Missional Communities series | Post #9

Well, we’re a little over a month into this series on Missional Communities. The past few posts have dealt with Ephesians 4’s ministry gifts.

In this post we looked at how the different 5-Fold gifts lead Missional Communities.
In this post we examined what immature versions of these gifts look like.

I guess this has turned out to be a bit of a “series-in-a-series” as we will have one more post today on the 5-Fold gifts as it relates to Missional Communities.

One of the questions our team at 3DM is asked pretty frequently is how to identify what base gifting people are out of the Ephesians 4 5-Fold Ministry gifts: Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Teacher and Pastor.

Now I’m not going to pretend there is a hard and fast rule for doing that. But we can provide different lenses to help people, right? As we’ve thought about it, it seems that each of these archetypes asks a fundamental question. A question, if you will, that burns more brightly and passionately than any others. I’ve found this can be a helpful way of finding out someone’s base gifting.

• Apostles Core Question | Are we leading the people of God to their destiny? (future oriented)
• Prophets Core Question | Are the people of God hearing his voice and actually responding? (integrity/justice oriented)
• Evangelists Core Question | Are more people entering into the Kingdom of God? (new life oriented)
• Teachers Core Question | Are the people of God immersing themselves in scripture and incarnating it? (truth oriented)
• Pastors Core Question | Are the people of God seeing transformation, healing and redemption? (transformation oriented)

It’s fascinating, actually, that when you look at how each of these sees the world through these questions, how important it is to have each of them present in the communities we are a part of! Do you want to be part of a community that isn’t future oriented? Or truth oriented? Or that doesn’t care about justice or integrity? Or isn’t seeking new life or transformation? All of these are needed and work in concert together.

Missional Communities series | Post #8

In our last post on Missional Communities we talked about how each of the 5-Fold Gifts from Ephesians 4 would start and grow a MC. Obviously each of them do it differently based on the way God has shaped them.

Now here’s the question I want to ask today.

So in Ephesians 4 we have Apostles, Prophets, Teachers, Evangelists and Pastors. When these people are released into mission, unbelievable things happen. But this is pre-supposing that each of these are mature versions of each of these gifts. But what happens when we have immature, underdeveloped people with these gifts?

Here are some tell-tale signs.

• Immature Apostles | They are unable to distinguish between the constant flood of good and innovative ideas they have and the God-ideas that are being given to them. It’s about an inability to discern. They try out something new every week and never really develop any of their ideas and jump from thing to thing to thing. After a while, people stop following them because they have a hard time staying focused on the task at hand and people refuse to give their time and energy to something when they know it could change with any whim of an idea coming from the immature apostle.
• Immature Prophets | Everyone’s favorite. 😉 While they have a natural gift to “see beyond” what most people can see, immature prophets make two fundamental errors. First, if they sense God is saying something, they provide the interpretation themselves and don’t release it to a community of people outside of them. Just as Paul said, the prophet will give their sense, but it’s up to the community to weigh and give an interpretation. Their job is to share, release what they’ve received, back away and then see what other people make of it. The proper path goes like this: Revelation to Interpretation to Application. An immature prophet, having received some sort of revelation, wants to go straight to Application. This is incredibly harmful and not the pattern that scripture gives us. Second, they assume they are always right. The problem is that often times they are right and this builds a false sense of confidence that they get it 100% of the time. Because of this, they can become arrogant, haughty and difficult to deal with. In contrast, a mature prophet is actually quite humble because they know that any revelation they receive isn’t their own and they entrust it to the community.
• Immature Evangelists | Like immature prophets, there are two things they typically do that can be truly harmful. First, they present a reductionist Gospel that’s all about getting people out of hell, that while important, doesn’t always include Jesus’ invitation to discipleship and the availability of the Kingdom that Jesus’ central message was about. When they do this, they make faith and Christianity all about when they die and nothing to do with what happens here on earth. This is terribly destructive. Second, many immature evangelists can have sort of a “Love you and leave you” strategy. It’s like once you’ve “crossed the line” into becoming a Christian, they make world’s fastest baton pass-off and are never heard from again. They move on to the next person. Now this isn’t to say that evangelists need to be there forever, but that it shouldn’t be a jarring experience for someone who is just entering a discipling relationship! Being a disciple is about relationships and immature evangelists can make a bad first impression when it comes to Christians and relationships.
• Immature Pastors | This one is pretty simple. Pastors love nothing more than being with people in the midst of their brokenness, pain and suffering. However, they can have a really difficult time in moving people from that stage to one where they are seeking healing, transformation and redemption. Immature pastors sometimes don’t have the confidence to push or challenge people to move forward, to take a step forward into the Kingdom, for fear that the person will be angry with them. The mature pastor can live in this tension while the immature counterpart stays a mile away from it and will let people sit in their brokenness far longer than should happen.
• Immature Teachers | The good thing about Teachers is their profound love of scripture. The bad news is that scripture can be the end rather than God. Immature teachers tend to forget that scripture is a thing that brings us to God. Scripture isn’t the point. God is the point. They can suffer from Bibliolotry where they idolize scripture and put it over their relationship with the living and breathing God that we come to know by means of reading and incarnating scripture. There are few things more beautiful than watching a Teacher learn from a Prophet because their ability to teach goes to a new level as all of their teachings drive people to the arms of the Father. Lastly, immature teachers can rely on their own intellect to “wow” people rather than the authority that is given from scripture and from the Holy Spirit. People’s comments about Jesus were that his teaching possessed an authority that they didn’t see in the Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees. Likewise, the writer of Hebrews says, “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” A teacher’s authority doesn’t come from how smart they are but from the Word of God and the power of a transformed life. An immature teacher will often forget this.

Missional Community series | Post #7

We’ve dug this post out of the archives, but it’ll be important to cover this as we move into some new territory in our next post.

Here’s the general premise: Depending on your base gifting from Ephesians 4 (you were created as either a Pastor, Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist or Teacher), you will lead your Missional Community differently than other people with a different base gift. In other words, if you’re naturally an Apostolic leader, they way you start, lead, sustain and multiply your MC will be very different than someone who is, say, a Teacher. And it should be that way!

So what are we tackling in this post?
How does each base tend to lead Missional Communities?
SO…here we go.

• Apostles leading a missional community

Apostle led MCs will usually be highly attractional, orbiting around someone who has loads of charisma and ability to gather others.  Frequently their groups grow the quickest.  Their mode of multiplication is often to split down the middle as a result of the pressure of the speed of growth.  A mature apostle should have the skills to manage such a maneuver, even though it can be fraught with pastoral landmines, as multiplying a MC can be difficult for some relationally.

• Prophets leading a missional community

Prophets will tend to focus on the mission, but not be quite so evangelistic.  They often go for high visibility, since they desire an incarnational approach to presenting the Gospel.  Generally this means that they and their groups are very radical, often with the highest demands placed upon members.  If you know a group in a tough urban context where there is lots of talk and action about reclaiming the city by their very presence and engagement with the people out on the streets, then that is probably a group with strong prophetic leadership.  Such groups can grow by multiplying, but often they will keep the core team and allow a new work to bud off into a new context.

• Evangelists leading a missional community

Almost certainly evangelists will love to go straight after the People of Peace in their chosen mission context.  They will identify the gatekeepers to that place and stay with them.  Often you see evangelists literally going out in pairs, finding some People of Peace, building relationships and through them reaching a whole neighborhood that was previously unreached.  Eventually they will look to hand the group on and go into a new context or send out others in twos to do a similar work elsewhere.

• Teachers leading a missional community

Frequently you will see teachers go into an existing context where the witness for Christ is struggling or almost extinguished.  They will give themselves to model how to live the Christian life, whether in worship, community or mission.  Mature teachers will do this ever so humbly, so it won’t even feel like teaching much of the time.  They will stay for a lengthy season, but many will eventually begin to look for a fresh context requiring their help and then hand on their group.  They will send out new groups who will be characterized by having been thoroughly prepared with a clear model of how to do things.

• Pastors leading a missional community

Pastors long to bring community transformation, by establishing and then building on long-term relationships.  They highly value the integrity of becoming fully embedded into their context.  This means that while things are not as spectacular at first, they have a slower and longer burn approach to mission.  We have noticed that often this model works especially well in the suburbs.  As relationships are at the heart of everything they do, it can be more difficult for them to multiply, but they do find it easier to grow as a ‘bud’ or ‘shoot’ off a small group of people and perhaps to take what they are doing into a neighboring area (or even neighboring street!).

In our next post we’ll look at this in a slightly different light, trying to understand what immature versions of these gifts might look like in Missional Communities.

Missional Community series | Post #6

Alex Absalom is a brilliant leader and thinker and also the co-author with me of the book Launching Missional Communities: A Field Guide.

Today’s post in our 4 month series on Missional Communities is lifted from his blog (if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, it’s really great. Click here to pop over.)

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about individual Missional Communities…but what about the churches that are making gigantic paradigm shifts to embrace a more missional approach? There can be some real tension there.

Alex grapples with some of those realities in this post.

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I was chatting with a leader friend the other day and she was telling me about the frustration that is felt in the team that she is part of.  Their church is primarily operating out of the “old” paradigm (solely attractional), but the leaders are actively moving towards the “new” mode of a missional/discipling culture, as they plan to start releasing Missional Communities.  The stress is caused by the tension between making time/space/energy for the “new”, while still being highly aware of the demands of the “now”.

Our conversation covered ways of managing this, since clearly it would be unwise (and unkind) simply to refuse to pay attention to their existing expressions of church, especially as their MCs are not up and running in any substantial way.  People have been fed and trained to operate in one model of church and so it will take a lengthy process to transition expectations and commitments.  Nevertheless, here are a few thoughts from our conversation:

• Keep loving the people in your church.  Even the ones who are inexpressibly slooooooooooooooow to come on board.  Most of them aren’t being deliberately difficult, so win them by your personal kindness.
• Find things in your church’s history and calling (maybe even from its foundation) that you can anchor to and use to explain why what you are proposing is just honoring the church’s past, not a deviation away from it.  Why was it planted where it is?  What areas of your city have people prayed for consistently?  Who have they seen fruit at reaching in the past?
• Don’t take too long before launching your “new” expressions of church.  Since it is such a major shift, we can be tempted to devise a multi-multi-year process even before anything new starts to happen, since we are so desperate to make it work well.  However, there is wisdom in actually devising a timeline to launch huddles and MCs in your church within the next year or so.  In the book Launching Missional Communities, we lay out an extensive 6 month process that will work as an excellent template in most situations.  This does start with a few assumptions – such as you as the leader are really up for this – but it is an approach that can work well.  To be honest, at some point you have to decide you are going for this, that this is what the Father is calling you to do, and start aligning resources and energy accordingly.
• Trim back on what is devouring your energy.  Find ways to still do what you are committed to – such as Sunday gatherings – but maybe in a manner that consumes a little less in terms of preparation and resources, or is a little less perfect.  Even a 10% reduction will make a huge difference to a typical month for you and the team.  That way those resources can be given to the new things that are emerging.
• Use Sundays and similar occasions to help prepare the process.  For instance, what stories do you tell?  Who do you brag about?  Find examples of people stepping out in mission – perhaps Person of Peace stories – and tell those as testimonies or sermon illustrations.  Another important area is your teaching topics.  Spend time talking about what the missional lifestyle looks like from the Scriptures.
• Related to this, put new lenses on how you read the Bible.  By this I mean, are you still reading it through the eyes of Christendom?  For instance, when you go through Acts or the Epistles and study how they talk about the church, what do you think they mean by “church”?  Did it look like church gatherings in Christendom, or did it operate in a more decentralized, oikos (household) located, mission-driven context?  How were people discipled?  What did it mean to be a disciple?
• Finally, champion those stepping out into mission in your city.  Tell their stories. Celebrate their successes.  Laugh (with them!) at their mess-ups.  Basically, create a culture of innovation, where people receive encouragement and resourcing to go and extend the Kingdom.  This will mean their being released from some other responsibilities or expectations.  Repeatedly give permission so that people know they will be supported to experiment with this more missional mode.  If you allow freedom to fail, then you will see people step up in freedom to lead and to innovate.

Missional Communities series | Post #5

So let’s say you are really captivated by this idea of Missional Communities. The idea of re-creating an extended family on mission together really grabs your heart, mind and soul.

Where do you begin?

Really, it begins with two very simple questions as you are praying:
1) Who do you want to be good news to?
2) To people in that community, what is good news?

Far too often we rely on clever ideas or what appear to be easy solutions. Let’s be honest: We think we’re smart enough, organized enough or hard enough workers to do mission successfully…so we ask God to bless whatever we’ve already put our minds to. It may sound cliched, but what we really need to do is hear from the Lord and let his Spirit show us the way. He has shaped us in particular ways and he has been at work, preparing the harvest fields.

“God, who are you sending me to where you are already at work and what is my entrance into that community?”

Consider this passage from Acts 16:6-10:

⁶ Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. ⁷When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. ⁸ So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. ⁹During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” ¹⁰ After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

It seems obvious that Paul had a plan going into Mysia, but he was sensitive enough to the Spirit to know when his good idea needed to end and the Spirit had better perspective on things.

As we look to launch Missional Communities, that has to be a bedrock belief. We have to honestly believe that apart from the Spirit, we can do nothing. Our ideas, intellect, plans and hopes are folly if done outside of the Spirit’s leading. What I’ve seen in America’s uber-entrepreneurial culture is that this can be a hard lesson to learn…and usually it’s the failure of a MC that teaches that lesson. So if I could advise anything from the beginning, it would be to really seek out God’s Spirit for your specific MC and allow him to shape where you’re being sent and the vision that will incarnate itself.

are you in the UK?

It seems appropriate as we are in the middle of this 4 month series on Missional Communities to offer up an opportunity if you’re living in the UK.

One of the things we use to help churches implement things like Huddles and Missional Communities into their churches (or to come alongside church planters) is a two year Learning Community process. Rather than having you sign up without any sort of test run, we’re offering a ONE DAY FREE TASTER CONFERENCE to anyone living in the UK who would like to learn more about this way of being the church. The Taster will give you a chance to engage with the process of a Learning Community before having to commit any time or resources to it.

It will be on Wednesday, 16th February, 2011 in Sheffield, England.

So if you’re at all interested in what we’ve been discussing on this blog and would like to hear more, you can register and get more details by clicking here.

We also have about 1o of these happening here in the United States in 2011 (one is happening in Seattle as we speak!) and we’ll keep you informed when they happen as they are going on in every region of the US.

Missional Communities series | Post #4

It does seem pointless to have a series on Missional Communities and not have it teeming with stories, right? Theory is good, but let’s see it put into practice.

Here’s a story about a Missional Community developing in Lexington, KY. The core team that is doing it are part of Southland Christian Church who was in one of our Learning Communities.

What I’m really hoping to do with this series is cover a lot of the theory and practical questions that come with Missional Communities, but give lots of stories into how these mid-sized, missional groups can incarnate themselves ANYWHERE. What we’ll do is put the stories up and then I’ll give some thoughts on the particular MC.

This story was taken from Southland’s MC blog, so at the end it does have a shout-out for people who are interested in joining the MC. But it’s actually helpful to see how this church is inviting people to be part of this mid-sized community.

When a skate park opened up down the street from my house in Nicholasville, at the ripe old age of 32, I dusted off my old skateboard and took my son over to check it out. The park was packed and what I saw really bothered me as a Christian and as a father. The kids’ explicit language was embarrassing; kids of all ages were smoking cigarettes, and one six-year old was even smoking a cigar. There were no parents around and I overheard two older kids talking about their dads being in jail. These kids were from my community, my neighborhood – and there they were, right on my street. I left the park knowing God was showing me the mission field and that there was a deep need for love in those kids’ lives – His love.

After much prayer, my wife and I started to visit the skate park weekly, taking our son with us. We set out to skate with the kids and build positive relationships by modeling what that looks like. As a father and son team, we encouraged and challenged each other in a positive way. The park kids quickly noticed and that opened the door for conversations about skateboarding. We also brought a cooler full of cold drinks and popsicles with us to share. They were hesitant, but once we told them to help themselves and that everything was free, they dug right in. And they started asking, “Why are you doing this?” They obviously expected strings attached. Our answer is always, “We’re just doing this out of love.”

Encouraging the kids in a positive way, and showing them love expecting nothing in return allowed us to also share that God loves them. Since then, God has grown Love Skate into a full time ministry with monthly cookout dinners (April – October) for the skaters in addition to weekly Wednesday night cooler visits. During the off-season (November through spring break), we meet on Wednesday nights for a full home-cooked dinner and fellowship. We’ve been able to remain a consistent Godly influence in their lives regardless of the weather!

Winter is actually our busiest time of year even though the kids aren’t skating as much. The cold weather provides more one-on-one time with the kids since they’d rather be inside where it’s warm and dry instead of trying to skate out in the cold. Last year we cooked a big meal each week to feed kids in our home. God used us in amazing ways to reach these kids — we started dinners with about a dozen kids and by spring break, there were 40! Needless to say, we’ve outgrown our house and are happy to report we’re moving to the local YMCA for our weekly dinners, where we will also include some kind of lesson or teaching as part of the evening.

With that many kids, we have some serious food needs every week! If you can help, please let us know! We need the following:

• Home cooked meals – The kids aren’t picky…they are hungry! This is often the only decent meal they get each week so we want it to be special. Food will need to be dropped off no later than 5 p.m. on Wednesday nights or – if it’s frozen and ready to cook, earlier in the week is fine! The key is homemade food (we steer clear of frozen store-bought pizza!). We will start this year with servings to feed 25 hungry people and adjust as the season progresses. We would love to find a number of life groups willing to prepare a full meal once a month or so.
• Drinks – Water, sports drinks, sodas of any kind.
• Paper goods – Paper plates, bowls, napkins, towels, plastic silverware, plastic cups, etc.

If cooking isn’t your thing and you still want to volunteer, check out these other serve opportunities!

• Prayer team – We need prayer warriors willing to pray on Wednesday nights during the 6 o’clock hour.
• Set-up teams – Come about 5:30 p.m., and help get the Y ready. This will include setting up tables and chairs for serving and for dining.
• Devotional leaders – People willing to give a short 10-minute devotional once a month.

Last but not least, we need a reliable and trustworthy ministry partner. I need another male to assist in mentoring/leading the group. Ideally it will be someone with a skateboarding or biking background who loves Jesus and has a servant’s heart. The last two characteristics are definitely the most important!

Notice a few things that this MC is doing well:

• Rather than doing what many churches do, this MC took their relational capital and energy to the place where there wasn’t a Gospel presence. Instead of building their own skate park at the church, they went to one where plenty of people were already present. They acted as a “sent people.”
• The vision for this MC was birthed not only out of need, but from a specific calling to share God’s love and see his Kingdom break into a place devoid of a Gospel presence. They overheard several of the kids’ dads were in jail and their hearts broke and they gave a Christ-like response: These kids need to be loved. Instead looking at the outside issues (drinking, smoking, terrible language), they understood that in a world absent of Jesus’ love, this is what happens.
• They made sure to establish relational credibility before doing things like offering water, popsicles, etc. This created an amount of trust within this sub-culture.
• They didn’t avoid the question. When asked, “Why are you doing this?” their answer was always, “We’re just doing this out of love.” There was a type of boldness to both their presence and their answer to questions.
• Their was “seasonal” life to the Missional Community. When the weather was nice, they were at the skate park. But when it got colder and not as many people were there, because they had established strong relationships, they were able to capitalize. Notice what they said: The cold weather provides more one-on-one time with the kids since they’d rather be inside where it’s warm and dry instead of trying to skate out in the cold. Last year we cooked a big meal each week to feed kids in our home. God used us in amazing ways to reach these kids — we started dinners with about a dozen kids and by spring break, there were 40! Needless to say, we’ve outgrown our house and are happy to report we’re moving to the local YMCA for our weekly dinners, where we will also include some kind of lesson or teaching as part of the evening.
• The MC was able to utilize Jesus’s Person of Peace strategy. Notice that when they first started having meals, only a few kids came. Once these kids were comfortable and had a strong sense of community, they proved to be gatekeepers to the wider network. That’s how this MC was able to go from 6 kids to 40 so quickly. They invested the most in the people who were open.
• They were able to create easy entrance points for new people to join the MC. Basically, if you can cook, you can be one of the adults calling this MC home (and honestly…everyone can cook!).
• They made sure the entire venture was bathed in prayer as they’ve now established a prayer team focusing all of their energy on this one MC.
• It went from something that was completely social, to something that had spiritual content, but it didn’t happen overnight. There was a natural, relational progression. But they continued to make the social aspect one of the main pieces of the Missional Community.

Missional Community series | Post #3

We’re in a 4 month series on this blog about Missional Communities to celebrate the release of the new book, Launching Missional Communities: A Field Guide, as well as our time leading up to the Exponential Conference at the end of April.

Today’s post is a simple one, but one I think you’ll find particularly helpful and can serve as a tool to use for other people.

One of the things we talk about a lot in regards to Missional Communities is that they need to be balanced in the way that Jesus’ life was balanced. He had three definitive dimensions to his life, and so with MCs, we should have the same dimensions.

• UP: time spent focusing on God
• IN: time spent focusing on others in the body
• OUT: time spent focusing on those who don’t know Jesus yet

If this is done well in the context of a spiritual extended family on mission together (groups of 20-50), the community, mission and discipleship that occurs through God’s Spirit is stunning.

Earlier today, Thomas Willer, a good friend doing some really exciting things in Copenhagen, sent me this picture of how they are teaching their community how these things relate. Thought this would be something worth sharing.

Missional Communities Series | Post #2

I’ve already mentioned it, but the 3DM team is going to be at the Exponential Conference at the end of April, down in Orlando, Florida. Exponential is the largest church planters conference in the world, and this year, they’ve teamed up with another conference: VERGE. The focus of the conference? Missional Communities.

As you might expect, we’re pretty excited about this and will have 5 different slots when we’re speaking and interacting with people, as well as one Main Stage talk.

Leading up to the conference, VERGE  is doing a series of articles and videos to stoke the intellectual fires. The articles came out a couple of weeks ago, answering the question, ‘What is a Missional Community?’ You can read that here.

We also created a video tackling the same question, but with some other thoughts baked in, slightly different than the article. As we are doing a whole 4 month series on Missional Communities, seemed appropriate to share it!

Missional Communities Series | Post #1

One of the things that we’re constantly trying to do is give different handles, lenses and angles for people to see and understand Missional Communities. (If you’re unfamiliar with MCs and you’d like a quick look at what they are, check out this Wikipedia article).

Over the next 3-4 months, I’m going to do a series of posts that really get into Missional Communities. We’ll have stories of how people are using them in the United States. We’ll take some time to answer questions that people have been asking on this blog for the past month or two. We’ll give a few ideas of how to start different kinds of Missional Communities. (For instance, what are some ways to start them in government housing projects in the city, in suburbia, for teenagers, for artists, etc). I want to spark your imagination for all that Missional Communities can do when the Spirit is at work. It’s certainly not meant to be exhaustive, more just throwing various ideas, handles, interviews and stories out there. Hopefully some of it really connects with you or might be language that could help the community you are in.

Our first post is actually quite simple. It’s short and to the point.

My very good friend, Keld Dahlmann, is the senior pastor of Aarhus Valgmenighed in Aarhus, Denmark. Brilliant leader and thinker and has been wonderfully successful in pioneering new missional models in Denmark. He has spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to create a spiritual oikos (in Greek, oikos means “household,” so what the NT is referring to with churches were households on mission together). Obviously, Missional Community is simply a spiritual household on mission together. That’s it.

Create an extended family on mission, then invite people into family life.

Keld has come up with 6 simple, but very accessible principles for creating an oikos.

Here is what they are:

1. Shared vision (What do we exist for? In other words, in what way is this community going to bring heaven to earth?)

2. Shared resources

3. Extended family (= more than a nuclear family, we’d say a minimum of 15-20 people, max of 50)

4. Mom/Dad (leaders in “fathering” mode)

5. Prayer

6. Common meal

*One of the things God has been speaking to me a lot about lately is the desperate need to create these extended families that really are experiencing radical community together. I think these principles are an excellent lens to use and give people when evaluating/creating the community you’re a part of.