Not FOR God, but BY God’s Power
Language is important. I’ve been thinking lately of the language I use in relation to serving God. Often I say that I’m doing things FOR God, as if God needs me to get his work done.
“He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need.” Acts 17:24-25
God allows me to be part of what He’s doing. And even what I do for him, I do in the strength he provides.
“‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord” Zechariah 4:6
“Blessed are those whose strength is in you…” Psalm 84:5
“if anyone serves, [it should be] from the strength God provides, so that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ in everything” 1 Peter 4:11
When I find myself doing things FOR God, it’s sometimes been in my strength and to make myself feel good about what I can do. Because of what God has done and By God’s Power are proper motives and help keep God as the one glorified and worshiped.
Splitting hairs? Maybe. Just thinking.
“Could we change the world by starting 1,000 mega churches over the next 10 years?” #exponential Notes 2011
Question ask by Matt Carter during one of the Main Sessions led by he and Ed Stetzer at Exponential Conference in Orlando,
April 26-29, 2011. Here’s a few notes:
Matt Carter:
- Could we change the world by starting 1,000 mega churches over the next 10 years? Answer: We actually just did that. Over the last 10 years 1200 mega churches were started and interestingly enough less people are attending church today than ever before. No 1,200 mega churches wouldn’t hurt and would be welcome, but we cannot be a one weapon army.
- There is a restlessness among laity today that’s not existed in a long time. People are asking, “why is what we see in the New Testament so different from today’s Christianity?”
- If we build more and reach more in one place, what changes in our cities? Sending people as missionaries into the cities will bring real transformation.
- Change the scorecard for the church to MISSION together. No better way to foster community than be on mission together. Aim at community get nothing. Aim at mission get community thrown in.
- Train church members to be missionaries, to feed themselves, and to reproduce.
- Raise the bar for engagement. The sky is the limit. People with the power of the resurrection inside of them are passing out bulletin in our churches. People are capable of so much more than we are asking and allowing. We must release them.
Northshore Probe: Meeting the Challenge
Only 3.3% of the population of the Northshore attends a SBC church on any given Sunday. After multiple interviews with leaders from other Evangelical denominations, it is highly likely that less than 10% of the population attends an evangelical church on any given Sunday. Maybe a better indicator of success is small group attendance and only 1.9% of the population of the Northshore attends a Small Group Bible Study on any given Sunday. To double these percentages to 6.6% and 3.8% over the next 10 years, keeping up with population growth means we would need to add 16,434 worshipers and 9,304 Bible Study attendees. Find all the data and full report here.
Four suggestions to meet the challenge: First, we need some of our churches to breakout. Second, we need healthier and riskier church planting. Third, we need to partner to help churches in need of and willing to engage in revitalization. Fourth, we need a discipleship revolution.
Breakout Churches
A breakout church is defined by Thom Rainer in his book by that title as a church that reaches at least one person for Christ every two weeks or 26 persons per year, has a conversion ratio of 20:1 or 1 conversion for every 20 members per year, has tenured and consistent leadership, and the church makes a clear and positive impact on its community.[1] The momentum of growing churches breaking out will help us catch up with population growth and move past a season of decline.
Healthier and Riskier Church Planting
Healthier church planting means church planting that is led by churches with a heart to multiply and reproduce themselves for the sake of kingdom expansion. So, what’s needed for healthier church planting is healthy mother churches with a heart to reproduce. As Bob Roberts says in his great book The Multiplying Church, “The future of faith in America (and anywhere in the world, for that matter) is not tied to planting more churches, but in raising up of mother congregations of every tribe, tongue, denomination, and network that are reproducing… The hope is in pregnant mother churches.”[2]
Riskier church planting would be multiplication that targets hard to reach areas and unchurched pockets of our population. Missiologist Alan Hirsch suggests that current church models are reaching out to smaller and smaller segment of the population, with possibly as much as 60% of America untargeted by our evangelistic and outreach efforts.[3] Our probe identified multi-housing residents as one potential segment that is underserved. Others may be those in their early 20’s with very little understanding of religion in any form. We need some church plants that go beyond planting a worship service that looks similar to others in the community, but will ask the question “Where is the church not?” and go there with the gospel. We need some church plants that have different scorecards and different expectations, but will faithfully deliver the message of Christ to unchurched people.
Partners in Revitalization
Church revitalization is needed to turn momentum around for congregations that are not effectively reaching their communities. Churches are needed who are willing to adopt or sponsor or merge with existing congregations for the glory of God. And churches are needed who are willing to admit there in need of coming under the wing of a benevolent parent church or work with a church wanting to help then in a revitalization effort.
A Discipleship Revolution
Call it revival, lay renewal, or awakening, what we need is a revolution of discipleship that will lead Northshore Christians to multiply themselves spreading the Gospel like a sneeze to their neighbors, classmates, coworkers, and beyond. In his book Church 3.0, Neil Cole observes, “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.”[4] We must refocus on making disciples who will reproduce themselves by telling others, inviting others, and discipling others.
[1] Rainer, Tom. Breakout Churches. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2005.
[2] Roberts, Bob. The Multiplying Church. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2008.
[3] http://www.christianpost.com/news/alan-hirsch-church-model-reaching-only-40-percent-of-americans-47500/
[4] Cole, Neil. Church 3.0: Upgrades for the Future of the Church. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010.
“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.
Lane Corley 