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An Inside Look at the NewThing Gathering

Written by Greg Hunt

The Life and Times of the Desert Father

Landing late Sunday night, May 3rd, for my first NewThing Gathering, I thought, “What’s a house church guy from El Paso, TX, doing here?”  All my insecurities were starting to rear their ugly heads when I got halfway down the escalator to see Aaron Monts (Lead Pastor, IKON/San Francisco) holding a paper flower ripped from a Chicago Botanic Garden ad.  Hint: When a bald man who is an ‘insider’ of an organization you just signed up for is standing in a public place handing you a paper flower - insecurities tend to fade away.

Meeting Aaron was indicative of the people I met at the Gathering.  They didn’t hand me a paper flower, but they are a bunch of selfless, pride-shelving folks who gathered together to do one thing - figure out how to wake people up to the reality of Christ...together.  For this borderplex desert rat, I was relieved, humbled, and well - stoked that I could be part of such a movement focused on the greatest life-mission of all: helping people find their way back to God.

I needed that to bring back to my station: El Paso, TX.  El Paso is a 400+ year old city in the middle of a desert where 28% of the population is below the poverty level, bordering the most violent city in the world, 85% Latino, and 90% Catholic.  I’m a protestant gringo from the Midwest who has a house church bent.  Talk about a marriage made in hell...if it weren’t for the fact that people, regardless of background or religious upbringing are looking for the same thing: a God who is real and not locked up in tradition. 

As I sit here, I’m fleshing out a plan of reproduction to go where people are: bars, bagel shops, coffee houses, homes, and gyms: gathering people in places that demand face to face interaction.  Why?  I want to see more Sara’s baptized in a bathtub by her boyfriend.  I want to see more Mike’s who didn’t know Christ a year and a half ago end up leading a house church and a trip to Fiji to give clean water.  I want to see more Rodrigo & Paola’s who moved from Mexico for a better life run into the life-giving Jesus.  I want to see more neighbors like Sergio & Ruby be immersed into Christ even though a Sunday Gathering isn’t on their radar

Whether it’s a border town house church/missional movement or a white suburbia, multi-site movement - the point is Jesus becoming Savior and Lord of as many people as we can reach through this growing, reproducing movement we call NewThing.