Sometimes, I really wonder how this whole evergreen thing will ever work... seriously.

We have (foolishly?) broken nearly every rule of church planting I can think of... We didn't start with a bang. We don't advertise. We provide little in the way of programs to attract people. (For example: our kids ministry for young kids is a patch of carpet and a tub of toys and for older kids some really faithful people trying to teach about the attributes of God.) Our Sunday mornings are exercises in community, dialogue, and (we hope) spirituality... not a polished, linear sequence with good production values that starts on time, ends on time and always entertains, but a time when we worship God and hear from Him through His Word and through the voices of the community. We have no structure, method or mechanism (other than the gifts God gives us as a community) for dealing with people- for teaching them, loving them, welcoming/keeping track of them or healing them. Our home groups have no coherent strategy or feel... nor does the rest of what we do, for that matter. In short, we're a mess. A beautiful, meaningful, sometimes frustrating, Godward mess... but still a mess.

So how is that supposed to thrive? How is it even supposed to survive?

In a sense, we're rolling the dice. We're betting that with God's help, if we move away from a model where pastors and elders do all those things, the community itself will step in and fill the void... the people themselves will own their community enough to make it what it needs to be, both for themselves and for those they want to see become part of the community.

It's a risk. If we (all of us) don't do this, this thing we're a part of may go off the tracks. So, what does what does owning that, owning the community look like?

First, it looks like the life of the community flowing from the people of the community, not just the leadership. Start things! See a need? Fill it! Don't like something? Change it. Want to add something? Bring it. It's your community. It will be what we together make it.

Secondly, owning the community means that when things rub us wrong or disappoint us or even hurt us, we talk about it. We trust the process of and people in community to talk it through, work it out. And if we ever have to disengage from the community, that comes only after some serious prayer, discussion and work.

The good news is we're growing. More and more people are finding a home in the evergreen community. Unfortunately, that's also the bad news, because it requires more of each of us... on second thought, maybe that's not such bad news after all.