Good stuff.

Oh. My. Wow. Seriously, Ed?

Redeemer Church in Lubbock, Texas, recently invited Jonathan Dodson to speak at their Missional Living Conference. The conference was built around the Three Gospel Conversions based on Colossians 1:15-20. Those familiar with his talks at LEAD 09 will note that these new talks introduce a fresh theological and practical perspective on the Three Conversions. Both audio and video are available.

• The Gospel & American Christianity: This message deconstructs the dualism of American Christianity in order to reconstruct a whole Gospel around Jesus Christ as Lord.
• Community in American Christianity: This message demonstrates the communal character of the Gospel, unpacking very practical ways to cultivate “steady state community.”
• Everyday Mission in America: This message shows how mission is not optional but essential, spending considerable time on how to live "everyday life with gospel intentionality.”
• How a Church Renews a City: This message shows how Gospel communities on mission is God's design to renew cities.

These are fantastic. Especially the one on American Christianity.

It seems the Empire has fallen on hard times. Presumably to get finishing funds for his latest Death Star, Darth Vader—or a man pretending to be Darth Vader?—was reduced to robbing a bank on Long Island this morning. Impotent Rebel Alliance security forces tell Newsday (paywall) that Vader marched into a Chase bank in Setauket around 11:30 a.m. today. Brandishing a completely unnecessary handgun—as he had the power to choke the oxygen out every teller's throat—the fallen Jedi demanded cash.

It's unclear whether he also found their lack of faith disturbing, but one Rebel policeman says, "The teller complied with the robber's demands and gave him money from the drawer." Vader is described as 6 feet, 2 inches tall, also wearing camouflage pants, and was last seen boarding a starfighter headed in the direction of Long Island's sinister Sith stronghold, in Valley Stream. (Isn't this also where Improv Everywhere has their headquarters?) Below, a surveillance photo from the teller's point of view:

Bank robberies are not funny, but seriously.

I am currently at home sick with Strep Throat and an ear infection.  (Don’t worry, you can’t catch it through the computer.  I don’t think.)  I figured since I was on quarantine and it hurts so much to talk, I would address a few of the most common questions I/we have received since announcing we were planting Venture Church.  Many of you have asked where we are in the process and how you can get involved.  We are in the process of developing some tools that will allow us to communicate with everyone who wants to stay in the know about what God is doing in and through this birthing process.  Until then, I hope to address some of the more critical questions through Facebook, the website, and Twitter.

So, here we go!

Why does Montgomery need another church?

This has probably been the most common question we have received from Christians and non-Christians alike.  I have come to believe that the majority of people equate the number of buildings dedicated to Christian activity to the spiritual health of an area.  Hence, if you have six billion churches like Montgomery does, you must have a city that is on fire for Christ and therefore need no more churches.  

Here is a truth that we must understand.  We aren’t starting another church.  In fact, no one in Montgomery, or Alabama, or the United States, or the entire world has started another church for over 2,000 years.  There is only ONE church.  (Ephesians 4:4)  It is not our desire or our heart to help create or serve anything that detracts or hampers the ministry and the purpose of that one church.  As Christians, we have all been called into that one body.  Whether you serve or minister in a Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, or Baptist expression of the church, we are all children of the One True God and share the same life purpose of reflecting the glory of Christ.  

It is with this desire that we are called to lead a new expression of that one church.  An expression that does “church” differently.  There are churches in Montgomery who are doing fantastic ministry and are reaching the lost and leading them to become fully equipped and dedicated followers of Jesus.  We celebrate what the Holy Spirit is doing through them and pledge to come alongside them in the ministry of the Gospel. However, it is not our desire to simply do more of the same.  There are people groups and families in Montgomery who are not being reached with the Gospel.  If we continue using the same methods and structures, we will continue to fail in reaching these people.  The Kingdom needs new expressions of the Gospel to reach an emerging generation that places no value in church or the things of God.  We have to be willing to shift our methodologies and our strategies to meet them where they are.  To engage them in relationships that may lead them towards Jesus.

So, does Montgomery need just another church?  Absolutely not.  What Montgomery does need is Love, Grace, and Restoration.  It is our hope and prayer that God can use Venture Church to provide that.

Where are you in the process of launching?

We are currently in the process of building our core teams.  We have several families who have committed to being a part of Venture Church.  We have several others who are currently praying through coming on board in key leadership roles.  We are praying right now for God to send us strong leaders who feel called to the Gospel ministry.

We will start meeting weekly as a Launch Team on August 15th.  We will host these meetings at our house to begin with.  We will share a meal, pray and worship together, and begin building the foundational blocks that will become Venture Church.  There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into launching a new community, and we are looking for awesome people who want to be a part of something new.  If you are interested, please email me at VentureChurch@mac.com.

We have several events coming up soon.  We have NAMB Church Planting Basic Training on August 26th-28th.  This will be some foundational training that will hopefully better equip us in the nuts and bolts of getting Venture going.  We have a ton of shared vision, but the time has come to translate that vision into tangible systems.  This training will provide that framework.  We are so excited about our partnership with the Montgomery Baptist Association, the Alabama State Board of Missions, and the North American Mission Board.  They have been so encouraging and share our vision of seeing Gospel-centered churches planted throughout the world. 

We also have a church planter assessment for myself and Brit coming up soon.  This is a tool that will help us round out our team so that there is balance in the APEST gifting. (Ephesians 4:11)  Our goal is to have a solid, balanced leadership team that is on fire for Christ.  We have not set the date for this assessment, but it will probably be in early August.  We ask for you prayers for both of these events.

I will tackle a few more of these tomorrow, and I look forward to clarifying the vision of Venture Church.  For Christ and His Kingdom.

Joe

New blog post for Venture Church

Social Media

John Calvin wrote that the human heart is an idol factory. He was right.

Throughout history, we have bowed down to golden cattle, celestial beings, stone animals, and even human body parts. The passage of time has only increased the number of ways we exchange the worship of the One True God for lesser, false gods. Today, we can sadly add yet another idol to the list—social media.

Social media (blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), as technology, is neutral and harmless. Social media can and should be used for the glory of God and the advancement of the gospel in every possible way. But natural-born idolaters like you and me are no more than a few clicks away from making this good thing a god thing.

Tainted Meals

Social media carries a unique set of temptations. Much like the adulterous temptress described in Proverbs, social media offers us the invitation to come into her house and enjoy the choicest foods, only to find the meal poisoned.

The most dangerous of these tainted meals is pride. Few other creations in history have allowed us to see how "important" we and our thoughts are with such tantalizing immediacy as our blog and tweet stats. There are times we check our stats because we are more concerned with the applause of man than the affirmation of Jesus, and we forsake the true justification of who we are in the gospel for the false justification of who we are in the eyes of our followers. We do the opposite of what we set out to do in the first place; we serve ourselves instead of God and his people.

Check Your Hearts

Pride creeps in through tweets and status updates. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with mentioning where we are having lunch or who we are with, we would be well served by checking our hearts before we do. Are we sharing this information to give people a helpful window into our lives as we seek to live out the gospel, or are we unwittingly (or even quite wittingly) enticing our friends toward coveting the life we are living? Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth tweets.

So what's the answer?

1. Think before you post.

It sounds simple, but stopping to think about why we are about to do what we are about to do is an amazing sin-killing weapon. Use it and use it often. It has been a great help to me.

2. Consider "fasting" from social media for a season.

While this may seem extreme, in light of Jesus' counsel about tearing out our eye if it makes us sin (Matthew 5:29), fasting seems like the least we could do to expose the true condition of our hearts. If we are flatly unwilling to consider it, that tells us something.

3. Believe the gospel.

Make your solid theology soundly practical in daily life. If, when we are tempted to go to the fleeting approval of man to shore up our insecurities, we instead go to the approval of God that is ours in Christ, the approval unaffected by the abundance or absence of re-tweets, we, our followers, and the kingdom are better for it.

Calvin was right. The heart is an idol factory.

But at this intersection of technology and idolatry, pull the plug on the bad and keep the good.

Good stuff.

By Pastor Scott Thomas, President of Acts 29 Network

The Tension to be on Mission

The church in every generation is called to bring the good news of the kingdom into a spiritual encounter with the aspirations and challenges of that culture where it resides. Simply, believers are on a mission from God in their respective communities. To engage today's culture with the gospel requires the formation of a gospel community - the church of Jesus Christ - to be a visible representation, witness and engaging instrument of the sovereign outreaching hand of God in our culture. In many churches this may require a new vision, new ways of thinking, and new patterns of behavior (Matt. 9:16-17). This means pre-believers are encouraged to be included in the context of all of the church functions as they make small steps toward Christ (Luke 19:10).

Since we are in Christ, we have a missionary identity. We are adopted into a missionary family. We serve a missionary God. Mission becomes part of our identity, because our Father is a missionary God and we resemble Him as a child of God. So, the church is a missionary church, with missionary people, that do missionary things. It is who we are and it is also what we do. Mission is not something we tack on to the list of options as a Christian. To be Christian is to be on mission. It’s who we are and it is what we do.

Ten Characteristics of a Missional Church

1.     The missional church is committed to the authoritative, infallible, inerrant, inspired Scriptures (2 Tim. 3:14-17; Acts 2:42).

The authority of all missionary work is founded in the truth that God has a clear word to communicate to the world. The Bible’s authoritative word—not just the casual observance and even religious obeisance—guides the missional church toward understanding the person and work of Jesus throughout all of Scripture (Luke 24:44).

Although this is admittedly a unique description of missional, it cannot be an assumed reality. I think the distinguishing difference between emergent and emerging is the view of the Bible. I no longer use the words but to clarify, a missional (emerging) church is motivated by the words of God to proclaim the timeless gospel in a timely method. David Garrison said the one thing that keeps the reproduction of churches from fragmenting into a thousand heresies like a crack splintering across a car windshield is the authority of God’s word. Garrison believes this is one of the characteristics of every church planting movement.[1]

2.     Understands the centrality of the gospel expressed in all aspects of a person’s life (1 Cor. 15:1-4; 2:2; Gal. 6:14).

In Galatians 2:14, Paul deals with Peter’s racial pride and cowardice by saying their “conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel.” The Christian life is a process of renewing every dimension of our life—spiritual, psychological, corporate, social—by thinking, hoping, and living out the implications of the gospel. The gospel is to be applied to every area of thinking, feeling, relating, working, and behaving. The missional church is not dependant on programs or methods, but rather by the transforming power of the gospel. GOCN began with the indicator of a missional church as one that proclaims the gospel audibly and visibly. [2]  “Being gospel-centered means being both word-centered and mission-centered,” says Steve Timmis, Director of Acts 29 Western Europe. [3]  The gospel is not separated from the authority and effectiveness of the Word and is not devoid of practicing the gospel through mission living. It was Newbigin who described the local congregation as ‘the hermeneutic of the gospel’.[4] Newbigin’s idea is very simple: people understand the gospel by looking at the people of God. It is the church in time and space - the local church - that expresses the gospel and interprets it within its own cultural setting. 

Through the gospel, He rescues us from a life of self-serving mission to participate in a life of God-serving, Christ-glorifying mission. We are remade into missional people by the redeeming work of the Spirit and the Son.

[1] David Garrison, Church Planting Movements (Midlothian, VA: WIGTake Resources, 2003), p. 182.

[2] Empirical Indicators of a Missional Church, Gospel and Our Culture Newsletter ( http://www.gocn.org/resources/newsletters/1998/08/vol-10-no-3-september-1998 (accessed 10-18-09)

[3] Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2008), p. 33.

[4] Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1989)

Good stuff.

In an effort to stay relevant in American society, the Southern Baptist Convention has begun a new program called the Great Commission Resurgence to redouble its commitment to evangelism and church growth, giving 110%, instead of the 105% they had been giving during the past decades. As anyone that follows sports knows, 105% is the same as 10% and results in never winning, especially in church growth.

One of the main ways Southern Baptists have stayed relevant in American society is through their use of resolutions at their yearly convention. These resolutions bring debate over contentious and hot button issues to the masses and allow for Baptists to inform the world of how they feel about specific subjects, therefore “taking a stand” and “keeping it real” as they communicate the love and grace of God to a world in need of it (oh, and God’s wrath and judgment also).

During the past 100 years Southern Baptists have made the evening news with classic (I will give a Top 10 list of my favorite REAL resolutions later this week) resolutions like Boycott of Disney in 1996. This year, we have a few new resolutions destined to make future Baptists proud and the world go, huh?

Making sure the world knows where they stand on every issue; here are the Top 10 Resolutions for Discussion at 2010 Southern Baptist Convention in Orlando:

10. As previously mentioned in this blog: Resolution to Boycott “painter” Thomas Kinkade in light of his recent arrest for DUI.

9. As previously mentioned: Resolution to Invite Big 12 schools into the Southern Baptist Convention.

8. Resolution to add heavier menu items to Tea Party Rallies throughout the nation. Says Albert Mohler, “we know the Tea Party movement is largely led by Southern Baptists and their friends. However, we believe the idea of a tea party is fairly childish and effeminate and ask to add Fried Chicken and Macaroni Salad, along with sweet tea to the menu for all rallies. We are considering a proposal to change the name to Sweet Tea Party movement thereby reflecting an important segment of the demographic of this important movement.”

7. Resolution to add to the Baptist Faith in Message, 2000 an addendum explaining that, “while the offices of pastor and deacon are explicitly male, as spelled out clearly in Scripture, a woman may be elected President of the United States and hold that office with support of Southern Baptist voters, if she holds the following criteria: she is Republican, she is evangelical, she is pretty hot for her age, she is not married to a former president.” Current prohibitions for pastors and deacons are still in effect for all other women.

6. Resolution to ask Congress to consider changes to the military policy of “Don’t Ask: Don’t Tell.” While many are hoping for a different change of this policy, Southern Baptists are concerned than overturning it will lead to Baptist Chaplains right to free speech taken from them. They will no longer be able to name this sin if the US Military allows The Gays to serve with impunity. The SBC will resolve to change the policy to “Do Ask: Do Tell: Do Tell Them They Are Going to Hell.”

5. Resolution to ask the Gores to seek family counseling and repair their marriage. Says Mohler, “even as a godless Democrat who cares about the earth way too much, we want to see Al Gore and his wife live their lives together and hope and pray for their reconciliation.”

4. Resolution to encourage Lifeway to consider Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as central curriculum for Vacation Bible School in 2012.

3. Resolution to dismiss all Mayan and Hollywood claims the world will end in 2012 as bogus examples of New Age philosophy, paganism and postmodern hokum in which all Apocalyptic claims outside the parameters of Biblical literature are given a voice in our highly “spiritual but not religious” society of tolerance for all besides those giving the truth of Revelation. An addendum by Acts 29 Baptist pastors to reprimand John Cusack for his participation in this film, while praising him for all other roles was summarily dismissed by the Executive Committee.

2. Resolution to boycott Sex in the City 2 as not only an immoral film pushing promiscuity, alcoholism, hedonism and a homosexual agenda, but also an awful movie that was not even funny. We will consider a resolution condemning Transformers 3 next year for being even worse.

1. Resolution to commend Glenn Beck for standing up to the left-wing Sojourners organization and Jim Wallis and his insistence that Social Justice is a mark of Christianity. Social and Economic redistribution of resources, while a mark of the early church, are not central tenants of modern American Baptist Christianity and not within our Baptist Faith and Message, 2000. While churches may choose to give money and help to the poor, they are not to advocate politically except on issues of morality, such as abortion, taxation, Federalism, school vouchers, homosexuality, the 2^nd Amendment, Islamic invasions and the heredity of the President.

The resolution to ignore the Emerging Church movement as inconsequential and unworthy of discussion was tabled until 2011.

Hilarious.

Bring It Back – Church Planting and Corporate Renewal
By Tim Brister 

In May 2008, then president of the SBC Frank Page made a startling analysis. He asserted, “The Southern Baptist Convention is dying rapidly, and resistance to change could kill more than half the denomination’s churches by 2030.” That means the number of churches could number only 20,000—down from a total of more than 44,000 in less than 22 years. What leads Page to make such a catastrophic assessment? In part, Page explains, “Many Southern Baptist churches are small groups of white people who are holding on (until) the end. Not only have we not reached out to younger generations, but we have failed to reach out to other ethnic minorities who are all around us.”1

How do we reach the ethnic minorities and younger generations? We would argue the answer is a robust commitment to church planting. Not only would an aggressive church planting initiative counter the number of churches dying, but it would also bring a much needed revitalization and renewal to existing Baptist churches in North America. In his article, “Why Plant Churches?” Tim Keller makes the case,

“The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for (1) the numerical growth of the body of Christ in any city, and (2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in the city.”2

Keller explains that new residents “are almost always reached better by new congregations” as well as new socio-cultural groups. Additionally, a new church that is intentionally multi-ethnic from the start best reaches new racial groups in a community.3 The culture outside the church always changes quicker than the culture inside the church. Oftentimes tradition and ministry philosophy becomes so ingrained in the DNA of an established church that it becomes increasingly disconnected from the ever-changing community. New churches that are capable of contextualizing the gospel and engaging the culture evidence more from conversion growth than transfer growth. Keller explains the difference:

“The average new church gains most of its new members (60-80%) from the ranks of people who are not attending any worshipping body, while churches over 10-15 years of age gain 80-90% of new members by transfer from other congregations. This means that the average new congregation will bring 6-8 times more new people into the life of the Body of Christ than an older congregation of the same size.”4

Given the contrast between the growth of new churches and existing churches, one may be led to believe that church planting aversely affects existing churches. This, however, could not be further from the truth. Keller adds, “Strange as it may seem, the planting of new churches in a city is one of the very best ways to revitalize many older churches in the vicinity and renew the whole Body of Christ.”5 From all indications, the Southern Baptist Conventions is in a state where vigorous church planting and church revitalization are needed. The good news is that they are not opposed to one another but actually benefit from one another.

Steve Timmis and Tim Chester point out that “church planting puts mission at the heart of church and church at the heart of mission.”6 This is the need of the hour. To renew our churches through the intersection of mission and community in the outworking of church planting will result in more existing churches being renewed and recalibrated by the Great Commission. PLNTD seeks to encourage local churches to embrace the Great Commission by becoming church planting churches. We believe that when existing churches appreciate the overall health and prosperity of the kingdom of God instead of the typical turf mindset, the kind of renewal we asking God to bring in our day will also result in greater kingdom advance. We encourage you to join us for an aggressive vision to plant churches, anticipating renewal and revitalization to churches across North America.

_________________________
1 Douglas Baker, “Half of SBC Churches Could Die Before 2030, President Predicts.” The Baptist Standard (May 19, 2008).
2 Tim Keller, “Why Plant Churches?” (New York: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2002), 1.
3 Ibid., 2.
4 Ibid., 2-3.
5 Ibid., 3-4.
6 Steve Timmis and Tim Chester, Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 85.

Very accurate.