Hugh Halter

Several weeks ago I loaded up a brief list of comments regarding “You know you’re an incarnational community when.”  I had one fella email me and ask me what my list would be for incarnational church.  Great question and it caused me to parouse all the “missional/attractional” charts I’ve compiled over the years.  You’ve probably seen many as well.  As I looked through some of the tags, I noticed that none of them mentioned “Nimbility.”

Quite possibly, it’s due to the fact that it’s not a word, but since other authors get to make up their own words, I thought it’s okay to give it a shot.

“Nimbility” according to Hugh, is a churches ability to hear from God and make quick adjustments or even change course without going through the normal 6-12 months rigamaroll.   Now there’s a great word “rigamaroll.”

Nimbility was a key characteristic of the non-institutional church that seemed able to hear God’s voice and simply go where God wanted them to go and do what they thought the winds of the Holy Spirit directed. Now, I’m not one of those hyppie-type Christians that believe that we just sit indian-style in the middle of a flowery field and move like a band of Grateful dead followers in a caravan of VW buses.   I’m actually quite suburban in my ways.  I like some structure; I value organization and planned forethought; I value the biblical precedent of eldership and congregational accountability, but there must be a way to avoid the drawn out process of ecclesial red tape that quite often limits a church’s ability to dance with God when he speeds up the music.

A few months ago, we were sensing that Adullam may be slipping into “churchdom.”  Our original story as chronicled in The Tangible Kingdom was full of conversion stories, spontaneously meaningful dialogue with the unchurched culture, hours spent on the weekends in transformational relationship, and all-around focus on a Monday through Monday missional Christianity.

Although our rhetoric stayed the same, the gravity of growth was pushing us into a corporate slumber.  Many of us sensed it, but we simply didn’t have the time or the energy to address it as we wanted to.  Maybe you’ve been there.

Maybe that’s a side lesson in Nimbility. Just like you lose your co0rdination after a long run or a two hour hard mountain bike ride, fatigue, both corporate and personal may be why we settle into the rut of “just doing church.”

When the voice of God was clear, I sent out an email to our entire congregation and told them that I needed them all to be at the next gathering. I referenced that we had to make some hard decisions together.  In fine form, almost everyone showed up.  I think some thought I was either shutting the church down or someone had made a massive moral blunder.

I began by calming their fears of impending doom, but told them that we had lost our story.  I reminded them of our original story together and simply asked them to consider giving God the best part of our week again.  I shared how almost all the great stories of Adullam happened on the weekends and how our Denver culture requires that God’s missional church be most active with people on Saturday and Sunday.  We needed our spontaneously intentionally time together again.

I then suggested that we hold a much more balanced rhythm of Gathering weekends and Village weekends without a corporate gathering.  After our time, we handed out response cards to get their opinions. We gave them a week to respond and then we made our decision.  Out of several hundred adult responses, we had only two people that said they preferred to have weekly gatherings.  Everyone else confirmed, God was asking us to get back up on our toes and start dancing again.

In the next four weeks, we prepared not only to change our Gathering structure but also a new location move and we actually moved our Gathering time as well.  In short, we did what you’re never supposed to do in a church. CHANGE EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE!

So what happened? Not sure yet, but so far, everyone is smiling, we almost doubled the number of villages, I was able to have a truck load of conversation with people who felt the change was pushing them back toward God.  As well, many of our villages that had become midweek bible study groups had intentional conversations about how they were going to use their free weekends to serve in their city and neighborhoods.  In short, we recalibrated back to God’s original thumbprint for our corporate community and in six week time, it feels like the old story.

I hesitated to share this with you via blog because I didn’t want any tired pastor to throw in the towel and push their congregation like we did ours. For sure, most congregations can’t do what we did, nor would it be wise for others to try.  Adullam had as one of it’s core elements, a history of change and flux so “Nimbility” came easier for us.

I’m simply sharing this because I’m proud of us. Like a Dad who sees his family do something remarkable together, I’m glowing with admiration for a band of friends and fellow sojourners who want to hear from God together and who make His missional call the priority over personal preferences, fear of change, or calcifide organizational structures.

If I was to make my new “what does a missional church have to have” list, at the top would be NIMBILITY.

I’ll keep you posted

Hugh