The Variables & The Constants
There is a Sunday I reflect back on that is captured like a snapshot in my mind. The memory is vivid, it colorful.
From where I was standing I could see the stage of our church. One the platform are three to four young adults leading worship. In the altars, kneeled in prayer are another 8-10. Wading through the crowd of praying students were the very few of us adults praying, counseling, and encouraging these broken spirited seekers.
It was a picture of what we believed for.
This was the picture of the preferred outcome that we set out with. This was the reality of the dreams coming to life right before our eyes. As we traveled the 4 minutes home from the building we met in to our home, I remember turning to Rachael and saying “this was the dream.”
We really didn’t know what to call it. The name was The Collectives Church. But was it a church? Was it a ministry? Was it a hybrid of both? Or was it something completely different?
The short answer to all the questions is “yes”, we think. So with little clarifying language we simply started referring to it as an “experiment”.
My basic level of high school science taught me that when you begin an experiment you start with a hypothesis. Then you set out to test your hypothesis. An experiment will contain both constants and variables. The goal is to hold the constants constant and test which variables work to bring about the results of your hypothesis.
What we had cooked up was this idea that young adults, in particular, Lee University students were not attending church because the church was not intentionally bent toward their demographic. Data backed up our hypothesis, stating that only 20% of Lee Students were attending a local church in Cleveland more than 1 time per month. We knew there was a problem that needed to be addressed. Rachael and I knew that our heart was bent toward Lee University students and wanted to do something to serve and reach them.
Our hypothesis was simple: create a space intentionally built for young adults to worship in, serve in, and be discipled out of. If we could do this with authenticity, students would come.
The constants of the experiment would be the values of the house. We were bent on 4 things and held tight to them and loose to how the methodology and execution would take place. The values were:
- Scripture was our Standard
- Presence over Performance
- Authenticity was Essential
- Created for Community
These were the constants. Things we would not move off of. Other pieces we stay committed to is that our platform would remain young. We would work to identify gifts and callings and help young adults and adults step into their giftedness. These things would be unchanging.
We believed that in the modern attractional church model with plug and play pros filling the roles from the platform to the kids area, that young adults lacked the opportunities to test and prove the gifts of God in their lives. In part, we were right. In part, we were wrong.
The part we were right about. There were a host of young adults not getting the opportunities of others. Some of them found their way to our church, to our stage and ministries, and to our hearts. What we did not know or failed to discover prior to launching was that there were a host of young adults singing, playing, leading in spaces already. The problem was they did not call the places they played, lead, or sung home. They found their name in a planning center. Then shortly after service found their name on a stipend check.
They were hired hands, not sons and daughters of the house. This was foreign to Rachael and I as we had spent years of our young adult era freely serving in our local church because we wanted to give out of the investment made into us. It was an overflow of what was being poured in. What we found was that loyalty at times was only as strong as the Venmo amount they were being sent.
This is not a knock on young adults. They are college students struggling to scratch out Chick-Fil-A money. So I understand why they said yes to the opportunities. This is simply a variable in our experiment that we had not calculated on encountering. It was a variable we found incredibly frustrating while we would pastor a student other churches slipped in just willing to pay them. And the next thing we knew, we were doing the work of pastor and another church was getting their service.
While we were the first call after breakups, breakdowns, and to capture squirrels out of cars (all true events). We were at times, the last place on their list of Sunday expressions. Yet, despite all these variables that had not been accounted for when we started, when we were together in the room, so was the Lord.
For a season our Sunday nights were filled with the unexpected. God’s presence would fall heavy, strong, and overwhelming. Young adults worshipped, wept, and walked out of the room changed. While we were smaller than Gideon’s army, the force in which God demonstrated his love was great. A worship song that came to popularity at the time was Tasha Cobbs Leonard’s “This is a Move”. The song opens with the lyrics:
Mountains are still being moved. Strongholds are still being loosed. God we believe, Yes we can see it. Wonders are still what you do.
Those four words: this is a move became an anthem for us. We had no other way of describing what was taking place. For a season it was like lightning in a bottle. For a stretch of Sundays, it was explosive and at the same time incredibly fragile. It was sweet and still while being incredibly powerful. It was a place and space where Lee University students were coming and finding a place built for them to serve, built for them to sit, built for them to become what God intended for them. A place where they could come broken and the healer was in the room. A place they could bring their mess and allow God to cleanse them. A place to bring struggles, addiction, and demons and the presence would fall and do a work in their life.
It was unique. Like Jesus is Joseph’s tomb, the space we gathered in was borrowed. While weekly we paid rent, it was not our house, but most nights felt like home. Early afternoon, we slightly modify a space designed for a more liturgical expression into something at the crossroads of ancient and modern. The stage would be cleared off of elements of the church that in the AM called it home. We would reset with our light and lean worship set up, some weeks consisting of little more than an acoustic guitar and a keyboard. As God added, we added a box drum. But for the longest time it was simple, unsophisticated, and authentic.
The room at times carried the fragrance of the praying grandmothers who met there in the morning, we would pray and praise in the fragrance of heaven in the PM. And the Lord, out of his kindness, would meet us there. We were not following a growth plan or script. We had burnt the boats and bet on God doing something organic. We were gambling that word would get out and those who were experiencing the power of the Lord would tell their friends. And they did.
Stripped of pretense. Stripped the trappings of what an American church looked like, we gathered. Most Sundays unsure if anyone was joining us. Praying they would come back.
We road the ups of our first big event and the downs of the Sunday to follow. Our team planned and pulled off an outdoor worship service. Due to too many reasons, we would never do it again. Following that service we had a bonfire and s’mores. It was our largest attended Sunday to date. New faces, new Lee University students had found us. It felt like one giant step forward.
The next Sunday was halloween. Not typically a holiday the church fights with, except in Cleveland. Our local community hosts a huge block party downtown. In short, free candy. Our inflated confidence was quickly deflated with the lowest Sunday that we had had. When asked at our first birthday by a friend “what Sunday did you quit?” I quickly responded “Halloween 2021”.
But somehow, Monday came. We brushed ourselves back off. Stood back up and went after it one more time. Every Sunday felt like the first and quite possibly the last. Again, the greatest descriptor was that it felt fragile. Fragile it was.
Many fragile things are held as items of beauty. This was no different. Sunday after Sunday, we met. We sang, we preached, we prayed, God showed up. It was rhythmic but unpredictable. It was consistent but not duplicatable. It was rough around the edges and delicately beautiful all at the same time.
Rachael and I, often the oldest in the room, we looked like experts and for many weeks were so unsure of what to do other than one thing: err on the side of obedience. And so we would. If God said pray for the sick, we did. If God asked us to keep singing, we did. There was a Sunday were our response time carried on nearly 30 minutes. I knew the Lord was not done, but also knew people needed the freedom to go. So as the pastor, I got up prayed a closing prayer, said “Go Be The Collectives, you can go, but we are going to stay.” I went back to my seat to pray. No one moved.
The thickness of the glory of God had captured our attention and hearts to the place where we did not want to leave. It was heavy and hard to move. It was a weight laid on us and freeing all at the same time. And not a single soul in the room was leaving until it lifted. So we didn’t. Some sat silent. Some cried. Some journaled what the Lord was saying. But all stayed.
We look back at that moment and recognize we were in the midst of something that could only be described as a move. The song “This is a Move” became an anthem for the season. We didn’t create it. We didn’t manufacture it. We just felt responsible to steward it for as long as God was going to move.
That night became a snapshot of the next several months. Students came. Students left. Some visited. Some never returned. But all who were willing were able to taste and see that God is good.
