Why does church innovation = technology? | Part 1

I’ve noticed an interesting church leadership trend in the past few years.

Every year there are a few magazines or blogs that put out an annual list of innovative churches (most notably Outreach Magazine). Here are a few examples:

• LifeChurch.tv has a SecondLife campus.
• Mars Hill (Grand Rapids) had Noomas (though not technically tied to the church)
• Granger has great videos and communication gurus.

All of which are great and exciting innovations helping us better achieve the Great Commission. And to be clear, these achievements should be celebrated. But somewhere in the last 10-15 years, “innovation” in churches has, by-and-large, become synonymous with technological innovation or innovating how we deliver The Message via technology.

To “innovate” simply means to develop new things or methods. With the American church shrinking in size and influence, innovation is undoubtedly needed. The stats to support the church’s decline have been well documented. Only 15% of Gen X and only 4 % of Gen Y regularly attend a Sunday service. Moreover, 62% of Americans say they would never go to a church service. Yet most churches are using technological innovation — vehicles like video campuses, podcasting, Facebook microtargeting, etc. — to either draw people to their services or to export the Sunday experience. Most of our innovation revoles around technology meant to draw people to something that is Sunday service-centric.

Yet the innovation that’s required is for new methods to reach the 62% who aren’t likely  candidates for a worship service conversion. A re-imagining is required of how the Church can incarnate in a way that is relevant to that growing segment. So my first challenge for Christian leaders is to think of innovation beyond technological means.

But I also have some specific challenges to the Church’s growing infatuation with technology. They are…

1. In my experience, Discipleship and Mission can rarely be done well at a distance.
   It’s not often that true mission or discipleship happen outside of real flesh-and-blood relationships. Discipleship is meant to be life on life — day in and day out. Not only is it difficult for those we are discipling to see how we are following Jesus if they don’t have access to our real lives — but it’s also harder to know what they’re struggling as it’s easier for them to hide things in the digital world. It’s also harder to communicate genuine support and challenge without physical proximity or context.
2. Technology works best when it’s supplementary to existing relationships vs their primary mode of being.
   For example, I love Facebook. I use it all the time. One of the things that I LOVE about Facebook is that I get to follow my son, Sam, who is 1500 miles away at university. I get to look at pictures of him and his fiancee, Taylor (they are getting married this weekend!!!). I get to laugh at his funny status updates. I get to follow him through the week even though I’m half a continent removed from him. The existence of Facebook ADDS to an already rich, pre-existing relationship. It affords things to our relationship that we wouldn’t have without it.
3. If we’re not careful, reliance on digital media can shape us to disengage from life offline.
   Technological “innovation” can become counter-productive if it shapes people to dis-engage with the mission we’ve been called to. If it becomes a crutch to avoid the flesh, blood and mess of real life — then we have a different problem on our hands. I’m not trying to be a Luddite or an alarmist, but sometimes I really wonder if we are worse at discipleship and mission than we were 15 years ago because we haven’t been thoughtful with how technology is shaping us.

The church needs innovation. We need to set our sights to re-imagining, but we need to do so by getting back to the basics of discipling people and innovating how we do that. If you disciple people the way Jesus did and the way his disciples did, the way the early church did and the way we’ve seen throughout history, you will always get the missional thing.

The problem is that we are pretty awful at discipleship. (How’s that for candid?) As you’ve heard me say before, mission and discipleship are intextricably linked. You can’t be a disciple the way Jesus envisioned a disciple without being missional. So this is what I want to say:

Discipleship is where we need innovation.

Dallas Willard put it this way: Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. First, what is our plan for making disciples? And second, does our plan work? Sadly, most churches have a plan, but their results don’t come close to standing against the types of disciples we see littered throughout scripture. The plans simply aren’t working.

What does all this have to do with the church and technology?

I wonder what would happen if local churches spent ½ of the time they spend on keeping up with technology trends and innovating them and re-allocated it to innovating ways to make disciples who can make disciples in every-day, flesh-on-flesh, real life? Refusing to do it at a distance, but using the digital stuff as supplementary, not as the main thing.

I wonder if we just might have a movement on our hands.

Now don’t hear me wrong. I’m not a luddite who despises technology. Love love my ipad. A three-toed sloth couldn’t rip it from my fingers. 😉 I’m not suggesting a false dichotomy where we should shun innovating technology within the church because only then can we embrace “true” mission and discipleship. I’m saying nothing of the sort. I’m just asking us to take a step back and evaluate how we are allocating out time, energy and resources within “church world.”

What say you, oh blogger world?

(there is a bit of irony, isn’t there, that I’m writing this via an innovation of digital technology!?!)

Interview with Alan Hirsch about his new book “On the Verge”

Recently Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson released a new book, On the Verge. Now I’m good friends with Dave and Alan and they graciously allowed me to ask them a few questions about their book. I’ve included that interview as well as a brief review of their book at the end.

• How did you and Dave get together to write this book?

We were on a plane together and Todd Wilson said that if we would write it up, then he would make it the theme of the following Exponential conference.  Kinda like a bribe! 🙂  Actually it was a good opportunity arising out of our desire to help frame the Future Travelers conversation which we were all leading together.

• Why do you think this book is critical to where the Western church finds itself?

Drucker said that whom the gods would destroy, they give forty years of success.  Well, if he’s right, then times up for the business-as-usual methodology associated with the church growth paradigm.  We really have come to some sort of impasse.  We are also at the juncture where best thinking church growth is meeting and engaging with best thinking in terms of mission.  Add to that commitment to exponential type growth and you have a good recipe for apostolic movement.  Yes, that its.  Its the time to return to the apostolic movement form.

• In what ways does On the Verge serve as a continuation/fruition of your previous work?

It forced me to think more in terms of process.  I was forced to view the material I wrote (especially The Forgotten Ways) from the perspective of the innovative leadership of large and complex systems.  This actually started happening when people were kinda saying to me “Alan, I more or less agree with what you are saying, no need to shout any longer, now what do I do?”  Its a good question and it certainly deserves a well thought out response.  On The Verge is that response. It is very much for guiding practice built on deep theology and sound sociology and leadership theory.

• What do you think this book has that other books in this space may not have?

The distinctive is in the meaningful interface between missional theology, grassroots methodology, multi-site savvy, and multiplication church planting.  It also emphasizes how we can get everyone in the church into the game, and not just the professionals.  Its all about people-movement.  Using a both/and approach, its about how to use the current church as a platform to launch people into ministries in every sphere and domain of society.  Very exciting.

• Ok. Someone has just finished reading On the Verge. What do you want them to go and do next?

Give it a go.  Lean into it.  if you are leading the church to be what Jesus originally intended, you are on the side of the angels.  But don’t go off half-cocked.…Make sure you get your paradigm stuff right first, because if you don’t all attempts to change will simply snap back to default once pressure for change is alleviated.  Its all in the paradigm.  Of course you could join a Future Travelers cohort or go through a 3DM Learning Community.  The important thing is to do it with others!

Here are some of my thoughts on the book itself:

I think there is an important shift happening here that we need to pay attention to: The idea that while some of the structures for the church and methods we’ve used aren’t where we want it to be, perhaps we can transition churches rather than blowing them up. While it’s never exactly put this way in the book, it’s implicitly stated as you have Hirsch, a brilliant theoretical mind who is able to explain the origin of movements (while envisioning new ones within Christian orthodoxy) partnered with Ferguson, who is one of the most accomplished practitioners you’ll meet. The two of them working together on this project is fascinating, from the way they think, to the way they write to the way they process. You can see how each is challenging the other on the page. It’s quite a fun read.

Perhaps one of my favorite pieces was re-understanding church as a type of missional organization rather than a religious social club. What might this mean for the church? This is what they say on page 73: “If we persist with the current status quo, we are in effect asking the nonbeliever to do all the cross-cultural work in coming to church! Remember, we are the sent ones–not them.”

I won’t go on and on. Needless to say it’s a wonderful and fascinating read. One last thing I’d throw out that isn’t a criticism but a caveat: Be prepared to take a few notes as you go and write down some definitions they spell out because they will reference them again. You’ll want to have access to their vocabulary as you go.

Alan and Dave, if you’re reading this review, thanks so much for your hard work and dedication to this and for what you’re giving the people of God. Love being partners with you guys. Cheers!

sneak peak at the new book

Less than two years ago we released a self-published book called Building a Discipling Culture. We released it quickly, not having as much time as we would have liked to really craft the book, knowing we were going to have to leave out a lot of content and nuance we would have liked. There was a large demand for the book and we felt we needed to get it out. In the 22 months since then it has become somewhat of an underground best-seller.

Mercifully, however, we are proud to announce that in less than ONE MONTH, we will be releasing the re-written version of Building a Discipling Culture…and you will be able to buy it (and our other two core books) via hard copy and as an ebook through ipad or kindle. Furthermore, 2/3rds of this book has new content that we’ve never put out before. It really has been quite an overhaul.

To whet your appetite a little and to get in gear for the launch of ebooks, we’ll be releasing snippets of the book here on this blog in the next month. And to start…here’s an excerpt from the first chapter.

Enjoy.

West Coast church planters unite!

Are you a church planter or know one living on/near the West Coast?

We have some really exciting news! On September 13-14, we are going to be offering an ALMOST– FREE Missional Communities Workshop for Church Planters in San Francisco.

Increasingly, church planters are wanting to explore new and more effective ways of planting churches in a North American context that is more post-Christian with each passing day. Gone are the days when all you need to do is throw up a worship service with the right marketing and see a church spring up with people who aren’t already Christians. In most places in the United States, this just doesn’t work anymore.

Because of that, many church planters are starting to explore using things like Missional Communities and Huddles to start churches. While this isn’t necessarily new, it is fairly unknown in the United States. SO…we want to help!

If you are a church planter or know of one, because planting provides some very unique challenges, we’ve put aside two whole days to teach on, explore, model, answer questions and provide in-depth consultations on Missional Communities in a church plant setting…and it’s practically free.($30 to cover food for the two days)

Want to know more or register for this event? Click here to for more details and registration.

Obituary for the American Church

From time to time I will have the people I’m discipling write out their own pastoral obituary. I ask them to write out how our enemy would take them out, rendering them unable to serve their family and communities. As you can imagine, the answers vary, but always serves as a really helpful exercise as they are forced to confront issues of character, etc.

Now last week I did a post looking at some of the things the American church is doing well. Today, let’s do something different. You see, taking the same exercise I’ve used with pastors, for the past year I’ve been thinking how the enemy would/might be trying to take down the American church. Now what I’ve noticed is that the original temptations Jesus faced (which can best be boiled down to Appetite, Affirmation and Ambition) are somehow warped and insinuated into the culture. As each culture is distinct and different, a smart enemy would come at each culture in subtle ways, tempting them in ways they don’t see or expect, and with things that would look different from culture to culture.

For instance, the issues the European church deal with are actually quite different than the ones the American church is dealing with…even though often times they are put under the same broad umbrella of “Western Church.” Sure, there are some similarities, but the attack is different. More nuanced.

But those original temptations of Appetite, Affirmation and Ambition are slowly insinuating themselves into everything we call CHURCH. We just often don’t recognize it or see it.

And so this is how, if our enemy gets his way, the American church could be taken out:

• A culture of CELEBRITY (affirmation)
• A culture of CONSUMERISM (appetite)
• A culture of COMPETITION (ambition)

• CELEBRITY

The idea of celebrity is deeply woven into American culture and values. All you have to do is look at the ridiculous nature of Reality TV and you see how Americans are constantly craving celebrity (either to be a celebrity or to find the next celebrity and stalk there every move). Now there is nothing dark or sinister about “celebrity” in and of itself. You can’t find an argument that says Jesus wasn’t a huge celebrity in his day. However, there is a difference between being famous and being significant. If Jesus was famous, it’s because he was doing something significant. The problem with many pastors is they make decisions, develop personas and define success from the lens of what will make them a celebrity/famous (even if they don’t know it or see that they are doing this). So in American church culture, it’s pretty easy to become a celebrity: Grow a HUGE church. Now all in all, it’s not terribly difficult to grow to be a giant church if you have the right tools at your disposal…but that doesn’t mean the ends justify the means of getting there. For instance, though Jesus was a celebrity in his day, he was willing to say things that ran people off in droves. In fact, the book of Mark chronicles the way (from about the mid-point of the book on) how people left Jesus to where, at the end, virtually no one was left. NO ONE wants to be associated with him for fear of the consequences. That’s a Charlie Sheen-esque flameout (obviously without the character issues!). That’s not something you see too often in American churches. I suspect it’s because riven deeply into the American psyche is the desire to be a celebrity. And American pastors are very susceptible to this. Many subtle things happen in people who desire to this kind of celebrity status: They can disengage community and isolate themselves, setting themselves up for moral failure. They can make decisions that are numbers driven and not always Kingdom driven. They can skew to a shallow understanding of the Gospel as opposed to a holistic one that leads people to discipleship. They can put the good of their church (their personal Kingdom) over the good of God’s Kingdom. Question: In what ways are your decisions made by a subtle undercurrent of ambition and a hope for celebrity?

• CONSUMERISM

We live in a culture that revolves around consuming. Every TV commercial, every store, every credit card company, every bank, every TV show or movie, every piece of clothing, car or product, every website, every restaurant…every everything is tailored to fit your desires, needs or personal preference. We are easily infuriated when things don’t happen exactly as we want them. We exist in a place that implicitly says this: “We are here to serve you and meet your every whim and desire. Let us take care of you.” What’s more, it’s never enough. Eventually the house or the car get older and we want new ones. The clothes aren’t as fashionable and we want something more in style. That restaurant is getting boring, we must find another. Our favorite TV show is wearing thin, so the search begins for the next favorite. And on and on and on. This is how we are wired to think in the United States. And it is all backed up by this rationale: You’re worth it. You deserve to have what you want, how you want it, when you want it. And for the most part, the church plays the exact same game. We do as best we can to provide as comfortable an experience as humanly possible, using every means at our disposal to attract them in (and then keep them in). So we tailor what we do around their wants and desires. That’s Marketing 101, right? The problem is at the end of the day, the only thing that Jesus is counting is disciples. That’s it. He doesn’t seem to care too much about converts, attendance, budgets or buildings. It’s about disciples. And, by nature, disciples are producers, not consumers. Yet most of our churches are built around feeding consumers. I’d argue 90% of the church’s time, energy and resources are linked to this. But the issue is this: The means you use to attract people to you are usually the means you must use to keep them. In other words, if you use consumerism to attract them to your church, it often means you must continue using it to keep them…or else they will find another church who will meet their “needs.” And yet…that consumer mentality is antithetical to the Gospel and to the call of Discipleship. Disciples aren’t consumers, they are producers. Jesus cared about disciples more than anything else. Question: In what ways is your church community using consumerism as the means to draw people to a Gospel that is, in and of itself, anti-consumerism?

• COMPETITION

You will never find a more hyper-competitive culture than you do in the United States. As a foreigner living in this land, I can attest to that with the utmost respect. Americans love to win, they love the struggle of the journey and love holding up the gold medal of victory. Now don’t hear me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being competitive, it’s just how competition has become warped and twisted within our culture. And it’s that, at least in the church, we are competitive about the wrong things. Much of the American church finds itself competing with the church down the road. “Are we bigger than them? Do we have more influence than them? Do we have the best/biggest youth group in town? Do people like to get married in our church building? Do people like our church better than theirs?” The fact of the matter is that there is a battle, we do have an enemy and we should be competitive…but against our enemy! What we haven’t seen is how crafty he is. This seems to be the alliance he has struck with the American church: “I’ll let a good chunk of your churches grow…just not at the expense of my territory.” And so what happens? 96% of church growth is due to transfer growth and not churches striking into the heart of our enemy’s territory. We’ll consider it a win because we have the new service or program that is growing…but that growth is mainly from people coming from other churches. That’s not a win! That’s a staggering loss. Furthermore, for many pastors, we don’t think we’ve won until we’ve won AND someone else has lost. Seriously?! For sure, we have an enemy and we should be competitive, but we should be competing against our enemy, knowing that the final battle has already been won, and not competing against our own team members. So gifted and skilled is our enemy, so conniving is he, that he has convinced us that beating the people on our own team is victory while he stands back and laughs, rarely having to ever engage in conflict, protecting his territory. He is beating us with a slight of hand, with a clever distraction, turning us against ourselves. Question: In what ways are you competing (both in actuality or simply in your mind) against people who are on your own team?

In all honesty, it isn’t that the American church will ever truly die or cease to exist. It will always be there. But it is entirely possible that if these three critical issues aren’t addressed and dealt with, it will be a hallow shell that is spiritually listless.

If we think through Celebrity, Consumerism and Competition, the anti-body against all of these is sacrifice. Learning to lay down what builds us up and giving to others instead. “Learning to serve, rather than to be served.” Looking for anonymity rather than celebrity. To build a culture of producers rather than a consumers. To live in a vibrant, sacrificial community fighting a real enemy rather than competing against the same community God has given us to fight WITH rather than AGAINST. It’s about sacrificing what we want for the glory of God and the advancement of his Kingdom, regardless of our advancement or desires. Clearly this is what Paul was getting after in Philippians 2:6-11 when describing the attitude of Jesus as taking on the attitude of a servant, willing to sacrifice all acclaim and equality with God. It was a willingness to set aside and sacrifice celebrity, consumerism and competition at the altar of the incarnation.

Fifty years ago, as these three subtle threads were being woven into the American church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., serving as a prophetic voice, said this:

If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

We are now into the second decade of the 21st century and we find ourselves still, for the most part, refusing to sacrifice what we want for what God is asking of us and his Church. Will we have the courage to sacrifice as Christ sacrificed? Will we do the things that cost us so that his Kingdom may advance?

6 things the American church is doing well

I often coach people in our Learning Communities that what we need is EVOLUTION not REVOLUTION. If we try to revolutionize the church over night (either on a macro or micro level), everyone winds up dead. It’s not spiritually responsible in how we are forming people and suggests that somehow the Spirit of God hasn’t been at work previously. We may not like it, but change takes time. And because of that, it’s important to note where things have shifted and where we are seeing positive transformation.

There are always some who are called to be revolutionaries – exploring new frontiers, taking new ground for the Kingdom in new and innovative ways, even serving in prophetic and ultra-counter-cultural ways. But not everyone is called to be a pioneer. Some are called to advance at a different pace, in a way that takes along the masses who don’t change quite so quickly.

Sometimes it seems there are two polarized camps – those pushing out, who want to throw out the dirty bath water (and sometimes the baby with it) – and those who staunchly want to stay put – doing the same things and expecting different results. Those two camps are often quite critical of one another – rather than recognizing that there are unique callings within the Kingdom.

As someone who has spent the majority of my life living outside of the United States and didn’t grow up here, I think there is a perspective from an outsider that is always helpful. With that being said, with an outsiders perspective, here is what I think the American church is doing well:

1. SUNDAYS. We may not love everything about the attractional nature of Sundays that many churches are currently trying to get out of, but by-and-large, we are probably seeing stronger teaching from scripture, more creative expressions of worship, more passionate people coming together to worship the Lord, partnered with a greater sense that Sundays aren’t what “it’s” about. I think we’re seeing lots of innovation/imagination in the realm of teaching, doing more to connect the truth of scripture with the context of our lives. I think you’d be hardpressed to think we were better off 50 years ago with worship services. That being said, I think we all believe we need to see just as much (and MORE!!!) imagination/innovation go into how we live OUTSIDE of that 90 minutes on Sunday. We can always do better than we are now, but we should also celebrate when positive change happens.
2. AUTHENTIC. People can idolize the 1950’s all they want, but I’ll take people not sweeping their issues under the rug any day of the week and twice on Sunday. The fact of the matter is that people were just as broken in the 1950’s, we were just better at hiding it. As Christendom has faded and we live in an increasingly post-Christian culture, the church has become far more comfortable with accepting the fact that every person is broken and there isn’t a need to hide it. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t change, repent and seek transformation, but at least we can be more honest about who we are in the church (or that there is a greater sense of that).
3. ACTIVATION. At least within the evangelical tradition of the last 50 years, when the evangelical church has gotten behind something, they have been able to activate people behind a singular cause and will do everything they can to get people on board. The problem has been that, often times, we’ve activated behind suspect causes/ideologies. But there seems to be a swing more and more towards a wholistic expression of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God.
4. SELF-CRITIQUE. Sometimes observing evangelicals is a bit like watching parents eat their young…in the sense that no one is “safe” (which is sad). However, the flip side of that is the ability to be agile and self-critiquing and to change quickly. Simply look at Willow Creek. The church saw enormous numeric success, thousands join the Willow Creek Association and 30 years in they release the Reveal Study. And they very publicly admit where things aren’t working, where they got it wrong and how they are trying to change. Thirty years sounds like a long time, but in all actuality, that’s not a lot of time in comparison to the church’s ability to be self-reflective in the past. Now if we could learn to critique with civility and grace, that would be a huge step forward as well.
5. ENTREPRENEURIAL. Again, sometimes we can get lost in the bubble of our own making, but can we think of a more imaginative or entrepreneurial time in church history? We are boldly stepping out of “well, that’s how we’ve always done it” mode and are constantly trying new, exciting and frightening things to push forward the Kingdom of God. We may fail from time to time (or more than that), but at least we are following the wild goose of the Holy Spirit and having a go at it. I have to imagine the the original entrepreneur, the God of creation, is smiling as we go about His business. More and more, there is a missional disturbance happening. We certainly don’t have all of the answers, but the desire to change the world and impact people other than ourselves grows daily. And out of this desire we see new and fresh expressions of the church.
6. SMARTER. A huge knock on the church has been how negatively the business world has affected the way the church functions. This is a pretty fair reaction. However, we would be foolish not to see a few of the benefits, with two big ones coming to mind. VISION/PURPOSE. Any time a church is asking itself, “God, why have you put this spiritual family here? What are you asking us to do?” is a good thing. While there is the meta-narrative of God’s grand rescue mission that we all exist in, it never ceases to be helpful to see how our community fits into it on a more micro level. This can be particularly helpful as we are spiritually forming people (though, can be narcissistic or ego-driven if not done well). The second is FINANCES. I think we’ve gotten much shrewder with how we use the finances within the church. Rather than hoarding the money and protecting it, we are pushing it out of the safe, interest-collecting coffers and putting it to work (though I imagine we could question HOW and WHERE that money is being spent in many cases). But we still need to recognize it’s a step forward. Most churches and denominations are no longer collecting endowments but spending them on Kingdom-initiatives. Even if it’s not close to perfect, this is a good thing, a shift and a re-orientation towards the Kingdom.

Does your Gospel lead to Discipleship?

Ben Sternke is in one of our Learning Communities and is planting a church in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He has a GREAT way of simplifying complex questions/thoughts into a logical way of understanding. Perhaps none are better than his recent post on the Gospel, Discipleship and Evangelism. Like a swashbuckling pirate of old, I’m stealing his whole blog post and reposting here (I even stole the picture from him original post!). (He seriously has a great blog. Spend some time perusing it sometime).

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Does the gospel I preach naturally lead to people becoming disciples of Jesus? – Dallas Willard

Put another way: Is becoming a disciple of Jesus the natural way to say ‘Yes’ to the gospel I preach?

This question has been revolutionizing my understanding of the gospel, evangelism, and discipleship. For example, if we see the main message of the gospel as “Your sins can be forgiven,” it does not naturally lead to becoming a disciple of Jesus, because once you’ve got the “forgiveness contract” signed, discipleship seems like an optional extra-curricular activity for people who are into that kind of thing. Gospel-as-forgiveness is an anemic understanding of what the New Testament proclaims.

Here’s the way I am beginning to understand this, and the simple way we are going to be teaching our leaders at Christ Church to practice evangelism. Do you think this adequately captures things? What do you think?

THE GOSPEL
The Gospel is the good news that through Jesus Christ, life in the kingdom of God is available to anyone and everyone. The door has been kicked open by the death and resurrection of Jesus, and whoever wants to can come running in and find the good life in God’s kingdom.

EVANGELISM
Evangelism is the work of proclaiming this gospel; that is, announcing to people that a life in God’s kingdom is available to them right now, and inviting them to move into it by trusting Jesus.

DISCIPLESHIP
Discipleship then flows easily and naturally from this gospel, because the waywe enter life in God’s kingdom now is by trusting Jesus. This doesn’t mean simply trusting him to let us into heaven when we die. It means we trust him for everything: our daily needs, abiding joy and peace, and power (through the Spirit) to do the things he said were good and right, to join with him in his action in the world.

Thus trust in and obedience to Jesus are what we are calling people to when we tell them the kingdom of God is available to them. Some will ignore the message, some will mock and attack it, but some will respond with a question like, “What must I do?” The answer is, “Trust Jesus. Join us as we seek to live in relationship and obedience to him. Join us as we seek to be involved in what He’s doing right now in the earth.”

All of this must be done in a relational context. That is, we will seek to establish presence in a context before we move into proclamation, and our proclamation will be conditioned and shaped by our context. If we discern that someone is open to the gospel, one easy way to invite people into the kingdom is to simply say, “I believe God is very close to you, he loves you, is available to you, and wants to work in your life. What would you like to ask him for?” From there you can simply pray with them about that issue, and then walk with them and see what happens.

This way we’re inviting people on a journey of trusting Jesus, where they can take small steps of faith and obedience in relationship to the actual issues of their lives, because these are probably the places the kingdom is seeking to break into their lives anyway.

What are your thoughts on this way of formulating these ideas and practicing evangelism?

Where did Jesus give the Sermon on the Mount?

Most scholars think it was here, overlooking Capernaum.

Shallow small groups

This video is more than a little sad, but there is a lot of truth in humor (it’s a funny, satirical video). So have a laugh and a think.

HOW do you lead a Huddle?

HOW DO YOU LEAD A HUDDLE?

This is a question we’re asked a fair amount. More and more people are recognizing the discipleship crisis that is gripping the Western church and Huddles are one vehicle that is emerging in our more post-Christian context. And while we have a re-written book coming out later this summer with a lot on this question, we are happy to announce a very practical resource for you.

We have just released the audio from a 2-day Huddle training workshop one of our 3DM team members did that includes over 14 hours of audio on how to lead a Huddle. It’s cheap, the material is excellent and, because it’s audio, it’s portable!

You can download the audio by clicking here. Enjoy!