CHURCH PLANTING IN THREE FLAVORS

I am sitting on a plane as I type this, on my way back home from Madrid. We have just had our annual Advancement Team retreat. The Advancement Team leads CA's church planting work in Europe. I lead this team together my friend and colleague Kevin Johnson. The team consists of 6 people: five of us serve as regional 'facilitators (we prefer the word 'facilitator' to 'director' as it emphasizes the serving nature of the role more). The sixth person is Al Dyck, our HR liaison.

We meet together once every two weeks online. We use Skype, an amazing took that lets us talk to each other at no cost at all - but it's not the same as seeing each other. And for some topics, well… you just need to be able to look in each other's eyes.

So once a year we gather together. This year we met in Madrid. Again, in an effort to save cost, we went to a city where 2 of our people already lived. But also, because Madrid is actually home to three of our projects.

These three projects are called Mountainview, Oasis and the Malasagna Project (actually, the latter has no name, but it is in the Malasagna arid of Madrid, so that's what we call it). They are each very different, and as such demonstrate what CA is about quite nicely.

While we had a lot to discuss we made it a point to see each of the three projects. Not just to honor and appreciate them, but also to 'ground our conversation with a sense of reality.' I think that strategy worked beautifully.

MOUNTAINVIEW

I arrived early to go attend Mountainview's service. Mountainview was CA's first church plant, founded by Troy and Heather Cady and Richard and Riekje Wallace. Mountainview is what I would call an attractional church, which means that 'one goes to church on Sunday morning' and the prime way in which new people come to church is through the sunday morning service.

And new people come to Mountainview all the time. The church is growing leaps and bounds. In fact, it is growing so fast that we urgently need additional people here to help with the challenges it brings.

I found the service warm and inviting. This was the opening graphic (below) and above is a photo of the worship team. The service was British-Spanish, with not a hint of American english — I just say that because sometimes people have the impression that all of our projects are 'American' (So not true!).

OASIS
On Monday night we met with the elders of CA's second Madrid Project, Oasis (picture below). That Oasis has elders means it is already quite developed. Oasis meets in the centre of Madrid and consists almost exclusively of young people. Their weekly service is on Saturday. Most of their meetings happen in a cool large living room downtown Madrid.

MALASAGNA
On Tuesday evening we met with the Malasagna Team. This team is led by April and Kelly Crull. They both come from Iowa (picture flat agricultural country that goes on for 100s pf miles), but have chosen to live in Europe for a long time. Their team is 'embedding deep' in what we call an incarnational approach. 'Incarnation' refers to the fact that Jesus, although was God, became a human, a baby at that; learned human language, wore normal clothes and spoke to us in ways we could understand. In an incarnational approach church does not ask that you come to her, but it comes to you - like you, in our forms. The Malasagna team has chosen an area of Madrid, a barrio, of a few streets wide and long, to live and be and dwell and form relationships. They are not so much planting a church as they are planting themselves and living out Jesus — to the best of their ability. All of them are bivocational, having regular jobs, and sharing the normal problems normal people in that area have — meanwhile loving each other and the people around them - and finding ways to make friends and serving the neighborhood. They do this primarily through music and graffiti-art.

PROUD
I write all this because I am so proud of all of this people. I love the way the Wallace's have served God in Madrid for so long, not allowing crises to take them out, but rather investing deep and going strong. I love the way Oasis is led by a young American girl called Amy, who gives her all. I love how April and Kelly and their two kids are going deep, ministering in Spanish, and loving on people in all walks of life.

THREE MODELS
I also love that all three models of ministries are at home in CA. Within CA we share a passion, a vision and a set of values. But when it comes to models and methods, we actually have a whole range of possibilities. In recent years we have talked much about this new 'incarnational' style of church planting, but please believe me when I say we are not done with more attractional models of church planting. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people.

There are those who think that incarnational churches are the way of the future and attractional churches should become a thing of the past. I don't agree. There are also people who think only incarnational churches can be missional - and attractional churches can't. I disagree again.

In my understanding all churches should be about the mission of Jesus: both incarnational and attractional churches. Furthermore, incarnational church planting may be the vogue, but it has been around for a long time — it just wasn't called that. In the same vein, attractional churches will be needed in the future.

We had great conversations. I love the people on the AT. But what was most powerful to me, was seeing how each of these planters is giving themselves away. Giving themselves away to bring in a harvest of people who need Jesus - and a continent in urgent need of redemption.

Comments

[Troy Cady]

A great review, Ro! Thanks for this...I'm going to link people to this..

[April Crull]

Nicely put Ro - I'm hoping to share it with our Iberia region as well.

Just a note though, although your spelling of our barrio makes it sound much yummier (lasagna) it is actually spelled Malasaña :)

[Hilary Porritt]

Great to read about what's happening in Madrid, as we'd met with Kevin on thursday night and prayed for your advancement team meeting.

[Robert Lederman]

It is wonderful the work that God is doing in Madrid and Spain. The Spanish side of MV is slowly growing as well. Perhaps one day we can finally put to death the idea that one can't grow a church or plant a successful mission in Spain to death!

[Robert Lederman]

And if you could please pray for us in Mountain View that God will bring labourers to the harvest We are pushing almost 300 people with only 1 full time staff member (Richard pastor) and 3 part-time staff and 1 intern.

The wonderful thing is that out of our weakness God has been made glorious!!

[James D. Bourne]

God is Good.