Someone from the emerging church thing that I'm a part of has mentioned a few different examples of groups (churches) doing stuff similar to what we'd like to do. The Red Network was one example and Small Boat Big Sea is another. Both cool network / church things I'd like to be involved in. Now here is the limit I fear that I've found. Are there any groups like these that don't involve a paid worker? Can an emerging church emerge to something more than an wobbly underground gathering without a paid worker?
5 comments:
i want to say that it is possible, teh cafe church in glebe, sydney has lasted without a paid "leader" for 10 years, they now have part time paid admin people, and for 2 years they paid an artist in residence who creasted art for worship.
The Other Late Late Service in Adelaide lasted for about 12 years without a paid person, we've closed down now, but that was more because we'd all healed and been sent out on mission elsewhere...
It is possible...
Cool! I know that Cafe Church is Uniting Church affiliated but I'm not sure when or how that happened. Was TOLLS (the other Late Late Service) ever denominationally affiliated?
long of the short of it is that while cafe church glebe had a number of uca people involved and supporting it in the beginnings it only became a uca after all the churches around it died, the sale of the property went into paying off their morgage on the warehouse and helped tehm financially a fair bit. it also caused a few issues with a number of people having issues with being affiliated with a denomination/institution.
tolls crashed in uca buildings for quite some time, our first 4 years were in a church that we had to pack up after every night and then we moved to ovingham uca who allowed us to basically take over the place. i think we were probably the first "alternative worship" community as such in Australia and we basically made our way by paying for our own equipment and borrowing lots of gear from others. we did get some UCA funding to help us with projects like the electronic music studio, but never paid someone to do anything in the community.
Well our little community survives on no paid leadership, but then again, we are pretty new and pretty small.
Since I kinda lead it, i wouldn't be comfortable being paid, but if down the track it is taking a significant chunk of my time and what not, then i wouldn't have any problem with getting paid to do it-I don't actually see a problem with that.
Do you?
Hello Digger,
No it doesn’t bother me either way. The only problem with someone getting paid is that there needs to be money somewhere for that person to get paid. I guess I have two questions swimming around in my head at the moment…
1)Is it possible to get an emerging church thing off the ground and keep it sustainable for the long term (say 5 years) without a paid worker?
2)Is it possible to get an emerging church thing off the ground and keep it sustainable for the long term (say 5 years) without some affiliation to a denomination or larger church?
I guess neither questions will ever have definitive answers but perhaps percentages. I think this is the kind of info that would be really important to people wanting to start some kind of emerging church thing up.
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