Archivos de la categoría ‘Iglesia Emergente’

No Mission Without the Gospel of the Kingdom

Publicado: septiembre 7, 2011 en 3DM Discipulado, Iglesia, Iglesia Emergente, Misión Integral
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by BEN STERNKE on SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

Post image for No Mission Without the Gospel of the KingdomEarly on in my explorations of missional theology, I remember thinking that this stuff was so brilliant that all people really needed was permission to do it, and it would take off. I figured all this missional energy was just bottled up inside everyone and they were just waiting for someone to release them and bless them in it. I thought the reason people weren’t doing it was because they didn’t know they were allowed to.You probably know what’s coming. Excitedly I began giving people permission to live missionally, explaining why it made sense, illustrating the possibilities. And people basically nodded in agreement. Some even got excited with me. But nothing changed (including me). Even people who wanted to couldn’t find their way into a way of life that was naturally joining God in the renewal of all things as a matter of course. A deeper problem was manifesting itself, one that I was just beginning to understand.

As I’ve read and prayed and pondered and worked with people and discussed with others, I think I see more clearly now what the underlying issue is. I’ve boiled it down to a little axiom that I want to offer and explain. Here’s the axiom:

No mission without formation.
No formation without discipleship.
No discipleship without the gospel of the kingdom.

I think this gets to the heart of why mobilizing Christians and churches for everyday mission seems to take so long and be so difficult. Here’s why.

No mission without formation
Underneath the issue of mission was formation. As Dave Fitch has said, “missional people do not fall out of trees,” they have to be formed. More properly, they have to be transformed (“changed from one form to another”). The reason we weren’t seeing any sense of “everyday mission” was because people hadn’t been formed significantly into the image of Christ.

No formation without discipleship
But why hadn’t they been formed in this way? These were people who attended church services regularly, led small groups, taught Sunday school,worked in the nursery, even! Why wasn’t all this activity and service resulting in spiritual formation in the likeness of Christ? Because they had never fully intended to follow Jesus as his disciple, learning from him how to be like him. This gets to the heart of why some of the most beautiful and theologically-rich liturgies can sometimes produce some of the meanest people you’ll ever meet: event the practices, in and of themselves, don’t magically make us like Jesus. We must “enroll in the school,” as Dallas Willard says. I’ve written previously about how we do this. The truth is that we will not be significantly formed to look like Jesus unless we do so.

No discipleship without the gospel of the kingdom
So why don’t people become disciples of Jesus? Short answer: because they’ve never been ravished by a vision of the kingdom of God. In other words, they haven’t really understood or received the gospel of the kingdom. The “gospel” we’ve been predominantly preaching is a truncated version of the full vision of life in God’s kingdom that Jesus talked about (as did Paul and the rest of the New Testament writers).

The gospel is not primarily about dealing with our “sin issue,” it is about theinvitation to live with God in his kingdom right now. If this is the gospel we are responding to, then all the rest of the dominoes fall easily into place:

Responding to the gospel of the kingdom naturally leads to discipleship,because we very quickly learn that we don’t know how to live with God in his kingdom, but Jesus does. This is a very different way of life that we mustlearn from Someone who knew how to do it well: Jesus. We are with him, learning from him how to be like him.

This kind of discipleship to Jesus naturally leads to significant spiritual formation, because the Spirit transforms us as we follow Jesus in kingdom living. We start thinking and speaking and acting and loving like Jesus. His life gets “into” us more and more.

Our formation as disciples then naturally leads to everyday mission,because ultimately this kingdom life we are invited into is simply a matter of being involved in what God is doing in the world, joining with him in the renewal of all things.

So ultimately it seems to me that if we want to cultivate a movement of people and communities joining with God in the renewal of all things, we must begin by preaching the gospel of the kingdom: giving people a brilliant picture of life in God’s kingdom (both in our words and lives), and telling them the shocking news that they can step into the kingdom right now.

Any additional thoughts? Does this axiom seem to hold true for you in your situation?

Do You Want to Learn How to Make Disciples?

Publicado: septiembre 1, 2011 en 3DM Discipulado, Iglesia Emergente, Misión Integral
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by Ben Sternke

Post image for Do You Want to Learn How to Make Disciples?In our process of planting a network of missional communities, we’ve discovered that discipleship is an absolutely essential foundation to have in place if you want to see any fruit in terms of mission. Through our friends at 3DM, we’ve been learning how to build a discipling culture that is radically reproducible and leads to what Jesus called “fruit that lasts.”Through this process, here are a few things I have come to believe:

  • You can’t teach people into missional living, you have to disciple them into it, like Jesus did.
  • If you disciple people like Jesus did, it almost automatically leads to mission. It fundamentally changes the whole direction of people’s lives.
  • Making disciples is what Jesus told us to do. If you don’t know how to do this, your ministry won’t be producing kingdom fruit, no matter how “successful” you appear to be in terms of attendance at meetings or money in the bank.
  • You can’t take people where you’ve never been. If you’ve never been discipled into discipling people to disciple people, it is nearly impossible to create ex nihilo a community that can do that.
  • The church in the West is faltering because of a massive lack of intentional discipleship.

Which means that for you as a leader, the whole issue starts and ends with your own discipleship. Sadly, most of us have never been discipled into making disciples the way Jesus did.

If you find yourself in that boat, I want to make you aware of an opportunity.

In the next few weeks, I will be starting a few Coaching Huddles. They’ll be focused on helping you establish a discipling culture in your ministry context. We’ll be working with 3DM’s memorable and reproducible tools, practices, and skills for imitating the life and ministry of Jesus and discipling others to do the same. Each Huddle will have up to 5 people in it and we’ll meet for a period of 9-12 months. The Huddle will happen weekly on a conference call, and you will have access to me outside of the Huddle calls. (If there is enough interest in Fort Wayne, too, one of these Huddles could be local).

Many people are becoming more familiar with Huddles as they have been used by Mike Breen and 3DM, and this discipleship vehicle has produced some amazing fruit in my own life and many others that I know. Huddles are certainly not the only way to disciple people like Jesus, but they are the best vehicle I’ve come across for producing people that increasingly look more like Jesus and are able to do the things that Jesus did.

These Huddles come with a high commitment level:

  • You schedule other things around it. You get the most out of this if you commit to showing up every single week.
  • We take accountability seriously. At the conclusion of each Huddle you will be able to answer two questions: 1) What is God saying to me? 2) What am I going to do about it? There is no growth in the kingdom without action.
  • It will cost you financially. $100 a month, to be exact. I am doing this as a multi-vocational church planter, so your financial investment will not only help me feed my family, but it will go toward our mission of discipling people who can’t afford to invest financially and establishing missional communities in Fort Wayne and eventually all over the Midwest.
  • You will start a Huddle of your own. I’m assuming from the beginning that you’re going to grow a lot, both personally and in your ability to disciple people. Sometime during our 9-12 months together, you will be expected to start a Huddle of your own, because part of being a disciple of Christ is making disciples of Christ.

If that sounds like something you’re interested in, contact me ASAP and let me know why you’d like to be in one of these Huddles and what you’re hoping to get out of it.

Surprises of church planting

Publicado: septiembre 1, 2011 en 3DM Discipulado, Iglesia Emergente, Misión Integral
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Doug Paul

 

Before arriving to the central point of this post, allow me to recap some of the things I’ve been talking about in the past few months. As I see it, here are some of the enormous hurdles facing church planters as they are planting in the current landscape of things:

  • Many church planters are attempting to plant types of churches that are vastly different than any church they’ve seen or been a part of before. We use words like movemental, decentralized, discipleship-oriented, empowering, lightweight/low maintenance, gathering is a time to bring together the scattered pieces of the community so we can scatter again. The hurdle: Doing this requires a skillset that next to none of us have because there are next to no people who have done this and almost all of us have grown up in a different paradigm of church. Furthermore, even if we can find coaches who have done it, it’s still crazy hard because we’re trying to do something beyond our reigning paradigm that we’ve never experienced for any lasting period of time. It’s easy and fun to talk about the theory of all of this stuff. But at the end of the day, don’t we actually need to know how to do it? For instance, it’s one thing to read about a Missional Community or be coached by someone who’s led them…but I’d contend the learning curve is a Mount Everest of steep if you’re launching Missional Communities and you’ve never been in one yourself for at least a year where you’ve seen it start, grow, disciple people, see people come to faith and multiply. Church planting can be a volatile environment for learning something this hard when you’re starting from square one. Now I’m not suggesting it can’t be done without experiencing it first. Clearly every movement in history, at some point, did not exist. But I’m suggesting for a movement to grow and flourish it needs to be easily reproducible. This barrier of paradigm, training and experience is a monumental barrier to that flourishing on the wider scale of things.
  • I would contend that most church planters have never been discipled before. I have this running theory that the vast majority (I’d guesstimate it at 95%) of people age 40 and younger who grew up in the church have never been discipled in the way that the New Testament and every missional/discipling movement would qualify discipleship…and that includes pastors. There are two big problems here: First, Jesus cares first and foremost about our own discipleship. He cares more about us than he does about what we can do for his Kingdom. He doesn’t really need us to accomplish his purposes, though obviously he prefers it. Second, how are we going to be able to disciple someone if we’ve never been discipled yourself? We can’t take people to the places we haven’t been ourselves.
  • The financial stress cannot be overstated when you combine the two things above with the reality that church planters have to feed their families. Raising support, at least for most, isn’t a viable long term option. You can start the church that way, but eventually, most people’s support will dry up. Obviously bi-vocational is a great possibility, but to be honest, most church planters are trained to do one thing and one thing only: pastoring. That’s their skillset. So bi-vocational can be incredibly difficult (this is another post for another time, but we’ve started to work on some really exciting things for this). It’s difficult because it puts most bi-vocational planters in a position where the job has very little flexibility or pays peanuts (or both). This leaves church planters in a precarious position because they need the church to grow and prosper financially, which means they need more people…but in order to get more people they need to know how to disciple people (and they’ve never been discipled) and grow a new kind of church (which they’ve never really seen or been adequately trained to grow). That’s quite the Catch-22, isn’t?! Can you start to see how all of this puts church planters and their families on the precipice of a nervous breakdown? (not to mention a possible financial one)
It seems to me, from where I sit, that more and more church planters want to plant these kinds of churches; churches that can flourish in post-Christendom and embrace all of the ancient practices of discipleship and mission. We’re seeing that the future is found in a kind of return to the past. I would say many of them feel as if the Lord has spoken something deep inside of them to plant this kind of church. But for the reasons listed above, many will default back to the hierarchical, centralized, Sunday-centric attractional church model they know rather than sticking with it. And who can blame them? Their primary responsibility is to care for their own family! We cannot ask people to sacrifice their family on the altar of ministry. Clearly this isn’t what Jesus is after.In short, we need to address some of these massive gaps or we simply won’t be providing a way forward for scores and scores of church planters who long to be faithful, but need the means by which to do so. They need it financially, spiritually, relationally and from a training/experience perspective. 

In other words, we must radically re-imagine the way we are training and resourcing our church planters. In my next post I’ll throw out some of the practical ideas I’ve been kicking around with some people and where I believe all of this is going. Stay tuned.

 

http://dougpaulblog.com/

¿Qué nos hace ser atractivos?

Publicado: agosto 26, 2011 en Iglesia Emergente, Misión Integral
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Juan Simarro Fernández
Retazos del evangelio a los pobres (XXXIV)
¿Qué nos hace ser atractivos?“… y venían a él de todas partes… toda la gente venía a él”. Marcos 1:45 y 2:13.
Jesús ejercía una atracción especial sobre muchísimas personas. ¿Cuál era la razón? La razón es que el Evangelio que trajo Jesús era atractivo. ¿Lo sigue siendo hoy? Estoy seguro que hoy podría serlo si siguiéramos los parámetros del Evangelio que nos trajo Jesús.Es como si Jesús, para las multitudes, a través de su palabra, de su ejemplo, de su estilo de vida, de sus prioridades y de su mensaje liberador de las cargas de los religiosos de la época, su identificación con los pobres y humildes y la siembra de sus valores, los valores del Reino, se presentara como algo fresco frente a lo rancio de muchos religiosos, como acogedor frente a las reglas y normas de pureza y de exclusión que marcaban las autoridades religiosas del momento, como algo vivencial que convertía al Evangelio en un flujo liberador para con los que sufren.

 Es por eso que le seguían multitudes. Es como si a través de este estilo de vida y este Evangelio liberador de Jesús, se estuviera haciendo un llamamiento generalizado, como si el mensaje “venid en pos de mí”, fuera un mensaje para todos. Todos, en cierta manera, podemos ser llamados, atraídos, captados por la figura de Jesús , por su vida de servicio, por su mensaje liberador y que se identificaba tanto con los débiles del mundo.

Cuando uno es captado por el atractivo de este evangelio restaurador y que se identifica con los sufrientes del mundo, es cuando hace surgir en nosotros una vocación: vocación de servicio, vocación de ser agentes de liberación, vocación de comunicar el Evangelio, vocación de búsqueda de justicia, vocación de ser los transmisores de un mensaje que cambia vidas, vocación de unirnos a la denuncia profética a favor de los débiles del mundo… Eso era el atractivo de Jesús, la razón del por qué de ese auge de la esperanza de las multitudes, de los proscritos y tildados de pecadores.

 Veían en el mensaje de Jesús algo atractivo que no era común a los líderes religiosos de la época.  Jesús era totalmente original en su mensaje con respecto a los líderes religiosos del momento y se convirtió en un ser atractivo para grandes multitudes.

Hoy, para ser atractivos, debemos volver a la figura histórica de Jesús, debemos volvernos hacia los valores del Reino, hacia el compromiso con los pobres y sufrientes de la tierra, a identificarnos con los excluidos y proscritos del mundo, con los robados de dignidad y de hacienda, con los ofendidos y humillados de la tierra.

 El atractivo de los creyentes no está en que asistan a los cultos con ropas limpias, en que se conviertan en cumplidores de rituales… aunque hay que hacerlo. No está de más que busquemos el culto en los templos, pero el auténtico culto a Dios está explicado tremendamente bien por los profetas. El auténtico ritual está, sin duda, en partir el pan con los hambrientos, en acordarse de los excluidos y pobres de la tierra, en trabajar por la justicia… Eso nos va a hacer atractivos en la línea de Jesús, sin que eliminemos otras partes del ritual o del culto.

Quizás sea entonces cuando las multitudes nos van a seguir, cuando la evangelización va a tener un atractivo imparable, cuando nuestras palabras serán hermosas y proféticas, cuando el mundo se volverá hacia nosotros. Jesús era atractivo porque tenía en cuenta a los oprimidos, rechazados, proscritos y, además, liberaba a muchos tildados de malditos por ignorantes que no podían seguir toda la maraña de normas de los religiosos del momento. El Evangelio liberador de Jesús tenía un atractivo extraordinario, imparable, nuevo, liberador, original, restaurador de los despojados y rechazados.

Cuando nos sentimos atraídos por el Evangelio comprometido de Jesús, el que en gran parte se puede llamar el Evangelio a los pobres, es cuando nuestra fe está empezando a vivir, cuando el Señor nos ha tocado para que abramos nuestro corazón y nuestra vida a una fe actuante. La fe que necesita del amor para no morirse y dejar de ser. Para ser atractivos al mundo tienen que surgir las obras de la fe como algo precioso e irresistible, como algo que se compromete con el mundo y que sirve.

La fe sin obras, no es atractiva. El cristiano de fe pasiva, es como algo sin forma, sin atractivo, sin valor. La fe que actúa por el amor es el atractivo al cual no se podrán resistir las multitudes del mundo, la fe que puede cambiar valores y hacer que las estructuras de pecado, de maldad y de injusticia salten hechas pedazos.

Por tanto, el auténtico atractivo, si queremos ser vidas preciosas ante los hombres que no tengan más remedio que reconocer la atracción de los cristianos del mundo, el encanto que se debe reflejar en el rostro y la vida de los cristianos, debe compaginar la fe con el amor, una fe activa que obra a través de actos de amor y de servicio a los débiles. El cristianismo que se limita a ser de ritual y de sacristía, no es atractivo para el mundo. Ni siquiera es feo u horroroso… es algo indiferente, sin forma, incapaz de cambiar el mundo, ni de cambiar vidas.

La atracción del Evangelio no está sólo en la alabanza o en la exaltación de un Jesús por labios insolidarios. La atracción va a estar cuando el Evangelio se compromete con el mundo como algo liberador, cuando se predica con unos estilos de vida que alumbren al mundo, alejados del boato y del “prestigio” mundano de los acumuladores de este siglo, cuando se den los primeros lugares a los que han sido relegados a los últimos rincones de la humanidad. Cuando el Evangelio que prediquemos sea rompedor de yugos, liberador de los oprimidos y rehabilitador de los que viven en la infravida de la pobreza y marginación.

Es cuando, entonces, nuestros rostros van a ser atractivos al mundo y el Evangelio será un faro que atraiga la mirada de todos los pobladores de la tierra.

Autores: Juan Simarro Fernández

©Protestante Digital 2011

Always Enough

Publicado: agosto 20, 2011 en 3DM Discipulado, Iglesia, Iglesia Emergente, Misión Integral
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BEN STERNKE

Post image for Always Enough

Lately I have been reflecting on the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand (Mark 6:30-44), and I think it has a lot to say to those of us seeking to cultivate people and communities that can move out in discipleship and mission.

Anyone who has actually tried to do this stuff knows how difficult it is, how fraught with unanticipated challenges and constant feelings of inadequacy. It’s easy to think that no “progress” is being made, it isn’t moving fast enough, and maybe I don’t have what it takes to do this stuff in the first place. I have come to believe, though, that all of this is a necessary part of the training Jesus will take us through as we seek to join him in his mission. It’s the same training the first disciples went through in the feeding of the five thousand.

Like us, the disciples first saw a need: people were hungry. Jesus had been teaching all day and the disciples prudently suggest that because of the lateness of the day and the remoteness of the location, they ought to be dismissed to go to the surrounding villages to buy something to eat. They saw a need and attempted to fill it with their own ingenuity and street-smarts.

Jesus, however, gives them a bit of a shock with his own suggestion: “You give them something to eat.” The disciples are incredulous. “Do you have any idea how much it would cost to buy food for all these people? Are you really suggesting that we do that? Are you crazy?” They’re still attempting to solve the problem with their own abilities and intelligence, and they’re despairing because they realize there is no way they can do anything even remotely close to what Jesus is suggesting.

Jesus then asks them the question that gets to the heart of what he’s trying to teach them: “How many loaves do you have?” he asks, “Go and see.” The disciples answer, “Five–and two fish.” Jesus tells everyone to sit down on the grass, and I can imagine the disciples thinking, “He’s going to start a riot! How are we going to split this up to feed five thousand men?”

But Jesus simply takes the little sack lunch, looks up to heaven and gives thanks, breaks the loaves, and tells the disciples to start handing out food. The result is, in Mark’s understated prose: “They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish.”

Jesus always leads and commands us to do that which we could never accomplish in our own ability. You give them something to eat. Stretch out your hand. Take up your mat and walk. Heal those who are sick. Cleanse the lepers. Raise the dead. Make disciples of all peoples.

And when we come face-to-face with the impossibility of what we’re trying to do, and finally start to give up doing it in our own strength, Jesus says, “How many loaves do you have?” The disciples count them up and give them to Jesus. This is essential. They don’t give him a few of the loaves and keep a few for themselves, just in case. They giveeverything to Jesus, relinquishing the meager provisions they had, trusting Jesus to do something with them. The disciples wouldn’t get their loaves and fish back in the same form they gave them.

Jesus took what was offered, insufficient as it was, looked up to heaven and gave thanks, broke the loaves, and gave them to the people. It’s the same structure as the Eucharistic meal: taken, blessed, broken, given. That which was offered in trust is gathered up into the life of the kingdom, broken and distributed, and finally multiplied to meet the need, bringing dinner to five thousand families, plus leftovers!

Whatever you have is always enough when it is offered to Jesus completely, because God multiplies it to meet the need, however large.

So if you’re discouraged in the journey of cultivating communities of formation and mission, I implore you to resist the temptation to throw in the towel. The reason it’s hard is because we’re learning not to strive in our own strength. I also implore you to resist the temptation to, in frustration, engineer solutions birthed in your own ability or intelligence. Keep looking to Jesus and offering him what you have, however meager. Whatever you offer will be taken up into the life of the kingdom, broken and transformed by God’s power, and multiplied to meet needs you could never hope to meet in your own ability.

They’ll probably even be leftovers.

30 Simple Ways To Be Missional In Your Workplace

Publicado: agosto 19, 2011 en 3DM Discipulado, Iglesia, Iglesia Emergente, Misión Integral
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VERGE NETWORK

Many times it’s difficult to find practical ways to be a blessing in your workplace. Rapid pace, mounting deadlines, or co-worker conflict can often derail even the best of intentions to say and show the love of Jesus at work.

Recently, Josh Reeves posted some very practical ideas for blessing others in the workplace:

1. Instead of eating lunch alone, intentionally eat with other co-workers and learn their story.

2. Get to work early so you can spend some time praying for your co-workers and the day ahead.

3. Make it a daily priority to speak or write encouragement when someone does good work.

4. Bring extra snacks when you make your lunch to give away to others.

5. Bring breakfast (donuts, burritos, cereal, etc.) once a month for everyone in your department.

6. Organize a running/walking group in the before or after work.

7. Have your missional community/small group bring lunch to your workplace once a month.

8. Create a regular time to invite coworkers over or out for drinks.

9. Make a list of your co-workers birthdays and find a way to bless everyone on their birthday.

10. Organize and throw office parties as appropriate to your job.

11. Make every effort to avoid gossip in the office. Be a voice of thanksgiving not complaining.

12. Find others that live near you and create a car pool.

13. Offer to throw a shower for a co-worker who is having a baby.

14. Offer to cover for a co-worker who needs off for something.

15. Start a regular lunch out with co-workers (don’t be selective on the invites).

16. Organize a weekly/monthly pot luck to make lunch a bit more exciting.

17. Ask someone who others typically ignore if you can grab them a soda/coffee while you’re out.

18. Be the first person to greet and welcome new people.

19. Make every effort to know the names of co-workers and clients along with their families.

20. Visit coworkers when they are in the hospital.

21. Bring sodas or work appropriate drinks to keep in your break room for coworkers to enjoy. Know what your co-workers like.

22. Go out of your way to talk to your janitors and cleaning people who most people overlook.

23. Find out your co-workers favorite music and make a playlist that includes as much as you can (if suitable for work).

24. Invite your co-workers in to the service projects you are already involved in.

25. Start/join a city league team with your co-workers.

26. Organize a weekly co-working group for local entrepreneurs at a local coffee shop.

27. Start a small business that will bless your community and create space for mission.

28. Work hard to reconcile co-workers who are fighting with one another.

29. Keep small candy, gum, or little snacks around to offer to others during a long day.

30. Lead the charge in organizing others to help co-workers in need.

Be sure and check out the full article here.

Do you have some other ideas or ways that you’ve been missional at work? Let us know below in the Comments section!

Missional Tip: Pick one of these ideas and act on it this week. Let us know in the comments how it went!

[ HT: Zach Nielsen and Brad Andrews]

http://www.vergenetwork.org

Don’t drink the water: How culture has corrupted the American Church

Publicado: agosto 19, 2011 en 3DM Discipulado, Iglesia, Iglesia Emergente, Misión Integral
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by Mike Breen

One of the things we have to develop if we are to be missionaries to those around us is the ability to step back from our culture and observe it carefully and thoughtfully. We do this so we can best connect the Gospel of Jesus — of his available Kingdom — with the culture we live in. We also do it so we can be careful not to let toxic pieces of the culture we are seeking to redeem insinuate themselves into our worldview. That’s why we are told “be in the world, but not of it.” Being observers and exegeters of culture teach us how to “be not of it.”

Let me offer an example that, perhaps, will stir the pot.

If you read The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille (and if you’re serious about reaching the American culture, you need to read it), he talks about the culture of the United States. He says many things, but one thing he mentions is that part of the “code” of America is the culture of abundance. We don’t just buy what we need, we buy far above and beyond that. In fact, if you get down into the history of this country, you see that this is actually woven into the fabric of America since its’ inception. It’s absolutely fascinating.

So in this culture we find ourselves in, abundance is good.

But it goes further than that. We ascribe certain qualities and virtues to abundance — “success” or “value” or “meaning.” In American culture, a simple formula is this: The more money/stuff/friends/houses you have = the more successful/valuable/meaningful you are. It’s a simple formula and we probably see it all around us. People base their personal identity and value on the degree of abundance they are living into. We know this is destructive. All we have to do is look at our current financial system and see how unstable this is. Yet it’s all around us.

What’s interesting is how it is playing out in more subtle ways, insinuating itself into much of the world Christians inhabit. The sad reality is that churches/pastors live by the same simple formula: The more you have = the more successful/valuable/meaningful you are. In other words, the more people go to your church, the better you are as a pastor. The more people that show up on a Sunday morning, the more successful you are. We’ll even reward you with special perks to affirm you are special: The conference circuit. If your church gets big enough, we’ll stick you on a stage with the spotlight on you in front of thousands and thousands of your peers, who lean forward with baited breath, waiting to hear what you have to say.

The more people in your church = the more successful and influential you are. Or more simply, “Big = right.”

Here’s my question: Who says so?

Who in the world says that formula is right? Where in scripture can I find it written that people with the biggest churches are the most successful in the eyes of Jesus and his Kingdom? Now I’m not saying that big churches can’t be successful in the eyes of the Kingdom, I’m simply saying it’s not a given. I’m saying that just because you have a lot of people coming to your church doesn’t mean you’re actually preaching and living out the Gospel of Jesus. This formula we’ve accepted in our church culture is an adoption of the wider culture, not the culture of real Kingdom life. It has insinuated itself into our thinking and we must see how toxic it is. In fact, you would have a hard time convincing me that our enemy’s strategy isn’t to let a certain % of churches grow to reinforce this toxic and warped way of thinking. It pushes us away from true Kingdom success, so it’s not really a loss for him, is it?

Really hear what I’m saying. It’s not that big churches are bad. I’m not saying we shouldn’t want our churches to grow and see more and more people come to faith and be discipled. I pastored one of the largest churches in Europe. But I didn’t evaluate the success of our church on the size or % growth of our church attendance.

It’s about quality, not quantity. If I had to pick between a church of 50 people who were all disciples and Kingdom citizens or 5,000 people who went to my thing on Sunday but few were actual disciples…I’d take the smaller group every time. EVERY TIME. Because that is what Jesus valued most, it’s what I value most.

How many churches at the end of the year ask themselves, “Did we grow this year?” and use the answer to this question as a barometer of success or failure? Yes, of course we want our churches to grow and see more people come to faith. But that is in the Lord’s hands, not our own. Life in the Kingdom of God says that success is faithfulness. Period. Success is obedience. Success is doing what God has asked you to do and being faithful to him, letting him control outcomes. Daniel in the Old Testament refused to eat the food of the culture for fear of being contaminated. My friends, our churches and our minds are contaminated. The “world” has crept in and warped the way we see things.

The value of your ministry is not evaluated on how big it is and how fast it is growing, as if we were stockholders evaluating the growth of the shares we hold. Your ministry is successful if, and only if, you and your community are obedient to what God has asked you to do. Ask yourself this question: Are we being faithful?

There were times in Jesus’ ministry when he had more than 20,000 people coming to hear him speak, hanging on every syllable, wondering what he’d say or do next. This same man lost next to everyone, with even his closest friends leaving him. We see the same kind of journey for the Apostle Paul. Yet in the eyes of the Kingdom, both are “successful” because they were obedient.

Perhaps there is no better way to close this post than with the covenantal prayer that John Wesley would use and has become a guiding prayer in my own personal journey. May it comfort and disturb you:

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.

And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.

Amen.

 

http://mikebreen.wordpress.com

On Church Mission Statements

Publicado: agosto 7, 2011 en 3DM Discipulado, Iglesia, Iglesia Emergente, Misión Integral
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BY ALLAN BEVERE

Every church I have served has had a mission statement. I have assisted churches in developing mission statements. Some of those statements have been quite good, others are nothing more than idyllic preference-driven affirmations on how the church can continue to serve only itself. Since the church has a mission, having a mission statement seems quite logical.

But does the church need to develop a mission statement when Jesus has already given us one?

And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you’ (Matthew 28:18-20).

I know that when churches develop mission statements they mean well, but in doing so do they unintentionally suggest that they can improve upon the mission Jesus gave the church some two millennia ago? We are to go to all the nations in order to make disciples of Jesus Christ, and that mission has not changed. Perhaps we feel the need to have a second mission statement because we want to add our two cents, believing we have to have a say in what we should be doing as the church.

Now some might suggest that a mission statement gives more detail, fills out, Jesus’ marching orders he has given to the church. But the experts in mission statements insist that a good mission statement is short and to the point and easy to memorize, and a long mission statement is counter-productive and basically useless. What is shorter and more to the point than Jesus’ charge to make disciples of all nations?

No individual church needs to develop a mission statement. We’ve had one for two thousand years. What each church needs to do is to get to the task of keeping the charge we’ve already been given.

 

 

http://www.patheos.com

Why We Don’t Make Disciples

Publicado: agosto 7, 2011 en 3DM Discipulado, Iglesia Emergente, Misión Integral
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BEN STERNKE

The Inventor and His Useless Invention

A few days ago Mike Breen posted a series on his blog that essentially asked the question, “Why does most ‘innovation’ in the church revolve around technology instead of discipleship?” In other words, why do we spend so much intellectual and creative capital tinkering with technological niftyness instead of investing that capital in finding out how to make disciples well?

Most of the possible reasons he offered revolved around the fact that discipleship is difficult, and therefore left untried (like that great G.K. Chesteron quote, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”) While I think there’s an element of truth in that, I think that the real issue lies much deeper, and has to do with how our unspoken theological assumptions invariably guide our lives. And everyone has theological assumptions. You can’t live without them. But if they remain unexamined and un-articulated they could lead you to waste your life tinkering with things that don’t really matter in the long run.

My contention is this:

If we want to see a discipleship revolution take root in the North American church, we have to grapple with our inherited assumptions about what salvation is.

Until we really wrestle with this question and come to some solid answers, discipleship will not take root because it will always feel like an optional “add-on” to the “main thing,” some Christian bling for those who are into that kind of thing.

My friend JR Rozko articulated it really well with his comment on the first post in Mike’s series, andwrote a good post in his blog outlining the issue. I’ve also written about the issue a couple times (“Forgiveness Isn’t the Whole Gospel” and “The Gospel, Evangelism, and Discipleship”).

Essentially the issue is this: If salvation is merely agreeing with a few propositions so we can get into heaven when we die, if that’s what it’s really about, then of course all we’ll do is innovate new ways to attract people to hear that message and “say the prayer,” so to speak. Our goal defines the path our innovation takes.

But if salvation is something bigger, like participating in the life of God, joining with him in what he’s doing now (which I would argue is a far more biblical definition), then it makes perfect sense to make disciples of Jesus, because if we accept the invitation to live with God in his kingdom now, we very quickly learn that wedon’t know how to do that. Thus discipleship follows naturally from this, because Jesus knows how to do it, and he promises to teach us and empower us to do it.

If salvation is “signing the papers” so we secure blessing in heaven, then our goal will simply be to get more people to sign the papers, and thus our innovation will take a technological turn, because you get more informational bang for your buck that way. But if salvation is participating in what God is doing now, and our goal is initiating people into that kind of life, we will naturally utilize our creative and intellectual capital to innovate ways to more effectively make disciples. Again, our goal will define the path our innovation takes.

The problem is that many churches try to “add” discipleship to their already-existing programs and paradigms, without deeply examining their assumptions about salvation, which tragically lead them to invent tricky new ways to “get the word out” and remain impotent in their ability to make disciples. Like my friend Michael Rudzena said the other day, “Sometimes it isn’t the problem that needs troubleshooting, it’s the paradigm.”

If we really want to move churches toward building discipling cultures, we need to find ways to ask this deeper question about the nature of salvation. We need ways to confront the underlying assumptions that lead us away from discipleship. One idea I’ve wondered about is using parables. Jesus used them all the time to explode paradigms and turn things upside down.

What kinds of parables could we tell that would explode our paradigms of salvation?

http://bensternke.com


The Gospel, Evangelism, and Discipleship

Publicado: julio 28, 2011 en 3DM Discipulado, Iglesia, Iglesia Emergente
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by BEN STERNKE

Post image for The Gospel, Evangelism, and Discipleship“Does the gospel I preach naturally lead to people becoming disciples of Jesus?” – Dallas Willard

Put another way: Is becoming a disciple of Jesus the natural way to say ‘Yes’ to the gospel I preach?

This question has been revolutionizing my understanding of the gospel, evangelism, and discipleship. For example, if we see the main message of the gospel as “Your sins can be forgiven,” it does not naturally lead to becoming a disciple of Jesus, because once you’ve got the “forgiveness contract” signed, discipleship seems like an optional extra-curricular activity for people who are into that kind of thing. Gospel-as-forgiveness is an anemic understanding of what the New Testament proclaims.

Here’s the way I am beginning to understand this, and the simple way we are going to be teaching our leaders at Christ Church to practice evangelism. Do you think this adequately captures things? What do you think?

THE GOSPEL
The Gospel is the good news that through Jesus Christ, life in the kingdom of God is available to anyone and everyone. The door has been kicked open by the death and resurrection of Jesus, and whoever wants to can come running in and find the good life in God’s kingdom.

EVANGELISM
Evangelism is the work of proclaiming this gospel; that is, announcing to people that a life in God’s kingdom is available to them right now, and inviting them to move into it by trusting Jesus.

DISCIPLESHIP
Discipleship then flows easily and naturally from this gospel, because theway we enter life in God’s kingdom now is by trusting Jesus. This doesn’t mean simply trusting him to let us into heaven when we die. It means we trust him for everything: our daily needs, abiding joy and peace, and power(through the Spirit) to do the things he said were good and right, to join with him in his action in the world.

Thus trust in and obedience to Jesus are what we are calling people to when we tell them the kingdom of God is available to them. Some will ignore the message, some will mock and attack it, but some will respond with a question like, “What must I do?” The answer is, “Trust Jesus. Join us as we seek to live in relationship and obedience to him. Join us as we seek to be involved in what He’s doing right now in the earth.”

All of this must be done in a relational context. That is, we will seek to establish presence in a context before we move into proclamation, and our proclamation will be conditioned and shaped by our context. If we discern that someone is open to the gospel, one easy way to invite people into the kingdom is to simply say, “I believe God is very close to you, he loves you, is available to you, and wants to work in your life. What would you like to ask him for?” From there you can simply pray with them about that issue, and then walk with them and see what happens.

This way we’re inviting people on a journey of trusting Jesus, where they can take small steps of faith and obedience in relationship to the actual issues of their lives, because these are probably the places the kingdom is seeking to break into their lives anyway.

What are your thoughts on this way of formulating these ideas and practicing evangelism?

 

http://bensternke.com

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