Dr. Leslie Brickman On Cell Church Values

NOTE: Les Brickman is a companion of mine going back 20 years. He has a Ph.D. in Cell Church from Regent University and currently lives in Kenya, training pastors using his version of my Boot Camp. His comments below state my own convictions, and I welcome a discussion about his presentation.

I do not believe either that the cell church movement is a blip on the screen of church history, or that it was meant only as a transitional structure. I believe it is the only structure that allows the church to fully function as the church.

I believe the early church met both in small groups and gathered together as a larger corporate group. As Bill most ably brought out years ago, theologically we need to experience the manifest Presence of Christ in three ways – personal Christ in you, wherever 2 or 3 have been gathered into His Name (small group), and Christ in the midst of the great congregation (large group). History attests to the fact that the small group aspect was, for the most part, abandoned in favor of the large group for most of the last 1700 years. The pendulum moved off center to the large group side. Today, I think the pendulum is moving off center toward the small group side, i.e. simple church movement. I think this is unbalanced for a number of reasons.

Paul employs the figure of the body of Christ throughout the scriptures. He also remarks that the natural comes first, and then the spiritual. God has given us many things in the natural to help us understand the spiritual. The image of the body is one of these. In the natural, there is a significant difference in God's creation between a simple cell and a body, between a simple organism and a complex organism. While all complex organisms are comprised of simple cells, the whole is greater than the mere sum of the parts. A simple cell can never achieve what a body is capable of achieving. So it is in the spiritual. While it may be argued that the complex organism we call the church may grossly misuse its resources, a simple cell simply does not possess the resources needed for the Great Commission. A simple cell cannot create a reproducible discipleship system to release each member into their God ordained gift based ministries. The corporate body of Christ, on the other hand, can. Whether it chooses to do so or not is another story, but it has the potential.

I believe that we are called to live out our Christian life as part of two communities: a small group community life and a corporate community life. Even most cell churches, in my humble opinion, while stressing the vital necessity of living in small group community, have ignored the vital necessity of living in corporate community. Yes, the cell is the church, and not just a part of it. But the cell is not a body. One of the things I came to greatly appreciate about Dion and EPBOM, is that each member is called to live in community at the cell level, but each member also came to discover their place in the corporate body based upon their spiritual giftedness. Demonologists live in cell community, but also live in community with the rest of the body and demonstrate that as they minister throughout the week in the areas of deliverance and soul therapy. Those with gifts of administration exercise their gifts in various venues throughout the week. Ditto for those with gifts of helps, service, leadership, intercession, teaching, evangelism, etc. His departments only look like departments. They are the incarnational manifestation of the Holy Spirit. EPBOM is an excellent illustration of a people living both in small group community and corporate community.

The cell church in America has at best opted for a cell lifestyle, and substituted a corporate meeting on Sunday for a corporate lifestyle lived throughout the week. The price necessary to live such a corporate lifestyle in time and effort seems a bit too much for most pastors to even ask. It is as unrealistic to assume that a meeting on Sunday can possibly take the place of a weekly corporate lifestyle, than that a small group meeting on Tuesday can take the place of living out a community lifestyle during the week. What we seem to lack in the American church is a desire to live a Christian lifestyle 24/7. Simple church just makes it more simple to relegate our commitment to Christ to one meeting a week. A simple church member does not have to worry about being asked to spend additional time flexing and exercising their spiritual gifts in body ministry, there is no larger body to whom or within which to minister.

The NT uses the body analogy. I believe God gave Bill the two-winged bird analogy. We have used it here in Africa and have seen how God has employed that simple analogy to open the eyes of pastors to the true nature of the church. They experience what we can only call an "Aha" moment.

Regarding the simple church movement, I believe that it can touch people the cell church movement will not touch. But I believe it is fraught with biblical difficulties. While the basic building block of life may be the cell, God's creation is a myriad of complex cellular organisms. While the basic building block of the church may be the cell, the church that will proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light is a complex organism – it is a two winged bird.