As an individual, I'm not very comfortable with change.  But as a church leader, I've discovered that change is imperative.  Not 90-degree (or 180-degree) changes, every couple of years (or months) which can become overwhelming and destabilizing.  But like with any organism, gradual, incremental change is just a natural part of growth, development, and maturation.  And thank God!  Our church in Amsterdam is growing, developing, and maturing!  In the coming months, we're planning to make a few structural adaptations.  And while these plans have already been shared among the various concentric circles of people involved with Zolder50, I thought it might be interesting for some of you (who wouldn't normally hear such announcements otherwise) to see a written version of what we've been sharing within our church community.  Keep reading for more details:

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Our mission is simple: to Know Jesus, Become Like Jesus, and Make Jesus Known. We support each other in the process, yet each one of us makes our own choice, not just to say that we’re going to follow Jesus, but to actually and actively live that out in our day-to-day life: reading and studying the Bible for application, enjoying a vibrant prayer life, living out the Great-Commission and making other disciples, being taught by the Bible and the Holy Spirit, and living in community.

As a church (and particularly as a church leadership team), we’ve spent a lot of time talking about this and trying to figure out how to do this.

Two years ago, we came up with a creative new idea to try and achieve these goals. We decided to shift our focus so that it wasn’t so much on Sunday worship gatherings, getting away from the idea that the church is a place for passive consumption of religious goods and services. Therefore, we placed more of an emphasis on our smaller family units, our “Home Groups” -- making those the primary point of involvement for our church and then trying to empower these home groups for mission in the city. We didn’t just want to wait for the people of Amsterdam to come to church; we wanted to take the church to the people of Amsterdam. So, as a part of that decision, we tried a schedule for Sunday worship where two congregations would meet on alternating weeks. That way, the focus could fall more to home groups, we could keep the priority of mission in front of us, and we could develop more leaders. This worked well, in some ways... In other ways, it didn’t exactly work out like we had hoped.

So, we’ve been talking about this with our Servant Leadership Council more and more, over the course of the last year; and as we talked it through, one of the most important conclusions that we reached is that we would do well to create a greater sense strategic partnership as we’re out on mission together. As our home groups are right now, this is kind of hit-or-miss (in some groups it’s happening really well, but in other groups it’s not).

After much prayer and dialogue, we’ve decided to make some adjustments in the next several months, leading up to January 2010.

Specifically (and perhaps most significantly), we've decided to transition from being a collection of “Home Groups” to being a collection of “Communities.” In a lot of ways, these are two different ways of getting at the same thing: creating smaller “spiritual families” who can know Jesus, become like Jesus, and make Jesus known in their day-to-day lives. Both involve building a sense of community and relational intimacy. Both involve studying the Bible together and encouraging each other towards greater spiritual growth… But there are also some differences. Home Groups have been general relational groupings; Communities are more united around a specific mission. Home Groups have been a random collection of people from various walks of life (sometimes the only common bond among the group being a love for Jesus and/or an interest in studying the Bible together with others); Communities are more grounded within and centered on a broader sub-culture within the city (geographic, ethnic, shared-interest, phase of life, etc.)... Examples of potential Communities (which tap into a broader sub-culture within the city of Amsterdam) might include a Community for Amsterdam Noord (or any particular neighborhood), or a Community for musicians, or a Community for university students, or a Community for squatters, or a Community for young families, or a Community for Latinos… Really, the possibilities are nearly endless! The idea is not to make this a strict categorization of the people in our church and say that “You can only be in a Community together with other people who are exactly like you.” But it is saying that we need to start uniting with “like-minded” people, in order to build more effective community and allow us to make Jesus known within the city around us as well.

We expect that many of our existing Home Groups may be able to make this transition as a group. In fact, that’s our default suggestion: that each group can put their heads together and come up with a shared vision and mission. But we also realize that this decision may mean something of a “reshuffling of the Home Group deck.” We might see some totally new Communities started with new people stepping up into leadership. And we certainly hope it will also be a great time for pulling others (who have never been a part of a home group before) into this more intimate form of fellowship.

The other change that the Servant Leadership Council has decided on -- again motivated by a desire to facilitate a greater sense of partnership and equipping ourselves for greater spiritual development -- is to have these Communities gather together with a cluster of other Communities on a weekly basis (instead of just twice a month, as we've been doing for the past couple of years). As of January 2010, we envision two separate Clusters of Communities meeting every week. Given the number of teachers and musicians that we currently have, we can't say that these weekly worship gatherings will be exactly the same as what our worship gatherings currently look like. But even so, we believe it could be really beneficial to have more regular interaction with this broader collection of Communities -- for purposes of equipping, encouraging, exchanging information, and just enjoying each others' company.

So then, how will we get from here to there?

Since we aim to implement these adaptations by January 2010, we still have a few months to plan and prepare and make the transition. During this transition period, we've decided to bring the whole church together for weekly worship gatherings, starting with the first Sunday in September. We can take advantage of these four months to have something of a "training camp" experience. Unfortunately, because of fire codes, we'll be limited to involving 150 people per week (which probably won't be too big of a problem in the beginning, but could get to be more of a problem toward the end). If anything, though, we hope this limitation will only intensify that training camp feeling with the first 150 people (the most active, most eager individuals) getting the opportunity to be a part of things. During these transition months, we're going to study the Gospel of Luke (which is great stuff for learning to really Know Jesus, Become Like Jesus, and Make Jesus Known) as well as have time to practically discuss and equip ourselves for our transition to Communities on mission. Home Groups will keep meeting as they do right now, while each Home Group and its Home Group leaders will be coached through the transition. Potential new Communities and Community leaders will be identified and coached through the process of getting established (which might begin sooner than January). And as the fall progresses, we hope and pray that the Holy Spirit will bring clarity to the process, settling each individual and each Home Group into its own Community and Cluster of Communities with everything in place by the new year.

We can't ever claim to have everything all figured out, but God really seems to be in this. The Servant Leadership Council (a collection of all the Home Group leaders who voluntarily committed to helping the church make wise, well-rounded decisions in matters such as this) went through a very prolonged and deliberate process that resulted in a unanimous conviction that God was leading us this direction. We feel that it's really a continuation of the course our church has been traveling for the last several years.  We'll have lots more to talk about in the next few months, as we get closer to January 2010. But through it all, we look forward to working together towards Knowing Jesus, Becoming like Jesus, and Making Jesus Known!