Leaving our Islands
The truth is most believers exist on situational islands. We have a base we call church, one we call family, one we call work, school, recreation, etc. We tend to adapt our lifestyle to the base we occupy in the moment, rather than bringing our bases together into one that keeps us focused on our mission in life. Paul said we were to “take every thought captive to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5), which is a nearly impossible thing to accomplish with the disparate and segregated home bases most try to launch into life from. Bringing as many of our islands into one integrated foundation is what the Lighthouse Communities of the Marketplace Saints is all about.
Networking and Working Together
For many years now the affluent life we have all enjoyed in America has contained elements that both contribute to, and detract from, our spiritual lives. One of the detractors has been affluence’s tendency to segregate us. If we don’t own our own home, we’re just not successful. We have many different environments we exist in simply because we can afford to. Visit most Third World countries and you will inevitably find three and four generations of families working together and living under one roof to survive.
While we would call that a “hard life,” living as they do helps in so many ways to bring families together by fostering a mindset of community. You see considerably less family dysfunction with them than with us. While most of us have come to believe wealth and independence is a good thing, is there something precious we have lost through our quest for success and individuality? I think so. We’ve lost the ability to, as the folks in the Pentecostal Church of Acts did, “be together and have all things in common.” This is one of the primary reasons so many who claim Christ today are in fact “lost sheep in their Father’s house.”
Internal Focus
Jesus said the world would know we were disciples by the love we had for one another (John 13:34-35). For too long the world has looked at us Christians, preaching one Gospel and yet living another, and rightly cried “hypocrites!” To effectively spread the love of Jesus externally we must first understand and display that love internally. Paul said, “So also you, since you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church” (1 Cor. 14). All spiritual gifts are given first for the edification of the body. And displaying our gifts within the body is why restoring the concept of true Christian community is so critical. It will not happen in scheduled meetings once or twice a week. We must collect more of our islands into one place to create a sustainable model of Christian community. As we take steps towards that the world will see us loving one another in peace and unity, and as Jesus prayed “know the Father sent Him” (John 17).
External Focus
However, too many failed attempts at establishing Christian community reveal a tendency to distance themselves from society and become too internally focused. Jesus and the Spirit gathered, trained, and empowered their communities for the purpose of having an external, as well as internal, impact. God’s command to us was to be a “city on a hill, and a light to the nations” (Matt. 5:14, Isa. 42:6). Jesus’ engaged the world with His disciples, bearing internal and external fruit “that remains” through displaying a constant balance of engendering internal empowerment for the purpose of engaging in external mission, “created for good works” (Eph. 2). To maintain that balance in two ways: 1) having ministries integrated in to our communities to grow us up so we naturally “overflow” to the community, and 2) employing at the entry point of our centers a coffee shop or café where we meet and greet the public, introduce them to our community, and share the love of Christ with them. Together, these two elements should insure we keep a proper balance of “coming in and going out” before the Lord.
Reaching People where they Live
The one environment that has been conspicuously missing from past attempts at establishing sustainable Christian community has, ironically, been the one environment in which most spend the majority of their waking hours: work. We too often see work as a necessary evil rather than the beautiful thing God made it to be. The first endeavor He gave His first man was “to cultivate and keep” the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:15). The “excellent wife” of Proverbs 31 was skilled in both production of goods and commerce. Finally, when Jesus was looking for His disciples, He did not look to the temples. Rather, He went to the workplace and created “Marketplace Saints” of the men He found there. Our businesses will be the cornerstones of the Lighthouse, and how much more effective will they be immersed in a kingdom environment? This will provide a healthy environment where they can interact, share ideas, mentor one another, provide accountability, and become a launching pad for commerce with compassion, integrity, and a new-found purpose.
Fellowship of the Marketplace videos
For many years prior to 2009, I had experienced a yearning in my spirit for authentic Christian community. I didn’t know what it looked like, only that it was not what organized religion was delivering up. I would blog about this often, and one day I received a response from a friend who had moved to Florida to start a new life. He said I might want to come to Brooksville, a small town in central Florida, to see what God was doing there in a small cafe.
What I found there was to provide the inspiration for the Lighthouse concept. There I witnessed the first and only true, organic, grass roots Christian community I’d ever seen. Expanding from this café to reach across three counties, what I came to call “The Church in the Marketplace” served thousands each year with no substantial donors and no worldly explanation to offer. It was just a couple who dedicated their lives and their business to the service of the Lord, and the fruit that exploded forth from it.
It began with a dinner served each Sunday to the large homeless population in the area, which inspired others to start their own ministries, which spawned a thrift store and a food pantry, and all just miraculously provided for by the Lord! The café was a house of prayer where both believers and unbelievers alike felt the presence of God. Many wandered in saying they didn’t know why they were there other than the Lord had told them to come. There people were prayed over, set free, and healed on a regular basis.
The inspiration for this came through a vision in 2001 where Jesus appeared and said, “The church is broken. It has become a business and forgotten about Me. But I will build My church in the marketplace.” I began to make annual sabbaticals to Brooksville, finding it to be “heaven on earth.” I was so inspired by this phenomenon that in 2011-12 I wrote and produced a documentary to capture it.
Sadly, the group disbanded in 2012 and the café was sold, but the impression the power of this concept left on me has never dimmed and is what has inspired the Lighthouse Community effort. I hope you will click on the links below to view both the short trailer and the 45 minute documentary. Hopefully it will inspire you to become a part of this movement and sign up your business or a ministry for the community center. Welcome to the new Fellowship of the Marketplace: The Lighthouse Community!
Trailer
Documentary