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Dialogue Getting this issue together has been a good case-in-point about being a network. Trying to hear from everyone made it clear that we don’t all work in the same way — like some of us don’t read much and write less! Trying to communicate about turning out a piece of mutual thinking is somewhat lower on the priority list when we get together than catching up with each other and dealing with the latest necessity of one of our big ideas!. So as you read, please pray. We think being a network of cells and congregations is one of the great gifts we have been given. But it is a big gift, and to whom much is given, much is required. To demonstrate to the Philadelphia region that Christians reconcile instead of divide, that they heal rather than split, that they do the work to love rather than take the easier way of self-protecting is a tall order. Jane gets us to enjoy the main expression of identity as one church: the Love Feast. Jeff helps us keep our eyes open to what it might mean to be out of the net. Joshua gives us a jet’s eye view of the future. Rod provides history and Bible study. — Ed. Love Feast Memories The main place we express our togetherness has its beauty and foolishness. Ah, Love Feasts. Those feel-good, bigeating, full-of-hugs get-togethers we have in our meeting places every three months or so. Once you’ve been to one, you hate to miss the next. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? (If not, I hope you’ll find out at the next one!) A Circle of Hope Love Feast is the quarterly meeting that we appropriately consider a family reunion. It’s the time that we have deliberately set aside for people from all of our congregations to connect, eat, and make our renew our covenant to be one people in Christ working together in a common mission. When I asked a few people to describe a Love Feast, there was one common word used by those of us who come from church-y backgrounds: fellowship. For me, that word brings to mind a vivid image of my childhood church’s “fellowship hall” with fluorescent lights, fake wood paneling, and large old ladies wearing polyester pants and dishing up spaghetti. Not the most attractive image. (Except for the spaghetti.) But then I think about what happened in that space, and I understand what fellowship is. The fellowship hall was where the church came together around Christ. We bonded as a community because of our shared interest, love, and mission. The fluorescent lights were outshone by the bright glow of Jesus that was shared. And that glow is what happens at our Love Feasts. We come together every three months to bask in each other’s glow. We are united by our commonalities. Love Feasts are a place where we catch a glimpse of the kingdom of God on earth. For Teresa Gingrich, her first Love Feast helped Circle of Hope make sense. As a regular attender at the Broad and Washington site, she had heard about the Northwest and East locations, but it didn’t mean much. “The abstract idea of ‘other congregations’ came into reality at the Love Feast,” she shares. “Even though we didn’t all know each other, we still had a connection; we knew that we’re all part of the same thing.” I fondly remember my first Love Feast, back in 1999. I had been at Circle for about 5 months, and I was making a covenant. The hours leading up to the feast found me in the Wissahickon with several other brave souls, being baptized by Rod. It was a cold April day, and the ice had just melted. After thawing out and putting on warm clothes, I entered the old 10th street meeting place for the Big Event. At that time there was only one congregation, and most of the faces in the room were familiar, but it was still nerve-wracking for someone as introverted as I am to realize how many people I had yet to meet. Today, with three congregations, there can be dozens of people at a Love Feast whom we may have never seen before. But once we step into the room, the warmth just seeps into us and we can’t help but feel a part of the love. “The variety of people—both familiar and unfamiliar—was great,” shares Teresa. “Everyone was so friendly, introducing themselves, talking and laughing. It was exciting to come into a body of people and meet so many new people at once.” The commonality that we feel through Christ makes a Love Feast feel like a family reunion. Even though we don’t know each person there, we know that we are connected to them in some way. Spencer James noticed this instant connection at his first Love Feast. “I couldn’t believe the vibe,” he shares. “People didn’t know each other, but it felt like family. There is such a lot of love. It’s great for a guy who doesn’t have a big family.” Natalie Mufalo likes to reconnect with the other congregations at the Love Feast. “It’s a great opportunity for everyone from all the congregations to intermingle,” she says. “I love meeting all the new people and hearing what they are doing. And of course, there is nothing like the variety of food!” Oh, yes, food. My favorite way to connect with people is to eat with them. I love to walk along the Love Feast tables laden with crock pots and Tupperware, wooden salad bowls and pizza boxes! Yum. The diversity of the kingdom is revealed through labels on the containers, from vegan peanut stew to roasted pork to KFC. And sometimes even some of that “fellowship hall” spaghetti. Following the meal there is a time for people to make a covenant with the others of Circle of Hope. People who have been connected and want to make a public commitment to partner with the rest of us have a chance to stand up and share their story. When I made my covenant six-and-a-half years ago, I cried a bit as I expressed my desire to become a part of this group of people who were seeking Jesus in such an attractive, loving way. I felt as if I had finally met people who knew the same Jesus that I knew. “Whenever I talk about Jesus I cry,” I said, a little embarrassed. These days I talk about him so much that the tears are not quite so common, but I love that I cried when I made my public covenant. Since my first love feast, I’ve had the pleasure of recommending a couple of people when they made a covenant with the community. I still cry when I get in front of that microphone. I realize now that it’s more than just talking about Jesus that makes me cry. It’s the action of opening up to be a part of him and knowing that He accepts each one of us that gets me all teary. Brenda Robinson loves this covenant part of the Love Feast. “There’s so much excitement about joining the community,” she says. “Hearing people’s experiences in this public way is a unique experience compared to other churches.” That uniqueness is what Circle thrives on. The Love Feast is a
big event in the life of our community. It is where we formally
grow in number, but more importantly it is where we grow deeper
into each other, and closer to the kingdom of God on earth. Jane Clinton What the Network Looks Like from the Outside I have been an outsider so long, I only vaguely remember what inside looks like. I grew up so Baptist I had the Billy Graham bedspread, but the gray wriggly mass behind my face always stayed skeptical, always one foot out the door. Because, come on, huge chunks of this faith don’t make much sense. There’s stuff worth believing in Christendom, but there’s also plenty to doubt. Full-on Ponyboy status finally came in my late 20s when my “church family” kicked me down the stairs and waved coyly from the landing. After that, I thought of myself as a starving dog: feral, hungry, crouched on the edge of light, far away from the house. Some days I said I would be happy to merely lie on the porch, not even asking to go inside. More often I sat quietly in the half-dark. After a while though, I learned, out in the dark with the sinners and assorted unclean, that Jesus is where you get loved, not where people run the sounds together: gee. zus. I missed being in the house, but I grew to prefer the edge of light. We’ve got some decent people out here, and at least when an outsider kicks you, no one feels compelled to smile about it. So I’ve been padding around the edge of Circle of Hope for about a year now, testing the wind, ready to bolt at loud noises or sudden movement. And then Rod breezily asks me to write about what the Circle network looks like to an outsider: where it’s good, where it’s confusing. “Sure,” I said. “Now what, exactly, comprises the Circle network?” Score one for confusing. Circle isn’t very good at explaining itself in person. I talk to people, and no one seems to have an entire idea of what it is that Circle does. The website does a decent job of assembling the pieces (the GUI is a little wonky), but does anyone even look at that? I’m looking at a public meeting bulletin now, and I found the URL sort of buried in the “vitals” section. Even among the clarification, Circle’s still a little confusing. Turns out, Circle is kind of sprawly: three congregations that seem only tangentially related, a cluster of “good works” initiatives under Circle Venture, and cells (an unfortunate name to have to explain since the “body” connotation comes in a distant third after “prison” and “hard” when you say it out loud). Is there more? Am I missing something? I’m not even sure. A name like “Circle” suggests symmetry and order. In practice though, I’ve seen something different. The rhetoric at this church is very, “Hey man, whatever,” but the theology isn’t. Watching that in action is less like a circle, and more like that optical illusion where two tubes turn into three. It looks right at both ends, and the thing holds together, but there’s clearly something weird going on in the middle. People who follow Jesus tend to be a little uptight, because we model ourselves after perfection. Yet we pretty much have no choice but to fail, and not trying isn’t an option. So you have to try to be Jesus-level perfect, and then be okay with not being perfect, which is really a lot to ask. You can look at either end -- perfection or failure -- and it seems pretty clear. But in the middle, that’s where the weirdness goes on. This in itself is not startling. Grace is paradoxical. You knew that when you signed on for salvation. The startling bit is how blithely Circle seems to handle that paradox. I‘ve watched individuals and entire churches melt down when they couldn’t handle that paradox, that essential weirdness. They settle into understanding God as a taskmaster or a hippie or just plain AWOL and reorder their whole sorry lives around it. Spending a life staring at that weird place where two tubes turn into three is too much for them. It’s interesting that Rod asked specifically about what’s good and what’s confusing about Circle, because really, they’re the same thing. I mean, look, there’s all the standard things you’re supposed to like about Circle: the community, the informality, the social conscience, the Christocentrism. These things are great, and if they went away, so would I. But as an outside observer, that’s not the good part. What’s really good at Circle is that confusion isn’t a threat. It’s furniture. When things appear hard and senseless, no one whips out the “Footprints in the Sand” plaque. Confusion -- that’s just the gig, man. Following Jesus is sprawly and weird. No one has an entire idea of how it all fits together. There are sections that are just confusing. Which is fine. How refreshing. Wouldn’t it be great if I decided that finding a church with this level of intellectual and spiritual honesty as a standard feature meant that I was ready to come inside? That I could stop feeling like an outsider, stop comparing myself to a dog? Yeah, that’d be great. Maybe that’ll happen some time. Until then, the same church that’s okay with letting God do his thing can let me be a little feral out in the half-dark. That’s how Circle works. Jeff Quick The Future of the Network and Why It Matters. For me, the network takes the face of Jesus out of the picture Bibles, Chick Tracts, and 500-year-old paintings. I see the face of Jesus in you. “Christ is coming to us because God loves us” becomes less of a belief system, it becomes us loving one another and working together to build the Kingdom. I see Jesus alive and moving in such an incredible way when people from very different backgrounds and personality styles forge relationships and share in Christ’s mission when the world would have us atomized into our respective camps in a broken world. When I was a kid, one of my absolute favorite movies was Top Gun. Great soundtrack, fast jets, nicknames for all the main characters, tragedy, teamwork, and redemption (even a sex scene that I had to fast forward every time I watched it). Navy F-14 Tomcats, have two aviators per plane. Each person has their unique responsibilities just to fly the plane, shoot the bad guys, talk to the tower, and run all the computers. It is hard enough for that duo to manage all that complexity. But to complete the mission or win a dogfight the general doesn’t send just one plane. There is a squadron of these two-seater planes, doing all their individual responsibilities while flying together and taking care of one another in order to complete the mission. Going into a dogfight with Soviets (a little dated?) requires teamwork. Maverick and Goose would be toast without Iceman and Slider (Maverick is actually chastised by Viper “never leave your wingman!”). Of course the climax of the movie is whether Tom Cruise can stay with his wingman or leave Iceman unprotected to chase the bogie that he sees as another impending threat (goosebumps). The direction that we are heading as a church is very exciting, and to me, that direction is like Top Gun. We grow F-14’s and need to work as a squadron. Cells are growing relationally; people from diverse backgrounds are connecting to each of the congregations. As those congregations grow, people in those congregations grow tighter (and that’s good, a strong F-14). It is a real temptation to grow just our cell or just our congregation, but we need one another (a squadron, people!) to fulfill the mission that Christ keeps calling us to. This church has been meeting publicly for almost ten years. There are a good number of us who have been around for a long time, and have a genuine sense of ownership of the network. We like being in a squadron. For the next person to come in, just learning to fly a plane can seem like work enough. The people in their cell and congregation seem like more than enough people to try to get to know. A couple hundred other people, outside those whom that person is naturally drawn to, can seem a bit distant or even intimating. Because a group seems established, there can be a fear that there isn’t room for mutual ownership. It is very difficult to keep growing an organic group when the Spirit and the people are valued more than the structure. How can we authentically keep setting the table for this diversity? How can we keep reproducing a healthy, well oiled F-14 Tomcat while keeping our sights on the larger mission that God is calling us to? Not atomizing with the rest of the world in the 21st century will be a challenge. A fallacy of our times is that by not being a part of anything, one is a part of everything (We’re all on the same plane). That philosophy says if you are a part of a church here, then you are less connected or committed to the church in the rest of the world (you are not in the same F-14 as them). I hear God calling us to really be connected to one another, and grow connected people — actually fly a plane in a fleet of planes rather than be a spectator- passenger on a 2000 person or even 2 billion person mega plane. How would a white 60yr old lifetime Fishtown resident ever get together with a young black professional from Germantown, and a young white anarchist living in South Phila? Imagine a firedup- African-American-lawyer-female working in Center City being together with a dynamic-Puerto-Rican- Kensington-raised-social-working- mom and a white-and-witty-Palmer-seminarystudent who recently moved to Germantown? That’s the kind of church/squadron that my heart yearns for. It’s not so much about organization, it’s about being together. At the last Hour for Reconciliation (a time once a month devoted to keeping us coming back together, keeping us doing the work of racial reconciliation together), people shared stories about the sin of racism permeating their lives and workplaces. From people in professional situations to people on the street, we all found ourselves lost without Christ, and were finding healing and transformation in the relationships that we were building through Jesus. Love Feasts, Hours for Reconciliation, Cell Leader Team meetings, Circle Venture, Circle Thrift are just some of the opportunities that we have to come together to foment growing relationships with one another. To build a church for the Next Generation, we keep making room and being includers, helping people from all walks of life get in touch with Jesus through community. We don’t just reorganize for who is already here, God is building a fleet. That’s why we say “the church if for those yet to join.” Growing the kingdom is hard and exciting work. Our challenge is how to keep these cells and congregations healthy and working together, crossing barriers as one family unit to help Jesus redeem the world. We need one another to not only multiply healthy cells that are authentic representations or life in Christ, but to construct a reconciling network to bring hope to 21st Century urban life. Joshua Grace How the network idea got going Let me say right off: we may use the 21st century word “network” to describe ourselves, but what we are doing is as old as Jesus. As usual, we’re ancient/future in our outlook. That’s why we needed to put out this issue of the Dialogue. We wanted to focus on the network of cells and congregations that forms Circle of Hope because we sometimes seem strange to people. Supposedly, being a Network it is hard to “get.” Maybe that is because people have been “got” so the Bible is hard to “get.” One can hardly take a step in the Bible without running into God working through what might be called a network of people, or without being called on by Jesus to form one! I’m not sure the writers of the Bible would be able to “get” how most Christians in this era tolerate the enculturation of Christianity to the point that most Christians can’t form networks. Don’t you think they would be appalled by our racially and ethnically segregated worship? Wouldn’t they be amazed that many Christians think their country, their city, their neighborhood, their church, their cell is better than, or in competition with others? Wouldn’t they be puzzled at how many people resent the supposed imposition faith relationships make on their individual “freedom?” I do. Like we are doing, I think the Bible- writers, if parachuted into Philadelphia or born here, would be very determined to perfect a network. They’d do it even when people in G’town complained about going “clear down to” Broad and Washington. They’d step it up when people in Kensington said, “So many people in the other congregations are so old!” They’d keep working it out when people in South Philly lost track of the fact that other congregations exist and vice versa,.and vice vice versa. So let me try to help us keep working with this. My goal is to take us back to some of the scripture that gave us a few of the major reasons we decided to be the church the way we are. If we hope to keep building a network of love and trust in our distant, skeptical culture, we’ll need a strong foundation to stand on. Actually, we became a network TOO. The Holy Spirit has been inspiring similar things from the beginning. We had the blessing of inventing how we thought God would plant a church for the next generation in Philly. We came up with an ancient/future answer: He’s going to do it like God is always doing things – bringing people face to face with him and with each other again. Jesus had his own idea of “net” work: "Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore.” Matt. 13:47-8 We’re all kinds of fish in one net, too. Paul had lot’s of pictures to describe a network. This one is directed against individualists who can’t seem to stay connected. “Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. Col. 2:18- 19 We want to live connected to the head, and so to each other like a body is held together. We had the basic goal to survive as diverse, touchable, incarnations of Jesus in a neighborhood. We had the inspiration to do something a little harder than corralling a market share by appealing to felt needs and using clever branding. We want to be real and we want to live in our neighborhoods. So we came up with a both/and method for meeting that challenging goal. Each congregation stays small enough to be touchable and the church (network) is big enough to survive. We want the intimacy of smaller and the capacity of bigger. For the writers of the Bible, this is common sense: Jesus and his people are always up against a lot. Standing alone makes us sitting ducks for evil. Intertwined, we are hard to break into wreckable pieces. We’re not proud enough, as individuals or congregations, to take the dangerous path of going it alone, just “getting ours” or just being “us.” We wanted to do our part to knit together Philadelphia with love When we looked at Philadelphia’s balkanized condition, it cried out for reconciliation, and still does. Lot’s of people know about this, but very few people, especially Christians, organize to do much about it. We thought it would be a cop out not to do our part, so we planned to be a network, crossing the boundaries between the neighborhoods with our own love. We are neighborhood- based and citywide. Sometimes we use the word “glocal,” since Christians are transnational -- global and local. This is the kind of goal Paul would recommend, don’t you think? It is the kind of thing he says he was trying to do, too: My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Colossians 2:2-3 We want to demonstrate this “unity in love” to a world that hasn’t seen it much and which thinks it is impractical. The newer translation quoted above traded the more literal “knit together” in love for “united.” I like to think of us as knitting – each person, each cell, each congregation linking with the others to form a whole piece of material. When you hear Paul talking about that, he seems to be implying that if we DON’T do that knitting, we will not have the “full riches of complete understanding.“ I think he is right. What’s more, if we aren’t knitters others won’t get a true picture of Jesus from us, as well. We wanted to give people an opportunity to get healthy and exercise their capabilities. Multiplicity helps. The organic growth of cells propels new people into responsibility all the time because new leaders are needed when they multiply and everyone’s gifts are required to do the mutual care of each little “body.” We decentralized our mission efforts too, and called for people to start their own teams to lead us in whatever the Spirit could generate from us. This way of doing things creates ferment. We like that “chaos” because it requires the Spirit of God to generate it, direct it and keep us together in it. Having many people engaged heightens our sense of dignity and accountability. So we are flexible and accountable at the same time. Plus, I think pushing multiplicity is the kind of approach God
has always used. The first church is the best example. After Stephen
riled up the leaders in Jerusalem, the first church was attacked
and forced out of town into the nearby territory. By telling the
story of Jesus, they created the first network of churches. When you have a system that is ordered by common love and faith and directed by the Holy Spirit it seems as crisisridden as Acts 8, at times. But handing everyone the responsibility to do their part wherever they are planted and expecting them to keep together in love seems like the best way to keep everyone growing into their fullness. The next generation is not a mass market, and we didn’t want to treat it like a market, at all. Yes, yes, making church like a TV show “works.” A lot of things work that we wish did not work because people still don’t seem to understand what will kill them. Sometimes it seems pigheaded, but we don’t like to pander to people’s worst instincts just so they’ll come to a meeting, give money, or just like us. What we are trying to do instead is deliver the life and message of Jesus as a community in Christ. We want to be a safe place for people to explore God’s love as they are now. And we want to be discerning enough to keep our eyes open for where they are going to be next. We’re relevant and predictable at the same time. God knows how to speak everyone’s language, but that never makes the message inconsistent. Some people have thought it is a little suspicious when they realize
that we’re hard to “pin down.” We’re more of an amoeba than a corporation.
But I think Paul was that relationship-oriented, too. Even when
he was writing to believers he had never met, he presumed a common
bond that would result in some good thing: This mutuality forms a character trait that says a lot more about
Jesus than most arguments about the Bible. In our postmodern era,
being a people is more compelling than talking about what someone
ought to “buy.” So, as cells, as congregations, between our congregations,
and in relationship to the world at large we are trying to perfect
sharing. We’re replicating the picture Paul paints in his letters:
We may not have as well-developed and consistent character as we would like, but we are who God has. We accept that like he does. We’re not advertising ourselves. We are not a product. We’re a people. That’s a lot of stuff in a few paragraphs, maybe too much, too pared down to make all the sense I would like. I offer it to help keep the dialogue going so we can listen to God and each other and end up creating the church he would like to use next. So far, I think we have done a good job of listening and trying to keep up with him. We have, appropriately, bitten off more than we can chew and need God’s help to enable us to be what we are called to be. Let’s keep chewing. Being Circle of Hope, “the network of cells and congregations who form one church in many neighborhoods” can seem a bit strange. Some people find it hard to “get.” But somehow that seems appropriate, since the world, in general, doesn’t seem to get God too well, at all. However, I think God gets us. Rod White Our vision for a growing network of congregations People form a cell Cells form a congregation Congregations form the church |
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