I found this quote from Northland 's pastor Joel Hunter provoked a whole bunch of ideas and pushed a whole bunch of buttons for me:
It means that these people gather together because they need some help or want to be connected to a larger group in the church to worship, but they are going to do their own pastoral care, their own education, their own community service, all of that kind of stuff where thy are. And that fellowship is important. So for us the development has really birthed a vision of being able to-- plant churches is probably too big a term for us because the term church has so much western baggage to it-- but we are enabling small congregations to do evangelism and discipleship and service and worship together all over the world. And so that's the course that we are on right now. That is where everything is pointed here in our church.
It has tremendous benefits to our people's maturity because when you come to a church and you are constantly reminded that you are just getting filled up for the people who are not there inside the church with you, and everything we do as a church is to make us witnesses and servants to those who are not regularly in church programming. It really does give you a better handle on how and what it means to love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
Northland does a whole bunch of internet church stuff that I don't dig - even more than I don't dig the video preaching stuff at Mars Hill. But I liked some of these thoughts.
You can read the full interview with Joel Hunter here.
