MISSIONAL | daveharder.ca

Archive - MISSIONAL RSS Feed

Church Planting Congress 2

November 23, 2009 in church, Leadership, MISSIONAL with 1 Comment

I got home late Friday night from the Church Planting Congress in Calgary and finally this morning have a chance to process the many great moments. Here is a bulleted list of my takeaways from a high impact week.

The very core motivation and source of who we are and what we do is found in the very character and mission of God – The Missio Dei – You have not known God if you have not joined Him on mission. Michael Frost
What is your movie Trailer that demonstrates to the world the coming Kingdom of God. I hope it is not I attend church on Sundays…
Montreal has the most students of any city in North America! Yes even more than Boston.
What type of disciple will it take to transform neighbourhoods?
Poverty in our cities is now diffused and is not only a downtown issue anymore. Our cities in Canada are very different from American cities… we have fewer highways, greater % uses public transformation, higher incomes, more stable growth, safer, complicated government structures, more educated… how do we engage our cities with the gospel?
Churches live disembodied spirituality.We have become excarnational not incarnational.
God's mission has a church.
Maybe our calling is not to plant massive churches but churches that have deep roots in neighbourhoods.
Are you trying to make the mission of God safe? If you are STOP that!
The death talk… mission will cost you your life! What do you need to give up so you can join God on mission.
Church planting is not replicating but reproducing.
God says "I will build my church, you go make disciples."
Love God, Love Others – GO
Retell the story of Jesus not just the death of Jesus.

These are just a few of the take aways. I am looking forward to processing all these and much more with The Journey community.

PDF

Ways to NOT be a Missional Church

October 17, 2009 in church, God, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

This is a great post by Jonathon Dodson at Church Planting Novice.

Missional church movement has spawned a slew of misunderstandings and misapplications of mission. Over the next few days I want to suggest three ways to not do mission: 1) Event-driven Mission 2) Evangelism-driven Mission 3) Social Action driven Mission. Let’s think about Event-driven together:

Event-driven Mission: These are the churches that, in the name of mission, throw bloc parties, do Easter Egg drops from helicopters, hand out water at intersections, do gas buy-downs, or even, as was recently suggested to me, do coffee buy-downs.What’s wrong this this approach to missional church?

Event-driven Mission is works-based. It begins on the wrong foot, the foot of action instead of the foot of identity. It makes mission out to be an act of man, not a participation in an attribute of God. Mission is something we are before its something we do. Event-driven approaches to mission turn mission into an event, something that is optional for the super-spiritual, something that gets us points with God, that gets him on our good side. But God can not be bribed by mission or anything else. Event-driven mission builds mission on works not grace.

Event-driven Mission is very often Consumerist: The event approach to being a missional church often appeals to consumerism, not to genuine social or spiritual needs? It aims at the consumer-in-want-of-stuff, not the sinner-in-need-of-grace. These attempts at mission appeal to the consumerist longing for a deal, instead of the sinner’s deep down longing for redemption. They try to buy people off. I’ll give you an Xbox if you come to my church. I’ll pay for your gas if you visit on a Sunday. I’ll rent a helicopter if you will consider becoming a Christian. If you have to pay people to come meet Christians, something is seriously wrong with your understanding of gospel and mission. Event-driven mission makes appeals based on idolatry not to grace.

It doesn’t work very well. In urban contexts, people can smell a bait and switch a mile away, and that is exactly when they left the church (if they were in it in the first place). If we want to reach non-Christians in a post-Christian context, then we will have to prove to them that they cannot be bought off, that we are a real community, and that we care about them enough to live next door to them, eat with them, work with them, suffer with them, rock out with them, go be with them. Event driven mission is a bait and switch.

PDF

1/3 Gospel

October 2, 2009 in Bible, church, God, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

If I could sum up this years journey for me it would be a growth in my understanding of the gospel, the good news of Jesus. I can honestly say I had missed so much of what the gospel is…

I find it is so easy to accept a one third gospel, where we spend of our time praying and listening but miss the other dimensions of God and in essence when asked how we are doing we are lying to say we are fine.

This one-third gospel is hardly a gospel at all. It focuses on Jesus' death and resurrection as a doctrine to be believed, not the way forward into a Person to be trusted and obeyed. It is a gospel where we spend the majority of the time working on us, a gospel reduced to the status of a ticket that gets us to glory. But the biblical gospel is much more than personal conversion or a heavenly reservation. The gospel has two more "thirds." The gospel calls us into community and onto mission in Jesus.

The reality is if we have been changed by the resurrected Christ, community and mission are a natural outflow. We see in acts where this naturally flows… They prayed and engaged in intimacy with God, lived in community with one another sharing possessions, eating, serving, loving, and God added to their number daily, the rhythm of the gospel is all three. You can't say you love Jesus but live in isolation and could care less about your neighbour!

Jonathon Dodson, pastor of City Life in Austin, TX, writes a beautiful article on this, remember its the order that is crucial. First Christ then others:

The Three Conversions

"When we are converted, we are not converted to Christ alone. It was Martin Luther who first spoke of three conversions: conversion of the heart, conversion of the mind, and conversion of the purse. He focused on what needs to be converted in man.

However, it is also important to consider what man needs to be converted to. Not only does the gospel convert our heart, mind and money, but it also converts us to some thing. Three things to be specific. When we are converted, we are not converted to Christ alone. The gospel converts us to Christ, to church and to mission.

In the New Testament, Jesus, Paul and Peter repeatedly use metaphors for the church that reveal the need for three conversions, conversion to Christ, community, and mission. These three dimensions of the gospel are not presented as three options, but as three essentials that constitute biblical faith.

Our primary conversion, of course, is to Jesus Christ as Lord (Col 2:6). To Him alone belongs all the glory, honor and obedience. To make church or mission our primary conversion would be an act of idolatry. Jesus alone is Lord; however, the lordship of Jesus does not stand alone. As Lord of all, Jesus calls us into His kingdom, His family, His church.

The metaphors of Jesus as Lord of the Harvest, Head of the Body, andCornerstone to the Temple all underscore the inextricable connection between conversion and community. When we are converted to Jesus, we are converted into His church.

The saving work of Christ through the cross was not to gather a loose collection of souls for glory, but rather a costly sacrifice to create a new community as the proof of the gospel to the world. This community is the church, and the church is naturally a gospel-centered missional community. The problem is that we contaminate it with unnatural thinking and behavior. We jettison the conversions of community and mission. As a result, our view of the gospel is considerably undernourished. When we think of the gospel, we think individual conversion but the Bible typically presents conversion into a community and on mission in the world."

No matter where you live and what your days look like, you have the choice each day to depend on yourself, to live safely, and to try to control your life. Or you can live as you were created to live – as a container of the Holy Spirit of God, as a person dependent on him, desperate for God the Spirit to show up and make a difference in the world you live.

When people ask how we are doing we usually will answer depending on an emotional feeling, or how our prayer time was that morning. In reality you are only fine when you are radically in love with Jesus, walking in close knit community with others, and on mission in the world. It is then that you are doing fine!

PDF

I Got The T-Shirt

September 29, 2009 in church, God, MISSIONAL, Pastors with 2 Comments

I don't rant often but today I am feeling the need to get it out there! I have had some crazy experiences this summer and on twitter that are somewhat shocking! I will not share the stories as I love these pastors and believe deeply in church planting but I don't get why church planting and t-shirts are in the same sentence. I even got a t-shirt sent to me… why? Maybe I just don't understand because I am Canadian and Canadians are much more reserved and less into the whole marketing church thing. OR maybe we have been post christian a little longer and have realized t-shirts and mascots really don't work in awakening people to the reality of God's Kingdom.

It concerns me that we have confused marketing with church, and who are we marketing "our" church to? Trust me the lost are not into your t-shirt or your mascot a matter of fact they are probably turned off by it. If you want to see lives transformed start by making friends, serving your neighbourhood, being honest with your pain, admitting your messes and discussing how Jesus is your hope. The stats don't lie… most of church growth is the shuffling of the sheep, fellow church planter if you could only build your church with those not in church would you still make the t-shirt? If you answer yes go for it… but the reality is we would probably say no. Let's get back to serving, loving, listening and leave our slogans and marketing tools behind. The amount of time, money and energy spent on such things takes away from being "sent" on mission. Here are some helpful tools to replace your t-shirt:

Take the kids to the park and make friends with the other dads.
Go to Starbucks and engage in conversation with those willing.
Go next door and ask your neighbour over for dinner.
Make a list of the needs in your neighbourhood and begin meeting them.
Join a sports league and go out for a beer with them after the game.
Make friends, get out of the house, stop strategizing and start loving.
Teach your kids about living missional.
Form moms groups at the coffee shop or mens groups at the pub and just engage in their stories. You may find you actually have a lot in common and they are closer to Jesus than you would have thought.
Volunteer at a non-profit in your community.

Lets make the gospel and Jesus the Good News. The best news ever is that I am more flawed and messed up than I dare believed but I am more accepted and loved than I could dare hope! God you truly are amazing. Please allow the gospel to capture your heart and you won't even need the t-shirt…

PDF

Gospel Community Training 2

September 28, 2009 in church, Leadership, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

As I was wrestling through the tensions God began to show me how the shift in my heart also had to be made in how we "do" church. The shift:

1. From Lecture Hall to Laboratory – Jesus taught his disciples on the way yet we have reduced discipleship to what we hear from the pulpit and then are left to work it through on our own. We spend so much time sitting and hearing but not doing, living, acting. When the church thinks it is the destination it always confuses the goal. The goal is for us to be sent, to participate in God's redemptive plan in the world.

From teaching to modelling
Curriculum centered to life centered
Attending to creating
Proclamation to demonstration
From staring at the backs of heads to doing life together

2. From Programs to People – So many churches have moved from a relational community to a stage driven organization. People end up joining churches because of the menu and the stats don't lie. We are recycling believers yet are not reaching those that are lost. As the service economy has grown so has consumerism in the church and we ended up outsourcing our spiritual formation to the church and not taking responsibility for our love for God and others. In a program, consumer driven model the scorecard is based on who comes? But what about imitating Christ? Maturation is messy and Godliness increases as we live it out together. Remove all the programs and insulators the church has created and how are you doing spiritually? We tried the experiment on an outreach to Montreal and honestly it was such a difficult week but I heard God! And experienced what it was to walk with him and open my eyes to what he was doing in peoples lives instead of plugging them in to a program.

3. From Elephant to Rabbit – I am less concerned with the container but that the church has been contained. The reality is planting churches the conventional way costs gobs of money and people hours are spent building the production not going out on mission. I believe the simple church model is here to stay as we remove the extras and get back to the simplicity of loving Jesus and others. We do the temple thing but rarely do we do life together in the context of community. Ordinary people doing everyday stuff make the best leaders of Gospel Communities. Too often we parachute leaders in or create a small group that they have to drive to attend, instead of raising up local leaders in our neighbourhoods, campus, or business.

It is our desire to see Communion with God, Community with one another, and Mission in the world come out of the walls of a building and become tangible in the places we do life. Jesus command was "as you are going, make disciples."

PDF

Fresh Expressions – An Interview with Bishop Graham Cray

September 26, 2009 in church, MISSIONAL with 2 Comments

I was introduced to fresh expressions by my good friend Michael Jones who had their community, the Living Room, go through Fresh Expressions in Montreal. Since that time I have had the opportunity and privilege to connect with our Anglican brothers and sisters here in Ottawa and dialogue fresh ways to impact culture with the gospel. Graham was one of the people behind the Mission-shaped Church document that led to the creation of Fresh Expressions in the UK – a partnership between the Anglican Church of England, the Methodist Church and the wider UK church community. Early this year, Graham became team leader of Fresh Expressions. Enjoy!

FX Canada Interview w/ Graham Cray Part I from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

PDF

Gospel Community Training

September 23, 2009 in God, Leadership, MISSIONAL, Pastors with 0 Comments

It was amazing to see NewLife, The Journey, The Living Room and a number of church leaders in the city join together to learn about Gospel Communities. I was amazed by peoples faith, honesty and desire to learn and grow… to leave old paradigms behind and embrace the new.

Gospel Communities the vision:

It is our desire is to have clusters of friends throughout the city in which community, communion, and mission unfold as a way of life. We believe we will touch upon the needs of the city most when cells of Jesus followers seek to bless specific places where they do life. Here are some thoughts from the training and what each session focused on.

I believe God is calling us to replace a "come to us" invitation with a "go to them" life. But paradigms die hard and change is difficult. Jesus told us to go into all the world and make disciples, but too many of us have inadvertently changed the go to them command to a come and see appeal. We have grown attached to our buildings, programs, staff, and a wide variety of goods and services and God is calling us back to the simple joy of loving Him and others.

Session 1 Notes:

In going through some pain a few years ago in my marriage, ministry… God began to show me not just who I was but what his church had become. In that season I had to work through some key tensions that had become a part of how I did life and ministry. The tensions are:

I was not smoking what I was selling – I would talk about evangelism, discipleship… yet I was too busy to walk across the street and love my neighbour. I did not even know my neighbour. In this season I began to understand that mission was not an activity of the church but an attribute of God. Thus every life transformed by God is a missionary life, each marriage is a missionary marriage, every job a missionary vocation. I needed to live a different kind of way.
My views of "the lost"- I had an "us them" mentality that was deep. They were anti-God, clueless, sinners and I was perfect. I did not understand what Jesus meant by lost, that they were lost because of their value, they were treasured and worthy to be looked for. AND I was just as messed up, had the same questions, and could connect at a very real level.
Church activity was equated with spirituality – I was at church a lot and attendance was everything. I was a spiritual consumer that was looking to consume the "next thing". I believed that if you came to church, served, gave in the offering, attended a small group bible study, you would find a meaningful life. The result was most got tired, and we had no clue how to engage with culture.
How do we get them to come to us? – The amount of time and money I spent getting people to come to us makes me queazy. God was longing for me to join his redemptive mission in the world and I was stuck planning the next event. In focusing on them coming to us I missed what it was to listen, hear their story, and make friends.
I lived in two worlds – I had my spiritual life and then my other activities… sports, bills, car rides, cooking, laundry… the worlds were not connected. I could not see Jesus in the day to day. I would sit, learn, study but where did I live out what I was learning. I have since then learned that growth is about unpacking biblical truth in the context of the everyday. If the sermon on Sunday is not lived Monday you really did not learn anything. A disciple is being an imitator of Christ, following him along the way.
The final tension (I am sure I have lots more but lets stop here) Where are my friends? - Oh ya they are doing ministry. One of the greatest tensions was when ministry stopped the relationships faded. They were functional in nature, birthed in the activity not love. We would only see each other at events and then we would have to schedule more events just to hang out. I had a deep longing to do life with people and in the middle of doing life we would show each other Jesus.

Gospel communities was birthed in this tension. It is not a strategy or the latest program to help you grow your church. My favourite quote from this session, as we had Q and A, was "I feel like I am in AA but still drinking." Meaning I know I need to shift to become more love based but the reality is I am stuck in a functional program driven mindset. Like an Alcoholic the first step to recovery is admitting our need. I needed to change, the church needed to change.

Session 2 notes tomorrow

PDF

Rob Bell Drops Like Stars

September 23, 2009 in God, Life, MISSIONAL, Pastors with 1 Comment

It has been way too long… I have not figured out how to include blogging in my busy fall but I will continue to work on it. Last week was a crazy week. My buddy was in town from California, Rob Bell, My birthday, and our Gospel Community training on the weekend.

This message was about suffering…bad things in life…and really not why these things happen, but where to go from there. The next hour and a half was dedicated to exploring the idea of “What now?” in response to the tough times life throws you.

Here are some takeaways from the Drops Like Stars Tour:

We are good at making plans, assumptions, and expectations and then we suffer! Our frame of reference is lost and the insulators are removed and you say Now What?
When people talk about significant moments that have altered the trajectory of their life, they don't talk about their new "pants" or "shoes" they talk about real painful experiences. I would not be here today if… this did not happen!
The lack of creativity in our lives and churches is correlated to our avoidance of pain. lets get honest!
Death can happen two ways, murder, cancer,accident OR as Will Farrell says in an amazing movie Old School "death by wallpaper". We die from boredom. I am free from suffering and it has made me miserable.
Pain makes us honest.
Johnny Cash performing in the viper room… remove the clutter and get to the raw essence of who you are and what church is. Stop the performance trap!
Suffering creates a solidarity that bounty never does. Wow we both own Harleys, cool! Wow you had a mom who died with cancer too! Suffering connects us and removes the labels.
The Cross is at the heart of the Christian faith and God never promises to remove our pain but to be present in the midst of it.
In the midst of pain our greatest need is not to have answered the why but to know you are not alone. God says I know how you feel and I am present! Wow I love that.
Their is a difference between owning and possessing. You can own everything yet possess nothing.(Eg. rich in America) You can own nothing yet possess everything. (genocide, war, sickness yet have peace, love, and joy) Suffering makes the distinction clear…
God wastes nothing! Your mistakes grow you…
Be skeptical of perfection, the blemish is where God is.
So few people understand the road of suffering because they chooses another way.

It was kind of hard trying to digest all that stuff walking down the street after the “show” at 10:00 pm, but the main thing I took away was that it’s just not worth beating yourself up for past failures, missed goals, a selfish past because God will use those things.

We had such a great time together and I enjoyed the balance of excellence and simplicity. A goal I long for in our community. Rob thanks for coming to Ottawa even if you stirred some things up. In the stirring it is my prayer that you embrace your pain and your churches pain… quit ignoring it and choose the path of suffering. Trust me it will produce something beautiful!

PDF

What is a Disciple?

September 10, 2009 in Bible, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

I apologize for being so sporadic in my writing but I have been crazy busy the last couple of weeks. To give you something to read until I post again here is a great post from one of my fave bloggers Jonathon Dodson. I love his definition!

A Brief Definition

We define “a disciple” as a Spirit-led follower of Christ. The reason we don’t use the “gospel” in our definition is because we see discipleship as relational, unto the Person Jesus, not unto the information of the gospel. We also wanted to emphasize the critical role of the Spirit in being a disciple of Jesus. All too often discipleship is disconnected from the Spirit, the Spirit of the Gospel of Jesus. We want to retain the trinitarian, personal nature of the Gospel by emphasizing the persons of the Trinity.

You Can’t Follow Jesus

But I thought discipleship was all about Jesus? It can’t be all about Jesus apart from the Spirit. Without the Spirit it will be all about you trying to be all about Jesus. This results in dead-end moralism or legalism or despair. The truth is that you can’t follow Jesus. Will Walker helpfully illustrates the centrality of the Spirit in following Jesus when he asks:

Q: “Who would you pick between Jesus and the Spirit to be your discipler?”

A: “Not Jesus because apart from the Spirit we cannot follow (obey and enjoy) Jesus.” (my answer)

Some Bible Examples:

Salvation: Ezek 36. Israel could not obey the law with out the heart of flesh being animated by the Spirit.
Mission: Luke 4. Jesus does not begin his ministry until he is baptized by the Spirit.
Mission: Acts 2. The Church does not begin its ministry until the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost.
Sanctification: Gal 5. The way we look like Jesus is by bearing the fruit of the Spirit.

In discipleship, the primary goal of the Spirit is to reproduce the likeness of Christ in each person for the glory of God.

PDF

Finding Christ in the Mundane

September 1, 2009 in Bible, Life, MISSIONAL with 0 Comments

In Exodus 25 God asks "make me a house for me to dwell." They had sacred garments, sacred space, sacred offerings, sacred emblems, sacred sanctuary, sacred rituals. What is "sacred"? It means set a part, to build a space and do activities that are separate than the common space. In the ancient world their were two realms, the sacred and the common.

The problem is this is not just an ancient view. I remember growing up as a kid dressing up in my Sunday best because I was going to "meet with God". I was not allowed to play sports on Sunday because that would tick God off, and I couldn't go to school dances, movies, listen to rock music, play cards… because somehow all these things took away from the sacred. I am making it sound like my childhood was a little strict… I had amazing parents who loved Jesus but the view of sacred and common was not much different than in Exodus and Leviticus. We had our daily lives but what was really important was what happened at the church.

So what does Jesus do with this understanding? In Matthew 12 on the Sabbath, the sacred day, he heals a man. He then goes on to say "the one greater than the temple is here." What the center is over there in the temple and Jesus comes along and says I am the temple. That must have messed them up!

Then in Matthew 25:51 the curtain to the sacred space was torn. Now we have unlimited access to God! And then in 1 Corinthians Paul says "you are a temple". What a massive shift. With Jesus the Holy is found in the common and the sacred is understood in the everyday.

Do you see Christ in the mundane tasks. In the midst of bills, doctors appointments, groceries, laundry, sports, dishes, eating, kids soccer, forms, work, school, is JESUS! A follower of Christ is growing in the awareness of Christ in the everyday.

My fave passage these days is Jacob in Genesis 28 saying "The Lord was in this place and I was unaware of it." So much of life is us being awakened to the reality of God in places we did not think he was. Is work what you do to make money, are your kids an inconvenience… what about evangelism is that a program your church runs every fall and spring! What if every moment of everyday could be filled with the reality that Jesus is present here. That would change lots of conversations and add purpose to many blah moments.

The religious want to keep the two separate… but I do not want to go through my days missing Christ. Thinking, if only I can hang on till Sunday. We gather not to see Christ, We gather to be awakened… to say what Jacob said… The Lord is here and I was unaware of it.

God awaken us to see you even in the dull moments of our day.

PDF

Page 13 of 15« First...10 «11 121314 15 »