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Honesty of a Church Planter

April 12, 2012 in church, God, Leadership, Life with 3 Comments

Thanks for this post by Michael Robison! This is a constant tension that I find I am continually working through… May Jesus be enough!

Planting a church truly is the hardest job I have ever had. I know I keep saying that lately, but the truth is….I am processing this reality on a daily basis.

I am beginning to understand exactly why this is so true for me….As a church planter you are essentially on your own. While I have a team, a core group and a vision…The beginning of this thing is resting on my shoulders right now. My hard work, my drive, my leadership and my faith will help build this church. But…those things simply are NOT enough. What I really need is confidence in who God has called me to be, and what God has called me to do. I need confidence that He will build His Church….He just chooses to let me be part of it.

Truth is….That is not easy to maintain as a leader when you are building something. There is an ingredient in the life of something new that is not present…..and won’t be for a while. It’s an ingredient that truthfully lends itself to one of my greatest flaws, and would likely be better if it stayed absent!

I admitted to my wife this week, that I miss the validation of a congregation when I preach. I miss the excitement of a crowd each week. I miss the satisfaction of pulling off a great event. Basically…I miss people liking me! (I’m the kind of guy who needs lots of verbal affirmation)

That is 100% pride…Simply put, it is a flaw in my life. Pastoring and Planting a Church will pin point your flaws faster than anything in the entire world! And, this journey has been no exception.

I have had to wrestle with the reality that I often derive too much confidence and self-worth from the approval and affirmation of men, and not from my position in Christ. What that means, is I wrestle with the very thing that I try to help other people overcome. I teach every week that we are 100% loved and accepted by Christ, just the way we are. But, in my life I am still wrestling with that concept. I often feel as though I must succeed more, work harder and go further in order to be the best God has called me to be. I even apply this to my personal relationships. I want people to see me as successful and smart…not the unsure, scared, mediocre and rookie leader that I really am.

The reality is that God loves me, and sees me as perfect just the way I am today. If I never accomplish another thing….I am where I need to be. I don’t have to do more. This is a phrase I have to repeat to myself DAILY!!!!! In fact I have it written on my bathroom mirror, along with other things I try to remember daily.

Romans 5:6-11 says that even in my worst state, Jesus loved me enough to give His life for me. So, now that my life is better, certainly not perfect, why would I ever believe He loves or accepts me any less. Ephesians 2:10 says that I am the workmanship of Jesus….meaning that He created me just the way I am! I should stand confident in Him as a result of these things.

My worth, and yours, MUST come from who Jesus is, and the love He has shown for us. It must NOT come from people’s approval and affirmation of us. We can do nothing more to be loved greater by Jesus. So, be who you are created to be, do what you are called to do…..and enjoy the security of being loved fully by Jesus no matter what happens!

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Why Is It So Hard To Do What Jesus Did?

April 3, 2012 in Bible, church, God, Leadership, MISSIONAL, Pastors with 0 Comments

Mike breen had a guest post by Paul Maconochie, the pastor at St Thomas Philadelphia. Paul was the pastor who followed Mike at Philadelphia and now, 8 years later, it is one of fastest growing churches in Europe, doing some incredibly imaginative things in a truly post-Christian context. I hope you enjoy the series, and if you’d like to read a little on the history of St Thomas, check out this blog post on how I chose Movement over Mega.

In our Canadian context I am pretty convinced we can learn much from Europe but in this post you should have one of those duh moments… we just need to get back to doing what Jesus did. As pastors we need to embrace the challenge of being a disciple who lives out my faith on mission and and makes other disciples. Embrace the challenge…

When I trained at seminary to become a Minister, there were a number of assumptions that were made about what that ministry was going to look like.

The major focus was on theology, because of course it would be my job to make sure that my future congregation understood the Bible in the right way. Other key components included pastoral care and a little on how to preach. I had no training in leadership, no training in what it means to be a disciple or to disciple others (other than Bible study), no training in how to build or facilitate effective evangelism.

My training was equipping and shaping me to fulfill a certain role; one that most churches in the UK expect their Pastors to perform and one that most Church leaders go along with. The role I was being trained for was this:

To look after the people of the church and care for them
To teach the people and to feed them spiritually.
To help them to be comfortable and healthy as they try to live good lives in a difficult world.

The huge problem with this is that it’s a million miles away from the model of discipleship presented in the Bible. In fact, it could be argued that it’s the exact opposite. Jesus said:

“The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.” (Luke 22: 25-26)

A benefactor is someone who provides for other people and in return is able to exercise some degree of control over their lives. The provision of a benefactor can be financial, intellectual, social or spiritual; sometimes it can be all of these. Pastors in the Church seem to have entered into a ‘benefactor agreement’ with their congregations, where they are expected to be the providers of what people need pastorally and spiritually.

We have ‘taken hold of that for which the Church has taken hold of us’ instead of taking hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of us. When we do this, we effectively become like a ‘shell’, insulating people from the life of discipleship that Jesus has called them into, instead of a skeleton supporting and helping people to disciple others. The church becomes like a crab or a wood louse, with the staff surrounding the people with care and teaching, catering to their needs. But what we want to see is the church operating like a human body; arms, legs and torso supported by the skeleton and working together to achieve the commission that the head gives it.

Jesus’ commission is ‘Go and make disciples.’ Are we primarily doing that as leaders? Are we helping the people in our church to do that? If we are not, then are we really fulfilling the commission that Jesus has given us?

In a city with rock-bottom levels of church attendance, we have seen folks coming to know Jesus on a weekly basis. We are seeing hundreds come into our missional communities each year in a country where the average church congregation size is 38. And we are not just producing consumer-Christians, but believers who get straight back out there, discipling others. Why is that? What have we done that is different?

I believe that it starts with us as leaders.

Rather than providing pastoral care, we should be building a culture and supporting structures so that our people care for each other.
Rather than providing spiritual food, we should be equipping our people to access God’s Word and receive food from Jesus directly.
Rather than making people into clients for what we provide, we should be making disciples who can in turn go and make disciples.

We can do this by ‘pruning’ out a lot of the management we do, and then start living the life. We form a core community, live life-on-life and reach out to others to bring them into the Kingdom. Like Jesus, we identify and call a group of disciples to go on the journey with us and ask them to do the same. We percolate this throughout the whole church.

by Paul Maconochie

We do our job of making disciples and let Jesus do His job of building the church.

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Movement Day

April 2, 2012 in church, God, Leadership, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

As Kari and I were preparing to move to Ottawa we knew we would not just plant a church but be a part of a movement that would see our city transformed. These last 3 years have been an incredible delight, joining together with churches and Kingdom leaders to see our city transformed. I am so blessed to be in a city with so much love for God’s purposes over our own. I am on the serving leadership team of Mission O and am loving the discussion taking place amongst the leaders… the Spirit is igniting a movement that is going to transform cities and you do not want to be on the outside looking in. Join the movement…

I hope to see you in NYC!

“…seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you… Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Jeremiah 29:7

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Empire and the Liberation of the Neighbourhood – Walter Brueggemann

March 30, 2012 in church, Life, MISSIONAL, Religion with 0 Comments

Another great video from The Work of the People! I love Walter Brueggemann, such a blessing to the church. At The Journey we are constantly wrestling through what it looks like to move into a neighbourhood, pray, have presence and see what God can do when we intentionally bless the neighbourhoods we live. Walter Brueggemann on on empire and the liberation of the neighbourhood… “How do I have a baptismal identity in the midst of the North American empire.” WOW Enjoy!

Empire & Neighborhood from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

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Don’t Go To Church This Easter

March 28, 2012 in church, MISSIONAL, Pastors with 0 Comments

Don’t go to Church this Easter

by Brandon Hatmaker pastor of Austin New Church. Austin New Church closes it’s doors on Easter! When everyone is busy planning their Easter program inside the church building this community is getting ready to live resurrection outside of the church building… in a place people need restoration. Something about this just feels right!

Brandon says… “It’s one of the most powerful and certainly one of my favorite Sundays of the year. Instead of gathering inside, we gather outside for a time of fellowship, food, and communion with our homeless brothers & sisters in downtown Austin. As most of you are aware, our Easter Downtown Grillout is different from our regular time with the homeless community. We bring our lawn chairs, enjoy a meal with them, share in communion together, and listen to some great live music. It’s quite the event.

I am not saying every church needs to think out of the box like this but we definitely need more churches thinking this way. The Journey peeps… I know this is now not an original idea but I think it is one we need to adopt for next year. This is what joining God in the renewal of all things looks like.

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Creating A Movement

March 26, 2012 in church, Leadership, Life, MISSIONAL with 1 Comment

Great video on creating a movement. Be inspired. The question following the video is this….Do you want to be an individual with a message or a person with a movement? Be encouraged!

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A Little History Lesson

March 21, 2012 in church, MISSIONAL with 2 Comments

I saw this at JR Woodwards blog this morning and as a history guy thought it a critical piece in the missional conversation.

While some think that the missional church is just another fad or strategy, like the church growth movement, the seeker church or the multi-site church, Craig Van Gelder is his recent book Missional Church in Perspective helps us understand that the missional church has been in the making over the last century. It’s not a fad, but a development with deep theological roots.

Van Gelder gives an important historical backdrop to the emergence of the missional church from the time of the reformation until today. If you want to understand the richness of the historical development of the missional church, you really need to read his book.

JR whets your appetite by giving you a crude overview Van Gelder’s history of the missional church, here is an excerpt from his post.

By the middle of the 20th century the question continued to loom over the church. Ecclesiology (the study of the church) had been developing for the longest time apart from missiology (the study of missions) and vice versa.

Then enters Karl Barth, who through his Church Dogmatics, which was designed around the Trinity, re-introduced the concept of Trinitarian missiology. The Trinity had hit hard times during the enlightenment, and while it was confessed during the enlightenment, theologians usually didn’t write about it, because rationalism reigned. But with the introduction of the Trinity into the theological conversation, the concept ofMissio Dei (mission of God) was recovered, and there was a shift from a church-centric approach to mission to a Theo-centric approach to mission. The rediscovery of God being missional in his very nature (The Father sending the Son and the Father and Son sending the Spirit) changed the game. The starting point for missions was no longer the church, but God. As Jürgen Moltmann has said, “It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church.” In other words, there is mission because God is a missionary God.

Then the quest for the historical Jesus put a needed emphasis on the life and teachings of Jesus. As the quest moved from the classical liberals to the neo-orthodox and others through the third quest, the central message of Jesus’ teaching – the kingdom of God – became more clear, and a more holistic understanding of the good news was developing. God wasn’t just interested in saving individuals, but there was also a corporate and cosmic aspect to the good news. God wanted to recover all that was lost at the fall, restoring relationships between God and people, people and each other, people and themselves and the way we relate to creation.

Consequently, as ecclesiology and missiology began to be fused back together through the understanding of missio Dei and the kingdom of God, the realization that the church was missionary in essence was also being understood at a deeper level. British missionary, Lesslie Newbigin became a key figure in the integrating of mission and church, and the South African missiologist, David Bosch in his seminal work Transforming Mission not only helped us to read scripture with a missional hermeneutic, but also highlighted many of these key developments of the missional church.

Some people say, “Isn’t ‘missional church’ redunant?” I would say, “Only if you don’t know your history.”

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Rescuing Our Churches From Consumerism

March 19, 2012 in Books, church, God, Leadership, MISSIONAL, Pastors, Religion with 3 Comments

A great post from Don Johnson at Transformed. -

Thoughts from Dan Jarrell’s paper. “Beyond Technology: Albert Borgmann’s ‘Device Paradigm’ And Its Implications for American Evangelical Churches”. This may not cause someone to stop in their tracks. But I will tell you that this has given me pause and challenged me to some serious reflection.

Dan is a pastor of one of the largest churches in Alaska (ChangePoint in Anchorage). The catalyst for this project was a D.Min. prof, Andy Crouch, who pointed Dan to Borgmann’s writing (e.g. Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology). Crouch is one of the best thinkers on culture (note his book Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling). It was also fueled by Dan’s own growing frustration with the problem of consumerism in the church and the wholesale marketing of sacred things as if they were commodities to be consumed. He took the ideas of Albert Borgmann and applied them to the philosophy, culture, and practice of American evangelical churches in general and American megachurches in particular.

Here’s a powerful paragraph, just a sample of what Dan is saying in much of his work:

Consumers find freedom in devices that deliver what they value, becoming dependent upon those devices and embracing a “device paradigm” that shapes their view of life. Over time, consumers lose all sense of the value of process. They think technologically, expecting their needs to be addressed through devices, even when those needs cannot be commoditized. I contend that American evangelicals have learned to think of spiritual maturity and community as commodities. They expect their churches to provide the devices necessary for enjoying those commodities with minimal engagement in the processes that create and cultivate them. Churches grow if their programs and services seem to deliver what is expected, yet neither maturity nor community is a commodity. Neither can be enjoyed without full participation in process. The result is ironic: churches that are most effective in delivering a product are least effective in making disciples.

Dan essentially shared that this project has been his own journey of repentance—shifting from “device” thinking to “grace” thinking. Device thinking focuses on efficiency (best means to achieve an end), calculability (bigger is always better), predictability (making people feel comfortable and safe), and control (institutionalizing and packaging). (All of which need repented of.) This is what a technological society values. It is also what pastors can come to value, especially as the church grows into a large corporation.

In contrast, grace thinking is much more interested in participation (how can we get maximum personal engagement with what matters?) and contingency (creating space for the inefficient, the immeasurable, the unexpected, and the uncontrolled).

Just as our consumerism culture has reduced, fragmented things into mere commodities to consume, assisted by machine and technology, so the church has tended to fragment, reduce, mechanize the things that are focal, transcendent, things that provide a center of orientation. It looks something like this–worship is reduced to excellence on stage, with passive observers expecting something more next week; fellowship gets reduced to giving units; obedience gets reduced to legalism; sacrament gets reduced to an efficient prefilled communion cup with wafer; and the Bible gets reduced to a sermon extracted from its metanarrative–e.g. “7 tips to Marital Happiness”).

So what needs to happen? Here are some of Dan’s thoughts:

We need to repent of our tendency to follow the ways of a reductionist culture.
We must reconsider how we evaluate success. Our metrics need to count servants, not listeners; celebrate initiative (people finding ways to get engaged) over impact; and measure success in terms of deployment over detaining.
We need to embrace contingency (meaning—pack your plans with margins, welcome uncertainty, provoke dialogue, and be brave to invite criticism.

Here are other things–Keep structures simple and lean. Do things with, not for, people. Turn the love boat (10% serving the 90%) into an aircraft carrier (everyone on board vital to the mission). Value personal touch over distant technology.

Too easily I find myself embracing a theology of achievement. Papers like this help me move back to a theology of alignment—with what it is God values most.

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Restoration

March 15, 2012 in church, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

This upcoming Sunday we continue our journey towards the cross and begin a mini series about restoration.

Two popular Christian attitudes keep the church from accomplishing its mission. First, many Christians compartment their lives along sacred and secular lines. Second, many Christians have a limited view of the Gospel. Our problem lies in our incomplete view of the Gospel message—we only believe part of the story. The Gospel doesn’t begin with the Fall but with the beauty of the Garden, and it doesn’t end in redemption but restoration of all things. For most of us, the biggest missing piece is the idea of restoration, but this part of the story is central to our mission as Christians. Where you see brokenness re-imagine these as God created them so you can join in Him in His restoration work.

Visit Us: Sundays @ 5 pm The Old Ottawa South Community Centre 260 Sunnyside Ave. Ottawa, Ontario

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Stop Talking and Start Liivng

March 13, 2012 in church, God, Leadership, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

Often we take shortcuts to actually living a missional life. Here Ben Sternke challenges us to not just talk different but live different.

RENAMING

The renaming shortcut is thinking that if we start using new nomenclature, people will “get it” and change will come. The word “missional” oftentimes gets used this way, when leaders add it to the language of their church without really taking the time to investigate the implications of its theology. Or renaming small groups “discipleship groups” and expecting disciples to come out of them.

Language does create culture, so it’s vitally important that we use language that creates a discipling culture, but it’s not enough to start talking differently. You also have to start living differently as a leader, because you reproduce who you are, not what you say. You can’t just tweak your lingo, freshen up the logo, and expect any real change to take place. Renaming isn’t enough.

RETHINKING

There’s another leadership shortcut we often try to take, I think: being content with rethinking stuff. (I am very guilty of this) It’s easy for us to talk about doing something so much that we think we’re doing it.

If sitting in rows listening to someone talk could change the world, we would have done it by now, and You say ‘I go to a church that teaches the Bible.’ So what? Go to a church that lives the Bible.’” Which is why I like him so much.

It’s easy for us to assume that if we’ve gracefully teased out and deftly articulated our theology that we’ve really accomplished something. But it’s not enough to write a book or cleverly broadcast forgotten truths. We need to put this stuff into practice and see how it plays out in real life.

RE-FORMING

Beyond just renaming and rethinking, what we’re aiming for is re-forming our churches around discipleship and mission. This will involve the painful work of embracing brokenness and weakness so God’s power can flow through us. It will involve examining our lives and undergoing personal transformation before attempting organizational change. It will involve exploring the assumptions we’ve made and opening ourselves up to new ways of leading.

It will involve not being content with the shortcuts of renaming or rethinking things, but only with a genuine re-forming of structures and practices around discipleship to Jesus and mission in his name.

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