Acts 29 Sonoma Retreat – The Network & Defining Missional

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jun 29, 2007 in Church, Church Planting, Culture | 1 comment

I returned last night from the annual Acts 29 pastors retreat where we spent most of the week in Sonoma. It was great to see friends and spend time with other church planters from across the country. A couple things came from the conference, which I may post on more:

1. Acts 29 re-organizing from a network to a movement.  Leadership, structures and vision are all adjusting to reflect this.  Some exciting news is that John Piper & Tim Keller will return to speak at Acts 29 bootcamps.  (Tim Keller's is the month after his new book is supposed to come out in March, 2008: In Defense of God: Doubting Your Doubts (Hardcover).  Start reserving your tickets now!

2. Ed Stetzer (pic of us @ Jonathan Herron's blog ) spoke on the history of the word missional which traces it's origins from three streams of thoughts: missio dei, mission & missionary.  He presents why we may all use the same word, yet it means radically different things for emerging churches, evangelical camps and the reformed community.  So when Tim Keller speaks about being missional it is not the same thing as when it used by John Franke or Alan Roxburgh.  He plans to publish a paper on this soon which will be extremely helpful for the missional conversation. 

3. Scott Thomas and then Driscoll did a State of the Union address on the network.  More changes will be coming soon…

Re-thinking Work – The Need for the Church to reclaim the Cultural Mandate

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jun 26, 2007 in Church Technology, Culture | 4 comments

The cultural mandate calls us to be stewards of the world and cultivate it for God's glory.  This includes our work.  Yet, churches have largely left work to the domain of the 'secular world'.  There are two reasons I believe this occurred, first Western Christians are shaped by an enlightenment, Platonic dualism worldview  (creating a false secular/sacred divide).  Secondly, we have a limited view of the gospel.   When the gospel is reduced to just individual salvation, the fullness of God's redemptive plan is not understood.    The evangelical world had focused almost exclusively on the great commission at the cost of seeing their entire life as part of God's plan. If we broaden our gospel understanding, how does this change the way we think about work?

First, it should change how we think about our job.   The themes of creation/fall/redemption are a pattern we must examine our work by.   For example, here are conversations I've had with people regarding their work:

Insurance Broker - God provided for man in creation placing him in the garden, because of sin, death/disease entered the scene.  An insurance broker seeks to bring peace in the face of sin by providing people with health care so they can be taken care of in a time of need.  This is redemptive work bringing shalom to a broken world.

Merchant Service Account Exec – (Provides credit card processing at a company that eliminates banks as the middle-men so they offer significantly lower rates).  In the garden we should have shared and taken care of one another.  In the OT God forbids the Jews from charging interest to one-another.  Because of sin, we don't want to help others in need and charge high interest rates (and because of sin people abuse credit.)  Lower interest rates seek to reduce the consequence of the fall as best as possible.  It is trying to reduce the impact of the fall.

It is important for Christians to see their work as valuable as they act as agents in this mandate. Are churches encouraging Christians to think this way?  How would it change for Christians if they connected their work to God's redemptive plan?  

Second, kingdom-mindedness would mean companies would re-org in effective ways to reduce waste, miscommunication, lack of delegation and responsibility.  Shouldn't distinctly Christian organizations be leading the way as it relates to employee satisfaction, customer service, etc?  In addition, these companies would re-invest back into the community.  What else would a kingdom-minded company look like?  (I'm excited that a member of our church is starting a job where he will provide consulting to companies that want to think through what it means to be kingdom-minded.  It will be interesting to see what develops from that.)

Lastly, work should play a bigger part of life in the church.  What would it look like for churches to be involved in enterprises, employing people, meeting needs, job training?  Doing all of this with the cultural mandate in mind?  Fortunately, there seems to be a re-discovery of the cultural mandate.  Hopefully this will broaden people's understanding of work beyond just a 'mission field'.  We will recognize that our job of cultivating the garden was given prior to the fall. Cultivating the earth was our primary mission.  Yet we know this redeeming process will not be completed until Jesus comes. 

Gospel, Mission, Kingdom, Imagination [External Links]

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jun 21, 2007 in Church, Culture, Leadership, Ministry Design | 4 comments

Triperspectival Leadership Essentials (David Fairchild) – Examines three essential elements of leadership, character, competency and the often overlooked compatibility.  Also check out his recent posts on Gospel Worldview Questions & Gospel Diagnostic Questions.

Rick McKinley's talk @ the Q Conference. Here is one of his points from 4 ingredients of divine imagination:  (read more at Q – Rick McKinley, Church Relevance or Q day 3)

deeply transformed disciples.. it is not about church but movement. We can grow big churches full of undisciplined disciples, but they will not transform culture. Create a movement of transformed disciples. Truly transformed disciples don’t need permission or a program to reach people. They are a movement of God to release on the city.  Ask: Who in my congregation that has been so transformed by the Gospel, and talk to them about giving it all up and going on this crazy journey…

Some bloggers to check-out: Gospel Driven life (pastor), Hsu’s Views (city-focused campus crusades), Mike Edwards (church planter) & Buzzard Blog (church planter).

The Double-Edge Sword of Raising Support as a Church Planter

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jun 19, 2007 in Church, Church Planting, Leadership | 18 comments

A few days ago I posted an idea to help fund church planting and transitions into ministry.  Since then I've been thinking a bit more about a 'tentmaker' organization that would create sustainable church planting movements.  The concept comes from the apostle Paul who worked as a tentmaker in Thessalonica, Corinth, and Ephesus (cf. Acts 18:3, 1 Thess. 2:9) in order to plant these churches.  The goal is to create an organization to equip church planters so that they can provide for their families and transition with income into the ministry as their church develops.  The church planter could even seek to start a tentmaker organization in their city to provide ongoing support for their first and hopefully future church plants.  It is like Agathos' plan of One Church One Village, who instead of asking for continual support to fund their ministry to the orphans of aids victims in Africa, seeks to buy farms to create ongoing support.

By focusing on self-sustenance, and requiring that each village be self-sustaining, costs to each participating church are limited to a specific amount – capital costs. No further funding will be needed for each village. 

Do traditional methods of raising funds to plant a church impair the mission of the church?   Is there a connection between typical funding that requires church planters to put on a more 'event-driven' church in order to attract Christians who attend other churches and tithe?  Does the church focus more on Sunday's service than the very life of the people living on mission throughout the week?  Does it re-define what is a successful plant?  Can a church never 'break-even' and still be seen as successful?  Are there areas (inner-city, small towns) where it is impractical for a church to support itself through the congregation? 

How might church plants supported by accompanying resources from a tentmaker organization re-define success?  Could it change unspoken priorities and challenges of money to allow for intensely missional living with a longer-term view of 'success'?   There is still a lot to think through…

UPDATE: The Tentmaker Group has launched to help church planters raise funding.

Leading Gospel-Centered Church Meetings

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jun 18, 2007 in Church, Leadership, Ministry Design, Triperspectivalism | 2 comments

Do you have a structure of how to lead meetings at your church?  In our monthy church planting meetings with Harbor, they patterned a structure of meeting we have adopted at Kaleo.  It includes:

1. Grace Renewal Stories [Existential] – The meeting begins with people sharing how the gospel (grace) at work.  In this time people share stories of changed lives of those they lead or their own.  There is something remarkable to hearing how the gospel is at work, it gives God the glory for what is happening.  We can only accomplish the work of the ministry when God's grace intrudes into ours and other's lives.  In addition, it is a time of celebration that brings us to a place of shared vision and spirit as we seek to see the gospel transform San Diego.

2. Vision [Normative] – After grace renewal stories are shared, we spend some time casting vision for the church.  We try to limit it to one main item that we want to ensure the leaders are thinking through and sharing with those in their ministries. 

3. Just-in-time Coaching [All] – Next, we open the floor for ministry leaders to ask the group for coaching.  People bring up the biggest challenge they currently face.  This includes practical things such as communication/planning, coaching on how to counsel someone or even theological questions.  There is great value hearing Godly wisdom from a variety of perspectives to deal with ministry challenges.

4. Kingdom Prayer [Situational] – We close the meeting with Kingdom prayer.  As we seek to see the Kingdom expanded through our ministries we submit our requests to God.  Only ongoing, dependent prayer will keep our ministries and our own hearts alive, effective, and saturated in the grace of God.