[A once-a-week addition to our blogumentary, "My Thoughts" posts are tastes of other peoples' voices along the journey; they're written by folks who are partnering with us in building The City Church, to explain some of why they resonate with the vision.]Matthew Hudson and his wife, Angie, were two of the first people to commit to the vision of The City Church. They have been instrumental in helping develop and cast this vision, are amazing hosts for many of our gatherings, and Matt serves on our Board of Directors (an interim leadership team until we develop tested and qualified elders). Among other things, Matthew heads up creative services for The Penumbra Group, Inc.
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As I share the vision of The City Church with people, the most common questions are about structure. “What will the services be like?” What will the Villages do each week?” “Why another church? I’m happy with mine.” As we meet and pray about the vision, one thing we have to remind ourselves is to resist the temptation of "structure." While some structure is definitely needed and Biblically directed, our culture is programmed for lots of structure: lots of events; lots of procedure and processes. The simple answer is that God will provide the structure as needed. In other words, He will shape The City Church, and the Villages meeting across our city, according to his plan.
And our job is to let that happen.
It is very tempting to add lots of detail and structure as a way to increase our "numbers" (numbers is the human part), but we are actually looking at only three numbers. The first is the number of people who are connected to The City Church – through prayer, networking or support. Our hope is that all of you reading this will be in this number. We will "open" in January with six people if that is God's plan – we are not focused on big numbers. But we cannot open (or better said, should not open) without a connected network of people praying for our mission. The second number we are looking at is the number of people who feel called to help us as leaders or hosts of the Villages. While everyone will act as servant-leaders in the City Church (the very essence of being “on mission”) there is a need for people to embrace a higher level of commitment and be with us through the Fall as we pray, plan and prepare. Again, this number can be six or 60 – whatever God has planned.
However, these two numbers pale in comparison to a much more important one: The City Church vision is to reach some of the 74% of the DFW population who is currently “un-churched.” It’s not about taking members from current congregations (although you are certainly welcome and needed if God moves you) – it’s about providing a place for those who are currently not connected. It’s about a new vision for “church” in Fort Worth that ultimately will help each other realize a new, deeper relationship with Christ as they live on mission every day.
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