Emergent Brethren

Hey all….sorry it has been so long for me in that I haven’t posted anything in such a very long time.  But I thought with our Annual Conference coming up and our meeting on the 14th I thought I would put a question out there that I am wrestling with currently.

It seems like in discussions around the Emerging Church as well as the Missional Church (sometimes these two expression go hand in hand, and sometimes they don’t….we at Veritas try to describe ourselves as an emerging missional community of faith) everything is about the urban setting.  It’s almost like “if you want to be emerging and missional you must live in an urban context.”  Have any of you run into the same thing?

My question is, is this right or can a community of faith be emerging and missional in the suburbs?  And if so, what does that look like?  This is a very personal issue with me as Kim and I look at what God is calling us to do and be in the very near future (I will share about it at AC).  Do we stay where we are (in the suburbs) or move into Lancaster city?  If we stay what does it look like to be emerging and missional in the burbs.  If we go to the city what does it look like to be emerging and missional in the city. 

Any thoughts, comments, etc.. would be greatly appreciated. 

Light the Night is a way to impact your community on the night of trick-or-treating with the message that Jesus is the light and that the light overcomes darkness.

We’ve done it for years now in different communities and have found it to be the single most attended event by the community hands down. Where we might get 2 to 20 people from the community to attend an on-site dinner, concert, VBS, or children’s event, we connected with 400 to 500 people through Light the Night last year.

The idea is to have one or more homes in the community host the event. It is critical that you do not have it on church property.

You put up a welcoming banner (preferably the same one is used by all the homes hosting no matter what church affiliation) and literally flood the home with light – bank lights, spot lights, Christmas light, every light object you can gather – and invite people on a night dedicated to evil and darkness to experience the light.

You have games (with candy or tickets for prizes), puppet shows (giving the message of the night), free food (cotton candy, hot dogs, popcorn, etc.), music, drawings, and gift bags with information about who is hosting the event.

The two great things for our churches have been that it is something that can pull in every person in the congregation to help with and that it meets people where they live – literally. We saw a lot of community building as parents stood around visiting with neighbors they may have never spoken to before while the kids ran around playing games. It has not been unusual to see parents literally dragging kids away to “finish trick-or-treating” only to return a few minutes later because kids knew a good thing when they saw it!

For ours, we put people into ministry teams: set up and tear down service team, evangelism team (they handed out the gift bags and were charged with simply talking to parents), intercession team (who prayed over the neighborhood and event site), administration/children’s team (who ran the games), administration/planning team and food service team.

A church in State College, PA, started Light the Night seven or eight years ago. The vision for it is to get all the churches in your community doing it to have the greatest impact. It’s one thing to know people go to church, it’s another to see home after home in your city proclaiming the message of Jesus.

Lisa G. Yoder & Gary D. Yoder
Grandview Church of the Brethren
S/C Indiana District

The Pacific Southwest District held their annual Spring Event recently. This year’s speaker was Dan Kimball. .

Dan was asked to speak on the topic, They Like Jesus But Not the Church. His presentation was one of the most engaging ones we’ve had in the history of this event. He began by talking about how most Christians live within a “Christian bubble”. They shop at Christian stores, listen to Christian music, fill their calendars with Christian activities (inside and outside their local church) and hang-out with their Christian friends. While some may think this is a great life-style, Dan points out how this isolates us from those whom Christ is calling us to reach. The more we are isolated from them, the less we understand how they think and what we might do to actually reach them. In his book by the same title he writes, “Christians are now the foreigners in a post Christian Culture and we have got to wake up to this reality. . .”

He continued his presentation by sharing how we need to think of ourselves as missionaries in our neighborhoods. He also writes in his book, “When missionaries enter another culture, they listen, learn, study the spiritual beliefs of the culture, and get a sense of what the cultures’ values are. They may try to discover what experiences this culture has had with Christians and what the people of the culture think of Christianity. Missionaries in a foreign culture don’t practice the faiths or embrace the spiritual beliefs of that culture, but they do respect them, since the missionaries are on the other cultures’ turf. . .”

For the rest of the presentation, he touched on the following points in his book of why people don’t like the church. Though we may not agree with the following points, Dan shares that these are the perceptions of what others have on the church.
1) The church is an organized religion with a political agenda.
2) The church is judgmental and negative.
3) The church is dominated by males and oppresses females.
4) The church is homophobic.
5) The church arrogantly claims all other religions are wrong.
6) The church is full of fundamentalists who take the whole Bible literally.

I met with Dan in February and the night before the event to help him understand who the Brethren are and what might best work in his presentation (I had seen it twice before.). Of this list, the idea that we oppress females isn’t true in this district. In fact the two largest churches have women as pastors. Since the PSWD has had difficulty in dealing with the homosexual conversation in years past, I encouraged him to touch on the topic, show the video interview he has, stress how we need to be hospitable to all people, and move on.

At this point of the day, his coffee really started kicking-in. After he shared his material on how others think of the church as homophobic, he asked, “How does this issue play-out in the Church of the Brethren? How do you deal with the issue?”. For a moment, fear kicked-in. We had people from open and affirming congregations and people from the other side of the issue both present. What happened over the next 45 minutes was totally a gift from God! Dan led a discussion where people lovingly and respectfully discussed the issue of gay and lesbian involvement in the church and how we should reach out and care for them. It was a totally amazing time!

If you or others struggle with evangelism or being missional, I would highly recommend his book. This material can be helpful in changing our attitudes towards those outside the church and give us understanding on how they might be thinking. Zondervan has also created a DVD curriculum to teach the materials in the book in 6 small group sessions. It also has sermon outlines and shorter video clips to play in a worship service.

It was great to be surprised and blessed by God at the PSWD Spring Event!

In the absence of a permanent Director of Congregational Life Ministries, I’ve been representing the Church of the Brethren at Evangelism Connections. This is a ecumenical group of eight denominations which discuss evangelism. The main project that they’ve accomplished and maintained is the website: www.evangelismconnections.org. At this site, members of the different denominations have contributed resources, writings, etc.

What do you think of the site? Do you think it ought to be linked to this website?

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Jeff Glass

Recently we shared lunch with some of the new attenders at our church as a way to get to know them and to introduce them to our church. 

 I thought I would share with you the process we use to empower ministries to begin…

Not a lot of hoops here (no permission necessary!), and no water for the fire… just gasoline. You see, I believe that as a pastor, it is my job to empower people to live out of their gifts and callings… we are all ministers when we say yes to Jesus… I am a pastor, but all who have said yes to Jesus are ministers.

At CoJ, to start a ministry a couple of simple things must take place. First, the ministry can’t violate our vision or core-values (see our webpage for those). Second, you must get a couple of other people who will join you in the venture as a team(I can’t think of a leader in the bible that acted on their own… Moses had Aaron, Paul had many co-horts, Jesus sent the disciples out in twos). Third, be able to raise the necessary funds at least of the first year… then we can talk about if it becomes a core ministry, adding it to the budget (however, doing so, deflates commitment to the ministry somewhat at lease further removes it). Fourth, be willing to evaluate the ministry periodically and adjust or let go of it. And you see, it’s just that easy.

Someone asked, “well, doesn’t that create an opportunity for things to run amuck?” I guess it may, but I like the way Gamialiel puts it in Acts… If God is in it, I can’t stop it, and if God is not in it, it will fail. (my translation of his words in Acts 5:38-39).