yesterday

yesterday was arguable the most productive day I’ve had in a long time.  I got up early and went tothe gym.  Then I went to Aloha Cafe and worked on our outlines for our cell groups this month.  I got two of them done so that’s awesome, and I know where the third one is going so that rocks.  Then I got some good organizing done on our info table, we’ve had a thing that was lame, but now we are going to get it going.  And I wrote the message for transit. So that was good.

Then later one I met with Emily to talk about out missions trip and she’s going to be helping me keep the ball rolling on this.

And after that we had a really great time at transit.

So it was a busy but productive day and I left feeling really great about it.

Colts Win! Colts Win!

You know I couldn’t root for the Bears.  They beat my beloved Seahawks.  So the colts were a shoe in for me.  And it payed off.  The Colts defense basically told Rex Grossman that perhaps football isn’t the best career path for him.  All in all a great game.

I preached this morning and I got some good feedback.  But preaching is exhausting on an emotional level and then  after church we had a BBQ at the Church and then after that we had a Super Bowl Party w/ the youth group.  Busy Day and now I’m beat so I will go to bed shortly.

I took tomorrow off as a vacation day.  I am looking forward to some naps.

No Perfect People Allowed — Book Review

Last Night I finished up “No Perfect People Allowed” By John Burke.  This is a great book on helping the church realize that we are not the moral powerhouse that we once thought we were.  The church is no longer a part of average people’s lives, and the Bible is not common knowledge like it once was.  So leaders in the church cannot go on doing business as usual.

Burke lists several issues that the church needs to figure out, and the basic premise is that people don’t have to have it all figured out before they come to Church.  But the Church needs to be a part of the journey in the lives of individuals.  So how do we do that?  We we come to them as co-journeyers.  We are all in this together and we as the church are called to be the gueds that they need.

Burke does a really great job of talking about the issues.  And he uses a  lot of really great stories.  I did feel however that this book was larger than it needed to be.  But No Perfect People Allowed is still a great resource and I would recommend it to leaders in the church and anyone who wants to see the church be transformed into a culturally relevant entity that leads people out of darkness and into the Gospel.

Missional Leaders Forum Notes

As always Earl brought some great wisdom and insights.  Here are the notes that I took on my lap top.  I might scan in the index cards and put the pictures in at another time.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Earl Creps            Missional Leaders Forum
Possible Topics
Emerging/Emergent
Permission to not embrace Boomer Church
Missional Movement
Insight:  Best prophets don’t always know they are being used.

Emerging/Emergent

(map of emerging ministry diagram on note card)

  • Implication Feelings towards Proclamation
  • Implication people going to proclamation churches feel like they went to theater.
  • How do we deconstructed the Proclamation model and invite people to join us to find the answers, instead of pushing the answers on them.
  • If we try to sway a conversation it becomes a sales pitch instead of a dialogue
  • Answers are a dead end faith is a living thing.  The mess is the point.  It’s not about having all the answers.
  • Communal: Relationships
  •     reconcile with one another
  • Institutional: Structures
  • Debate
  • Community is not homogeneity.
  • People will find their preference everywhere in the Bible.  It’s not cut and dry everywhere.
  • What we provide may communicate things that we do not intend.  Because people will be looking at it from whatever angle they come from.
  • Liking lost people is more than love. Affection is more powerful because love is obligatory. No one can pay you to like someone.
  • Missional Ministry — Interprets the ministry of the kingdom of God to those who are spiritually disabled.  Someone has to help them get it. Needs to be a core reality.  It needs to become natural.   How can we do this?
  • Missionality can die with the first big change in programming or facility.
  • Q:  Does missionality ebb and flow? Is it like a tide that we need to be ready for? Or is it something that we need to be constantly driving.
  • Infrastructure is wanted and needed but it can become a cruel task master.
  • The Institutions have to exist as an interpretive vehicle.
  • We are interpretting culture but Culture is also trying to interpret us.
  • Our organizational architecture needs to communicate what we believe about the community of God.  It should move people like a good building moves people emotionally
  • The Pastoral team needs to model a way to do Christianity in a way that might make people want to copy it.
  • People from the outside see us trying to be something that we are not.  We need to look inside ourselves.  And ask.
  • Who is Jesus?
  • Who am I?
  • Who is my Community?
  • These are the most important questions that will help us keep balance in our lives.
  • To a missional person its missiology (why questions) first and ecclesiology (how questions) second.
  • (After 1st Break)
  • Why Did the Father Send Jesus?
  •     Missional Diagram on index card.
  • The only thing that counts is pound for pound.
  • If you have 200 people and you water baptize 10 people a year — You are as effective pound for pound as Willow Creek.
  • We need to be happier than we are, the lost can see our discontent and agenda.  It’s contagious and as soon as they see it they bail.
  • They see ambition and discontent and they don’t want to be like us.
  • We need the tension to be content with where we are at being faithful to what God has called us to and wanting to reach our community.
  • There needs to be a gap between calling and obsession.
  • Know your boundary.  Don’t sell yourself out to be something that other people want you to be.  (be like Jesus)
  • Does our vocabulary give us an obsession to fit the buzzwords.  We need to be us and find the way that God wants to utilize us.
  • We can’t differentiate between the people that we are called to and the people that we live with.  It needs to be graceful because it is who we are at the very core.
  • You don’t do evangelism to others.
  • We need to own the mission and let it bubble out of us, it’s not a suit that we put on when we go into “pro mode”
  • We need to figure out a way to be ourselves but in a group of like minded selves.
  • Church is wherever we are!
  • how do we capture this lightning in a bottle.
  • What is the difference between what we do and what the smartest atheist in town does?

Intersection of ministry and culture (Diagram on card)

Something inside of me needs to die in order for us to be on the right path.
We need to believe who Jesus says we are. 

Case Studies
First Assembly Little Rock, Arkansas
Young Adult ministry 0-huge in no time and just attracted christians.  They eliminated the ministry and started over.
They launched a new ministry at the church, which is smaller but they are growing with people converting to Christ.
1.  Part of the Process is determining what needs to be Crucified.
For new things to live sometimes old things (even “successful” things) need to die.
Sometimes the enemy is the stuff that is working


Life in Deep Elum – Dallas, TX
Party City
Successful church plant in a bar attracted Bible College Students — Shut it Down
Restarted – Bought a Coffee shop that neighbored a sex shop.  The Coffee House was very successful.  You could feel a love that wasn’t out in the streets.
2.  Common Wall Holiness — We can share a common wall with the world without being corrupted by it.  If we have no common wall then we just have Barriers.
they launched a 3million dollar Community Center, and instead of being an outsider in the community they became a Center Piece.
Reneisance Church North Providence AG/ RI
8 of 24 A/G churches planted by this church.
As they grew they would grow to 200-250 and plant churches from their growth.

3.  Apostolic Impulse — Church plant that plants other churches.

4.  Perpetual Church Plant — Refused to give up on the Church Plant mentality.

What story do we want to show, the me story or the God Story.