Appendix C: How to Form an Ecosystem Community: You Can’t

To the leaders and “pastors” reading this…

I was asked to address an international group of leaders, referred to as apostles, prophets, mega-pastors and such. Here is what I said to them, as an “outsider” of their normal circles: 4JLT.com/light

After I spoke, a line formed from the crowd, to ask me follow-up specific questions.

A husband and wife said,

“We are co-pastors and apostles to a chain of churches in our northeastern US state. We’ve been very successful as such things are normally defined. But what you said today is definitely from God and totally Biblical. We don’t have to ‘reimagine’ church anymore. It’s all in the Bible and lived out by Jesus. We see that clearly!
“But what do we DO? While standing in line, my husband and I spoke of how maybe we should shut down our ‘Sunday morning celebration’ and start building God’s way instead of man’s. What do you think? We are totally willing.”

My answer to them:

“While you could do that, I really, really don’t recommend it. That would strand a lot of good people in chaos and confusion. It’s far better to help children outgrow their children’s clothing, than to just strip it off them.
“INSTEAD, you could begin to facilitate the Priesthood of ALL believers and their gifts by being ‘ADDITIVE rather than subtractive.’ If you are at people’s homes and their children’s soccer games, and you’re letting others know to do the same, bringing ice cream cake to someone’s house, facilitating a gathering in a park on a Tuesday and planting the seeds in a number of folks to ‘consider how they might spur others on to love and good works,’ prepared to give a reason for the hope within them, then you’ll be shocked how people begin to grow in their Freedom to BE. Even others accidentally in the park will ‘SEE how you love one another’ and the ‘THIS is HOW’ of Jesus can finally come to fruition!
“You will not neeeeeed to ‘cancel Sunday’ because it will be just one more chance to be Together for a while…but put the seats in a circle. ‘Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”’
“In time, when the time is God’s, the group of folks will transform whatever Sunday used to be—and it would be unthinkable to keep doing the rote clergy attendance thing. With so many other amazing Life opportunities organically through the week, unscheduled, those who WANT Jesus to be King over them and the Spirit to lead will explode with growth—and irritate the daylights of those who love the world and the things of the world. The leaven in the batch, the cold mixed into the hot (lukewarm) will either run for the hills or gradually be exposed and have the first real opportunity in the ECOSYSTEM to be Converted or Changed. The Gifts and Priesthood of all Believers will flourish and grow, and multiply in hearts and lives and families.”

And here’s the cool part. Do you want to know how I know this? Because I have seen it happen firsthand for the last 40+ years. A bunch of us started out in the Sunday attendance-based system, but once we started living in the Ecosystem, LIFE pushed its way through the concrete of the religious-system. We didn’t need to “cancel Sunday,” nor did we need to treat it as a special day. No “ribbon cutting” or anniversary for “starting something new.”

Even over forty years ago, when we knew nothing (some things never change!) we were still trying to figure out System versus Ecosystem Together. The System was all any of us had ever seen or heard of. So, here we Go—from within the steeple house paradigm. Even then, Sunday was just one more day of the week. How could it be different when you love Jesus, His Body the living church, and people ALL the time? Sitting in rows and files no longer made sense to us. We would never do that in our living rooms or kitchen or in a culdesac or park. He is our LIFE.

As one example of a thousand, many years ago, still WITHIN the System, we were sometimes climbing a motel swimming pool fence on Tuesday or Saturday, 2am, with the Security Guards’ permission, until the motel finally gave us a key. (Plus, we crowded into their diner afterwards. So they liked that.) We weren’t waiting for a “Baptism Sunday” for baptism, the Signature on the Covenant Contract. And, we weren’t crazy about “religion-izing” the celebration by bringing it into the holy building sanctuary, just a mile or two away. We had the key to that too, of course.

2am is launch time, if it is! For those who had given all to Jesus, full surrender, forever, no take-backs, no one ever “waited.” In the Story of Jesus and His apprentices and the early thousands, not once did anyone “wait” to put the Signature of immersion on the Contract of exchanging their sin for His righteousness. By faith, by abandonment, by denying our very selves, we die to self, are buried, and rise to walk in a New Life, Together. (Romans 6-8).

1. Start with Surrender, not Altering Structure

And of course… Start with repentance and fully yielding to Christ. Come what may. Jesus KNEW what He was doing when He invited us to shed religion and the System to have HIM instead. The LIFE of JESUS, rather than Theo (God) Ology (logic, study). What a difference.

2. Find Others Who Want Jesus, Not Religion, in whatever religious group you’re around, or any coffee house or place you may meet people who want and need the real Jesus.

Look for, and BE, all this stuff:

Not talent.

Not charisma.

Not ambition.

3. Live Hebrews 3:12–14. It will become so rewarding and life-giving that it will be your natural way to live Life. It’s Jesus. HE said so.

Forget having “meetings.” Just be Christ-centered and with the best people you can find, as often as you can. You don’t have to talk down to anyone or about anyone, or blow anything up. God isn’t looking for barefoot prophets. He’s looking for those who will wash the feet, “while they are yet sinners” like you and I are. Get with folks, and find out about their lives over meals, in homes, yeah maybe in religious buildings some, on walks and runs, parks, children’s team games, and trips. And let them voluntarily into your life. Of course, you’ll SEE about nothing but jargon unless you are with them “as you rise up and sit down and walk along the way.”

Daily means kind of daily-ish, because it will change faces according to circumstances and availability. Avoid cliques! Let me say it again, and you can pretend I said it 10 times more right here: Avoid cliques. If it is predictable, it is ultimately going to damage you and everyone around you.

Be willing to graciously invade space and give away space, without weirdness or policing or dripping.

When making this change towards ecosystem, whether it’s a “Bible study” or “congregation” or “parish”—a good philosophy is… Be additive not subtractive! Get involved in each others’ lives way off-schedule in addition to whatever your organized thingy might be.

Go places, do things, engage in life and make Jesus central in every little thing with each other. Notice life or lack of life. Talk about it together. No policing but also no spiritually brain dead world-seeking, fun-seeking nonsense. Not little cliques, but everybody, or some unassigned ever-changing subsets of everybody. Talk about your spiritual life and what you are learning. Let Jesus cease to be a topic on a schedule, but rather “live and move and have your being” in Him. Be vulnerable not teachy or weird.

Let the previous so-called clergy become just a brother or sister in the middle of a family. Maybe with extra gifts, maybe not, but that’s not even relevant. As Jesus said, nobody is special, “you are all just brothers,” Matthew 23.

Just let Jesus be center of all of the “extra” times you are also together, and much of the other system stuff will melt into an ecosystem. And “when revelation comes to the second one, let the first sit down!” will become a way of life every day. And, in fact, “Bible studies” and “services” will no longer exist in your mind. You’ll never think of anything again as “going to church” or “something to attend.” You will have outgrown that concept.

Live life. Jesus centered. None of us have it altogether, but all together we have it all. You will discover some amazing things about each other and about Jesus. People will come to crossroads in their lives that they didn’t know they needed to come to. Not everything will turn out great, but amazing things will happen for those who really do want Jesus with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. We all will be set free to discover gifts and horizons we were previously unaware of in ourselves and others.

As Jesus said, “100 mothers, brothers, sisters, lands, possessions, and Zoe life.” Ecosystem Life, Together. For “whosoever will.” “This is My church that the gates of hell can no longer prevail against.” Who has Oil? You’ll find out.

You won’t be able to turn a system into an ecosystem, because you will lose the majority of your friends when you start living for Jesus this way. Many will hate it because they hate the light. Still, you are doing what you need to do and finding out who is real or wants to be. That is powerful! Take your time. And again, God could do a Jonah-Ninevah thing and from the King down everyone will grab ahold of Jesus’ cloak.

The motto: 80 miles deep and 5 miles wide is… 2.5 million times better than… 1 inch deep, 40 miles wide.

To the younger generation reading this…

We have already said, “Don’t be an activist! Don’t be a swashbuckling pirate waving your sword around!”

Since many of you reading or hearing this are in your teens and 20s and early 30s, this is probably essential to say:

But also, as Paul charged Timothy, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.” 1 Timothy 4:12

And do not let anyone steal your hope to see “on earth, as it is in Heaven.” You will likely come across those—as we did—who say, “Oh, the idealism of youth. In a few years, you’ll calm down as you realize all your high aspirations of what the church could and should be are just not possible this side of heaven.” You cannot tolerate such thieves who who want to rob you of the inheritance of the riches of Christ and His Kingdom. Just ignore them, respectfully :).

A mistake of youth is to trust people that say the words but who clearly don’t love the light of the penetrating words of Jesus. Letting people like that too close, too early, will cost you great grief later. Go slow. Agreement is not the same as deep life with God. Not even close.

Again, go slow. Love. Hope. Hope all things.