Wait, But How Do I Find This Type of Community?

A probably unhelpful but still truthful answer to this very common question

I get this question pretty much every time I share about our church.

While a majority of white male church planters remain confounded as to why in the world I would choose to plant a church in this way, our small, loosely structured, non-program-non-Sunday-centric model continues to prove that it is exactly the kind of community many people are yearning for.

However, in being a small, loosely structured, non-program-non-Sunday-centric church plant, it can be hard to help folks find and discover such a community within their midst. We aren’t part of any larger organization, I only know a handful of folks doing similar things as us, especially here in the south, and unless you happen to live here locally in Houston and know one of our core members, finding your way into our specific and localized expression of church probably isn’t going to happen.

But in honest truth, the real reason helping people find a community like this is so dang difficult is primarily because you don’t find faith spaces like this, you form them. And I recognize that is not the answer a vast majority of folks want to hear.

I recognize that most of us just want to be given a location and a start time so maybe we can try it out next Sunday— oh whoops I forgot I was out of town, okay maybe the Sunday after that. We want to be sent a few preview sermons to check out the theology. We want to scroll through a website or a social media page and see if the vibes are giving cult cool or cult run. And trust me, I get that. Much of our concerns about church as we know it are valid. We have every right to distrust, remain on guard, and want as many questions as possible answered before entering into a faith space that we aren’t so sure about anymore.

I myself, still remain unsure and distrustful of most traditional churches and I think the reason why is important here: You can do all the right things— you can research all the questions, confirm they have women and BIPOC leaders, check they have affirming theology, start attending the church for months, even years, agree with every sermon, find the pastor likable and “real”, believe the people to be genuinely wonderful and welcoming— and you can still have that church reveal itself to be another harmful and dangerous disaster. Because at the end of the day, almost nothing about how our traditional churches are structured is built to ensure nor develop genuine trust, accountability, transparency, or community.

You cannot develop genuine trust with a leader whose main form of communication with you is a sermon.

You cannot develop genuine relationship with folks you see for 1 hour, once a week, sitting shoulder to shoulder, silently.

You cannot develop theological transparency with a model that emphasizes talking over action.

You cannot develop genuine community with tools designed for a consumer-centric model.

And while many of us may agree with this in theory, we continue to carry remnants of this consumer-centric model in the way we approach searching for a new one. We still believe we should just be able to show up and find before us a perfectly curated community fit to our theological preferences, where all the people fit our vibe and where all our families needs are met to satisfaction. And we expect someone else to build that for us. We are the consumers. We simply show up and enjoy. That is what church as we know it has come to have us believe.

And worse than that, church as we know it has often punished and limited us when we dared to step out of this consumer-centric norm. When we did have opinions and wanted to help offer change or help, when we did want to be a part of building, creating, serving, and influencing the faith communities we belonged to, many of us had our hands swatted away like little children, told to leave the vision casting and the forging forward to the professionals who knew what they were doing.¹ Everything about how “the church” has formed us up to this point has conditioned us to believe the exact opposite of what I am about to say here, so get ready for some discomfort, okay?

Some of us need to stop expecting to stumble upon the perfect faith community via traditional means and need to start believing we are fully allowed and able to form a pretty great faith community ourselves through untraditional avenues.

The perfect faith community for you may look nothing like a church right now. It may not be something you can “attend” or “checkout” and it probably won’t have a website.

It may look like a group of your friends deciding to decolonize your faith together.

It may look like starting to host once a week meals for the people on your street.

It may look like asking a friend or two to start relationally investing within a local non-profit together.

It may look like attending a traditional church, making some connections, and intentionally deepening those connections in order to form and build the type of community you have always wanted.

I simply no longer believe “church” is the pews, the sermons, the worship sets, the buildings, not even the service projects. I believe church is the moment you look another human being in the eye and have the boldness and courage to ask, “hey, you wanna figure out this whole Jesus thing together?”

And my friend, absolutely nothing is stopping you from making that ask.

Beyond this type of self-permission, I think the only other, overwhelming obstacle that stops folks from making such intentional asks and investing in this type of community is just a lack of being led.

Who is going to teach us?
Who is going to instruct us?
Who is going to tell us what to do?

In many ways, that has been my primary role within our church for the last year and some change. I was the one to instigate and implement different forms of engaging with scripture, of organizing, of gathering and of operating together. And you wanna know a secret as “the one in charge?” At no time have I known what in the heck I was doing.

I had no one telling me what to do. No road map to determine next steps. I never once followed some set curriculum or structural model. I just tried stuff.

And I listened to the response and intake of the community to inform what was working, what wasn’t, what more was needed, what we needed to scale back on. I listened to their needs, their wants, their hurts, and their strengths and we found and did things that met us each where we were at.

I knew our community possessed a lot of church hurt and were all coming out of very white evangelical spaces— so we experimented with contemplative practices and with ideas I got from reading up on historically forgotten faith communities that came out of the margins. I borrowed resources from other communities who I knew were doing things outside the norm. Some of those resources were helpful, some didn’t work for us at all. So we’d try something else and just did that again and again and again.

I kept a posture of wonder, learning, and curiosity from pretty much anyone not directly affiliated with the white evangelical world: non-profits, social clubs, justice movements, spiritual directors, liberation theologians, and the long prophetic and faithful ministry of the Black church. And I allowed that learning to form and shape what we did, how we did it, and why we did it.

It sounds cheesy but man it really can be this simple: The work that God was already doing within us to grow and change and shift our faith, that is what taught us and instructed us. The Spirit of God is who told us what to do.

And I think far more of us are fully capable and ready to step into this type of faith-led community forming than we realize.

I’ve wrestled a lot with what it means to be a “leader” in the midst of this small, loosely structured, non-program-non-Sunday-centric church plant. And while a whole lot of that is still up in the air, here is one thing i’ve landed on for sure:

A leader is simply the one to go first.

The one to make the first ask.

To initiate that first meeting.

To give the first book recommendation.

To host the first meal.

To set that first table.

To extend that first invitation into belonging.

The rest is on the community to continue to build, form, and make fruitful.

Not only do I believe that a lot more people should be a lot more willing to see themselves as this kind of fully capable “leader”, but I also believe a lot more people should be a lot more willing to trust the power of a community and what a group of committed and willing participants is capable of building together.

The consumer-centric church model wants us all to believe that a church needs a seminary trained, professional leader who knows what they are doing and can cast a vision that will command and direct a streamlined mission primed for any and all to come join. It needs a Sunday morning service, a professionally trained worship leader, a multi-purpose building, and a minimum budget of $100,000+ to fund it all. But, the experience I have come to know as “church” needs little more than someone willing and humble enough to admit what they don’t know and who can simply be the first to cast a wide net of invitation, offering others a space to explore, learn, and create something beautiful together.

Expressions of church like that are formed, not found. So find your people, find a purpose, and start forming.

1. They did not.