Rethink Mission: Inspiring gospel-centered missional churches

Friday’s night included shorter teaching sessions from George Patterson (who reminds me of a mad scientist) Neil Cole, David Garrison, and Ed Stetzer. Below are the notes from George, Neil & Ed.

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?

Session 2 on Thursday night was Francis Chan, pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley.
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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 »

This weekend I’m blogging from Verge, the missional community conference.

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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