YOU BIG BABY

I took off blogging for Holy Week.  I got a couple of days in with my kids, grandkid, and friends in San Antonio.  Had a wonderful Easter with the Cocoa people ... who are so talented and dedicated!  Now off to blogging with a bang.

I like it when one church incubates another.  One has plenty of facility and the will and the flexibility to take another church onto its property.  It might take it under its wing in some other ways.  They can share all-church-work days and make the worship flower arrangement get in twice the duty. 

Some worry that there’s twice the wear and tear but probably not quite.  And nobody says to a couple getting married and moving into one or the others’ apartment, “Watch out because you’ll have twice the wear!”  No.  They say, “Two can live as cheaply as one.”  Or they say, “Twice the fun!”

But today I am thinking about a backwards idea that, as I am thinking about it, is  very true to life.  The incubating happens when a bigger takes on a smaller.  So there’s a full-grown mother who has a tiny, tiny little life inside.  Usually, an established church is incubating a little congregation of 20 or 30.  In my circles it has been an anglo church taking on a fledgling Korean, or Brazilian, or Arabic, or African American Church.  Other places have Laotians, Chinese, and so on. 

Now to the backwards part.  What if the congregation that you incubated was larger than yours?  What if after your family house was down to just you and your wife, would you consider moving into the mother-in-law quarters so you son or daughter and their growing family and their limited income could have a better home arrangement?  Or consider how in life we have children and we are big but they are little.  Fifty years later and they are big and we are little.  The kid I taught how to read is now teaching me how to manage my computer.  I remember a photo once where there was dad carrying Johnnie and then next to it the fifty years later where Johnnie was carrying dad.  So what if the congregation that you incubated was larger than yours?  It happens in life. 

So I know a church that is growing in a community where an established church is shrinking.  That same growing church is outgrowing its facility and the established church is down to using about 20% of its.  How could the established church incubate the growing one?  What would that look like?