IRELAND UPDATE

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Auschwitz- Birkenau

While in Poland recently Cheryl and I chose to visit the site of the former Nazi extermination camp known as Auschwitz.   It's hard to describe what you think and feel as you walk through the buildings, stand on this ground, and listen to the tour leader's stories and statistics.   When people turn away from the light of the good news about Jesus and the Kingdom of God, and instead persistently embrace and believe the lies, the end result is death and destruction..

 

Is Francis Really That Crazy?

 

"Missions" or The Mission?

I was reading the final chapter of Luke this morning and was struck once again  (Luke 24:45-48)  that Jesus' vision and his commission has always been about catalysing a Jesus centred disciple multiplication movement to seek and save THE NATIONS (Gen 12, Matt 28, ..."your Kingdom come, your will be done on Earth..just as..in heaven..").      Yet most of our inherited churches ("Christendom shaped") are primarily shaped and structured for the task of evangelising and serving (caring for) local communities; with pursuit of "missions" being a secondary (or even optional???) aim. 

 How did that disconnect happen??

Last week I read that more than 60% of Christians report feeling no obligation to share the gospel.  The vast majority of churches have never intentionally planted another church. (i.e. we've planted sterile churches.)   The vast majority of pastors have no current practical plans to start another church.   Doing so is often regarded as "above and beyond"..  rather than just the "normal outcome" of contagious "disciplers" multiplying local communities of disciples who are also living daily "on mission" with Jesus.    

And even those who DO have a vision for planting another church..are often mainly focused on "serial church planting" (one at a time) rather than actually catalysing a movement of spontaneous, contagious disciple multiplication..  Now our inherited churches aren't "bad" (in fact God is present and they're really, really good!!)  But they just aren't adequate for the specific All Nations commission we've been called to.   The time, effort and energy it takes to sustain and run an attractional / extractional church usually keeps disciple multiplication and the spontaneous multiplication of new local communities of disciplers well off our radar.  

When you lose site of the end mission (THE NATIONS)  it actually shapes, shrinks, and constricts your "vision", your values, and your understanding of the mission of God..  The end goal that you start with will totally shape the values, priorities, and structures that you choose.  

Seems that even if your end goal is a really good and noble one (e.g. "reach and transform our local community, train new pastors, and help them start great new churches like ours") the other values and structures that we assume and start with (inherited and often enshrined and unchallenged in our theologies or worse in our unexamined habits and practices)  normally fall way short of what is necessary for catalysing a viral movement..      

So..just after reading Luke and reflecting on all the above I then clicked on the link below  [a dialogue between Francis Chan and Mark Driscoll and Joshua Harris (Gospel Coalition),]  and it just seemed to be a classic illustration of the VERY thing I was reading and thinking about.  Mark and Josh (and many others..) just see Francis as going through a kind of burn out and "copping out" of his high calling to pastor the large mega church he started and has been pastoring in Simi Valley, CA.   They think he's stepping back and aiming lower..   But is he??    

Personally I think he's recapturing a vision for the nations..and realising that the structures and forms, resource demands (time, energy, people, money, emotion)  for maintaining and operating the inherited Christendom shaped structures are too often actually a distraction from, and a BARRIER TO the full on pursuit of the mission of Jesus!!  And even though Francis may not be able to fully explain it all, it seems that Jesus is steadily leading him into uncharted territory. 

"Follow Me"

I think it was Soren Kierkegaard who long ago wrote about "following Jesus out of Christendom".   I think that might be what's going on in Francis' life right now.    And that doesn't seem all that crazy to me..

Have a look at the video (link below) and let me know what you think.. 

Phil

http://vimeo.com/14452343

The old seems good enough?

Reading through the end of Luke 5 this morning..  It's where Luke records a series of stretching interactions Jesus has with the Pharisees and religous leaders of his day.  In the last verse (v 39) Jesus comments on one reason why it was so hard for the Pharisees to even understand and embrace the good news of the gospel of the Kingdom.. 

Luke 5:39 (NASB)

 ³⁹"And no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, 'The old is good enough.'"

Yet in the previous verses Jesus explains that He didn't come to restore and rennovate the Old.. Instead he brought entirely new wine and that requires new wine skins.  

That gives me another slant on why it seems so hard for us to let go of our familiar and time tested Christendom shaped church structures and institutions...

Even today, at first glance the New Wine doesn't seem to be better than the old. 

Francis Chan / Following Jesus in a new direction

Like a lot of people I have huge respect for the life and teaching ministry of Francis Chan, pastor of a large mega-church in the Los Angeles suburbs (Simi Valley).  Two years ago I heard him speak at a large church planter's conference and what he said then really struck me.    I came back saying to Cheryl and others that "..if he continues thinking in the direction that God seems to be leading him..he's going to be moving away from missional attractional church in order to pursue missional incarnational life and ministry".  

I spotted the same thing again recently when he was taking part in a panel discussion with Neil Cole, Alan Hirsch and others...and AGAIN it was just so plain.  Something is changing..   Kept thinking:  "If you're serious about the things you're saying...then God is clearly moving you in a new direction."

So I wasn't that surprised when I heard today that he's announcing his resignation from his church.

"I would be hypocritical if I didn't go.."

Here's the link to an interview where he starts to articulate his next steps. 

Should the Church Seek the Lost? Or Should the Lost Seek the Church?

Have a look at the extended quote from a challenging new book by our friend Linda Bergquist (San Francisco) and her colleague Allan Karr. 

"Today’s church has posed itself a serious challenge: to live according to its missional nature rather than simply organize around mission activities. This challenge is something of an antidote to the church’s previous practice of piecing together a theology out of the two “Great Commission” verses found in Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8 rather than from the entire biblical story.

When we miss the big picture — that God is forming a people for Himself and reconciling the world to Himself — it affects our ecclesiology and reduces mission to a program or department of a church. A century ago, the German theologian Martin Kahler said that mission was “the mother of theology” in that the theologizing of the early church was necessitated by its missionary encounters with the world. Over many years, other prophetic voices have tried to call us to a more authentic theology, but we have not always listened. In 1969, missiologist Heinrich Kastin wrote: “Mission was, in the early stages, more than a mere function; it was a fundamental expression of the life of the church. The beginnings of a missionary theology are therefore also the beginnings of Christian theology as such.”

As you design, refine, or re-align, these questions about the role of mission will be some of your most important decisions. Do you believe that missions are something that the church does, or that mission is something that the church intrinsically is?

Your answer to this question either limits or releases people. It helps define whether the church seeks the lost, or whether we expect the lost to seek the church. Which will it be?"

From: "Church Turned Inside Out: A Guide for Designers, Refiners, and Re-Aligners" by Linda Birquist and Allan Karr

Neil Cole: On the Seduction of Addition

Being disciples / Making disciplers / Multiplying communities of disciple makers..

So many of the stories of "multiplication movements" seem to be rooted in the developing world.  That's why I love to learn from people like Neil Cole who are modeling and leading the way in the Western world.

He writes: 

"Multiplication may be slower than addition in the initial stages, but in the long run, it is the only way to fulfill the Great Commission in our generation. The population of the world is rapidly multiplying. If all we do is add disciples and churches we will not even scratch the surface of what we have been commanded to do. Nor can we simply add multiplication to our current addition strategies, because each one has completely different requirements. We must stop adding if we want to start multiplying.

Could it be that our commitment to strategies that cannot multiply is in fact what is keeping us from seeing a movement here in the West?"

Click on the link below to read the full article..  (and look around on his blog for the full series of articles on movement.).

The Secret to Church Multiplication Movements, Part 6

Hugh Halter / "A Missional Scorecard"

My friend Paul Dzubinski spotted this post from Hugh Halter.  It's a challenge to the way we think about and evaluate "progress" as we pursue the Great Commission..  Definitely worth reading and considering...

 

"You can't join our church."

Whaaat?? 

"But you COULD join our mission."

I've been thinking more about the contrast between membership and mission.  Somehow those two concepts have become disconnected for a lot of people who think of themselves as Christian.

There are all kinds of groups you can't just sign on and join.  You only become part of these groups through sharing a common life and shared experience..  And it's only becasue of THAT shared life and experience that you have a shared identity.

Lately Cheryl and I have been thinking about joining one of the local hill walking clubs.  But the problem is..you can only join by actually going hill walking. 

Our 40th high school (secondary school) reunion is coming up.  I know it seems narrow and exclusive.  But you can't actually join the Class of 1970.  You had to be there with us for that journey.  Now it's part of our experience and our identity.

So exactly when did "church" become an organization that you can join rather than a relationship and way of life with Jesus that we learn to live out together? 

How did "mission" or "discipleship" come to be viewed as an "optional, extra" (somehow regarded as a "high achiever's / extra credit" status within Christianity) instead of just being the day by day normal everyday life experience of every single follower of Jesus?  

Francis Chan: Turning Up the Heat

A few weeks ago I made a return visit to the Exponential Conference in Orlando.  This is an annual gathering that brings in leaders from across North America (and a few global ones) to focus on principles, strategies and resources for church planting and church multiplication.  I kind of have mixed emotions about the conference itself in that so much of it assumes that real church requires a large weekly centralized gathering of people..with paid staff, parking lots, power point, worship teams, kids facilities, etc... and I'm much more focused these days on the idea of multiplying simple, organic, reproducible, localized communities of disciples of Jesus.   But this year the conference closed with a very interesting talk by Francis Chan pastor of a fairly mega-size mega church in Southern California.  And he gave an amazingly non-mega church message on the importance of following Jesus into a life of humilty and sacrifice and into one to one relationships (community).  Really powerful word.  

If you want to get a little flavour of what he said you can watch his video clip in the current issue of the Catalyst Leadership e-zine.   Just click on the link...which should take you to the e-zine contents page.  Then click on the article titled:  Video: Francis Chan, Turning Up the Heat.   8 minutes or so..  Well worth it..