Category Archives: Community Groups

August 14, 2012 · 12:00 pm

Entering into Missional Community Messiness

Last week I intended to complete this small series on missional community messiness that every community will face. Last Tuesday, I focused on the 3 bad and 3 good reasons missional communities get messy and today will be about engaging this messiness.

Engaging vs. Ending the Missional Community

Many people would prefer to simply end the missional community and then move on to the next one when messiness arises. While that seems like an easy solution, it doesn’t address the root issues that will eventually repeat themselves and it doesn’t model the gospel of Jesus Christ at all.

The gospel of Jesus Christ informs us that Christ came to us specifically because we were a mess and his love for us compelled Him to enter into our world. He then took our mess on Himself on the cross, enduring the punishment our mess caused so that we wouldn’t have to face it. In His resurrection, we have hope that our mess can be addressed and transformed. God did not end the world, but sought to redeem it through Jesus.

This gives us hope when we find that our missional communities are messy and dealing with challenges.

Engaging the Bad Messiness Through a Missional Reset

Bad messiness in missional communities is the result of undefined or unshared leadership which usually leads to unclear vision and direction so the community lacks mission and is no longer seeing new people added to their community.

The best way to address these issues is to have a missional community reset. Take a few consecutive weeks to redefine the intent and direction as a community. This involves the leaders developing their general vision and then inviting the community to speak into the overall direction. (I plan on elaborating on developing a collective vision in the coming weeks.) Spend time as a community bringing to light the dysfunction. This freedom to face dysfunction comes from the gospel because we don’t have to pretend perfection; the gospel shows us our imperfection. This allows us to embrace our weaknesses, bring them to the community and address them collectively.

There may be natural times to do this like the beginning of a new season of community groups or it may need to be done in the middle of the season so the messiness won’t continue. The aim of the community to embody Jesus in His holy life and compassionate action needs to be clear or the community will sacrifice one while embracing the other which is unsustainable.

This missional community reset provides the arena for the community to share their desires for change and invite full engagement in the future direction together. Despite this messiness being a result of bad leadership, it is easier and quicker to address than the good messiness.

The Good Messiness Requires the Long-Suffering Love of God

Confession & Transformation

When the gospel sinks deep into the lives of people in community, they begin to share long-term struggles they wish would go away. These can often be tremendously challenging and habitual issues that require long-term care from the community. If we are honest with ourselves, we’d prefer not to long-suffer with people when there is no end in sight, but nothing can convey the love of God like long-suffering with others for transformation.

Jesus redeems us from our sin by faith (theology term: justification), but also promises to make us more like Him over the course of our lives (sanctification) until death when we fully become like Jesus in the life everlasting (glorification). That’s a long process, but God chooses to use His people to help us through that and the community that assists one another through trials, struggles, tragedies, and transformation from sin will know a depth of the gospel love of God that others don’t. Throughout this process they will also proclaim to the world that the power and love of God is greater than the mess of this life.

Raw Questions from Exploring & Potential Believers

A community that can endure the raw and messy details of life will likely find themselves faced with people exploring Christianity or new believers who have genuine questions about how faith shapes the world that will be incredibly challenging. We all want easy black and white questions and answers, but most raw questions deal with questions about Christianity’s encounter with our current culture.

This is when issues of sexuality, work and faith, theological convictions that separate faiths, and Christian values conflict with the norms of culture. In some cases, the missional community leader won’t know the answer and that’s ok, as long as they join the community in seeking the answer together. In other cases, the answer will confront the norms of the lives in the community that are shaped by the culture instead of Christ.

We’re not comfortable with this type of confrontational grace (though some are too comfortable with confrontational culture wars) that extends love by way of truth presented with gentleness.  I recently had a conversation where “all the cards were put on the table” and the disagreement was clear, but the result was not separation and end of friendship. The result was a continued commitment to explore these ideas together. I was very encouraged by that and I have seen the same thing occur in a number of our communities.

Each missional community can create a gospel-centered culture where rawness is embraced over always being right. It’s challenging, but it reflects the work of Jesus in our own lives, as God peels back layers little by little to reveal His desires for our lives over our own.

Inter-Generational & Racially Diverse Convergence

The church community can unfortunately be more segregated than the rest of the world. It was not supposed to be as evidenced by the scriptures speaking of a gospel that reconciles beyond age and race. For the missional community to seek to be gospel-centered in a way that embraces diversity, the community must be aware that diversity brings its own challenges. Our unspoken preferences can often be shaped by our culture, race, and age in ways that we have not confronted or acknowledged.

Living with a community of people dissimilar to you in life circumstances, but similar because of Jesus will bring these things to light. Embracing diversity allows us to see the beautiful design of God in culture, age, and race that fully magnify Him with their uniqueness over sameness. There may be times when conflicts arise, but letting the grace of God that is extended to us in Jesus guide our response will lead to a healthier community. The wisdom and strength of a diverse community speaks powerfully of the gospel of Jesus Christ to move beyond preferences and maintain God’s glory as the goal.

Every Missional Community will face messy seasons, but the gospel of Jesus Christ defines our response so that our community can continue to proclaim the good news of Jesus to the world.

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July 5, 2012 · 11:57 am

Summertime for Missional Communities

We are in the midst of the summer here in NYC, as evidenced by the inescapable heat. Summer starts a little later in NYC than other areas of the country due to a school end date in late June. Similarly, our city has a summer rhythm of life that slows down just a little and enjoys the season immensely.

Churches in the summertime typically mirror this summer rhythm of slowing down, enjoying summer fun, and being less programmed as many people in the church take vacations. While missional communities are not a church program, each church must consider how they encourage and lead their communities or small groups to approach the summer.

How should missional communities function in the summer?

Finding Rest through More Fun & Less Formal Activity

I’ve known many churches who take a break from small groups during the summer, but that communicates that community and mission are seasonal activities and goes against the grain of scriptures description of Christian community. The break has good intentions to provide rest, but it does not help the community develop ongoing healthy rhythms of rest that can be woven into their community during the summer season.

Summer provides time to be less formal in our interaction and participate in the relaxed activities that function naturally as community creators and opportunities for extending the gospel of Jesus Christ. Encouraging communities to view this summer with the intent of finding rest while not sacrificing gospel activity will help them become a community on mission in the everyday.

Approaching the summer with the hope of extending the gospel can also be a way to experience rest. Throughout the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, the Sabbath (day of rest) often plays a predominant role in Jesus’ healing and teaching activities. On the day of rest, Jesus found rest through extending the peace of His love and establishing rest for others.

We encourage our community group leaders to invite others to plan fun activities and social events from their communities so they can take a break from being the initiators of their community. This becomes an invitation to shared leadership amongst the community, inviting all to be contributors to the health of the community.

Summer is a time for more fun and this can teach us that missional communities were intended to also be fun communities.

Finding Mission in Natural Ways

I mentioned this above, that the summer provides some natural activities that can be infused with the mission of extending the grace and love of Christ. Our communities need to approach their summer fun with an eye toward including neighbors, family, and co-workers, instead of just fellow Christians, to learn that mission can happen on the beach, at the pool, and around the grill just as much as on a short-term mission trip.

Here in New York, I watch missionary teams come from all over the country with similarly colored t-shirts and a catchy bible verse on the back to hang out tracks, host camps, and do other “missionary” activity. While these could be good ways to make people aware of Jesus, they are not natural. It’s not natural to spend hundreds of dollars, look awkward, and do abnormal things in a city that is not your home.

When the gospel of Jesus Christ shapes the way we approach life, it can be normal to talk about your regular life (now shaped by your faith) over a meal, at the pool, and while hosting a backyard BBQ. Missional communities can enter into the rhythm of their city during the summer, participate in the neighborhood’s activities and find themselves cultivating friendships where life and the worldview that shapes it can be discussed.

The hope for missional communities in the church is for the community of Christ followers to be living this way throughout the year and the summer provides an easy learning ground to teach us outside of a classroom.

Finding Vision for a Fall Re-Launch

The summer season also provides a time to celebrate what God has done in the community over the past year. I find these is so much to celebrate in all the community groups at our church over this past year and unfortunately it usually takes times of slowing down to reflect and recognize all that has happened. The summer is a season of celebration that can provide great excitement for future motivation.

As each Community Group pursues the gospel shaping their summer fun, they are inadvertently preparing their community for a fall re-launch. Cultivating a community that enjoys one another and has a view towards welcoming others into it.

The summer is meant for us to be refreshed by having fun, but it can teach us to make this type of fun activity a community rhythm even when the formal schedules of school, busy season at work, and a busier church calendar begin to vie for our time in the fall. Of course, you could also use it to take a break from doing anything and you may find rest, but you might also cultivate a lifestyle where rest means escaping and disengaging. I’m not suggesting that you never simply stop, there needs to be time where things merely lie dormant. At the same time, rest was intended to be implemented into a weekly rhythm and not just a yearly break.

Missional communities need to enjoy their summer and find rest, but rest does not always have to be absent from the family of God or the mission of God (not that they should be separated).

Enjoy your summer, it’s the only way to find rest.

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June 7, 2012 · 12:15 pm

To Lead Well, Align Well

As my wife and I were preparing to have our first son, Eli, we had to make decisions about our vehicles. The plan was to sell the ’96 red Ford Mustang she had purchased in high school and to purchase a mom-mobile sedan and keep the Xterra I had been driving since college. Unfortunately, the Xterra was totaled when a racing vehicle on the highway that eventually fled the scene hit us. We were fine, but the Xterra was done and we replaced it with the mom-mobile sedan.

This meant that I inherited the ’96 Ford Mustang, every young professional’s dream. Unfortunately the Mustang wasn’t in the best shape being as old as it was. The tires consistently wore out quickly and had to be replaced, the battery connections rendered multiple batteries useless, the radiator tapped out over time, and the odometer stopped working at 95,789 miles.

One of the major problems it had was an alignment problem. When I would take my hands off the wheel it would veer away from the direction I was traveling. This started off as a small issue, I only had to overcorrect on the wheel slightly, but it kept getting worse. This not only affected driving straight, it caused the tires to wear out even quicker and became a costly repair.

I’ve seen this same type of alignment issues and affects inside communities that I’ve led and I’ve seen others lead. The leader may have a clear direction of where the community or small group is supposed to go, but if the entire community is not aligned it could eventually be a costly fix to re-align.

Leading well in missional communities, community groups, or whatever you term small groups, requires that there is clear alignment and direction through the life of the community.

Align at the Start through Vision Casting & Collaboration
Every Ford Mustang was supposed to built with accurate alignment to drive straight when the wheel was straight and to adjust as the wheel directed. There can always be a design or direction for anything at the start. If there is no vision or direction in a Community Group, it will falter from the beginning since it lacks a purpose.

For every new leader, we ask them to think through how their community will embody our core values of Gospel Enjoyment, Intentional Community and Prayerful Mission. Their first official meeting as a community is centered on casting this vision and forming it with the rest of the group.

The unique nature of a missional community that seeks to share leadership is that the leader both casts vision and collaborates on vision.

The leader spends time considering their neighborhood and the people in the community to see how this group will truly embody the core values. This allows the leader to cast vision for what they sense needs to happen as a community. As they cast the vision to the community, they seek input from the rest of the group in order to solidify the vision.

This type of collaboration enables every person in the community to take ownership as they form a unified vision. The leader casts the vision based on the community values and the community forms the vision into practicals that shape how the community will function in seeking to accomplish the vision.

Alignment is most easily set at the beginning, as this enables you to identify when things are in need of realignment. When the community is drifting away from the aims that have been set. Realignment assumes there has been initial direction and alignment.

Maintaining Alignment
Just as every car has regular check-ups to make sure it is functioning appropriately and that includes the car alignment, each community will need regular alignment checks. A leader has the responsibility to assess each new idea or activity to see if it is in line with the direction set by the community.

A community group will certainly evolve over time, but the principle aims for the a gospel-centered community on mission do not shift much. The practicals can either reinforce the alignment or begin to take the community off course.

I had a meal recently with leaders who were discussing the future of their community and identifying the current state of their community. The leaders recognized the health of the community in their care for one another, but also saw the need for the future to be more about extending their gracious community to other people. It was so encouraging to hear these leaders recognize their long-term aims, to celebrate where the community was meeting them, but also to humbly recognize and hopefully seek the change the group needed.

This type of reflection is essential for leaders in maintaining alignment.

Realignment Conversations
In a functioning community, there will be some level of disagreement along the way. Some people in the group will only be around for aspects of the community life, but will avoid others. There will be some people who completely disagree and don’t like the community’s direction.

As beautiful as it would be for the dissident to come and discuss their disagreements, in nearly every circumstance it is up to the leader to initiate these conversations. The leader has the responsibility to pursue those in the community who only participate partially and to pursue those in obvious disagreement.

Leadership cannot be passive because the gospel of Jesus Christ is not passive. God is actively seeking and pursuing people to align with His ways. A leader impacted and guided by the gospel moves toward those in need of realignment, they do not simply tolerate them.

These conversations need to happen privately with the aim of winning the person and not the argument. This requires a leader that loves well by listening. This could be a huge opportunity for the community to change and the person in disagreement may have specific gifts that reveal where the community is lacking a full gospel understanding.

When it’s time to sell the car
Over the life cycle of a missional community, it may grow to a point where there are significant differences in alignment throughout the group. It may mean realignment is needed or it may be time to move on altogether. A leader will need to discern if the community is developing multiple directions that would lead to a healthy and beneficial multiplication.

In these instances attempting to maintain alignment will actually be destructive and hinder the mission of God through your community. A handful of the community could develop a passion to display the gospel through mission in a different way that isn’t a complete departure from the aims, but will be expressed differently. Multiplying the community into new expressions will be the best way to start over with new alignment and direction to pursue a healthy community on a healthy mission for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Aligning well as a leader is not an easy task, but leading well requires that every lead identify and seek to maintain the direction and vision of the community. The best leaders won’t simply have the best vision, but will have the clearest community vision. This vision is based on the direction of God from His scriptures to embody the gospel through a loving community faced outward to the world. This gospel-centered vision is worth the effort to seek collective alignment to join in God’s loving mission.

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June 6, 2012 · 10:06 am

To Lead Well, Share Well

I was meeting with a leader of one of our Community Groups who was exhausted. He was ready to give up, discouraged by the lack of participation from the rest of the community and felt like he was doing too much. He thought the best answer was to quit leading and end the Community Group. After a good conversation over lunch, it became clear that one of the biggest issues facing the Community Group was that he was trying to lead everything. This seemed counterintuitive to him and to most of us. “If I’m the leader, shouldn’t I be leading everything?”

The biggest issue I see in leadership is hoarding responsibility. It comes from a great place, but does not serve the leader, nor does it serve those being led. It burns out leaders, frustrates those being led and rarely mobilizes or develops other leaders.

This is a major issue for gospel-centered communities on mission. To lead well, leaders must share well. Leadership is not about doing everything, being the superhero who plans every event, meets with every person, or finds every opportunity for mission for the community.

Leading like Christ leads us takes an empowering approach, especially to a community. This kind of leadership reflects the gospel of Jesus Christ. Believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ requires people to believe that we have flaws and only Christ was truly perfect in every way and sphere of life. A leader who is a follower of Christ does not assume that they can do everything the community or group needs accomplished.

Missional communities desperately need leaders who humbly seek to share responsibility for leading the community. The question we need to answer is why do we typically hoard leadership?

We View it as Scriptural Expectation

For many of us, we view this type of leadership as very scriptural. Aren’t we supposed to lead like Christ? Doesn’t this mean we sacrifice most and take on most responsibility, not demanding from others? This is a view of leadership doesn’t think a leader is ever supposed to share responsibility.

The good news for every leader: they are not Jesus Christ. Christ alone could fully embody every perfect gift and bear the burden of us all. The scriptures that follow Christ’s life, death, and resurrection point the need for communal leadership that seeks to empower every Christ follower for the work of ministry.

This is the point of passages in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4 that speak to the reality we see everyday. We are all gifted uniquely, which leads us to need one another to accomplish the mission that God has placed in front of us. We cannot do this alone and the community can lead through individuals taking leadership in a variety of ways.

This how the scriptures speak of leadership and how it is demonstrated for us in the stories of the Bible. A community led by a community of people.

We Fear Losing Control

For some of us, if we’re honest, we fear losing control of the outcome. This could be born out of fearing that quality will suffer or that it won’t get done or done perfectly.

The gospel of Jesus Christ can free us from this. Christ’s gospel reminds us that we couldn’t accomplish salvation on our own and we were in need of Jesus to do it right for us. It frees us from thinking so highly of ourselves that we think we need to do everything or it won’t be done well.

Quality tends to suffer most when people hoard leadership most. Sharing leadership may result in a dip in quality, but part of good leadership is coaching and empowering those you share with to better than you were.

This sounds that a nice ideal, but it may actually be what is preventing us from sharing leadership in the first place.

We Fear Others Being Better Than Us

There are some leaders who don’t share responsibility and if they were really honest, would admit that some of it has to do with fear of others doing it better than them.

When we look at Jesus and His leadership, once again we are encouraged to move beyond this fear and make it a hope. Jesus says that His disciples will do greater things than what they saw Him do. He didn’t have a fear that they would accomplish more and do greater things, it was His hope and plan! Isn’t that amazing?

We see this same mentality in Barnabas in the book of Acts. If you follow the story of Barnabas, you see that he was the one who took a risk on Paul and discipled him. Over time Acts tells the story of how the discipler (Barnabas) takes a back seat to the disciple (Paul).

Great leaders don’t fear others being better than them, they aim for it. Sharing leadership can be the best way to empower and develop leaders that will take the community to greater places. It will redefine success for leaders who tend towards wanting credit and seeking glory, to wanting the same for others.

Leader who seek the glory can tend towards using people to get their own ends, instead of being for people, wanting greatness for those they lead.

We Don’t Know How

For others, and specifically for the Community Group leader I had lunch with, they don’t know how to share leadership.

Over lunch, we discuss the various aspects of his Community Group. They were seeking to be a healthy missional community. A community that prayed and discussed the scriptures together, ate meals together, served together, had accountability and incorporate non-Christ followers into the community. The main problem was that he was the only one initiating all of these things.

After discussing the people in his community and what they are passionate about in the community or naturally gifted in, it became apparent that the next step in his leadership development was to help them and given them ownership.

The first step in sharing leadership is personal invitation as opposed to mass messages of requesting help. This means identifying the potential gifts of those in the community, encouraging them in those gifts and personally asking them to use their gifts for the benefit of the community.

I encouraged the leader to work with them to get started and follow up with them after they began leading, but then to give them the freedom to lead. Eventually, a leader has to move from directing to coaching to fully trusting those with whom they share leadership.

The biggest transformation that takes place through shared leadership is the death of a consumer community and the birth of a contributing community. An entire community that seeks to contribute to the overall health of the missional community based on the gifts God has given them.

Only when this happens can the community truly display Jesus to one another and their neighborhood.

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June 5, 2012 · 11:02 am

To Lead Well, Pray Well

Continuing what has become a series of posts on leading missional communities, those who lead well also pray well. While this is primarily about missional communities, I see this in my own life when it comes to my marriage, family, work, or anything I’m in charge of, the more I consider these things in prayer and declare my dependence on God in prayer, the better leader I am for those things.

A praying leader builds a prayerful community. Jesus’ instructions to His disciples when He had compassion the crowds and saw their needs, was to pray. The typical thought of the leader of a missional community is to rush hard into meeting needs, but Jesus’ call to us is to pray, seeking God who has the power to change the world.

As I consider prayer’s affect on leadership, I see its influence in 2 predominant ways.

 1.    Prayer Changes The Leader Who Prays Often

The Pattern of Praying Leaders in Scripture

In the story of Daniel in the Old Testament, we find a leader who is under authority that does not honor God. He faithfully serves the country and his authority, but also faithfully prays. Daily he seeks God and it becomes such a pattern that when his heart is burdened by needs as it is in Daniel 9, his first impulse is to pray and God responds.

You see the same reality in the story of Nehemiah. A leader who is burdened for those he loves and his first response is prayer. In the midst of his daily work, you see this leader pray and God provide for him in prayer.

It’s no surprise then that Christ follows the same pattern of seeking God privately and also publicly in the midst of everyday life. Prayer is not something only reserved for the closet and is not something only reserved for the midst of everyday life. The apostles and Paul in his letters continue to pray for those they lead.

It transforms them as leaders, bringing them in line with God’s heart for others and bringing them in dependence on the power of God, not their own strength.

To Be a Praying Leader, Pray for Others

All of these mentioned spend much of their time praying for other people. It’s fascinating to look at the prayers recorded in scripture, to see many of them follow a similar pattern of thankfulness to the character of God and asking for God’s work in others.

Leaders who pray selflessly, fixed on God providing for others become the selfless leader the community needs. Daniel & Nehemiah pray for the restoration of the nation of Israel, Jesus prays for his disciples and those who believe in Him. Paul prays for the churches he helped start. These men all have personal needs, found them met in God and spent their prayers asking for God to meet the needs of others.

Not surprisingly, they become the best models for leadership because they sacrificially serve those they lead. This is the result of praying well.

2.    Prayer Invites God to Change Those You Lead

The content of the prayers recorded in scripture show the belief of the leader in the power of God to change any situation and any person.

Daniel believed in the power of God to change an entire nation to return to following God. Nehemiah believed in the power of God to restore the city where God’s people lived. Jesus knew the power of God to establish His followers in His ways and His joy. Paul believed in the power of God to reveal His goodness to His people and to move them to know and follow Him with their lives.

Leaders can easily become prideful thinking they are the ones with the power. This is usually quickly dispelled by their inability to change people or situations on their own. The counter to the prideful leader is the dependent leader, who trusts not in their own power, but entrusts their efforts to God through prayer.

God has recorded many prayers for us in the Bible that teach us how to pray. As leaders, we must recognize that God has given us direction in prayer, it is not focused inward, it is focused upward in praise to God and outward in requesting great things for others from God.

A prayerful community can change the world because it is a community dependent on the power of God to change the world. Their prayers change them into selfless people seeking the welfare of those around them and not seeking the provision of their wish list.

Leaders have the opportunity to join in God’s efforts, to develop God’s heart, and to see God answer our prayers. The great leaders are the ones who seek God in prayer.

This is a challenging reality. It has changed the way I walk to work, spending less time trying to be updated on the world news and spending more time asking God for great things for the people I love and have been asked to lead. It has changed the way I go home, praying for my family as I seek to enter the home to love my family and not just seek rest. It has changed the way I go about work and conversations, making me more willing to stop and pray in the moment as opposed to promising to pray later.

The strange thing about prayer is you never feel like you can do it enough. This can be a cause for guilt and a joyful invitation to find more time to be with God. I recommend the latter for leaders, so we remember it is a joyful and a joy-filling opportunity to talk with God and pray for others.

Pray well, lead well.

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May 30, 2012 · 11:02 am

To Lead Well, Be Faithful

Most people assume leadership involves a lot of activity, doing amazing and monumental things or accomplishing many tasks. When we look at leaders, they seem to be incredibly busy and while leadership naturally lends itself to more activity, the only way to ever lead well is through faithfulness. Whether it’s in a company, your family, and in ministry, faithfulness lends itself to good leadership.

Michael Hyatt recently wrote an article titled “3 Reasons Why Faithful is the New Radical” speaking to leaders who desire to be radical. This is especially true of those of us in the Missional Community world who long to see gospel-centered movements. I loved what he had to say,

By and large millennial Christians want offer lives in service to God and others by offering new and creative solutions. This is good.

But if I could speak a word of caution, from one rabble-rouser to another, I would say that sometimes the most radical thing you can do with your life is to simply be faithful.

Yes, you heard that right. By consistently doing the same thing every single day you might be more radical than you think. I know that doesn’t sound very sexy, but it’s the stuff that gives weight to significant social movements.

1 Corinthians 4:2 says that God holds his people accountable, not for the big splashy things they’ve done, but for simple faithfulness:

In this regard, it is expected of managers that each one [of them] be found faithful. (1 Corinthians 4:2, HCSB)

He goes on to share 3 reasons why faithfulness is so key. As I read it, it reminded me of what we ask of our leaders in our Community Groups. As people approach leadership in our Community Groups, we want to be clear to them that our greatest expectation of them is faithfulness. When we speak of faithfulness, it starts with faithfulness to God and then extends to specific people in your life.

Here are 3 reasons why we look for and expect faithfulness from our leaders.

Being Faithful Starts Before Leading

If people aren’t faithful before they start leading, they won’t be faithful while leading. We’ve taken risks on people thinking they would be faithful once they started leading and it simply wasn’t true. This is the clear pattern of scripture as well.

Jesus was faithful to God and faithful to his parents long before He comes on the scene and is baptized. He lived a sinless life, perfectly obedient to God and He remained faithful as He led His movement to the cross and beyond. Faithfulness in leadership is mirroring the character of Christ to those you lead.

In the Old Testament, David is faithful as a shepherd before he ever becomes a king. He lived in obscurity faithfully tending and protecting his sheep and his faithfulness there prepared him to fight Goliath and eventually become a great king.

His kingdom eventually suffers because of his lack of faithfulness to his role and to God. Faithfulness to tasks is one aspect of leadership, but spiritual leadership for Community Groups hinges on the leader’s faithfulness to God.

Faithfulness to God is True Success

All leaders want to be successful in leadership, but we consistently remind our leaders that God’s success is the result of abiding in faithfulness to God. Christ instructs His disciples in John 15 to abide with Him and bear much fruit.

In the missional community discussion, it can be easy to attempt to measure success in terms of people added to the community, service to the community, and in multiplying the community. These are all good things, but if they lack faithfulness to God, the community will likely suffer. God clearly desires devotion to Him over activity apart from dependence on Him.

While subjective in nature, success as gospel faithfulness can be easily seen in the results of confidence in the gospel and greater love for people.

Faithfulness to People helps a Community Thrive

There are certain people who have been placed in our lives closer than others. They could be family, friends, co-workers, or neighbors, but they seem to interact in our world with more frequency than others. When Paul preaches his sermon in the Aeropagus, he indicates that this is no accident, that it is in fact the design of God so that others and we would know Him.

Understanding this allows leaders and communities to be faithful directly where they are placed and directly with people who are placed there as well. This can decrease the strain on relationships for many of us and I’ve noticed that a thriving community results from the faithfulness of leaders to the people who are right in front of them.

Our Community Groups seek to care for one another and their neighbors. This could be a daunting task unless they understand being faithful to who God has placed in their midst. This lets them identify and meet the tangible physical and spiritual needs for one another and their neighbors easier by focusing on specific people.

Faithfulness builds on itself and expands the capacity of the leaders as their influence grows. We can’t be certain what the future has for our lives or our leadership, but we can be faithful with what we’ve been given. Whether it is a job we don’t enjoy, money, or friendships, learning to be faithful with what we have will allow us to be faithful when we have more.

Great leaders are faithful leaders.

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May 9, 2012 · 10:55 am

The Source of Gospel Enjoyment

Gospel enjoyment is centering on and celebrating the finished work of Jesus Christ in His life, death and resurrection.

Gospel enjoyment recognizes that you only live for what you love, so for the Christian or anyone else for that matter, we must evaluate if we love what is most lovely. The good news of Jesus Christ is the most amazing truth and is most lovely, but we are not merely called to cognitive belief of the truths of Christ as our Savior, we are called to love this truth.

Effort Alone is Not Enough

Living a life that mirrors Christ is a huge challenge, but gospel enjoyment gives freedom that enables us to live this life God calls us to with great joy and victory. It’s essential that every Christian love the gospel or they will never embody Christ in their lifestyle or their actions toward others.

Those who claim Christianity know the personal struggle of trying to maintain personal holiness and morality without becoming judgmental know-it-alls who are unable to love others. The commands of scripture toward taking responsibility for the local church community can also seem daunting, let alone the call to embody Christ to our neighbors with our words and our actions.

One path that many Christians take is the one of resolve and willpower aiming to accomplish the commands of scripture or at least the ones their local church tends to care about. This resolve and willpower either creates pride and a judgmental attitude if a measure of the “Christian life” is achieved or condemnation and guilt when it isn’t achieved. We need more than resolve and willpower.

Effort alone never results in transformation, but effort is needed toward the right end. Effort is needed for gospel enjoyment.

We must ask, how do we get gospel enjoyment? How does it happen? How do we get to the point of delight that transforms our efforts?

The Great Commandments as Jesus articulated them were to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Faith cannot be separated from love because salvation is tied up with joy in knowing the good news of God’s redemption through Christ’s perfect life, substitutionary death and bodily resurrection.

Knowing God as the Source of Gospel Enjoyment

“We love because He first loved us” is how the scriptures (1 John 4:19) explain the love of God that we are to embody to one another. It highlights the source of all gospel enjoyment as beginning with God. This is at the end of passage that highlights the love of God:

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfect in us.” 1 John 4:7-12

Jesus in His high priestly prayer in John 17 echoes this desire for Christians to know and have the love of God in them.

“O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it know, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.” John 17:25-26

God alone is the source of all joy, delight, and love. Jesus Himself points to loving Him as the path to obedience and Paul directs us in Colossians 3 to seek the things above, where Christ is, as the path to our lives becoming more like Christ. In the same high priestly prayer Jesus says “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent.” (John 17:3)

I have seen from the scriptures, from my own life, and from many others that the call of the Christian life (eternal life) to align every area of life under Christ’s gracious reign is only accomplished when we love God and the gospel of Christ most.

This is gospel enjoyment. It’s our greatest delight becoming our greatest direction. It’s the path to our efforts no longer being futile because they are directed at knowing God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Gospel enjoyment is the path to obedience, the path to living in Christian community the way God has designed it, and it’s the path to embodying Christ to the world around us on mission through declaration and demonstration.

And it all starts with knowing and delighting in God. You only live for what you love, so for the Christian, the question is why have we tried to live the Christian life apart from a great love for God? Our faith is the invitation to love what is most lovely in Jesus and to let that love guide us to be transformed toward being like Him.

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April 19, 2012 · 2:28 pm

Missional Community Implications: For Church

I’m a big fan of missional communities as I believe the scriptures clearly articulate the power and intent of God for a community to demonstrate the gospel of Jesus Christ through their love for one another and their neighbors.

It’s becoming a larger conversation and many churches are considering the idea. As they consider it, they must consider and be ready for the implications. The idea sounds new and exciting, but directly affects the common understanding of church. As I’ve thought about it and considered it, there are many implications depending on the current approach of a church, but overall there are 4 immediate implications for which a church should be prepared.

Monday-Saturday as valuable as Sunday

The Sunday gathering is what most people call church, but the scriptures use church to describe a people, not a service or a building. For a church to implement Christ-centered communities on mission, they will have to give as much, if not more, effort to equipping people to let their faith affect the rest of their week as they do to putting on a Sunday service. Is the church ready to spend its effort on equipping the saints? If it is not, missional community is merely a brand name change without substance.

This does not mean that you need to abolish the Sunday gathering as some have suggested, but it does mean you no longer treat the music or the sermon as the primary point of mission for your church.  The Sunday activities become a part of the rhythm of mission that occurs amongst the community. It becomes catalyst and culmination of mission that leads to the worship of Christ. Is the church ready to define mission as the everyday extension and representation of the gospel of Christ to the world? If not, missional communities will not be missional at all.

In moving this direction, a church also begins to address the personality driven nature and the celebrity pastor culture that can be prevalent for many churches. Leadership is no longer confined to a few “professionals”, but freely spread across an entire community. This can be uncomfortable at first for pastors and congregants who are not used to having less/more ability to lead God’s people. Missional communities thrive in a church where leaders are ready to celebrate others gifts and stories of loving their community.

Mission Requires Margin Requiring Less Church Events

The church calendar can be the biggest impediment of mission. How busy is your church? How busy is the church staff or key church leaders with church or Christian-only activities? It’s not necessarily that church activities can’t also be missional, but for many churches the activities continue the “come to me to hear about Jesus” mentality rather than entering into the neighborhoods activities following Jesus’ “go and tell” charge.

A church will need to evaluate their current calendar and activities to evaluate if they are asking the impossible of the community of God. Most people are fighting for margin already and need the church to give them the freedom to join their co-workers, friends, and neighbors in their activities. This may mean they don’t come to church on a Sunday occasionally (blasphemy!?!?) but that will confront the church’s view of the overall purpose of the community of God.

Missional communities thrive when margin is provided to exist as members of their neighborhood and church events/activities/equipping needs to serve to supplement rather than compete.

Church Programs, Committees, & Ministries Will End

This is the biggest one for many churches in established denominations. Every ministry, program, or church committee will have to be re-evaluated and adapted to join the missional community mentality or missional community becomes another option on the church activity buffet line.

If a church wants to release their people (they may not) to love their neighbors and serve their neighborhood, every ministry or ministry opportunity needs to be evaluated. Does it compete with or encourage Christians to join the mission of extending Christ’s love to all?  This coincides with the mission requiring margin because many of the programs are more church activity to make people feel involved or contributing when they need to connected to a community not a church task.

A church of missional communities thrives when the entire church is flowing in the same direction. It’s not to say there won’t be care or counseling ministries or similar things that focus on the church community only, but it’s recognizing that those ministries end in missional communities.

Every Vocation is a Spiritual Calling

Most people spend more time at work than they do anything else. If this is not seen and encouraged as an opportunity to exalt Christ with and at work, then there will only be one spiritual job – full-time ministry. Throughout the scriptures we see God specifically impart abilities to people that have nothing to do with our understanding of full-time ministry, but God does this to make Himself known through work.

Every company can be a people group to extend the gospel to and an opportunity to display the love of God and the magnificence of God through the work. Until we all see ourselves as missionaries sent by God in every profession, we will only see church staff members as people paid for ministry. That is a false understanding of who ultimately provides all things for us (God) and is able to use any means possible to fund His missionaries (your salary from your company).

Missional communities thrive when people see all of their life as an opportunity to demonstrate the grace, mercy & transformative love of Jesus Christ to whomever they encounter. This means their jobs, their neighborhood, and their favorite restaurant is an opportunity to display Jesus to the world.

Is it worth it?

This is surely what many churches will begin asking. Is it worth it to affect the status quo? Is it worth it to transition to missional communities if it will take years to do so? Is it worth it if it will cause frustration amongst a people who like the building-Sunday service understanding of Church?

Make no mistake, it will be a challenge for every church that chooses to pursue missional communities, but asking is it worth it with an eye toward the implications is the wrong question.

The right question is, does Jesus deserve the worship of everyone in my neighborhood and city? That answer is yes, He is the only one worthy of worship, the only one who loves perfectly, challenges perfectly, and transforms people. Because of this, any difficulty a church has in extending the gospel of Christ to cause more worship of Jesus is worth it.

Aside from that, I can share that personally there is no greater joy than being in a community that loves the gospel of Christ most and being a part of extending that gospel to others.

So yes, all of these implications are worth it.

 

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April 18, 2012 · 10:54 am

Missional Community Implications: For Life

As our church continues to aim toward being a collection of gospel-centered communities on mission (Missional Communities), I’ve noticed that many people are not ready for some of the real implications that come with this idea. Even as many other churches wrestle through this, one thing that must be acknowledged is that pursuing this Book of Acts type community has major implications for your life, your church, and even the world.

Missional community methodology has implications for our lives because the gospel of Jesus Christ has implications for our lives. True faith in Christ involves reorienting our lives to follow His ways instead of the ways we have developed over the course of our lives. These implications deal with many of things we say we treasure, but the end results are many of the things we long for but think we will never have.

Dying to the Unhealthy Embrace of Individualism

We have all bought into the American ideal of individualism, that the collective best is accomplished by each of us seeking our own individual ascension. While individualism can have the benefits of promoting innovation, it has the downside of achieving this at the significant cost of others and relationships.

We have taken an unhealthy embrace of individualism that has led us to be suspicious and judgmental of others and seek our own good no matter what happens to others or our society. We seek our own self-ascension to the destruction of others. Jesus shows us a much better way.

Of all the people that ever lived, Jesus had the right to pursue His earthly ascension, many even wanted to make Him king. But He consistently sought the advancement of others with His power, His love, and eventually with His death and resurrection. He knew that only by laying down His life and even His desires (as He expressed the desire for another way to God the Father before going to the cross), would the collective best have the opportunity to be fulfilled. The collective best now has potential because of Christ’s death and resurrection when Christ is embraced as Lord by faith.

For the Christian, we proclaim that we follow Christ’s life, share in His ways, and seek to mirror those ways to our world. He spent His life with a community of people seeking to bless everyone He interacted with leaving us a pretty high bar as our standard for life.

A Life Bound Up with a Community

When a Christian becomes a part of a Community Groups or Missional Community, they are pursuing the life Christ laid out for them, but what they are usually not ready for is the required change. Committing to any type of community means that work, life events, and family time will be affected. This is true for buying season tickets to a sports team, joining a community organization, or even over-committing to work.

Committing to a missional community means we have less of our perceived sovereignty over our time and our life. We open ourselves up to gracious intrusion by others when our homes are less put together, we’re less prepared and it’s less convenient to us.

To be a part of a community is not to add more events. It will require a realignment of the current events of your life to align with a group of people, which may mean less events. You will likely be doing many of the same things, but no longer doing them just for yourself or by yourself.

Meals, recreation, and regular hang out time become community activities rather than individual escapes. And before the introverts go crazy, it doesn’t mean that alone or private time doesn’t happen, but it does mean that alone time is meant to refresh you to engage with a community of people.

Your Stuff is not just for you anymore

In Acts 2:42-47, we see the first church established in a response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s described as a community with shared beliefs, shared life, and shared resources. It begs the question, am I ready for my stuff to not just be for me? We’ve been taught and continually marketed to that we work so we can purchase and we all need to purchase the exact same stuff so each of us can have it.

What if we viewed our stuff as community stuff? What if we arranged our homes to enable hospitality? De-cluttered to become welcoming and became comfortable with our stuff being messed up and potentially ruined if it meant experiencing relationships in community.

The implications of missional communities is to shift our thinking from if I have more stuff, I’ll be happier, to recognize that real happiness comes from real relationships. It may changes our litmus test for purchases to be more gospel-centered. We may start measuring a purchase by how it can be a blessing to other people and not just a blessing to us.

You are expected to give & not just receive

Church culture has become great at letting a few people lead many people, placing the majority of people on the side of receiver and the few people as givers. Missional communities by their very nature require shared leadership and everyone in the community taking responsibility and ownership for one another and a mission greater than themselves.

This implication is that you become expected to contribute and not just consume a conversation or relationship. This means you have to stop complaining about the community not caring for you enough or giving you enough attention. It’s not that you won’t be cared for by the community, it’s that you help create a caring community for everyone, including yourself.

It also requires that you begin to remove conditions on your contributions to others. Unfortunately, we judge whether to care for someone based on our perceived value they bring to the community and us. A gospel-centered missional community does not operate like this. It recognizes that the love of God was given to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ not because we were good enough, smart enough, or people liked us, but because God chose to extend that love to us. He even chose to do it when we weren’t living like He demands. This is the nature of grace and a community embodies it well when they extend love based on God’s definition of value.

Assessing what we truly want

Missional communities affect what we value, but it ultimately forces us to ask what we really want in life. Most of us want quality relationships, deep conversations, and purpose to our lives, but too few us evaluate if our lives are set up in a way that these will ever be accomplished.

I truly believing aligning yourself and committing to a community increases all of the things we truly desire. I’ve never experienced more joy and enjoyment of life as being in the midst of a community that loves the gospel of Jesus Christ most. The implication of this type of gospel enjoyment is the creation of a community that blesses one another and the world.

Tomorrow I’ll tackle the implications for the church and Friday I’ll deal with the implications missional communities has on the world.

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March 20, 2012 · 9:37 am

Missional Community Success: Gospel, Not Mission

I have heard many people say, “What you celebrate, you also cultivate.” It’s absolutely true, which makes storytelling and defining success a huge deal whether it is in a business environment, a classroom, at home, or in the church.

For missional communities, the idea of a group of Christians being a gospel-centered community on mission, it is most definitely true. But this forces us to question what we are celebrating. Is success in a missional community only multiplying that community into two or three communities? Is success only celebrating baptisms? Is it a service project?

What you celebrate, you will also cultivate.

If the above list is what you are celebrating, you will likely see more of it, but if they are the only things you celebrate, what are you creating in the process? What aspects of a gospel-centered community on mission suffer when these are the only measures of success?

I’ve been really impacted lately going back to look at how Christ developed His disciples to eventually lead a movement that would change the world. One of the most impacting passages on this for me lately has been Luke 10:17-20. This follows the disciples being sent in pairs with some brief instructions. They go out in pairs, meet with the leaders of the community and based on receptivity stay or leave. They come back to Jesus and have this exchange.

“The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And Jesus said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Luke 10:17-20

Celebrate & Cultivate Gospel as Success

That last sentence is impactful. They came back with joy and were celebrating their mission success and Jesus does celebrate with them, but then redirects their rejoicing to the reality that they know God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. He tells them not to celebrate their mission success, but celebrate their salvation in the gospel.

There is no doubt that Jesus desired to see the things they accomplished in mission, but the mission was not the end in itself. When we only celebrate mission as success, we set ourselves up for failure. There is only so much control we have over the “success” of investing in a cause or sharing our faith with others. What happens when the success dries up and that which you celebrated has disappeared? For some, they will be fine, but I’ve seen many times where it completely wrecks people.

There’s pressure to maintain great mission to be seen as a successful Christian, there’s the potential for burnout because the focus has shifted from loving God to doing for God, and we begin to depend on ourselves and our effort rather than trusting and depending on God. Christians are called to faithfulness to God to bear fruit, not just a focus on mission.

Power of God & Purpose of Mission

This is why Jesus celebrates with them, but then immediately points to what they should be celebrating. He places their focus upward on God and the gospel because it is the power of God and the ultimate purpose of the mission.

The gospel is the power of God that motivates mission. So celebrating and loving the gospel is the only way to sustain mission. By the gospel we know, experience, and rest in the love of God that is rooted not in our efforts, but the work of Christ in His life, death and resurrection. We are reminded that it is ultimately God who gave us the gospel, gifted to us a great salvation providing and empowering us to accomplish His mission through His message. It also places us back on the right purpose for our mission.

Mission doesn’t end on serving your community or extending the love of Christ to your neighbor, the end is that Christ is exalted and worshipped as He should be. The final result should be that what is most valuable (Jesus) becoming most valued.

Seeing a merciful God that has chosen to punish Christ on the cross instead of us, exchanging His righteousness with our sin and rejoicing in God because of it is the aim for the Christian on mission. The purpose that all might see Jesus as the resurrected King and a good King at that.

Widening the Lens of Success

We must widen our definition of success in gospel communities on mission. We have our favorite stories that we share, but why not share and celebrate the messy side of community? A community that is messy is usually the result of the gospel sinking in deep into the lives of the people in the community. They believe there is hope for change, a way out from their hurt, their anger, their addictions, and they’ve been told they won’t be defined by them anymore because of Christ. Is there any more comfortable environment to share these things than a community centered on the gospel?

But the lack of celebrating the messiness makes leaders feel like they are failing if there are sins, errors of judgments, addictions, etc. when it’s the very reason we have the gospel! This is success in the gospel and not failure in mission.

Widening the lens of success means that you get to rejoice often. You get to rejoice with the community when people seek to live near the community  and how they seek God together and find an apartment. We celebrate when we see the gospel setting people free from addictions, or fear of man. We celebrate when conversations no longer center on ourselves and our thoughts, but on Jesus and His scriptures. We get to celebrate so many things that express the love of God being extended to other through the community.

We still rejoice in the mission, but it’s always in light of the gospel and not on its own. Mission gets put in its rightful place, a byproduct of the gospel of Jesus Christ and not our grounds for celebration.

In celebrating the gospel, Jesus becomes our foundation for hope, joy, approval, and freedom. He never gets replaced by the work of our hands. He deserves the reward of His suffering, a people praising His name, not just their work for Him.

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