church plant structure: organic or nonorganic? (pt 2)

In one sense the church we planted was organic (it started with a bunch of people in my living room), but we made no attempt to start a new church every time we filled the living room (which for most observers means we didn’t stay organic).  Our reasons for not going organic parallel Hofmeister’s in a number of ways, but there are three primary reasons we opted to plant a smaller (but not house-sized) congregation:

Uno – Teaching/preaching/worship.  I was a church-based college pastor for a handful of years, and as such had frequent interactions with campus pastors from different parachurch groups.  A few of these got connected to a nearby network of house churches and became organic church pastors as well.  One day I was with a few of them and asked, “Why do you do your church meetings on Wednesday or Thursday nights?  Is there a reason none of you do Sundays?”  Nervous laughter followed, and then they said, “The truth is, our people love what we’re doing, but most of them like to be able to sneak off once a month or so to one of the nearby megachurches and worship there.  Meeting midweek allows them that option.”

I’ve heard this same story – house church people wanting the occasional “fix” of a larger worship gathering with highly gifted musicians and teachers – enough times since then that I think there really is something to it.  And it makes me wonder, for all the disparaging of teaching/preaching that goes on out there, could it be that God has gifted some to teach larger groups of people, and that this may even have real value in people’s spiritual formation?  Craig Brian Larson points out that few if any books on spiritual formation list “listening to good teaching/preaching” as a spiritual discipline, but they should.  The reaction in recent years against pulpit-ministry-as-the-cure-to-everything is right on the money, but is it possible that we have let the pendulum swing too far?  That we are in fact denigrating a legitimate and important function of local church ministry, to the impoverishment of our people? 

Anyone whose church values small groups knows that some of our best learning happens in small, interactive teaching settings.  Yet most of us would acknowledge that not all of our best learning happens there.  Different learning styles, as well as different teaching styles, have greater effect for different people.  One of the strengths of  both house churches and/or small groups is that they allow more of the capable, gifted teachers in a given church to build others up with their gifts.  But I wonder, is it possible that these teachers whose gifts are best exercised in small group settings will actually be maximized when put along side those whose teaching gifts are better suited for large group teaching/preaching?

That is the conclusion that we came to, and our effort has been to try to take a team approach in our teaching ministry.  In our worship gatherings, we utilize (on a rotating basis) the two or three teachers whose gifts are best suited to that setting, and in small group ministry we utilize those teachers whose gifts are best suited to that setting.  The result (we hope) is a church where all those with teaching gifts are finding a way to exercise them, and the congregation is strengthened as a result.