The Missional Journey

Last Monday after class, Cindy, Jeff, Pete, Theresa and myself went out for coffee and to talk. I have been thinking a lot lately about what we are about to do here at the church. Back in December I felt that we were supposed to get back to what the original vision of this place was. We were going to plant a missional church. We were going to have an emergent flair to what we looked like. I even took some heat from some of the local leaders here about doing it (comments about how a friend of a friend of a friend knew someone who once met a person who went to Todd Hunter's church and how we REALLY didn't want to do that now, do we?) Well, we did want to do that, and we were going to do that, but we ended up taking over a church instead. One thing led to another and we didn't do it. Well, now is the time to do it.

It always seems like when this group gets together, I get in trouble. Not from them and not because they cause trouble (it has been a long time since we got kicked out of Bakers Square for throwing pie, but I digress). No, I take heat from other people within the church because I talk to them more then I talk to the people who are complaining (hmmmm, I wonder if there is something to that, but once again, I digress) So, back to my story....

We got together and I told a story. I started to think about the times in my life when I felt like I walking totally in the will of God. Then it hit me. I was in collage. I was working with the TEC retreat program within the Catholic Youth Office in Chicago. Now it had nothing to do with TEC, it had nothing to do with the CYO, what it had to do was with the people I was working with. For about a seven year period a group of us did ministry with a passion. We were working with the kids through TEC, but it went beyond that. We were working together, whatever one of us needed, we all did. We played music at each others churches, we prayed together, we ate together, some of us even married each other. Amazingly, very few of us lived near each other. We were scattered all over Chicagoland. We all had different jobs or went to different Universities. But somehow, our lives were always intertwined. And it was more then a friendship. It was all about God. Our lives were intertwined around each other and around Christ. When we got together we joked and laughed, but we always were ready for whatever God was wanting to do. And we usually did it. It was a powerful time of my life. We preached the gospel (even in a Catholic setting) and we saw lives changed.

That memory affected me this week. Cindy and I received a prophetic word from John Paul Jackson back in 2001. It went something like this: "Leadership, leadership, leadership, stop being reluctant and follow me. Leadership, leadership, leadership. The giftings and callings of the Lord are irrevocable. I will restore the ministry of your youth so that the mockers and the scoffers will be quieted. I will give you gifts so that you will know and that they will know that I am God. Leadership, leadership, leadership." (Or something like that.) We always looked at that word as a "go" word, that we were being restored and we were about to get sent. Looking back, both were the case. The one part of the word that has always confused Cindy and I was the part about the ministry of our youth. I was not saved in my youth....she was a punk rocker in her youth. And then on Monday afternoon it hit me. TEC. Not that we would be doing the retreat again, but that we would be active in a community again like that one. It caused me to shutter and almost cry. It has been a long time since we did that. I did not realize how much I missed that community.

So I pulled together the people that I am closest with here. Jeff, Theresa, Pete and of course my wife. I would have loved Alice to be there, but it was late, and Josiah needed to be in bed. I told them a very brief version of the above story and then asked them what kind of church did they want to be a part of. We went on for about two hours. I really don't know what this will look like when we get there, but for the first time since we moved back to Illinois, I know we are on the road. I am really excited.

I have been blogging for four years now. I'm hoping to document the journey right here. It is my prayer that there are more then five of us on this journey. It is my prayer that most of the church joins us, leaving the idea of belonging to a church and instead becoming the church. It is time to become missional.

Oh yeah, it has been a long time since I was in contact with any of those people from my youth. Dave, Gabe, Keith, Dan, Sue, Anita, Cathlene and Andrea. If any of you are out there and happen to come across this, shoot me an e-mail. We should get together sometime over at "Jim and Pete's" for pizza and some good memories! :)

Small Groups Revisited

I was sitting in a restaurant here in DeKalb a week or so ago talking with Pete about our small groups. One thing led to another and we came up with this interesting concept. Traditionally, the way that you start new small groups is that you find a "small group leader" and have them begin to recruit members for their small group. This leader can (in a perfect world) come from a successful small group and take a few of the members of the old small group with them to jump start the new group. If your lucky, the pastor will say something on Sunday morning to "plug" the new group and hopefully stir some interest.

In this model small groups have a tremendous importance within the church. It is the place where you take the people who are coming on Sunday morning and plug them in. Getting them in the small group is fruitful in two ways. First, they get discipled better in a small group environment, and second, you see a greater buy in to the church. You move people from just casual attenders to tithe giving, children church volunteering members. That's the theory, and that is just what every pastor in the world wants. People who in love with and are plugged into their church. Most of us have been told over and over again about how important this model is and how we NEED it in our church. All successful churches have strong small group ministries. We must also have a strong small group ministry to be a successful church.

Needless to say, if I judge our church by that model we would be considered a failure. Now it's not that I don't want small groups. It's not that I have not encouraged the church to join them. It's not that I'm not willing to invest in them. It just seems that most of the people that we have are not interested in them. They come to church, they do their thing and an additional night is a hassle. What's a pastor to do. I've read the books, I've taken the classes, I've listened to the tapes and yet we only have three small groups. It can get really depressing. That is until I came to this conclusion: this is a great model, assuming that you have people who want to be plugged in and that you have a Sunday service that regularly generates new people who are hungry for relationships and discipleship. Unfortunately, that is not us.


So Pete and I started talking about the small groups and about how we should take the three that we have now and make them more missional. Remember, missional community...that was the thing that I wanted to be a part of when I came here four years ago...that is the thing that we have not done. So if we could only get our small groups to think missionally, all of our problems would be solved, right?

Well, not really. The model that we are so used to doing is not a missional model. It is a Sunday School model. It's just an over glorified bible study. No, what we need to do is not just get our small group leaders to think misionally, we need to make our small groups missional. So, here's the thought...

What if we planted small groups the way we planted churches. So we look at our community - Northern DeKalb County - and we mapped it out. We asked the question, where would a good place to have a small group. Let's say for example, we focus on Genoa. So, we find someone who is willing to lead that group. They do not have to live in the area (although it would help), they would just have to commit to lead the group. The leader could start praying about the area, perhaps going up there and connecting with some people there (you know, got to some restaurants, stores, whatever....talk to people). Then we go up there as a church. Perhaps we do some servant evangelism up there, try to stir something up. Tell the people we are planing on starting a group up there and see what happens. We only need three or four people to be interested to start a group (and if one of them would be willing to host, all the better.) So the group starts first, and then the people start coming to Sunday morning. The group becomes the focus (since that is where they were introduced to the church.) And since a small group can be less intimidating, they invite their friends to the group....and so on , and so on. Kinda far fetched? How do you think we are going to plant the new church in San Juan?

I'm not sure if this will work or not, but I'm going to give it a shot. What's the worse that can happen? No one responds? Oh well, at least we tried to stir something up. Who knows, maybe the small group becomes a church one day. Or is the small group supposed to be the church today?

That's a thought for another day...

Da Bears

Ok, I'm a big Bears fan, and yes, I'm rooting for them this weekend, and yes, I think that they can win. But it seems like the only people who are picking the Bears are those of us who live around here. I really thought that way until I read this:

It's not just the city of Chicago that loves the Bears.The Super Bowl Formula wholeheartedly embraces them, too.The formula I unveiled in January 1990 uses a variety of regular-season statistics to predict Super Bowl winners. At the time it was created, those numbers would produce the right answer for 20 of the 23 Super Bowls that had been played.

Thank you Tim Cowlishaw of the Dallas Morning News. Some one outside of Chicago believes in these guys. I finally feel vindicated!

100th Post

Hey - this is my 100th post! It is had to believe that I have been doing this since 2003 (See first post here.) There have been HUGE gaps in posts, and I should have gotten to 100 a little faster then 3 1/2 years, but wow...100 posts. I've never kept a paper journal this long! While I'm posting this, I've got some Worship Circle running in the background. Kinda gets me sentimental....remembering why I'm doing all this. Here are the lyrics of my favorite song from them.....kinda says it all:

If I lift your name up high
Will you draw me to your side
I just can't make it one more night
Without your kiss

I wait still, Lord come and fill
This emptiness is more then I can stand
I lift my eyes, my voice to the skies
Return me to my first love once again

Lord, I fall down on my knees
Only you can rescue me
I find that I am so in need
Wrap me in your Presence

I wait still, Lord come and fill
This emptiness is more then I can stand
I lift my eyes, my voice to the skies
Return me to my first love once again

mp3 link

Links Updates

Well, I finally got around to updating some of my links there on the right. I had to drop four links due to inactivity (Todd Hunter - please start blogging again....PLEASE!) as well as updating one link. Not too bad considering that I have been meaning to do it for over a year now!

Five Streams of the Emerging Church

Scot McKnight has a great article in this month Christianity Today about the different streams within the Emerging Church. Good read.

What if we do nothing....

"So, what happens if we do nothing? If we simply sit in the knowledge that we are in Christ with some thought that whatever God wants to happen will somehow mysteriously happen just because HE wants it to? My answer is, very little. Very little will happen in us that will lead to any kind of real transformation into the Image of Christ. Whatever faith or strength we had would relatively soon fade, become washed-out and colorless. There are more analogies than I know that you could lay over this thing - the muscles would "grow" weaker, smaller and eventually would be useless. The fire would burn for a while but then would "grow" smaller, colder and eventually all the fuel would burn up or all the oxygen would disappear and the fire would go out. However you want to look at it, it's not good."

Church Growth

I've been giving a lot of thought to church growth lately. There always seems to be a big push from our regional leadership regarding church growth. It seems like the size of a church determines if it is successful or not. Truly a corporate view of what church should be. This view infuriates me. I struggle with the concept that the only thing that counts is the size that you are. I always thought that it was obedience that got you the "good and faithful servant" complement, not the size of your church. I am now, and always will be against the concept of church grow as a measure of success or failure as well as for growth by any means.

With that said, I have been thinking a lot lately about growth. Even though it may seem like I'm contradicting myself, we need to grow as a church. We are struggling. And I know that growth is not the end all solution, but we really need some more leaders in this place. The pool of people that we have that has either the ability, potential or willingness to lead is small. We have been focusing over the past month or so on community, but I'm getting convicted that we might spend so much time on loving each other that we will forget about loving everyone else!

I think that one of the callings of this church was that we are to be a Missional Community. Over the past four years I'm not sure that we have been either missional or a community. I have also felt that we are supposed to be different somehow. Yesterday, at the Vineyard area meeting, one of the pastors who had been on a sabbatical for the past six months made an interesting observation. He had visited several different churches in his area and around the country during his time off. He said that it did not matter what the denomination or tradition he was visiting, they all fell into one of three categories. They were either liturgical (like a Lutheran church he visited), they followed the Willow Creek model (a song lead by a group of singers, a skit, then a topical message) or they did 30 minutes of worship followed by a message (the only difference being where the announcements were placed). He said there was nothing original, it had all become homogeneous.

That is the issue that I am dealing with today. For as cool and hip as we think we are, we are just like tradition three, with the addition of a coffee break (ooooh....doesn't that just scream "hip"). All the models, all the programs, all the books speak about the same thing. How to evangelize is how to grow the church. But if the product is all the same, are we not just developing a consumer base that is just shopping for what makes them feel better, or what sounds better. Where is the faith in that? Are we not just spending more time "evangelizing" the church hopper instead of actually going after the lost? How do we become the church that Jesus has envisioned for us to be without selling out to the 10 easy steps to become big and successful? How do we become a Missional Church not just in word, but in action?

More later...

Out of Africa

Anita Frederick from the Oak Park Vineyard has kept a blog of her trip in Africa...quite fascinating.

Worldometers

Found this link on accident (I was looking for information on our Electric Meter). It is a real time counter for different statistics world wide. Stuff like population, births, deaths. Take a look at the health section....the abortion numbers were mind-boggling.