:: AIP#12 - Who Else "Does Church" Like This? (BEING the Church, part 4) ::

First, sorry for the enormous length of yesterday's post - but I hope you found it helpful. If you actually read it all!

One final post on our unique (but not at all "new"!) structure: a question we've gotten as we explain The City Church is "does anyone else do church like this?" In other words, "does anyone else meet primarily in homes and living on mission rather than focusing primarily on Sunday services?" And while six months ago, I was as surprised as you might be to learn that the answer is a strong "yes," we've been blessed in this process to personally learn from each of these church communities, either in person or in writing, as we glean from their wisdom and experience in establishing The City Church.

While we're not copying any one of these models in particular, here is a list of biblical, mostly-theologically-sound church communities who function in a model along the same lines, and how we're learning from them:

• Providence Community Church (Plano, TX - visits with leadership and communities)
• Austin City Life (Austin, TX - individual coaching and multiple visits through summer & fall 2009)
• Austin Stone: Church Planting Residency (Austin, TX - meeting numerous times with leadership for coaching, training, etc.)
  
• Austin New Church (Austin, TX - setting up a meeting with leadership and community over the summer)
  
• Coram Deo (Omaha, NE - meeting with leadership and community visit scheduled, August 2009)
• Core Community Church (Omaha, NE - setting up a meeting with leadership and community, August 2009)
• Adullam (Denver, CO - the leaders authored a book about their vision, called The Tangible Kingdom)
• Soma Communities (Tacoma, WA - spending a week with their community in October, 2009, at a training called Soma School)
• The Crowded House Network (Sheffield, England - the leaders authored a book about their work, called Total Church; occasional online communication with one of the authors)
  
• New Testament Church (Jerusalem, Israel - an author documented the activities of this church as a pattern for God's people to follow)

In addition to the hands-on training with the churches and pastors above, several authors, bloggers, and leaders have provided great resources to specifically help us develop our model and our leadership. Among them are Ed Stetzer, Mark Driscoll, Neil Cole, Jonathan Dodson, Alan Hirsch, David Garrison, Bob Roberts Jr., Dan Allender, Alexander Strauch, Jim Collins, Bob Thune Jr., John Piper, Tim Keller, Dee Hock, Ori Brafman, Rod Beckstrom, and Malcolm Gladwell.

We hope it goes without saying, but we're learning from the Bible - in everything we do, we are seeking a biblical basis, accompanied by prayer, fasting, and godly wisdom from outside sources.

Finally, since we view the church as a family or a people rather than an institution or an event, we're learning from you, and we're learning from "the harvest [which] is plentiful" - we're becoming as immersed as possible in Fort Worth, its culture, and its people, as we learn our specific context and culture to have the greatest impact for the kingdom of God. So help us learn - give us your input, feedback, thoughts, questions, etc! Let me know if you want specific books by some of the authors I listed. And to get a general feel for how The City Church will function, poke around on some of the websites above - remember, we won't look exactly like any of those churches, but the general concept will be similar.