John Mark Comere Enhanced: [00:00:01] What is John Mark Comer doing for church these days? I am so fascinated by [00:00:06] this question because I think that he's one of the most thoughtful practitioners [00:00:11] of how to, like, be a disciple of Jesus. He's written lots of books [00:00:16] about this. He was a megachurch pastor, and he's taken a lot of time to think [00:00:21] deeply about these questions.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: And so anything he's doing in this arena I find [00:00:26] really interesting, and I think a lot of us would like to know.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: And so he was on a interview with Preston Sprinkle [00:00:31] recently, and for a few minutes, he just sort of unpacked what he's doing for church right now. [00:00:36] And there are seven traditions he mentions in this very short clip that I think are really instructive, [00:00:41] that have been elements that we've really explored a lot, traditions that we have used.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: And [00:00:46] so listen to how John Mark Comer begins to describe their church. This is, you know, very brief, [00:00:51] uh, but I'd like to go over these seven traditions that are very different than [00:00:56] what he came from at Bridgetown and how these seven traditions can impact the way you might be [00:01:01] thinking about church, particularly a house church.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: And this really can update, I think, a lot of thinking [00:01:06] when it comes to this, so I really appreciate what he shares here, but take a listen to this
I, I'm curious, off the [00:01:11] topic a little bit, but do, do you... So you said you volunteer past- You, you're, like, a [00:01:16] volunteer pastor now alongside other pastors? I was-- Well, here, I was gonna ask you if you miss [00:01:21] pastoring, uh, a large church, Bridgetown, kind of, you know, [00:01:26] um, but you said you are actually pastoring.
Does this... I imagine it looks quite different than [00:01:31] your time at Bridgetown, though Uh, yeah. We started a little [00:01:36] experimental church a year ago. It's been meeting in our living room for the first year, though we're [00:01:41] just about to move to a little facility. Um, Gerald Griffin, who is my [00:01:46] longtime kinda one of two other co-pastors at Bridgetown, moved down about- [00:01:51] Okay
gosh, seven months ago to join us. Oh, cool. And [00:01:56] so us and our wives and a few other people are serving the community, leading the [00:02:01] community. It's not like a job. I don't get paid for it. I do it in my spare time. So it's like a- But I love it ... it's a small [00:02:06] house, it's a small house church? It's not- Yeah, on, on purpose, yes.
Yeah. And it's, it's, um, it's [00:02:11] growing very slowly, but we wanna keep it small. Our goal is to- Yeah ... never let it get [00:02:16] over 150 people. So- How do you, how do you keep people from [00:02:21] going to John Mark Comer's church? I mean, do you, is it like totally offline, [00:02:26] like nobody can really find it unless by word of mouth?
Um, honestly, it's really easy. We're about to do our second [00:02:31] intake, and we didn't even fill it all the way up. Um- Yeah ... it's really easy. I mean, it's a long s- that's a [00:02:36] long conversation, Preston. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But, uh, we do a couple of things. One, it's, it's like a speakeasy church. It [00:02:41] doesn't have a website. It doesn't have a name.
Okay. There's no like, "Come to this middle school at 10:00 a.m., and I'm preaching [00:02:46] on quiet," or whatever. You have to know an existing member in the [00:02:51] community and get invited there by them. Um, and, uh, [00:02:56] two, it's a really high bar of commitment. Okay. So it's kinda like open, but you [00:03:01] have to go through a nine-month-long discipleship cohort that meets weekly- Whoa
to [00:03:06] join. Uh, we all live by a rule of life, including, you know, we keep Sabbath together, we fast [00:03:11] together on Wednesdays and pray. We're all giving to this. We commit to a daily [00:03:16] contemplative practice. We're all in discipleship bands where we meet together with a few other [00:03:21] people for confession of sin and vulnerability and sharing.
Wow. So it's like kinda open, [00:03:26] but it's like, yeah, but you can't just... Uh, for example, we, church is like three, four hours long [00:03:31] on Sunday night. We do Lord's Supper as a full meal, and we cook, like potluck style. So you have to [00:03:36] bring a thing, and you have to RSVP, like if you're not coming to church that weekend, which [00:03:41] makes sense, you know, 'cause we're make sure we have enough food for everybody.
So you can imagine- Wow ... the average church, if [00:03:46] you had to RSVP every single Sunday you weren't gonna be there, to which then everybody knows you, and they're all like, [00:03:51] "Why are you not here?" Wow. That's wild. So, um, there's some stuff like that that [00:03:56] just makes it- Yeah ... uh, that, that put up some really healthy kind of- Yeah
um, [00:04:01] soft gates to keep it small.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: All right, guys, let's dive into the seven [00:04:06] traditions that John Mark Comer describes here. The first one, and do not discount [00:04:11] this, he calls it an experimental church I cannot emphasize enough [00:04:16] how important it is that when you're trying to do something unusual when it comes to church, you have to [00:04:21] signal that loudly and upfront.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: People, when you use the word church, [00:04:26] they have enormous amounts of content, [00:04:31] and assumptions, and muscle memory they bring into anything that you use that word. [00:04:36] Who's gonna be my pastor? Where, when's the worship service? Can I bring my friends? Th- there's a [00:04:41] million assumptions that the modern person, Christian has with regards to [00:04:46] that word church, and so you have to do something to disrupt that.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: If you're gonna do something, if you're gonna [00:04:51] violate people's basic understanding, and I love the word experimental. We have used this so often. [00:04:56] I've invited people to so many things that we have tried, and just said, "Hey guys, we're [00:05:01] doing something experimental." Man, that just gives you tons of grace, and it opens this whole [00:05:06] conversation around, "Okay, well, let me not bring in all of those [00:05:11] assumptions into what you're calling church.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: Let's start to explore that." So that's the first one that I think that that is [00:05:16] so important. We are always coaching people, signal loud, and often, and early that what [00:05:21] you're doing is different. Okay, number two, he talks about the facility that they are [00:05:26] using, and he says it's in a living room, but now they're getting a, uh, they're, they're moving towards a [00:05:31] facility.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: I think it's really important when you're thinking about a church, [00:05:36] like he's using this word house church. He sort of embraces it, but then quickly says, [00:05:41] "We're also trying to find a facility." And I think he is avoiding what [00:05:46] I see as the primary flaw in the whole house church movement.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: [00:05:51] I, I'm a huge house church fan, and a lot of what we do is coach house churches. But I would [00:05:56] say the most difficult mistake for house churches to overcome is that [00:06:01] they constrain their entire church to the size of a living room. [00:06:06] And once you do that, you don't realize how many decisions you've just made that [00:06:11] can really backfire on you long term.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: So some living rooms can hold 20 [00:06:16] people, some can hold 50 people. But how big should the church be? That should not be [00:06:21] determined primarily by the size of somebody's living room in their house, right? Um, you need to [00:06:26] proactively think about how you answer that question. But as soon as you say it's a house church, people are like, [00:06:31] "Well, all right.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: Well, we've settled that. What's most important is that it fits in a living room or it fits in somebody's [00:06:36] house. And if we ever get too large for somebody's house, then we have to split, we have to multiply." [00:06:41] And this is really what kills so many house churches, because they oftentimes are [00:06:46] not strong enough to multiply at that size.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: They need to get a little bit bigger in order for [00:06:51] there to be actually enough gifts, enough stability. But they're like, "We can't get bigger. We've maxed [00:06:56] out the living room." And then you enter that multiplication conversation far too [00:07:01] early. So that's the second thing is that it's interesting how he's handling the facility, which brings up the [00:07:06] third point he made, and that is that it is their goal to never get larger [00:07:11] than 150 people, I think that is absolutely the right [00:07:16] target.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: And this has been really difficult for me to admit because I really love house churches, and I [00:07:21] wish we could do it all in a house church. But what I've continuously discovered over and over again, [00:07:26] in the last two years in particular, is that you cannot get to enough gifts, [00:07:31] enough leadership, you cannot deal with enough pastoral issues.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: There's just too much going on with [00:07:36] 20, 30 people to, to really fully, uh, live out the, the [00:07:41] mandate of what a church is in the New Testament designed to do and be. And I think 150 people is a [00:07:46] sweet spot because it's large enough for you to have all those gifts present. Small enough so that you [00:07:51] can facilitate a conversation within the body, and I've seen this done [00:07:56] with 150 people.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: It is possible. It is very difficult to do it past 150 people. That [00:08:01] is, I think, the right number, and I've said this recently, and so I was really surprised to hear John Mark Comer [00:08:06] say this. I think there is something very specific about that size, and I [00:08:11] think that if you refuse to get to that size, you will oftentimes be underserving [00:08:16] your body, the community, and what actually it needs.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: You will probably be [00:08:21] prematurely multiplying, and oftentimes that will do damage [00:08:26] to both the daughter and the mother church in that context. And so I think this goal of [00:08:31] 150 people is really the right goal, although I do think you need to then find a facility, and that [00:08:36] can be difficult.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: One service, one group, one body, but you can [00:08:41] facilitate up to about 150 people. It's probably not actually ideal to hit 150, but I [00:08:46] would say that is the max, and that's how he described it, and I could not agree more. Uh, it was really interesting to hear him say that. [00:08:51] Okay, so experiment, the facility size, these three traditions I found really interesting.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: The fourth [00:08:56] one is kind of their marketing or their, their, their non-marketing approach, what you call a [00:09:01] speakeasy church, and that you have to know an existing member to get an invite. Now, this, to me, [00:09:06] is what makes a church fundamentally relational at its base. In other [00:09:11] words, as soon as you put a website up there, as soon as anybody could walk through the doors of the church who [00:09:16] does not know anybody, there is nothing you can do to stop attracting consumers [00:09:21] into the church that have no interest in actually being [00:09:26] relationally connected to the body.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: They are there to check a box, and if you're a good speaker, if [00:09:31] you're decent at doing church or running a service, or even if you're creating a cool experience [00:09:36] with, like, a meal or something like that, but you're just, like, keeping the front door wide open to [00:09:41] anyone who happens to find out or can Google something online, wow, you will [00:09:46] not be able to stop your church body from becoming less and less relational.[00:09:51]
John Mark Comere Enhanced: I've never seen somebody overcome this marketing issue, and I think that what he's doing [00:09:56] is exactly the right way. You need to know somebody. This needs to be relational. [00:10:01] I need... Everyone in this body right now is relationally connected to one another. We all [00:10:06] know each other, and so if somebody's coming in from the outside, they need to know someone, and then part of [00:10:11] what we're gonna do is use that existing relationship to try to establish, uh, [00:10:16] connections with that person And that connection is actually what makes us a body.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: It's that [00:10:21] interdependence 1 Corinthians 12 is describing. We've talked a lot about, uh, on this podcast. And so [00:10:26] I think that's a really great way to do it. There's probably other ways to do it. Um, you could use, uh, the next tool [00:10:31] that he mentions, as part of that, but I think this one-two punch is really powerful.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: This along with [00:10:36] unmarketing I think is really powerful, and that is the high bar of commitment. Yes, nine [00:10:41] months of discipleship, clear rule of life, constantly talking about what [00:10:46] is the minimal requirements of what it means to be a part of this church.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: And you will [00:10:51] see very few people interested in joining a church, even if John Mark [00:10:56] Comer is doing a lot of the teaching. They'll be like, "That's just too much. I just want something that I wanna check the [00:11:01] box, or I wanna have an experience this Sunday morning. I wanna be able to not show up and not RSVP that I'm [00:11:06] not gonna be there."
John Mark Comere Enhanced: And this is so important, you guys. So like in our community, we have a rule of [00:11:11] life, um, after we have a very similar process where we spend months really talking about it, training people [00:11:16] in it before they make a commitment. Once they make a commitment, it's a commitment that we're gonna hold them to.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: We [00:11:21] have conversations and follow-up because, uh, it is really important that this not [00:11:26] become a group of consumers, and because of the way our culture is designed, that just naturally [00:11:31] happens. So I love these two elements, these two traditions he's describing, the unmarketing and the high bar and [00:11:36] very clear commitment with the rule of life.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: Um, I think that's fantastic.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: And the sixth one, is gathering [00:11:41] is the Lord's Supper, where there's a whole meal. It goes for three or four hours. It's potluck style. Again, if [00:11:46] you're gonna do something relational, this is the way that the early church gathered.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: This was very normal the way that they do it. [00:11:51] Um, we do the same thing in our community. Um, this is one of those... So y- this, if you kinda add these three things up, [00:11:56] you've got, no marketing, you've got a very, uh, high discipleship bar. Y- everyone's being discipled [00:12:01] or discipling, and you're going through, in this case, his nine-month discipleship process, and you have a three [00:12:06] to four-hour, uh, gathering that happens around the Lord's Supper where everybody's bringing and everybody's participating.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: [00:12:11] Again, that is the nature of a community. What you're seeing, what you're hearing, what he's describing is [00:12:16] community life, okay? And the last one, the seventh one, is joining, um, and he talks about these soft [00:12:21] gates that keep it small. And I would say this is so counterintuitive [00:12:26] to people in the evangelical world because the basis of what it means to be an evangelical is [00:12:31] we are evangelistic.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: We wanna keep the door wide open for as many people to come in [00:12:36] as possible. We wanna make sure there's c- free coffee and, and close parking and, um, [00:12:41] comfy chairs and good air conditioning and on and on and on, and all kinds of services for the kids. [00:12:46] And, um, and so we're so used to catering to the consumer [00:12:51] desires of Christians and competing with each other as churches over those sort of [00:12:56] consumer, uh, elements that, uh, the idea of you're gonna put gates [00:13:01] in front of people coming into the church, that there's something just wrong about that.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: There's, [00:13:06] it, it's gonna rise up inside of so many people like this, like, "Oh, that can't be [00:13:11] right." Um, and guys, uh, and I, I did a really deep dive on this in, um, my [00:13:16] review of The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, one of my favorite books that I've read in the last [00:13:21] 10 years. And what, um, what Ellen Crider describes there is that for the first [00:13:26] 300 years of the Church, this was...
John Mark Comere Enhanced: There, there was all kind... This... Everything that Mark- John [00:13:31] Mark Comer described was normal in the early Church. There was no marketing. You had to know somebody. [00:13:36] You were a part of these longer gatherings. It was a very high level of commitment. It took usually a year or two of discipleship to even [00:13:41] join the Church and participate in your first Lord's supper or communion, uh, experience.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: [00:13:46] Um, these soft gates they had three or four what they called scrutinies as you were coming into the Church, [00:13:51] and what happens, this is a different evangelistic strategy. What I wanna do is push back on the idea [00:13:56] that this is anti-evangelism. This is a different form of [00:14:01] evangelism, and it is the form of evangelism that happens when you are focusing on [00:14:06] quality.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: And so what you wanna do is be a prophetic witness to the culture of a different [00:14:11] kind of person, and if you just let the floods of people come in, if there are no [00:14:16] gates, if there are no borders, and we just sort of make everything super low bar, [00:14:21] you can get a lot more people in the front door. You can have a conversation apologetically about what [00:14:26] the gospel is and whether or not they should believe it, but one of the things you're gonna miss is this prophetic witness to [00:14:31] the culture of a very different kind of community, and I think that's what's desperately needed right now.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: What he's [00:14:36] doing is actually gonna be, over the long term, far more evangelistic. I think what people are gonna do [00:14:41] is see this community and say, "What in the world is going on over there? Like, how did this [00:14:46] happen? Why are people living life in this way? They're being transformed. They truly [00:14:51] love each other.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: They look out for each other." And so this high bar, yeah, it's a [00:14:56] little bit more of a long game of evangelism, but I wanna really challenge. This is not [00:15:01] anti-evangelistic. The church service was never meant to be the primary vehicle of evangelism.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: We've [00:15:06] decided to attempt that, and we've discovered that as you use the worship service [00:15:11] in that way, you are constantly creating this issue, which is that you're not properly [00:15:16] discipling the actual Christians, and you're sort of making them and the people who are visiting and consuming [00:15:21] almost, like, feel the same.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: And so I think we need to experiment, going back to his first word, [00:15:26] with different ways of doing church, ones that are far more ancient, and everything that he's describing here is so much [00:15:31] closer to the way the early Church actually gathered. So I was so encouraged to hear what John Mark [00:15:36] Comer is doing here.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: Um, I could not agree more with these seven, uh, elements, and I'm really [00:15:41] curious what this stirs up for you guys. What elements do you think he's describing here you feel are, are [00:15:46] healthy, or things that you've tried? Anything you'd push back on, let me know in the comments. Uh, thanks so much for jumping in here.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: If you're [00:15:51] interested, by the way, in going through some coaching, having some directed conversation about this kind of [00:15:56] church Go to 1cage.org. Uh, I'd love to engage you in our House for Community, [00:16:01] cohort, which is starting in a couple months, and we go into detail for about six months and just [00:16:06] talk through these kinds of way of doing church.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: I do think that it should start in the house. I think you should [00:16:11] start by building a house for community, but do exactly what John Mark is describing here, and move, and make sure it's [00:16:16] relationally based before you begin to move out of the living room into something a little bit, little bit larger. But, uh, we [00:16:21] would love to talk to you about how that's working in our context, in other contexts.
John Mark Comere Enhanced: So go to [00:16:26] 1cage.org and, uh, sign up for House for Community if you're interested in that
