When I first started out on this microchurch journey it turned into something of a major frustration. Everyone had their own language, one which I did not speak and some even used words that demanded I carry a thesaurus with me. Others were very keen on requiring us to sign on the dotted line or insisted we do things their way. Others were still locked into the Church marketing matrix and were teachers and trainers rather than practitioners.

Did I mention that I have allergic reactions to networkers?
When I first met the guys from the Underground Network in Tampa I found them to be exactly the opposite; they demanded nothing, listened attentively, explained things slowly and patiently answered my questions even the ridiculous ones.
They not only talked about the work of their microchurches, the trainers actually took us to their own and showed us where they lived amongst the poor.
At the end of a couple of days of training my wife, Ann turned to me and said, “They designed this just for us!”
What I did not like was their insistence that “this work is slow, like really slow!” I was frustrated because I’m from the generation where slow is unbelief or just bad confession. Even though I knew that Jesus had one hundred or so followers after three years I secretly believed that He did that on purpose or that it was just wrong to tell converts not to follow Him but simply to, “go home and tell the priest and a handful of people of your miracle".
I liked Underground but they took some getting used to, it took a while to not mistake their humility and lack of networking techniques as ambivalence. I am so glad I hung in there!
They were right about it being slow; so right. They were also right about the rewards that come with this kind of work.
I read the following words a few years ago, I got mad at this ancient writer too:
Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
These words are in essence what was being shared with me and living them out is both a killer and a blessing. Living through liminality is punishing but life giving.
First death. Then resurrection. First death. Then new creation.
Listen to these words from a prophet who learned patience the hard way:
And then God answered: “Write this. Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run. This vision-message is a witness pointing to what’s coming. It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait! And it doesn’t lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It’s on its way. It will come right on time. (Habakkuk 2)
All I would see is, “It aches for the coming…….It seems slow in coming” but now my faith causes me to believe and even see, “ It’s on its way. It will come right on time.”
My friend Paul Gibbs, the founder and pioneer of the Pais Movement explains it this way through the story of the priests carrying the ark of the covenant into the Jordan River ahead of everyone else. They had to step into the river and then the waters would split and they would cross over in safety. They stepped in and nothing happened apparently, but what they did uotknow was that the water immediately split nineteen miles down river at a place called Adam. In the words of Habakkuk, “If it seems slow in coming, wait. It’s on its way. It will come right on time”.
Jesus is Lord. Amen?
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