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Here are some excellent resources coming out in the next few months to assist missional conspirators:

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At Verge last week, Jeff Vanderstelt announced the launch of the GCM Collective Launching in March as a collective (originally comprised of Soma Communities, The Crowded House and Kaleo Church-San Diego) it will centralize resources to help communities exchange ideas, resources and encouragement in a move to being the church as a community, centered on the gospel on mission to the world.

According to Drew Goodmanson (of Kaleo Church), here are some ways to stay informed of the launch:

1. Sign-up at GCM Collective
2. Join the Facebook page and follow GCM on Twitter.

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M. Scott Boren: Missional Small Groups: Becoming a Community That Makes a Difference in the World (Allelon Missional Series) (July 2010)

Product Description:

Small groups are a great place to connect with other churchgoers, but many wonder, is this all there is? Is sitting in a living room, talking about a book or watching a video the extent of what we can do together? Isn’t being a Christian community about something more than this? Pastor and author Scott Boren thinks so. In this latest release from missional thinktank Allelon, Boren gives leaders and members of small groups the tools they need to make an impact on their communities. Beginning with a gentle critique of current small group models, Boren goes on to show how a uniquely Christian paradigm can set groups free to transform their communities. The final section of the book offers over twenty practices that groups can do to become more missional. Ultimately Missional Small Groups is about helping groups follow Jesus by equipping them to bring his message and healing to a hurting world.

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Dave Ferguson + John Ferguson: Exponential: How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Church Movement (Exponential Series) (May 2010)

Product Description:

The purpose of this book is to communicate a simple strategy that will engage every Christ follower and challenge every leader to become a reproducing leader. Our hope is that every church will become a reproducing church. This book will lay out a brief, but solid theology for a reproducing strategy and then give very practical ‘how-to’s’ for reproducing Christ followers, leaders, artists, groups/teams, venues, sites, churches and networks of churches.

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Eric Swanson + Rick Rusaw: The Externally Focused Quest: Becoming the Best Church for the Community (April 2010)

Product Description:

The Externally Focused Quest: Becoming the Best Church for the Community is designed for church leaders who want to transform their churches to become less internally focused and more oriented to the world around them. The book includes the clear guidelines on the ten changes congregations must adopt to become truly outwardly focused. This book is not about getting all churches to have an annual day of community service as a tactic but changing the core of who they are and how they see themselves as a part of their community.


David Fitch, author of The Great Giveaway, a pastor of Life on the Vine, and the Chair of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary, recently put his twist on what church planting should/could look like in the post-Christendom culture.

Fitch:

We recognize then that when we get over a certain size, all we end up doing is making the goods and services of being a Christian more accessible and convenient for already existing Christians. We have no other option then, when we get too big, to ask fifteen or twenty people to leave and go be missionaries to dechurched places in post Christendom. This used to be called church planting. We often now call it “seeding missional communities.”

On discerning where to “seed” these missional communities, he says:

…we like to think in terms of “sending” groups of people as “missional orders” into a community – bands of people who can take time, and sink in and learn that culture and be among the place in which God has called them to minister Christ. When we discern places for such a missionary endeavor, we ask are these places “under-churched” and “affordable for us as we seek to live missionally and beneath our means?”

He goes on to share 5 issues to be discerned in “seeding” a new missional community:

1. Discern the 3 (or 4 or 5) leaders
2. Land in the community over launching in the community
3. Exegete the community over market surveys
4. Teach missional rhythms over attractional events
5. Prepare for a sustainable way of life over a long period of time over projected growth and financial sustainability after three years

I think Fitch’s instincts here are on the right trajectory. Read the entire post here and how he would flesh out the “seeding” process.


I’ve been slow to get this up here on transformission but last week, my friend Ed Stetzer shared an exciting announcement that I’ve been talking about via Twitter for some time now in his post, “Missing the Missional Mark.” (In fact, that is why there has been little to no blogging for the last few months…)

In his entry, Ed said:

A few of us have talked and we are going to try to forge something of a definition (of missional) — at least for how we use the term. As part of that, later this year, July 12-14, I’m partnering with a few others to launch a new conference called missionSHIFT that I believe will help us with the discussion.

As a part of this conference, we are prayerful that a helpful statement can be forged on what it means to be missional. Several leaders in the missional church conversation (Keller, Hirsch, and others to be announced), who write about all-things missional, have already agreed to be framers for the statement and some of the framers will be at the conference for discussion and dialogue.

The intention of “The Missional Manifesto” is to allow the Scriptures to guide our understanding and involvement in the mission of God as it applies to the whole of life and doctrine. The document will strive to show how “missional” intersects with truths about the gospel, the local church, evangelism, missions, social justice, and contextualization, among other things.

The intent would be to say, “This is what we mean when we talk about being missional.” It is not our intent (or within our ability) to say this is what everyone should think or say about the term. Words mean different things (for example, “grace,” “justice,” and “gospel” all have different meanings to different groups). However, it is our hope that it will help us be clearer and more mission-shaped in our own thinking and practice.

I have had the privilege of working closely with Ed on this for the past few months so I’m excited to see this come to fruition. More about my role to come…

As Ed stated at the end of his entry, he is “resurrecting” his Monday is for Missiology” posts in which he will blog about all things missional. If you are interested in this conversation, this will be a great place to engage in discussion. This will also be the forum where we release additional names of those who are framing “The Missional Manifesto” and those who will leading our missional “labs.” Stay tuned…

Another way to get involved in the conversation is via Twitter. First, follow @missionSHIFT to stay up to date on announcements re: missionSHIFT. Second, if you have a comment about what missional is to you, make sure and use the hashtag: #missionSHIFT. Finally, follow the discussion on the tweet “wall” at the bottom of all the pages on the missionSHIFT website.

If you believe it is time for the church to engage in the mission of God, missionSHIFT will inspire and prepare you to cultivate a missional movement in your church and community. I want to encourage you to come to this conference.

If you are interested in coming, you can register here.


If you are a pastor, this is a must see.

Darrin Patrick, lead pastor of The Journey (my home church and where I intern) interviews my friend Ed Stetzer, President of Lifeway Research and Lifeway’s Missiologist in Residence, on what he sees as the pressing issues within evangelicalism today.

I believe this is Ed at his best, bringing prophetic insight to a wide variety of topics that should be of interest to those who love the church and the Gospel. Enjoy:



Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Ephesians 4:14-16 (NIV)

Those infamous words: truth in love. Isn’t it just like God to put together two things so diametrically opposed to one another and tell us this is how we should talk to one another. Man…

Here’s the problem. We don’t do a very good job with this. At all. Particularly in the area of confronting someone in love to bring moral clarity to a situation for them. My observation is that, in many ways, confrontation within the Christian subculture is actually countercultural within it. And it shouldn’t be. In other words, the very place where confrontation should be done and done well is within the Christian community and we are failing miserably.

Here’s my take. We have developed a Christian culture where it is not o.k. to be not o.k. We have locked into this individualistic idea that our sin only affects us, therefore minimizing sin as a whole. We have lowered the bar on our responsibility as friends, pastors, faith communities by saying that tough love is not support because “who are we to cast the first stones?”

Confronting someone by speaking truth in love is Kingdom work. When we call people to wholeness and commit to walking alongside them – no matter how tough those steps are to walk through – we are joining the King in his mission to restore and redeem all of creation. What a privilege.

When we stick our heads in the sand at the very moment when that person needs our voice in their life, we are actively rebelling against our King and saying to that person that as an image bearer of Christ, they are not worthy of our involvement in their life. What a shame.

The irony in this all this is that healthy confrontation in the context of the Christian community could be an amazing witness to the surrounding culture if done Biblically, but we can’t even figure out how to do this within our own Christian community. It has no potential for counterculture in the greater society when it’s countercultural within its own culture. Did you get that?

How do we expect the watching world to give a flip about our talk of personal and communal holiness when we don’t have the guts to confront each other in Christian community and spur one another to good works?

That’s just it. They are watching and they are growing increasingly apathetic. It’s time we give them something worthy of watching.
___________________

For more on this, read David Powlinson’s excellent book, Speaking the Truth in Love: Counsel in Community


total-church-study-guide

I’m very excited about a new resource from Veritas Community Church, an Acts 29 church in Columbus, Ohio. They have created a free study guide to accompany the Re:Lit book Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis.

You can download the free 32-page PDF study guide here.

Chester and Timmis, the authors of Total Church, founded The Crowded House church-planting initiative in the UK and direct the Porterbrook Network. Steve Timmis is also Director of Acts 29 for Western Europe.

Total Church may very well be one of the most influential and informing books I’ve read that has influenced my ministry philosophy since The Emerging Church and Emerging Worship by Dan Kimball and Transforming Mission by David Bosch.

There is no shortage of great tools to help form Gospel and Missional DNA into the life of a church plant core team, a just-launched church plant, a small group ministry, a church revitalization, or a church that is transitioning from a traditional to missional model. The Total Church study guide is yet another exceptional resource to that end.

I would also encourage you to check out these great handbooks/guides:

>The Tangible Kingdom Primer from Hugh Halter and Matt Smay
>The Forgotten Ways Handbook from Alan Hirsch
>The Gospel-Centered Life: A Nine Lesson Study from A29 pastor Bob Thune
>Fight Clubs from A29 pastor Jonathan Dodson


extract’d

dietcokementos

We have a tendency to celebrate church leaders who have managed to draw a large crowd to their church. But this is hardly an accomplishment in a culture where a few bottles of Diet Coke and a pack of Mentos mints can draw a crowd. The fact that a few thousand people might show up on Sunday to hear you talk seems less impressive when you consider that we live in a society in which millions of people will tune in to watch Sanjaya sing on American Idol.

Aggregating an audience isn’t successful ministry. Fostering women, men, and children toward deep, internal, and unyielding communion with Christ that transforms their lives and produces the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—that is ministry worth celebrating.

-Skye Jethani, from his “The Divine Commodity” blog book tour interview with Bob Hyatt


I recently had the privilege to be interviewed for an article by Jennifer Harris, news writer for Word & Way, on church and culture. The article was forwarded to me today from a friend. Apparently it popped up on the Associated Baptist Press website.

I encourage you to check it out: “Some churches help Christians view culture through spiritual lenses”


theologyontap

Wednesday night, I had the privilege to attend “Theology at the Bottleworks,” a Midrash ministry of The Journey [my family's home church + where I am doing my church planting internship] at a pub, Schlafly’s Bottleworks, in beautiful Maplewood.

In older, simpler times, a pub or “public house” was often the focal point of the community, playing a similar role to the local church, where people gathered to openly discuss significant issues of the day. The Journey is re-entering the “public house” to reach into culture by tackling spiritual, political, and philosophical themes in an open environment.

And yes, this has been the setting for the infamous “Beer and the Bible” controversy that brewed, pun intended, back in 2007. There is great comment from my good friend and Journey pastor, Jonathan McIntosh, on the web home for Mike Corley of The Mike Corley Program here about TATB [unfortunately, the audio seems to be nonexistent]. You can read a couple of somewhat objective articles about TATB from the Baptist Press here and the Christian Post here…

I am shadowing the moderators for the next couple of months to eventually become a part of the moderation team over the next year. And let me say, after observing my new friend Matt moderate last night, this is going to be one of the most difficult yet shaping things I have ever done. I’m excited about what God is going to do in me through this…

This particular evening was unique in that it was the 4th anniversary of this outreach event. To be specific, this was the 48th TATB event. Pretty astounding.

There were probably about 50 people there and I was told that there are usually 70+. And my best guess was that it was split down the middle: 50% religious, 50% non-religious.

The topic was “The Impact of Technology on the American Way of Life.” And a lively topic it was. Here were some of the great points made/questions raised across a wide spectrum:

>technology makes us lose touch with reality into isolation
>human interaction is overrated
>technology pits art + creativity vs. efficiency + mass production + instant gratification
>technology makes you more human, not less
>does technological innovation undercut traditional fundamentals?
>technology makes us skip the fundamentals of knowledge, i.e., spelling
>new technology wouldn’t be realized with the fundamentals changing
>are we headed to a Wall-E or Matrix world?
>technology can enhance relationships but cannot substitute for human touch, empathy, etc.
>do we like where technology is taking us?
>technology moves us away from real sources, i.e., analog musical recording vs. digital
>to curb abuse of technology, we have to discipline ourselves and self-moderate
>technology is neutral; we use technology, it doesn’t use us
>technology is good for scientific + medical purposes but not relationships
>we are trading quantity of connectedness over quality of connectedness, i.e. Facebook friends vs. real friends
>there is no counterbalance with technology from the spritual + ethical side of the equation
>should we limit/restrain technology?
>Bible gives principles not specifics on how we should handle “stuff”, i.e., Genesis 1 “subdue” principle

So what does this have to do with why we aren’t missional?

I sat at a table with a non-religious, 50+ year-old Greek curmudgeon, a non-religious 30+ year-old Asian-American (originally from Hong Kong) molecular biologist and resident at Children’s Hospital, and a 30+ year-old skeptic and non-practicing Orthodox Jew. Uh, yeah. And it wasn’t the large group discussion that impacted me. It was the discussion with my three new friends after the discussion that did. Big time…

My experience Wednesday night unearthed some things inside of me that I need to preach to myself to help me understand where my heart and head don’t line up with regards to my missional posture to culture. So I thought I’d invite you to join me on the journey.

As a part of a series, I am going to unpack what I believe are the 5 main things that keep us from being salt and light in culture. I hope you join me in the conversation…


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