The Paradigm Shift Series - Join a Movement

This is part 5 of the series looking at organizational culture in churches.

Join a Movement. I think this is one of the tough ones for everyone – especially those prideful people like me. If you are truly going to be obedient to God, then you have to stop trying to start a movement in your city. I’ll bet that got your attention. After all, isn’t a movement to Christ what our city needs more than anything? Well, yes it does. But the movement is already there. The paradigm shift here is away from programming and planning and creating a movement in the name of Jesus toward looking for and joining God’s movement in your city right now. I think we have all been part of small groups who want to change the world. And I think many of us are so thankful for the blessing of salvation and the relationship of our Savoir that we want to do things for Him out of love and appreciation. Our thoughts may be in the right direction – bringing people to Jesus. But our hearts are out of alignment. Go back to Matthew 28:29, we are called to make disciples. We are not called to start a movement. We are called to love. And the best way to love God is through obedience.


I am especially guilty of this one. I cannot tell you the number of ministry groups I have been part of starting over the years. Or the amount of clever “seeker” events I have helped plan with creative themes, logos and t-shirts. How disappointing to Him I must have been. How disappointing to Him I am now if I believe that City Church is anything more than His movement in the city of Fort Worth.

When we started our journey, our focus was on targeting downtown. But after we let go, stopped planning and let ourselves join God’s movement versus starting our own, something amazing happened. In our first five Villages – none of them were downtown. God’s movement is for the city, but in His way, not ours. We did not start City Church as a new movement for the city. We looked for what God was already doing and joined in. (This philosophy is true for our global missions as well. Now there is a real paradigm shift!)

But remember the pride comment a few paragraphs before? Even as we write this, we wonder if this magazine is prideful. Are we doing this to get attention? Are we trying to show the other churches in the city how cool we are? I can honestly say as I write this, the answer is no. But I can also honestly say that for most of my life, the answer would have been, yes. Since we have started City Church, there have been people from all over the US (and even outside US) who have contacted us and asked Ben, “Tell me how it works?” “How did you come up with it?” “What is your plan?”

The answer is simple. First, you have to shift your paradigms. You have to love as Jesus did and be obedient. And you have to commit yourself to a lifestyle modeled by the apostles in the first churches. And you have to begin with believing it is His movement, His church, His people, His plan.

The city doesn’t need any more clever programming. It doesn’t need any new ideas. It just needs God’s people to live out His ideas – the ones He gave us – the ones that were modeled for us by the apostles in Acts.