“Church is a way of being in the world, not some place I go on Sunday” #Exponential 2011 Notes
Spent a few days learning with 4,000 Church Planting Leaders at the Exponential Conf. A few notes from one of the Main Sessions with Michael Frost and Reggie McNeal:
Michael Frost:
- Missional means understanding we should go. Incarnational means loving those you are going to.
- Missional is like getting married. Being incarnational is like romance.
- Incarnational Practices:
- Listening to the people to whom we’ve been sent, as a posture. Asking as Jesus did, “What do you want from me?”
- Readiness to serve.
- Be loyal to your city or neighborhood. – No one is more transient than American ministers.
- Incarnational Actions: Eat in local cafes. Shop locally. Meet with local community leaders. Say yes to every invitation.
- Different domains in society: Political, Arts, Education, etc. The church decided to start another domain instead of releasing its people into the domains they are already in.The church is already deployed across all the domains of culture.
- Those who get incarnational ministry understand church as network not a thing, church as a verb, church is a way of being in the world, not some place I go on Sunday.
- Millions are looking for church, but many more millions cannot or will not accommodate their life rhythms to get involved in our domain of church. We must go to them.
- What gets celebrated, gets done. What you make a big deal about, gets done.
- Mission Shift: 1) Change the scorecard. 2) Change your language. Change church to a verb
What would a Church Planting Movement look like in North America? How can we get there?
#Exponential 2011 Notes: Had the privilege of sitting in on a Church Planting Movements Panel led by Ed Stetzer with some of the best thinkers in the world on the topic:
- Steve Addison, author of Movements that Change the World.
- David Watson
- George Patterson, author of Church Multiplication Guide
- Felicity Dale, author of An Army of Ordinary People and The Rabbit and the Elephant: Why Small is the New Big
- David Garrison, author of Church Planting Movements
A few notes:
#Exponential 2011 Notes: Neil Cole
Spent a few days learning with 4,000 Church Planting Leaders at the Exponential Conf. A few notes from
one of the Main Sessions with Neil Cole:
- If we’re going to reach the world, we’re going to have to learn to multiply.
- The silver bullet of church multiplication = “Christ in you, the hope of glory” Colossians 1:27. The power to start a movement is within every Christian.
- Exponential growth always starts slow and small but builds momentum over time. We’re often seduced to want to start big and fast. We stop doing what multiplies and start doing what adds, because we lose patience.
- Movements are most vulnerable at the start. Why? (1) Seduction of addition, (2) development of leadership dependency issues instead of empowering disciples, (3) misplaced faith – instead of in Christ’s power we put faith in our strategies and plans.
- Don’t plant churches, plant Jesus. Church doesn’t change lives, Jesus does.
- Leadership dependency kills movements.
#Exponential 2011 Notes: Dave Ferguson, Alan Hirsch, Francis Chan
Spent a few days learning with 4,000 Church Planting Leaders at the Exponential Conf. A few notes from one of the Main Sessions: Dave Ferguson, Alan Hirsch, and Francis Chan:
Feruson and Hirsch:
- Times are changing: Church attendance is below 20% of the population of America. Those claiming “no religious affiliation” has doubled over the last 10 years.
- Potentially, 60% of the population are alienated from our current church models and strategies. All are eggs are in the attractional church basket.Many are not coming to us, we must go to them.
- Einstein on problem solving: Current problems will not be solved with the same kind of thinking that created the problems.
- We have been shaped by a certain way of thinking about church. Our thinking must broaden.
- Problem: It’s impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
- Leadership frees people up or enslaves them. Leader job is to help people see themselves as God intends them to be.
- The people in your pews have incredible dreams, we must unleash them.
Francis Chan, Main Session #1: Incredible message about defying current expectations with real faith.
- Many expectations of leadership and church are not burdens that God puts on us.
- When you’re in them, crazy things make sense. Even when you see gaps between scripture and current practice, we start thinking, “Maybe, I’m nuts” “Surely everyone else is right”
- How can you be casual about something you really believe in?
- Realities: Church is supposed to be a family and every believer is to be a disciple maker. Today, what we do is meant to appease people who don’t want to be a family of disciple makers. Result: No light to the world.
- It makes no sense to bring people together into a room for worship, who have no intent on being disciples.
- Where do we get what we do in church from the New Testament?
- God will use you if you’re willing to be lonely and misunderstood.
- The moment you’re not willing to be lonely or misunderstood, you have nothing to say.
Northshore Probe: Final Report and Summary
The Northshore Baptist Association Probe was completed on April 1st and the results and findings are
indeed a call to action. In preparation for the PROBE our office conducted the following research: a 30-year statistical summary of our churches, a study of multi-housing on the Northshore, and zip-code demographic studies for every community in the NSBA area. On Friday, April 1st, a group of pastors and laymen came together to conduct an area-wide windshield survey looking for opportunities for ministries and potential church plants. The teams identified 25 areas for potential church planting and ministry development. Here is a summary and some highlights from our findings:
STRONG – Highlights from our Bridge Church Message Series on Ephesians
Through the Church at Ephesus, the Bible says all of Asia heard the word of the Lord. It was one of the most
effective churches, which makes this a very important letter and church to study in our day of declining churches and out paced church growth compared to population. Here are a few highlights from our recent study. Find the messages at http://bridgenorthshore.com.
- The Gospel pushes us to the heart of the matter. It confronts our idolatry. It pushes us to see who is really king of our hearts.
- Do you go to church? No, we are the church. Quit going to church and start being the church where you are. Quit inviting people to church and invite them into your lives.
- You teach what you know, you reproduce who you are.
- Salvation is a transaction. We give Christ our sins, he give us forgiveness and freedom through redemption. Our sins are placed on him, his righteousness is placed on us.
- God chose me knowing the worst about me, he adopted me into his family, and he accepts me as he would his own son.
- You’re worth something to God. You’re very valuable to God. You’re worth dying for. You’re worth giving everything for.
- Sin is really not an issue of what you DO, but of what you fail TO DO. It is that you fail to Glorify God.
- You don’t access God’s strength with casual Christianity, you access it when by faith you do something you can’t do in your own power.
- Church is more than just attending worship services, it’s about serving together. A family on mission together. Church is not the destination, it’s a connection point. An airport, not a theme park. Church is a post office, not a government agency. Sending letters. Creating, not stifling movement.
- What needs are going unmet because you are not using your SHAPE to serve God? What lives are being untouched because you are not ministering in practical ways?
- Marriage Defined: A SACRED RELATIONSHIP between ONE MAN & ONE WOMAN, to be practiced within the confines of a COVENANT or LIFE LONG COMMITMENT. Genesis 2:24; Hebrews 13:4
- Defining Love – AGAPE – sacrificial, initiative taking love. The kind of Love that Christ had for the church.
- Two attitudes that every God-like Christian should use in regard to relationships: “It’s not about me” and “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
- In Christ, we do not fight FOR VICTORY; we fight FROM VICTORY.
- For the Christian, spiritual warfare is never an attempt to gain the victory. It’s standing firm in the victory we already possess.
Church 3.0: Upgrades for the Future of the Church
File this one under books that make you think, excite you, and frustrate you (the last chapter’s first sentence
is “It is entirely possible that this book has offended you”), but Neil Cole’s observations about church life and necessary adjustments in Church 3.0 is a great read for ministry and mission leaders in todays America. I recently discovered that in my region of the Bible belt, less than 5% of teenagers and 10% of adults are attending evangelical churches. What does this say about the next generation? Do we need to upgrade to a new operating system? Cole says yes.
What is Church 3.0? Church 1.0 would have been Jerusalem Church which needed a lot of patches and didn’t last very long (many leaders long for Jerusalem’s crowds without considering it’s eventual outcome). Antioch would have been 1.1. Reproduction and sending voluntarily and on purpose started there. Galatian churches would have been 1.3, Corinth 1.4, as Paul added patches and shifted with the Spirit along the way. Church 2.0 came with Constantine and the establishment of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church. 2.1 came with the Protestant Reformation, 2.2 with the Anabaptists and radical reformers. And now Cole says the shift is happening to Church 3.0.
What’s the upgrade?
From the Introduction: “The change to Church 3.0 is a shift from a program-driven and clergy-led institutionalized approach of church to one that is relational, simple, and viral in its spread. Instead of seeing church as something that serves its people, church becomes people who serve – God, one another, and a hurting world. Church is no longer a place to go, but a people to belong to. Church is no longer an event to be at, but a family to be a part of.”
The rest of the book answers questions about Church 3.0 and Organic Church.
A few of the questions:
- What about the Church’s mission? From Coming to Going
- What about Church growth? From incremental to Exponential
- What about Church models? From Congregations to Networks, From Centralized to Decentralized
- What about Gatherings? From One-Size-Fits-All to Tailored Groups for Effective Function
- What about Heresy? From Better-Trained Pastors to Better-Trained People
- What about Finances? From Ten Percent to the Whole Enchilada
Agree with Cole or not, you will be challenged to think about simplicity and mission. Here’s a few of my favorite quotes and ideas from the book that seem to have stuck with me:
- We must transition from seeing church as a once-a-week worship event to an ongoing spiritual family on mission together.
- it’s possible to do church but fail to demonstrate anything of the person and work of Christ in a neighborhood.
- One side effect of pursuing excellence in church production is that common Christians become spectators who can contribute a percentage of their income to keep things going, though little more. we have raised the bar so high on how church is done that few believe they could ever do it themselves.
- we have lowered the bar of what it means to be a Christian, such that simply showing up to the weekly one-hour event with some regularity and a checkbook is all it takes.
- I want to lower the bar of how church is done so that anyone can do it, and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple so that they will do it.
- three roadblocks to church multiplication: buildings, budgets, and big shots.
- Buildings are not bad or wrong; they are simply not alive and therefore cannot reproduce.
- People don’t mind being called a servant, they just don’t like being treated like one.
- we have made church about something that is less than the gospel itself and more about how the particular speaker makes us feel on Sunday morning.
- The Gospel is not an invitation to walk down an aisle or a sawdust trail; it is an invitation to the adventure of a lifetime!
- church has become a religious event that takes place once a week, rather than a spiritual family on a mission together.
Are you provoked yet? For good? Thoughts? Read the book. It will make you think.
Measuring Change
@Habitatstw has built 80 homes in an area neighborhood and 911 calls are down 53% in that neighborhood since the
projectbegan. Great measurement of the transformation that Habitat can bring to an area. What metrics can we use to communicate the impact of our ministries? Will our current metrics (how many? how much? how often?) bring about such change in our communities? Reggie McNeal’s latest book Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church and Stetzer and Rainer’s Transformational Church: Creating a New Scorecard for Congregations have me thinking differently about success and change.
Part of the issue is Habitat had to build 80 homes with years of labor and sweat and blood to get to that point. We want change we can see quickly and don’t have to wait for. Focusing on change and not quick results will mean long term commitment. I’m in. For my church and for Habitat of West St. Tammany.
Recognizing Unsafe and Safe Relationships
Finishing up our Strong Relationships Emphasis today at Bridge Church. Sharing a list from one of my favorite books. They are known for their Boundaries books, but a lesser known book has helped me in recognizing relationships that could have a negative impact on my life. Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good For You and Avoid Those That Aren’t by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, will help you discern character and recognize manipulative harmful people before it’s too late. Here is there list of what to look for in people that are unsafe:
1. Unsafe people think they have it all together instead of admitting their weaknesses.
2. Unsafe people are religious instead of spiritual.
3. Unsafe people are defensive instead of open to feedback.
4. Unsafe people are self-righteous instead of humble.
5. Unsafe people only apologize instead of changing their behavior.
6. Unsafe people avoid working on their problems.
7. Unsafe people demand trust instead of earning it.
8. Unsafe people believe they are perfect instead of admitting their faults.
9. Unsafe people blame others instead of taking responsibility.
10. Unsafe people lie instead of telling the truth.
11. Unsafe people are stagnant instead of growing.
12. Unsafe people avoid closeness instead of connecting.
13. Unsafe people are only concerned with “I” instead of “we.”
14. Unsafe people resist freedom instead of encouraging it.
15. Unsafe people flatter us instead of confronting us.
16. Unsafe people condemn us instead of forgiving us.
17. Unsafe people stay in parent-child roles instead of relating as equals.
18. Unsafe people are unstable over time instead of being consistent.
19. Unsafe people are a negative influence on us.
20. Unsafe people gossip instead of keeping secrets.
A Safe Relationship…
Helps me draw closer to God.
Helps me draw closer to other people.
Helps me to become the person God created me to be.
Check out the author’s website – www.cloudtownsend.com – for more relationship resources.
Lane Corley 