I was speaking at a church planting conference. It was an open session—lots of Q&A. The next morning I was sharing a cab to the train station with one of the participants. “I noticed last night,” he said, “we kept asking ‘do’ questions and you kept giving ‘be’ answers.” “How do you do evangelism?” “We try to be a community that is intentional about the gospel.” That sort of thing. “Was it frustrating for you?” It was, but only now did I realize why.

A ‘Be’ Church

Of course churches do things. There isn’t really a choice between being and doing. But we can get hung up on our programs, on activity, on meetings. We need to be creating a culture, a way of being Christian community, that liberates people so they can adapt on the fly to missional opportunities.

A ‘Bespoke’ Church

This might just be a British thing, but if you get a suit made up specially for you we call it “bespoke.” The opposite is “off-the-peg,” when you just walk in the shop, take something off the peg in your size and you have your suit. But if you have the money and the inclination you can go to a bespoke tailor not a mile from my house and get a suit made just for you. Made for you. A perfect fit. Just right.

Many people are looking for off-the-peg models of church. They want to take whatever is the latest trend or the successful formula and drop it into their context. But we need to be creating “bespoke churches”—churches that are tailored to their members and their missional contexts.

How Do You Do It?

Or people want training programs, manuals, handbooks. People often ask, “How do you train people?” I have as many answers as I have people. It’s about life-on-life training that is tailored to each person.

So let’s talk about theology, values, principles. I might even tell you how we put them into practice to stimulate your imagination. But please don’t just copy what I do.

Total Church:

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis make the case for reinforcing and strengthening churches with particular emphasis on the gospel and community. Find out more.

How can we create communities of grace? Let me suggest seven ideas:

1. Make the connections

We need to teach, speak, sing, and pray grace. But we also need to make connections for people. We can believe in justification by faith for the final day, but doubt justification by faith for the next day. On a Monday morning in the workplace we are still trying to prove ourselves, to find identity in our achievements.

2. Welcome the mess

Welcome messy people. Don’t suppress conflict. Don’t hide problems.

3. Stop pretending

Don’t hide your own problems. You’ll need to exercise some discretion: let everyone know you struggle and let some people know what you struggle with.

4. Stop performing

Don’t put on a show. Don’t push people to perform, to produce results, to get it right all the time. Give people permission to fail. We’ve realized, for example, that polished Bible studies and articulate prayers disenfranchise semi-literate people.

5. Eat and drink with broken people

Jesus eats and drinks with sinners. It’s a powerful expression of community. We think we’re enacting grace if we run projects for the poor, but we’re only halfway there. We still act from a position of superiority, proclaiming that we are able and they are unable. The dynamic is totally different when we eat together. We meet as equals, share together, affirm one another, enjoy one another.

6. Give people time to change

How long did it take for you to become perfectly like Jesus? Of course, you’re still changing. There seem to be some sins we’re prepared to work on over a lifetime, but others where we demand instant change. Why is this? The answer, of course, is that we want people to be respectable. We don’t want a messy community.

7. Focus on the heart

All too often we focus on the behaviors we would like someone to stop or start. But Jesus says our behavior comes from the heart (Mark 7:20-23). Our focus needs to be on the heart. Our job is help people find joy in Christ.

Vintage Church:

In this book, Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears discuss the essentials of what it means to be a biblical church. Find out more.

Communities of Performance

• People talk about grace, but communicate legalism
• Unbelievers can't imagine themselves as Christians
• Drive away broken people
• The world is seen as threatening and 'other'
• Conversion is superficial—people are called to respectable behavior
• People are secretly hurting
• People see faith and repentance as actions that took place at conversion
• The gospel is for unbelievers

Communities of Grace

• People can see grace in action
• Unbelievers feel like they can belong
• Attract broken people
• People are loved as fellow sinners in need of grace
• Conversion is radical—people are called to transformed affections
• People are open about their problems
• People see faith and repentance as daily activities
• The gospel is for both unbelievers and believers

Total Church:

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis make the case for reinforcing and strengthening churches with particular emphasis on the gospel and community. Find out more.

I was recently asked to speak on communities of grace. So I got to thinking: What is the opposite of a community of grace? And I came to the conclusion that it's a community of performance. Communities of performance may talk a lot about grace, but they value performance—Christians who have it all figured out, churches that run smoothly, meetings that are accomplished. And so they communicate that what matters is that you perform well.

So is your community a community of performance or a community of grace? Try these diagnostic tests:

Communities of Performance

• The leaders appear to have it all figured out
• The community appears respectable
• Meetings must be a polished performance
• Failure is devastating, because identity is found in ministry
• Actions are driven by duty
• Conflict is suppressed or ignored
• The focus is on orthodox behavior (letting people think they have it all figured out)

Communities of Grace

• The leaders are vulnerable
• The community is messy
• Meetings are just one part of community life
• Failure is disappointing but not devastating, because identity is found in Christ
• Actions are driven by joy
• Conflict is addressed in the open
• The focus is on the affections of the heart (with a strong view of sin and grace)

In performance-oriented churches, people pretend to be okay because their standing within the church depends on it. But this is the opposite of grace. Grace acknowledges that we're all sinners, all messed up, all struggling. And grace also affirms that in Christ we all belong, all make the grade, all are welcome.

What Does a Community of Grace Look Like?

Imagine such a church for a moment. Here's Andrew: he sometimes uses porn because he struggles to find refuge in God. Here's Pauline: she sometimes has panic attacks because she struggles to believe in the care of her heavenly Father. Here's Abdul: he sometimes loses his temper because he struggles to believe that God is in control. Here's Georgina: she sometimes has bouts of depression because she struggles to believe God's grace. When they come together, they accept one another and celebrate God's grace towards each other. They rejoice that they are all children of God through the work of Christ. And they remind one another of the truths each of them needs to keep going and to change. It's a community of grace, a community of hope, a community of change.

Total Church:

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis make the case for reinforcing and strengthening churches with particular emphasis on the gospel and community. Find out more.

The great Reformer Martin Luther spoke of theologies of glory and a theology of the cross. Theologies of glory look for the revelation of God in his mighty works: creation, miracles, spiritual experiences. But this kind of knowledge, said Luther, only puffs people up. Instead God has chosen to reveal himself supremely in the cross. And that means revelation is only discernible by faith. Only by faith do we see in the weakness, foolishness, and shame of the cross the power, wisdom, and victory of God. Theologies of glory lead to pride. The theology of the cross leads to humility—or, in Luther’s language, humiliation.

Now apply the same idea to our churches. Churches of glory will put their confidence in mighty works: stage performances, big budgets, large numbers, powerful arguments, charismatic preachers. A church of the cross will be characterized by power in weakness, wisdom in foolishness, victory in shame. Its confidence will be in the sovereignty of God, the presence of his Spirit, and the power of his Word. Jesus said the kingdom of God has been given to “my little flock.” Most of the time it will be under the radar. But, like yeast in dough, it will grow unseen to fill the earth.

Why don’t people believe the gospel?

It often looks like people have an intellectual problem with our message. They can’t believe in miracles, they tell us. Or they can’t reconcile God with suffering. It’s a problem of the head.

It's a Heart Problem

But Romans 1 points to a bigger, underlying issue. Paul says the truth about God is plain for all to see. The problem is not that people can’t believe. The problem is that people won’t believe. We suppress the truth about God in our wickedness. We don’t want to believe because we don’t want to obey. It’s a problem of the heart.

So by all means, engage with a person’s intellectual questions (what we might call rational apologetics). But recognize the need for relational apologetics. We need to show people that it’s good to live under God’s reign (Deuteronomy 4:5-8). We’re to be a light to the nations. As Blaise Pascal put it, we need to make people want to believe our message before we can persuade them that our message is true.

And pray. Ultimately, only God can open blind eyes.

Total Church:

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis make the case for reinforcing and strengthening churches with particular emphasis on the gospel and community. Find out more.

What images do spirituality or spiritual activity conjure in your mind? I guess many people think of praying alone away from the noise of the family, or sitting in contemplation on retreat in a rural place. It’s about what I do alone, rather than what I do with other people. Spirituality has come to be about solitude, calm, silence.

In reality, though, this is spirituality for the well-off. It’s only for those who can afford to go on retreat or have space in their home where they can be quiet. It won’t work for the single mother in a small apartment. It won’t work for the migrant worker who goes to work at six in the morning. It’s not urban spirituality. And it’s not biblical spirituality

Biblical spirituality is about:

• Bible meditation, not mystical silence
• Passionate engagement, not rural retreat
• Growing together, not individual solitude

In other words, biblical spirituality, at its core, is about the word of God, the mission of God, and the community of God.

Total Church:

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis make the case for reinforcing and strengthening churches with particular emphasis on the gospel and community. Find out more.

People often set up attractional church and missional church as polar opposites. Attractional has a come-to-us mentality. It’s about drawing people to the church. Missional is a go-to-them mentality. We take the gospel to people, meeting them on their terms and their turf.

But biblical missiology contains both elements. Israel was called to live under God’s reign expressed through his law in such a way that the nations would come to find out about Israel’s God (Deuteronomy 4:5-8). During the reign of Solomon the nations do indeed come to marvel at his wisdom and glory. But as Israel rejects her God, instead of being a light to the nations, she follows the ways of the nations. Isaiah, however, looks forward to a day when Israel will again attract the nations (Isaiah 2:1-5). He promises that God’s Servant will be faithful where Israel was unfaithful, becoming God’s light to the nations (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6). Jesus, of course, is this light: the light of the world, perfectly demonstrating the goodness of God’s reign.

Attracting In and Moving Out

When we come to the New Testament church, people often assume a switch of direction from “drawing in” to “going out.” But in fact the attractional missiology of the Old Testament continues. God’s new covenant people are to be a light to the world, attracting people to God’s reign (Matthew 5:14-16; 1 Peter 2:9-12). What has changed is the center! The center is no longer Jerusalem, but hundreds of small communities of light, littered across the world. We simultaneously draw in (through our community life) and move out (through church planting).

The problem with a lot of attractional churches is not their missiology, but their ecclesiology. Church is seen as a meeting. Attracting means attracting people to an event or even a performance. But biblical mission is about a community life, ordinary life, lived under God’s Word that attracts people to God.

The guy I first started church planting with used to tell the story of the first time he attended a church business meeting. He’d recently been converted and was looking forward to plotting the downfall of Satan with the other members of the church. What a letdown! They spent the meeting talking about the restrooms in the church building. Somehow churches have a tendency towards maintenance mode.

The great thing about church planting is that it puts mission at the heart of church. When you’re eight people meeting in someone’s front room—as the Crowded House was once—then you can’t help but be about mission.

But church planting also puts the church at the heart of mission. So much evangelism today is about me doing my thing with my friends. We have evangelistic ministries divorced from the church. This is not the New Testament way. New Testament mission was church planting.

Mission at the heart of church. The church at the heart of mission. Welcome to church planting.

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“I know people do a lot to help me, but I just want someone to be my friend.” So said a single mother in my congregation. At the root of much poverty is marginalization and exclusion. When we think of serving the poor our first thought is often of projects. We assume the thing to do is run a welfare program. But perhaps our first response to poverty as the church is to offer inclusion, to offer welcome, to offer community.

In our book Total Church we argue that two principles should shape church life: gospel and community. When it comes to the poor, too often conservatives do gospel without community, while liberals do community without gospel. We need to both love the poor and call them to repentance. They are often victims, but they are also always sinners in need of the atoning work of the cross.