By Rob Campbell
As a team member of Joel Comiskey Group, I think often about the future of the cell church. Would you be so kind to answer the following three questions?
1. Do you believe teens and people in their twenties embrace the cell church model?
2. How would you see the cell church model changing to attract teens and twenties?
3. Do you believe in two decades or so, the cell church model will be seen as antiquated and/or obsolete? Please explain.
This blog conversation should be interesting and enlightening. Please join in.
Comments?
Rob
1. Do you believe teens and people in their twenties embrace the cell church model?
We do not have any problem in our context of Quebec, Canada. Our youth cells are our best asset.
2. How would you see the cell church model changing to attract teens and twenties?
I could change the format, but not the principles. A cell is a house church and we need it with the values instilled in a basic church : worship, discipleship, caring for one another, leadership development, evangelis. That will stay till Jesus’s coming.
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3. Do you believe in two decades or so, the cell church model will be seen as antiquated and/or obsolete? Please explain.
Not at all, the contrary. I feel it will be the model to imitate.
1. Do you believe teens and people in their twenties embrace the cell church model? I think one of the attractive characteristics of the cell church model is the invitation the body to get in the game, and as I college cell pastor (and a twenty-someting myself) I believe my teens and twenty-somethings desperately want to play ball. So any church model that euips and empowers is attractive to this generation. I believe my generation want to be in the game, but in some ways they may not want to play in a way that imitates previous generations.
2. How would you see the cell church model changing to attract teens and twenties? I think my generation embraces the cell church model’s principles of empowering discipleship and missional community. I don’t think the model needs to change much. Some of how we live it out might though.
3. Do you believe in two decades or so, the cell church model will be seen as antiquated and/or obsolete? Please explain.
No, I don’t think so. At the very least many of the principles will continue on, and I have a feeling that it will be more alive in 20years than it is now.
1. Do you believe teens and people in their twenties embrace the cell church model?
The way I see is really not whether they embrace the cell church model but a purpose of why they are doing this. The motivation behind what they are doing.
2. How would you see the cell church model changing to attract teens and twenties?
I believe it is the people not the model that would attract teens and twenties. People make cell church model an exciting experience for the teens and twenties and a place where they could feel the belonging.
3. Do you believe in two decades or so, the cell church model will be seen as antiquated and/or obsolete? Please explain.
I agree with Joel. Principles will continue on. How it will evolve? Only God knows! 🙂
1. Do you believe teens and people in their twenties embrace the cell church model?
I see a generation growing up in broken families, and with broken relationships all around them. One thing they long for is authentic relationships, somewhere they can be real and people can be real with them. Healthy cell groups are a breeding ground for the ‘community’ that the younger generation is starving for.
2. How would you see the cell church model changing to attract teens and twenties?
I don’t see a huge need for change, there will always be a generation difference as to what preferences are; music, styles of preaching, etc. But the beauty of the way cell church is designed is that, it’s so little about that and so much about relational discipleship. A young person might walk out the door of a more program driven church that fails to have the right look or play the right music, but if that same person is ‘captured’ into cell group first I believe it would be a lot harder to push them off. After all even teenagers would agree that their friends are more important to them than their music.
3. Do you believe in two decades or so, the cell church model will be seen as antiquated and/or obsolete? Please explain.
Like others have said, if we’re following Biblical principles, they will remain. Styles and preferences will always move around, but principles are principles.