What’s Next for Us (part 3 of 3)
“All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
Some years ago, I came out of the sealed laboratory of the UNDERGROUND experiment ready to share our results with the rest of the Christian world. The 10 years I spent quarantined from the traditional church system, left me refreshed and invigorated by the possibilities we discovered. Still, I was also somewhat out of touch with the state of church, and slowly discovered that attitudes and openness were very different than when I went in.
When we started, the majority of traditional churches would have been hostile at worst and indifferent at best to what we were trying. When I came out, churches seemed curious and open. I was stealing myself for more resistance, but it wasn’t there. In the 4 years since, we have seen some of what were our most contested ideas become (almost) mainstream.
Aside from having a touch of whiplash, I now cherish a newfound affection for the traditional church. As they have taken steps toward me, I have also taken steps toward them. Particularly in the past 3 years, I have tried to better understand, serve and invest in churches starting from a traditional operating system. In many ways, that experience has continued to humble me. It is a serious challenge to make the changes we are proposing. I get that now. I am sympathetic to the challenge but also nursing a growing belief that it can be done. As the late social psychologist Kurt Lewin once said, “If you want to understand something, try to change it.” So it is that my attempt to change the church has given me new insight and appreciation for what it is.
While I am now working primarily in the area of collective impact (with NCF), and co-working (with COhatch) learning and innovating there, I am still committed not just to the stewardship of the UNDERGROUND story but the future of the church. And I still feel called to give a part of my heart, mind and time to her future flourishing. And I am not alone. There is a small growing community of leaders who, like me, have a story to steward but also a yearning for pressing on to learn and discover what is next for the church.
This is the third project I am committed to in this next season. The URL bravefuture.org which formerly housed my church consulting work is becoming an alliance of leaders stewarding cutting edge church ideas while searching together for what is next.
Right now Brave Future is made up of a handful of us who have been leading the way over the last 10–20 years, by quietly prototyping missional communities, microchurches and the structures that support them. Hugh Halter (Adullam and Lantern Network), Jeff Vanderstelt (Soma and Saturate), and of course me (Underground) are a few of the friends who are stepping out together to serve the church of the future.
We are not forming a new organization, we already have organizations we are working with and through. We are friends committed to 1) openly sharing what we have learned over the past 15+ years of innovation and 2) discovering together what should be next for the church. This will take courage to not hold too tightly to our own stories but to share them as steps on a journey we know many churches are on, while also pressing forward with new ideas and new experiments. This too will take courage.
We hope to expand the alliance relationally by carefully including other missional movements who have proven stories to tell, who can commit to future learning, and who will serve the cities we identify as learning laboratories. We want to continue to offer each of our unique sets of resources to the church as a whole but will commit together as an alliance to raising money and giving time to 10 key cities over the next 10 years; helping to incubate not just networks of churches, but thriving kingdom ecosystems.
There is lots more to work out and plenty more to say in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
