Derek Webb Interview – 26 February 2005

G: Yeah, that’s gotta be hard. I know you were talking about some of the church you’re planting…a couple things I’ve been thinking about lately is, unfortunately, instead of being a corporeal church, we’ve turned into a corporate church, in America especially. But, I mean obviously you wrote an entire record about it, but do you see it changing, are there some positive signs you’re seeing—I mean obviously you’re involved in the church plant that’s going on now, but are you starting to see that people are starting to figure this out?

D: I do, I do. I mean, and I mentioned this before, but I think probably the most encouraging thing that I’ve seen is the fact that there’s so much more discussion about it, now. There’s so many good books by really visible Christian leaders and authors that are starting dialogues about the church. And people are discussing it, people are talking about it. And they weren’t five years ago, ten years ago–not like they are now. There’s a lot of conversation about community, about church, and how do we do it and what’s the role of the church, and there’s a lot more of that going on now than there was a few years ago. That’s a huge encouragement.

Cause that’s really, that’s all that we’re after, I mean that’s all that we need to be doing, is just have communities talking about it. You know, “Does this make sense to everybody?” “Is this really how we want to do this?” Cause you know, there are mandates. But there’s a lot of preferential things about how to run, how to do church. A lot of mandated things … And so it’s gonna take … just getting together and just talking about it, and just saying, “we don’t have to do it this way…are we all doing it this way just cause this is the way we do it?” Or, you know, “let’s look at scripture, let’s contend together with this, let’s figure out where we can go, let’s dream about the glory of the church and where we’re going and what…you know, and I think those conversations are happening. I do. I mean, a lot moreso than before.

I mean, Josh Harris, for Pete’s sake, just wrote a book about the church–I endorsed it. Because he’s such an influential writer in the Christian culture. I love that he’s using the spot to write a book about the church. You know, I mean, I love he’s using his influence to bring that issue to a head. I love that. And, I mean, there’s a lot of that going on. There’s a lot of good discussion. And so that’s a huge encouragement. Cause that’s really all it’s gonna take. If we all start talking about it, I think we’ll realize there’s a lot of things that we all just do, just cause we just do it, and we have for a long time. There’s a certain way…and a lot of it’s subcultural, and we could find ourselves really making huge changes.

But it’s gonna happen in local communities, it’s not gonna be, you know, a papal decree. It’s gonna be, it’s gonna take communities just saying, “You know what? Let’s do this differently. I think there’s a way that we can meet the needs of our community better. And let’s do that.” And that’s gonna be a great thing.