Sally Hinzie, UBA Church Consultant, is an avid reader and a practical thinker. She condenses selected books into a quick, easy to read set of “Book Notes” that offer you the opportunity to determine if this is a topic that you’d like to study further. This week's edition reviews Deve Browing’s Deliberate Simplicity – How the Church Does More by Doing Less.

Richard Foster writes about the discipline of simplicity in Celebration of Discipline. I have tried to apply that discipline in my personal life. We have a simple home, used cars, and “antique furniture” that was once new but has aged along with us. So when I found a book applying the principle to the church, it certainly caught my interest. It was Deve Browing’s Deliberate Simplicity – How the Church Does More by Doing Less.

Dave Browning certainly knew about churches that do more. He was the pastor of Christ the King Community Church which started April 4, 1999, in Mt. Vernon, Washington. Christ the King now has locations in 6 states. A current list of locations can be found on their website.  

What was the secret of “deliberate simplicity?” There are 6 factors that Christ the King structures their church around—minimality, intentionality, reality, multility, velocity, and scalability.

1. Minimality

With minimality, the church focuses on 3 things—Worship, Small Groups, and Outreach. Each of these aims focuses on a different element who and how to love. In worship, they aim to love God more. In small groups, they focus on loving people more. In their outreach, the goal is loving more people. 

Rather than having so many kinds of programs, Browning wanted to make each program especially worthwhile. He explains, “Deliberate Simplicity advocates restricting the activities of the church instead of expanding them. It calls for less programming instead of more…working smarter instead of harder. It calls us to move the fulcrum so the same (or less) energy is leveraged for greater results.”  (p. 37)

2. Intentionality

Intentionality is described as mission. “A church driven by mission is carrying out marching orders from its Commanding Officer. This is the purpose for the church’s existence. Resources are allocated to fulfill this mandate. The energies of the participants go to carrying out the mission. The mission is the impetus.” (p. 68) 

“Two kinds of people fit well in a Deliberately Simple church:  lost people with ruin and wreckage in their lives, and saved people who have a heart to reach out to lost people. If you are looking for a church with programs that will meet your needs, you will likely be disappointed in a Deliberately Simple church.” (p. 72)

I love this quote because I believe that is the mission and responsibility of the church. Jesus brings hope and healing to broken people. He tells us that when he read the scripture in the synagogue:

16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

    because he has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

    and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Shouldn’t this be the mandate of every church? 

3. Reality

Christ the King shows their commitment to reality in an advertisement they created. They write: “Do you know what’s special about us? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. If you are looking for a perfect church, where people talk, act, and dress perfectly, you are going to be severely disappointed with us. At CTK you’ll find real people, with real problems, real blue jeans, and a real God who we’re learning to love.” 

“What you won’t find is extra reverb so that we sound ‘holier than thou,’ music written during someone else’s lifetime, harsh judgmentalism implying we don’t struggle but you do. We found out that we’re all made out of the same stuff. There’s nothing special about us. So bring your story, your pain, your questions, your sense of humor. You’ll fit right in.” (p. 99)

4. Multility

“Multility” – n: a commitment to multiples of some thing, instead of a larger version of that thing. More instead of bigger is the theme. Christ the King Church found they lost a sense of community when they merged two smaller congregations into one larger one. By starting new campuses instead of merging, they grew and kept community.  

5. Velocity

“In a Deliberately Simple church, there is a sense that time is short. There’s a feeling of necessity to act.” (p. 151) So, velocity is a value. The church is streamlined in its structure to act quickly to new evangelism opportunities and to launch a new campus. The staff plans and structures early to double growth, move to two services, and launch another campus.  

6. Scalability

Scalability keeps an outward focus in the church. This system includes organic multiplication and leader deployment. The question used is, “What steps does a church need to take to make sure outreach doesn’t get choked off by nurture?” (p. 181) Christ the King has a history of rapid reproduction locally and globally.  

I read this book over three years ago.  While updating this review, I went on the church’s website.  I discovered that Dave Browning died in 2017, but his vision still lives on in the Christ the King network. I think this shows the longevity of these tenets.