Back in November, my wife and I had the opportunity to attend the "Prayer Bootcamp for Urban Mission" in Vancouver put on by our Grace Church Planting Network. Justine Hwang & Pastor John Smed led the bootcamp. John writes,
"The secret to effective prayer is to connect the gospel to prayer and prayer to mission. This is the essential character of Jesus’ prayer. The upward priority of worship, the kingdom values of preaching grace and doing justice, and the inward practices of forgiveness and spiritual warfare are all contained in the Lord’s Prayer. This workshop is applied prayer. We put Christ’s teaching into immediate action as we pray together for each others’ churches and cities. The outcome of this workshop is ‘prayer trainers’. With prayer resources and instruments in hand, participants put into practice what is learned."
Where?
Where are the missional spaces (places and activities where you meet people)?
Where do they experience community?
Are their existing social networks with which we can engage or do we need to find ways of creating community within a neighbourhood? Where should you be to have missional opportunities?
When?
When are the missional moments?
What are the rhythms of your neighbourhood?
How do people organise their time?
What cultural experiences and celebration do people value? How might these be used as bridges to the gospel? When should you be available to have missional opportunities?
What?
What are peoples’ fears, hopes and hurts?
What ‘gospel’ stories are told in the neighbourhood? What gives people identity (creation)? How do they account for what what’s wrong with the world (fall)? What’s the solution (redemption)? What are their hopes (consummation)?
What are the barriers beliefs or assumptions cause people to dismiss the gospel?
What sins will the gospel first confront and heal for these people?
In what ways are people self-righteous?
What is the good news for people in this neighbourhood?
What will church look like for people in this neighbourhood?
My friend, Shawn, has a great post on an 'inconvenient faith.'
"Christianity, properly understood and practiced, is an inconvenient faith. It puts a squeeze on life as it’s currently practiced in North America. In talking with people about the Christian lifestyle employed in Acts chapter 2 of the New Testament the question is: Is this minimum church or maximum church?....
"...To steal a line of thought from former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin: You can’t have the Church Jesus wants with the participation levels that our cultural Christianity allows. Something’s gotta give."
Timmy Brister asks the following great diagnostic questions to himself. Here are a few of them...
1. If our church would cease to exist in our city, would it be noticed and missed?
3. If the only possible means of connecting with unbelievers were through the missionary living of our church members, how much would we grow? (I ask this because the early church did not have signs, websites, ads, marketing, etc.)
4. What are the subcultures within the church? Do they attract or detract from the centrality of the gospel and mission of the church?
6. What are we allowing to be our measuring stick of church health? (attendance vs. discipleship; seating capacity vs. sending capacity; gospel growth, training on mission, etc.)
7. Are the priorities of our church in line with the priorities of Christ’s kingdom?
8. If our members had 60 seconds to explain to an unbeliever what our church is like, what would you want them to say? How many do you think are saying that?
9. If the invisible kingdom of God became visible in our city, what would that look like?
12. Are the people we are reaching more religious or pagan?
13. What can we learn about our evangelism practices by the kind of people are being reached with the gospel?
15. What percentage of our growth is conversion growth (vs. transfer growth)?
20. If money and space were not an issue, what is one thing we ought to dream for God to do in our midst where it is impossible for anyone to get the credit except for the omnipotent hand of God?
"Discipleship must always be discipleship-in-movement-to-the-world. The disciple who will not lay down life for the world and for the Gospel of reconciliation is not worthy of being a follower of Jesus Christ."
"Far too often mission is relegated to one of those 'wishful thinking' categories that we hope to get to some day in our ministry. The newer third-world churches are supposedly not ready to engage in mission on their own until they reach a certain level of maturity...Meanwhile the North American and European congregations often relegate 'mission' to the leftover category, with the internal necessities of congregation and membership receiving higher priority. Mission calls us to radical reexamination. If mission is part of the essence of the Church's nature as the body of Christ and the people of God, then it ought to be at the top of the list."
And I love this quote of Johannes Blauw's in The Missionary Nature of the Church...
"There is no other Church than the Church sent into the world, and there is no other mission than that of the Church of Christ."
And again,
"If one wants to maintain a specific theological meaning of the term mission as 'foreign mission,' its significance is, in my opinion, that it keeps calling the Church to think over its essential nature as a community sent forth into the world. Seen in that light missionary work is not just one of its activities, but the criterion for all its activities.... It is exactly by going outside itself that the Church is itself and comes to itself."
I'm reflecting on this quote and the best way to get God's people to buy in to their calling to be God's missionary people:
"The Church is not an exclusive club of privilege, neither is it a place to rest from our labors. We have been brought in so that we may gather others into this Kingdom of Grace."
Chapter 4 of this book includes a discussion of "The Essence of the Local Church in Historical Perspective," and speaks about the traditional reformational marks of the church (word, sacrament, & doctrine) and casts those in light of a missional reading of the four attributes of the church (one, holy, catholic, & apostolic). Then concludes with these thoughts...
"What is the Church? It is the unifying [one], santifying [holy], reconciling [catholic], and proclaiming [apostolic] activity of Jesus Christ in the world. Mission cannot be something separate from or added to the essence of the Church. The essential nature of the local congregation is, in and of itself, mission, or else the congregation is not really a Church."
"Notice that this description is a far cry from saying that 'everything the church does is mission.' What the church does internally with no intention of impacting the world outside of itself is not mission. But when a local congregation understands that it is, by its nature, a constellation of missional activities, and it intentionally lives its life as a missionary body, then it begins to emerge toward becoming the authentic Church of Jesus Christ."
“It is not enough, however, just to say that mission has a solid biblical foundation, we also need to see that the Bible has its roots in mission. That is, the Bible is the product of God’s engagement through God’s people in God’s world for God’s ultimate purposes for the nations and the world…So from beginning to end, the Bible is missional, by its very existence and by its comprehensive message. Mission then has to be a prime hermeneutical key for our own Bible reading and teaching.” [Quoting C.Wright's The Mission of God]
"The Church exists by mission as fire exists by burning." - Emil Brunner
"There is no participation in Christ without participation in His mission to the world. That by which the Church receives its existence [i.e., the life of Christ] is that by which it is also given its world mission."
"In choosing a people, God intended to reach out to the whole world.... 'In choosing Israel as segment of all humanity, God never took his eye off the other nations; Israel was the pars pro toto, a minority called to serve the majority. God's election of Abraham and Israel concerns the whole world."
"The Church is not an exclusive club of privilege, neither is it a place to rest from our labors. We have been brought in so that we may gather others into this Kingdom of grace."
As the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting continues, check out this excerpt from Ed Stetzer’s chapter entitled Toward a Missional Convention in Southern Baptist Identity:
Many churches will go to great lengths and tremendous expense to involve members in “missional” activities far from home, yet fail to fully engage their own neighborhood. Perhaps one of the contributing factors to this seeming inconsistency is the ability for us to behave “missionally” for a short period of time in a “far country” where co-workers and neighbors can’t see us. In these short-term/long-distance mission events, we are able to experience the passion of missional living without really becoming incarnational to our own context.
This approach to missional work is perhaps the unfortunate outcome of a separation between missions and evangelism in popular thinking among Southern Baptists and other evangelicals. To many, missions is something done “elsewhere” by “someone.” Thus, some churches that are “far-thinking” and “far-reaching” in terms of international missions are failing to reach the people in the shadows of their steeples. North America is not viewed as a mission field. In fact, many believe it to be a “reached” field only in need of an evangelism strategy, not a true missional engagement.
What is needed is not merely an understanding of missiological thinking, but a commitment to missional thinking. While missiology concerns itself with study about missions and its methodologies, missional thinking focuses on doing missions in every geographical location. Such thinking is needed if the SBC is to remain faithful in its calling to serve churches by equipping them to impact their surrounding communities.
There are a couple of great posts by Tommy Brister over at Provocations + Pantings under the title: Missional Margin: Too Busy Not to Evangelize? (Part 1, Part 2). Both are well worth your time and reflection.
Here are a couple of nuggets:
Those of us who are too busy not to evangelize need to throw away our door hangers and put up the open and welcome sign. We need to practice personal hospitality which says to a broken world, “You’re welcome here. Please come and sit a while.” The first step for us is to repent of our me-centeredness and get on board with God’s program so that it governs our lives. Is this not what “seek first the kingdom of God” is about? The kingdom of God should be top priority in our lives, period.
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Indeed, we miss out on the mission of God because our mission (or minutia) takes precedence. We don’t love our neighbor because we don’t welcome them. It is disturbing to us. And we don’t welcome them because we are simply too busy.
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Missional margin is all about creating white space in the life of a 21st century Christian who has more than enough distractions to anesthetize him from the call to be actively on mission with God.
The article concludes by asking, So how can I cultivate missional margin in everyday life? How can I remove the “please do not disturb” sign with one that says, “you are welcome here”?
Brister offers some suggestions. Check it out, Part 1 & Part 2.
"The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for the 1) numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any city, and the 2) continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city. Nothing else - not crusades, outreach programs, para-church ministries, growing mega-churches, congregational consulting, nor church renewal processes - will have the consistent impact of dynamic, extensive church planting."
If you have the time, and have been bitten by the church planting bug, or at least have your curiosity piqued, you should check out these lectures by Rev. Keller.
Filed under: I Never Thought About It From That Perspective
----- This was encouraging to me as we seek to raise funds for the New City Church Project-Calgary during these tough economic times when folks are nervous about the economy.
John Piper proposes the thesis that the worst of all times is the best of all times for missions.
Thinking & praying on Lamentations 3, he says his thesis needs to be tested:
1. During an economic downturn we are more dependent on God. That is the most fertile soil for creating missionaries.
2. During an economic downturn unreached people around the world do not expect you to come, but to look out for yourself. So they may more likely see your risk as love rather than exploitation.
3. During an economic downturn those who need Christ around the world may be less secure in earthly things and more ready to hear about eternal life.
4. During an economic downturn people at home may be wakened to the brevity of life and the fragility of material things, and so may become more generous not less. And when they give under these circumstances, it will make Christ look all the more like the all-satisfying Treasure that he is.
As we look at the amount of money we need to raise to do church planting in the most expensive city in which to live in Canada, it seems like a daunting task.
All the more glory for God when He provides during these times. Join us in praying to this end.
Filed Under: Because it needs to be said....
----- Over at Dream Awakener, there has been a great series of posts on Christians and pubs and mission. It is built on the idea that pubs are 'third places,' that is, places other than home and work where people gather. And where people gather, there Christians should be. "Churches and communities of faith should encourage members to frequent local pubs/bars as a social context in which they can get to know and build strong relationships with people who are there." Now, this is sure to be controversial among some evangelicals, especially in the south. I once heard a campus minister say it was a sin for a Christian to even walk into a bar. Well, that is Pharisee-ism, not Christianity.
Rev. Tod Bolsinger, one of the few remaining lights in the PCUSA, tells of a time when he was in a bar and had an opportunity to ask the Fight Club question, "So, how's that working out for you." Great story.
I was in a conversation with another minister who hits the bars every Thursday night with folks in his congregation to drink beer, socialize, build relationships, & share the Gospel. He was telling me about one bar that he goes to that is owned by a lesbian couple. They have begun calling him their Pub's Pastor.
Filed under: "You've Gotta Check This Out"
----- My good friend & cohort in Calgary, Shawn Doud, has a good post on being missional by carrying about the magnet.
He writes,
" 'Carrying about the magnet' describes beautifully what our church is attempting to do with our New City Project. We are a small church with no permanent building. We are located mere miles from several large churches and one mega church that attracts people from throughout the whole city. It would literally take millions of dollars and hundreds more people (and stuff) to become a "magnet church." Instead we will be able to mobilize many small magnets to where the unchurched and our church people live."
