Dave Browning, Hybrid Church: The Fusion of Intimacy and Impact. Jossey-Bass/Leadership Network, 2010.
Referenced in: Missional Communities – Convergent with Attractional
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
My students know I am a champion of “AND,” i.e. the solutions to most problems are not found in either/or thinking but in both/and thinking. Anxious times in culture tend to breed extremes. People react to the failures of the established system, jettison everything conventional, and swing the pendulum toward the opposite extreme. Much of the material in the missional/emergent conversations reacts strongly against megachurches as a bastion of modernism, touting the small church or house church as the “true,” “organic” church. Certainly these models have much to commend, but the solution is not found by putting all our hope on one end of a continuum.
Such is the genius of this text. It is a short, well-written apologetic for a dual platform of the intimacy of small “house” churches and impact of very large mega-churches. I like the development of the text as reflected in the Table of Contents:
- Introduction to Both
- Chapter 1 – The Extreme World
- Chapter 2 – The Fallacy of Either/Or
- Chapter 3 – The Beauty of Both/And
- Chapter 4 – The Emerging Blends
- Chapter 5 – The Convergence of Intimacy and Impact
It echoes my conviction that is shared by missional leaders such as Alan Roxburgh (Introducing the Missional Church) and others that missional may legitimately take on many forms. As leaders consider the various expressions of missional that may be suitable for their settings, this contributes an important balanced spirit.
From the Publisher
A hands-on resource for both large and small churches.
It has been predicted that in the twenty-first century extremely large churches would emerge in America that resemble neither an elephant nor a field of mice. Which is better? At one time the answer would have been either/or. Now it’s both/and. We want both the intimacy of smallness and the impact of bigness-we want a hybrid of the two. Hybrid Church is a practical guide for clergy and leaders who want to have the best of both church worlds: the intimacy of small “house church” groups and the impact of very large mega-churches.
- Offers a guide for churches who want to capitalize on their strengths to build intimacy with impact
- Written by the pastor of one of the “fastest growing” and “most innovative” churches in America with thousands of members organized in small house groups
- Outlines a vision for how the church of tomorrow could look like the early church. Given that the trend is toward very large and very small, with few churches in the middle, this book will be a welcome resource for both large and small churches.
The church of the future is going to look a lot like the church of the past. The early church was both small and big. It met house-to-house and in the temple courts. Today we also have both forms, the mega and the micro, and the possibility of a hybrid that capitalizes on the best features of both.
Hybrid Church is a practical guide for clergy and leaders who want to have the intimacy of small “house church” groups and the impact of very large megachurches. Pastor Dave Browning should know. He leads Christ the King Community Church in the Seattle area, a nondenominational, multilocation church with thousands of members organized in small house groups. Based on what he has learned from Christ the King, which has been cited as one of America’s fastest growing and most innovative churches, this groundbreaking book shows what it takes for a church to embrace the best practices, forms, and organizing principles of the mega- and micro– church models to become a hybrid and capitalize on the unique strengths of both.
As Browning explains, the small church has the advantage of harnessing the power of prayer in intimate groups, focusing on Christ-centeredness, and offering comfortableness, while megachurches tap into the strength of faith, momentum, and creativity. By combining all these advantages into a hybrid church, leaders and their churches can reach more people more effectively. Ultimately, this vision of a hybrid church is not about numbers, it is about people. It is about fulfilling the great commission and bringing people out of darkness into God’s marvelous light.
About the Author
Dave Browning is a visionary minimalist and the founder of Christ the King Community Church, International (CTK). CTK is a nondenominational, multilocation church that has been noted as one of the “fastest growing” and “most innovative” churches in America by employing the K.I.S.S method: “keep it simple and scalable.” It involves 17,000 people in several countries. He is the author of Deliberate Simplicity: How the Church Does More by Doing Less.
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- Missional Perspectives, Introduction
- Missional Church Resources, Introduction and Index
- Church Leadership and Renewal, Index to Resources
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