Church planting, Why do you want to plant a church?

I have come to see that in church planting the First thing one must do is answer Why do you want to plant a church? And the Second is to define church. Because your definition of church and why you want to plant one is foundational to what you do, A.K.A. plant. They both combined will define what it looks like and how it functions and its purpose for existence. I have come to understand how these two issues are so critical, they will set in motion the chain of events that determine what is created, the answers will mold and shape what you do.

First, The Why? So Why do you want to plant a church?

First off one must understand Church Planting is about Jesus, about having a passion for the community life and reaching the lost. I have met so many “church planters” that the only place that they want to plant a church is in the rich parts of a metro area, I would say 99% of all new plants in the last five years have occurred in the rich areas of my cities metro area, and I believe that really reviles the planters heart and motives.

Like one young planter I challenged to plant in the poor or even the blue collar areas instead of the rich (high income) area he was targeting, he replied “there is no money in starting a church there” the truth came out as to the why he wanted to plant a church. It was all about money, he was approaching it more as an entrepreneur stating up for a for-profit business. Approaching it like starting a career to provide for him, in monetary ways, to fund his big material dreams of what a church is all about, and his personal desired income.

(I have an idea how about if we say that for the next few years we only plant churches in the inner city and blue collar areas of our cities.)

If you see church planting as a income providing career, something better to do than try and get a career in corporate America, to a be your own boss instead of working for and answering to someone else, you have a very wrong motive.

You must ask yourself, what is my motive. Why do I want to plant a church?

If your vision is a church of 10,000 with a Starbuck’s in it, see a mega complex starched and a nice six figure income with book deals in your future, you are doing it for yourself, only for self gain. You not only have the wrong Why you want to plant, but also the wrong definition, an un-biblical definition of church and motive.

I will continue this in my next blog. Read all at my personal website here.

Blueprint of the God life and church

I have come to understand the God life and church much differently than the traditional belief of the American Church. What I read in the scriptures and see in the life of Jesus is something much different. So I have come up with a new blue print for the God life I desire to live, of what the church is and how it functions. This is still a work in progress, I am still trying to come to grips with and understand the God life, Christian life and church. Above is a diagram of a flow chart of a missional God life that is to be the foundation, blue print of my life in Christ. Each layer, phase of the missional flow of the God life links to a web site that I have made explaining, laying out that part of the life, church and what I see God saying it is to be, that Christ lived and modeled for us to reproduce.

Individual expression of Jesus

www.thechristiannextdoor.com

Individual expression of the Church

www.churchnextdoor.us

Collective Expression of the Church and Kingdom life

www.thecrowdedhouse.us

Synergetic[1] expression of the Church and body of Christ

www.fourteentwentysixgathering.thecrowdedhouse.us

I believe our life should be the touch point for others to see and experience the person and life of Jesus, they should know that He was and is because they see Him and the life the bible said He lived manifested in our life, world view, thinking and actions.

That our home should be the touch point for the Kingdom of Heaven, God life for them, you, your wife and children should be first where they see the kingdom life manifested, lived out. And should be where they see the church lived out (where two or more are their I am), their touch point for the person of Christ. Be where they see and touch the Kingdom community life lived out just as Christ lived it out with His disciples. You at work or school or while shopping at Target should be where they encounter the church and Jesus as well, all of these instances should be where they see the life of Jesus on lived out. Our homes should be more known and identified as the church in the neighborhood than the cold stone buildings that have a sign out front call it a church. Our lives and homes should be know as the place to go to experience church, be part of church, not some glamorizes entertainment center that calls it self the church.

Mouseover the image to and click on to see full flow chart, copy and paste in your browser the links from center of page to visit websites.

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[1] Synergetic \Syn`er*get"ic\, adjective. [from Greek expression, from to work together; sy`n with 'e`rgon work.]. Definition: Acting together; enhancing the effect of another force or agent.

Whose responsibility is it to carry out the Great Commission?

The following is a test to see how well you know the scriptures and the essentials of Christianity.

Take out a peace of paper and answer the following question:

In fifty words or less, tell me whose responsibility the Great Commission is?



Actually it’s a trick question, it does not take 50 words to answer the question, not even 40, the answer take only one word.

If you answered anything other than ‘mine.’, sorry you fail. You must repeat the class again, please pick up your textbook the Bible and open to Matthew chapter one and re-read paying close attention to the life and words of Jesus. Then repeat this for each of the books of the NT. Then you may re-take the test.

Am I sent?

We are sent, because God is a sending God, it is His nature, His character. So the question is never “Am I sent?” everyone who is truly in Christ is sent. The question to ask to whom am I sent? To where am I sent?.

God has placed you in the neighborhood that you live in for the same mission, to live the same life with the same purpose as He has sent someone to Mozambique or Botswana. He has sent you to the people at your job, school, grocery store, Wal-Mart or a restaurant just as someone He is sending to Thailand or Nicaragua, to join Him in His mission, to be His massager, to be the church among the people of your neighborhood, work place, grocery store just as much as someone sent to the people Nicaragua or Mozambique.

We should them say I am sent, and I am sent to…….fill in everywhere you go today. I am sent the the people of my....... fill in every person you meet at any given moment of the day.

What did Jesus call us to, our mission or His?

When Jesus said, “Come follow me,” this must have stopped the disciples dead in their tracts, cause their hearts to start of pound a thousand times a minute. This was a bunch of ordinary people with ordinary lives being called by an extraordinary man with an extraordinary life. This was the man who healed people, restoring their dignity and inviting them out of oppression. He touched lepers without harm, turned water into wine and caused the fish to over fill the nets. Caused a little to feed thousands, He healed multitudes. He ate and hung out with the outcast, prostitutes, drunkards and the poorest of the poor. While both shunning and condemning the religious. To follow Him was an daring call, a moment to be part of something grater and against the grain of what was established as goodly, righteous and holy way of life.

Then He invited them to come to the local synagogue on Sunday morning for a couple of hours and Wednesday night for another couple of hours. Forget following him around and watching Him do things. And when they got to there, he sat them down and led them through a couple of songs. Everyone sat in the same direction facing Jesus as they listened to him speak from behind a small upright box. The message was on average an hour long, tightly scripted with an introductory joke to arouse the crowd and was primarily about how to “not sin”. It usually included three points, a story from His personal life, and a summary to wrap it all up. He always finished with a challenge to his disciples to do better and closed with another song. At some point in the process he passed a large basket around expecting them to put a little something in to pay the rent and help build a larger meeting place, and for advertising and marketing plans and hire professionals to plan their programs to attract others and to get people to come and join there tight little group. The reality was that those in setup were tired of unpacking and packing up each time they met in this rented building. A new, obviously larger building just made sense. After all them more we pack in the more we get in the basket. Under this scenario you have to imagine the original call to “Come follow me” seems to lose its impact, doesn’t it?

The problem is that this isn’t in the Bible, it is not the life Jesus lead, the disciples where called to or lead. But yet this is exactly what the church and Christendom has practiced over the last 1,700 years, the blue print for every traditional church in America for the last 300 years. And yet Jesus never did it this way, nor did the church in the first three centuries. He went out to the people and restored them. He sought out reconciliation and healing. He engaged His Father’s mission, it was His way of life. Can you imagine watching Jesus heal someone? But in doing so He showed the disciples the way to life, to function in everyday life. He modeled a leadership that empowered them to do it themselves. It was an apprentice model of leadership that taught them how to engage the mission themselves. Nor did Jesus did not say I will assemble a bunch of people together so they can hangout, have free coffee and donuts and be entertained great performers, videos and skits and here some motivation feel good about yourself preaching.

But rather He said I am sending you.

He did not say service to Him was changing diapers, hading out programs or parking cars, He said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Paul said, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” Paul got it, he understood what Jesus meant when He said follow me, it meant imitate my life, every detail of it, even on to death for the good of others.

We must ask ourselves,

Do I know My Father’s mission?

Jesus understood that God had always been on a mission of restoring all of His creation. He said to Mary when she was looking for Him “Do you not know that I must be about My Father's business? Can you say the same thing?

Is my life structured in a way to accomplish this mission?

Ninety percent of what we think when we say “church” does not exist in Jesus’ blue print. He took ordinary people created a people who changed the world. A people who where the church, not a building that was the church, not an organization with lots of programs made to entertain a bunch of pew warmers and coffee drinkers. But a people who lived exactly as He did and did every thing and even can do grater things than He did, people whose lives looked just like His. Does you life look just like His, are you doing every thing He did, and greater as He promised that His followers would do. "Most assuredly I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” John 14:12

His very invitation invites us into a larger mission of restoration, of true relationship with God, the building of the Kingdom of God on earth, not the building of buildings.

Purpose driven life

When we do not live on mission, it produces a very marginalized Christianity, a very narrow understanding of Christianity and what it is, when we are not living with a bigger purpose of what a Global God is doing in the whole world. Then your Christianity is going to be about you and you alone, about making you happy, meeting your needs, its about God serving you because what else are you left with? And this can been seen in our traditional church services our contemporary worships services, they are focused soly on the individual and that churches needs only.

If we are not living with the bigger pitcher of what God is doing in the earth, then it is just going to boil down to what God is doing in my life. Our lives are to complex to ask God to give me a “Purpose Driving life” or a “Your Best Life Now”, I do not want God to step down into my existence and give me a individual purpose, I want Him to lift my eyes up to Him and say this is what I am doing now, this is My purpose on earth today and you can be involved in it, be a part of it. That gets me excited, not wow God blessed my little enterprise, my self-purpose, self-plans. Are we so really small minded to think that the God who created all that is, who was and is to be, who decides who take one more breath of not. Is the one I call to be my assistant in life, to do my biding, to enable my plans, to follow my lead or even depend on me to come up with the right plan for His work on earth.

The eternal God of the universe, who is and always will be is actual dong something, working, on mission from day one on the earth, He just not setting there on the side lines waiting on someone to do something to come up with a plan to save the world, reach the lost. He has a plan from before creation and His is actively working in out on earth. And not only is He doing something, He has chosen not to have the angles carry it out His work, and could do so a 1000 times better. But has chosen week and broken vessel who are the most need of Him and redemption to be His emissaries to go out and be His hands and feet to ministry to other who need Him the most. We are a desperate broken messed up people going to other broken messed up people and say we need God, we cannot save ourselves, lets go to God together. That is a bigger and greater mission than I could ever come up with myself anything as great and anything less is a waste of life, for self-glory not God’s glory.

How do we be missional?

How do we be missional? Here is a collaborated list of thoughts on how to be missional.

1. Think Missio Dei. God is a missionary God. As God the Father sent Jesus, Jesus sent us, and empowered us by the Spirit. Isaiah 61:1-2 is God’s manifesto; it is what Jesus gives as his first sermon in his hometown. He opens the Isaiah scroll and read what is to be his manifesto also, and it is mine also, Isaiah 61:1-2 is the goal if missio Dei. As God sent His Son with His manifesto, mission, so Jesus sends His people, His bride the church with the same manifesto, mission.
2. Think biblically. Be a student of the word of God, Jesus was. Be someone who studies them day and night, who thinks, eats and breathes the scriptures.
3. Be a Missionalest. If you aren’t, what’s the purpose of you life? Everything in your life should be directed toward participation in God’s mission, accomplishing God’s mission in the world, the restoring, renewal, redemption and reconciliation of all creation. (i.e. “Missio Dei is central in all that we say and do in life.”)
4. Be a Gospelists. The Gospel must be the very “heartbeat” in the soul of every believer, his worldview it molded by the Gospel, what he thinks about and meditates on is filtered through the Gospel. So then being gospel-centered means the gospel is functional central to your life, at the core of your being, what defines you. (i.e. “The gospel is central in all that we say and do in life.”)
5. Have a functional gospel-centered identity. Being gospel-centered means the gospel is functional central to your life, at the core of your being, what defines you. It is at the core of your identity, who you are.
6. Think contextually. If it was good enough for the apostle Paul, it’s good enough for me (1 Cor. 9:19-23). One-size never fits all. The Gospel never changes, but how we communicate it does.
7. Think culturally, act biblically. We live, breathe, and swim in culture. What's more, it's impossible to be a Jesus-follower in a non-cultural context. If we are serious about being missional, we need to understand the culture and subcultures surrounding us.
8. Practice incarnational principles. Incarnational living brings the living embodiment of the gospel to our neighbors, manifesting the reign of Jesus to our neighbors, and therefore liberates their suffering. We should consider how we can live in a way that makes the gospel most accessible to the people around us, that is see it at work in your life and Jesus tangible to them be cause you are the living image of Him.
9. Practice love. As in love God with all that you are, and love your neighbor with the same kind of love you show yourself.
10. Practice caring for those in need. Give loaves of bread and fish to those without, physically touch today’s lepers, and if you have more than one of something someone needs, give it to them.
11. Practice compassion. Bringing the same love that Jesus would bring to the broken and the lost.
12. Practice mercy. Bringing the same love that Jesus would bring to the broken and the lost.
13. Practice grace and forgiveness. Most people will need to see the gospel in action before they can adopt and practice it. Give grace, give forgiveness. Even if you think it will kill you.
14. It is about justice. Standing alongside the neglected, the falsely accused, and the abused.
15. Actively engage in restoration. In God’s mission of restoration, actively working to restore al of creation to wholeness. Not to condemn others who are in a fallen state, but on the mission or restoring them to wholeness and a right relationship with God.
16. Live in and build authentic community. Jesus was about intentional community, communities engaged in the restoration of each other and the world.
17. Practicing missional discipleship. Actively teaching one on one others to duplicate the life of Christ by imitating your example of dong it, by your life being about restoring, renewal, redemption and the reconciliation of all creation lived out right before them to see how it is done.
18. Practice the Great Commission. Share your faith in word and deed. Engage in doable evangelism. Don't discriminate. Instead, share the gospel with everyone regardless of ethnicity, religion, economic or social status.

I intend to make these my non-negotiable way of living a missional lifestyle.

Missio Dei

Missio Dei (God's mission in the world). God himself is on a mission to restore (i.e. "reconcile") all of creation, God's purposes for the world is reconciliation not condemnation at this time, place in eternity, He is on a mission to save, restore and heal man, to call unto Himself His prodigal creation, mankind. And God's people (i.e. the church) are to embody and to bear witness to this, His love, grace, mercy and forgiveness. The church is not so much a rescue station for the lost as it is a demonstration of God's saving purposes in Christ. The church is a servant of the Gospel; she is the Gospel in action, in human flesh just as Jesus was. Chosen to bless the whole world and be a sign of God's past, present, and future activity. This implies followers of Jesus are not called to go on a mission for God; they are called to join God in His ongoing mission. This was the central theme of Jesus' life, teaching and ministry: the Kingdom of God. This is the mission of each follower of Christ, of the church.

Church is not about being an entertainment center, a set of self-help-programs, a warm and fuzzy place for believers to hide from the world, a great show and set of programs to invite un-saved people to.

But an open demonstration ('A city on a hill") of God purpose for reconciliation of man to Himself, of His Kingdom, of a life lived with Him, a community so radical different from the world, the living out of love for one another like none has seen in the world, forgiveness on a God level that demonstrates the total, unconditional forgiveness of God for anything.

And it is going out, in motion with God, demonstrating Gods pursuit of the lost, His prodigal son, bring reconciliation and healing to those in need, going into the darkest places, just like Jesus, gong to the prostitutes, the poor, the dying, the drug dealers, your co-workers, neighbors and the strangers. Any thing less is, different is not the Church, not Missio Dei.

What the Chruch is Not

Some may assume or rationally think that the church is a building to be filled with Bible Studies, churchy music, hi tech sound and lighting shows, movie clips, entertaining skits, hymnals, pews, paid workers to do all the work, pastors who do all the studying then present the cliff notes of it both verbal and in the program also would be nice (keep it to 20 min or less please) of what the bible says and do all the evangelizing of course, programs to meet their needs (financial, marriage, how to get rich, how to get God to do what you want Him to do, est.), something to keep the kids busy for an hour or two, a program to teach the kids all bout the God stuff so the parents do not half to, prayer groups to do all the praying, oh lest not for get about the free Starbucks and donuts in the foyer, etc., est. And service to God is reduced to changing diapers once a month, handing out the programs at the door or directing traffic in the parking lot and working the book store of course where you can pay to get copies of the sermons and the pastors book that you paid him to do.

But church is Not for more studies to debate personal theology and continually add to the list of don'ts. Not for only prayer about my health and personal needs or a new $500,000 sound system to bring in more people. Not for couples to choose to only live in isolation from the world and surround themselves with only believers. People who say church is Sunday and Wednesday night only and has nothing to do with the rest of the week. Church is the building I invite people to come to, to be entertained by our professional entertainers and get plugged into one of our programs for the paid professionals to deal with them. Not for people who think that being a conservative Republican in their views is being a light, being a Christian or how God is working in America.

Basically dismissing the idea that each person who knows Christ is to function as the church in their everyday life 24/7, and the church exist is to carry out the " Missio Dei ", to join in, be part of the Missio Dei, the Mission of God.

The church is a gathering of sent people who are individually living as the church by being a Gospel centered people who are on Missio Dei, living missionaly 24/7. Who come together to corporately be the church as a whole on Missio Dei, God’s mission. To celebrate and worship God and their part in His mission. And each person is excursing their spiritual gifts and calling to the body so there is no need for paid professionals. To live in community with each other 24/7, and love, build up and support one another. And they are a people in motion, that is going out into the world to take the gospel to the world, being sent out into the world as Christ was sent, so we are being sent to be agents of reconciliation and transformation to the world, joining in with God on His Mission to redeem the world, in our neighborhoods, work, schools, grocery store, Wal Mart, the city as well as other countries. We do not invite people to go to church, we are the church and are about taking it to the people, we are on Missio Dei.