'Jesus even loves brummies'

The Why in Community

You should join a community group because ________.

That is very important blank.  How you fill it in will have a profound effect on the health of your community group ministry.  You can do a lot of things right and still be torpedoed by that question.

If you are not convinced the question of why is that important, tell your wife that you’re planning a date night because Mark Driscoll says it’s a good idea. While she may appreciate the insight of Pastor Mark I would venture that she would be more moved if your motivation were her beauty and your desire for her company.

The answers to the why in community are similarly not all equal.

Good Fruit ≠ Purpose

Growth, retention, belonging, and health are important byproducts of community, but they are just that: byproducts. We cannot take good fruit of healthy, gospel-saturated community and make it the purpose.

“Apart from Jesus’ death and resurrection, community is not possible.”

Our foundational reason for why we have community groups in our church is to image God and proclaim the good news of what Jesus has accomplished on the cross.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.  Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. –  2 Cor. 5:17-20

The Ministry of Reconciliation

We have been reconciled to God and one another for the purpose of making an appeal to the world to be likewise reconciled.  As image bearers of God we were created for community. What sin has broken, Jesus has reconciled. Apart from Jesus’ death and resurrection, community is not possible. The existence of a loving, gospel-saturated community is a testimony to the truth of the gospel.

In a broken world that intrinsically longs for authentic community, this is a profoundly different motivation. People aren’t interested in church growth. They are desperate for hope. They can find belonging in a pub, but they need a community transformed by the love of Jesus. We have exactly what they need when we root our groups in what Jesus has accomplished.

“Our foundational reason for why we have community groups in our church is to image God and proclaim the good news of what Jesus has accomplished on the cross.”

The Why Before the How

If you want to inspire people to be a part of community help them see the bigger purpose.  Show your church how to image God in community and help your leaders understand that they are an integral part of the advancement of the gospel.

As for those byproducts, when we get the foundation of community groups rooted in Christ, we can trust there will be fruit that is good and glorifying to God.

So before you ask how to do healthy community groups, make sure you know why.

via The Why in Community | The Resurgence.

Church planting pastors usually experience a painful crash course in leadership. Very few seminaries teach this well and very few churches model this well. So, young pastors led by a vision and driven with passion often run into a leadership brick wall. I remember the first church I led as Pastor and Chairman. The Board was more concerned about Robert’s Rules of Order than they were in Jesus’ Great Commission (Mt 28:16-20). I move that we postpone indefinitely the exclusion of the Holy Spirit in church leadership meetings.

A Tool for Leaders Leading Leaders

I have used one leadership tool in my 30 years of ministry and 21 years as a chairman of a non-profit Board more than any other tool. Perhaps it may help you as you lead a newly formed leadership team or an official board of directors. It may even be the difference maker in any leadership team you direct.

In leading other church leaders, ask them to weigh in and not just to buy in to a product (any idea, project, concept, or thing produced by the work of the organization).

Buying in is securing the commitment of affected parties to a decision where they have not been involved in its formulation (i.e., I need their buy in to my plans)

Weighing in is having an idea, concept, or vision and asking for key leaders to lend their ideas (weigh in) on its formulation (i.e., I want them to weigh in on this need we have)

Average leaders will appreciate your bringing a finished product to them for their approval. But great leaders will want to help shape it, refine it, and make it a better product. Which kind of leader do you want to lead your organization?

via A Tool for Building Great Leaders | The Resurgence.

This post originally appreared on Justin Buzzard’s blog

At our informational meeting for Garden City Church I shared a list: The Top 10 Reasons Why People Should Not Join our church plant.

1.  If you’re looking for the next cool thing in town (We want to grow by conversion growth, not church-goer transfer growth).

2.  If you’re a Christian and you don’t like your current church (You will find reasons to not like this church).

3.  If you have a bad track record at churches of being unteachable and causing problems (You won’t change here, you’ll repeat the pattern).

4.  If you’re a consumer wanting to “go to church” 1x a week for a nice show (We are not a Sunday show, we are a community of disciples on a mission).

5.  If you want religion (This church will be built on the radical gospel of grace).

6.  If you have an agenda (We have our vision, our mission, and our values—your private agenda does not supercede them).

7.  If you’re a wolf (We will sniff you out).

8.  If you think this will be a nice little church that stays the same size, where everybody knows your name and you have my cell number on speed dial and we have a picnic lunch together every week (By God’s grace, we want to grow).

9.  If you think this will be easy and smooth (This will be hard and difficult; this will be a fight, a battle, and a challenging mission).

10. If you want to hold onto your comfortable life (You must lose your life).

I also shared a quote from Sir Ernest Shackleton, from the advertisement he used when recruiting men for his expedition to Antarctica in 1914:

Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.

via Top 10 Reasons Not To Join a Church Plant | The Resurgence.

Mark Driscoll gave this talk at the Resurgence conference in Orlando, Florida earlier this year. In this talk, he addresses the four theological distinctives of the current global movement in Christianity: Reformed theology, complementarian relationships, Spirit-filled lives, and missional churches.

via Four Points of the Movement | The Resurgence.

“Missional” is the current buzz word of the church. But what does it means to be missional? what is the “mission” of those being missional?

In one sense we are all missional, we live our lives with certain goals, aims and priorities of what we want to achieve.  So what is the mission of the church (global and local)?  As pastor of a local church i want to encourage and work alongside, if not always together, with other local churches and christian organisation because i think it brings glory to God when His family is united in purpose. However, i find myself very confused about what ‘mission’ some of these groups are on!  One group banging on about and prioritising the social justice issues, another community transformation, others to be seeker sensitive and other friendship evangelism? So biblical what is the mission of the church and how do these individual parts find there place and priority in the light of the great commission?

Here is an hour-long panel discussion at The Gospel Coalition with Matt Chandler, Kevin DeYoung, Jonathan Leeman, and Trevin Wax on the the Great Commission and the mission of the local church.

What on earth is the mission of the church?

<iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/25624674?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0″ width=”400″ height=”225″ frameborder=”0″></iframe><p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/25624674″>Gospel, Mission, and the Church</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/gospelcoalition”>The Gospel Coalition</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

As a young church plant we are more susceptible to the changing wind of ‘missional’ visions as our vision is yet to be deeply rooted and embedded in the hearts and mind our the church’s DNA.  So should i work with or alongside other with a different twist or possibly distortion of that the mission God has called his people to.  I’m not talking about methodology here. i’m not really concern with how people fulfil the mission and mandate that Christ has given to us, which he was given by His father but surely as his people we should have clarity on what the mission is.  If we do work with others with a different ‘mission’, i know that i’ll be exposing the church to at best misplaced passion and at worst wrong and faulty theology. i desire unity but i also want to protect the sheep from making things of secondary importance the main thing.

hope you find the discussion helpful

How does a church bring God glory in the world? Jesus put it very simply in the Great Commission:

Go into all the world and make disciples, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you

God receives glory through more and more people becoming followers of Jesus. Every local church is meant to be a community of disciples, each and every one of whom is involved in some respect in making more disciples. It is multiplicatory.

“Missional” is a current buzz word. All it means is having a commitment (as individual disciples and as a local church of disciples) to doing what Jesus said: making more disciples. Witnessing, praising God to the world, calling others to come and be worshippers and followers with us.

Therefore the goal of all leadership, all ministry, is growing and equipping missional disciples to do this. A church is not just the church when we are gathered for a couple of hours on Sunday. We are God’s missional community when we are dispersed in our work places, families and everywhere we go for the other 110 hours a week we aren’t asleep, living for Jesus and speaking for Jesus. The role of biblical leaders is to equip all the disciples to go there and make disciples.

God gives leaders to churches to facilitate every single disciple in participating in various ways according to their spiritual gifts in disciple-making ministry. Every disciple has unique disciple-making opportunities that nobody else has, because they have unique networks of relationships. A senior medic said to me a couple of weeks ago that his clinical director had asked him an astonishing question about the Lord out of the blue, and he instantly had an opportunity to encourage the man towards Christ. Disciple-making.

God does not give leaders to remove the burden of having to make disciples from everyone else and just do it themselves. It is worth leaders and congregations taking a long hard look at everything they do to see whether each activity has a connection with biblical disciple-making to the glory of God. Every home group leaders, every Sunday school teacher, every compassion ministry leader, every preacher. If it doesn’t, we must ask “why are we doing this thing?”

Just think for a minute of the difference in effectiveness between a church where everyone has a correct concept of themselves as a disciple-maker, and one of the same size where everyone thinks that is the job of one or two leaders. The gospel effectiveness of the second is a fraction of the first. Woe betide the leaders who take disciple-making away from every disciple and keep it all for themselves. They decimate the maturity of the rest of the disciples, take away their joy in witness and radically diminish the glory that goes to God.

This is a question that as a church we have been and are praying over.  Of course, I know that the good news of Jesus Christ proclaimed to people is of first importance and building is just a means, a resource, a vehicle to meeting people through and in to share the gospel.  Our current situation is that we don’t have a building, nor can we get hold of a community space to work out of. It is important to say that the primary objective of having a building is not to have a space to meet on a Sunday as church, though i believe that is very important for us,  the main reason for wanting a building is to be able to meet people from the community. “Well, why don’t you go meet people where they’re gathering?” you say.  Unfortunately, the only community building open which we can go to in the area is the local pub “The Leopard”, and I do go but I can’t spend all day in there with people!

I also believe that when church planting in an urban deprived area, there is something helpful and safe for the community about a church being in a building (when I say ‘church’ think body of Christ and its work – not just Sunday service). Much has been written about ‘house churches’ and the like, but I believe such a model, on its own is unlikely to be fruitful in a housing estate where an invitation to a church that meets in a house will be much scarier than an invitation to a traditional church building.  It most likely that people will think that you are a cult – a bunch of religious nut cases.  Hear me right, I believe there is a need for up close discipleship which the house church model provides, while ‘traditional church’, if defined as only a Sunday congregation, may fail to deliver. However, a building in an estate area does provide credibility and availability to the community.  It also speaks of longevity, that you are there for the long haul.  Many people on housing estates have had folk come and go in their lives, and need the stability of a community of people (the church) to commit to them.  So we believe that a building or space, at the right time, will be an important part of God’s strategy to building his Church (though just the means and not the end!)

So pray for and with us, as we seek the Lord in prayer and fasting over the next month. We ask God that He will reveal his perfect will for us as a church, and that we will have the faith to be obedient whether that be in patience to wait  or boldness to advance.

Jez

hi folks,  for those that are following the progress  of the church plant in short Heath – we launch this Sunday – very exciting. The time of preparation has been really encouraging and we now have 14 people committed to the church plant. we have spent the last two months in prayer and preparation for all God has for us.

We’re still waiting on some premises to do much of our work out of  in the community,  but we trust God in this. however, it looks very likely that we will have a property to start our work amongst those who are homeless, recovering from addictions, or find themselves needing a safe place to stay.  it will start very low-key, as a home for people in need but over time we see this becoming a property that can hold 5/6 individuals and having planned and structure rehabilitation program will be in place. In addition to this we have plans to purchase/lease a second property very close to the first to either be a second phase home or to be a women’s house. Even as i share about these things it seems amazing that these are even possibilities for us as a very small church.   but nothing is impossile with God and those willing to be obedient to him to reach people with the Gospel.

The still looking for people to come and join us on the ground in a variety of different capacities, and whilst no one is in place yet, i’m having conversations with four people, at the moment, about taking on different roles and functions. I have no doubt that God is only provided these people just the right time for us and we pray that he will lead us to them or them to us.

The church will starting of with a teaching series in the Gospel of Mark and Proverbs during our first six months,  and in a our midweek gathering will be studying three series; “how people change”, “20 Christian beliefs that every believer should know”, and “the nine marks of a healthy church”. We also have men’s and women’s ministry once a month, and a book group, once a month, where we read a book as a prompt to think about issues facing the church today, and personal holiness,  such as St Augustine’s “confessions”, .  The first book that we were looking at is “why we love the church” by Kevin de Young and Ted Kluck.

I’ve made some really great contacts in the first two months of being here in Erdington, with local churches, organisations, drug and alcohol recovery services, overseas missionaries, the Birmingham church planting network, and other church planters.   i am currently looking at opportunities to partner or support others for the work of the gospel in Birmingham. One possibility is developing a church planters training programme with various different agencies partnering in this work. But the very early stages of consultancy but my hope is that we have something in place September 2011.

Let me finish by saying how much  jo and myself appreciate the prayers and support that people have given us so far and have pledged to give us in the future. Much support is vital to the ongoing fruit of any ministry that the church are involved in. i hope to be able to send you news so of people lives being change by the grace of God and God’s work amongst us as a body. Please pray for us that we will be faithful and obedient in everything and anything that God may ask us to do.

jez

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