Creating a Movement

A tree grows from one visible trunk, top-down. A rhizome spreads underground, sideways, sending up new growth in places you'd never predict — and it still has one life running through the whole thing. That's the image for this episode, and we trace it through three moments in Acts: believers scattered by persecution who end up planting the gospel wherever they land, the Spirit falling on Cornelius's household before the church has worked out any theology to explain it, and a handful of believers whose names Scripture never bothers to record starting the church at Antioch. We also bring in Bobby Clinton's research on what movements have in common, and ask what it would take for a congregation to be less of a location and more of a movement.

Covered in this episode:

• Acts 8: persecution scatters the Jerusalem church, and it's ordinary believers, not the apostles, who carry the gospel out.

• Acts 10: the Spirit falls on Cornelius's household before Peter even finishes preaching — God moves first, and the church catches up.

• Acts 11: unnamed believers start the church at Antioch, which later sends out Paul and Barnabas.

We also walk through Bobby Clinton's five commitments of a movement — personal involvement, persuading others to join, commitment to the core beliefs, non-bureaucratic cell-group organization, and enduring opposition. The fourth one is where the rhizome language comes from most directly. Reference:

J. Robert Clinton, The Making of a Leader

Reflection Questions:

1. Where has something in your life scattered you a move, a loss, a disruption that might actually be the Spirit sending you somewhere he already intends to work?

2. Is there a "Cornelius" in your life someone outside your familiar circle that the Spirit may already be moving toward before you've worked out all your theology about them?

3. Are you willing to be one of the unnamed ones with no title, no platform, no credit — who simply opens a home, shares a meal, tells the truth about Jesus, and lets something start that you'll never get to name?

Journal Prompts:

• Name one disruption from the last few years. Did it open a door you wouldn't have chosen yourself?

• Who's someone in your life who feels outside the circle — what would it look like to pay attention to what God might already be doing there?

• What's one small, unglamorous thing you could start this week that you'd never get credit for?