Mega/Micro: Reaching our communities together

Just over a year ago, within the space of 72 hours, Tony and I had three megachurches ask us about simple church.  We may be fairly slow on the uptake at times, but even we couldn't miss the fact that this might be the Lord.  Since then we have had a two national meetings with megachurch and microchurch leaders meeting together, and even the theme of last year's national conference "The Rabbit and the Elephant" reflected this potential.

One of the churches that has shown much interest is Austin Stone, a very rapidly growing megachurch here in Austin, consisting of mostly 20s and 30s.  They are already reaching out into the city with missional communities. They are putting on a conference, Verge2010 at the beginning of February.  Speaking at it are many proponents of simple/organic church–Neil Cole, Alan Hirsch, David Watson, David Garrison, George Patterson and others.  Other megachurches in our city have thrown their weight behind it too.  The emphasis is on missional communities and how to reach out to our cities.  It promises to be an exciting time.

If any of you are interested to know more, the website is verge2010.org.  If any of you reading this blog can come, contact me and let's get together during the conference.

What could God do in our cities if it doesn't matter who gets the credit?  If the thousands of people that the megachurches in our cities represent caught the vision of reaching out to the city using organic/simple church principles, we could have a far-reaching impact on our communities.