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CCS November 2006 Newsletter Cell church in post-Christian culture (part 1)
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CCS News |
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What a thrill to address 7,000 cell leaders and supervisors on the first night of the Elim cell conference two weeks ago in San Salvador, El Salvador. Returning to North America, I face a far more skeptical church environment, one that is far less willing to commit time and energy to spiritual endeavors. The two question that I have to continually ask myself are: 1. What are cell church principles that cross cultural boundaries? 2. What are the adjustments that need to be made to cell church ministry in the western world? In this issue I’ll address the first question and in the next issue I’ll talk about key changes that need to be made in more secular, western cultures.I’ll send the next issue (part 2) during the first week of December and start the pattern of sending the CCS newsletter during the first week of each month. |
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First principle we can apply cross-culturally: measuring fruit in terms of infrastructure growth When I first started doing research on the worldwide cell churches in 1996 I noticed that many of these worldwide cell churches had a different way of viewing success. They measured their growth by the multiplication of leaders they had trained who would in turn start new cell groups. They measured precisely what was taking place in the cells, but weren’t as precise when it came to Sunday attendance growth. |
Joel Comiskey before speaking to the 400 pastors at the November 2006 Elim seminar in San Salvador, El Salvador |
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When I first started studying the Elim Church back in 1996, for example, I fully expected for them to give me a precise Sunday attendance figure for their church. But alas, the church didn’t even keep Sunday celebration statistics. To arrive at such data, I had to measure the space within the sanctuary, count how many chairs were present, and then make an educated guess concerning how many people were attending their seven Sunday services (35,000 people attending the Sunday services at that time). Many of my church growth measurement techniques didn’t fit in that environment.
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each night in at the Elim Church in November 2006 for the cell conference |
Yet, those at Elim can tell you precisely how many attend the weekly cells. They now have approx. 120,000 people in cells/house churches all over San Salvador (although they have recently stopped counting cells without trained leaders and thus, they now only officially report, 6,569 cell leaders and 73,700 people attending those groups with set leaders). These house churches are intimately connected to one another through a well-planned system of care and training. |
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Elim-like cell churches taught me that a church could grow in number while maintaining the quality of discipleship. I took this principle back to Ecuador in 1997 and applied it in the church plant I co-founded called the Republic Church. At that church, we had previously measured church growth by how many were seated on Sunday morning. As we changed our paradigm for measuring church growth, we were able to focus on making disciples who make disciples and see the resulting celebration growth as well. I think the cell church worldwide should push us in the west to redefine how we view church growth. Redefining church-growth success in terms of making disciples rather than building attendance figures might be the most important shift in pastors’ thinking to make cell ministry work in North America.
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It’s not a matter of removing the success mentality from the North American mind. It’s a matter of redefining what success really is. The focus on cell infrastructure helps align the pastorate with the New Testament truth that the job of the pastor is to prepare God’s people for works of service (Eph. 4:11–12). This focus rescues the pastor from the role of star of the Sunday celebration (how can I make the celebration attractive enough to keep the people coming back?) to chief trainer and disciple maker (how can I prepare and release lay workers into the harvest by developing them to lead dynamic cell groups?). Though both cell and celebration are important in the cell church, I believe the cell infrastructure should guide (or drive) the church. I find that pastors are pretty good at handling PowerPoint and managing the celebration service. They need a lot of help, on the other hand, in growing the infrastructure of the church. Second principle we can apply cross-culturally: Giving away community through multiplying cells makes the community stronger The cell group offers face-to-face interaction. It gives each member the chance to receive a listening ear, gentle encouragement, and a warm embrace. |
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Yet, we can learn from the growing overseas churches that we need to give community away in order to remain healthy. Koinonia that is not given away and freely shared can easily degenerate into Koinonitus, a church growth disease. True community is strengthened and grows stronger as it spreads from house to house. I’ve noticed a lot of talk about community among small group circles in North America. Yet, many see community as an end in itself, when in reality community is never an end in itself. I learned from the growing cell churches that evangelism that leads to multiplication must guide cell ministry. |
As the cell group focuses on a lost world the community actually grows stronger |
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These cell churches were never content with letting the senior pastor do the evangelism for them. Each cell had the built-in DNA of evangelism and multiplication as part of its internal make-up. These groups grew in community as they gave it away. When a small group has a common evangelistic objective, it starts working together to accomplish a goal. The common objective creates a unity and camaraderie. Everyone gets involved—from the person who invites the guests to the one who provides refreshments to the one who leads the discussion. The team plans, strategizes, and finds new contacts together. The cry of the lost drives cells to share their rich community rather than hoarding it among themselves. When multiplication takes place, new groups are available for lost people to receive wholeness. One of the main difference that needs to be made concerning multiplying life-giving communities is the multiplication rate. Just because the goal is multiplication, this doesn’t mean that all groups will multiply at the same rate. In Bogota, for example, the multiplication rate is far more rapid than countries where the soil is hard and receptivity is minimal. I remember talking to my good friend, Werner Kniessel, senior pastor of a growing cell church in Zurich, Switzerland. Werner told me how certain cell church gurus would come to his church and talk about how cell multiplication should happen in six months, or it was better to close the group. He told me that he’s found from his experience that it takes at least two years to multiply a cell group. Again, it all depends on the soil and receptivity level of the people. The goal is still multiplication, but the time frame of that multiplication varies among cultures due to the receptivity level of the people. Evangelism that leads to multiplication keeps a small group moving forward to fulfill the great commission and actually keeps the health level of the cell strong.
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