O Lord, Give Me Half The Faith of an Ecclesia Church-Planting Cubs Fan

Last week I was given the opportunity to attend the Ecclesia Conference in DC and it was an excellent time. For those unfamiliar with the “Ecclesia”, it’s basically a network of missionally minded churches across the country. Now, my church is not a part of Ecclesia, but my interest is more in the people and the conversations in it and that seems to be ok. Here are a few of my observations as somewhat of an outsider.

Having attended my share of conferences over the years, each gathering has a “feel” to it. This being my second time at this gathering, there were a few things I had my eye on. Of course there are the cliched jokes that we all love, it’s a room full of macbooks, moleskins, and manbags. Further, we all hate cheesy aliteration but cannot help using it from time to time either. Cool eye wear? Check. Cool jeans? Yep, not a pair of khaki’s in the house. Some of these people not only adopt kids but adopt parents – yep. In this room, it makes more sense to pay more for your XLR than your car. Most of this stuff is simply true of people in their 20’s and 30’s but you know you are not at a Southern Baptist gathering because there are tattoos, women, and amillennialists. I’m telling you, it’s a pretty cool group of people.

They are also a very welcoming group. While that is typically true of most church leader groups, if you know anything about twenty-thirty something, educated, post-evangelical, radical church planters, many of whom had difficult church congregant/pastoral experiences (catch my breath), well, you’re a bit surprised that it’s such a friendly place. As a bit of an outsider, it feels like everyone here knows everyone else. Some of these pastors and leaders have been meeting together (multiple times) for years and you can tell by the number of inside jokes (and some you know because of the social media world).

It’s a very sharp, intelligent, well-read room. Many I spoke to are/were a part of the emerging church conversation. I would assume that everyone would say that New Kind of Christian was an important book for them. So much more could be said here but I’ll leave it with, it seems that many of us in the missional church conversation have roots in the emergent/emerging church conversation.

Like I said, it’s a sharp and intelligent room so you don’t ask a question like, “Have you read any Dallas Willard?” You will get a polite answer like, “Well, sure, he was our speaker here last year and a number of us have read his books over the years …”. The question that an Ecclesist wants to ponder is more like, “What do you think Dallas Willard is thinking about right now?” “Well, JR (there are like 8 JR’s, so you never really know which one is being referred to) was just talking to him because Dallas had just update his secret Tumbler and he said Dallas has been wrestling with the idea of …”.

But they are not condescending either. This took me a while to figure out because I simply thought that they were better at being polite but this year it dawned on me – These pastors don’t have enough people or power in their church to be condescending. In some ways, I don’t really fit in this group. I admit, I can be condescending but even more, I’m not bivocational, I don’t design websites, my church doesn’t meet in a bar, and no matter how hard I try, I don’t look like Topher Grace, not even an Egyptian version of “Eric”. My church has a youth ministry, I’m one of the youth pastors, we even have a budget.

This year’s theme was spiritual formation. If you want to read on what what actually spoken about, I recommend these reflections:
Scott Emery’s, Eric Phillips, especially loved this one by Dave Kludt, the summary of tweets,
and keep an eye out on the Ecclesia site for when they post the mp3’s. A summary of tweets. http://lcfva.com/2011/02/formative-tweets-from-the-ecclesia-national-gathering-2011/

This year, I came late (though I enjoyed what I heard from Todd Hunter, found Marykate Morse’s leadership seminars to be fantastic, and loved the panel discussions from the many that shared) and I left a little early, so driving home, I reflected more on the conversations and relational elements I enjoyed those 36 hours I was there.

After some reflection, I think the greatest element that I am walking away with is that many in this gathering are very faith-led. Perhaps it’s their seminary training from Fuller, Talbot, Tibet, or it could be their collective choice in MLB teams. Which brings me to my point, “Is there anyone out there in American Christendom who has more faith than a married with children, bivocational, missional, church planter who cheers for the Cubs??? My prayer this Lent is that the Lord would give me half the faith of these people. Amen.