PCA Multi-Site Conference | Page 2 | Liveblog live blogging.

Technorati Tags: church planting, harbor church, live blog, multi-site, scribble live

PCA Multi-Site Conference | Page 2 | Liveblog live blogging.

Technorati Tags: church planting, harbor church, live blog, multi-site, scribble live

Now on to Hirsch. I read the shaping of things to come a couple years ago and used it when I taught a class on the missional church at GRTS a year ago. I own but have not finished reading Hirsch book the Forgotten Ways. It was helpful to hear him share his thoughts first hand. Hirsch talked about four critical shifts for the church to stay relevant and not die in the current context for ministry

• recovery of the centrality of Jesus
• recovery of discipleship
• recovery of  incarnational missional impulse
• recovery of apostolic ethos and movement

I think I have heard or read most of this stuff before. Some of it I have been saying myself for years. (Not that that means anything.) But what was interesting to me is how different his perspective on these issues were as opposed to whatI have heard coming from those who love his writing. The people who have talked to me about Hirsch’s SOTOK approached it in such an either or manner that I got the feeling that if I didn’t buy into every he said and follow is right now I was part and parcel of the death of the church.

Don’t get me wrong there is a prophetic urgency to Hirsch voice but he presents it with a much broader fuller, perspective and graciousness than many of his adherents (at least the ones I know) have. Maybe this is the way that books on this subject have to be written so that people will buy them. But after listening to Hirsch I didn’t get the same eiither or feeling about what he is proposing that I got reading the book. Instead I find myself in agreement with Hirsch that we need to learn how to rediscover what it means to be fully Christian fully human, and fully the church.

I beilieve he is correct when he challenges us to appreciate the fullness of the gospel and Jesus message and not simply attach to the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus like  some kind of a “cosmic fire insurance”. Or place so much emphasis on the ethos of Jesus that we make him into a nice example for good living. As Hirsch said many times in his talk that is not the whole picture of Jesus. Jesus is lord. he is lord of the church, Lord of our lives, and the author and finisher of our faith.

In this regard I find Hirsch to be completely orthodox in his thinking, His methodology my be radically different but we are in radically different times. It was refreshing to hear him talk about the way the evangelical church has subverged the message and minstry of Jesus with our subjective interpretation of Pauline theology. This amounts to what he calls Paulism not Christianity. If we are to be Christians then Christ/Jesus  must be at the center of everything we do. As Hirsch said Paul would be disturbed by what we have done since he specifically taught that this faith we live was not about him but about Jesus. I think our emphasis on Pauline theology and only the death and resurrection of Jesus rather than his whole life and mission provided a convenient means to fit the Christian faith in a western North American US box. Buy my ticket follow the rules and I will be home free. The reign and kingdom of God is much more than that.

Now in case you think that I have become a Hirsch groupie let me say that I was a little disappointed in his response to my question which followed some others about how all this translates into a multi-racial pluralistic culture. He basically said the US was another animal all together because of the long history of segregation and slavery. Yep knew that. He also said the kingdom of God is multi-racial/multi-cultural. Then he asked I thought. So here goes.

Writes like Hirsch must challenge their readers to a broader cultural and contextual understanding of their thoughts. The readers especially anglo readers to must learn to see the implementation of these thoughts those lens other than their own discomfort and disconnect the the modern western church. We all must learn to ask what if their are perspectives other that those I am familiar that shape the way that I think about how church looks feels, tastes and smells. Finally we must avoid at all costs taking our interpretation of any writer and elevating it to an absolute (by doing this we avoid the cult of personality that seems to be developing in much of the emerging/missional church conversation) . More on this to come in another post.

Technorati Tags: alan hirsch, church, church planting, diversity, hirsch, incarnational, kingdom of God, mission, missional, missional church, Paul, reign of God, shaping of things to come

New Urbanism has become a mantra for people interested in restoring urban centers and reconfiguring suburban sprawl. Its designs have sprouted across the country, from new towns like Seaside, Fla., to redevelopment in existing places like Gaithersburg, Md., or West Palm Beach, Fla. The Congress for the New Urbanism started small 12 years ago and now has more than 2,300 architects, developers, planners and urban designers.

Now Christian leaders are adopting the movement. They say the philosophy behind New Urbanism is a possible antidote to the isolation experienced by many churches and Christians. Across the country, influential Christians are thinking theologically about urban design and applying its principles to the church. They advocate for New Urbanist concepts because they force people to share with one another, dwell among their neighbors and allow for a healthy exchange of ideas.

The national advocates for New Urbanism include Randy Frazee, a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, a trend-setting Illinois megachurch attended by more than 20,000 people. Frazee says there’s a “movement brewing” where Christians are striving to capture the values of New Urbanism because of an urgent need.

A couple of years ago I was able to participate in a seminar on new urbanism. I was  enthralled by the potential synergy between the new urbanist social movement and the call to churches to return to our urban centers and be a part of their renewal. I think of Mosaic life as a new urbanist faith community, though we are not strictly a geographic or parish church. It is interesting that Randy Frazee is embracing new urbanist values. itisinteresting to me that Willow Creek which is so often talked about like the evil empire of the church often innovates more in terms of praxis.

Frazee compared mega-churches to castles surrounded by moats. A few times a year the drawbridge is lowered to let people in, where they become a subculture separate from the outside world. They become so involved in church life that they are not involved in their neighborhoods, he said.

“You have to disengage from your community to be involved in the church,” Frazee said, describing the problem. “Now the church has become irrelevant to the community.”

Willow Creek is a laboratory for new ideas in the evangelical world. Frazee said the push for New Urbanism will include the 10,500 churches in the Willow Creek Association, which links smaller congregations that share the megachurch’s philosophy of ministry

Last fall I went to the CCDA conference in indiana and Dr. John Perkins taught a Bible study every morning his main text was Zechariah 8. Th efollowing verse stuck in my mind and seem to me to evoke the kind of new urbanist perspective tha Jacobson expresses, 

¹ Then another message came to me from the Lord of Heaven’s Armies:
² “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: My love for Mount Zion is passionate and strong; I am consumed with passion for Jerusalem!
³ “And now the Lord says: I am returning to Mount Zion, and I will live in Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the Faithful City; the mountain of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will be called the Holy Mountain.
⁴ “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Once again old men and women will walk Jerusalem’s streets with their canes and will sit together in the city squares.
⁵ And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls at play.
⁶ “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: All this may seem impossible to you now, a small remnant of God’s people. But is it impossible for me? says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
⁷ “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: You can be sure that I will rescue my people from the east and from the west.
⁸ I will bring them home again to live safely in Jerusalem. They will be my people, and I will be faithful and just toward them as their God.
Zechariah 8:1-8 (NLT)

Technorati Tags: church planting, new urbanism, new_urbanism, praxis, randy_frazee, spiritual-practice, willow_creek_community_church

Having planted a missional church from 10 people, and having gone through much pain and joy, I have wondered what if you could warn people up front what this all would mean for their lives and expectations before they started gathering together? What expectations would you warn those first gathering people against? And if you did deliver such a warning list , would there be anyone left to gather.

As a missional church planter I really appreciate his thoughts on this. They are both affirmation and challenge. They hold a kingdom view of church planting and the missional church out before me.

Check out the whole post thanks to John Smolo for the lead

Technorati Tags: church planting, david_fitch, emerging church, missional_church

Giving Skin to God – Volunteers In Service Blog Believe it or not, the core energy – the motivating passion – for the work of the Equipping Church Network finds its source in the truth of the incarnation. We often get asked why we are so committed to church-based ministry in the community, and we ultimately get back to the One whom we worship, the One who has become one of us, the One who has become particular and concrete in the person of Jesus the Christ, the One who continues to become concrete in particular communities of faith, the One who continues to have "a body" through his people in specific locations. God certainly is actively present in the world in a multitude of ways, but he is "given skin" through local communities of Jesus-followers who are serious about his patterns of life i.e. humility, service, compassion, justice, and self-sacrificial love.

Technorati Tags: blog, church planting, church_based, community_ministry, incarnation, jesus_followers, service, spiritual-practice

 Then I came across this in my email inbox this morning from the eBay atheist » Blog Archive » Ethics and Evangelism

Karen posted this on the Off-The-Map discussion board yesterday. There has already been some discussion of it there. I’m bringing it over here too since she’s asking some great questions. Do ethics matter when it comes to evangelism, or do the ends justify the means?

When I was an evangelical Christian, I was routinely taught to do pretty much anything necessary in order to “bring someone to Christ.” The idea was that the pit of hell was looming wide, so it was permissible to use many tactics that might be judged unethical in other contexts, in order to get a person saved. This included inviting them to church for a “neutral” service (such as a holiday pageant) that was really planned as an evangelistic event, complete with altar call. I consider that a fairly inoffensive example (though still troubling), but there was also much worse going on, including things that contributed to my leaving Christianity and religion in general. As an example, some friends and I have been chuckling over this evangelism video by actor Kirk Cameron.

I have real problem with these bait and switch type of events but they are pretty transparent and ridiculous, and the Cameron video is more laughable than troubling to me. So I’m not sure why that kind stuff caused here to become an ex-Christian. But the question arises for me did Jesus ever ask anyone to commit to anything like following him? How did he do it and what difference should that make to you and me? Is there something of value beyond the bait and switch mentioned above for us to learn from the way Jesus and his first followers shared faith. Or is that whole idea outmoded and irrelevant in our North American context?

Technorati Tags: church planting, evangelical_christian, ex_christian, pluralistic_culture, share_faith, spiritual-practice, spiritual_laws, witness

[thumb:485:l:s=0:l=g]Mosaic Life is  moving into ultra-emergent worship. I was listening to a feature on the ultra marathoner on NPR and he defined the meaning of ultra as "beyond" so I’m using that as my reference point. By that I mean that what we are doing in worship doesn’t easily fit into either the modern contemporary worship format or what has been come to be defined as emergent worship. It is amazing to me how disconnected the contemporary and modern church  is from the roots of worship practices. In they view if it doesn’t have scripture being read from the platform and preached from the platform it isn’t worship. This problem is compounded by thinking that emerging worship is a generational thing. Case in point the prayer path labyrinth that we step up for holy week in our space is marketed under youth ministry by group publishing. The ancient rituals and practices of the early church and following have been discarded in favor of an exclusively upfront driven worship "service". Meaningful rituals that have served the church well in the past have been abandoned in favor of consumer driven corporate worship practices that have no connection to what has come before historically. Now I believe worship should be relevant and engaging so the task is not to leave all ancient practices behind but to reclaim, refresh and renew them in ways that are relevant and engaging to the context.

On the other hand much of emerging worship is anti modern eschewing the possibility that anything good can come from up front or on the platform and acting as if that never occurred in ancient worship forms. In reclaiming ancient worship practices emerging worship also tends to draw to draw more from the European pool than other diverse worship pools. This effectively leads to what I call retro worship which does hymns from the European past but not  hymns or songs  from the African American or other non Anglo cultures. Diverse here means adding a djembe playing (truth in advertising we have and use a djembe in our worship). Because many of those practicing emerging worship discount and discredit up front leadership almost completely in favor of communal dialog and interaction, they fail to recognize the varying ways that dialog and interaction are expressed in different cultures. When it is is done well the call and response of of Afro Christian worship is an interactive dialog that is culturally shaped, with the preacher (performing almost like the cantor in Jewish worship) leading the gathered body into dialog with the scripture text. It has always struck me as strange that we talk more about teaching in emerging worship that preaching. I may be wrong but preaching tends to feel less interactive ( more big jug  pouring to little mugs) than preaching. I really value the alt worship stuff especially what is coming out of the UK. But I wonder if we would fit their definition.

Here is an example of how we are moving to ultra-emergent worship

Good Friday worship gathering

Video- Palm Sunday to Easter (Work of the People)
Song – Here I am to worship
Scripture reading - Matt 26:17-18
Video
Scripture reading – John 13:3-15
Video -  Foot washing (Highway Video)
Song O the deep deep love of Jesus (arrangement by Reformed University Fellowship)
Scripture reading – Matt 20, 26-28
Communion – by intinction (rip & dip) in a circle
Scripture reading – Matt 26:36-46
Video clip – Gethsemane (Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ)
Scripture reading – Matt 26:57-68
O Sacred head Now wounded (arrangement by Reformed University Fellowship)
Scripture reading – Matt 26:69-75
Video clip – Peter’s denial (Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ)
Scripture reading – Matt 27:1-10
Video – Passion Flash – the passion story, arrest to Pilate told hip hop style(Highway video )
Scripture reading – Matt 27:11-14
Video -
Scripture reading – Luke 23:1-12
Scripture reading – Matt 27:15-26
Song Were you there (Traditional gospel)
Scripture reading – Matt 27:27-32
Video -
Scripture reading – Matt 27:33-49
Video -
Scripture reading – Matt 27:50-56
Song – Wonderful cross (arrangement Chris Tomlin)
Video – It’s Friday but Sunday’s coming – Igniter Media

The worship space was created with chairs setup in a u shape on top of the labyrinth lit mostly by candles with enough light for reading. All scripture was read by those participating in worship from around the room. We celebrated communion by gathering in a circle and passing the cup to each other.

That is one example of our ultra-emergent, contextual, missional multi-sensory worship.

Technorati Tags: church planting, corporate_worship, diversity, emerging church, spiritual-practice, worship, worship_practices

On one hand it felt like we had a just bit too much going on. So maybe we  will scale back a bit next year. One the other hand our church community was really blessed by our Seder dinner. Many of our faith community as well as some who were not made good use of our labyrinth and other spiritual practices during the week. One of the few people who came out to the Passion of the Christ showing stuck around after to thank me personally for making it available.Two of our six grade boys decided to fast on Good Friday with the rest of the faith community. Our Good Friday worship was the first experience for a church shopping family who returned for the Easter Egg hunt and Easter worship. We met many people from the community Easter egg hunt, including some residents of Eastown who thanks me for our work in the community and another who asked how we could get others churches to be as involved. We had great participation in worship on resurrection Sunday with God’s vision for us reflected in those who were present all ages, races, social backgrounds and faith expressions.

So all in all it was a time of connecting and deepening spiritual activity. So maybe we won’t change anything. uh-oh maybe this is how traditions are born

Technorati Tags: church planting, holy_week, labyrinth, mosaic-life, seder_dinner, spiritual-practice, spiritual_impact

a greenhouse church is one which strikes a balance between the "organizational" model of the garage and the "organic" model of the meadow. the following marks are the foundation of a plan for spiritual formation within a greenhouse church:

1. organic beginnings for each formation group/community (LIFEGroup)
2. united sense of the desired outcome (spiritual formation/christlikeness)
3. guiding principles which promote healthy growth (formative, caring, missional)
4. regular communication and evaluation (life-support/coaches and self-evaluation) 
5. flexibility (recognizing that every group is different) 6) reproduction (launching groups from groups)

Now we don’t need anymore labels for church but I feel some real connection to what he is describing especially the part about the balance between organic and organizational. Maybe that is what Mosaic Life is becoming.

Technorati Tags: church, church planting, emerging church, group_community, house_church, mosaic, spiritual_formation