Emergent Brethren

Here are some quotes worth sharing…

“Religious people have preferences; Missional people have stories” Bruce Wesley

“If you copy someone else’s vision, who will accomplish your’s?” unknown

“What causes exclusive community is fear. What causes inclusive community is love!” Hugh Halter

“If people aren’t asking about our lives, then we haven’t postured our faith well enough or long enough.” Hugh Halter

“The gospel is the tangible life of God flowing into every nook and cranny of our everyday life.” Hugh Halter

“People who only dream of community usually destroy it, but those who love people without expectation unknowingly create it.” Hugh Halter

“Missional people are individuals committed to forming their character and lifestyle after those of Christ and who are compelled to live out their faith in the context of a community.” Hugh Halter

I beleive that each local church is unique and is given a specific mission from God that falls into the overall larger mission that every church has to glorify God and make disciples (apprentices) of Jesus. One of the things that happens to many of us is that without a motivating vision that is unique to us… we jump from one idea to the next in the hopes that something will get us where we want to go. I confess that I am part of a movement of pastors in America that have hopped on the Conference bandwagon that we spend time at ministry conferences hearing what is happening in certain churches and then try to imitate that hoping that it will help us too! Doing this ignores the fact that God has made each church unique and called us to a unique purpose. God doesn’t mass produce his church… each church is unique. “If we copy someone else’s vision, who will accomplish ours?”

In his book Church Unique, Will Mancini shares a process that will help us identify our unique vision and then a framework to guide the living out of that vision.

We all know that vision is key to kingdom growth. I came to Community of Joy in 1999 and in the first 10 months we changed the name, cast a new vision, established core values, and empowered leaders to lead… and as a result saw phenomenal growth, but then about 10 months into our journey, we started to platuea and then decline until a year ago, when God provided a new ministry center for us in the form of a building we purchased and renovated. That process brought us together in a profound way and as a result, we experienced another growth spurt… now we are back to the level we were at in late 2000 when we began our first plateau. Interesting enough, we are now experiencing another plateau. Having been down that road before, I don’t want to go there again… that’s why I am calling our congregation to embark on a journey of clarifying vision and even considering partnering with one of Will Mancini’s Vision Navigators to help us do that.

One of the realities that we still face inspite of casting a new vision and having buy in… is that for most of our long term core folks… the motivating vision for them is still to become a self-supporting autonomous congregation that has it’s own building and meets it’s budget, pays it’s mortgage on time and experiences modest growth. But that really isn’t much of a vision and certainly not one that we need God’s help to accomplish!

Besides, the church is a by-product of a motivating vision not the focus of vision. Being the incarnational/ missional people of God who are sent into the world to share God’s love with the world and invite people to join in the journey is the overarching vision we have and if we can live out that in specific and unique ways, people will be drawn to the journey and the church will grow.

During these past two weeks, I have read 6 books that deal with the Emerging/Missional Church… There was Exiles by Michael Frost, followed by The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch and then Breaking the Missional Code By Ed Stetzer and David Putman followed by Breaking the Discipleship Code by David Putman and finally the two books that I want to recommend to you… Church Unique: How missional leaders cast vision, capture culture and create movement by Will Mancini (www.churchunique.com) and The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay.

I hope to do a blog entry later this week on both of these two books… but for now, until I get time to do more indepth … let me encourage you to look at these two books.

The Tangible Kingdom does the best job of any book I have read lately of setting the stage for understanding what exactly is going on in the big “crack” that we find ourselves in and then it pushes beyond that to suggest a process for becoming incarnational and missional in our everyday lives!

Church Unique recognizes that we jump on the conference bandwagon or the imitate church x bandwagon too often and neglect the uniqueness of our own churches. Will then sets forth a framework for discovering what our Kingdom Concept as he calls it is… what specifically God has called us to be and do and then helps frame that in a vision frame that brings clarity and accomplishment as well as advances the vision. I am so excited about the framework that he puts forth that I inquired about getting some help from a “vision navigator”. I hope to blog on this too shortly.

Anyone else read these books?

There is a blog conversation going on today about being a Missional Church… Just read a blog by Alan Hirsch where he ended with this statement, “Mission always sets our Agenda and Incarnation must always describe our Way.”

I think this is a VERY helpful thought! This is how I would say what Alan has said…The mission of God is our agenda as a church and being the hands and feet of Jesus is the way we do mission!

 Here is another blog about the whole Missional Church movement.

Any one familiar with Willow Creek’s new study out called Reveal?  It is not a bible study, but an assessment study.  I am interested in hearing more… don’t really want to buy it but would love to hear your thoughts?  Jeff… you probably should buy it and let us know what it is about!  It might be helpful stuff for some of the churches you work with.