February marks the 3 year anniversary of Bloom‘s first official weekly public gathering – it’s birth(day/month), in a sense. I like birthdays, so we decided to have a birthday celebration for Bloom this weekend. Tell some stories, eat some cake. It was a really great time.
Actually, I did most (all) of the story-telling. I get the impression sometimes that a lot of people are part of our community without having the foggiest idea where we came from or why we do the weird things that we do. Or even better, why we don’t do some of the things that we don’t do. Like, why don’t you raise a bunch of money to do like a “real” church launch (whatever a “real” church launch looks like). Stories help put all that in perspective.
So I told some stories to talk about why we are what we are and why we sense the Spirit leading us where we think the Spirit is leading us. In all, I would call the talk a mega-important primer on the “what the heck” of Bloom. If you haven’t, you should listen to it. It may become required listening for anyone who wishes to join our community.
Without spilling the beans, and in brief, I spelled out why I don’t think God’s dream for Bloom is to become the next super-awesome church experience in the city of Denver. In truth, Denver doesn’t (maybe no city does) really need another super-awesome church experience anyway. It needs churches that are more intentional about spiritual formation, discipleship, mission, etc.
So instead, I tried to paint a picture of a radically decentralized church… a church that pushes ministry to the fringes, plants and replants new house churches/missional communities that penetrate neighborhoods with the good news of what God is doing in the world in Jesus, and then regularly gather together regionally to celebrate the work of God and be re-cultivated for running after Jesus in his mission “out there”, as he’s more often than not “out there” doing all kinds of amazing things. Its just up to us to catch up with him.
Anyway, especially if you’re part of the Bloom community, I hope you’ll give it a listen. We have a bright future and a lot of work ahead.
