The Crowded House Reflections 6: Differences in structure
A few people have said to me that they are not in favour of The Crowded House model of church- in fact it is difficult to speak of THE model…
What I observed was at least 3 differing models, at work. What holds them together is an agreement to and congruency with the TCH values. In one sense it does not matter what structure the church or gospel community takes as long as they are working out the values in their community or context.
So what is it that determines structure if it is not any prior ideological commitment,? The structure is determined by the mission. As God has opened doors and presented opportunities they have had to respond and at times that has meant a change of structure.
As for example the work among the Kurdish refugees has resulted in the creation of a specific Kurdish team, which does not operate as a “classic gospel community” but within the wider support and accountability of the network has taken on a structure and feel of its own, which is congruent with the mission. But I would not imagine this is what TCH originally set out to look like up front.
The result is that you can have 3 at times very different looking “parts” of TCH network, all working towards living out the values.
One criticism I did pick up around structure was that perhaps the structure and the terminology has changed too much as they have responded to changing contexts and missional opportunities. Tim remarked to me that they are aiming to try to not change things around too much in the next few years to try to bring some solidity and consolidation to the network. Although he added, if we were sure that God was opening up some new direction that required to us to change the structure in order to fulfill the mission -we would do it.
In my book this is still a much better problem to have than a static structure that has remained unchanged for decades and is almost untouchable…
Aye