Category Archives: Small 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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March 2, 2012 · 2:40 pm

Verge Day 3: Main Take-Homes

Verge Day 3 was convicting, challenging and continued the stream of inspiring everyone. I don’t have time to recap the whole day, but as I’ve thought about it there are some major game changing take-homes from Day 3.

Everyone has been inspired to embrace the gospel and it’s missional implications, but day 3 laid out the necessary components.

Overall the main take-home was a healthy community + healthy dependence on God + healthy discipleship = healthy gospel mission.

Healthy Community
Dhati Lewis did an amazing job of challenging everyone to evaluate the health of those we call and send on mission.

One of the more beautiful & balanced statements he made was this:

“A lot of us spend time trying to be unleashed without first getting healthy but others of us try to get healthy primarily without having a concern about getting unleashed.”

It’s a great picture of pursuing mission without neglecting community & cultivating community to be on mission. A great message in the midst of the methodology conversation.

Healthy Dependence on God
The two speakers who stood out from the rest were Jeremy Story & Dave Gibbons. Knowing Jeremy from NYC, I expected his message, but loved how he spoke with such conviction on the transformative power of prayer on the mission of God. Amazing content and convicting message from him.

Dave Gibbons stirred things up by sharing his own story in experiencing dependence on the Holy Spirit. Discussing his initial lack of openness to the Holy Spirit & gifts of healing but how God used his own children and ministry partners to challenge him to be open to be used by God with spiritual gifts the American church has neglected because of their abuse in the charismatic circle.

I left both of these with confirmation in the essential nature of dependence on God for His mission to flourish in a community.

Healthy Discipleship
Neil Cole laid the foundations of discipleship with 2 Timothy 2:2 “what you have been taught, entrust to faithful men who will teach others also.

Rodrick Gilbert & George Patterson brilliantly taught that to be Christian is to be a disciple maker, developing & teaching people to model the life and ministry of Jesus.

George Patterson is easily the most enjoyable speaker. He always does something out of the ordinary that slams the truth home and makes it memorable. He planted people in the audience who tried to prevent a Christian from becoming a disciple maker. It was engaging and memorable.

Kevin Peck, who has taught me more than I even realize, taught on Christ’s plan for discipling the world. In contrast to us spending most of our time on the many to reach the few, Christ spent his time with the few to reach the many. There was no plan B. This seemed like a big epiphany for the crowd.

Healthy Gospel Mission
All of this results in the mission all of us were inspired to pursue. The mission of replicating the love, message & mercy of Christ in other people.

It was a refreshing and challenging day.

Today and tomorrow are travel days for our family back to NYC. I’m looking forward to continuing to process all that happened at Verge.

I’m very thankful to the Austin Stone and the many speakers for their time and energy to make this such a great conference.

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March 1, 2012 · 11:18 am

Verge Day 2 Recap

Wow, there is so much to process through after day 2. With all of these amazing speakers, it made me thankful for going to the Verge Pre-Conference and especially the For The City Pre-Conference.

Day 2 started with Stew setting the tone and fixing our purpose on the right thing, knowing, delighting in, and loving Jesus and His gospel above the ministry strategies and methods we would be hearing.

Following worship, Stew warned us that we would be drinking from a firehose, but challenged us to think through the lens of 2 major questions. He said these questions are prevalent wherever there is a major movement of disciple-making disciples.

The 2 questions: What is God telling you? What are you going to do about it?

The Format

For those of you who have never been to Verge or did not watch it on the simulcast, the format is different from many of the conferences I have been to because the main sessions are tied to a major idea and then 3-6 presenters are given the opportunity to teach, equip, and inspire us on these main ideas over the course of an hour.

This format requires that you process this information in some way and preferably with another person so it was really great for Stew to frame the content through the lens of these questions and then call us back to these questions following each session.

The danger of conferences is never processing what God is telling you and challenging YOU to do in your context because if you do not do this, you jump at adopting ideas and practices without yourself ever being changed in the process. If you are not changed you will never lead change in other people.

Main Session 1: For The City

Rudy Carrasco, Bob Lupton, John Sowers, & Dr. John Perkins

Main session 1 was truly amazing. Rudy Carrasco led off by challenging us to affirm that business is an outstanding Christian calling that we must honor and encourage in our congregations. If we only affirm business for the money it can provide, we completely miss the opportunity for people to use their business to create jobs and opportunities for our city. The greatest way we could enable people to be for the city is to affirm that their skills, talents, and ethic in their work can create jobs and equip people to create new companies and enterprises in poor areas of your city.

Having listened to Bob Lupton & Dr. Perkins yesterday, I loved hearing Rudy cast the vision for unleashing the workforce in your church from feeling guilty for being successful in the “secular” world and affirming the absolutely necessary skills and talents they have for restoring the brokenness of neighborhood.

Lupton and Dr. Perkins are always a highlight. Knowing how much they love one another and have been so influential in each other’s lives over the last 30+ years made it all the more special to see them share the stage at different times in the morning.

It is always amazing to listen to Dr. Perkins. Justin Lopez of the For The City Network did an amazing job of interviewing Perkins by not pushing any agenda and letting Dr. Perkins expound on all that God has taught him. One of the more interesting parts was his conversation about parachurches and churches. He discussed a need to repent for creating a parachurch rather than affirming and building up a church. It was beautiful to watch an 82-year old man affirm that God continues to teach us and work on us for our whole lives.

Main Session 2: Incarnational Mission

Mike Breen, Leonce Crump, Hugh Halter, Dave Ferguson, Alan Hirsch, Jon Tyson, Todd Engstrom, Jen Hatmaker & Jeff Vanderstelt

Yes, those were all of the speakers. Drinking from a firehose doesn’t begin to describe it. I’ll try best to summarize the highlights.

Alan Hirsch led us off by defining Incarnational Mission. Again, Alan is way smarter than me and seems even smarter than that with his accent, but setting the focus on following Christ and embodying Christ (incarnational) made it impossible to seek to adopt a ministry strategy and led us to focus on following Christ.

Dave Ferguson shared his personal story of how God has been changing him, a mega-church pastor, into someone who seeks to love his neighborhood. The transformation came as a result of focusing on being a blessing to his neighborhood rather than trying to convert it.

Hugh Halter placed our focus on 1 John 2:6 “whoever says he abides in Christ ought to walk in the same way that Christ did” and then contrasted a religion focused life with how Christ confronted his culture on their abuse of the scriptures, the Sabbath, and discipleship. It is definitely interesting how we need to be challenged in our approach to all 3 in our current day in the church just like the Pharisees in Jesus’ day.

Jon Tyson was the highlight for me. He discussed how faulty our typical ways of sustaining mission are and then laid out the only way to sustain mission. “Love is the only thing that can sustain incarnational mission.” His reasons were that love leads us to identify with people rather than our brand, project, or mission and identifying with people leads us to agony for their needs. Only in agonizing in their need will we follow Christ’s love for the world and extend Christ’s love to the world. Passion for God, compassion for people.

Todd Engstrom of the Austin Stone did a great job of challenging us with a very practical training tool they use to equip their leaders. It contrasted the church’s typical approach to community with how the rest of the world approaches community. This contrast forces you to ask what is going to change about how we seek to develop community with the rest of the world. Very helpful and you could see a lot of light bulbs go off in the room.

Admittedly, I missed Mike Breen and Jeff Vanderstelt, both guys I respect and love their content, but I wanted to see my former co-workers since I was in downtown Austin again. It was great to connect with them and share with them what God is doing in our lives in New York.

Jen Hatmaker put our focus on the scripture “Follow me as I follow Christ” and then asked us “If people are following you are they becoming more like Christ? Or are they spending their week writing a sermon or participating in bible study?” The challenge was a great one. Am I using my time too much for ministry work without developing people and challenging them toward the way Christ lived.

Unconference and Main Session 3: For the Gospel

This was followed by 4 hours for what they call Unconference. This was the more organic portion of the conference where you could dictate the topic and the location and discuss with others at the conference what you were processing.

It provides a great opportunity to get even more practical with those who are processing some of the same issues. A very different idea for a conference that I continue to think is the best.

I also skipped the night sessions for a family dinner. From what I heard, Jeff Vanderstelt challenged us all through the Story of the Prodigal Son to focus on the gospel implications that drive us to worship God more. Matt Carter reminded us that activity is worthless without knowing and loving Jesus. This was followed by an amazing time of worship.

My day ended with grabbing drinks with guys who do my job way better than I do my job. Thankful to Todd Engstrom to organizing these men and getting us together. It was refreshing, I learned a lot and felt more equipped to serve Apostles Church when I return. It was a great time.

Conferences as Seminaries?

One of the more interesting thoughts was shared over twitter by Jon Tyson with an observation that conferences have become the new seminaries.

I completely agree with him and think this is a great opportunity. There’s more collaboration, there’s more practical handles and tools for people to begin to actually accomplish the ideas and it’s more refreshing.

On to day 3…

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February 29, 2012 · 12:20 am

Verge Day 1 Recap

The Verge Conference started today and it was amazing. I said it was the only conference that I feel like was worth attending for its theology and its practice.

It did not disappoint at all. I really love the way it is arranged this year with Pre-Conference Breakout Sessions for Missional Communities & Mercy/Justice all on one day. This provides a great opportunity for any church member to take a day off and attend so that it’s not just a pastor’s conference.

Today, I spent half the day at the Missional Community Pre-Conference & half the day at the For The City (Mercy & Justice) Pre-Conference. I’m so thankful to have been at both.

Missional Community Pre-Conference

I missed the first panel discussion thanks to Austin traffic and fog, but I made it to Brandon Hatmaker’s breakout session, Serving Through Missional Communities: Seven Steps to Moving Beyond the Event. It was very helpful and practical for how the gospel of Jesus Christ develops a community to be merciful and compassionate. It was also helpful in leveraging service events to be more than a social justice activity to become an opportunity for Christians and those outside of the church to be educated on the full meaning of the gospel.

One of the more impacting parts was the idea of letting go of the return on investment we get from serving. Brandon told the story of feeding the homeless and the homeless consistently asking about when the church was and how he began to understand that was their way of paying him for his service. They had nothing to offer him, but the hope that they might come to his church. This is important because churches can often use social justice to get people to come rather than to extend the love of Christ without expectation of anything in return.

It challenges us to check our motives and come to serving others and meeting needs with no expectations but to extend the love of Christ.

It was really refreshing to hear how God is using Brandon and his church to display the gospel of Jesus Christ. He wrote a book if you want to learn more: The Barefoot Church (Primer)

For The City Pre-Conference

As much as I enjoy missional communities, I could not have been more thankful to be a part of the For The City Pre-Conference.

I think it could potentially be the best part of Verge for me this year. Time will tell.

I arrived right before Bob Lupton spoke and it was absolutely amazing. I’m sure much of it is in his book Toxic Charity, but to hear someone who has empowered the poor rather than kept them dependent on handouts was challenging and so encouraging.

Some quotes that challenged me:

“The poor can pay a heavy price for our goodness.” – Talking about how our handouts create dependency which continues the cycle of poverty.

“One way giving keeps the needy in the needy role and the giver in the giving role. It diminishes relationships.” – This was incredibly challenging in regards to how the giver can often relish their position and never relinquish it to those they give to. We can participate in giving olds clothes and gifts in a way that removes the dignity of the poor and disempowers them. So challenging.

I also got to lead my first breakout session at a conference. How to get those who care about you to care about your mission. It was fun to share what I’ve learned (and continue to learn) about meeting people where they are, helping them understand the mission God has called you to, and how you invite them to participate and engage needs with you.

But nothing really compared to listen to Dr. John Perkins. I was able to meet him and just thank him for his life, his love for Jesus, and his faithfulness in ministering for the gospel of Jesus Christ. He has been a slave, fought for civil rights, created the Christian Community Development Association, and participated in discipling and creating many leaders to continue the work of restoring broken communities.

Some quotes from Dr. Perkins:

“We have deified capitalism to the point that the church is unable to speak prophetically into the system.” – He was discussed how capitalism is the best system in the world, but making it a god makes us slaves to a system that was meant to serve us. For the church, we are unable to talk about the brokenness of America’s abuse of capitalism because Christians have replaced Jesus with the system as well. A challenging thought for sure.

Listening to him talk about 50+ years of knowing and serving Jesus was such a powerful testimony to the worth of giving your life to serve Jesus and display Him through restoring brokenness in neighborhoods as well as systemic brokenness.

In the middle of Bob Lupton’s talk, I asked one of our church staff to buy the digital access for the Verge content because I know I wanted to hear it again. It’s worth it.

I ended the night with dinner and beverages with great missional community thinkers that challenged and encouraged me tremendously. It was a great day 1.

Tomorrow starts the Main Conference sessions that you can watch on simulcast if you want. It will be well worth your time.

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February 27, 2012 · 9:05 am

Missional Community: Integrating Children

One of the many challenges that Community Groups face is how to handle children in the community.  We have a key conviction that children should be included and seen as members of the Community Group.

This means they are seen as members of the community that need to be discipled with the gospel as we seek to be a community on mission. If we don’t count the children, then we could easily find ourselves in the situation one of our Community Groups faced where there were 14 adults and a total of 16 children. That’s 30 total people that must be considered and accounted for in order to even meet as a Community Group.

In New York City, there are no apartments that fit 30 people and even if there were, 16 children in one apartment is asking for chaos and destruction. It became unmanageable and impeded the ability of the Community Group to care for one another and be on mission together.

Church Community as Family

We discuss Community Groups as a family and we all know the extended family is involved in raising and developing the children. When we move to a community in proximity and become a community that moves beyond the event into the rhythm of everyday life, we discover that an entire community viewing themselves as a family blesses the children of the community.

They are given models of the Christian life other than their parents in all walks of life with varying pasts that educate them on the paths and careers they would want to pursue.  The various spiritual gifts, talents, and resources in the church are displayed for them inside of a community that is seeking to love Jesus most and to love them.

If I had never been shown how to parent by a family before I had kids, I would have been a dramatically different, likely over-protective and fearful parent. But I was handed a 3-month old when I was a 23-year old single man and given a bottle to feed her at dinner with the community I had just started being a part of and I am so thankful for this education. I was able to see the good and challenging parts of parenting, discipline and delight of parenting that led me to see children as a blessing and prepared me to be a father.

There are so many people in the church who have never seen a family try to display the love and grace of Christ to their children. Many who were not shown this by their own parents and are left trying to figure it out. When we seek to integrate children, we bless the family and the kids, but we also bless every member of the community that is able to learn from watching parents who seek to love their kids.

What most people think about in the children in Missional Communities/Community Groups conversation is the actual formal meeting time. Every missional community has a time set aside where they meet (let’s call this the formal time) and then they spend time together outside of this time (let’s call this the informal time).

During Community Group Formal Meeting Time

As we’ve approached this question with our Community Groups, we really believe there are 3 primary options, but with each option it must be considered how the children will be shown truth, have fun, and experience the love of Christ. The 3 options are babysitting, family integration for part of the Community Group or family integration all the time. Each of these requires their own intentional focus for the specific time the group meets. But this also point us back to the reality that we must stop viewing church community as an event to attend once a week, but a community rhythm we live throughout the week.

Babysitting

Some Community Groups choose to have the kids meet at one house, others choose to have them in another room, but each week someone from the Community Group rotates to babysit as their way of serving the community. We also encourage them to use the Jesus Storybook Bible or provide kid’s ministry curriculum that is age appropriate. This can be an amazing way for a community to serve one another while learning to disciple each other’s children.

Family Integration for Part of the Community Group

This is orienting the Community Group so that children are included for parts, but not all of the time. This might cause you to change your Community Group time to meet to Saturday morning for a big family breakfast with everyone that includes a time focused on everyone caring for and teaching the children. The other time is utilizing babysitting to have fun, know God, and extend the love of Christ to children. This forces a community to learn to let all of our conversations be rooted in the gospel even in the midst of our children.

Family Integration for All of the Community Group

This is the commitment by the Community Group to reorient everything so that children are always welcomed. This must be an outflow of the entire community desiring to extend Jesus’ love to the children. What are things about your Community Group that would have to adapt to include children? The conversations would likely change, the setting would likely be more informal and having encouraging or challenging conversations will have to become normal in the midst of chaos. This will also force the accountability times and even some of the prayer times to be different throughout the week.

For this to be a reality, the community will eventually learn to have a conversation that is broken up by the cries and requests of kids. This challenges the typical view that children are an interruption rather than a blessing to our lives. If you ever want to extend the gospel to a parent, you are going to have to eventually be able to communicate with them while they have their kids climbing on them and hurting themselves.

The benefits of this mindset are many. I know from experience that my children benefit greatly, have more joy, and more obedience after they are around a number of people who love them. For it to be a community that also seeking to love Jesus most assists me greatly as a father to share my faith with my children in a natural way.

But this not only benefits the children, the entire community is changed and blessed by this key conviction. This provides a window to gospel-centered family, teaching singles and young marrieds how to be parents and to grow spiritual, gospel-centered children. This could open up singles to adopt and pursue parenting children before society tells them they are ready. Parents benefit from what I mentioned before, receiving help in extending the love of Christ to their children from a wider community.

Gospel Enjoyment leads parents to integrate their faith into every moment of their family time and it leads a community to do the same as they integrate families and children into the rhythm of their Christian community.

This continues to be a challenge for us, but our convictions are leading us to explore different options, challenge the notion that we must outsource children’s ministry to professionals, and we are continuing to learn. We gladly welcome any additional insight from your experience.

What have you seen happen when trying to integrate children into missional communities.

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February 26, 2012 · 10:54 am

Missional Community: Rhythms over Events

At Apostles Church, we are defined by 3 core values, Gospel Enjoyment, Intentional Community, and Prayerful Mission and our Community Groups aim to contextualize these values in their neighborhood. They are often guided by 3 convictions that we believe assist them in being a gospel community on mission. Those 3 convictions are proximity over affinity, rhythms over events, and integrating children.

A large shift in my understanding of church was moving from events to rhythms. Church has become a place to attend, an event to experience, rather than a people to partner with, a lifestyle of mission. Small groups aim to provide that expression of church, but can easily become another church event. So now church becomes Sunday & Tuesday night, but no community is actually built.

Let the Community happen all week

If a community forms a rhythm of life where interaction happens more often than once a week, then there is less pressure to accomplish so much in the formal group time. We try to cram prayer, bible discussion, mission discussion, accountability, confession into this time and it’s impossible. We then define success by whether we covered all portions of these or if the conversation was good. But the success of Christian community is so much more than great discussion, it’s the gospel applied to our everyday mundane lives and the gospel extended to our neighbors.

The challenge is to view yourself as part of a community that forms rhythms and patterns rather than a member of event that happens once a week. We all currently have rhythms of life for meals, work, rest and recreation. We must filter these through our faith and believe that the gospel informs and transforms our rhythms. We may need to transform our old rhythms and incorporate new rhythms.

Let the Community speak into your life

This type of Christian community only occurs when we reorient our lives with the community of God for the mission of God. Letting the community challenge the way we spend our time, letting them challenge our idols so we seek to build the kingdom of Christ rather than our own kingdom.

Jeff Vandersteldt describes mission as doing ordinary things with gospel intentionality. So it’s looking at current rhythms (when we eat, work, play) and asking how these can be shifted to incorporate our community and our neighbors so they become focused on the gospel. The kitchen table can be your greatest place of mission if you expand the reach of the meal you are already eating.

We may have to reorient our work schedules or be more purposeful with the little time we have. When I worked as a civil engineer, there were regular happy hours on Thursday & Friday evenings that I would typically miss to be home with my family. I discussed this with my wife and she encouraged me to go to these happy hours occasionally and I invited a guy from our community to join me. It was a great opportunity to develop relationships that led to great gospel conversations at and away from work. It only happened because I worked with my wife to reorient our schedules for the mission of God. Gospel enjoyment is so key here. We only change our lives so we can enjoy the things we love.

Practical Steps

One of the most helpful things we have done as leaders was to identify the circles of people they current exist in. The people we interact with who do not know Jesus in our neighborhood, our workplace, our friends, and our hobbies. I encourage you to do this with the other believers in your community and identify where God has provided open doors for mission to your people group.

Then we brainstormed ways we can invite these people into our community and ways we can participate in their community. In the gospels we see Jesus enter the lives and homes of non-believers, then invite people to follow and participate in His life. It’s not just about asking them to come into our world, but it’s about going to their world, their turf and believing the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

Asking questions of your neighborhood

What are the rhythms of your neighborhood? When are they outside enjoying the neighborhood? When do they eat dinner? What type of cultural destinations do they participate in, what is the predominant religious makeup of your neighborhood? These are all essential questions to ask in order for your community group to form rhythms that naturally interact with the people group you are hoping to reach. God has sent you as a missionary to these people groups.

How does your Community Group need to change for each other and the mission of God? For some of your Community Groups, there needs to be a new rhythm for gospel confession and accountability, the creation of a time where each of them are challenged to make Jesus their greatest delight and then address their sin. Sin can be one of the greatest hindrance to the mission of God.

For others it is creating a rhythm where non-believers are regularly incorporated into the community. It could be a weekly pot luck dinner, participating in local concerts or events, or joining sports leagues with gospel intentionality.

Approaching the gospel for holistic transformation in every aspect of life, moves us from events to a comprehensive rhythm of life in the community of God for the mission of God.

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February 24, 2012 · 10:35 am

Missional Community: Proximity over Affinity

At our church, we are defined by 3 core values, Gospel Enjoyment, Intentional Community, and Prayerful Mission and our Community Groups aim to contextualize these values in their neighborhood. They are often guided by 3 convictions that we believe assist them in being a gospel community on mission. Those 3 convictions are proximity over affinity, rhythms over events, and integrating children in the Community Groups.

One of the major shifts we made over a year ago is moving from affinity based small groups (marrieds, families, single men, single women) to proximity based gospel communities on mission. We made the shift for a few reasons.

Gospel Mission

When you gather around affinity, an unintended result is that people don’t even reach outside of their affinities in their own church. If they can’t even be on mission within their own church to people who are different, they will have difficulty being on mission to those different than them outside your church community.

We had a few Community Groups that were gathering people from all 5 boroughs in Manhattan and because of the traveling time and challenges, they were really unable to be in each other’s lives on a regular basis that would lead to true community that encourages and exhorts. They were unable to be on mission together on an everyday basis. It presented many challenges.

Gospel Identity

Additionally, people begin to define themselves by their affinity and it has the danger of becoming their primary identity over the gospel. This was evident to me when we made the shift and the pushback I received was asking how a single man can identify with the other men in the group that all identify themselves as husbands and fathers. The reality is that the gospel is your primary identity and then defines the way you live as a husband and father just as the gospel is the single man’s primary identity and he seeks to live it out as a single man. A husband and father can be challenged by the single minded devotion to Christ of the single man or woman, just as the single man can be challenged in what it means to become a man who pursues covenant and disciples children.  It also seems to be a problem when Jesus or Paul is unable to hang out in your small group time.

Gospel Presence Where You Are

Another reason we made the shift is that as you read the scriptures, there is a consistent challenge to love the city where God has sent you, to not assimilate into the ways of the city, but to seek its flourishing, its welfare, its shalom, which is Hebrew for holistic flourishing. We see this idea in the old testament as the Lord speaks through Jeremiah to challenge the exiles in Babylon to seek the welfare, literally the shalom or holistic flourishing, of that nation that they have been brought to serve because in seeking its flourishing, they will flourish. In the New Testament, Paul in Acts 17 describes God as determining the boundaries of our habitations so that people would know God.

As a result, transitioning from affinity to proximity can be challenging and we focused on people over process during the shift. This caused a lot of people to ask for the first time “How can I love my neighborhood? My neighbors?” We just kept asking, what do you love about your neighborhood? What would you love to see God repair, restore, redeem through a community in your area? It’s changed how people walk the streets of their city, how they view their neighbors, and created a desire for mission in the people at Apostles Church.

We encourage people to find encouragement in their affinity within their Community Group or within the various Community Groups in the same region that partner together for a wider gospel presence.

In Transition

The transition is ongoing, but many left the Community Groups they were traveling to in order to start a Community Group in their neighborhood. For others, as their lease came up, they chose to move with gospel motivations. Instead of asking how can I get more space, the question becomes should I move to engage with a certain community or should I move to a certain area of town where there is a major need for gospel presence. We have to let the gospel guide all of our decisions.

For a few couples, this led them to move within a 10 block radius (1/2 a mile for you non-New Yorkers) of their Community Group. For others, this led them to move to Brooklyn Heights and Beorum Hill in Brooklyn to see a gospel community get started where there hasn’t been a large presence.

With proximity becoming a conviction, our Community Groups now gather around the gospel, the identity they have in Christ as the bond that forms them together and the mission they are all on. It opens opportunity for mission to families for our singles and opens up mission to singles for young marrieds and families. As a result, we are more adequately reflecting the demographic of the neighborhood in order to extend the gospel to our neighbors.

It forces us to get out of our comfort zones and be confronted with the challenging circumstances of others so we see how God has uniquely equipped us with our circumstances, our life stage, and our personalities to care for, encourage, and challenge each other where God has placed us.

Proximity provides the greatest ability for our Community Groups to embody and live out our core values of Gospel Enjoyment, Intentional Community, and Prayerful Mission.

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February 16, 2012 · 11:22 am

Pursuing Prayerful Mission

How does a church become missional?

This seems to be the question that many churches are asking, wondering how a church moves from inwardly focused to externally focused, moving from simply loving one another to extending the love of Christ to the world.

A predominant response is to swing the pendulum from a consistent focus on community to a consistent focus on mission. It’s logical, but it does not address the problem. The Christian’s difficulty in extending the message and mercy of Christ is not because they haven’t heard the challenge to do so or they haven’t heard it enough. It’s a gospel problem.

The Christian either has a half understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ or the gospel of Jesus Christ is not the most valuable thing in their life. We talk about, proclaim, and bore people to death about the things we think are most valuable and the things we treasure. This is partly because we spend most of our time learning about, thinking about, and growing our affections for what we value. Whether that is your kids, your singleness, your job, your hobby, and your cat; what you value most, you will talk about most. It becomes the thing that shapes your life and becomes a definer of who you are.

Since this is true, the church must focus on Gospel Enjoyment first and foremost. The only way to awaken a Christian and an entire Christian community to extend the love of Christ is for them to know and cherish the gospel of Jesus Christ most. It is most valuable, the best news, and until it becomes the definer of life for the church, evangelism, mercy & justice and any other missional activity will be motivated by duty and lack a natural expression.

In assisting our communities to pursue Prayerful Mission (Prayerfully seeking to renew all things with the message and mercy of Jesus Christ), we bring their attention back to the gospel. To love what is most lovely and to value Christ above all things. From there, we look to Christ to see how He instructed His disciples to be missional.

Pray

At the end of Matthew 9, Jesus speaks the famous phrase, “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few” that has been used to motivate people to go, but Christ quickly follows that with instructions to pray. Not only that, but His motivation to pray came from a compassion after seeing large crowds of people. He loved them so much that He begged His disciples to pray before He then sends them out in Matthew 10.

The church can easily see the mission is great, there are many who do not know the gospel of Jesus Christ. But how often does it motivate us to pray? We must become a praying people if we are ever to be a missional people.

Gospel Explanations come from Gospel Motivations – Evangelism

One of the things the great JR Vassar says often is that a life motivated by the gospel leads to a life explained by the gospel. Gospel explanations stem from gospel motivations. This needs to become our understanding of evangelism.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with handing out tracks and street preaching, the most common form of evangelism is people sharing why they live the life they live.

When this happens, whether you’re a Christian or not, you are evangelizing.

For our communities, we try to help them process how the gospel defines their approach to their home life, their work life, the way they spend time and money, along with other things. This is why an intentional community that counsels with the gospel is so essential.

In equipping our communities, we encourage them to recognize receptive opportunities that are already in their lives. We do this to move mission from a “this happens somewhere else” mentality to a “this happens in the everyday” mentality. When Jesus sends His disciples, he encourages them to spend time with the most receptive, so it becomes helpful for us to evaluate where we live, work, and spend our time to see if God has already provided opportunities for us to share our gospel-motivated lives.

The Gospel through Mercy

A few years ago, I only thought of the gospel as a spiritual reality to extend to people through a message. But in re-reading the gospels and the epistles along with Ministries of Mercy by Tim Keller, I was confronted that I had a limited view of the gospel. Christ came not just to heal people spiritually, but to address the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual brokenness in our world.

He is doing this through a community defined by the gospel. We partner with Hope For New York to join non-profits in serving our city, but we also encourage creative compassion to the neighborhoods where our communities exist. This has led to people surprising their local parks through joining clean-up projects and even establishing a non-profit to serve foster children in NYC.

Extending the mercy of Christ to tangible needs coupled with a gospel explanation is a powerful display of who Jesus is through a community that loves Him.

Multiplying Disciples and Communities

This brings us back to the gospel in asking what is the final goal. The final goal that starts with the gospel is to see more disciples and more communities that seek the renewal of all things with the message and mercy of Jesus Christ. We prepare the people at Apostles Church that they won’t be in the same Community Group forever because Jesus and His mission is most valuable.

This frees us from dependence on community – though we never neglect or stop loving those we initially establish community with – to then extend a new creation of a community to those outside the community. For us, we see this as a proclamation that Jesus is even better than our closest friendships.

But none of this happens without the gospel of Jesus Christ becoming primary in our lives. We could explain this and attempt to exhort people to mission all day, but only the gospel provides the freedom and the joy to extend the message and mercy of Jesus Christ to everyone.

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