Measurable Values of a Disciple

I just returned from the Right Now Conference in Dallas, TX. As we have been talking about core values and mission statements, here is their mission statement and four measurables to define what success would look like.

Mission Statement -- Our Mission is to help people trade in the pursuit of the American Dream for a work that desperately needs Christ.

A Trader is a new kind of missionary, not defined by geography, but defined by a resolve to...

Choose Daily to sacrifice our time and money to apply The Parable of the Good Samaritan and to "go and do likewise."

Hate Injustice and find specific ways to bring the hope found in Jesus to desperate situations.

Work as Worship because God is glorified when we use our God-given passions and skills with excellence.

Act Swiftly because the time is Right Now!

I sat in on a breakout led by Will Mancini (www.willmancini.com, www.churchunique.com. He is a clarity evangelist and wants us to all have precise clarity about why our individual church exists. He helped Right Now develop these statements. He lays it all out in Church Unique.

Here's my question for discussion: Do you agree that an individual church should have a unique existence and calling? Why don't many churches have such clarity?

Ten Characteristics of a Spiritually Plateaued Leader

I recently started reading Neil Cole's book, Organic Leadership. In the introduction (pp.22-25) he has a list of 10 characteristics of a spiritually plateaued leader that he borrowed from Terry Walling and adapted and elaborated on. They are...

1. A spiritually plateaued leader avoids relationships of personal accountability. These leaders are removed from people. They have a degree of separateness that keeps them unaccountable to anyone. Often Christendom has reinforced such a separation and tried to justify it as biblical, to the detriment of the church, the world, and especially the leader...

2. A spiritually plateaued leader rarely applies the truths of God's Word to him or herself personally. Many Christian leaders have pursued education and have become experts on the Bible, thus believing they have no more to learn. These leaders no longer read the Word for insight into their own lives, but rather apply it to the problems others have. They read the Bible only to find solutions to other people's issues rather than with their own needs in mind.

3. A spiritually plateaued leader has replaced his or her joy, peace, and love with envy and resentment. People cannot simply manufacture godliness by modifying their behavior to conform to Christ's ideals. The fruit of God's Spirit, seen in every aspect of our lives, is evidence of our redeemed character, not the works we force ourselves to perform to demonstrate our religious behavior. Where the Spirit is not in control, the fruit is not evident, and no amount of hard work can make it so. Leaders who are no longer growing in their pursuit of the Lord cannot display the fruit of the Spirit and often exhibit instead sour religious attitudes. It's amazing how these ugly ways of thinking, when enough leaders display them, are accepted as the norm...

4. A spiritually plateaued leader frequently looks for greener pastures in other places. Often Christian leaders blame their church or organization for the lack of fruitfulness in their ministry. They attribute the success others have to the luck of landing in the right place at the right time. Leaders who think like this are always looking to move to a better place where their ministry will be truly appreciated and the success they deserve will finally come. This means that many pastors move frequently from one church to the next looking for success.

5. A spiritually plateaued leader finds faults in others more often than in self. The leaders find introspection difficult and rarely evaluate themselves, though they are often busy evaluating everyone else. They "find the speck in their brother's eye but do not notice the plank protruding from their own" (Mt. 7:3)...

6. A spiritually plateaued leader is burned-out from lots of busyness that has been substituted for simple intimacy with Christ. Spiritually plateaued leaders are exhausted because they are usually deceived into thinking that more effort and more activity are ways to gain closer access and blessing from God. This is a devastating lie from hell itself. There is no substitute for intimacy with Christ. More activity will never satisfy our deep need to connect with God and usually prevents us from having the intimacy we so desperately require... While carrying out religious busyness may grant us a sense of importance, it does not renew our hearts with joy and purpose. Instead it robs us of the strength we need...

7. A spiritually plateaued leader compromises on ethical principles once held dear. It is not uncommon to find such leaders have fallen deep into patterns of hidden sin. Using grace and liberty as excuses, they continue to function publicly without regret or remorse, while behind closed doors they carry out sinful practices...

8. A spiritually plateaued leader stays within safe areas of expertise rather than branching out into new learning endeavors. This sort of leader wants to be seen as an expert rather than a learner and therefore has no intention of exploring new fields or gaining new understanding... The idea of learning something new is scary because it implies that the leader does not have the expertise that has been part of his or her identity.

9. A spiritually plateaued leader is unable to acknowledge the wisdom of others. This leader talks more often than listens, is uninterested in what others have to say, and is easily offended if someone contradicts his or her idea. It is almost impossible to tell this person anything new...

10. A spiritually plateaued leader has reduced the Christian life to a routine. The plateaued leader is in a kind of holding pattern and is not moving forward in his or her walk with Christ. For this person life is a routine, trying to live the Christian life in the right Christian way. It is a static existence of maintaining what is, rather than developing anything new. It is a life of a few dos and many don'ts.

Neil suggests at this point that we might need to put the book down and spend some time alone with the Lord. I was already thinking that when I first read through it. I believe it does us all good to spend some time thinking about our own soul from time to time. Perhaps some of you might find this list as difficult, and helpful, as I did.

Peace out; and in.

Introducing the Missional Church - a review

I recently read Introducing the Missional Church by Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren. I think this is perhaps the best book on the subject I have read so far. They've taken the work of Leslie Newbigin and made it easier to understand and more readable for simple folk like me. In fact, the point of the book is phrased in three questions: What is the missional church, why does it matter, and how does a church become missional?

I thought the first part of the book - where they explain the concept of "missional" - was the best. My only complaint is with the last section. It seems to become a bit of a sales pitch for the author's resources in helping your church become missional. There is still useful information though.

The book is broken into three parts, like so...

Part 1: One Missional River
Ch. 1 - Not All Who Wander Are Lost: Stories of a Church In Between
Ch. 2 - Just Give Me A Definition: Why Missional Church Is So Hard to Define
Ch. 3 - Does Missional Fit? Can My Church Be Missional

Part 2: Three Missional Conversations
Ch. 4 - What's Behind the Wardrobe? The Center of the Missional Church
Ch. 5 - We're Not in Kansas Anymore: Missionaries in Our Own Land
Ch. 6 - Why Do We Need Theology? Missional Is about God, Not the Church
Ch. 7 - God's Dream for the World: What Is a Contrast Society?

Part 3: Countless Missional Journeys
Ch. 8 - The Journey Ahead: Following the Winds of the Spirit
Ch. 9 - Starting from Here: Where is Your Church Now?
Ch. 10 - The Missional Change Model: Getting There from Here
Ch. 11 - The Awareness Stage: Staring Reality in the Face
Ch. 12 - The Understanding Stage: Can We Really Talk about These Things?
Ch. 13 - The Evaluation Stage: A Snapshot of the Church
Ch. 14 - The Work of the Church Board: How Do Innovators and Traditionalists Work Together?
Ch. 15 - The Experiment Stage: Little Steps toward Something Big

There were a few quotes that particularly stood out to me. The book starts out with this very nice paragraph on what being missional means...

There once was a people who were neither significant nor exceptional nor privileged. In fact they did what most people of the time did: worked, married, raised children, celebrated, mourned, and carried out the basic stuff of life. You would not think them unique, because their dress, homes, and professions were much like that of everyone else. What was different about them, however, was their strange conviction that they had been chosen by God to be a special people, a journeying people who were forced to discover again and again what God wanted them to be doing in the world... At every stage in the biblical narratives is hope for a future reality toward which the people are moving. Being missional means we join this heritage, entering a journey without any road maps to discover what God is up to in our neighborhoods and communities.

On p. 21 was this insightful little ditty which might differ from the "getting back to the NT pattern"...

As an alternative to the attractional, some take up a contrarian stance. They become anti-building, anti-clergy, anti-denomination, anti-megachurch, anti-tradition, and anti-structure. They point fingers at what is now in place and tear it down. Many are stuck on the negative, and they know how to write blogs that deconstruct and talk about what is wrong. Who doesn't know how to do that? There's nothing creative about it, even if the media is used well. Others move past the negative by elevating an ideal or dream of what the church should be. This is understandable, but it is not helpful. As counterintuitive as it may sound, we don't cultivate a missional imagination by setting up some ideal type of the church or telling people what we should be. There are different forms of these dreams. They often come in some form of getting back to New Testament patterns or describing some point in the church's history that we need to recover. Some use quite strange, almost nonsensical language about how the church must become deinstitutionalized (we actually haven't come across any human system that isn't institutionalized in one form or another) and that it needs to return to a preinstitutionalized state of organic life. None of this is helpful, because it fails to recognize where the Spirit is actually at work in shaping a new imagination.

On p. 24 they state clearly three perspectives they are hoping to challenge with the book...

First, we are challenging the elevation of any model as the way to do church... Second, we challenge arguments that the Bible reveals a missional secret or formula that provides twenty-first century Christians with a magic pill for entering missional life... Third, we are challenging the idea that there is some point in history of the church that provides us with just the right pattern and formula for creating missional churches...

As you can tell there are some fairly provocative ideas in this book. I thought it was quite good, and I would recommend it for any church leader or anyone interested in the missional conversation.

What are you reading?

I'm always interested in what others are reading. Here's what I've been reading lately:

• Currently reading 'The Forgotten Ways: reactiving the missional church' by Alan Hirsch. Just getting into it, but I connect with Alan and it's much better than I thought it might be. Seems very practical, with a nice glossary of terms in the back.
• Just read 'Strengths Based Leadership' by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. This was also much better than I thought it might be, because it's a "leadership" book, and not necessarily from a Christian perspective. It was a rather quick and easy read, it also comes with a code so you can take a strengths-based leadership assessment online.
• Introverts in the Church by Adam McHugh was an okay read. It wasn't the most well-written book, but the content was very good - especially if you are an introvert, or have introverts in your church.
• 'Living Faith: A Guide to the Christian Life' by John Schwarz was a nice "beginners" book for someone new to the faith. Fairly well written and an easy read.
• 'Practicing Greatness: 7 Disciplines of Extraordinary Spiritual Leaders' by Reggie McNeal was another one of those books I didn't think I would like, but it was actually quite good (if you are a spiritual leader). Very helpful and practical, imho.

So... what about you. Has anyone read anything worthwhile lately (or anything we should avoid)?

The Forgotten Ways of Jesus

Fran wrote a book. You should buy it!

The Great Emergence

A week ago I added some comments about a recent book under Lousy Pastor. The other night I was outside working in the yard when my neighbor starts talking about a book by Phyllis Tickle. I asked, "The Great Emergence"? And he said, "Yeah, I just finished it. Would you like to read it"? So during the Penn State /Michigan game I started reading. (There is a lot of down time during a football game.) I highly recommend it.

Here is the thesis: every 500 years there is a transformation in church life. The Great Schism, The Reformation, etc. Someone may assign a time or a date or a person' s name but the seeds were sown long before the date. So here in 2008 the waters are already rising and we may have a few years before the dam breaks--but break it will. 200 years from now some historian will write about it and set a date with someone's name assigned but we know that this movement--The Great Emergence--began when a bunch of malcontents started crying in the river.

Every tear shed for the church as she should be makes the river rise. Keep it up guys.

Podcast Download: Episode 10 - The Forgotten Ways Chapter 2

If you haven't listened to a podcast, you don't want to miss this one.

Download: Podcast Episode 10 - The Forgotten Ways Chapter 2

If you right click on the sermon, then click "Save Target As", you can save the MP3 to your computer.

We have moved into a discussion of The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch, which explores "reactivating the missional church" and explores the missional DNA which exists in all churches, planted there by the Holy Spirit.

I would love to have you in on the discussion. If you have any posts, comments, or questions about chapter 3 or 4 of The Forgotten Ways, leave them in the comments here or make a new post if you want.

Here are my notes for the Chapter 2:

The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch

Chapter 2 quotes

“Bill Easum goes on to note that every organization is built upon “an underlying systems story.” He points out that “this is not a belief system. It is the continually repeated life story that determines how an organization feels, thinks, and thus acts. This systems story determines how an organization behaves, no matter how the organizational chart is drawn. It’s the primary template that shapes all other things. Restructure the organization and leave the systems story in place, and nothing changes within the organization. It’s futile trying to revitalize the church, or a denomination, without first changing the system.” [Unfreezing Moves, p 31] Drilling down into this systems story – the paradigm, or mode of church – is, Easum suggests, one of the keys to change and constant innovation.” – p 54

“The movement that Jesus initiated was an organic people movement; it was never meant to be a religious institution. We must allow this new-yet-ancient systems story to seep into our imagination and reform all our practices.” – p 54

“Martin Buber, a profound commentator on prophetic religion and religious movements, warns us about the dangers of religious institutionalism when he notes that “centralization and codification, undertaken in the interests of religion, are a danger to the core of religion.” This is inevitably the case he says, unless there is a very vigorous life of faith embodied in the whole community, one that exerts an unrelenting pressure for renewal on the institution.” – p 55

“People now identify themselves less by grand ideologies, national identities, or political allegiances, and by much less grand stories: those of interest groups, new religious movements (new age), sexual identities (gays, lesbians, transsexuals, etc), sports activities, competing ideologies (neo-Marxist, neofascist, eco-rats, etc), class, conspicuous comsumption (metrosexuals, urban grunge, etc), work types (computer geeks, hackers, designers, etc) and so forth. On one occasion some youth ministry specialists I work with identified in an hour fifty easily discernible youth subcultures alone (computer nerds, skaters, homies, surfies, punks, etc). Each of them takes their subcultural identity with utmost seriousness and hence any missional response to them must as well. – p 61

“To reach beyond significant cultural barriers we are going to have to adopt a missionary stance in relation to the culture. And partly that will mean adopting a sending approach rather an attractional one, and partly it will mean that we have to adopt best practices in cross-cultural mission method. – p 63

“A major part of the problem is that although largely dechurched people do come to faith in Jesus through Alpha, it seems that they still don’t want to “go to church.” It’s that darn “Jesus yes. Church no” phenomenon again. People will come to faith in small, intimate communities of friends but generally don’t want the organized-religion part of the deal. This swapping of agendas has sometimes been perceived as a “bait and switch” strategy, which is generally considered unethical in the commercial world.” – p 63

“We must not abandon Christendom, for in it are God’s people, but it needs a fundamental change, a conversion if you like, if it is to become genuinely missional. This change is possible, but not without major realignment of our current thinking and resources. And because Christendom is so deeply entrenched in imaginations and practices, this shift will certainly not happen without significant political will to change. It will be resisted by those with the most significant vested interests in the current system.” – p 66

“It is time to (re)discover a new story of the church and its mission. Enter the emerging missional church (EMC). This form of ecclesia is genuinely creative, because it does present a fundamentally alternative imagination to the predominant one. And it is ancient, because as we shall see, it looks, feels, and manifests itself as very similar to the original apostolic one.” – p 67

“They are rich in conversations around spirituality, life, Jesus, God, faith, discipleship, and mission – conversations that try to include those outside the faith… There is a rediscovery of Christology and the person of Jesus as the center point of faith, rather than all the highly stylized dogmas and creeds that have defined the Christendom mode. On the whole it is very much a fringe movement – there is no sense that they have a central role in society at large – and yet it seems to committed to faith in the public sphere.

“Gibbs and Bolger list the following, more spirituality-focused, characteristics of the churches in the movement.” – p 68 [from the Table of contents of Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures]
• Identifying primarily with Jesus
• Transforming secular space
• Living as community
• Welcoming the stranger
• Serving with generosity
• Participating as producers
• Creating as created beings
• Leading as a body
• Praying, “Thy will be done”

“Somewhere in the genesis and genius of these diverse groups is hidden the future of Western Christianity. To dismiss them is to throw away the seeds of our survival.” – p 69 [Quoting Gerard Kelly in Retrofuture: Rediscovering our Roots, Recharting our Routes]

Podcast - Episode 9 - The Forgotten Ways - Chapter 1

Download: Podcast Episode 9 - The Forgotten Ways Chapter 1

If you right click on the sermon, then click "Save Target As", you can save the MP3 to your computer.

We have moved into a discussion of The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch, which explores "reactivating the missional church" and explores the missional DNA which exists in all churches, planted there by the Holy Spirit.

I would love to have you in on the discussion. If you have any posts, comments, or questions about chapter 2 or 3 of The Forgotten Ways, leave them in the comments here or make a new post if you want.

Here are my notes for the Chapter 1:

The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch

Hirsch divides chapter one into threes of his journey with the church.

Intro quotes

Phase 1: From Death to Chaos

“Everything in my education was geared toward maintaining the established, more institutional forms of the church. The vast majority of the subjects on offer were theoretical and were taught by theoreticians, not practitioners. So we had to learn on the run, so to speak. On reflection, perhaps this is the only way we really learn, but certainly at the time this was the way that God chose to somehow make a missionary out of me.” – p 31

“There was very little in the way of functional denominational strategy or successful models to refer to for mission in these contexts. So, in terms of approach, we decided that all we would do was build an authentic Jesus community where all who came our way would experience love, acceptance, and forgiveness, no matter what – we did know a little about grace as we had all experienced it so convincingly ourselves.” – p 31

“We attracted just about every kind of freak in the neighborhood, and soon people began to cluster in communal houses. We had no real outreach programs per se. We simply “did community” and developed a certain ethos based on grace for the broken.” – p 31

Phase 2: Becoming a Church-Planting Church

“Toward the end of this phase, we had begun to articulate something of the ideas that energized us, and we had developed something of a self-conscious “model.” We felt that we had to become a church-planting church with a regional organization.” – p 32

“SMRC was fairly unique, possibly even in world context, in that up to 40 percent of the community came from the gay and lesbian subcultures. What made this more unique was that we did not take a politically correct, pro-gay stance, theologically speaking, but graciously called all people into a lifelong following of Jesus, which for some would involve lifelong celibacy; others whose desire and will were strong pursued heterosexual relationships. We still remained committed to ministry on the fringes, only now it was to alienated young adults and gay people.” – p 33

“We then experimented with house churches in the working-class western suburbs of Melbourne, but sadly, for various reasons, they did not sustain.” – p 33

“The last missional experiment of this phase was for me (and I believe for the church as well) a decisive one. Over the years up to this point two critical things had taken place. First, SMRC, the “mother ship” so to speak, had settled down somewhat from the more heady days of wild and chaotic community. And second, we had become known as a “cool church,” and as a result lots of middle-class Christians, who for understandable reasons were alienated from the institutional church in various ways, had made their way into the community and settled down in it. So while maintaining its “groovy” and somewhat alternative vibe, South had inadvertently become safe and more self-consciously yuppie and, as a result, had lost something of its edge. Without anyone noticing, we had lost our original call and missional heart. – p 33


“The Christendom mode of engagement, what I will later describe as evangelistic-attractional, was simply not up to the type of missionary challenge presented to us by our surrounding context: a context that required more of a cross-cultural missionary methodology than the “outreach and in-drag” model we had been using to that point.” – p 34

“A combination of recent research in Australia indicates that about 10-15 percent of that population is attracted to what we can call the contemporary church growth model. In other words, this model has significant “market appeal” to about 12 percent of our population.” – p 34

“Demographically speaking, they tend to cater largely to what might be called the “family-values segment” – good, solid, well-educated citizens who don’t abuse their kids, who pay their taxes, and who live largely, what can be called a suburban lifestyle.” – p 35

“With these statistics in mind we can intuit that in America the current “market appeal” of the contemporary church growth model might be up to 35 percent (as opposed to 12 percent in Australia). But even if it is at this level of appeal, it is decreasing. It’s time for a radical rethink taking into account both the strategic and the missional implications.” – p 36

“The vast majority of evangelical churches, perhaps up to 95 percent, subscribe to the contemporary church growth approach in their attempts to grow the congregation, in spite of the fact that successful applications of this model remain relatively rare.” – p 36

“And that’s tragic, because it doesn’t seem to work for most of our churches and for the majority of our populations. In fact, it has become a source of frustration and guilt, because most churches do not have the combination of factors that make for a successful application of the model.” – p 36

“Thus in Australia we have the somewhat farcical situation of 95 percent of evangelical churches tussling with each other to reach 12 percent of the population. And this becomes a significant missional problem because it raises the question, “What about the vast majority of the population (in Australia’s case, 85 percent; in the US, about 65 percent) that report alienation from precisely that form of church?” How do they access the gospel if they reject this form of church? And what would church be life for them in their various settings? Because what is clear from the research in Australia, at least, is that when surveyed about what they think about the contemporary church growth expression of Christianity, the 85 percent range from being blasé (“good for them, but not for me”) to total repulsion (“I would never go there”). At best, we can make inroads on the blasé; we can’t hope to reach the rest of the population with this model – they are simply alienated from it and don’t like it for a whole host of reasons.” – p 37

“For Melbourne, where every third business has to do with food, and which has more cafes per capita than any other city in the world, we concluded that the missional church must seek to redeem the social pattern/rhythm of such spaces – reinvesting it with religious significance – and express what it means to be a people of God in a café-bar context.” – p 37

“How do we know we are being fruitful? With what measures will we as God’s people be weighed? How does God assess our effectiveness? (Is that not the inner meaning of judgment?) Because evidently he does (John 15:1-8; Revelation 1-3) and will (1 Peter 4:17) judge his people. – p 40

“A true encounter with God in Jesus must result in
• Worship, defined as offering our lives back to God through Jesus.
• Discipleship, defined as following Jesus and become increasingly like him (Christlikeness)
• Mission, defined as extending the mission (the redemptive purposes) of God through the activities of his people.” – 41

“But for us, the central failure lay primarily in our inability to “make disciples.” Our worship and mission were therefore enfeebled; they had no real foundations. I came to the horrifying conclusion that we had built much of SMRC on sand because we did not build it on discipleship (Matt 7:26).


Phase 3: From a Church to an Organic Movement

“We can’t seem to make disciples based on a consumerists approach to faith. We plainly cannot consume our way into discipleship.” – p 45

“We did transition the church over a two-year period by using a healthy model of change where all were invited to give feedback and participate. – p 48

Notes

My Note: The question here is “Where do you want to invest your relationships and your life?” The restaurant not to mention the classes would consume you, which would be ok if you and your family wanted to be consumed by it. The question is where and how do you invest your relationships to build outreach and discipleship?

My Note: Is he saying that for the foundation to be built on discipleship that the church must be built as an organic movement?

Podcast: The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch - INTRO

Download: Podcast Episode 8 - The Forgotten Ways Intro

If you right click on the sermon, then click "Save Target As", you can save the MP3 to your computer.

Our podcast discussion of The Present Future has ended, and we have decided to move into a discussion of The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch, which explores "reactivating the missional church" and explores the missional DNA which exists in all churches, planted there by the Holy Spirit.

I would love to have you in on the discussion. If you have any posts, comments, or questions about chapter 1 of The Forgotten Ways, leave them in the comments here or make a new post if you want. We will be recording the podcast on Thursday, Sept 11.

Here are my notes for the Intro:

The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch

Intro quotes

“I have to confess that I do not think that the inherited formulas will work anymore. And what is more, I know I am not alone in this view. There is a massive roaming of the mind going on in our day as the search for alternatives heats up. However, most of the new thinking as it relates to the future of Christianity in the West only highlights our dilemma and generally proposes solutions that are little more than revisions of past approaches and techniques. Even much of the thinking about the so-called emerging church leaves the prevailing assumptions of church and mission intact and simply focuses on the issue of theology and spirituality in a postmodern setting. This amounts to a reworking of the theological “software” while ignoring the “hardware” as well as “operating system” of the church. In my opinion, this will not be enough to get us through.” – p 17

And it’s not that reaching into our past is not part of the solution. It is. The issue is simply that we generally don’t go back far enough; or rather, that we don’t delve deep enough for our answers. Every now and again we do get glimpses of an answer, but because of the radical and disturbing nature of the remedy we retreat to the safety of the familiar and the controllable. – p 17

…missional ecclesiology is dynamite. Mainly because the church (the ecclesia), when true to its real calling, when it is on about what God is on about, is by far and away the most potent force for transformational change the world has ever seen. It has been that before, is that now, and will be that again. This book is written in hope that the church in the West can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, arouse and reengage that amazing power that lies within us. – p 17

Another feature of this work is the consistent critique of religious institutionalism. Because this could be unsettling to some, a word of clarification is needed to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings later on. I am critical of institutionalism not because I think it is a bad idea, but only because through my study of the phenomenal Jesus movements I have come to the unnerving conclusion that God’s people are more potent by far when they have little of what we would recognize as church institution in their life together. – p 23

Missional DNA (or mDNA) – Jesus is Lord, Disciple Making, Missional-Incarnational impuse, Apostolic Environment, Organic Systems, Communitas Not Community. – pp 24-25

Notes

Hirsch will explore this missional ecclesiology by examining the early church from AD 100 to AD 310 and the explosion of the Chinese church under intense oppression.

I have two criticisms of this book so far. One is the allusions to pop culture that “the power has been in us all along… we just didn’t know it.” I think it just plays to our arrogance. It may be true, but only as the Holy Spirit indwells us, each and every one of us. And Two, his use of academic terminology in the mDNA makes it hard to understand at a glance. I’m hopeful I can find clearer terms for his descriptions.

More Exponential Conference Podcasts

I listened to two more podcast interviews - one with Pastor Bob Roberts and the other with Pastor Andy Stanley. If you are looking for something to engage and challenge you, I would recommend both of these 30 minute interviews. Below are links and some notes. I think I'll listen to both of them again, and make further notes in comments.

Bob Roberts -- A few years ago, I actually felt some prompting from the Holy Spirit to seek this guy out. At the time, I knew nothing about him. And he has become very influential in my thinking.

I'll have to listen again but he said traditionally, we start with the gospel, find a church planter, start a church, and look for people to convert. But Biblically and what they do in the East (think China as opposed to Philadephia) is start with the gospel, find a disciple, engage their domain (work, family, ...), and then they see a conversion within that domain. Then they start churches because they have so many Christians rather than the other way around.

This doubled my desire to emphasize discipleship over anything else.

Andy Stanley - First, I appreciated his honesty about how his church started. (Roberts too. These guys didn't make their church starts sound like the immaculate conception as I've heard other pastors do.)

Stanley talked mostly about systems, though he didn't describe any specific system in their church. If you don't have systems, you can't multiply. I first heard about systems from Steve Ogne at a CMTC Bootcamp. I had not remembered ever hearing anything like that before. The idea of systems sounded too manipulative for my closer to postmodern ears. I didn't want to "funnel" anyone into anything. But after 15 years of experience, systems don't funnel, they give opportunity, and without them, people are confused.

Glenn Smith sat with me at Texas Roadhouse and wrote out on a 'Rate our Restaurant' card three systems that every church must have. I don't have the card in front of me so I may not be using his terminology.

<-------------Prospecting - Inviting Unchurched People --------->
<-------------Assimilating - Finding a place the new person --------->
<-------------Leadership Development --------->

People jump from one system to the next, though not everyone will of course. And churches that have become the most reproductive have learned that their leaders have to come out of the other systems or else they are sterile.

Stanley said his staff read "The Fifth Discipline" early on. Also the E-Myth.