Main Session 3 - On the Verge: Get It - Reggie McNeal

We have too many church planters. People say, “I feel called to plant a church.” Reggie, “I doubt it.” I know because they said “A church.”

Domains in society – horizontal columns - Politics, education, medical, social, business, arts, church – we invite people to our slice or silo subculture. And the only way we typically even engage the other slices is to lob missiles into them.

Church as a separate silo is Tower of Babel building – come join our tower and we’ll take you to heaven. Look at the church as being deployed all across and throughout these cultural slices.

Don’t plant A church, plant THE church.

Release people into all of society. Set loose the Christian politicians (both of them, I know I’m being generous), educators, business leaders, society leaders, medical professionals, artists and entertainers, etc.

Church – think who not what. It is a way of being in the world, not something I go to. I church at work, I church at home, I church on the athletic field, I church at worship. Everything where you are, the church is.

There are millions of people that will not accommodate their life rhythms to match our congregational modality which is the only way church shows up in our culture.

It’s going to take people like you to connect with folks that are never going to come to us.

City serve initiatives are a starting point for deploying Christians throughout our region and culture. But simply a starting point. How can we begin to equip and release people in their professions and communities to be the church there?

There are more Baptist congregations in SC than elementary schools. Just the Baptist churches in SC could adopt every elementary school in the state.

Good Samaritan is Jesus tool to move church people. Everybody in that parable met their scorecard objective and a clear conscience.

Jesus said, I’ve come to bring you life and life abundant. What if he was telling the truth and not just making Scripture.

Moving from a church centric-view to a Kingdom-centric view.

People will do what we make a big deal of.

Change the scorecard.

Change the language. Language will change the culture. We need to watch what we say.

When we say, “come to church” we’ve already created the wrong culture.

Missional communities are the missionary living incarnationally in a neighborhood or community.

Community of missionaries where the community comes together to support the individuals serving as missionary in their callings (social worker, nurse, attorney, politician).

If you want to plant THE church, begin to strategize how you can realize a network of missional communities in every crack and crevice of culture, how you can mobilize the existing church community to serve the community around us.

In Revelation, there is no church in the city. It is because God is with his people, the Kingdom, the Bride. There is no individual church. Jesus prayed, your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Main Session 3 - On the Verge: Get It - Michael Frost

Diana and Charles at engagement announcement, reporter asked Charles are you in love. Charles, “I suppose so, whatever love is.”

We need to be loved.

We have church leaders and planters that are not ready to love and care for their city. We’re like the spouse who says, of course I love him/her, I married them didn’t I?

Being missional is like getting married. Being incarnational is like making love.

It’s not enough to say, of course we love you, we planted a church for you. We have to court, love, and express love to our cities.

Practices:

1)      We need to adopt a posture of listening to the neighborhood/community/region/city that we’ve been sent. Instead, now we give them the programs we think they need. Let’s listen to them and then figure out what we can do to incarnate the gospel in that culture. Jesus asked the blind man, what is it that you want from me? When was the last time we asked our community/county/city what they want/need?

2)      Be prepared to serve. Be prepared to follow through on what it is that they’ve asked for. We are the sent ones, not because we’re better than you. But simply because we have been loved, forgiven, and set free by Jesus and sent to you.

a.       Eat in local cafes and shop in shops.

b.      Meet with community leaders.

c.       Say yes to invitations to sit down with anyone.

3)      Be loyal to your city/community/neighborhood. We are here and we’ll be here to help no matter what comes. In sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, ‘til death do us part. Nobody is more transient than American Christian church leaders. We’re like rolling stones that gather no moss. Incarnational mission is covered with moss.

Mission of God is telling our world that our God reigns through Christ.

Unexplained actions are not missional and undemonstrated announcement is not the gospel either.

Go and open people’s eyes to the reign and rule of God in people’s lives and watch church result.

Workship 3 - The Future of Church Strategy - Will Mancini and David Saathoff

The Future of Church Strategy led by David Saathoff & Will Mancini  Every church operates in one of three strategies; "More is more," "less is more," and "to be is more."  Learn not only how strategies are shifting over time, but the most important insight behind any ministry design as you lead your way into the future.  David Saathoff is the Lead Pastor at Bandera Road City Church - a church with 6,000 in attendance that he planted 18 years ago. (AP 1)

Will Mancini - Clarity isn’t everything but it changes everything.

Future of Church Strategy

1)      More is More Strategy

2)      Less is More Strategy

3)      To Be is More Strategy

Five Irreducible Questions of Clarity

What are we doing? (right side of vision frame) – mission or missional mandate, the church of God doesn’t have a mission, the mission of God has a church.

Why are we doing it? (left side of vision frame) – ethos, values, culture, collective soul, missional motives that drive culture

How are we doing it? How do we do what we do? (bottom of vision frame) strategy - we have lost the ability to distinguish means and ends. Can our top 12 leaders draw on a napkin how you accomplish your mission at the broadest level? This is where Joe goes. This is assimilation into body/programs/environments.

When are we successful? (top of the frame) define the WIN! – attendance, buildings, and cash or something else. If we aren’t clear about the outputs, then we measure strategy. We need to measure output and not strategy. Programs don’t attract people, people attract people. People who own the strategy cannot be entrusted with quality control. This is what Joe becomes. This is Jesus assimilating into people.

Where is God taking us?

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David Saathoff – Bandera Road City Church

Guy says to him. Church is really different than when I grew up. My wife is really a good Christian because she is so involved. (attends every week, multiple groups, office volunteer, serves in children’s ministry on Sundays). He can’t be that involved so he can never be as good of a Christian.

Strategy – we want people to come to our environments and accomplishing that means we are successful. Activity is not success.

Jesus healed on the Sabbath, had a conversation with Pharisees. Asked the question, was man made for the Sabbath or was the Sabbath made for man?

Was man made for church or was church made for man?

Why does our church exist?

Ephesians 4:11-13 – God gave responsibilities to church apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers to EQUIP THE PEOPLE for the work of ministry. The word equip is the same Greek word for when Jesus saw Peter, James, and John while they were “mending” their nets. We want to network people together so that they can catch fish.

Our goal is to equip people for mission – to be something in the world.

Right now many of us equip people to serve the organizations needs rather than equip them to be on mission.

20% of the people do 80% of the work and give 80% of the money. We get upset with the other 80% of the people. We have created some of this 20/80 problem. (At Mountain, we’d need to have 4500 volunteer roles. We don’t have 4500 volunteer roles in our organization.) We need to release people to be on mission but some of those may be roles that are not easily measured. Centrifugal force - out, centripetal force – in (toilet)

How? – moving people from bucket to bucket to bucket (typically linear). Future of the church is going to be more non-linear.

Why do we tell people that are seekers wanting to go serve on a mission trip that they can’t go because they are not at that point in the process? Does our culture/strategy prevent the desired outcomes by forcing linear?

How we reach out to people and the future strategy of our church will likely mean less linear processes.

You cannot photocopy someone else’s strategy.

We may have 2-3 buckets to assimilate people through and equip them with. What are they?

People don’t come every week. BRCC discovered that on average, they have less than 1 bucket per week. They have 1+ bucket every other week. They discovered that really they have a one step strategy which has to equip and inspire them to live on mission.

Our staff is likely being measured by how many people are coming to their programs not on life change or whether people are living on mission.

New metric is story.

7 how we live practices – Vital Signs

1)      Listen to God – through word, spirit, and prayer

2)      Be the church – intentionally serving the needs around us

3)      Share a meal – investing in the lives of people far from God and inviting them to join you on the journey

4)      Peal the onion – address the layers of junk in our lives, spiritual transformation. Disciplines are important but they aren’t everything. Psalm 129:23-24

5)      Downsize to maximize – simplify our financial lives to maximize our participation in God’s efforts in the world.

6)      Keep your passport current – we want to mobilize people to be ready to go be the church around the world

7)      Lean towards green – we want to be good stewards of the world and environment that God has given us.

Don’t get permission – get busy with the mission of God lived out in you.

Exponential - Main Session 2 - On the Verge: See it - Rob Wegner

For a missional movement, we have to see it before we will get it or do it.

Jesus sees us advancing as a revolutionary, freeing force that recaptures the kingdoms of darkness.

Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open it up and here’s the people. The devil thought up this memory device. It identifies the church as a place, or a destination event.

We are the church. It is not an event or destination, but an everyday mission.

Optometrist – new lenses clicking in place until we can see clearly.

Traditional ecclesiology – location with centripetal force pulling people attractionally towards it.

Three overlapping circles (Collins – hedgehog image)

Church growth efforts brought helpful missiology inside this existing box and we did it better which led to exceptional growth within our traditional ecclesiology.

Granger hearts began to change and we began to see the church being sent out into our city and around the world. Incarnational mission.

Difference between missional activity and a missional lifestyle. Repeated missional activity can lead to a missional lifestyle or missional activity can be an occasional effort to check a box or get an annual rush from a mission trip that doesn’t impact our everyday lives.

Incarnational Mission created a different direction of movement, an externally focused movement. People out there started asking, where’s this church that we keep hearing about (20-30 minutes away). Do we rent buses and bring them to us? If we tried to control it or centralize it, we would kill it. We said, God what you are doing over here is different. Let’s figure out how to be and gather the church there. Started Monroe Community Center out of former food pantry. Over time Mayor came and said crime had all but dried up since community center work began.

Multiplication Church Planting – Exponential

Started coaching leaders in India about multiplication, leadership development, missional ministry, started slow but then started exploding with growth. Within 18-24 months, 15 disciples going out, each pulling 15-20 disciples together and growing. Soon over 1000 churches were up and running. It was like the book of Acts all over again.

Overlap of three circles is Mission. It is the heart of the church, our mission, our missional energy and goal at every level.

God – what is it that we need to see, get, and do, individually and collectively, as the church?