God | daveharder.ca

Archive - God RSS Feed

Life In The Spirit

November 29, 2011 in Bible, God, Life, Religion with 0 Comments

I swiped this from Patrick Mitchel from Ireland to help us frame the needed questions to ask when it comes to life in the Spirit.

Last night in our wee church we had our monthly ‘Forum’ on an issue related to the Christian faith. It was my turn to lead and I proposed 6 things and we had a really good discussion which continued over a pint afterwards. Here’s a skeleton summary for what it’s worth.

CONTENTION 1: The blessing of the Spirit is the eschatological fulfillment of God’s promises and includes both Jews and Gentiles

CONTENTION 2: The Christian life begins and continues in and through the Spirit

1.   It is the Spirit who reveals the gospel

2.   The Spirit brings the believer into an objectively new position before God

3.   The Spirit brings the believer into an ongoing relational experience of God

CONTENTION 3 :The church is essentially a fellowship of the Spirit

CONTENTION 4. Christians belong to the new age of the Spirit as opposed to the old age of the flesh (which is not some sort of inner existential struggle between two natures within the believer)

CONTENTION 5: Sanctification has past, present and future aspects

i. A Finished Reality (‘This is who you are’)

ii. Ongoing spiritual and ethical transformation by the Spirit (‘Be who you are’)

iii. Future Glory (‘This is who you will be’)

CONTENTION 6: Perhaps the biggest differences among Christians is how much spiritual progress Christians should make through the empowering presence of the Spirit

And I have to bring in Gordon Fee here [note his wee dig at Luther's 'justified sinner' ( simil iustus et peccator)]

‘Paul expected people to exhibit changed behaviour … because the Spirit empowers this new life, Paul has little patience for the point of view that allows for people to be “justified sinners” without appropriate changes in attitudes and conduct … Nor would Paul understand an appeal to helplessness on the part of those who live in and walk by the Spirit … in which the “flesh” continually proves to be the greater power.’ Fee,Empowering Presence, 879-80

But the last word to Paul

‘And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God.’ (Colossians 1:10)

PDF

How Big Is Your ____?

November 28, 2011 in church, God, Leadership, MISSIONAL, Pastors with 0 Comments

Following our day with Alan Hirsch I have wanted to add some thoughts that allow us to stay in the tension.

If we are going to become good news to a broken world we have to care more about how we measure up to our onlookers than we do our peers. We have to become more externally focused by changing the scorecard based on our impact in the world, not the survivability of our various church forms.

“No strategy, tactics, or clever marketing campaign could ever clear away the smokescreen that surrounds Christianity in todays culture.” – David Kinnamon

The reality is attendance often decreases when we release people on mission. The problem is that many church leaders have spent their entire leadership lives in pursuit of buildings that need to be filled. We need to change how we view success.

The reality is a highly attended Sunday does not make you a great leader. When pastors ask, “So how many are you running on Sunday?” I want to vomit. First because it something I use to value at unhealthy levels. Second part of me wants to lie simply to save face. Why is it that numbers impress? When we orient our ministry around church attendance, we tend to get either defensive and insecure or puffed up and prideful. When we orient our ministry around mission and the kingdom, we tend to get increasingly more dependant on God and increasingly more thankful for his leading by the Spirit.

New forms of church will require a different score card, are we willing to sit in that tension of why numbers are so important to us… may we allow the deep work of the Spirit to heal our soul. Remember people look at the outward appearance but God looks at the heart. I am pretty sure God is not saying: “I was really disappointed with your attendance last Sunday” but is much more interested in the question “what are you doing to love others more?”. Nothing is more important! (John 13:34-35)

God’s movement will never be safe, predictable, and clean.
God’s movement will never be about your ministry.
God’s movement will always be about his kingdom.
God’s movement cannot be based on the old measurements of success.

Remember that anything that makes the name of Jesus famous is success. Anything bringing you glory is not.

PDF

Living in The Tension

November 24, 2011 in Bible, God, Life, MISSIONAL, Pastors, Religion with 0 Comments

I want to post a few things as follow-up to our day with Alan Hirsch. The common question I heard from everyone is… I don’t disagree with anything he said but… how do I live this out?

Churches in one city decided to close their doors on a Sunday and join together to serve in 12 projects that would bless their city. People were encouraged to invite neighbours who were not into the church thing but would love serving a practical need. A week after the announcement what came as a great idea was faced with tremendous backlash. Emails began to pour in accusing the pastor of compromising the gospel, and the greatest concern: How would we make budget without taking an offering that day? Tension! A number of churches cancelled their plans citing the tension was too high within their church.

It is interesting how much we are willing to work through tension on status quo things like a building campaign or the next sermon series but the moment we experience tension in serving those outside the walls of a church we give up and assume God’s not in it.

Here’s the short answer to why so much tension: “The flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other.”(Gal. 5:17) Whenever their is something powerful on the horizon, a God thing, we can expect tension. Yes I will say it… people in your churches are motivated by the flesh. I love what Alan says “it’s impossible to teach a man what he thinks he already knows.”

Brandon Hatmaker in Barefoot Church says it beautifully. “We need to allow tension to serve as a starting point to change. When we place our focus on eliminating the tension our focus becomes the tension itself instead of the thing we should be considering. This reveals our nature to eliminate the thing causing the tension instead of dealing with much-needed change.”

We should not focus on the tension itself that is caused by serving the poor, making disciples, or mobilizing the church on mission. We need to dig to the root of the tension and ask. Does it come from a pure place? Does it reveal a bigger problem? Is something broken in our lives that needs mended by the Spirit?

The response I get after sharing the structure of The Journey and our focus on multiplying missional communities is, “In order for me to do that I’d have to blow it all up and start from scratch.” They see the massive amount of tension that would surround such a major shift and retreat in their thinking instead of asking the question: what are the deeper roots resulting in the tension?

The wrong kind of tension occurs when we protect what we do. The right kind of tension occurs when we practice what Jesus did.
The wrong kind of tension comes when we make it about us and our kingdom. The right kind of tension comes when we make it about God and His Kingdom.
The wrong kind of tension comes from using Scripture to defend how we live. The right kind of tension is when we let Scripture define how we live. We will never think our way into a new way of acting but we can act our way into a new way of thinking… this is the process of discipleship.

There is a tendency in Canada to think we can choose a path without tension. Most of us would prefer to chart our journey that way. But God has called us to join His journey – one that is more amazing, wonderful, scary, awesome, engaging, dangerous, passionate, and rewarding than anything we could dream of. Without tension we won’t change so as Alan Hirsch encouraged us to do, sit in the tension, ask the deeper questions, and let that begin to inform what needs to change.

PDF

Process of Discipleship

November 23, 2011 in church, God, Leadership, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

We often think about discipleship as an event and yet we see in the Gospels Jesus having a purposeful process of discipleship. Discipleship always starts with the lost… evangelism must be reframed in the context of discipleship. Jesus was leading pre-converted disciples all the way through to Christ likeness. We are to do the same… it is a long journey in the same direction.

Look at this progression of discipleship from JR Briggs.

1. People were willing to hang out with Jesus

Jn 1:35-42: the first calling of the disciples
Jn 2: hanging out with Jesus at the wedding at Cana
Jn 3:24: John is in prison “before”

2. People were willing to give up something for Jesus

Mk 1:14: after John was put in prison
Mk 1:15-20: second calling
Mk 1:29-39

3. People were willing to give up everything because of Jesus

Lk 4:42-44:
Lk 5:1-11: third calling – repentance, fulfilling the calling from Mark.

A willingness to hang out.

A willingness to give up something.

A willingness to give up everything.

This whole process is discipleship

It is relational not methodological

It is not only about Jesus as Saviour but Jesus as Lord

It is about transformational change… living a whole new way of life.

It is about everyone…

PDF

Creating Paths Everyone Can Travel On

November 23, 2011 in Bible, church, God, Leadership, MISSIONAL, Pastors, Religion with 0 Comments

I am sitting with coffee in hand, looking at the snow fall reflecting on yesterdays day with Alan Hirsch. I loved all of his talks but specifically his one on the 5-fold and its importance in creating a people movement. His diagnosis of myself as an Apostolic – Evangelist – Shepherd – Teacher – Prophet was bang on. Then I came across this image… it captures my thoughts perfectly.

It reminds me of the role of the leader, the visionary, those with an apostolic wiring.

Visionaries do the hard work of creating paths that EVERYONE can travel on!

More quotes from the day:

“It’s hard to teach a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.”
“What kills movements of mission? Leaders who are afraid to release ministry to all of Christ’s followers.”
“We are perfectly designed to achieve what we currently achieve.”
“It’s impossible to teach a man what he thinks he already knows.”
“If you can talk about the church w/o Jesus, then you can probably practice the church w/o Jesus.”
“we are at our worst when we are the most comfortable!”
“The problem is not our message – Jesus – but our delivery system – Church.”
“New Teaching does not Create New Behaviour. We must ACT our way into new thinking.”
“A 5-fold ethos creates a reproducible movement. The shepherd / teacher model is killing the church.”
“Evangelism must be reframed in the context of discipleship”
“See everyone as seeds… the potential of a forest is in every person.”
“Church is not designed to be lead by professionals… we all get to play!”
“It is not about leadership but about the whole body”
“Christianity loses its way because it loses Jesus. We need to get back to who He is.”
“God made us in his image and we returned the favour”
“A people movement hinges on our ability to make disciples.”

Thanks Alan for a great day…

PDF

A Day With Alan Hirsch

November 23, 2011 in Bible, church, God, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

A great post from Richard Long on one of the sessions with Alan Hirsch.

“The “Day with Alan Hirsch” that we experienced today in Ottawa was a rich feast. He will be publishing a book in early 2012 titled “The Permanent Revolution”. Alan said that he will be focusing much more on the essential need to understand and practice the 5-fold gifts of Ephesians 4:11 in that new book.

So today we heard some of his thinking about it. He uses the acronym APEST when he talks about this. Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shepherd, Teacher. The different approach in Alan Hirsch’s interpretation and implementation is that he sees this letter written to the whole church and not just leaders, so that means these are not the “leadership” gifts, but gifts given to the whole body. And within those giftings there are leaders who function more specifically in them.

That’s a huge shift from even contemporary Charismatic practice. By flattening the function, it allows us to see the Body of Christ released into these activities fully. There is no need to create a clergy/laity distinction, which Alan abhors, and instead to see that we all have one of these “vocations” and even have all of them in lesser degrees.

I am looking forward to the new book and the opportunity to unpack this even further.

I blogged about my discussion with Alan Hirsch a year ago when we talked about Apostolic and Missional.

PDF

What Powers Mission?

November 7, 2011 in church, God, Life, MISSIONAL, Pastors with 1 Comment

My wife and I had the privilege of attending this years Church Planting Conference in Quebec City hosted by the Mennonite Brethren and C2C Network. It is the most romantic city to be in with your spouse and the food was incredible and the stories shared were full of grace and truth… I felt so blessed just to be around such great leaders. Last years time away in Whistler impacted me and shaped our community and I was hoping for the same impartation this year… I came into the conference expecting!

Our speaker for the week was Jeff Vanderstelt of Soma Communities. When God called our family to Ottawa and downloaded how he wanted us to plant The Journey I was looking for someone else who shared this vision and came across Soma. Jeff has been an inspiration and their materials a blessing to us.

This week away can be summed up as shifting from trying harder – Self, to submitting more – Spirit.

Now that Christ was leaving the scene and could only work through commissioners [his disciples], it might have been expected that the works would be fewer and weaker. He assures us of the contrary: “Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do he shall do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father” (John 14:12). His approaching death was to be a breaking down of the power of sin. With the resurrection, the powers of the eternal life were to take possession of the human body and obtain supremacy over human life. With His ascension, Christ was to receive the power to communicate the Holy Spirit completely to His Body. The union–the oneness between Himself on the throne and those on earth was to be so intensely and divinely perfect, that He meant it as the literal truth: “Greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father.” – Andrew Murray

The most profound implication here is something that is emerging as a core value in The Journey: The Holy Spirit is not optional. I get uncomfortable when the missional conversation drifts toward talking merely about structures, strategies, paradigms, and models. It’s as if we believe that if we can just get our thinking straight, we could bring the kingdom on the strength of our elegant structures and radical models. We can give lip-service to the Holy Spirit in that we assume he is working in and amongst all our planning, but are we filled and powered by the Holy Spirit… for without Him we can do nothing.

The simple fact is that Jesus told us we could do nothing without Him, yet we so stubbornly insist on trying! Because Christ has “gone to the Father,”(John 14:16-17) he is able to communicate his power and presence “directly to His Body” through the Holy Spirit. The problem is most of us would choose an external Jesus than an internal invisible Jesus. May we choose the invitation of Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit.

Let’s admit it: we’re uncomfortable with this part of life in Christ, for a variety of reasons. We’ve seen it done badly. We don’t want to look foolish in front of others. We have more confidence in our intelligence than we do God’s power. We value control over letting go and trusting God.

But we need to grapple with this issue and learn to flow in the power of the Holy Spirit every day, because even when we have the most elegantly-designed engine in the world, it won’t make anything move unless there is a constant supply of fuel pouring in. So yes, let’s design better structures. We need them! But let’s not forget that the form always needs to submit to the SPirit. The fuel of mission is the power of God through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

I want a life that can’t be faked or accounted for by human reason. Our lives and our churches should not make sense to a watching world. May you receive the invitation in Acts 2 to – Repent – Be Baptized – Receive the Holy Spirit – for this promise is for everyone!

PDF

The Truncated Gospel

October 26, 2011 in Bible, church, God, Leadership, Life, MISSIONAL, Religion with 0 Comments

I had a great time out west connecting with two amazing churches in Seattle and Corvallis. One evening, around a glass of wine and amazing food, I had the privilege of engaging in a conversation about the gospel. In the middle of our dialogue Jon Tyson twitters “If gospel centered folks would replace the term gospel with Jesus more often, I think we would be more Gospel centered.” It was like he was in the middle of our conversation. Unfortunately we have talked at length about what the gospel is not but very little time on what it actually is.

So what is the gospel?

People are not asking the traditional gospel question much anymore, “If I died tomorrow, where would I end up?” “Forgiveness Isn’t the Whole Gospel” But people want to know how to live life now… does God care? Is He present in the day to day?

And perhaps not surprisingly, Jesus has a response to those who are asking such a question and on just a quest. To them he says, “Wake up.” “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” “Come, follow me.” This is the gospel…

THE TRUNCATED GOSPEL By Ben Sternke

There is a direct link between what we think the gospel is and whether or not we become disciples of Jesus.
The reason more Christians aren’t running over themselves to become disciples of Jesus is that we as leaders have been preaching a truncated gospel (Gospel as forgiveness / forgiveness as salvation).
People who are taught that forgiveness = salvation do not become disciples of Jesus, because they cannot fathom why they’d need him for anything other than his blood.
Thus our call to discipleship, no matter how sincere or well-articulated, is being subverted by this understanding of the gospel and salvation. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot.
The call to discipleship must be rooted in the proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel Jesus preached: the good news that through Jesus Christ, life under God’s rule (kingdom) is available to anyone and everyone.
Saying “yes” to this gospel naturally leads to discipleship, because this is a very different way of life that we must learn from Someone who knows how to do it and empowers us to do it: Jesus. There is no other way to say “yes” except by becoming a disciples of Jesus.
This leads to the formation of our character in the image of Christ, which leads to everyday mission as we join him in what he’s doing.
Thus there is no mission without formation, no formation without discipleship, and no discipleship without the gospel of the kingdom.

Check out the November/December edition of Catalyst Leadership, a free digital magazine, is online now. The theme isThe Gospel in Focus. They have a good list of contributors for this all important question: What is the gospel?

This issue of the digital magazine has a number of contributors answering the question through video and writing. Here are some of the entries.

Video: The Gospel of Restoration – Gabe Lyons

The Gospel in all its Forms – Tim Keller

Is Our Gospel Too Small? – Tim Keel

The Gospel for iGens – Scot McKnight

PDF

SLOW is Fast!

October 18, 2011 in Bible, church, God, Leadership, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

I woke up this morning, had a shower, got my coffee and sat in my comfy chair to read the scripture and get caught up on my blog readings. I was inspired when I came across Steve Murrell’s blog post on Slow is fast. These have been my thoughts and mode of operation since we moved to Ottawa to plant a church.We need to constantly be reminded of this mode of thinking in our convenience shaped – bigger is better – consumeristic culture.

Too many of us (pastors & church planters) find our value in how many people show up at church functions. The more time I spend in the West, the more I have to shake off that sad obsession with size and remind myself that I am called to make disciples, not to build churches. Jesus said he would build his church – the kind of church that the gates of hell would not be able to stop. He has a long history of doing what he says he will do, so he probably doesn’t need my help.

(Note to self: your job is to make disciples, not to build a church. If you make disciples, Jesus will build them into a great church.)

If Jesus had been obsessed with numerical growth like many pastors today, he would have felt like a failure.

QUESTION: After three years – preaching good news, healing the sick, feeding the hungry and discipling 12 men – how many did Jesus have in his “church”?

ANSWER: “In those days Peter stood up among the believers – a group numbering about a hundred and twenty” (Acts 1:15)

Three years and 120 believers. Outreach magazine would have totally ignored those results. And many modern church planters with similar results would be thinking about a career change.

While it took 3 years to grow from 12 to 120 – it only took weeks for the 120 to grow to 1000′s. Why? Because in the words of Joey Bonifacio, SLOW IS FAST!

If we focus on making disciples (which is a slow tedious process) it is just a matter of time before those disciples begin to multiply out of control. That’s the Book of Act. And that can be your church, if you focus on making disciples and leave the church growing to Jesus.

PDF

Live

October 18, 2011 in God, Life with 0 Comments

I have heard it said by lots of authors and speakers… none of us get to choose how we die, but we do get to choose how we live…

It’s easy to imagine our ideal life. It’s much harder to live it out. Or should I say it is easy to imagine what a life following Jesus could look like but it becomes difficult to live it out.

We tend to focus more on comfort – security – convenience – the mundane things. We miss the delight and joy found in the risk of actually living.

We lose sight of the whole picture.

We forget to live.

So pretend it’s the end of your life.

What do you want to be able to say about it?

What memories do you want to have?

What goals do you want to achieve?

What regrets do you want to avoid?

What do you want those closest to you to say about you?

What life does Jesus want you to have?

Remember that…in every moment…in every situation…in every decision. He is present… which can give you the confidence to…

Live.

PDF

Page 5 of 14« First...«3 456 7 »10...Last »