Church Planter Evaluation

Here is a simple (20 question) church planter readiness test from Redeemer Presbyterian church. It asks pretty good questions.

HRC 2006

On January 27 & 28, we had our 3rd annual Healthy Reproducing Churches conference in Champaign, IL. About 70 people came from 7 church plants and 1 traditional church with an emerging type pastor. Lance Ford from Glocalnet came and spoke and did a good job introducing the people to the concepts of glocalnet -- church multiplication, community development, and nation building.


I uploaded some pictures to Flikr.com. You can access them by going to http://www.flickr.com/photos/midwestplanting/.

Churches Planting Churches

Bob Roberts talks about how networks are good, but the real power is in churches planting churches.

Friday I spent time with Brian Bloye at West Ridge Church. He has started his church planting school and using what we teach at NorthWood. He now has 14 or 15 guys in the program and projecting potentially 8 new churches next year! Way to go Brian!!!! He just entered his new worship center and now has around 4000 in attendance. But, he’s not obsessed with his new building and size--like many are--but with how he keeps his people praying, holy, reaching the lost, helping the poor in his area, planting churches, and engaging the world. As I walked with him on the campus and in the community, he was so quick to stop and visit with people along the way--and it was genuine--not fake. It’s obvious why God is blessing him.

I’ve longed for years for an emerging guy like him who has a rockin’ church to be just as obsessed with "the" rockin’ church and he is and it shows--not just his own bread box. These are 8 churches HIS CHURCH is planting--not his organization or network, but his church! This is as it should be. Networks are great but church planting movements come from church planting churches--not networks, organizations, or denomination (Though, I do belong to some)! And, he’s not doing just local work in the US or Global, but both--Glocal. If people only understood one feeds the other and you can’t fully do one without the other. There is no such thing as "when we get big enough or healthy enough." The only question is when we want to be the church bad enough. I look forward to the day when a church’s total attendance equals it’s attendance plus the attendance of all the churches it’s started and the number of churches in that count. That’s how church planting will change society because it’s viral and dispersed and decentralized.

Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life

Gil asked about Rob Bell:

I'm curious about this quote, from the review in the Kansas Post:
Bell also shakes up traditional evangelical beliefs. While calling Christ’s way “the best possible way to live,” Bell writes that Jesus did not claim one religion is better than another when he said he was “the way, the truth and the life.” Rather, he writes, “his way is the way to the depth of reality.”

I'm wondering what he means there?

I can't speak for Bell, but one thing I was looking for when exploring Bell was who he is connected with, while not foolproof, it can give a hint of where he is coming from. The one connection I found was Brian McLaren. McLaren said in his book A Generous Orthodoxy (fairly sure it was that book) that Jesus had no intent on setting up a religion. He came to be followed. Christianity developed as a religious movement, but McLaren suggest that a muslim wouldn't have to become a Christian to follow Jesus.

This certainly stretches past my comfort levels. But it has made me think. Being a Christian is being a follower of Christ. Being a part of the Christian religion is something else altogether. And I would agree that my initial and greatest goal for people would be that they begin to follow Christ. This is best done in the church.

To quote Brian McLaren, p 260, A Generous Orthodoxy, in chapter called Why I am Incarnational:

I must add, though , that I don't believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts. This will be hard, you say, and I agree. But frankly, it's not at all easy to be a follower of Jesus in many "Christian" religious contexts, either.

One place I have struggled with this is with a friend of mine who leans Catholic (he was raised Catholic and longs to return to Catholic). As we talk, he talks of the Catholic Church as THE authority for the church on earth. As a Protestant (or post-protestant as McLaren says, "I'm no longer protesting") I think, "I'm not under the authority of the Catholic Church." Denominations are so splintered and mainly because of their cultural contexts. McLaren is saying that our faith is lived out in a cultural context, which we call our church. What exactly does that have to look like? Most would answer, "No less than what our church looks like."

This may not have made as much sense as I hoped, but what gives me comfort not being part of the Authoritative Catholic church is that I am a follower of Christ, doing so in my own cultural context. It is hard to argue for the Biblical authority of the Churches of God General Conference any other way. (Or at least that I have considered.)

Rob Bell

I wanted to do a little background on some different names that are popping up in the emerging church circles. This is just internet search and some personal reading so these aren't meant to be full backgrounds. I just want to see where they are coming from and who they might be connected to.

Note he graduated from Wheaton and then Fuller.

From freep.com (whatever that is)

In Bell's envisioning of Christianity, he's also trying to bypass some of the feuds that have left many denominations deadlocked.

Women's ordination? No problem at Mars Hill. A third of the 15 associate pastors who work with Bell are women.

Homosexuality? Bell tells gay people the same thing he tells everyone who walks through the door. It's a powerfully affirming line that he repeated in his sermon on Sunday: "God loves you exactly as you are. Period."

The Rev. Brian McLaren, a pastor from Maryland who has become a national adviser to churches like Mars Hill, said: "Rob's one of the most courageous pastors in the country. What he's trying to do is move past the battle lines that have caused such polarization."

...

At the restaurant on Sunday night, Bell wiped a final bit of curry from his chin and said: "The bad thing about a lot of theology today is that it works like a box. The church draws a square box around itself and divides the world between people who are 'in' and 'out.' I don't think that's what Jesus intended. He saw the church as a journey we take together. That's what interests me: the exploration, the relationships, the excitement of trying to discover this together. All I'm doing is asking people to come along."

From Christianity Today

Ed Dobson says of Bell, "Rob is driven by a passion to teach the Bible, shaped by understanding the Bible in its context, then applying the Bible to where people live. At the core, he's about the Bible." It was with Dobson, at Calvary Church in Grand Rapids, that Bell served as associate pastor for three years before Calvary supported the launch of Bell's postmodern congregation. Today Bell is also heading Nooma (think pneuma), a ministry producing short dramatic videos of Bell's talks, shot MTV-style amid city streets, airports, and forests (www.nooma.com).

...

A preacher recently said to me that you cannot use history, because the more you learn about history, the more it will affect how you interpret the Scriptures. Yep. I hope so.

N.T. Wright says it this way, "Most people want to wake up in the morning with a general at the foot of their bed saying 'Go do this.' The problem is there's somebody at the foot of their bed saying, 'Once upon a time. . .'"

The "timeless truths" of Scripture emerge from real people in real places and a God who has all authority working in real time. So the more I know about the places and times, the more I understand God's authority.

Interview with Belief.net

He has a book coming out called Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. Here is a review.

He has a series of videos that can be used in worship called Nooma.

Bottomline: I'm pretty interested in what Rob Bell is doing. I've listened to his sermons online and they sound pretty good to me, but I'd really like to see what church looks like to them. I'm planning at some point soon going to Michigan and seeing firsthand.

Maxwell's New Book

I've seen this book advertised in Wired and Fast Company with the caption "Get Rich Quick." Is this where John Maxwell is headed?

Generous Orthodoxy Conference

A conference that at least peaks my interest.

Renovation of the Heart

Everything I've been reading and hearing lately seems to always refer to Dallas Willard. I had not read anything by Willard. Over vacation, I spotted a Dallas Willard book, Renovation of the Heart, at my sister-in-laws house. I asked if I could borrow it, and she said I could have it. Whoo Hoo!!

As I started the first chapter, I read this paragraph that I thought ought to be stamped onto the core value of everything Christian.

The revelution of Jesus is in the first place and continuously a revolution of the human heart or spirit. It did not and does not proceed by means of the formation of social instituions and laws, the outer forms of our existence, intending that these would then impose a good order of life upon people who come under their power. Rather, his is a revolution of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and to one another. It is one that changes their ideas, beliefs, feelings, and habits of choice, as well as their bodily tendencies and social relations. It penetrates to the deepest layers of their soul. External, social arrangements may be useful to this end, but they are not the end, nor are they a fundamental part of the means.

On the other hand, from those divinely renovated depths of the person, social structures will naturally be transformed so that "justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:24). Such streams cannot flow through corrupted souls. Conversely, a renovated "within" will not cooperate with public streams of unrighteousness. It will block them -- or die trying. It is the only thing that can do so.

...

The impotence of systems is a main reason why Jesus did not send his students out to start governments or even churches as we know them today, which always strongly convey some elements of a human system. They were, instead, to establish beachheads of his person, word, and power in the midst of a failing and futile humanity. They were to bring the presence of the kingdom and its King into every corner of human life simply by fully living in the kingdom with him.

Craig Blomberg's Review of Generous Orthodoxy

Full review here.

Here is the conclusion:

"But overall, I am far more enthusiastic about this volume than worried over it. What worries me are the growing numbers of people who are worried about it. What does this portend if not an ungenerous orthodoxy that draws ever-narrowing boundaries around what counts as authentic Christianity, thereby alienating even more onlookers from the very faith they already see as too judgmental and divisive? I recommend McLaren's work highly to anyone who cares about evangelizing postmoderns and about developing the kind of community in the church of Jesus Christ that our Lord himself seems to have desired."

What the Bleep Do We Know?

I want to see this independent film. I want to listen to where their hearts are, as opposed to immediately beginning to defend my faith.

Lately when I've talked to people "on the journey," as they explore their faith and even the path that they have walked with me, one guy in particular has questioned some of my firm ground. I think sincerely he has been talking about his own journey, which often should probably lead to their own path and their own journey (not away from Christ, don't get me wrong, just a different path, life, location, calling, ...) Anyway, I have had to take care to not be offended that he might be insinuating that my path is not THE path.