smith.
We also started raising funds for AIDS victims and to provide microfinance loans to the poor overseas. In four years our people have given $1 million. This focus on the poor and forgotten hasn't been without sacrifice. To this day we still haven't finished some of the rooms in our building. This has caused some members to complain or leave because they believed we weren't doing enough for our own church.
Part of our monastic retreat this year included taking our staff on a pilgrimage to the inner city. Amazingly, some had never been to these neighborhoods despite living in suburban Minneapolis their entire lives. We began to study the impact of generational poverty, and we visited people to hear their stories. Several have taken the opportunity to develop guided friendships with those on the margins.
Apart from what church leaders have done, we're also seeing others engage issues of social justice and reconciliation. Without any church program to encourage them, some of our younger members have relocated to abandoned parts of the city where they're involved in the redevelopment of local communities, schools, and businesses. Others tutor at inner city schools where our church has developed partnerships.
One of the more exciting stories involves two couples from the church who, after wrestling with the deeper implications of the gospel, decided to sell their expensive suburban houses and reduce their expenses. Together, they moved into a duplex in a blighted area closer to the city. By sharing their living expenses, they hoped to make more money available for relationships and generosity. A number of their suburban Christian neighbors (who attended other churches) were so disturbed by their plans that they actually tried to intervene and stop them from creating a "commune."
Environments of change
We've learned that preaching and teaching on spiritual formation are good, but they are not enough. And church leaders cannot merely be managers of church programs. Despite our attempts to disciple large groups of people through efficient programs that maximize economies of scale, the truth is that discipleship cannot be mass-produced or commoditized. One-size-fits-all programming has not worked for us; it has only produced information and techniques without life change.
Instead, we've recognized that church leaders need to be designers of formational systems of change. This means developing experiences and relationships that take people out of their habitual patterns and open them to new ways of thinking and living. Change rarely takes place without disturbing a person's comfort and messing with their routines.
This is what lies behind our use of monastic prayer retreats, a rule of life, and engagement with people on the margins. They create environments of change. As we preach, teach, model, and invite others into these practices, we are seeing transformation occur—particularly among church leaders. Still, we recognize that many of our people are not entering into the kind of life we are celebrating. Our attempts at formation and mission are not reaching as many in the crowd as we would like.
Although we have begun to experiment with monastic practices in formational communities beyond the church's leadership, I admit we haven't made tremendous progress in overcoming the obstacles of our own big box.
Accepting the crowd
So, should we abandon the megachurch as a structure incompatible with deep spiritual formation? Can we be large and not lose our souls? At Church of the Open Door, we are trying. We recognize that large groups have always been an expression of the church.
There always seemed to be a crowd around Jesus. He didn't shun the crowd, but he didn't allow their expectations to rule his direction either. Jesus appeared to have two strategies, one for the crowd and one for his core of disciples. He was continually managing this tension. Perhaps that is the model we should be seeking.
I have often wondered if my expectations are too high. It is right to expect 3,000 church people to become maturing disciples of Jesus? Without neglecting the needs of the crowd, maybe we should make the cultivation of a smaller group of future leaders our main priority. Wesley had large crowds where the gospel was preached through word and song. But he also focused on smaller communities of believers that practiced a rule of life. His model became so powerful that it was used to describe the whole movement—Methodism. Is that possible today?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer prayed for the restoration of the church, and he believed that this restoration would "surely come from a sort of new monasticism" which has nothing in common with the old monasticism except an "uncompromising attitude of life lived according to the Sermon on the Mount in the following of Christ."
The contemporary megachurch certainly doesn't share much in common with monasticism, and yet we are seeking the life in Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount as never before. Like Jesus' own ministry, not everyone that gathers in the crowd may engage, but the few that do may turn the world upside down.
Keith Meyer is the executive pastor of Church of the Open Door in Maple Grove, Minnesota.
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