The future of TXC
Tomorrow night is our first gathering of those interested in UnderCurrents. UnderCurrents are smaller gatherings of people that do life together throughout the week. (For the record, I may get bashed for the name of these...but I honestly can't stand the name "small group"...it sounds so Christianese and it makes absolutely no sense.)
I'm not sure how many people are going to come or are going to be able to find my house but we're gonna meet anyways. We really don't have much to say because we don't have a definitive plan. All we know is that we aren't designed to go through life in isolation and we have to intentionally invade each other's space if community is going to happen because we all love to play games and wear masks to keep each other at a distance, myself included.
Donovan is overseeing the development of our undercurrents and he has a dream for how it could look. A while ago he was watching this documentary on a guy searching for a lost city in a jungle and couldn't find it. He later died in the jungle. But it doesn't end there. Another guy went out in search for it later on and found the city. What he found out was that this city was not like a traditional city you would see with walls and such. That's probably why the first dude couldn't find it. This city was designed like a crooked wheel. In the center was a hub. It was the main gathering place. But out from this hub were tons of different roads leading to smaller sub communities of people. And from those sub communities were roads that linked together and subsequently more roads leading out to new sub communities. They would come together to trade and do whatever they did back then but then they would go back out to their sub communities. What they realized is that just because they didn't all live within the same four walls didn't mean that they were part of the same city. They all knew that their livelihood depended on each other. If one community was sick, another would travel through the road and help out. they wouldn't all come back to the main hub and try and figure out what to do. It was organic and grass roots based.
This is what we see our church looking like. In a sense it's messy. It's decentralized. Everything doesn't rely on "Sunday Morning" or the church office to figure out their lives. It just happens because our lives are so deeply integrated with each other. We don't meet in our Undercurrents 'just to meet' and go home. It's a natural thing that happens because we're already living our lives together. If someone gets sick in an UnderCurrent, the people from that community gather around to help out. If it's a greater need that the immediate community can't solve, the next UnderCurrent that is closest to them comes to their aid. These communities (Undercurrents) aren't just about meeting for a bible study because that's what 'good Christians do'. It's so much more than that. They can look and feel like whatever those in it want it to look or feel like.
How do we do this? We don't know. But on Tuesday @ 6:30pm at our house we're gonna start exploring what this could look like. If you wanna come the only requirement is that you bring an appetizer or dessert for me to eat!
I'm not sure how many people are going to come or are going to be able to find my house but we're gonna meet anyways. We really don't have much to say because we don't have a definitive plan. All we know is that we aren't designed to go through life in isolation and we have to intentionally invade each other's space if community is going to happen because we all love to play games and wear masks to keep each other at a distance, myself included.
Donovan is overseeing the development of our undercurrents and he has a dream for how it could look. A while ago he was watching this documentary on a guy searching for a lost city in a jungle and couldn't find it. He later died in the jungle. But it doesn't end there. Another guy went out in search for it later on and found the city. What he found out was that this city was not like a traditional city you would see with walls and such. That's probably why the first dude couldn't find it. This city was designed like a crooked wheel. In the center was a hub. It was the main gathering place. But out from this hub were tons of different roads leading to smaller sub communities of people. And from those sub communities were roads that linked together and subsequently more roads leading out to new sub communities. They would come together to trade and do whatever they did back then but then they would go back out to their sub communities. What they realized is that just because they didn't all live within the same four walls didn't mean that they were part of the same city. They all knew that their livelihood depended on each other. If one community was sick, another would travel through the road and help out. they wouldn't all come back to the main hub and try and figure out what to do. It was organic and grass roots based.
This is what we see our church looking like. In a sense it's messy. It's decentralized. Everything doesn't rely on "Sunday Morning" or the church office to figure out their lives. It just happens because our lives are so deeply integrated with each other. We don't meet in our Undercurrents 'just to meet' and go home. It's a natural thing that happens because we're already living our lives together. If someone gets sick in an UnderCurrent, the people from that community gather around to help out. If it's a greater need that the immediate community can't solve, the next UnderCurrent that is closest to them comes to their aid. These communities (Undercurrents) aren't just about meeting for a bible study because that's what 'good Christians do'. It's so much more than that. They can look and feel like whatever those in it want it to look or feel like.
How do we do this? We don't know. But on Tuesday @ 6:30pm at our house we're gonna start exploring what this could look like. If you wanna come the only requirement is that you bring an appetizer or dessert for me to eat!
