Something about Verge was different – and I want to get it down before I forget. Because I easily forget.

1. Worship Gatherings Should Not Be Abandoned
This first thing is actually a running thought I had throughout the conference.

One of my fears is that young zealots will walk away from Verge and say, “I get it now. We’re going to totally scrap our public worship gathering,” or “Who needs preaching? It takes the already limited time I have away from community and mission.”

Maybe some failed to notice, but during Verge we were convicted, inspired, moved, and challenged… all through preaching and powerful corporate worship experiences.

I know that as a whole, we’re moving away from event and program-driven Christianity (good!) – but an “event” is an okay event in my book if at that event the gospel is proclaimed, God’s Spirit is present, and the sacraments are observed.

2. Francis Chan is Awesome But Not For the Reasons You Think
Yeah, Francis Chan blew us away.

Here’s what stuck out to me, though, more than any one thing he said: we saw this mega-church pastor get on his knees in front of us all and beg God, in tears, to show him how to do church.

You got this sense from him the entire weekend that the bigness of his church didn’t matter. His books didn’t matter. His reputation as a pastor didn’t matter.  He acknowledged that he distrusted even his own motives for why he does what he does and that he wanted to be courageous enough to ask the question: does any of the stuff we think is so important in the evangelical world really matter in the end?

3. The Holy Spirit is Real
The best part of the weekend was a worship session on Saturday afternoon that never seemed to stop. It was time for the singing to be done and for all of us to move on to the next deal on the schedule – except that God had something else on His schedule.

Matt Carter got up and acknowledged that something was going on. Breakouts were going to start soon and that if people needed to go they could, but he opened the door for others to stick around if they felt so led. And we did. People just stood there. Or knelt. Or bowed.

And then one by one, people spontaneously started calling out to God. In a group of thousands, people started calling on the name of Jesus.

It’s hard to describe what happened, and I really don’t want to dishonor that moment by trying to make it seem more dramatic than it was. I’ll just say that for me it was an intense moment of sensing God’s hugeness and my own smallness and yet feeling accepted in that instead of alienated. It’s the first time I’ve seen something like that happen in a group that large since my charismatic revival days.

4. Mission & Community Are Hard
I was trying to explain to a friend unfamiliar with evangelical church jargon what a “Missional Community Conference” was about. I failed. It should’ve been simple because the conference was about mission and community (obviously).

Here’s why this conference sticks out: Verge was not just about mission and community, it was about being committed to those things until it gets painful.

Being committed to doing mission with a small band of people who know you well should and will be uncomfortable. It will cost me something. It will hurt.

But it’s worth it.

That’s what I’m leaving with. It showed up in the teaching, sure, but I got a fresh reminder in person.

During the weekend, I got to spend some time with Josh Wilson, a close friend and co-worker from The Journey that I hadn’t seen in months.  Right now, since leaving one church and getting ready to plant another, my experience of community is somewhat sporadic at best.

Seeing Josh reminded me first of the depth of friendship I miss out on when I am away from community. Secondly, it reminded me that community is painful because it means letting people get close enough to call you on your garbage. I don’t like getting called on my garbage.

There’s a trend right now among evangelical pastors that plays on our natural fears and desire to manipulate. It says that if you’re a pastor, you can only let people get so close. If people get too close, then you loose some of your power. Clear lines of authority get cloudy. You loose organizational effectiveness in pursuit of relationship. It’s that much harder to hold someone accountable to job performance and becomes close to impossible to fire them, if God forbid, one day you’re forced to.

Who cares.

Letting people in close enough to see through your every motivation is stinking painful. But the alternative – living life alone, surrounded only by admirers and no real friends – is infinitely worse.

George Patterson

The great secret: it’s easier to do evangelism, plant churches, and to make disciples if we do it the way the apostles did.

The way the apostles fulfilled the Great Commission:

1. They presented the risen, living Christ – instead of just telling facts about him.
2. They mobilized everyone to witness – not just paid full-time teachers & evangelists.
3. Who did the apostles go to? Stop trying to shove the camel through the eye of a needle.  The camels are the rich and powerful – most of America. The movement is sustained when the gospel is preached to the poor.  Go to the people who are receptive – who desperately want change – often the poor and disenfranchised.
4. One approach that has been consistent & universal. It doesn’t require a lot of money or a degree. It requires people who love Jesus turned loose to talk about him.
5. They did evangelism not just to individuals. They didn’t just pull new Christians out of their familial or social environment. When an individual was receptive – they went to that person’s family.

Neil Cole

Busyness – does not yield compassion. “Get out of my way – I’ve got things to do.”

Matthew 9:36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Jesus felt compassion – in the Greek – in his “bowels.” A compassion that comes from your guts is deep – born out of turmoil.

Jesus saw people as “harassed and helpless.” We could translate that as “pin-downed and molested.” If was saw someone like that – we would feel the deep down compassion of Jesus.

When it comes to making disciples – you cannot call it multiplication unless it makes it to four generations (Paul to Timothy, Timothy to faithful men, faithful men to others. 2 Timothy 2:2)

For Neil the pattern of making disciples is built into Life Transformation Groups. The groups:
1. Read large passages of scripture together multiple times over and over with the same chunk of scripture.
2. Confess their sins to each other – honestly.
3. Write out a list of their non-Christian friends and pray for them every week.

Look for those who are desperate – those that have a desperate need for Jesus.

Ed Stetzer

1 Peter 4:9-11

We have to let other people in our churches use their gifts.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to use when our people are living on mission, close to Jesus. That should be the norm.

From the passage:
1. All have gifts.
The way we do church, often disempowers people from using their gifts. We force them to sit and observe the professionals. If we disciple people with knowledge and no action – we are building puffed-up gnostics. Any system that disempowers or demotivates the people of God is unhelpful and perhaps sinful.

The recession has – in a good way – forced the church to rely more on volunteers instead of paid staff.

When we do for people what God has called them to do, everybody gets hurt and the mission of God gets hindered. The more gifted you are as a pastor, often the more difficult it is for you to release others to do what God has called them to do.

You cannot disciple with books. You disciple people life on life. Disciples don’t just know. Disciples do.

2. God intends all to use.
Obedience-shaped discipleship results in mission-shaped disciples.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve made it acceptable to sit in church week after week and do nothing and still call yourself a follower of Jesus. Contributing a percentage of your income and getting your face in a pictorial directory is not good enough.

3.He empowers us.
As pastors we often have a co-dependent relationship with our followers. In order to stop the cycle, the enabler has to stop enabling. Pastor – stop forcing people to be dependent on you for their spiritual life.

Like Susan Boyle – the underappreciated and undervalued shine when they get to use their gifts.

4. To bring God glory.
When people use their gifts in the church – God gets glory.

We should care less about the label on our church, and more about the lifestyle produced.
When we use our gifts, the body is united, and that brings God glory.

Disciples see what Jesus is doing and join him in that. Is your church equipping people to join Jesus on his mission?

Exodus 33:13
If God’s presence doesn’t go with us – then we won’t go. Is there anything else we want in life besides the presence of the Lord?

My motives in ministry have not been pure. “I want to be funny and engaging – or I want a big church – I want to do that.” All these things enter your mind and you loose sight of what you had at the beginning – where you just wanted to be with God.

Verge: to be on the edge. We really seem to be on the Verge of seeing something happen – more than the traditional “We’re going to change the world” excitement of every other conference.

It seems that the Holy Spirit is speaking the same thing to a diverse group of people. There is no pressure to start a movement – a movement has started – the Holy Spirit is starting it. This is Biblically driven – it’s theologically driven. It’s not just the hip thing.

Be courageous – Biblically. Erase what you’ve seen everywhere else – and just go to the Bible. Don’t just go around to other patterns – to tweak what other people are doing. Have the courage to read the Bible and do what it says.

Anyone can create a new religion and take verses from all over the place and force them together and make them work. We have to ask ourselves – looking at our churches – would I ever have come up with this just from scripture? Usually the answer is no.

If I just read the scriptures – I wouldn’t care so much about the gathering. If I read the scriptures, I would see that we are on a mission. That we are to make disciples. Then, what would happen, is that the gathering would just naturally happen – because I would be on mission and I would stick out and I would need other people to help me to do that – to hold me to that.

We would look at the Great Commission – which we’ve all memorized – and we would actually do it.

Go, make disciples – this is what Jesus says to do.

We change everything in church. We look at the Great Commission and don’t take it literally.

Unlike the game “Simon Says,” with the church, if Jesus says it – we just memorize it – we don’t do it.
If I ask my daughter to clean her room, I don’t want her to come back to me and say, “Dad – I memorized your words. I can say them in Greek. We did a study on what it means to clean my room.” No – I would just want her to clean it.

In Acts chapter 2 – the early church just gave all their stuff away. It’s insane, it’s radical – but it makes sense. They had just seen a man rise from the grave. What wouldn’t make sense is – after seeing a man rise from the grave – they just got together in a room every Sunday and sang some songs and listened to someone teach. You would look at that and say, “you didn’t see someone rise from the grave. You’d be doing more than that if you saw someone rise from the grave.”

Scripture says that it’s through our unity – through the way we love each other – that people will see that Jesus came from God, not through our apologetics.

What would it look like for the church to live this out – to have a real sense of inter-dependence in the church… to be able to ditch life insurance because we know that we are going to cover one another?

The disciples did not get together and plan out the day of Pentecost. It wasn’t a plan. It was the Holy Spirit, working through a bunch of diverse individuals to create a unified result.

We cannot create or plan a “movement.” This seems like something that the Holy Spirit is doing. We don’t have the power to make the wave. “God, I think you’re starting a wave here. But if you’re not – let’s just go home.”

There’s a story of a village that had an old tractor. Over the years the villagers had forgotten that the tractor could run and they had forgotten how to use the tractor. So, three months of the year, the town would gather the strongest in the village to move the tractor around on the field through mere strength. They were able to plant some crops – but it was only enough to feed the town.

Much like that tractor, in the church we hire the brightest and most talented to try to grow the church. What we really need is to read the owner’s manual. When we do, we will discover that the church, like the tractor, has an untapped power and life of it’s own. Power enough to plow more fields than we can possibly imagine, to grow more crops, to feed more people than we could imagine.

Let us not care about our salaries, our reputations or any of the other things we build our churches on. Let us strive for the simplicity and purity of the word. Let us be a people act like we really believe that a man rose from the grave.
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See all updated sessions from Verge here »

Matt Carter, pastor of The Austin Stone, kicked off the conference on Thursday night with a challenge on Jesus being at the center of our mission.  Below is the short form of his sermon.
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Missional community has the potential to be the thing that this generation will be remembered by – that will define this generation historically.

I believe that missional community is the long awaited structure that the American church has desperately needed to unleash everyday believers into the mission of their everyday lives. For far too long, for too many churches – their story has been “come to us and we will feed you spiritually – we will provide you programs – we will make you comfortable with the idea of church.”

Too often, that is where it ends.

The church has placed the onus of missional living on paid clergy and missionaries.

A growing tension: as the everyday believer reads the book of Acts, they wonder out loud, “When do I get to get in the fight? When does the Holy Spirit of God get to use me?”

Missional community could awaken the sleeping giant of the American church. It is long past time for the American church to awaken from its materialistic, narcissistic slumber.

Now – I’m also very concerned about missional community.

If missional community is the only defining marker for our generation, then we have failed.

The temptation – the danger for us – is that we will love our mission more than our Savior. If we love our mission more than we love our Savior, then our Savior will have no part of our mission.

In Revelation 2:1 Jesus commends the church at Ephesus. They were persevering with the Gospel, they had raised the standard of holiness in the church, they were elevating (not dismissing) sound doctrine, they were a community on mission, they stood against syncretism.

But, Jesus says, there is this one thing. “This I have against you, that you have left your first love” (Rev 2:4).
Jesus says – “I will remove your lampstand from its place.” In a sense he is saying, “If I am not your first love – if I’m not the goal – then I will remove my presence and blessing from your church.”

If you love your mission more than you love your Savior, your Savior will have no part of your missi0n.
Who cares if we figure out missional community but Jesus isn’t apart of what we do?

Here’s how you know if you love your Savior more than you love your mission: If Jesus took everything away, if you never had one shred of success in ministry again, if none of your dreams came true and all you were left with was Jesus – would that be enough?
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Stay tuned for more updates from Verge 2010, or follow the trend on Twitter.

The questions are simply:

1. What do I want people to know or believe?
2. What do I want people to feel or experience?
3. What do I want people to do or act on?

The order is intentional – cognitive, then emotional, then volitional.

What do I want people to know or believe? Question one highlights the central insight that I want to drive home. Where are people deceived, blinded to the truth, or believing a lie or half-truth?  What truth am I bringing that will shed light in the middle of darkness?

And not just truth in general – but gospel truth. How specifically am I bringing the objective, historical reality of Jesus – who he was and what he did – to bear on the lies and half-truths of our age?

What do I want people to feel? Question two asks as a result of embracing or believing that truth, in what way am I calling people to experience that truth. Truth merely understood with the mind but not experienced is not a truth that has been truly believed, at least not in the Biblical sense of belief.

John Ortberg says that answering this question – bringing people to a point where they feel or experience truth in some way in the sermon – takes the most skill. Can we talk about grace without it in some way inspiring awe & wonder? Can we preach Jesus’ words to inauthentic followers in Matthew 7 and not to some degree sense holy fear?

Answering question two means more than just yelling – it means that the preacher himself must have a personal encounter/experience with the truth that he is preaching. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones famously said: “Can a man really contemplate the love of God in Christ Jesus and feel no emotion? The whole position is utterly ridiculous… What is preaching? Logic on fire! Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire… I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to enter one.”

What do I want people to do? Finally – after people hear the truth, experience the truth, it is right and appropriate for you to call them to act on that truth. What do you want people to do as a result of all this? What should their lives look like this very week in response to the way the Holy Spirit has brought the gospel to bear on their minds and hearts?

Famed preaching professor Haddon Robinson encourages preachers while in sermon prep to fast forward in your mind to the Monday after you preach. Imagine that several different types of people in your congregation approach you privately and say, “I got it. I understood what you were trying to say. Now what? What should I do as a result? What does this mean for me as a single mom, or business owner, or struggling college student, or young single man on the verge of faith?” Whatever you might say to them then in that conversation – say it to them in the sermon. Specifically address the different demographics in your congregation and help them in the sermon with the “now what” question.

The gospel – first proclaimed, then experienced, and finally lived.

Based on your own background, personality type, and your current denomination or stream of faith (reformed, charismatic, seeker, etc.)  – you’ll be naturally strong with one of these, while one might be a weak spot for you. What about you?

You don’t have to have church-planting already in your DNA, however, to become a church-planting church. Let’s say that you pastor an established, traditional church & have never planted a new church or supported a church planter. Where do you start?

Meet area planters
If you’ve always been a pastor in an existing, established church situation, get to know church planters in your area. Take a couple out to lunch.  Most likely, they’re poor & hungry.  Church planters often feel like established church leaders are distrustful of them and their motives. Listen to planters in your area & their heart for reaching new people. Be available for conversation, prayer, and networking.  I hear story after story of church planters that are new to an area and can’t get pastors of established churches to even return a phone call.

Do a study
You and your church need to first believe in the importance of planting new churches on local soil.  If you expect some of your key leaders to be resistant on this issue – do a short study together on the importance of planting new churches, specifically in Western areas.  Tim Keller’s paper, Why Plant Churches or Glenn Smith’s article Does the U.S. Need More New Churches? are both great & simple places to start. The key leaders in the church, especially those who set vision and budgets need to be convinced of Keller’s words: “The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for the numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any city, and the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city.”

Budget appropriately
This is where it gets hard, and is the first place that established churches turn back from becoming church-planting churches. If you are going to plant churches, you have to set aside money in your budget for it – and that most likely will mean taking some percentage from money that you already give to foreign missionaries or to your denomination’s missions sending agency.

Vision from the pulpit
Whenever the primary teacher talks about the mission of the church, evangelism, or engaging the world with the gospel, make sure that you tell your people that a key piece of your missional strategy is planting new churches. Putting it out there strong will help hold you accountable to your new vision. “We are not quite sure how we’re going to do it – but a key piece of us reaching the world with the gospel is that we are going to start planting new churches – right here. There are unreached people groups right under our noses -  and the best way to reach them is to plant new churches.”

Join a church-planting network
In addition to having access to church-planting resources, when you as an existing church join a church-planting network like The Acts 29 Network or ARC you signify to potential planters around you that you are serious about church-planting. Young potential planters are already watching these networks because of their success in planting. When you join up, potential planters in your area will start to look to you for church-planting support & internship opportunities.

Begin a church-planting internship
The next difficult step is to start an intern program for potential church-planters. Doing an intern program can cost less than you think, but is likely to be more time intensive than you first realize. A few brief thoughts on internships:

Have interns raise their own support
If a potential planter can’t raise support for a part time salary, how will he ever raise money for a new church? If his own grandma doesn’t trust him, why should you? You could consider a stipend for a candidate with a lot of experience, if the candidate has a family (with multiple kids) to support, the cost of living in your area is exceptionally high (like NYC), or if the candidate does not come from a culture with an assumed network of churches, friends & family who can back a pastor financially (generally non-white or non-western.)

Assess potential interns well
Two mistakes here: 1.You set the bar too low (ie you accept anyone who remotely expresses a desire in church planting). If this happens, even a year (or two) of training at your church will not produce of guy that you will want to plant, and you may end up sending out someone who never should have planted in the first place. 2. You set the bar too high (ie you expect him to already be network assessment ready). This is not your network’s complete, rigorous assessment – this is your own pre-assessment. You’re looking for someone who has the raw DNA to be a church planter but still needs 1-3 years to work on theology, a marital communication issue, or needs to have more teaching & leading experience. They do have to demonstrate character, entrepreneurial skill, and a sense of calling – the three things that I think are impossible to teach.

Mentor interns well
A lot of fast growing churches bring on interns without any sense of what do with them. Sure, the “grab an oar, let’s get to work” mentality is great – and gives you some needed hands on deck – but at some point interns need: 1. theological shaping, 2. real mentoring 3. leadership opportunities where they can safely fail.  Also, with potential church-planters, give them opportunities to start something.

Send them out with money & people
If an intern goes through your whole process, has learned from your church & added value to your church, has passed your assessments, and responded & learned from your critiques & coaching, then be prepared to enthusiastically send them out with money and people.  If they really do have entrepreneurial & teaching skills, strong character and a good family – then by all means, put your money where your mouth is.

Show your congregation
Celebrate church planters – both those you send out and those you support. Have them preach in your church (if they can handle your pulpit). Lay hands on them and publicly pray for them. As they’re planting, find out the good stories and share those with your people. Regularly show pictures of your church planters just like you might your overseas missionaries. Let your congregation celebrate God’s work among these new churches.

These are initial thoughts on becoming a church-planting church. Much more can and has been said. What are your thoughts?

Jonathan, Ashley, Cora, and Nola

As you know, the McIntosh family is planting a new church in Midtown Memphis in 2010: Christ City Church.

If you would like to make a year end gift to help start this new church – there are a few options to make this happen:
1. You can write a check, made out to Christ City Church.
Our temporary address is 889 Mt. Vernon Rd. Tupelo, MS 38804.
2. You can wire money to the Christ City checking account. Email me for details on how to do this.
3. You can donate now via PayPal using a credit or debit card or PayPal account.

(PAYPAL*CHRIST CITY will appear on your credit card or bank statement.)

This money goes towards salaries, administrative costs, staffing strategic leaders, promotional needs, and facility rental once we launch.
If you’d like to see a copy of our first year budget or the vision packet, don’t hesitate to email me.

Take a look at my kids in the picture above. Do it for the children.

Seriously, do it because you believe that planting new churches is the best way to spread the gospel in city centers.
Do it because you resonate with the vision of a gospel-centered, missional church.
Do it because you strongly desire to see a community formed that proclaims grace and works for city renewal.
Do it for the glory of God and the good of the city of Memphis.

With much love and gratitude,
-JMac

Yesterday in talking to two different pastors in Memphis, the topic of public schools came up two different times.

One said to me in the context of his church’s and his family’s missional engagement with the city, “We decided to do the opposite of what most have done. People left the city and we decided to move in. People have pulled their kids out of public schools and we decided to put our kids in city schools.” I resonated with his passion.

Another conversation, this pastor, too, with a heart to send people on mission back into the city, but with a different approach to schools.  “The main way that I’m going to be on mission is not going to be through my 10 year old. I don’t expect him to be prepared for that. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.” I was certainly sympathetic.

So the question is this: in a city like Memphis, or St. Louis – whose school system lost their accreditation in 2007 – what posture should a missional leader personally take toward the public schools?  Does a pastor or member of a church seeking city renewal have a responsibility to enroll their kids in the public school system? Why or why not? Is putting your kids in city schools an effective strategy for mission – or is there a better way for families to be on mission together?

I call this “idealized city idolatry.”

You know the people that have an ideal version of some church in their head? They keep waiting for this perfect church that suits them just perfectly in all the perfect ways. They keep waiting for this church that does not exist and so they never commit. They church hop all their days.

I don’t do that. At least not with churches. I do that with cities.

In the past, in processing a call to start a church, I have idolized the idea of what city I would plant in. It’s hard to explain, but if you know me, you might understand that I was waiting for that perfect city. In recent months God has broken me of this.

Hebrews 11 paints a picture of Abraham also yearning for a city – but his city was designed and built by God (v. 10).  That is what gave him and all those saints who faced tremendous difficulties the power to follow God on mission – they hoped for (and in) a lasting city – a city with “foundations.”  Abraham’s city was the new City to come.

Why don’t you (and I and all urban lovers out there) make a decision to stop looking for an idealized city here on earth (London! San Fran! Boston! Wherever You Last Visited!) and instead love the city right in front of you, plain as the nose on your face? It’s not going to be the perfect city.  In fact, isn’t that the point?  The real city (not the idealized one in your head) is most likely extremely broken.

But you and I are called, through the work of the gospel, to love that city, to help shape that city. Are you working, living, shopping, building relationships, doing justice, loving mercy, creating culture, and planting churches in such a way that the city right in front of you increasingly resembles that new City to come?