Two by Two and Oikos
Welcome to the start of a series of posts on effective entry strategies in the modern American landscape. I am writing this series as a work in progress, not as an answer that I have found. In some instances, I may not even agree with myself, but I have found that writing out thoughts helps me arrive at answers that I do agree with, both Biblically and personally. I would love constructive feedback so we can grow together to better engage lost people with the Gospel. To follow this conversation, be sure to subscribe to this blog. You can click here to view all blog posts in this series.
My first post is a guest post from a friend, Rodger Shull, about a shift in entry strategies they made as they pursued the the lost in Houston several years ago. From this point forward, his words are in regular text and any comments I make will be italicized.
2X2, Oikos, and Why Research Is Important In CPMs By: Rodger Guigou Shull
Though this case study is written by me, I am indebted to the Holy Spirit for truly being the one who revealed this information to me. He gave me this understanding through His Word, but also His works.
Background
In 2017, I was walking around an apartment complex in southeast Houston in the heat of the summer, and I was frustrated. For 2 years, my team in the city had been going 2X2, knocking on doors, and sharing the gospel as the Bible talks about in Matthew 10 and Luke 10. Despite all of these efforts and thousands of gospel shares, it seemed like we had few if any disciples or churches that had started..
When Rodger says “going 2X2” he means a specific engagement strategy of going out as a pair of believers and engaging people where they are (often knocking on their doors). Usually, the people you are meeting are strangers to you at the outset.
I prayed and told God that I would continue going 2X2 as long as He wanted me to, but it seemed like a pretty fruitless endeavor. In that moment, in the middle of those pastel-colored apartments, He opened my eyes to something I had been missing in His Word.
The Revelation
I had done enough Bible studies about persons of peace (POP) to know that many gatherings and churches in the Gospels and Acts were started by faithful witnesses going 2X2 to find a POP who would then share with and gather their relational networks (or “oikos”). In fact, I thought that was how all of the churches were started in the Bible.
A few examples of this are Cornelius gathering his household in Acts 10 and Lydia and the Philippian jailer and their households responding in faith in Acts 16.
However, on that day, God brought to my mind the story of Pisidian Antioch. The church there was started when crowds gathered around Paul and Barnabas as they went to the synagogue to teach. The story never mentions a person of peace! Despite reading through Acts many times, I had never seen this before.
Analyzing The Data
This understanding of the Scriptures was so new and exciting that I couldn’t get it off of my mind. I decided to pull out a church generational map to see if I could find consistent characteristics amongst the churches in our networks that were sustaining for a long period of time that differentiated them from those that were dying off within a few months.
Of the three major house church networks in Houston, M4, Gathering (the network I am a part of), and Bay Area Houston (BAH) networks, it was very clear that the churches in the M4 network were sustaining much better than those in the other two networks. The biggest difference is that the Gathering and BAH networks were doing a massive amount of 2X2 sharing while the M4 network was not.
In fact, across all three networks, every single church that was started by going 2X2 had ceased to exist. The only churches that lasted were ones where a person or a group of people decided to share with their relational networks and invite them to their own house to gather as a church. This was a massive revelation to me because the facts were painting a pretty clear picture of what was working, yet no one in the Gathering or BAH networks was looking at these facts and letting them inform their strategy.
Communicating The Findings
I was so excited about what God showed me through His word and works that the next time my team met together, I could barely contain myself. When I had my first opportunity to speak, I blurted out everything I had been shown by God in one long, rapid-paced mass of words. After getting out everything I wanted to say in about a minute, I stopped, took a breath, and looked up, and was greeted by dumbfounded stares from my entire team. Needless to say, they did not receive my blunt communication style and more or less blew me off.
Nonetheless, over the coming months, I kept putting my findings before them and forced them to see what I saw. The facts were brutal because they showed that a major part of our strategy was not effective in reaching our vision, but in the end, the facts don’t lie and we slowly started to conform to the truths they showed us.
In hindsight, I should not have been this frank and overbearing in how I went about sharing my thoughts. A more gracious and slow conversation would have been much more Christ-like than beating the data over my team’s head. I’m thankful that they were gracious towards me. They did eventually tell me to tone down how I talked as kindly as they could, so hopefully I won’t make the same mistake in the future.
Changing The Strategy
After many months, we started to view our oikos as the primary people we needed to focus on when seeking to share the gospel. We started vision casting toward the importance of sharing with our oikos during our church gatherings and in our strategy meetings.
The Result
Our total number of sustained disciples and churches immediately began to increase despite the fact that our total number of gospel shares decreased. Not only that, but we have gradually elevated the role that research has in informing our strategy as we continue to also seek the Lord through abiding in Christ, prayer, fasting, and His Word.
Wow, don’t miss that takeaway. The answer to seeing more fruit among lost people was NOT more Gospel sharing. It was having a more strategic intent in how they were sharing the Gospel. Or to be more specific, they were being more strategic about who they approached in the first place.
Takeaways
If you are struggling with getting to sustained churches and disciples, I encourage you to consider whether or not you are elevating Oikos as the primary people that you and your team need to be sharing with.
Remember, by “Oikos” Rodger means you and your disciples’ relational network.
However, that’s not really the point of this case study. The story about how we changed our entry strategy was really just an illustration of the important role that tracking and research play in informing CPM strategy. Prayer and biblical principles should be what we go to first when trying to come up with a good CPM strategy, but I find that practitioners frequently base their strategies on what they feel will work, on a hypothesis, or on what best suits their temperament. There are myriads of reasons why this may be the case: maybe people don’t usually think in terms of research, maybe no one is keeping track of the information, or maybe the facts are too difficult to bear so people don’t want to face them.
Whatever the reason I pray that CPM practitioners would elevate the role of the researcher on their teams, and would allow facts to inform their strategy.
You can find Rodger’s original article here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f670FdATJ-okHfWcVlrTAOKL69baJg3Sv3AfA7mdvrA/edit?usp=sharing
He provides these links to these other resources:
NPL Houston Case Studies: 2016, 2017
A helpful Bible study on the importance of sharing with oikos: Video, Document
