Highlights from the Close Encounters Series
This summer, Bridge Church has been studying through a few of Jesus’ one one one conversations with people in the Gospels. We’ve had Close
encounters with people in the Shadows (the woman at the well), with the Wealthy Fringe (Zaccheus), people with Rough Edges (Peter), with those in Crisis (Lazarus’ family), with those who are Caught (the woman caught in adultery), and with the Religious Crowd. Here are a few highlights from the series:
- Reminder: Every person has a name, a story, and great value to God.
- Don’t worry about dumping your gospel load and engage people as friends.
- God is able to make preachers out of prostitutes.
- When confronted with truth, what you do next demonstrates what you believe and if its real to you.
- Jesus has a vision for what you could be and will be through Him. He has you in the oven, He’s working on you.
- If any of us had the power to clean ourselves up, Jesus would not have had to die on the cross.
- Jesus didn’t say, “Peter, go get cleaned up, get you act together, quit being so undependable and mule headed and then maybe you can come and follow me.”
- God’s goal for us is CHRISTLIKENESS. NOT COMFORT AND PLEASURE.
- Death and disaster may seem like the end to us, but it’s not to God.
- We can demonstrate to a doubting world and to doubting, skeptic friends the reality of who Jesus is when we live out his ways.
- “People may doubt what you say, but they’ll always believe what you do.” – Unknown
- Truth is not a club to be used on people, but a mirror to show us our sin and our need for Christ.
- If you say, “Well, that person will never change” – You are saying more about your belief in God than your belief in that person.
- Religion is man’s way to get to God. Christianity is the story of how God made a way to get to man.
Listen to the series here, or find us on Itunes.
Worth Reading: Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship
One of my summer reads was Alan & Debra Hirsch’s, Untamed. Actually picked this one up at Exponential ’10, where I was privileged to meet Alan, get the book signed (“Stay true Bro! Alan”), and try to talk him into moving to New Orleans. I would suggest reading The Forgotten Ways ahead of Untamed, if you’ve never read Hirsch. I’m certain that this book, like Hirsch’s previous works, will definitely be much help to the body of Christ as we continue to experience mission shifts in the 21st Century. A few of my favorite quotes:
- To fail in disicipleship and disciple making is therefore to fail in the primary mission of the church.
- You simply cannot be a disciple without being a missionary – a sent one.
- Technique is a terrible substitute for God – an idol – and it’s too easy to revert to it to “grow the church” while the authentic experience of the Holy Spirit is being edged out the back door.
- The implicit message church members get from a church that adopts a consumer driven model is that they are essentially discerning consumers and that the local church is a vendor of religious goods and services.
- Disciples tithe to the Lord; consumers are merely paying for services.
- Every disciple carries within themselves the potential for world transformation.
- If every Christian household regularly invited a stranger, or a poor person, or a work colleague into their home for a meal with the family once a week, we would literally change the world by eating!
- If missional defines our being sent out into the world, then incarnational must define the way in which we engage the world.
- Morality may keep you out of jail, but it will not keep you out of hell. – Spurgeon quip
Mutli-Housing Ministry Ideas
Last Friday the Northshore Baptist Association hosted a Multi-Housing Ministry Roundtable with Tia Albertson from Tarrant County Baptist Association in Fort Worth, TX. Tia’s husband Ray serves as Pastor of North Star Fellowship, which is a church that meets in a large apartment complex in Irving, TX. This is a fully constituted, fully functioning church that is intentionally planted to reach this particular multi-housing complex along with multiplying itself into others. The Roundtable was possible because of Northstar’s being in SE Louisiana on a mission trip.
I love this stuff because of my connection to an Apartment Church in Irving, while a student at Southwestern Seminary. Oak View Baptist adopted a strategy that included multi-housing church planting due to the lack of ethnic diversity in their congregation and overwhelming lostness in their one mile radius. I learned a ton at Kirkwood Park Fellowship and the principles of organic church life that I practiced as an apartment church pastor have stayed with me over the last 10 years.
Next time you drive by an apartment complex or mobile home park, think about the lives of the people there. Consider that what takes you 2 seconds to drive past, houses 400-1,500 souls who need to hear the gospel. A few takeaways from our roundtable with Tia Albertson and North Star Fellowship:
- Pray, Pray, Pray. Prayer walking is a good habit to get into and easy to do at a multi-housing complex. Click here for a Prayer Walking Guide.
- Try to work with the management. Go to serve. First question, “How can I help you?” not, “Can I have a Bible Study here?” A few ideas on this later.
- Look for persons of peace who live on site. Who is God working with that lives on site.
- Aim for church life on site. “The word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood” John 1:14
If you simply do outreach to a multi-housing site, inviting them to your church site, you will reach 4% of the population. But if you take church-life to them, you will reach 30% of the site. I’m praying that we go for the 30%.
Zimbabwe Orphans
In 2009, Cassy & Steve DiLeo, organized a clothing drive that pulled in churches and businesses including PJ’s Coffee, who allowed boxes to be placed in all of their St. Tammany stores for a month or more. hundreds of boxes of clothes were shipped to Zimbabwe. This morning I was blessed to receive the first pics of orphans at Melfort Children’s Home in Zimbabwe receiving some of those clothes!
Thanks to Steve and Cassy for your AGAPE-like leadership and initiative to take on the task. Along with the clothes, this orphanage has received new life through a new water pump and system for the on site well, thanks to the Make-a-Wish Foundation and the desire of Jonathan DiLeo, Cassy & Steve’s youngest son who passed away last year due to complications with a brain tumor. His last wish was that Melfort have clean water. I was privileged to travel to Zimbabwe and visit Melfort Orphanage with Steve, Cassy, and Jonathan in 2005. It’s just a snapshot of the plight of millions of orphans in Zimbabwe and other parts of Africa (estimated 25% of the population in Zim are orphans). Peter Mabasa, Pastor of Global Life Ministries in Zimbabwe writes about the children at Melfort:
We paid a visit to Melfort Children’s Home this week to distribute the clothing you and others donated to us recently. It was such a beautiful sight seeing many of these children smiling and happy to get a new pair of shoes, dress or perhaps a warm jersey to counter this year’s severe winter. Most of the children at this home have their own story to tell. They come from dysfunctional families some shunned by their families because they dared report a case of sexual and or other abuse resulting in the arrest of a family member e.g. an uncle. Then there are the orphans as a result mostly of the HIV pandemic. Other groups comprise children abandoned at birth by young mothers not prepared to take the responsibility of motherhood. You sit down with any of these children and you hear harrowing tales that will bring the most hardened person to tears. Making a small difference in the life of these children is one of the most fulfilling things one can ever do and for that we are grateful to you brethren for making this possible.
Along with aid to orphans, churches are being planted, medical aid provided, and leaders are being trained in rural Zimbabwe in partnership with Global Life Ministries and churches on the Northshore and in Central Louisiana. This weekend we are praying for Global Life as they trek to remote Binga, Zimbabwe, for a medical outreach. Also, praying for teams from Central Louisiana currently on mission in Zimbabwe. I’m looking forward to getting back to Zim in 2011. Let me know if you’d like to get on board.
What Does Missional Look Like?
The call to mission may cause you to memorize the names of everyone on your street; take new co-workers out for lunch; throw parties to connect friends who don’t know each other; go out of your way to ask people, “How are things going?” You might intentionally give some money to help people or support church, civic, or global causes that meet practical needs. You might feel the call to give time to volunteer. You might even participate in local or global missions.
Worth Reading: Church in the Making
“Why do we continue sending planters out to the field by themselves with no momentum, very little support, and the odds stacked against them?” So ask Ben Arment in his new book Church in Making: What Makes or Breaks A New Church Before it Starts. And this is the big question that many veteran church planters and there families have found themselves asking after seasons of discouragement and disillusionment. This book is written from the perspective of one who has been there and worked through what it takes to build momentum, gather support, and overcome obstacles. We may not like many of the answers. There is need for cultivation, it’s sometimes necessary to pull the plug, the best planters are locals and not big shots that parachute into town, ability to build a social network is a necessity. I hope every church planting strategists will read this book for solid ideas about prepping the ground and knowing what planters on the field are going through. For church planters, the questions for discussion after each section would be great for core development meetings. Well worth reading. Plan on keeping this book close to the desk for a few years.
You’ll also do yourself a favor by following the author’s blog.
Here’s a few of my favorite quotes:
- “Just like farming, there are two activities for church planters: cultivating and planting. If you do the right thing in the wrong season, you get zero results.”
- “If you dive headlong into planting a church on tough soil, you’ll get discouraged quickly and burn out.”
- “behind every great church is a cultivated community.”
- “there’s nothing more destructive to a church planter’s well-being than starting a church with no momentum.”
- “Buzz covers a multitude of sins.”
- “Church planting is the fine art of emptying ourselves for people who reject us and forgiving them for the sake of the gospel.”
- “As church planters we have to be careful to plant the church our community needs, not the church in our heads.”
- “The minute your congregation decides to exist for itself, the church is dead.”
- “It’s easy to sacrifice vision when the money is running low and you could generate revenue by becoming more things to more people.”
- “By putting personality ahead of purpose, we make our churches difficult to reproduce, let alone sustain.”
What is Community?
The call to community is more than just going to church on Sunday. A commitment to community might change the way you think about your Christian friends. Instead of working to impress them with your spirituality or your “edginess”, you might find yourself entrusting them with your struggles. Which might lead to better relationships. Which might lead to you going on mission together. Which is the whole point.
Good stuff from the TK Primer, which our church is tracking through this Summer.
Block Party Maximizer
Simple idea to maximize the impact of your evangelistic Block Party: Invite the local Ice Cream Truck to crash the party. And why not pay for the Ice Cream?
Just Like You
I think of this every year around Father’s Day.
There are little eyes upon you, and they are watching night and day;
There are little ears that quickly take in every word you say;
There are little hands all eager to do everything you do,
And a little boy who’s dreaming of the day he’ll be like you.
You’re the little fellow’s idol, you’re the wisest of the wise,
In his little mind about you, no suspicions ever rise;
He believes in you devoutly, holds that all you say and do,
He will say and do in your way when he’s grown up to be like you.
There’s a wide-eyed little fellow who believes you’re always right,
And his ears are always open and he watches day and night;
You are setting an example every day in all you do,
For the little boy who’s waiting to grow up to be like you.
Source unknown
Lane Corley 