thoughts heading into sabbatical

As I mentioned in my last post, Sally and I are taking a three month sabbatical away from the world of 3DM and all the pioneering God has led us to. I thought my wife, Sally, had an excellent post with her thoughts on her own blog (which you can read here). I thought this summed up, quite well, these last few years as we head into our next few.

So we are off.

The bags are packed with one of every type of clothing, the tickets are secured and our minds are beginning to drift to far away places and  to the books we will read together .

There is something amazing and wonderful about being able to spend 3 months with Mike  doing not much more than review, dream  and plan and of course eat some English chocolate . It’s a gift and I am grateful .

Sabbatical. It means the seventh. We moved to the USA 7 years ago on 1st July 2004. We said goodbye to my place of birth, to the church that we had grown, to many wonderful friends and to  every single female member of my family. We left behind Mikes hard won reputation and place within the UK church.

We took with us a crate  of furniture and  a few precious things which set sail on a boat called faith. We entered the desert in more ways than could have ever been imagined. We moved as a pioneering tribe. Some things flourish in harsh environments, in landscapes that are extrovert and extreme.

Our children grew and called it home.  Mike called it his retreat.   We built houses and landscaped yards and I called it   challenging  and was often reminded of the pioneering women who left the shores of Europe to start a new life not knowing about the Indians , snakes and diseases .

I  was happy, but in moments, not in days or years.

Happiness is a luxury, not an essential, and pioneering is not meant to be a walk in the park or a dance on the bandstand. Pioneering is a way of life. It’s something you do because you know no other way but to  cut the trees down and start a road or move boulders and build a village. I know no other way  but to walk forward but with a gun by my side  and an eye on the horizon.

So now 7 years on despite  being in a sweeter softer place in south Carolina that  we now call home. Roads are still needing to be paved , but  some frontiers have been won and  a few homesteads that form a village have been built. It’s good to look back sometimes as well as forward .

On sabbatical…but summer posts are still coming

I left for a 3 month sabbatical yesterday, immediately following one of our Learning Communities. The good news is that we’ve got an editorial calendar of blog posts I’ve worked on with our new acting Director of Content, Doug Paul throughout the next few months.

So new blog posts during the summer will still be coming!

Huddle training workshop!

More and more people are hearing about Huddles and the powerful vehicle they have become in the United States and Europe for discipleship and mission. Moreover, people want exposure to Huddles in a way that they are able to participate, see them in the flesh, as well as receive practical training and coaching.

We are pleased to announce one of our 3DM Team members, Ben Sternke, is holding a day-long Huddle training workshop in Chesterton, IN (near Gary, which is quite close to Chicago) on May 12. Here is his write up of the event:

Dallas Willard has said, “Every church needs to be able to answer two questions: 1) What is our plan for making disciples? 2) Does our plan work?”

Many of our churches have well-developed plans for doing so, but the reality is that they mostly don’t work. The people sitting in our pews are rarely becoming like the people we read about in Scripture. They may come to a worship service, join a small group, tithe, or even work in the nursery, but their lives just don’t seem to be looking more like Jesus’ life. We all want to make disciples. Most of us are unsure how to do it.

Over the last 25 years in post-Christian Europe, several leaders have developed a discipleship vehicle called Huddle that has been producing some results that have been extraordinarily promising. They seem to be producing and multiplying disciples whose lives look increasingly like the disciples we see in Scripture. It’s not a curriculum or a program, but more like a set of tools that allows discipling relationships to bear fruit. It has now become a worldwide discipling movement.

This informal 7-hour seminar will introduce you to Huddles and give you some extremely practical tools to start these kinds of groups in your context.

You can get more details and register by clicking here.

And don’t worry…we’ll be having more events like this in the not-too-distant-future.

Missional Communities series | Post #22

In church world right now, Missional Communities are the “sexy” thing. They are the seeker sensitive service on their day, right? Obviously we believe them to be quite different and coming from a different place biblically, theologically, strategically, practically and philosophically. But the way that people talk about it…it has that same “new car” shine.

So let’s break down that metaphor for a second.

Missional Communities really are the beautiful vehicle that will get you to the missional places God is calling you to go. Honestly, they really are.

But here’s what so important to understand: Missional Communities may be the sleek vehicle for mission, but discipleship is the engine. Without a process for discipleship for your leaders (which mean low control, high accountability), your car is going no where.

What is your process for discipleship for your leaders and does your process work?

Missional Communities series | Post #21

One of the important thing to remember about Missional Communities (mid-sized groups of 20-50 on mission together) is that the leadership is dispersed throughout the group. In many respects, the MC leader is investing and discipling his/her leaders to lead various pieces of the MC and in that way, laity are able to lead unbelievable acts of mission in community.

Now the way that many MC leaders do that kind of investment/discipleship in their leaders is in a weekly or bi-weekly Huddle (for more on Huddles and discipleship, check out Building a Discipleship Culture). But sometimes one of the things that’s missed is that the Huddles of leaders in a MC is a GREAT place to teach mission.

On that note, here are some great tips, practices or idea starters for how to teach leaders, in a Huddle setting, how to do mission the way Jesus expressed it:

• Have everyone come to Huddle at the normal place, but have each person bring $5. (They don’t know why). Each person is then assigned to go spend that money at a restaurant/coffee shop somewhere, buy a drink, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to them a person of peace, and have ONE substantive conversation in that one hour they are there. Doesn’t have to be Jesus related…but something deep. Then, the whole huddle gathers at a place after that to process and go around the learning circle as they enter into the Kairos that has been created.
• Go out for dinner one night with your Huddle and everyone brings their persons of peace. Process the night through the Learning Circle in the next Huddle.

• Have everyone in the Huddle bring their families (if applicable) and invite persons of peace with their families and go to the park for a cookout and family games.

• Have every person in the Huddle share your communities’ language for the gospel with one person of peace they are close to. Have them explain to the POP that they are simply practicing and are neither asking for or expecting a response. Have the POP give feedback. Did it make sense? What questions would they have? Did they feel pressured? Process in Huddle.

• Have the Huddle regularly serve with the poor and regularly process in Huddle.

• Move into bolder expressions of mission with your Huddle. Set up a “Free Prayer Table” on the sidewalk of a crowded street or shopping center and offer free prayer to people as they pass. Process the Kairos in Huddle.

• Have everyone in the Huddle commit to praying for one specific Person of Peace every time they are in Huddle and have them commit to pray frequently in their own prayer times until they see breakthrough. Process the Kairos’ of both frustration and breakthrough in Huddle.

• Have everyone in the Huddle meet during lunch on a workday and go to a place where people are and engage in random acts of kindness. Process the Kairos in the following Huddle.

• Have the Huddle meeting in a public place like a restaurant or coffee shop and use the time to pray for people in the place, asking for the Holy Spirit to show someone who is a person of peace and engage appropriately.

• Use one of your Huddles as a time to practice sharing the gospel in a relational way. Allow time for feedback, encouragement, coaching and critique.

• Use your Huddle time to explore the differences between persons of peace who are passing relationships (meet them randomly) and permanent relationships (they are a regular part of your life). How is mission done with the Octagon with these different types of POPs.

• Have everyone in your Huddle knock on 5 doors of people living around them bringing cookies (or whatever is appropriate) and engage in conversation. Follow-up with a dinner invitation if the relationship seems ready. Process the Kairos in Huddle.

• Have everyone in the Huddle ask God: 1) what missional context they should be trying to reach into, and 2) what the gospel touch point is for that missional context. Share in Huddle and then have their plans respond appropriately.

Missional Community series | Post #20

The following is a terrific post that Alex Absalom recently wrote on his blog. Alex is my co-author of the book Launching Missional Communities. (And btw–we know many of you have been trying to order it. Due to so much demand, we’ve had a hard time keeping it on the shelves! But a new shipment has come in and you can order it here. Our sincere apologies).

Lastly, before we get to the post on your mission target, a quick reminder that myself, Alex and the 3DM Team will be at the Exponential Conference this upcoming week doing something like 5-6 workshops and our own Jo Saxton will be speaking main stage! If you’re going to be at Exponential in Orlando, we’d love to see you. Drop by one of our workshops or come by 3DM’s booth.

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In our experience, the most effective Missional Communities that we have seen are the ones that have the clearest mission vision.  In other words, the leaders are crystal clear as to who they are trying primarily to serve and witness to.

This means a specific group of people who are not yet whole-hearted disciples of Jesus.  You can define the group by neighborhood (ie geography) or network (of relationships – such as a common interest), although obviously both aspects are always at work to some extent.  There is no ‘wrong answer’ here!  The question is, who should be at the center of your mission vision?

One way to think about this is to ask yourself, ‘In the new MC, where will we put our proactive energy?’.  Yes, there will always be unexpected situations that we are called to react to.  However, just relying on those moments is no way to build an effective and growing Missional Community.

Instead, you as the leader need to define who it is that your MC is called to focus upon as you go out in mission (ie in witness and service).  This is absolutely critical for defining your MC culture, because everything else flows from this.  For instance, the time, location, food you eat and how you socialize will be determined by who you are reaching.  Likewise, the way in which you pray, the style of worship or the language that you use to describe spirituality will all be impacted by your mission focus.

So the starting point is to work out who your mission vision is to.

The questions at the end will help you on this journey, although there is one that generally is the most useful one, namely, who are your People of Peace?

Jesus teaches us about the idea of People of Peace in Luke 10:1-11 (centered around verse 6).  A very brief summary would show us that a Person of Peace is someone who:

• Welcomes you
• Receives you (and, unknowingly, Jesus in you)
• Serves you
• You mutually connect with
• Opens doorways into their network of relationships
• Consequently, you intentionally prioritize your friendship with them.

My unsophisticated summary for all this is, ‘They like you and you like them’!

OK, it is not always totally that black and white, but that is a very good starting point.  The principle Jesus teaches us is that the fields are so white for harvest that we should start with the easiest pickings first.  Those will be different for different people, which should mean that if everyone plays their part, the whole field will be harvested!

Your role is to work out where you are meant to be focusing at this time.  Essentially, Jesus asks:

–  Where do you have favor?
–  Who is already responding positively to you?
–  Where do you think you will easily connect and impact lives?

Therefore, as you are thinking about where you should be witnessing and planting a Missional Community, a key indicator is, where are your People (or Person) of Peace?

The gatekeeper principle is important here.  A Person of Peace will introduce you to others in their social network, giving you credibility and creating opportunity for you to impact a whole group of unchurched people.   I’ll blog more on that another time.

The other thing to note is that a mission vision is not a static thing – it evolves and develops over time.  However, at all times it should be specific and clear, even as you follow the leading of Jesus.

Finally, you need to process your tentative conclusions with an objective leader in the church, to give you accountability.  They will help challenge you to be as specific as possible.  This is also important to do if you reckon that you can’t think of a clear mission vision right now!  That might be true, but many times we have found that people end up thinking that due to self-imposed rules or boundaries (“Is that allowed?”) that are not from Jesus!

REFLECT:

• As you look around, who are you called to love in a special way?
• Who and where are your People of Peace?
• Is there an obvious ‘open doorway’ of opportunity for the Kingdom to advance?
• Who do you currently ‘do life’ with most enthusiastically?
• What is Jesus saying to you as you pray about this?

The church’s dirty little secret

I’ve started to say it quite a bit. Perhaps you’re already sick of reading it. But I think it’s one of those things that really hasn’t hit home yet.

We don’t have a leadership problem in the church in the United States.
We don’t have a missional problem.
We have a discipleship problem.

If we make disciples like Jesus made disciples (i.e. the way we’re supposed to!), we get more leaders than we can handle and more vision and action for mission than we will have ever seen.

That’s the way Jesus did it.
That’s the way his disciples did it.
That’s the way the early church did it.
That’s the way every missional movement has done it.

And yet we are in a full-fledged discipleship crisis in the United States.

A few days ago an article came out that pointed to this that I think is really worth a read, if for no other reason that it reiterates this overarching point. It’s a great post by Rick Wood. Here are a couple of highlights.

• If we as a church succeed in every area, but fail to make disciples who can spiritually multiply, then ultimately we have failed. Yet if we fail in every other area, but succeed in spiritual multiplication, then ultimately we have succeeded.
• The dirty little secret of missions is that we are sending missionaries all over the world who have not demonstrated the ability to make disciples who can make disciples.

And because I think it’s worth a good read, here’s the majority of the article.

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In the 2000 years since Jesus came to Earth we have made great strides in technology. Our ability to communicate the gospel to huge numbers of people all over the planet has never been greater. We have a greater wealth of resources than ever before for proclaiming the gospel to every person, tribe and tongue. Yet many unreached peoples still await a fair opportunity to know and follow Jesus. At the same time the Church in the West is at best stalled. In Europe the Church is in serious decline. We are forced to ask ourselves, “Have we missed something? What is keeping us from making the progress we would all like to see?”

For 32 years now Mission Frontiers has been identifying the systemic problems and obstacles that hinder us from bringing the gospel to every tribe and tongue. We have sought to highlight the mission strategies that can help us overcome the obstacles and bring the love of Christ to every person regardless of their location, language or culture.

In this issue of MF we focus on one of the most troubling obstacles to world evangelization facing us today: the failure of the Church (especially in the West) to equip most followers of Jesus to reproduce their faith in the lives of others. The vast majority of Bible-believing followers of Jesus are not regularly sharing their faith nor investing their lives in helping to bring others to maturity in Christ. And those who are concerned about this donít seem to know what to do about it. We are not simply pointing fingers here. Both the guest editor for this issue and I are convicted that we need to figure out how to be more successful in this area ourselves.

Tom Nelson of Denton Bible Church in Texas wrote (see p. 21 of this issue),

If we as a church succeed in every area, but fail to make disciples who can spiritually multiply, then ultimately we have failed. Yet if we fail in every other area, but succeed in spiritual multiplication, then ultimately we have succeeded.

Our churches in the West seem to be succeeding at lesser things while failing at Jesusí core strategy for world evangelization. We are succeeding in collecting tens of billions of dollars each year to gather large crowds into beautiful and expensive church buildings on Sunday. We have succeeded in putting on a great show and developing programs that attract people to our churches. In the process we have put an unbearable burden on our pastors to do nearly all the ministry while failing to activate the laity. As a result many pastors are skating on the edge of burnout, while the majority of church members do not see that God has any other role for them except as spectators.

In short, we are largely failing to develop mature followers of Jesus who are able to make disciples who can make disciples.

The people in our churches are not growing to spiritual maturity where they are able to carry on the work of spreading the gospel within our own culture, not to mention cross-culturally to every tribe and tongue. This is having a devastating impact on our ability to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth.

The dirty little secret of missions is that we are sending missionaries all over the world who have not demonstrated the ability to make disciples who can make disciples. Most have not seen or participated in effective models of church-planting or discipleship at home, but we send them out in the hope that going cross-culturally will turn them into effective church planters and disciplers. This is wishful thinking at best, and it has to change.

We must learn from and refine effective biblical models of doing church and discipleship, both at home and abroad, where the focus is on spiritual reproduction and multiplication of mature disciplers and discipleship teams. The often overlooked secret of Christian maturity is that we learn and grow the most when we are involved in sharing our faith and discipling others. Until believers have demonstrated their ability to produce reproducing disciples, we must provide mentoring and peer coaching aimed at helping them learn to succeed in this fundamental task as we deploy them into ministry here or abroad. Otherwise we are only sending people out to replicate a failed model of doing church. Overcoming this failure of the church to equip believers to make disciples who can make disciples is one of the most critical needs in the church today. What we need is a Discipleship Revolution that transforms the way we do church and mission, and vastly multiplies the number of disciplers who can disciple all peoples both near and far. This will require effective disciplers to go cross-culturally to every people to begin a discipleship movement within each people.

Simply working harder at the current model of church will not succeed in bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth. God ís strategy for fulfilling the Great Commission requires reproducing disciples.

Why Not Use the Model Jesus Gave Us?

Jesus preached to crowds, but didnít leave the fruit to rot. He balanced public ministry with roughly equal attention to the development of 12 individuals, rather than simply attracting larger crowds. During the latter part of his ministry, He withdrew increasingly from public proclamation to change the lives of 12 men. Eleven of them would go on to change the world, even without modern technology. Jesus was intentionally relational in discipling the Twelve. He shared His life with them and used stories and parables to embed the truths of His Kingdom in their hearts. His focus was not on simply communicating a message or filling their heads with knowledge, but on guiding them to maturity as spiritual reproducers. That should be the focus of our churches today as well.

We will never bring the gospel to every tribe and tongue if we continue to rely on professional clergy to do ìdisciplingî as a transfer of knowledge. As followers of Jesus, we must all aim to become disciples who can follow Jesusí example in making disciples. None of us is excused from active duty in the service of our King.

Missional Community series | Post #19

Here is our own Jo Saxton, talking about Missional Communities with Michael “Stew” Stewart.

Missional Community series | Post #18

I often joked with the churches I was leading, “If you remove mountains and meals from the Bible, there’s not much left.”

So you’re probably heard many people talk about how crucial food and meals are to missional life and engagement. You can’t turn a page in the Gospels without Jesus eating a meal with someone. Eating with people at a common table is one of the best ways to form relational bonds.

That’s not really new information, is it?

But here’s a little tip for Missional Communities in relation to food.

Many MC leaders, when they have meals, feel the need to provide most of the food, snacks or beverages themselves. While they are demonstrating good hospitality in doing this and should definitely be done from time to time, we’re really losing an important opportunity. Paul, in 1st Corinthians 10-14, paints a picture of a spiritual extended family with everyone bringing something to the metaphorical spiritual table.

Why not move beyond the metaphor and have everyone bring food?

The way we’ve done it in many of our MCs is to say, “Everyone bring enough to feed your family +2 and we’ll all share the food.” The Baptists got this one right: Pot lucks are a great way to build a spirit of “everyone brings something, we aren’t consumers, we are providers.”

Everyone bringing food is one of those small but big things. It teaches a bigger lesson and creates a certain ethos.

Just a little tip.

a great idea

There’s been a lot of chatter lately in “church planter world” (as if this were some kind of alternate reality!) around bi-vocation vs. full time ministry. (You can click here for one blog post on this). I certainly don’t presume to say one is more godly or more noble, but I saw this on a friend’s blog and can’t resist sharing.

Alex Johnson, is a bivocational church planter in Denver, Colorado and is going to be part of our May Learning Community at 3DM. I thought I’d let you in on what Alex is doing. Because it is not only quite funny…it’s quite brilliant.

Here’s a post I’ve pasted in that Alex recently put up about how he’s being bi-vocational through a very specific business he’s started. I think you’ll really like his creative thinking on this one and probably get a good laugh. Notice how he’s thought through why the business connects with the culture he’s living in, connects with his season of life and gives him the missional flexibility he needs to be bi-vocational. Very well thought out.

Here is Alex’s post.

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The business we started is a cloth diaper delivery service that we call the Denver Diaper Service.  You can visit our website at www.denverdiaperservice.com.

We deliver clean cloth diapers to people and take away their dirty diapers to wash.  Now, cleaning poopy diapers is not a glamorous way to earn a living, but there are several reasons why we chose this specific business.

1.  It is a business that allows us to help protect the environment.  Millions of tons of disposable diapers have been dumped into landfills, and to this day, not a single one has biodegraded.  Stewarding the Earth is a big responsibility: you can’t do everything, but you can do something.

2.  It’s something we know well.  As parents of a 6-week old, we are intimately acquainted with dirty diapers and our knowledge will only grow.

3.  It’s a business model that allows for us to manage our risk because we invest capital as we have demand.  It’s not a “If you build it they will come model.” It’s more a “As they come, we build it.”

4.  We aren’t asking people to add an expense to their budgets.   People have to use diapers.  For roughly the same amount as disposable diapers, you can use a cloth diaper service without having to deal with the constant washing of diapers.

5.  Our potential customer base are people with which we regularly interact.

If you’re reading this and know someone in the Denver or Colorado Springs area who might be interested, please point them in our direction!  Denver Diaper Service is really designed to be a vehicle for kingdom expansion.  It’s a great way to protect the environment while supporting church planters too!