Street Repairs
by Rob O’Neal, Director of Church Multiplication
This past year the City of Prior Lake replaced the streets near my house. (Our beautiful winters mean that the roads around here wear out quickly.) Replacing a road is an expensive proposition. I’m glad I didn’t have to pay to have the work done all by myself. That would have been prohibitively expensive. In our city we share the job of helping people get around, so we share the expense of maintaining our streets.
There are some things that we simply do together better than we do separately, including starting new churches. It’s hard to start a church all by yourself. Of course, God can do whatever he chooses, but most of the time planters struggle on their own. When a core team joins a planter, they bring money, help, and encouragement that makes starting a new church easier and more enjoyable. If we add sponsoring churches and outside prayer support, we can move mountains! Church multiplication is definitely something that we do better together.
Like the residents of Prior Lake, we as a Conference cooperate to do important things together. Unlike the taxpayers near me, our cooperation is voluntary. We have chosen to share life and mission together. No structures force us to get together or to join each other in work. Ironically, I find that we like being together and enjoy cooperating! We do it because we like to, not because we have to.
I see this value lived out in my colleagues in the Northstar Church Multiplication Center. We have shared life together for years. We meet monthly to pray, encourage each other, and renew our ties. Those relationships lead us to work well together. We pour great energy into starting new churches. Our shared mission creates a kind of feedback loop. When we work together to start new churches, it makes our shared life even deeper.
The shared life and mission we have as a Conference is a theological reality and a divine imperative, not an accident. As the New Testament puts it, we are a temple where God’s Spirit dwells, a household of faith, and the body of Christ. While the New Testament’s theology of how we fit together soars, the Old Testament puts the same truth in practical terms in Ecclesiastes 4:12 which says, Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. We are a family where we share life and mission. It makes us stronger. Let’s celebrate and deepen what God has given us.
