A People Movement, and a Moving People
In August 2018, a Swedish 15-year-old decided to skip school and sit outside her country’s parliament, demanding urgent action on the climate crisis.
Greta Thunberg vowed to strike every Friday until Swedish policies complied with the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Her actions drew global attention, and shortly after her first school strike, hundreds of thousands of young people across the world joined her. The strikes ended after 251 days, but the organization she inspired, #FridaysforFuture, now has 14 million people involved in 7,500 cities on all continents. The "Greta effect" sparked a global movement of young people actively campaigning for changes to government policy and raising public awareness of climate change across the world.
Movements have an exponential, dynamic, scalable energy and are adaptive and innovative.
Beyond the campaign initiated by Thunberg, consider the impact of movements sparked over the centuries by Charles and John Wesley, William Wilberforce, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., to name but a few.
Although these individuals might have been catalytic in sparking or scaling movements, for something to truly move from a moment of change to become a movement of change, it must be owned and pursued by many people, in many different places, and in many ways.
The story of God’s people has always been about a people movement and a moving people. It was a people movement before a denomination or institutional reality, and a story before a statement of faith… and it has always been marked by a call to multiply.
Part of God’s original mandate to humankind in Genesis 1:28 was to “Be fruitful and increase in number.” In the Great Commission, Jesus calls us to multiplication – this time to multiply disciples: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19) And again, in Jesus’ last words before his ascension, he calls his disciples to multiply through geographical expansion: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
Jesus called ordinary people to join him, and the church he founded was a missionary movement. If the church had not functioned as a movement and failed to take the Great Commission seriously, there would have been no church then or today.
As leaders and organizations, we need to recapture and reimagine ourselves as part of the Jesus movement and to have the drive for our organization, venture, or community to play its part in the grand plan. We have drifted to an organizational reality where we manage processes, depend on vehicles, and lead through technique and systems. Catalyse Change, the charity I founded, and my book All Change, were created to spark imagination for movemental Christianity and catalyse the innovation for disciple-making, spiritual leadership, church planting, and Christian entrepreneurship. In our two main training initiatives, Movement Leaders Collective and Creo, we work with numerous organizations and leaders to unlock kingdom potential in themselves and in the places or people groups they are called to.
As Christian leaders, whether we are considering disciple-making, church planting, or spiritual leadership, we must recapture a first-century design in our 21st-century context. We must become a collaborative, dynamic, authentic, generative, and innovative community that reflects more of the Jesus movement of the first century than the consumer movement of the 21st.
These dynamics are key, regardless of whether you lead a micro-church, church, faith-driven venture, charity, or denomination. Speaking of the generative, organic nature of movement dynamics within a faith-driven organization, Timothy Keller says:
“A church or organization with movement dynamics has spiritual spontaneity; it constantly generates new ideas, leaders, and initiatives within and across itself ‒ not solely from the top or from a command center outside of itself. … A church or organization that is highly institutionalized, however, is structured so that individuals cannot offer ideas and propose projects unless asked or given permission. A church with movement dynamics … generates ideas, leaders, and initiatives from the grassroots. Ideas come less from formal strategic meetings, and more from off-line conversations among friends. Since the motivation for the work is not so much about compensation and self-interest as about a shared willingness to sacrifice for the infectious vision, such churches naturally create friendships among members and staff. These friendships become mini-engines powering the church, along with the more formal, organized meetings and events.”
Jesus’ plan was for everything to be a movement, constantly advancing and moving forward, and that everyone play their part. The way that he did this was to place movement potential in the smallest, most reproductive element of his plan: the disciple. By equipping his disciples to be disciples, and become disciple-makers, he sowed the seeds of a movement that still exists today.
Sadly, rather than forming disciples, much of the Western church has created consumers, outsourcing ministry to the work of the professionalized few, and with the focus of faith becoming a “weekly church service” experience rather than a whole-life, 24/7 expression. We are managing institutions rather than making disciples. As a result, many 21st-century Christians are not equipped to live as vibrant disciples, let alone make and form new disciples. Culture is discipling believers more effectively than the church. Consumer Christians don’t own their spiritual journey, they don’t contribute to the life of the church or the world around them, and they are blown around by the winds of culture.
There are signs of hope across the UK though. We see this in the work of REACH in the Midlands and SYNERGY across the UK in missional disciple-making; the social entrepreneurship of FLTR Coffee; and the micro-church network in Bicester, which has a growing national influence. Pioneer is a network that mobilizes churches across the UK to take the gospel to new places and spaces. Cairn Movement (Scotland and Ireland) works with pioneers for fresh expressions of church and missional activity, and ministries such as Fusion are engaging students in missional disciple-making. There are also many Christian entrepreneurs that we partner with through Creo who are pioneering faith-driven ventures in education, arts, social action, digital and media, and other places to impact society.
The essential task for us as leaders today, then, is to unlock the power of movemental Christianity in and through our ventures, churches, denominations, and organizations.
A Jesus movement can be defined as:
Disciples who actively participate in a shared kingdom purpose, in a relationally bound, DNA-based organism (embodying the Greatest Commandment) that has generative energy and grows to multiple generations (fulfilling the Great Commission).
Active participation (full mobilization)
Jesus movements activate every disciple in the system to contribute to the cause.
A shared kingdom purpose (clear and compelling vision)
Jesus movements have a kingdom narrative and a Jesus-centered cause that propels people forward and pulls them together.
Relationally bound (committed community and network effect)
Jesus movements display camaraderie and a commitment to one another that creates an active, attractive, and adventurous community.
DNA-based organism (core values and strategic framework)
Jesus movements have an agreed-upon set of kingdom values and DNA – the organizing beliefs and principles that inform and shape every action and interaction.
Generative energy (orientation toward innovation and adaptive leadership)
Jesus movements have dynamic energy, empower innovation, and are self-generating and self-replicating.
Growth to multiple generations (ethos of distribution and scale)
Jesus movements cultivate paradigms, platforms, principles, and practices that embrace the challenge of pursuing generational growth and adapt to different circumstances and cultures.
Successful businesses today focus on research and development, emerging markets, cultural shifts, and prototyping as important aspects of growth. The balance of keeping existing customers as well as gaining new customers, then, becomes an invisible tightrope for companies. As the Western church, it seems we spend far too much time trying to keep our customers (yes, emphasis intended) happy and engaged, in an attempt to hold on to what is already a small and decreasing pool. Archbishop William Temple (1881-1944) famously said, “The Church exists primarily for the sake of those who are still outside it.” That was the mindset of the early church as the movement spread into Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. The church isn’t intended to be a social club or membership organization that exists solely for its current members but instead is a living body called to communicate, demonstrate, and extend God’s kingdom transformation in a broken world.
