Church Planting

Acts29 Boot Camp: San Diego

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I want to encourage any of you who are interested in planting a church, replanting/renewing a church, or just learning to be a better pastor or church leader to attend the Acts29 Boot Camp in San Diego.  There will be some really good guys speaking there including David Fairchild, Scott Thomas and Daniel Montgomery.  It's at Kaleo Church where my friend Drew Goodmanson is an elder.

My Acts29 Boot Camp experience was in Dallas last fall.  It sparked much conviction about my calling and direction in ministry.  It was also life-changing for my wife.  I highly recommend it.

Review: Breaking the Missional Code

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A couple of nights ago I finally finished Breaking the Missional Code, a new book by Ed Stetzer and David Putman.  I found it to be a worthy read and I wanted to offer a somewhat brief review of it.

I expected this to be a good intro to missional thinking.  I'm not sure that's what I'd call it.  I would call it a good intro to the outworking of some missional thinking.  It's not about the "missional code" but about "breaking" it.  That's why it's a book of stats, helpful stories, charts, and plenty of simple, practical ideas based on solid missional foundations. 

I must admit that I'm a little concerned that some guys who don't get missional theology could apply much of this book as church growth advice.  Joe Thorn seems to make similar observations.  It's hard to break the missional code if you don't get "missional."  So I wish the book had a little more space dedicated to something more foundational in explaining "missional." 

One of my favorite aspects of the book is the pervasive help concerning thinking on culture and contextualization.  The church should "spring forth out of the soil in which it is planted" (p 91).  "We must look for those cultural bridges to every people group, population segment, and cultural environment" called "redemptive analogies" (p 97).  All good stuff.

There's plenty on planting, on models and methods.  Lots of good questions on vision, networking, and readiness.

I really liked Chapter 12 on emerging networks.  It's mirrors much of what I've been personally desiring and encouraging among Southern Baptists.  They have recognized the backwards work of denominations and parachurch ministries and recommended a helpful approach to getting denominations thinking about their role in a healthier way.  My favorite advice is that denominational agencies need to "learn to 'dance' with other organizations."  Can I get a witness?

For me the chapter on the practices of leaders who break the code was crucial to the book.  Maybe it's just because of where I am and what I'm wrestling with in ministry, but it's very helpful nonetheless.  They said we need to ask the right questions of the right people to understand the culture we are in.  We must be willing to pay the price physically, emotionally and in so many other ways.  Getting culture and making an impact will take real risk.  According to the authors it will also take great teams, so leaders need to "inspire people to take overwhelming risk" (p 201).  We need focused visionaries who work on their churches and not just in it.  These are not just brief statements, but all thought out and explained.  Very helpful.

The absolute best thing to me about this book is you don't get through it and think there is one way to "do church."  It's a book about asking the right questions based on the right biblical principles and hopefully seeing an indigenous church raise up that reflects the culture in the right ways and is different than the culture in the right ways. 

When we talk about missional churches we are not referring to a certain form, expression, model, type, or category of church.  We are talking about a church that seeks to understand its context and come to express that understanding by contextualizing the gospel in its community.  Over time the church becomes an indigenous expression of the gospel within that culture, eventually removing all extrabiblical barriers.  The truest expression of this mission church is that is fully represents Christ in its context, maintaining biblical integrity so that gospel moves unhindered. (187-188)

I really enjoyed and recommend Breaking the Missional Code.  For biblical/theological foundations many of us will need Bosch, Guder, Newbigin, Van Gelder and others.  But for the how-to outworkings of missional theology, Breaking the Missional Code is very worthwhile and has already caused me to make some plans this summer to implement a few great ideas.  I see this book as mainly helpful for practitioners and those in training, but it is also the most accessible book for local church leaders.  May it find a wide readership.

Seattle: Thursday

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Okay, it's VERY late.  So this will be very short.  I may expand on some stuff later, and I don't claim to be able to make sense of stuff so late.

Smokin' guns, Tim Keller just rocked.  I'll explain this talk a bit, but the rest will be brief. 

Keller's third and last session was up first this morning, "Doing Justice."  Geez.  A friend said it was the highlight of the conference.  It certainly was one of the most important talks I've ever heard on ministry.  Keller described injustice as that which damages the fabric of shalom.  Shalom is the way things ought to be.  When the body is healthy, it has shalom.  All bits and pieces are harmonious.  So with culture, as the bits and pieces do well together, there is cultural/city/neighborhood shalom.  But when that fabric is damaged (as it always and often is) then we do justice, or reweave shalom.

Keller said that power has to be given to others if we are going to do anything good.  Our job is to enable flourishing.  We are born in certain circumstances we didn't look to be in.  People haven't asked to be where they are.  And Christians should give away power to those who don't have it as the work of justice.  Keller said that biblical righteousness is about being willing to disadvantage yourself for the advantage of the community.  His question for us: Does your city rejoice that your church is there?  If they don't then we aren't working justice.

Matt Chandler of The Village Church of Dallas was next.  I first heard Matt in Dallas last summer at Acts29, and he was great.  But today, it may have been the most important message I've heard.  I said Darrin Patrick's message was really good for me, and Matt's was like picking up where Darrin left off and pressing even harder toward Jesus.  I wrote in my notes: "I would gladly let Matt start again and say it all over again."  It was that good.

Eric Mason talked about reaching the hip-hop generation.  Good, solid stuff.  We heard a couple of rap songs.  Very interesting on contextualization.

Mark Driscoll batted clean-up by talking about the Gospel, the Cross, and mostly about penal substitution.  It was a "hot" talk, and he was pretty fired up.  Good, biblical stuff.

Last things...We were able to hang at the Driscoll house for 1 1/2 hours tonight with about a dozen other guys.  The conference audio should be online in a couple of weeks.  And please pray for our trip back.  We fly out at 2:30 central time.  It has been a great, great trip but we really miss our kids.

Seattle: Wednesday

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Mars Hill Values

What a great day in Seattle.  The temp was nice, the sun was out, and day two of the the Reform & Resurge conference was fantastic.  I'll go speaker by speaker with a few brief (it's really late and I'm really tired) comments.  All quotes are as exact as can be after trying to understand my fast and sloppy writing.  You may not understand the context of something, but consider yourself blessed for what you do understand. :)

First up, the second and final session taught by Ed Stetzer.  Much came from his new book Breaking the Missional Code (see Driscoll's new interview with Stetzer about his new books).  I won't give all the info, including a couple sets of lists.  But I will say the first list includes 10 shifts for moving people toward culture and the second includes steps to understanding culture.  Good stuff.  He also gave good advice on how to get beyond demographics in knowing culture. 

Josh Harris followed Stetzer and talked about a "humble orthodoxy."  It was very good.  I've heard Josh speak before and I always learn much from him.  He taught from 2 Timothy 2:14-26, 1. Teach the truth faithfully, 2. Live the truth faithfully, and 3. Represent the truth humbly. 

Quotes: "We are to avoid controversy that distracts people from the gospel."  "Living Truth becomes a living lie when we don't embody it ourselves."  "You should be suspicious when the voice in your head says, 'You don't need counsel on this decision.'"

Tim Keller gave the other two messages of the day.  The first was on "Being the Church in Our Culture."  He provided a paper/article for the talk.  Here's his six-fold model for the church relating to culture.  They can read as one sentence.

1. More Christians living long-term in cities
2. ...With a better understanding of the gospel
3. ...Living as dynamic counter-cultures in the city
4. ...Integrating their faith and their work
5. ...Radically committed to the good of the city as a whole
6. ...Contextualizing the Gospel message

Quotes: "Christians are to be alternate cities in every city."  "People in our churches need to understand the theological meaning of ordinary work." "We are taught how to raise up church leaders, not culture leaders."  "Christians are supposed to live in the city as a counter-culture, but are not supposed to take power."  "Unless you are radically like [the culture] and radically unlike [the culture], they are going to shrug."

Keller's second talk was on "Preaching the Gospel."  He said you can understand the Bible diachronically (through the story) or synchronically (topically).  Some new evangelicals try to focus on the former, older evangelicals on the latter, but both are needed.  He focused on the Gospel as the agent of change in both unbelievers and believers as it tears down our idols and leaves us with Jesus.

Dsc_0023 Both talks by Keller were excellent and well received.  I was able to ask about suburban/rural incarnational ministry during QnA, since he focused on urban ministry.  I was also able to talk with him after the last session.  He speaks again in the morning.

I had the chance to meet Mark Horne and Dan Cruver today, and shared lunch with several friends I mentioned yesterday plus Drew Goodmanson.  Drew is a great guy and an elder at Kaleo in San Diego who knows more about the internet than the founder, Al Gore.  I had a nice chat today with Shaun Garman of Red Sea Church in Portland.  Shaun is a godly young pastor who we first met at the Acts29 conference in Dallas last year.  I also had a brief 'hello, love your books' with Donald Miller after he showed up for Keller's first talk.

I've met several guys who recognized me from this blog and decided to say 'hi.'  I love making these sorts of connections, and many of these guys seem to find my blog because they are looking for Tim Keller resources.  One of those guys is Darren Larson from Wheaton, IL.  He only lives an hour from me but we meet for the first time in Seattle.  Strange world.  Check out his blog.

I failed to mention yesterday that I talked for some time with Scott Thomas, who has been the Acts29 replanting guy and is now heading up the whole dealio.  Very cool for everyone because Scott is a great guy.  He always listens like you are the most important guy in the world and has great penetrating questions and insights.  We hope to talk more with him tomorrow.  Read a great "replanting" article by Scott.

FYI, I believe the conference audio and video will be available for free at some point on the Resurgence site.  How cool is that?

Seattle: Tuesday

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The Reform & Resurge conference is on full force.  Three speakers today.  First was Darrin Patrick of The Journey Church in St. Louis.  Darrin is an SBC'r and a church planter with Acts29.  His talk was just perfect for me, exactly what I needed. 

He said that your biggest challenge in ministry is yourself.  He used James 1:1-4 to talk about how those who walk with God will be a mess because God wants to build our character through trials.  The process of going through trials is painful, but we need to focus on the product of trails not the pain of trails.  Why would we want to avoid trials when it's the trigger to God's power?

The second speaker was Anthony Bradley.  I didn't like it.  Seemed like a good guy with something to say, but he didn't get it out. 

The third speaker was Ed Stetzer, the church planting and church researcher with NAMB.  Great missional stuff.  He used Acts 17 to make four points.  1. Acknowledge spiritual questions in culture,  2. Understand culture, 3. Acknowledge the positive and rebuke the negative inside the culture, and 4. Proclaim Christ. 

Stetzer said that the HOW of ministry must be determined by the WHO, WHERE, and WHEN of culture, but that the church is currently answering questions that no one in the culture is asking.  The church has then become a culture in itself.  But what the church needs is to hold two truths in tension, that we mus be contending for the faith (Jude 3) and contextualizing by becoming all things to all men (1 Cor. 9). 

Great quote: "Preaching against culture is like preaching against somebody's house.  It's just where they live."

Second great quote: "The stumbling block of the cross has too often been replaced by the stumbling block of the church."  Most people aren't being recruited by other religions, they are being repelled by ours.

Today I was able to sit with Kevin Cawley and Brian Brown.  We had some discussion after the day ended with Kevin, Brian, Bruce Chant, Bill Streger, and Pete Williamson.  I also met a handful of other bloggers and blog readers.

Sidenote: I'm reading and planning to blog-review Stetzer's new book Breaking the Missional Code soon.  The book is about how Tom Hanks finds the code for missional theology in the glow of Thomas Kinkade paintings.  Okay, not really. But it's very good so far. 

Dsc_0033 For lunch we had it catered by a local barbeque restaurant, Porter's Place.  Wow, was it good.  We were told to be sure to "meet the man."  So we saw a guy who we figured was "the man" and asked if he was.  He said no but went and got "the man."  "The man" is no man, but one of the most powerful hot sauces I've ever experienced (and I've experienced a couple of very hot ones).   That's "the man" that I tasted a drop of on the toothpick (see pic).  Literally burned my mouth and made my eyes water for 15 minutes or more. 

Tomorrow, more Ed, Josh Harris (who I met tonight at the hotel), and Tim Keller.  It's gonna rock.  For now, the donger need sleep.  G'nite.  Oh!  And be sure to keep up with my Seattle pictures.

The Resurgence of Resurgence

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DriscollFrom Mark Driscoll...

The elders at Mars Hill Church, which I founded in 1996, have always been a big-hearted, kingdom-minded team of godly men who have given over 10 percent of our general budget to help church planters since our inception. Now, they have also agreed to give even more money to serve the greater church by launching The Resurgence ministry. This includes paying for the development of a massive website that will include thousands of free articles, audio and video podcasts, film reviews, music reviews, book reviews, and more. It also includes freeing up one of our elders, Gary Shavey, to serve as director of The Resurgence, and recently hiring Jon Krombein as the full-time content manager for the forthcoming website.

To kick The Resurgence off with a bang, we will launch the new website this spring, Zondervan will release my next book Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church in early May, and we will be hosting the Reform & Resurge Conference 2006 at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Below I’ll introduce each of the main speakers and give some reasons why you will not want to miss this event.

John Armstrong: Church in the City

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John Armstrong has a good post about his experience visiting City Church of San Francisco for a few days: "What is the Future of the Church in the City?"  Here's his final paragraph...

I will tell you plainly that I believeCity Church, under God’s grace and provision, has an incredible future. The way these pastors and people interact with the religious and civic leaders of this city, the way they continue to humbly learn and move toward a clearer missional vision, and the way they embrace and accept all people incarnationally, deeply impress me. If there is to be a strong and vibrant witness to Christ in the cities of America in the coming decades, especially among the rising young population that is flocking into many of our major cities, then I believe City Church San Francisco will be a major part of that kingdom growth. I look forward to seeing how God uses the friendships I enjoyed this weekend at City Church for the wider growth of Christ’s church in North America. This kind of weekend is what I live for in terms of my own call to ministry.

This explanation of the Gospel is from CCSF's site, and I've heard it from Tim Keller before...

The gospel is:

- you are more flawed and lost than you ever dared believe, yet
- you can be more accepted and loved than you ever dared hope at the same time, because Jesus Christ lived and died in your place.

Redeemer NYC: Getting Press

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Tim Keller's wife, Kathy, has an article in The Movement about "Missional Ministry in the Age of Media."  I think it's helpful.  I especially find this excerpt interesting...

Unwise use of publicity, interviews and relationship to the media.

As a result of a series of unpleasant experiences, Redeemer Presbyterian Church has forged the following media policy:

We do not provide interviews or participate in stories; we do not desire publicity that will raise our profile. This policy exists for these reasons:

1. Anything that raises Redeemer's profile pulls Christians out of their own churches to visit or join us. This is a bad neighbor policy; the City needs many different churches, not one big mega-church, something we are going to great pains to avoid becoming.

2. If Redeemer becomes a “Christian tourist destination," our limited seating will be filled with those who already believe in Jesus, leaving no room for genuine seekers. We are already turning people away at one service, and seating is tight at others. Therefore, we do not want any publicity that would fill our seats with curious believers.

3. Redeemer would prefer that seekers come as the result of relationship (i.e., they are accompanying a friend who is then available to discuss things with them following the service.) To come into a church like Redeemer is not an easy thing, and although publicity might result in a few non-believer walk-ins, we would prefer there to be none at all.

4. Redeemer’s message is nuanced and non-political. We want to present the gospel and have people make up their minds about whether Jesus is God or not, rather than convincing them to espouse a point of view about this or that hot-button issue. Since this is somewhat different than the approach of some other evangelical churches, we don’t want to say or do anything that would give the impression that we fit into the storyline that the media currently has about evangelicals. This would tend to obscure and falsify our real message.

The problem is that while publicity alerts people who are trying to find a church like yours to your existence, it also alerts those who find your presence alarming. This can have an immediate negative effect on your rental arrangements (if your landlord does not wish to be identified with a church with your doctrinal commitments, or if he or she merely wishes to avoid a potentially controversial situation.) It can also affect the lease agreements of other churches in your area, which will suffer along with you if permission to rent in schools, for instance, is revoked.

Publicity also allows people to find you who are discontented with their own churches and who hope to find a church they can influence so that it suits their needs. These folks are a thorn in the side of any church planter trying to keep a clear vision of the Gospel before the world. And some people, of course, are just perennial malcontents, unable to be satisfied with any church, hopping from congregation to congregation, leaving a wake of destruction behind them.

The Movement: Recommended Books

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Keller: Ministry in Global Cities Pt. III

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Tim Keller continues his thoughts on ministry in world cities with his newly released article "Ministry in the New Global Culture of Major City-Centers Part III."

City-center churches should have as equal as possible emphases on: a)welcoming, attracting, and engaging secular/non-Christian people; b) character change through deep community and small groups; c) holistically serving the city (and especially the poor) in both word and deed; d) producing cultural leaders who integrate faith and work in society; and e) routinely multiplying itself into new churches with the same vision. There are many churches that major on one or two of these but the breadth, balance, and blend of these commitments is rare in a church. Nevertheless, this balance is crucial for ministry in city centers.

Here are the links to Part I and Part II, and Part IV is coming soon.  Also stop by my Tim Keller Resource page.

Pastoring and Planting

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I'm re-listening through some of Keller's online sermons and talks.  You can find them on my Tim Keller Resources page.  Whether you are pastoring (like me), planting a church or a church leader, Tim Keller's talk on church planting, "Why to Plant Churches," is very helpful.   I really like how he explains the value of new churches, not only as a way of effective evangelism, but also as a way to strengthen established churches in the area.  Check it out.

Story About Tim Keller in NYT

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In today's New York Times there is a story about Tim Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian called "Preaching the Word and Quoting the Voice".  Great stuff.  Some excerpts...

Dr. Keller "has grasped the strategic significance of the city, of theurban culture and the need to engage that very diverse culture at every level," he said. "Our culture is urban-driven."

[...]

Observing Dr. Keller's professorial pose on stage, it is easy to understand his appeal. While he hardly shrinks from difficult Christian truths, he sounds different from many of the shrill evangelical voices in the public sphere. "A big part is he preaches on such an intellectual level," said Suzanne Perron, 37, a fashion designer who is one of many who had stopped going to church before she discovered Redeemer several years ago. "You can go to Redeemer and you can not be a Christian and listen to that sermon and be completely engaged."

[...]

An important lesson that Dr. Keller said he had tried to convey to other pastors is that the hard sell rarely works in the city. Becoming a Christian in a place like New York, he said, is more often the product not of one decision but of many little decisions.

"One decision might be Christianity is more relevant than I think," he said. "Or, here's two Christians that I don't think are idiots."

[...]

His church's main goal, Dr. Keller said, is to teach pastors how to truly love the city, rather than fear its worldly influences. Unlike many evangelicals, Dr. Keller advocates an indirect approach to change.

"If you seek power before service, you'll neither get power, nor serve," he said. "If you seek to serve people more than to gain power, you will not only serve people, you will gain influence. That's very much the way Jesus did it."

Tim's son, Jonathan, has commented on the article...

Redeemer does not aspire to fame. In fact, Redeemer did not want the article done but the journalist was going to do it whether or not Redeemer helped him to write it. And what better way to make sure there are less errors in reporting than to participate? So there it is in the Times. Hopefully it does not have an harmful repercussions. Redeemer is happy to fly under the radar of the majority.

For more from Keller, visit my list of Tim Keller resources.

(HT on the NYT article: Chris Giammona)