Ed Stetzer promises to blog regularly.  He just launched EdStetzer.com.  Here's the goal of the blog:

This blog will be a mixture of several things. We will look at research and discuss it here. In just a couple of weeks we will release some groundbreaking research on the dropout rate for the transition years from high school to college. Several guest bloggers will both write and interact here. Whenever we release research, this will be the official forum for interacting with us. You can post questions, question our assumptions, or say we are the smartest people ever for doing the project (thanks, mom, for dropping by).

David Wayne and I had breakfast with Ed and asked him a couple questions.  Here is a quote:

Evangelicals have a weak ecclesiology.  Ecclesiology and missiology are the defining issues of our day.  We are going to see a great die-off in the American church of established churches, yet see a broader diversity of forms of church.

…more from GCA later. 

We completed day 1 of the GCA Church Planting conference.  John Piper did a session encouraging the church planters and reminding them to be weary of church planting experts/formula's it is the Holy Spirit the preaching of the gospel.  The first sessions took place as well.  Afterwards, I had a chance to meet David Wayne (JollyBlogger) in person.  Bart Johnson, Larry Kirk, James Martin and I sat around a table at an ice-cream social talking about cessationists, creedo/paedobaptism and a sundry of other denominationalism topics SBC, PCA, EV Free.  All over a nice sundae. 

Ed Stetzer came over and gave me a hard time for my Missional - Missio Dei, Missionary or Mission post that got him in trouble over at Bill Kinnon's blog.  Stetzer's talk is now leading many in the emerging church to begin the overthrow of governments according to Kinnon (all in good fun people).   I realize my post didn't portray Stetzer's full intent, I apologize for the ease of the straw man argument with no substance.  Stetzer asked us not to post further, so we're left waiting for his article to come out…..  (no pressure Stetzer).  

Stetzer, David Wayne (JollyBlogger) and I plan on getting together tomorrow morning for an interview.   So if you have questions for Stetzer that you can post prior to 5am PST (when we meet!), post them. 

I'm putting the finishing touches on my GCA presentation, Communication in Our Post-Christian World:

The culture is changing and it requires new methods of communication.  This session will help you learn how to effectively minister in a post-Christian context.   Come learn the 1) five values of this Post-Christian generation, the 2) ten idols that enslave them and 3) effective ways to communicate the eternal and unchanging gospel message.

This is the first session for my Media & Message series.  Any of you planning on being there?  (Jollblogger is coming to the conference! btw- If you haven't, add his feed to your reader.)

This week has been extremely crazy, as the Monk team is in town planning the future of Ekklesia 360 Church CMS.  We now have over 750 churches and ministries using our system and growing rapidly!  Secondly, I am wrapping up my two sessions for the GCA Conference on Message and Media: Communicating the Gospel in Our Post-Christian World.  It will be held at John Piper's church next week.  I haven't been able to finish a couple posts I'm working on, so here are a few links that have caused me to think:

Part-time pastors are making a comeback (another reason the Tentmaker Group is so necessary…) 

Top 25 Church Planting Churches in America : Reformed vs. Reformational (David Fairchild)

A new book is released, entitled: Signs of Emergence by Kester Brewin.  (HT: Jordon Cooper with a full review of the book.) In his discussion of how the cities have changed into complex, bottom up systems, Brewin says this (pg 63),

There are still those who cry for revolution, for a revival that will change things in a snap, make everything OK as thousands flock to church… But the days for revolution are over. The cry for revival is too often a cry for abdication: you do it all, God. Well God has done God's bit, it is the systems that now need to change. This is the faith we have signed up for: the Church as the body of Christ where we have real parts to play, real responsibilities. 

Lastly, if you haven't already done so, I'd encourage you to check out Tim Chester's blog : Reformed spirituality, radical ecclesiology.   Chester and Steve Timmis are releasing a new book (not yet in America) called Total Church.  I leave the summary to Mark Moore :

Total Church is one of those books that you hold in your hand and think two things after you've read it. First, Wow! This book says it all. Second, Wow! This book says it all. The first "wow" is the one you say while cheering and applauding that someone has said things that you have desperately wanted to hear. Each page drips with gospel understanding and real life love for the church. The second "wow" is the one you say while realizing that you pretty much have nothing new to offer the world at this point other than a copy of this book. The things you had been thinking about that seemed so "radical" and "refreshing" are now nothing more than restatement of what's been said.

The Tentmaker Group is launching.  On August 13th & 14th a group from the Tentmakers will travel to Las Vegas to observe and meet with one of the companies to participate.  This company has a role that fits well with the need for church planters to fund a transition into ministry as described previously.  Training for this role will take place August 27th through 29th.  We expect a class size of 5-10 for this first round of training.  This role is a sales role, but allows for flexible work-schedules and the ability to work from home.  People who are interested in moving to San Diego to participate in a church planting movement will be able to shortly.  (We are looking at office space Friday.) We also have a second opportunity for pastors or ministry leaders who seek to supplement their existing income with part time work.

After we launch this out of San Diego, cities who would like to start their own Tentmaker Group will be able to.   

The Vision of the Tentmaker Group

1. Helping fund local church planting and ministry movements.

2. Allowing church planters, ministry leaders and others to augment their existing salary or setup a transition into ministry.

3. Providing a Kingdom expression through the value of work and a desire to demonstrate the cultural mandate to cultivate this earth to reflect God's glory.

4. Involving local organizations and businesses in these expressions.

5. Providing gospel consulting to people starting companies who want to give back to the city.

The Opportunity to join the Tentmaker Group

1. Church planters or ministry leaders who would like to raise support through one of the Tentmaker Group's positions.

2. Companies who would like to provide flexible part or full-time jobs to people transitioning into ministry.

2. Business leaders who want to impact their local city with a gospel-centered view of work and the city.

3. Entrepreneurs who desire to start business to impact their local city with a Kingdom mindset.

If you would like to learn more, feel free to contact me.  At this time we also will seek to raise some seed capital to fund the development of the Tentmaker Group. 

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

A new book is coming out entitled, Voices of the Virtual World: Participative Technology and the Ecclesial Revolution. This book is a collection of over 40 writers, many well known bloggers, authors, missional thinkers and pastors. (I wrote a chapter: Will the Internet create a new Reformation?)   The Wikiklesia Project has announced July 23, 2007, as the release date for this first volume which explores “spirituality contextualized within a culture of increasingly immersive technology.”  All proceeds from the sale of the Wikiklesia e-book, audio book, and print version will go to the Not For Sale campaign.

Check out The Wikiklesia Project press release for more details.

Is the American church in the middle of a transformation?  Over the last couple years, there are an increasing number of pastors who are rethinking church and Christianity.  Many of these shifts were recently expressed by The Gospel Coalition.  These three shifts will radically change the face of the church (quotes from The Gospel Coalition):

1. The Bible as Story (Normative) - The Church is being transformed to see the Bible as a redemptive story, which competes with the cultures worldview.  It is holistic and involves all of someone's life.  Compartmental Christianity doesn't work if this is being taught.  This type of reading positions itself against individualism and consumerism, two of the biggest idols of our culture.

To read along the whole Bible is to discern the single basic plot-line of the Bible as God’s story of redemption (e.g., Luke 24:44) as well as the themes of the Bible (e.g., covenant, kingship, temple) that run through every stage of history and every part of the canon, climaxing in Jesus Christ. In this perspective, the gospel appears as creation, fall, redemption, restoration. It brings out the purpose of salvation, namely, a renewed creation. 

2. The Gospel as bigger than an salvational entry-ticket (Existential) - Could the "10 Tips of Being a Better Husband" era be coming to a close?  Will the gospel be seen as a solution of more than an individual's personal problems?  The Church will begin to expand it's vision of God's redemptive plan both in terms of how this shapes a person's motivation and how they see the plan of redemption.  The grace-renewal of this radically changes a person's desires and how they live.  This type of gospel battles the idol of religion & legalism, common in our churches.

This gospel fills Christians with humility and hope, meekness and boldness, in a unique way. The biblical gospel differs markedly from traditional religions as well as from secularism. Religions operate on the principle: “I obey, therefore I am accepted,” but the gospel principle is: “I am accepted through Christ, therefore I obey.” So the gospel differs from both irreligion and religion. You can seek to be your own “lord and savior” by breaking the law of God, but you can also do so by keeping the law in order to earn your salvation.

3.  A Missional posture towards the culture (Situational) - The idea of being missional is now everywhere.  People realize, sin is not a disease we can catch.  We are called to be in not of the world.  (Yet if #1 & 2 aren't what drive the mission, it will have less or little impact.)  Being on mission also moves past the self-obsessed depressive culture we swim in to be radically other-centered.  It is a natural outflow of the first two points being lived out.

We want to be a church that not only gives support to individual Christians in their personal walks with God, but one that also shapes them into the alternative human society God creates by his Word and Spirit.

A church that embodies all three of these is part of the Gospel Awakening that is taking place.  The Gospel Coalition states (Also read The Error of the Uniperspectival Church ):

"The ministry we have outlined is relatively rare. There are many seeker-driven churches that help many people find Christ. There are many churches seeking to engage the culture through political activism. There is a fast-growing charismatic movement with emphasis on glorious, passionate, corporate worship. There are many congregations with strong concern for doctrinal rigor and purity and who work very hard to keep themselves separate from the world. There are many churches with a radical commitment to the poor and marginalized."

More and more, churches and leaders will be challenged to re-think how they are being the church through the broader lens of the Gospel.  Is it part of a larger transformation that will lead to The Gospel Awakening?  Only time will tell….

A while back I recall seeing the Did You Know? Shift Happens video and wanted to create one for church planting and the state of the church in America. So here it is, just in time for us to celebrate July 4th Americans! (I've compiled statistics from a variety of sources such as Planting Missional Churches, Christianity Today, Barna, stuff from Tim Keller and other books. All-in-all I hope it is a powerful call to the church to support church planting. If you are interested in the statistics, they are all located at Church Planting Resources: The State of the Church in the U.S.) Enjoy.  Watch Church Planting in a Post-Christian U.S. >

UPDATE: I've had several requests, so a Quicktime file is available for download at Church Planting Resources .

As more churches & leaders begin to use triperspectivalism as a philosophy of ministry, there are a few dangers I wanted to warn against (these came up in an elder meeting at Kaleo):

Personality Test  - One of the dangers of triperspectivalism is using it as a personality test.  eg. "Oh, you are emotional, you must be a Priest."  This type of stereotyping is not only limiting, but also harmful.  As Christians we must hold to a 'already/not yet' tension in our understanding of self.  While, because we are not perfect, so that certainly there are areas we will tend to be weak in, it is crucial for people to know that Jesus Christ was the PERFECT Prophet, Priest & King on our behalf and has given us that identity.  If we have an area of weakness we can look to him, who is perfect in our weakness.  This also means that we cannot 'work' to grow in areas without it being done in a gospel/grace renewal by God.  

Reductionism - A second danger is defeating the very triperspectival emphasis by not seeing all three elements as co-existing.  I have seen people emphasize one area in such a way to eliminate the other two perspectives.  All three must be held together at all times.  For example, a counselor isn't just be a Priestly function, it must be grounded in God's Word (Prophet) and the counsel needs to be applied to a person's life (King).  

A word of caution is to know your audience when using triperpectivalism.  It may be something you reserve for people in leadership who won't be confused or prone to slip into one of the above errors because they understand the broader context of it's usage.  

View previous articles on triperspectivalism. 

At the Acts 29 conference Ed Stetzer spoke on the history of the word missional which traces it's origins from three streams of thoughts: missio dei, missionary & mission.  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.   I thought I'd share a few thoughts from his presentation framing missional from a triperspectival view:

Missio Dei (Normative) - The Mission of God is the reality of why the church is on mission.  It is bigger than the mission of the church, yet the church is central to this mission.  Why is this important?  One danger of the emerging church is that they can reject the Biblical call of the church as the central place of mission (situational) and therefore see their call to be missional only from the Missio Dei perspective.  This error is no different than a Calvinist who rejects a call of proclaiming the gospel (existential/situational) to the lost because the doctrine of election (normative).  Stetzer provided one example where a missionary group helped fund the over-throw of a government as part of their missio dei understanding of being missional.  The clearest picture of the missio dei that we have is from the Bible.

Missionary (Existential) - As part of God's mission, he changes the heart and identity of people.  This conversion includes becoming a person who is sent on mission. Our identity also changes into being citizens of the Kingdom of God, which is both already & not yet.  A sense of Missional that stems from missionary can lead to para-church ministries and 'lone-wolf' evangelism that doesn't truly reflect the unity of the church as the family of God or the bride of Christ.

Mission (Situational) - The church exists for God and for others.  At the center of our identity is being a people on mission to the world around us.  This mission includes evangelism, mercy ministries and other tangible signs pointing to the Kingdom of God.  It is in this situation we see being missional as an outflow of our lives in all situations to reflect the glory of God.

We must see all three working together so that being 'missional' means that we are participating in God's mission as He intends as a collective group of missionaries on mission to this world.  Any reductionism of this can and may lead to errors which include uniperspectival churches (great post by David you need to read) and people with limited views of the church as God's agent of mission. 

It was on July 1st, 2004 that I made my first post @ Goodmanson.com.  In the last 3 years there have been hundreds of posts and thousands of comments.   To celebrate:

1. I loaded up a new website design.

2. I re-organized the Article page based on categories for the top posts. Now you can find posts based on categories like the Gospel & Self,  Church, Mission & Ecclesiology, Church Planting & Ministry, Technology & the Church or The Future Church.

Thanks for participating in the conversation…

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…

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).

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.

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.