Pilgrim Soldier

David Fitch has written a brilliant post about why building a missional community is more difficult than building a mega-church.

Reading through the post it reminded me how much I have always felt at home within a smaller community of believers than I have in the larger corps I’ve been a soldier at. In fact I would suggest that it is far better to start looking at planting new congregations once you reach a certain size, say 150-200 people, than it is to continue to build.

But for me the basis of all church needs to be closer to home. Our obsession within the traditional church, and I include the Army in this, is about how many come to the Sunday service. Almost 12 months ago I wrote about Wolfgang Simson’s 15 Theses. Back then it was the first time I had seen it, but I’ve returned to it several times since then and it’s amazing how thoughts change.

What I have come to realise is that the Sunday gathering we have should not be the sum of our corporate worship. Sundays need to be a time to celebrate with all the worshipping communities of a church. These can be house groups or any other type of small group, but we simply cannot restrict our teaching/discipleship/worship in the way we have fallen into!

Most important of all is that we do not restrict ourselves to simply meeting together, but need to be outward looking. The Salvation Army has for most of its history claimed a dual role as both church and mission. Yet in many places we have allowed the mission side of our work to slip into the background, leaving it either to a small group, trained professionals, or let it disappear altogether. We cannot allow this to happen any more as this goes against the very commission that Jesus gave us. He sent us out, but we expect people to come in!