organic christianity

experience

I recently read an article in a special issue of Outreach magazine, which inspired me.  The title of the article was What I've Learned so Far by Lindy Lowry.  Pastors from the top 100 fasting growing churches in America shared their wisdom, wonder and hard-knock lessons of ministry, leadership and life.  I am not gleaning from their expertise because they have a whole bunch of people who come to their buildings on Sunday morning but because of the content of what they have said in this article, which inspires me as I work towards planting a new church in Brentwood, CA that I and others hope will transform lives in that community.  I am going to give you my favorite quotes from these pastors taken from the article.  

Ed Young, senior pastor of Fellowship Church, Grapevine, TX

"The churches doing the real stuff are the ones that are keeping evangelism white hot!  It's so easy for all of us to swap sheep."

"Information without application is an abomination.  We can know all this stuff about leadership, growth and evangelism, but until we apply it, that knowledge doesn't mean anything."

Chris Hodges, senior pastor of Church of the Highlands, Birmingham, AL

"There is no substitute for the presence of God.  He can do more in one second of His manifest presence than all of my own efforts."

"I've learned that skill and anointing will give you ministry opportunities, but only integrity and humility will sustain those opportunities."

Wayne Cordeiro, senior pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship, Honolulu, HI

"You never measure the size of your church by how many are inside; you measure it by how many are still outside."

Brad Powell, senior pastor of Northridge Church, Plymouth, MI

"Only God can build a church.  I learned this the hard way.  I tried to build Northridge on the passion and energy of my personality.  They hated my personality.  After two years of very difficult ministry and continued decline, I finally came to the end of myself.  When I began fully leaning on Him, the church began moving forward."

Jon Weece, senior minister of Southland Christian Church, Lexington, KY

"We understand that generosity is not measured by how much we give to others but by how much we keep for ourselves."

Bob Merritt, senior pastor of Eagle Brook Church, Hugo, MN

"Outreach takes more effort than anything else in ministry.  It's the first thing that tends to get lost."

Ray Johnston, senior pastor of Bayside Covenant Church, Roseville, CA

"Authentic worship and authentic Bible teaching are unbelievably attractive to people, and you can grow and reach people at the same time, without watering anything down."

"The average church stops caring about outsiders after nine years and never recovers from it."

centrifugal christianity

Ed Stetzer is an awesome man and author who has such a heart for church planting and missional living.  I regularly read his blog and really appreciated this post and thought I would share it with you all.

When the Mission gets lost in the System

Donna and I returned from Europe last night. I will tell a bit more about our time there in the coming days. If you are so inclined, you can find some interesting pictures at Twitter).

When Donna an I talked on the plane coming home (faces 11 inches apart), we were struck by how these church planters live incarnationally. Europe was their home-- and they were seeking to live sent on God's mission.

When we went to the Vatican, we did not find it to be a spiritual experience. It spoke to us, but not about faith. It spoke to us of power. It did not evoke "go and tell." Rather, it was clearly "come and see." (And, that same sentence would be true in many non-Catholic settings as well-- including a few I know all too well.)

We taked some about the contrast of "being sent" and "maintaining structure" in a Bible study with Threads called Sent: Living the Missional Nature of the Church. In Session 3 of the study, I tried to use an illustration of a yo-yo to describe how a church should constantly be pushing outward into its surrounding culture.

The logic goes like this. Most of us have a Constantinian model for church which, very simply, is summed up like this: building + clergy + program = church. We saw it quite clearly in St. Peter's Basicillica. The fallacy comes when we start to see those components as rules rather than tools-- that was clearly found at the Vatican but is often found in my church and denomination as well. When you create a system with God-given tools, then turn them into rules, you end up with a system that needs to be serviced not a mission that needs to be lived.

A better equation is this: body + mission + kingdom = church. We need to be a body on mission for the Kingdom. The session goes onto explain:

The biggest disparity between the two models can be seen in the focus. In the Constantinian model, the force is centripetal, moving inward. In the biblical model, the force is centrifugal, pushing outward...Think of it in terms of a yo-yo. When you swing a yo-yo around, two forces are at work simultaneously. The centrifugal force (technically 'inertia') pushes the yo-yo outward, and at the same time, the centripital force is exercised by the string, pulling the yo-yo inward. In the yo-yo, these forces are in balance at the same time.

The church's challenge is similar. At any given moment, there is a centripetal force pulling us inward, tempting us to care most about ourselves, our comfort, and our development. This strong force is actually part of human nature, and it results in things like the Constantinian model of church. What makes it even more conplicated is that the thicker the string, the greater the force pulling inward. So the more stuff we have-- the more programs, buildings, and clergy we add-- the greater the temptation to focus primarily on ourselves. When that happens, the church becomes little more than a spiritual department store, a kind of Wal-Mart for Jesus, providing religious goods and services to Christian consumers.

Now there is certainly a balance to this argument, but for far too long we have been dominated by the thickness of the string. So we tend to look in rather than looking out.

It was enlightening to stand with missionary church planters on the steps of the Vatican while we talked about starting New Testament churches in Rome and Marseille. These churches might meet in homes, cafes, or storefronts, but they would seek to make them missional in their contexts. These missionaries are making great sacrifice, being far from their families with little resources so they could reach people far from God and tell them about a relationship, not a religion. They would let them know that Jesus would live in their hearts and not a temple built buy human hands.

glass of water

Here is a new song by Coldplay that debuted in Antwerp called "Glass of Water."  I've always loved this band and this music video is rockin'!  

 

smell

 Earlier today at the Western Regional Foursquare Conference I had an opportunity to pray with a sweet couple from the Philippines that are seven months into a church plant in San Francisco.  He explained how he was discouraged that the majority of his congregation of sixty people were either homeless or mentally ill.  He explained that they couldn't hardly get through a service because people would wander and cause disruptions.  My first reaction to his story was to say, "That's awesome, it sounds like your ministry is looking a whole lot like Jesus' ministry."  Didn't Jesus spend his time loving prostitutes, tax-collectors (social out-casts), lepers and the physically disabled.  He spent time with them, healed their diseases and shared with them the good news of knowing a God who cares for them and forgives them of their sins.  I was so overwhelmed by the effectiveness of this gentleman's ministry out in San Francisco that I asked him to pray that our church plant would be as effective at helping people as his has been.  I didn't mean to get this reaction but he began to cry and asked God to forgive him for not seeing His heart for the people in his church. 

I shared with him a story of when I was out in San Francisco feeding homeless people on the streets.  I found a man lying on the street, passed out because he had obviously had too much to drink.  I bent down and grabbed his hand and prayed for him after giving him some food and drink.  When I was walking away my clothes and hands smelled of urine and sewage, which is to be expected after having such close contact to a man who has probably not bathed in weeks.  I put my hands up to my nose and smelled them and heard God speak to me gently, "this is what my hands smelled like when I walked the earth."  Jesus didn't come for people that were well and he didn't spend his time trying to reach the rich business class so that he could have better finances for his ministry or even look good to all the other religious people.  He loved hurting, dirty, unlovable people and He met their needs.  He smelled like sheep because He was a true shepherd.  I love my brother out in San Francisco and I think he is doing a great job reaching hurting people and I pray he doesn't lose heart in doing good but that he gives up any hope of being "something" in the church world and just loves people that come his way.  May we all smell like sheep.