Helena Church Plant: NARRATE

Adam & Theresa Huschka are leading Journey's church plant in Helena, meeting at the Cinemark Theatre: 750 Great Northern Blvd. To learn more about Narrate Church visit http://www.narratechurch.org

Narrate Church

Narrate: a vision for a movement in Helena

(the public gathering)
It's 10am on Sunday morning and we just spent two and a half hours cleaning-up a theatre in order to host our public gathering. The band is playing in the background as people trickle in and find places to sit. In just a moment, the band will lead us in their own unique blend of worship music. Later we'll spend some time wrestling with who God really is and what His dreams for the world really are. We'll also hear stories about people living on mission, people creatively bringing heaven to earth. Eventually we'll invite people to take communion and when the up front part of the gathering ends, we'll encourage people to linger.

The people piling in the doors come from all walks of life and from any number of backgrounds. Some are conservative republicans, others are committed democrats. Some were raised in the church, others hadn’t stepped foot in one before they started hanging with us. Some consider themselves disciples of Jesus, others are curious, and others used to be and are wondering. Many of them have had political lines blurred for them since they started wrestling with us.

Many of us were churched as kids, but in our young adult lives stopped attending church. Many Catholics join us, even a couple nuns on occasion. Some had stopped believing; others had come to see the local church as socially irrelevant; several disconnected as they got rolling in their professional lives; and many thought their convictions regarding the environment, evolution, and social justice meant they could no longer believe in Jesus or the validity of the Text. Many were walking with Jesus, but had become convinced that their ability to change the world would be better realized by volunteering with local social service organizations, as opposed to the church. By asking, What if... we continually challenge peoples preconceived opinions, and thus invite them to reconsider who Jesus is.

(innovative kingdom-bringing)
As we gather, we gather as innovative Kingdom-bringers. We’re a community that has spent the last six days out in the world bringing heaven to earth. Our vision, simply put, is Inspiring one another to dream Kingdom dreams, recognize needs, hear cries and innovate the means. We are community who takes seriously Jesus invitation to see needs, to hear cries, and pioneer ways to meet those needs.

Some people recently quit their jobs in order to lead their newly pioneered organization full time. Others volunteer with local social service organizations on a weekly basis. Many people in our community have pioneered smaller movements: one guy collects old bikes, fixes them up and gives them kids who don’t have a bike; another guy leads a Bible study at lunch in Carroll’s cafeteria; another gal leads an organization that mentors children with incarcerated parents; another couple does a Bible study for struggling addicts every Friday night (soon a second couple will be doing the same thing on Thursday night); another gal sells bottled water and gives all the proceeds to building wells in Africa; another couple leads a new believers study at their house on Thursday nights. All the ministries associated with our movement were birthed in people who in turn have worked hard to make things happen.

We are also in close relationship with over ten social organizations in Helena, and there is a deep sense of mutual respect for one another. We firmly believe in partnering with existing organizations if that is an option; when possible we function as a great teammate, and when we have to we create something new. From the very beginning of our time in Helena we understood that God was calling us to tell the story about Him with our lives, especially our everyday lives. We embraced the truth that planting a church didn’t just mean hosting services on Sunday mornings, rather, we understood that God called us hear to makes disciples to be a Jesus community inviting people into God’s story and then learning together how to tell God’s story with our lives. We’ve strived to see ourselves as sent to transform a community not just host church services.

So we gather to celebrate the ways God’s story has been flowing out of us; we gather to be united by a common vision for what it means to be a Jesus community; we gather for encouragement to live another week as people on mission; we gather to worship God; we gather to provide additional commentary regarding God’s story. In short, we gather as the spent but fulfilled people of God.

(wonder)
We are a community that has learned to love mystery, wonder, paradox and apparent contradiction. We love asking questions and often find that the best answers are in fact questions. We see in Jesus life a heavy emphasis on questions, and we understand His Jewish passion for mystery and wonder. At times we don’t offer an answer because neither Jesus nor the Text reveals the answer.

(both and)
Much of our theology is framed by our belief that Jesus came to bring a New Exodus. We see in the Scriptures a God whose core values are both righteousness and justice. We recognize that God has always been passionate about hearing the cries of the oppressed, whether the cries are of a personal, systemic, social or spiritual nature.

We emphasize social justice in our spending, our giving, and our consumption. Every year we’re giving more and more of our annual budget to serving the least of these found in Matthew 25. We are quite involved with giving to the global poor, particularly through micro-financing. Some of this money is also given to people pioneering ways to serve the oppressed (we think of it as investing in their experiments and service). We love watching people give their lives to Jesus by ultimately confessing their sin, believing in what Jesus accomplished on the cross, and committing their life to becoming more and more like Jesus. We’re convinced that Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him (Hebrews 11:7). Therefore, we treat everyone as in process and try to remember that God was at work in our friends lives before we showed-up, and will be when we leave. We talk a lot about God’s desire to renew our character and make us more and more like Him. We also talk a lot about learning from [Jesus] how to live our lives as He would if he were us.

(nomadic)
Currently we gather in a popular theatre downtown on Sunday mornings and in the auditorium at the local college on Sunday nights. We have no intention of ever buying property (however, if God tells us to, we will). We have several reasons for this. First, we like the lack of guaranteed future. We enjoy the reality that we could quite easily cease to exist next week. We agree with the Jews that God is in the desert, and one of the ways we stay dependent on God is with our lack of facilities. We like how not owning a building further invites corporate ownership, it screams this doesn’t happen if people don’t do their part. We like how not owning a building lets us add value to existing public gathering places in the city. Finally, the fact is that not owning a building lets us better discern what ministries to start, which leaders are committed, and when it is time to shut a ministry down (because making things happen even on a facility end is a lot of work). We certainly don’t see it as a super model but we do see that it fits who God is calling us to be in our context. Helena is a city of cathedrals; there is a beautiful Catholic Cathedral, as well as some very ornate mainstream buildings (we’ve been know to rent the Catholic Cathedral on more than one occasion). The fact that our church is a community of people, not a building, thrills us. Generally speaking, we like how being nomadic affects our souls.

(community)
Our approach toward community and belonging is intentionally organic. We think both community and belonging are non-negotiables, but at the same time we think it can rarely be created artificially. We like to say that we’ve intentionally designed an unintentional system. That is, we do a few things on purpose in order to organically help people belong.

By design our gathering goes about 70 minutes, but the children’s ministry goes 90. That allows people to dwell and stir and not feel obligated to run off and scoop up their kids. Three or four times a year we do things that intentionally put strangers under the same roof. The hope is that people at the very least develop social relationships with others, and there is always a chance they’ll connect with someone who could become a personal friend. (Examples of such gatherings are: Dinner for 8, life skills workshops, and various Bible studies.)

We serve together whether that be wiping down tables, running cords for speakers, pouring into kids in kids ministry, or showing up to help a friend of a friend move by serving together we increase our risk of meeting new friends, and we share experiences with existing friends.

Pastor Adam Huschka
Narrate Church
PO Box 1507
Helena, MT 59624
(406) 591-4095
adam@narratechurch.org
http://www.narratechurch.org