A Letter From Pastors Brian Miller and Fran Leeman

Dear friends and fellow-leaders in ministry,

As we begin this letter, we begin with a plea: read it carefully, take seriously the words that follow, and please consider the invitation we are extending to you.

Over the last several years, the tide of people asking serious questions about the church in Western culture has been steadily rising. Significant thinkers like N.T. Wright, Dallas Willard, Bob Roberts, and Alan Hirsch have been writing books that explore questions about whether some things are seriously wrong with how we think about the Gospel, the church, and what it means to live life as a Christian.

But more than that, many of us who lead and pastor on the front lines have gradually become convinced that the church here in America (even in its evangelical or "Bible-believing" forms) has in many ways ceased to reflect the values and flavor of the Jesus we find in the Gospels. These questions are not just the long-time debates about who is liberal or conservative, or who takes the Bible literally enough, or who has just the right doctrinal understandings. Rather, they are questions about whether we have rightly understood the mission for which Jesus came and what it looks like to share in that mission.

If you doubt whether we really need to take a hard look at our understanding of the Christian faith and how we live that out in the church, take an honest look at the perceptions of the non church-goers and non-Christians in our culture. Books like Dan Kimball's They Like Jesus, But Not the Church have chronicled what people hear the church and Christians saying. And what they hear us saying are things like:

It's just about getting your free pass into heaven and staying out of hell.

Believing in Jesus is how you get your hands on "the good life".

We just want to pass laws to keep all the gay people in line.

Jesus' message was "The time has come! The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the Good News!" (Mark 1:15). He told his disciples that when they went into a village they should announce that "The Kingdom of God is near you!" (Luke 10:9). Jesus' message was different than what the church today is often saying.

Jesus' life was different from the way today's Christians live. Jesus did not embed his life into a religious club that stood back from society and condemned the people who didn't fit the club's tastes. He went where people were— where they lived and shopped and got their water. He ate at their tables, asked them about their lives, listened to their stories, and loved them in a way that could help them find the way.

His primary concern was not how to get them to show up at the synagogue, but how to heal their brokenness and awaken them from their blindness about life, God, and their own hearts. The whole point of the incarnation seems to have really been that God wanted to be "with us", as opposed to preaching at us from a distance. Much of the church today has become a religious enterprise rather than a mission to enter and bless the world (Genesis 12:3).

The simple fact is that few people experience Jesus as being anything like the warm, tantalizing, enjoyable, puzzling, intriguing, engaging, challenging, radical, life-giving Nazarene of the Gospels.

And so more and more of us are asking:

What would it look like to live like this Jesus… to be the hands and feet and voice of God to the world of human beings which surrounds us?

And what would Christian communities that look and smell and think and love like this Jesus look like?

And what would it be like to see people enter into these churches like they did in the early book of Acts, where all the believers had everything in common and none was without need?

Over the last year, we have noticed that God has started to connect us to more and more people willing to ask the hard questions, people who are hungry to recover a way of following Jesus and ways of being the church that resonate deeply with the Jesus of the Gospels and take seriously His message of the Kingdom of God.

In the past, the two of us led an organization called Midwest Church Planting, which focused mostly on the logistics of jump-starting new churches. After MCP died off, we knew that the way we would try to help other leaders in the future would look different than it had in the past. What has become clear to us is that what most of us need, as pastors and leaders, is others with whom we can share this journey, with whom we can explore and find better pictures of the Kingdom of God, of following Jesus, and of leading our communities in His beautiful mission.

So in response to this new movement that God has stirred up toward a more centered, incarnational, and missional church, we are forming a fresh network called Grass Roots. The purpose of this network is to help us search for these better pictures, and to help us better lead Christ's community.

What will Grass Roots do? At least once a year (maybe twice) we will hold a Grass Roots Gathering, a two-day event for you and any leaders you care to bring, where we will explore specific questions about the Gospel, discipleship, incarnational living, being missional churches, etc. These will neither be vague discussions nor quick-fix seminars because we believe that deep discipleship and good churches will flow from right perspectives and right hearts.

Our first Grass Roots Gathering will be November 7-8 in Urbana, Illinois. The format of the gatherings will involve several talks, each followed by discussion in smaller groups, then feedback and dialogue back in the larger setting. What we want to create is an environment where we learn from each other, fueled by thought-provoking presentations. There will also be times of worship and time to just be together interspersed into the gatherings. There are two other things we hope will emerge through Grass Roots:

1) Seeing people share in missional adventures together, whether that is with New Life for Haiti, collaborating to birth new churches, or some other mission you bring to the table.

2) Seeing people cross racial and cultural divides. So we hope we will have at least Hispanics, Anglos, and African Americans gathering to encourage and teach one another.

In the near future, there will be a Grass Roots website, through which we'll be able to keep each other informed and point each other to good resources.

Grass Roots is not intended to replace your current connections (to denominations, who you have ministerial credentials with, etc.) We just want to form a family of leaders who want to help each other learn to see and live like Jesus and create communities through which God's Kingdom is made evident.

There won't be any membership fees or lifetime commitments. The only costs will be whatever it costs for us to pull off the gatherings. The content for the first gathering this Fall is already in place, and one thing we can promise – you won't be is bored! We're going to be exploring the shifting sands in the western church, asking how the church today is like/unlike the Jesus of the Gospels, and play with some pictures of what more authentic discipleship, community and mission might look like. The attached flyer has all the details—I've attached it in both JPEG and PDF formats (if you can't open PDFs, click the JPEG to open it larger).

Our hope is so much more than to just create more conversations. We want to restore the nature of the church to be the most effective force in expanding the Kingdom of God in North America. Interested?

Fran Leeman Brian Miller
August 26, 2008

GR Gathering Flyer.jpg
GR Gathering Flyer.pdf