check out this article

In case you hadn’t heard, myself and some of 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.

Leading up to the conference, VERGE  is doing a series of articles to stoke the intellectual fires. The first ones broke last week, with different speakers/thinkers/authors/practitioners answering the question, ‘What is a Missional Community?’

Here’s the link to the article I wrote on the subject, and as always, VERGE/Exponential (and me personally) would LOVE if you could leave a comment. Maybe you could leave a comment about your experience in a MC, or why you started one, or why you are excited by their missional potential, or why you would encourage people to try them.

Thanks for your help!

Top Books, Blogs and Albums of 2010

As is customary for blogs at the closing of the year, I spent a little time reflecting on the Books, Blog posts and Albums that have been favorites both for me as well as the readers of this site. Hope you enjoy it.

Top Blog Posts of 2010

• Can a church be Missional and Attractional?
• Introduction video for 3DM
• Excerpt #1 from the new book Launching Missional Communities
• Lent
• Missional Reading recommendations. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.

My Top 5 Favorite Books of 2010

*Hmmm…I have this habit of going through authors in large chunks. So actually, there are probably three authors where I’ve read at least 2 of their books, sometimes as much as 5. For whatever reason, most of my reading this year has centered around historical fiction and not as much as non-fiction, which is where I usually spend most of my time. Interesting year.

1) The Genghis Series by Conn Iggulden. It’s now a four book series with the publication of Empire of Silver a stunning book about the development of the Mongol Empire after the death of Genghis and the campaign of the great General Tsubodai. I also went through Iggulden’s “Emperor Series” which details the rise of Julius Caesar. Absolutely fascinating.

2) The Arthur Series by Bernard Cornwell was great.

3) Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth and World without End were stunning and scope and unbelievably interesting. If you want to understand spiritual formation within the foundational period of Christendom’s expansion in the Middle Ages, you can’t get better than this.

4) Jim Collins wrote a sort of follow-up book to Good to Great called How the Mighty Fall. Basically, what leads to companies falling that were, at least one time, great? The obvious examples for this book are Circuit City and Fannie Mae as both are mentioned in the previous book and no longer exist.

5) Alan and Deb Hirsch’s Untamed. It was such a great book that explored the need for discipleship to happen on the front lines of mission. Couldn’t agree more. For people really concerned about the future of Discipleship and Mission within the church, this is a must-read.

My Top 5 Music Album’s of 2010

• John Mayer | Battle Studies (even though it’s now a year old)

Favorite track: Heartbreak Warfare

 

• Kings of Leon | Come Around Sundown

Favorite track: Radioactive

 

• Mumford & Sons | Sigh No More

Favorite track: Little Lion Man

 

• Jack Johnson | To the Sea

Favorite track: You and Your Heart

 

• Jesus Culture | Come Away

Favorite track: Mighty Breath of God

art done well

Over the past couple years, more and more churches claim to combine art, beauty and worship together in a meaningful, seamless way. Many try, many fail. However, I think we can all say that the fact we are even trying to move in this direction is a fantastic shift.

However, my friend Greg commissioned a team a team and they produced this beautiful project. If you’ve got about 3 minutes, you’re gonna wanna see this.

Enjoy.

Can a church be Missional AND Attractional?

Recently JR Rozko put up a review of our newest book, Launching Missional Communities, on his blog. I’ve met JR before, and while I wouldn’t say I know him well at all, I definitely love the way he processes and he has a great blog which you can read here. It is thoughtful, provocative and is asking all the right kind of questions.

His review of Alex and I’s book (you can read the review here), was overwhelmingly positive. I thought he summed up well what we were trying to do in the book:

• Discipleship, leadership and mission are the driving themes of both the book and the entire philosophy of missional communities.  To get the point of the book, you have to understand that from the author’s perspective, the task of the church is discipleship – period – the end.  Any they are right.  You also have to embrace the idea that the replication of leaders is imperative to the larger task of discipleship.  If you don’t equip and empower leaders, you can kiss your changes of exponential discipleship bye-bye.  Again, I’m totally with em here.  Finally, mission is the context in which leaders are equipped and disciples are formed.  Amen!  If you can embrace and own these three things, then you’ll love this book and what it offers.

This is exactly what we’re trying to do in this book. Show how discipleship, leadership and mission can all come together in a practical way in Missional Communities…and give a resource to people to help teach them their biggest question: How do we do this?

As positive as JR’s review was, he did have one critique, and I thought it would be beneficial to open it up for a little discussion. Not in an antagonistic way, but as something that’s worth discussing. It revolved around the use and exploration of doing Missional AND Attractional in one church. In the end, I think JR and I would come down on the same page. Here was his one quibble, which he expressed on two fronts, analogical and theological:

• In the book, I used the example of the coming together of the Roman model and Celtic model and how this was used to great effect to evangelize the whole of Europe. His comment: The analogical problem here is that what is generally meant today by attractional and missional does not at all correspond to the realities and circumstances in which these models of churches existed.
• Second, he quotes this from LMC: We just need to understand what Attractional does well and do it. We need to understand what Missional does well and do it. His response to this: Impossible – attractional and missional churches are such because they have divergent understandings of basic Christian doctrines.  What we need is a theologically robust understanding the relationship between the the Missio Dei, the gospel of the Kingdom of God, and the Church.  This will lead us not to the ‘best’ of these two models, but to a cohesive vision of a missional ecclesiology.  This is the great error of ‘AND’ thinking; you never get to core issues because you spend all your time trying to artificially hold incompatible things together. The saddest part of this is that the underlying genius of the book actually does this work.  It undercuts the errant theology and philosophy driving attractional churches.  I just wish they had been more direct in stating it.

This was JR’s critique of the book.

As I’ve thought about this for the past few days, the predominant thing that comes to mind is that we probably could have done a better job fleshing out this concept and in the 2nd edition of the book, we definitely will. The problem is the way that I use the word “Attractional” and the way that most everyone else does can be different at times, which can lead to this kind of confusion. My guess is we will look at using a different word in the future.

Here is what we were trying to get at: There is something inherently attractive about a group of people coming together to worship their Father and King once they’ve been actively engaged in the mission field. In other words, the gathered church, coming in from being scattered, is unbelievably attractive.

Why?

Because it is the power of the reconciled community.

When a scattered church gathers, when we tell stories of mission to each other, engage in the sacred act of communion, worship as hundreds and thousands of people, hear from the scriptures and respond, look around and see every tribe and tongue and we do all of this in the presence of the Holy Spirit…this is wildly attractive to a great number of people (not everyone, but a lot).

This act of gathering the scattered church, I think, is something akin to what Newbiggin talks about when saying the church community should be a SIGN and a FORETASTE of the Kingdom that will be brought to fulfillment. It points to a future reality and provides a taste of that reality. (And as Newbiggin says, is an INSTRUMENT when it is scattered and in the mission field).

The church that I led in Sheffield was this kind of a church and I’m starting to see it in the churches we are working with in the United States. When Sheffield’s scattered church gathered together, in one room, there were rich, poor, old, young, former prostitutes, former drug addicts, former felons, former snobs, the homeless, former Hindu, former Muslims, people from Africa, Europe, America, Asia…all under one roof worshiping the same God. Thousands of people. I can’t begin to describe what worship is like in that context. (In fact, I bet JR could give us some insight as he just recently returned from the Lausanne Conference in South Africa where he experienced a similar thing).

To certain kinds of people, this is wildly attractive, in the same way that Jesus was so wildly attractive that large crowds often gathered to him.

I think this is the biggest difference between what I’m talking about with Attractional (and may stop using all together) and many other people: Why do we primarily gather and what is the byproduct?

My primary reason in gathering of all of our scattered Missional Communities is to worship God. I believe we are powerfully formed when we gather in the public space, in a large group, and orient our hearts and minds toward our Savior and King. My primary reason isn’t to disciple people in this setting (though they are spiritually formed) and I’m not trying to see how many people we can get in the seats.

The community was scattered out on the mission field. And now we are gathered together, locking shields together, resting in the embrace and arms of our Father, responding to his Spirit that works within us.

That is my primary reason for gathering people.

Now there is a byproduct: Often, because this reconciled community of people (the body of Jesus) and the Spirit of Jesus in that place are so wildly attractive, people come to know him. They decide to become disciples of Jesus. That happened often in Sheffield. But it wasn’t the primary objective of gathering. We weren’t measuring the “success” of the service in decisions made. We weren’t measuring success by how many people were in the seats. Our way of being the church always found far more people in Missional Communities than in our worship service. The worship service was not used as a direct attempt to “grow” the church. But it almost always did grow.

Success was worshiping God! Success was listening to what God was saying to us as a gathered community and responding to it.

What is unhelpful is many people use the word “Attractional” differently. And it comes down to the primary reason for gathering and the byproduct of gathering. In the way many people seem to use it, the primary reason to gather is to increase the number of people in the church and see as many decisions for Christ as possible. Recently, we heard a pastor say to the people in the worship service, “If you’re a Christian, this service isn’t for you. If you weren’t a Christian last week, it was for you. But it no longer is. This exists for people who aren’t Christians.”

In this way, “Attractional” as it is often expressed exists to gather as many people as possible and get them saved. The byproduct is worshiping God.

Now I think many would disagree with this. They would say, “It’s both. We want people to become Christians AND we want people to worship. They are of equal importance.” The problem is that their behavior doesn’t reinforce this idea. The success of worship is almost always evaluated on: 1) How many people are attending? 2) How many people made decisions?

“Success” isn’t based on simply coming together and worshiping. For me, success is simply being obedient…God has asked us to gather and worship him, we did, thus, we were “successful.”

In sum, what I am trying to say is that when the scattered church gathers, it is massively attractive and it isn’t unusual to see people come to faith or attendance increasing. But it’s attractive because of the work happening outside the Sunday gathering that is then being brought into the service. I’m simply recognizing there is inherent value in gathering all of our scattered parts together, that we are spiritually formed in such an experience in both a positive and powerful way. I’m acknowledging that to be true. There are many within the missional/organic stream of thinking who deny the need or goodness to gathering large groups of people together to worship. It is this point that I feel needs addressing with the word “AND.” We need the scattered AND the gathered church, but I might use those terms slightly differently than others.

I don’t fall into the camp that has abandoned large worship gatherings, which to me, feels a bit reactive. If that’s all you’re doing and maybe some small groups, you’re just not going to make disciples, which is the task Jesus has given us. But if the worship service is an environment for a scattered church of Missional Communities to gather, it is not only helpful but, I believe, necessary.

This is quite possibly the longest post I have ever written!! 😉 But I think this is great discussion to have. And I’m glad JR pointed this out in his review because I think we could have done a bit better job clarifying how we are using the terms and our thoughts behind it.

Look forward to more discussion on this.

discipleship without accountability?

The Barna Group just released new findings on the status of accountability (and thus discipleship) within the American church. Click here for the full report, but here are some highlights (all of which are excerpts from the article):

• A national survey by the Barna Group among people who describe themselves as Christian and involved in a church discovered that only 5% indicated that their church does anything to hold them accountable for integrating biblical beliefs and principles into their life.
• Barna Group studies among pastors and other church leaders have consistently shown that such leaders have a distaste for initiating any type of confrontation and conflict with congregants. Another barrier is that many followers of Christ are uncertain about the difference between judgment and discernment. Not wanting to be judgmental, they therefore avoid all conversation about the other person’s behavior—except, sometimes, gossip.
• Americans these days cherish privacy and freedom to the extent that the very idea of being held accountable by others—even those with their best interests in mind, or who have a legal or spiritual authority to do so—is considered inappropriate, antiquated and rigid. With a large majority of Christian churches proclaiming that people should know, trust and obey all of the behavioral principles taught in the Bible, overlooking a principle as foundational as accountability breeds even more public confusion about scriptural authority and faith-based community, as well as personal behavioral responsibility.”

If the people in churches are essentially allergic to accountability and the leaders balk at entering into anything perceived as conflict, it can’t be any great surprise that we have a discipleship crisis in the church.

As many of you know, Huddles (the discipleship vehicle created while I served at St. Thomas Sheffield) sprung from a time when there had been an unbelievable lack of accountability. Sometimes people ask where Huddles came from. The short answer is they came from a very real need to hold leaders accountable after I took over a church rocked by scandal.

Here’s something with a bit more depth into where it all began and why accountability is so crucial if we ever hope to make disciples:

In 1994 I arrived as the new vicar of St Toms and was soon answering questions about the demise of the Nine O’Clock Service (NOS), widely considered the first “post-modern” worship service in the world. Though originally under the supervision of St Thomas’ and meeting in their building, the NOS had moved into their own space and not under the leadership of St Thomas’, allegations began to surface involving widespread sexual abuse by the leader. Still considered one of the largest scandals in the history of the Church of England, St Thomas’ was left with many of the repercussions, as media outlets ran story after story on the now non-existent church service.

I was left as the one answering questions from the media, day after day, week after week, month after month, as we were the church the NOS planted out of. And I wasn’t even there when it all happened!

It was in this climate of cynicism, hurt and fear that a culture of accountability and discipleship was birthed that would lead to the creation of Huddles. Obviously one of the reasons the NOS failed was a lack of accountability and leadership run amok, so creating vehicles, practices and a culture of accountability was vital for St Thomas’. In addition, the church was beginning to experiment and develop Missional Communities (originally called Clusters) that were a decentralized expression of church, involving 30-50 people where discipleship and mission happened, though still connected to a larger church body. If a decentralized expression of church was going to be successful, consistent accountability, discipleship and development of church lay leaders would prove crucial. Huddles would become the connective tissue to the body of the wider church for the leaders. In other words…if we weren’t regularly holding people accountable, everything would just fall off the table. Huddles, with their active practice of accountability, is what held everything together. (You can read more about the history of Huddles here)

I’ve seen what a lack of accountability can lead to and I’ve seen what the presence of it can create.

The idea that only 5% of American Christians are actively being held accountable is just scary to think about.

my lovely wife

Got some very exciting news!

My beautiful wife Sally has just started her own blog, which you can find here.

Obviously I’ll have links to some of her posts from time to time, but wanted to make sure you knew she’s officially writing. Make sure you read her first post…it’s quite moving.

Lastly, not sure if you knew or not, but you can subscribe to this blog as well by clicking on the “Subscribe to this blog” button on the right hand side of this page.

understanding Jesus and “Persons of Peace”

We often talk about the “Person of Peace” strategy that Jesus clearly outlines in Luke 9 & 10 and then see playing out in the rest of the Gospels and in the early church. Admittedly, this can be difficult to wrap our minds around if we have only ever seen blitzkrieg evangelism used. Understanding that Jesus meant for evangelism to be deeply relational and keenly strategic seems a bit off if you’ve never seen it done before.

Ben Sternke is in one of our 3DM Learning Communities and posted this thought today on Persons of Peace and how Jesus used them.

Notice how Jesus only asks his disciples to do what he does himself.

I wonder how many times we ask people in our church to do things (be missional, tithe, pray often and deeply, engage in healthy community) that we don’t do ourselves?

Jesus only ever asked things of his followers that he did first and modeled for them.

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Just a few thoughts from this morning’s Daily Lectionary reading of the story of Zacchaeus from Luke 19.

Jesus spotted Zacchaeus because of the ridiculous effort he took to see Jesus. Climbing a tree hardly seems a dignified way for a grown man to behave, especially a very wealthy man.

A man who climbs a tree to get a glimpse of you is a Person of Peace (see Luke 10). Jesus recognizes this and simply invites himself over to Zacchaeus’ house! This means that Jesus is on Zacchaeus’ turf, where Zacchaeus is comfortable. Jesus is allowing Zacchaeus to serve him and show him hospitality. He eats the food Zacchaeus gives him and simply hangs out there for the afternoon.

Eventually the simple presence of Jesus brings Zacchaeus to repentance. He gives away half of his possessions to the poor and vows to pay back four times the amount of whatever he’s cheated others out of.

Jesus then announces what has just happened: “Today salvation has come to this house.”

To drive the point home, Jesus uses his interaction with Zacchaeus to illustrate and reiterate why he has come: “to seek and save what was lost.”

May we also continue to do the same things, following in the footsteps of our Master.

1. Find the person of peace, the person who is open to you, interested in you, likes you, wants to be around you.
2. Go to their turf, where they’re comfortable.
3. Allow them to serve you, show you hospitality.
4. Spend intentional time with them, and
5. Be ready to do the works of the Kingdom and speak the words of the Kingdom (in appropriate ways).

Because if we love Jesus, and we love people, we’re going to want to make that connection. If we find ourselves feeling lackluster about helping people get to know Jesus, we are suffering from a lack of love. Either a lack of love for people (we’d rather maintain our pride than risk looking foolish), or a lack of love for Jesus (we really don’t think he’s worth knowing).

But if we believe that Jesus did come to “seek and save what was lost,” and that being with him to learn from him how to be like him is the path to human flourishing, we will want others to come to know Jesus. Jesus himself gives us a wonderful way to do that relationally, naturally, organically.

do you have questions?

Obviously we just released what many are calling the definitive book on MCs: Launching Missional Communities: A Field Guide.

We’re expecting somewhere between 50-60 book reviews to be coming out on various blogs, the first of which you can read here. Pretty excited by all of this.

As for this blog, over the next 3-4 months we are going to do a comprehensive series focusing on Missional Communities (probably beginning in the next 2 weeks). It will cover practical components, stories of Missional Communities, interviews with pastors and MC leaders, ideas for MCs, etc.  We are in the process of shaping this series as we speak.

To help us, here’s what can you do: What questions do you have about MCs that you would like for us to cover in the next few months?

We can’t promise to get to each one, but we’ll do our best to tackle a lot of your questions.

So let the commenting begin!

story of a Missional Community

I can’t tell you how many times people ask for stories of how missional communities start, how they grew, multiplied, etc. How are ordinary, lay leaders in the church able to see all of these people come to know Jesus and change their cities?

Well…here’s a story of one.

It’s one of the stories in our new book Launching Missional Communities: A Field Guide.

This is Ryan, reflecting on his MC (which multiplied 5 or 6 times, the net effect being  over 150 people coming to know Jesus) over a 5 year period.

_________________________________________

In 2004, our MC started out of a group of five people praying together.  The idea was that we would become a Missional Community, but honestly, I didn’t believe it at the time. I just went with it because that was what we were asked to do.  We started meeting at our house, just getting together, eating and praying for each other.  It was a random group made up of one married couple, a single guy, and two girls.  We prayed through the vision of our MC—we want to plant and be planted—and shared what we were reading in the Bible.  One of the guys was going through Hosea on his own and talked about it often, so one night we all just sat around and went through Hosea, trying to find a name for our newly formed MC.  We found Jezreel (which means “God plants”) and went for it.  It was our vision.

Over the next year, we grew to about twenty-five people and met in lots of different homes.  They were friends and people we knew in our neighborhood.  We started to have a vision for our neighborhood, known as the Village, and so we began to pray for all our neighbors.

We continued to grow until we were more than sixty-five people in 2007, so that summer we multiplied.  When we look back, we sometimes wonder where all those people came from!  Really, it was people in the Missional Community gradually drawing in people they knew, whether through sports and outside activities, or people from work, or people who lived nearby.  We did have some Christians join, too, but we tried to balance being welcoming with making obvious that we were going to be looking outwards into our community and not be a traditional church group that looks only in.

As we thought about multiplying, God had set it up to where half of the people lived nearer the city center and the others lived in or near the Village.  All the city center people went and started meeting together, but even though the people were there, it was hard to find leaders to take that many people.  Looking back, I wish we had started to envision several people from that group at the beginning of ’07.  The summer months were hard; my wife and I were still focused on finding leaders for the new group, while also leading our current group.  Nevertheless, after a lot of praying and cajoling, by the fall we had found leaders, and we were pumped that the vision of planting was happening.

What then surprised us was that Jezreel continued to grow.  At first, it seemed that we had tons of room, so maybe some of that was just fringe people started coming more regularly.  But also new people were being added to the group.  We were starting to more intentionally do service projects in our area, so that helped us build more relationships.  Several of our MC households cooked out in front of their homes at least once a week.  We deliberately cooked too much and invited neighbors and passers-by to come over and eat with us.  This consistent presence out in the street really helped cement our place there and possibly gave us greater spiritual authority and impact.

Either way, a year later, in the fall of 2008, Jezreel had grown to sixty people again, and we knew that we needed to start talking about multiplying.  This time, we started praying that God would highlight leaders for us to plant the vision in.  He did, and so we did!  We began in the fall to talk with the two couples about being leaders of new MCs, which gave them time to digest it and prepare for it.  In January 2009, we multiplied into three MCs.  As we multiplied, we decided to change the name of our group from Jezreel to Village Hope.  God was giving us more of a calling to pray and reach out to this neighborhood, so we felt a new name would help to bring more life to that vision.  The MC multiplied pretty well, we kept about twenty-five, the second group took about twenty-two, and the third group took about a dozen.  We lost a few people in the restructure, but we gained even more in no time!  It was a great multiplication that was prayed over, and it was very clear to everyone that God was leading us in it.  He was working out the details and gave the new leaders lots of vision for their groups.  It was life giving whereas the first multiplication had been a little life draining.  We learned to wait on the Lord as well.  He was a part of the first one for sure, but I think we rushed it a bit.  The second one we mapped out, prayed into, and planned for properly.

In the meantime, the first multiplication, who went nearer the city center, have themselves grown to around fifty people, have spun off one new MC, and are in the process of moving towards multiplying again.  They have done very much the same pattern, with a mixture of friends and colleagues being drawn in, plus seeking to serve the local community.  One of the leaders of that Missional Community became the chairwoman of the local neighborhood group, which helps organize big art nights (they live in the artists’ area of town).  So members of the MC have become very involved in that, whether helping run things or, for the more creative types, hosting stalls at the arts nights.  This has given them tons of favor and open doors into that whole culture.

It is so exciting to see all that has gone on and how God has taken our faltering efforts and turned them into something so amazing.

What can we say? God is good!

Children’s Ministry thoughts

One of the churches we are working with just finished a white paper on Children’s Ministry. They did 6 months of research on child development and discipling kids (legit research) and put the findings in a very short paper (4 pages) and then a proposal for what Children’s Ministry could look like (2 pages)…for a total of 6 pages. The research was unbelievable and at some points jawdropping.

For instance…”Children were more likely to have vibrant faith if the parents weren’t even Christians than if the parents went to church and didn’t act as the primary disciplers of their kids.”

The findings basically say that the way we’ve done Children’s Ministry in the past 30 years (and perhaps longer) doesn’t work…almost ever! I think we’ve probably known this, but it’s helpful to know why…and more positively…what we can do to change that.

The white paper doesn’t have all the research, more of the topline findings and highlights + a way forward that is consistent with how 3DM is coming alongside local churches.

Anyways, here is the link to the PDF if you’re interested. Hope you enjoy it.