Christ's Grand Strategy
Building a global family movement
Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash
Recently someone pointed out to me that none of the essays I have published on Substack provide a clear outline or comprehensive description of how I understand the plan of Christ. The reason I haven’t done this is because, as simply as Christ’s plan can be described, the nuance of how to engage in it, in specific cultures, in specific situations, solving problems among churches and networks, all while helping to keep them maturing and one-minded at a movement level and then passing on those patterns and principles across generations and civilizations is incredibly complex and requires leaders to be continually engaged in coaching, deep relationships, sorting, dialogue, planning, traveling, strategizing, implementing, identifying cracks, directing network traffic and so on.
There’s also the danger that my simple summary, although I understand the ideas in it to be largely incommensurate with the western model of church and mission, can be read and understood as just another way of saying the same things that everyone already understands. In other words, the terms I used to describe Christ’s plan will either be so unique and technical that it will be difficult to understand what I’m getting at, or so familiar that it will seem like I’m not saying anything different at all. Such incommensurability, to borrow an illustration from Thomas Kuhn, is like one person playing chess, while the other is playing checkers. The board may look exactly the same, but they are two very different games, with different approaches and different moves that have different outcomes. It’s like trying to explain why you are making particular “checkers” move, to someone who is trying to play chess. It’s difficult to explain the difference because the other player can’t understand why you’re making moves they don’t recognize on a board they do recognize. They just think you’re cheating or changing the rules.
This is why, until now, I’ve written ‘around’ the ideas from various vantage points, so that if you read my current body of work on Substack, you will begin to understand where I’m coming from.
All that said, I will attempt to include such a summary below, given that I’ve just explained the difficulty of such a task. (FYI, will likely lean toward the unique, technical, difficult to understand what I mean side of things):
Jesus is building a unified global family. He initiated that plan when He was here and then appointed apostles to reveal it, implement it, and build His family, sending His Spirit to teach and guide them (Jn. 14:26) and Jesus himself broke back into history, selecting and plucking Paul out of his circumstances (an enemy of the cross) and teaching him, so that he could fulfill a unique and critical role to make sure Jesus’ plan was implemented properly (Acts 9:1-19; Gal. 1:11-24; 2 Cor. 12:1-6; Eph 3:8-10).
Paul understood this calling and created a traditioning schema (Jeff Reed) for the churches to follow (Col. 2:6-10; Rom. 12:1-2; 2 Thess. 2:15; 1 Cor. 11:1-2; 1 Tim. 6:20-21; 2 Tim. 1:8-14, 3:14-17), consisting of patterns, principles, and processes, which if held to, would keep Jesus' family movement stable, maturing, and expanding perpetually until He returns, potentially accelerating His return if they stick to this plan (they did not). According to this plan, the social structure of Jesus' global family is household, organized as a family of families or household of households, with leaders "parenting" at every level (Col. 3:18-4:6; Eph 5:17-6:9;1 Pet. 2:11-3:7; Titus; 2 Tim.). Parents in households. Elder-types in local churches. Apostolic-types across clusters and networks (Eph 4:11; 2 Tim.- especially 2:1-2). The implications of this are vast and it looks like this:
Simple church families that devote their entire lives to living together and helping one another, organized as an extended family of households (family of families) culminating weekly in a family meal/conversation (with leaders present), that remain connected across cities, regions, and around the world as a movement of complex networks shaped by network-type leaders (leaders of leaders, Eph. 4:11 gifted-types) who move among them helping them remain one-minded around the patterns of Christ's plan. We refer to this as The Way of Christ and His Apostles, a term originally coined by Roland Allen. There are several key concepts that help explain TWCA.
The Pauline Cycle: The consistent pattern, method, and expected outcomes Paul intentionally engaged in to quickly plant and shape new communities into churches who were deeply rooted in the gospel and the teaching or "sound doctrine".
Paul's Letters as Establishing Tools: Paul had a biblical, situational theology approach with the churches, passing on a deposit of "sound doctrine" (a new way of thinking, understanding, and orienting life) and he expected them to master and practice it. He wrote to the churches to continue strengthening them in the gospel (early letters), their calling to Christ's mission as churches (middle letters) and mature, expanding communities (families of households) with intergenerational leadership (later letters)
The Didache: built on the implications of the gospel or kerygma, as the early church referred to it, the didache is the teaching that sets the new life orientation for churches and followers of Jesus
The Paul/Timothy Model: there are two types of leaders that helped lead churches in the New Testament, local leaders (who focused mainly on one local church or cluster of churches in a specific geographic area) and ministers of the gospel (like Timothy & Titus who moved among the churches, strengthening and establishing them). Timothy trained with Paul for nearly 20 years in the context of the work itself before being commended as master craftsman who would go and train faithful men, who could train others also (2 Tim 2:2).
This is the organizing framework of my understanding of Christ’s plan, His grand strategy. It’s very different than what Christendom has produced. It’s incommensurate with most of the institutions that exist, and yet it’s what the church practiced for nearly 300 years, and it’s what a number of churches and networks are moving back to today. It sets the book of Acts as the organizing center of the New Testament (not the gospels) and Paul’s letters as the tradition that was established across phases of maturing churches and baton passing to the next generation.
May God bless your efforts to follow Him and shape your work around His priorities!
Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of global leaders who are establishing churches that are families, patterning themselves after Acts.