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Making progress through Andy Crouch’s Culture Making, which is proving to be a fantastic read.

Reading some authors is like scanning a blank wall with occasional windows. Reading Crouch is like walking through a fully furnished downtown loft with picture windows that open on the Missouri River and urban arts district (showing my KC bias there). Point is, Andy Crouch can flat out write.

Culture Making is not that book you “read for content.” Some authors make the occasional good point. A few authors do it with personality. And a mere handful write with consistent insight, voice, and artistry. Crouch is in that minuscule group, and the fact that he’s writing about cultures, creativity, and the arts makes it extraordinarily appropriate.

OK, I’ll stop raving. Here’s a piece from chapter 2:

The fact that I can give you a fairly complete description of the Gryphon Cafe depends on its participation in a broader culture, one that includes coffee shops, ponytails, realtors and bourgeois bohemians. But the culture of the Gryphon Cafe—the things it makes of the world, the horizons of possibility it creates within its walls, the new culture that its denizens make in response—is not exactly like any other coffee shop. The Gryphon Cafe is not just making something of the vast world of coffee or the current boom in “third places” all over America fueld by Starbucks; it is also making something of the lovely building it inhabits at the corner of Wayne and Lancaster Avenues, of local artists who hand their work on its walls, of the availability of artfully scruffy twenty-somethings who somehow can afford to live in an affluent community on barista’s wages.

Great book, and very helpful in exegeting an urban context like Kansas City.

________See also Intro, Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3_________

Place the small groups in proximity with outsider communities-and serve them.

A strength of small groups is their portability and adaptability-they can meet in a variety of locations and take on a variety of ministry tasks. In the church planting context, it makes sense to take advantage of “third places” as well as homes, in order to acclimate core members to the target community and encourage them to rub shoulders with non-Christians. If outsiders become interested in the church plant, a coffee shop or waffle house will likely be a better venue to introduce them to the believing members and make them feel at ease.

Taking this a step further, the leader should look for service opportunities within the community and tackle them as a group-not as a side item on the menu, but as a central part of the church’s identity, even before a public service exists. Working together on service projects (e.g., litter pick-up, food banks, shelters, drug/alcohol recovery) will be instrumental in the small groups taking ownership of their purpose as they generously serve the people they are called to reach.

Statistically, engaging in ministry evangelism is a significant factor in the survival of church plants.[1] On a practical level, it will also keep the groups from becoming ingrown. As Win Arn points out, “Most small groups, in fact, aren’t open to non-Christians…When small groups become the end rather than a means to the end, they distract a church from its disciple-making mission.”[2]

For me, planting near downtown Kansas City, there is an array of involvement options. Lower income areas exist mere blocks from newer, upscale housing. In one context, working at a shelter, boys’ home or mission makes sense. In the new arts district, with its loft neighborhoods, handing out bottled water and picking up trash would fit the bill. One challenge I’ll face is deciding where and how to invest service time. How will serving at a shelter, as opposed to buffing the urban chic areas, help reach my demographic?

________See also Intro, Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3_________

[2] Win Arn, “Small Groups that Grow a Church,” Leadership XV, no. 3 (Summer 1994): 71