Backyard Church
We Believed God Was Planting
It was March 2020 and churches decided it was better that we all stay home. Those were some difficult and confusing times. All of our churches were doing the best they knew how to do in a situation that none of us had ever been in before.
As a full-time preacher in a church, I found myself pre-recording sermons for Sunday and that left Sunday morning open to “do church” as a family. We would turn on YouTube and watch the sermon, take communion, and pray together.
In all the isolation, our family decided that we wanted to see people and worship with others and not just be by ourselves on Sunday morning. We invited some neighbors, invited them to our backyard for worship on a Sunday and we found “church” right in the yard! It was an anxious but exciting time. More people began coming and pretty soon the backyard was full of people.
About that time a man named Daniel came to spray our house for bugs. He was from Uganda and we quickly formed a relationship with him. As we got to know him, he invited his pastor from Uganda to come have dinner at our house as his pastor was visiting the States. God was starting to connect the relational dots for what was being birthed in the backyard.
“A few couples got together and prayed it over and we believed God was planting a church with the effort!”
When George Floyd was killed we invited a few people to speak in the backyard on a Sunday and we invited Daniel. We had an Auburn football coach speak and Daniel came and spoke about what it was like being Black and African living in America. Daniel kept coming week after week, driving from nearly an hour away. One day we asked him why he kept coming and he told us the week we invited him he had a dream of worshipping in the backyard. In his dream, a few people were worshipping in a backyard. He bowed his head to pray and when he looked up the yard was FULL! Then he came to our gathering in the backyard and he knew that is where God wanted him to be!
It wasn’t long after that church came back in-person and now I was going to worship in the Backyard and at the building with the church I preached at. This went on for a few months before we had a conversation in our backyard group about what God was doing among us. A few couples got together and prayed it over and we believed God was planting a church with the effort!
I resigned from my traditional ministry position and planted Backyard Church with the help of some amazing people who God positioned perfectly!
There are many stories that we could share from our Backyard church experience and lessons that could be taught. Here are a few:
Prayer and forming a prayer culture is essential to the life of the church. We pray so much. We spend a large percentage of our Sunday gathering in prayer each week. We have a prayer team on WhatsApp. We pray every Saturday night for Sunday, asking God to move and for us to be encouraged! Pray about everything and then watch God work! Because He is working all the time and prayer allows us to partner with Him in His Kingdom activity in the world.
The Holy Spirit is more than a doctrine. The Holy Spirit is an active Person. The church belongs to God, not us. God is in charge. God helps us through the work of the Spirit every day. We seek the Spirit’s guidance and ask for the Spirit to empower our efforts. A healthy church is one that has a relationship with the Spirit and depends on the Spirit.
We decided that there wasn’t any point in having pressure on Sunday. We choose grace over fear and anxiety. The person leading the prayer didn’t show up? Well, God had other plans. It all works out… someone else can say it. Someone forgot to bring the cups for communion, let’s find some… and sure enough, we found some. All the things that would have used to have made me an anxious mess in a traditional church are now just times to smile and wonder how God is going to work it out. We have a plan each week but our plan is subservient to the Spirit’s lead! That takes off the pressure.
Testimony is essential. We pray a lot…as I said above…and then we talk a lot about answers to those prayers. We regularly share stories in our worship of how we see God working in our lives. Our children hear this and are learning to look for God’s activity in their lives.
Church is intergenerational in every aspect of what we do. When we ask for things to pray about our kids have things to pray about and they ask. When we ask who will pray…our kids raise their hands and pray for the adults! We don’t want to build a bridge back to our kids at 18 when we could have been building it from 0 to 18.
We have entered a season where many churches are struggling to get by and it would seem impossible to plant a church when your church home isn’t paying the bills very well. But I want to conclude by saying that church planting and home churches are going to be a bigger path of what is to come for the future of the church.
I was in Canada this past Summer and they explained to me that if you wanted to plant in Toronto you had to spend millions on property and then well into the six figures for a livable wage. They had concluded that home church was going to be a big part of their future. America is on a similar track. Property values are high and the cost of living is high. The traditional church model will become harder and harder to sustain. And that may well launch the next leg of the American church journey where the church goes to backyards, front yards, parks, living rooms, jails, assisted living facilities, you name it.
I am as hopeful as ever about the future of the church and I hope you are as well! God is moving and it is exciting to see! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions at all (mattdabbs@gmail.com). God bless Mission Alive for their vision and ministry!
Matt Dabbs is a church planter, disciple maker, and digital marketer from Auburn, AL. Matt and some neighbors planted Backyard church during COVID. They expanded into two house churches with plans to start more this year. Discipleship is at the core of the ministry - being disciples who make disciples who make more disciples who plant churches. He has started a digital marketing agency for helping counselors grow their practice in order to get in the marketplace where people need Jesus and in order to make the church planting model more reproducible. Matt is married to Missy. They celebrated their 20th anniversary this year. They have two teenage boys: Jonah and Elijah. Matt and Missy are both graduates of Harding University and Harding School of Theology.