Why not let your church sprout new “movements” from within? Every church maintains multiple departments. Why not let yours cultivate multiple movements.

Every healthy congregation makes use of multiple leaders gathered around a common vision. However, the strongest of these leaders will have their own sense of direction from the Lord. If each individual vision can be woven together around the central vision then growth can become explosive. Vision fuels passion. Passion generates evangelism and growth.

Are You In The Way?
In fact, one way to tell if your wineskin is getting brittle is if people are struggling against you instead of alongside of you. You might ask yourself, “Have I have become the hole in the hourglass? Does all permission to minister have to come through me?” If the answers to those questions are affirmative, you are probably holding back some of the growth God is trying to send. God is creative (pun intended). He constantly works to raise up people who can see needs and then fill them. Our issues should not deal with whether or not they fit our program—God wants to expand our program. We should only question whether a new idea fits within the tent of our vision and values. If it does, we should endorse it and the leader who sponsors it.

Take the idea of small groups. We call ours “MiniChurch.” We originally built all our MiniChurches around a common format based upon a discussion of the weekend teaching. But, we had to stretch the tent. Our MiniChurch Ministry now includes “Power Teams” that study the same passage daily and meet for weekly discussion and prayer. We have “Inductive Bible Study MiniChurches.” We have “Gateways MiniChurches” for people in recovery from specific attacks from Satan. There are fill-in-the-blank study MiniChurches and so on. You get the picture. We began to grow exponentially when we chose to pull off the restriction of only one type of small group. Now just about 60 percent of our groups fit the original pattern, but our overall number of groups has grown by about 40 percent in the process. Though our total number of MiniChurches has continued to expand, much of the growth has been in the area of the newer groups.

The key to the growth in MiniChurch was a decision to relinquish control over the format. Had we stuck to the single format we would have continued to grow but not at the current rate.

Don’t Endorse Just Any Idea
Manufacturers learn that it is not smart for one company to create products that compete with one another for space on the retailer’s shelf (Think “New Coke” versus the original thing). When you do that all that happens is confusion and loss of market share. But, they do want to fit products to various needs as in the partnership between Coke and Diet Coke. Their wisdom applies to the church.

We would not endorse an idea for a large midweek service in our church because it would draw strength from MiniChurch in two ways. First, it would siphon off numbers and weaken our leadership team. Second (and more important), it would undercut the idea of small-group fellowship and personal support teams. We’ve built our entire ministry on the juxtaposition between my teaching and close up personal support in small groups. This is the picture painted by Luke in Acts 2:41-47. We would never allow anything to erode that very scriptural imprint upon our church.

Because of our underlying biblical values, we can easily hive off more MiniChurches. We can embrace new flavors of MiniChurch. But, we cannot endorse a ministry that would weaken MiniChurch. We continually stretch our tent, but we do not ignore the vision and values that build the tent.

Church As A Cluster of Movements
Could you conceive of your church as a cluster of movements? We think of ours in terms of MiniChurches, missions teams, sports teams, outreach groups, age-specific ministries, family services teams, etc. The structure is always flexing as new groups come to life and others die. Each of these areas functions as a movement within our church. They are pretty much self governing only coming together annually for a coordinated planning session. All we require is that they subscribe to our overall vision and values.

I know a church that grew because one man enlisted a bunch of helpers to restore an aging fire-truck and donate it to a Mexican village that had been tormented by fires. The pastor was wise enough to allow this unorthodox use of resources because it fit within the existing parameters of mission to Mexico, though only the man with the vision for the truck had ever participated in Mexico missions previous to the project. The fire-truck people grew into a mission team of their own. After they delivered the truck they continued to visit the village bringing food and clothing to some very poor people. They also brought the gospel.

One question that comes to mind is what about ‘doctrinal’ distinctives. How should you handle a group that has their own theological bent? We work pretty well with people who have their own theological issues. We simply ask them not to press their ideas on the rest of the congregation. If they are willing to work with us in this fashion, we can work together. If they begin to attack the central tenants of the church or to recruit heavily we will ask them to leave. Upon reaching this understanding, we’ve seldom had a problem. I think loyalty to Jesus is the central issue here.

A Movement Of Movements
The Hope Chapel Coalition of Churches is really a movement of movements. Our thinking about relative independence has allowed us to grow around the world. Freedom of “movement” has given us a greater harvest than we would have dreamed about had we tried to control growth and ministry patterns.

Hope Chapel Hermosa Beach retained its church planting vision after I moved to Hawaii. They continue to plant churches in and around the United States and do strong missions in Africa. They have become specialists in bringing life to dead or near dead churches. One man from Hermosa moved to New England to plant a church. As a result there are fourteen “Harvest Chapels” spread over a region previously thought impervious to the gospel.

We have planted congregations throughout Hawaii and Japan. Our daughter churches have spread their efforts into other parts of Asia. One man in our congregation recently began discipling a civil engineer in Pakistan who showed great promise as a personal evangelist. The result is 51 new “Grace Bible” churches in that Muslim nation in just over two years. Our daughter church Kobe Bible Fellowship now boasts a number of Bible Fellowship churches in western Japan.

One friend of mine, Linus Morris, got inspired by the book “Let Go Of The Ring.” As a result, he re-directed his existing ministry into a church planting movement. The result is more than 50 congregations spread throughout Europe and the United States under the name Christian Associates International. He invited me to speak at their annual leadership retreat as one of the “fathers” of the movement. We feel stronger having them as a sister movement to ours.

God Has More Ideas Than You Can Stand
My point here is that God has bigger and better ideas than we do. Each mind can contain only so much of his vision. If you or I insist that every idea must originate with us—or even fit our pattern, we will limit the growth of his kingdom. Loosen your grip, it could be fun.

For help with the concept of MiniChurch check our other website at www.straightstreet.com. Look for either the book “Friends: The Key to Reaching Generation X,” or the tape series”MiniChurch: Small Groups That Really Work.”