Exponential Conference 2010

My friend Tom Toner asked me my thoughts on the conference I just attended. I thought it might be worth reposting them here.

Tom,

The conference is refreshing. It gives me time to stop and ponder and listen to thoughtful speakers spur my imagination.

That being said, it was a weird collection in some ways. Several speakers seemed to have attained all they wanted to attain and now hated it. Two examples are Francis Chan and Matt Chandler. Chan has become a very popular speaker and wrote the book Crazy Love. Chandler planted a church with Chris Tomlin as his worship leader so duh, people loved the worship.

They both planted churches, crowds showed up, people loved their churches, and now they want to do something that feels more dangerous and real, like helping poor people. There was a powerful feeling from the organizers (my impression at least) that this was really, really wonderful. And it is... But there is still that feeling of we want to accomplish the success first (lots of people, lots of adoration) and then we will listen to those guys say we should help the poor.

On the other hand, they did have Shane Claiborne speak, who is a Tennessee boy who now lives in a Philadelphia commune in a slum area, who said, "Don't plant churches! Well, ok, plant a church, but live there for 5 years first. And maybe instead of starting a new church, go to a church that is already there." People think that is really cool and admirable, but the church planters at Exponential aren't going to do that. So why did they bring Claiborne in? To challenge our thinking a bit, but not to channel us down that path. To give a shout out to the crazy Jesus lovers, but not to give up the need for a trailer to store all your portable church planting stuff and to hire a payroll company to do all your payroll (these were a few of the sponsors of the event).

It's almost like they (the organizers) have one hand on the golden goal of a big successful church and one on what it would look like for the church to be a dynamic wildfire spread. The breakout speakers all had churches over 1000 in attendance (I didn't check every bio so I could be wrong.) And I'll sinfully admit I want the same thing.

For example, I'm listening to Alan Hirsch say the problem with the Western Church is that it isn't easily reproducible. So he and his partner speaker said, "Here's a model of a reproducing church. It doesn't have services necessarily. But each time a person is baptized, they are an ordained minister. They look for people who are open to God and share the Gospel with them. They share a one page list of what it means to obey Jesus. And they start doing life together. Repeat."

A young man sitting in front of me explained to his friend, "Yeah, and then the theology becomes so messed up as it's passed around without enough explanation and thoroughness. Bad idea."

I suppose that is most of our problems. We each have something we think is essential that won't fit on one page or easily reproduce, and we won't give it up for the good of the Kingdom of God. It's either doctrine or style of music or preaching style or building needs or financial compensation standards or whatever it is. Hirsch says, "Get over all that and let God spread like wildfire."

One breakout I was really excited about was talking about reproducing leaders. I'm under the conviction that this is the single most important thing I am not currently doing and that it would change everything. Scott Hodge (www.scotthodge.org), a young pastor who helped his dad transition an older Assembly of God church in Aurora, IL spoke well on the subject of transition and leadership. He described exactly what I hope to do... except... I asked what size was your church when you started this leadership training. His answer? 600-700. What does that mean for our church of 80-100? He said, "Do it anyway." (Again all the speakers were pastors of huge churches.)

I waited around after the breakout to make a phone call, and a guy named Patrick Grach (www.lifehousechurcheast.org, which may be the coolest site I've ever seen) grabbed me (he's pretty intense though he didn't actually touch me) and told me how he does leadership development and what might work more at our size church. He said to do the same amount of preparation (in other words, prepare as much for this as you do to preach) and then take potential leaders out to breakfast early morning every other week and see how they respond. That was the most helpful thing I heard because he brought it down to my size level (which just happens to be the most common size church in America).

Pastor Brian Miller
The Crossover Church (www.thecrossover.org)
New Life for Haiti (www.newlifeforhaiti.org)
Midwest Church Planting

2009 Exponential Conference

I spent the last three days in sunny Orlando Florida. Several CGGCers were there, including Ed Rosenberry (who I only saw at dinner... could he have been at Disney World the rest of the time? :) -- a joke). Thanks to Midwest CGGC for paying for me and one of my leaders to go.

Here are some quotes from the conference I wrote down. They may not be exact quotes. I wrote them down as I heard them.

Erwin McManus

"The church is scared to death of reality." -- Erwin McManus

"Jesus Christ died in the most heroic act anyone has ever done and then asks us to live our most heroic lives." -- Erwin McManus

"The gospel of the traditional American church is the most narcissistic story in our society." -- Erwin McManus (He was speaking of the "I'm a sinner. Jesus died for me. I get to go to heaven if I say I'm sorry.)

McManus said he almost cut his ties with Christianity (at least with organized Christianity) a couple of years ago when he was labeled a heretic for going into the "Marketplace" and discussing Jesus such as Paul did at Mars Hill. He would rather cut ties with organized Christianity than feel any limitation to sharing the gospel.

Alan Hirsch

Alan Hirsch defined what Missional is not.
-Not emerging church
-not simply being evangelistic
-not just social justice
-not church planting

"The church doesn't have a mission. The mission has a church." -- Alan Hirsch

Hirsch spoke of prevenient grace as the ability for our church to participate in mission.

Tri Robinson

"Vision is being who God made you to be and doing what he told you to do." -- Tri Robinson

Bob Roberts

Bob Robert's Ten Things to Learn from the Church Around the World

1. Gospel of the Kingdom of God -- not just the Gospel of Salvation

2. The Gospel encompasses the reconciliation of all things.

3. The focus is on the disciple not the preacher.

4. All religions are all places which makes for a naked public square and thoughtful communication.

He spoke of meeting with muslim and communist leaders all over the world and gaining access to share the gospel by invitation rather than by secrecy.

"Christianity started as a Jewish movement to Jesus. It will end as a Muslim movement to Jesus" -- Bob Roberts

5. Knowing other religions isn't just for experts but for everyone who would communicate who Jesus is.

6. Risk is seen in life and death not nickels and noses.

7. Never, never, never, never vilify another religion.

He didn't finish the ten but they can be found at glocal.net

Bob is always my favorite speaker. I could listen to him for hours. His books don't have the same effect at all unfortunately.

Neil Cole

Weeds in the Garden of Leadership

1. Institutionalism -- elevate institution as only institution doing God's work.
-Over 50% of Christian leaders will not finish well. Their calling became a career.

2. Corruption of Leadership -- the desire for power, fame (being liked by everyone), possessions, or pleasure

3. Legalism -- Protecting the powerful -- non-biblical traditions become equal to God's commands

4. Still in the Dark Ages - contributing to ignorance in an age of scholarship (keeping the Word out of the hands of the people. you do it more than you think.)

5. Bound by Chain of Command -- we're a mess from top to bottom

"Make everybody a disciple of Jesus so they will fall short of Jesus. If you make them your disciple, they will only fall short of you." -- Neil Cole

Efrem Smith

"What was it that disturbed you when you decided to plant a church? You can't live in disturbance. If you live angry, you will be dysfunctional, but that disturbance should continue to be at the core of your vision." -- Efrem Smith

"If you study the roots of most things (Hip Hop Culture for example), you will find "God Thoughts." -- Efrem Smith

Two Keys to turn white churches multi-cultural
1. Preach the Bible as a multi-culturally strong document.
2. United by Faith -- the measurements for multi-cultural church are not as high as you think. Dominate group is not more than 80%.

Francis Chan

"You wouldn't read the Bible and think, 'I need a building, a band, a sermon, and a room for the kids to have church.'" -- Francis Chan

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.

Missional Church Network

Brad Brisco left a link for the Missional Church Network. I thought I would give it a little more prominence and embed the Hirsch video found there.