Emergent Brethren

I have been wading through the dense work that is “Thy Kingdom Connected”. I am struggling to figure out how the thoughts, words, and philosophy works itself out in my context. I am still working on that and will be for a while if not for as long as I’m alive. But as I sit here in Starbucks reading I came upon a great quote regarding how you evaluate the effectiveness of your faith community. And this has helped me, because last week I was struggling alot with trying to evaluate the community and was always coming back to the same old metric of numbers. Here is what I just read that is so helpful. Read this, ponder it, and wrestle with it.

“To determine how your church is doing, don’t gauge it by the individuals in your church, or even in comparison to what other churches are doing; go to God’s bigger narrative. How is your local faith community participating with God in God’s dream for the re-creation of heaven and earth? How is your church participating in the flourishing of God’s dream of abundant life for all?”

And so I need to ask myself, “How is Veritas currently participating with God in God’s dream? And how can Veritas begin to participate with God in God’s dream?” Those are two great questions that I will be wrestling with and also asking others within Veritas what they think.

I’ll be blogging later this week with more reflections from “Thy Kingdom Connected.”

Found this interesting article in Leadership online from Dan Kimball about using buildings missionally.

They can be outposts of mission, not just a drain on resources.
Dan Kimball

Sunday, November 29, 2009

If you had asked me eight years ago what I thought about church buildings, I would have said, “Who needs a building? The early church didn’t have buildings, and we don’t need them either!” But I was wrong.

My anti-building phase was a reaction to having seen so much money spent on church facilities, often for non-essential, luxury items. I was also reacting to a philosophy of ministry that treated church buildings like Disneyland; a place consumers gather for entertainment. But these abuses had caused me to unfairly dismiss the potential blessing of buildings as well.

Consider the building occupied by Compassion International in Colorado Springs. It has a well-groomed lawn with sprinkler system, an attractive sign, and an expansive parking lot. It’s a nice facility. But it’s more than just a building—it is the headquarters and training center for a ministry that brings physical and spiritual nourishment to more than one million children in 25 countries. The Compassion building is used for a missional purpose, not simply as a place for Christians to gather and consume religious services.

When we planted our church in 2004, we needed a place to meet. We found a very traditional church building that had a sizable “fellowship hall” originally used only for donuts and coffee on Sundays. Wanting to use the building differently, we converted the fellowship hall into a public coffee lounge featuring music and art from the outside community. The Abbey, as it’s now called, is open seven days a week and offers free internet access.

Just yesterday I was in The Abbey and saw about 20 people, not part of our congregation, studying and hanging out. (During finals week I counted 90 students packed into the place.) While there I talked to a brand new Christian who has been coming to our gatherings. He found out about our church from a Buddhist friend. His friend loves coming to The Abbey and recommended our church because he trusted us.

We’ve also used our building to serve our community in times of crisis. When wildfires forced nearby residents to flee their homes, our building became an overnight refuge for those without a place to stay.

These missional opportunities would not be possible without a building.

What about the sanctuary? When we first got the building, one person said the sanctuary “looked like a funeral parlor.” We sought to remake the worship space to express our congregation’s values of community, worship, and service.

First, we removed the pews. Looking at the back of peoples’ heads simply didn’t communicate our values of community and participation.

We also invited local artists to create images during our worship gatherings. These were then displayed in the space.

The only cross in the building was very small, so we brought in a huge iron cross as the visual focus of our worship space. This clearly communicated that Christ was at the center of our mission.

We lowered the large wooden pulpit in order to facilitate more relational teaching, and we added a prayer shawl over the podium to reinforce our frequent talks about the importance of prayer in changing lives.

Little by little the space that had been powerfully missional in the 1930s and ’40s was transformed to reflect missional values of the 21st century. In 20 years I’m sure the way these values are expressed will have changed again, and I hope the design of the sanctuary and fellowship hall will change accordingly.

What’s important is that our mission drives our aesthetics and our use of space.

Today I am incredibly thankful we have a building. It allows us meet in larger groups for worship, and it allows for training classes that equip people for mission. We also use our space all week and welcome the public into it.

So, I have recanted from my earlier belief that buildings drain resources and create consumer Christians. I was wrong. Now I see them as missionary centers to impact lives for the gospel.

So here is my question and assignment for you. If you had the opportunity to have a building or you already own a building, what types of things could you or do you do to use the building missionally and to not be a drain on resources? If you could design a building anyway you want to be a missional center, what would you do? What creative ways could you fund the designing of the space? Let me know your thoughts about the article and the questions.

Over the last 8 weeks, since we officially launched Veritas back on September 13, there have been so many things that have been exciting. The launch day, people visiting, new people becoming part of Veritas, alot of interest from various places, and the freedom to pursue missional kingdom life in a new way. One of the upcoming things that has me super excited is our Advent series called Advent Conspiracy.

Last year at Hempfield COB, I wrote an article for their newsletter about Advent Conspiracy. I knew then that our first Advent as Veritas, the church plant, that we would undertake our own Advent Conspiracy. And now that Advent will be here in a few short weeks, we are working on various plans for how Veritas will live out its own Advent Conspiracy.

Some of the ways we are going to live it out include:

Worship Gatherings: Over the course of 4 weeks (November 29-December 20) we will be covering 4 themes. The four themes are Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, Love All. Next week a few of us are getting together to plan our worship gatherings for those 4 sundays and I trust that this group will come up with awesome ideas to make our worship times interactive, experiential, visual, and meaningful.

Offering: The other week during our Leadership Team meeting our group decided that we will be giving 100% of our offerings for the 4 weeks to 2 different organizations: one local and one international. So each organization will receive 50% of our offerings from 4 weeks. The international ministry that we will be supporting is Living Water International (www.water.cc) and works on getting clean water for villages in third world countries. The local organization is still being decided but will either be Music For Everyone or possibly The Gathering Place, a local HIV/AIDS ministry in downtown Lancaster.

Interview: Just yesterday I received an e-mail from a reporter from CNN wanting to talk with me about Advent Conspiracy and what we as a church plant will be doing during those 4 weeks. I’m not sure where she got my information, but I am super-excited to talk with her about Veritas and our Advent Conspiracy plans. I called her this morning, and am waiting a return call. So if something happens with an article on CNN.com, I will post it here for all to read.

Anyway, may we all live out the Conspiracy to take Advent/Christmas back from the consumer holiday it has become and put it back to focusing on the infant King Jesus, who says, “Why do you go into debt to celebrate my birthday?”

I’m so excited about what God is and has been doing in and through Veritas the last few weeks. He has done exceedingly more than we can even dream or hope. I feel so blessed to be able to be involved in this new adventure in faith, mission, service, and worship. Here are some of the things that have me excited…

1. This past Sunday we had an amazing turn-out. Now we aren’t all about numbers…but it is awesome to see people coming and having interest. We had 41 people there and when you subtract a friend who brought her small church (I think there were 7 there), and 2 “friends” of Veritas….you get 32 people (including kids). Some of the 32 have been there all 3 weeks, some for 2 weeks, and about 8-10 visited for the first time this past Sunday. Two of the ones who have been there all 3 weeks are F&M college students and they are amazing. I met the one for lunch on Thursday and had a great conversation and I am meeting the other one tonight for coffee (and probably dinner for her). Another who has been there every week is an amazing artist, poet, and overall great person who gets what we are all about and probably travels 30 minutes or so to be with us each week.

2. The visitors who came on Sunday is another reason that I am excited. A couple came with their two children. The father is a friend from years back and is a drummer. He spied the Djembe sitting up front and asked if anyone was playing it… I said I normally did but he would be more than welcome. So he got up and played Djembe during the 1st musical worship set. They have been looking for a missional church to be involved with, and will be returning this Sunday. Another couple came because of our presence at Purple Door. This couple blew me away (the wife’s name is Trinity…instant connection). He is ex-Amish (which is a story I would love to hear) and she is an amazing artist. We have connected via Facebook and it looks like they will join us this coming Sunday.

3. Last evening we had our second worship planning session with 4 of us there. The ideas were flowing last night around our next series entitled “We have questions, do did they”. The thoughts, ideas, and comments that flew around the table last night was amazing. The synergy was evident and electric. I’m excited about the next sermon series.

4. This Sunday is Service Sunday where we go out into the community to seek to be a blessing. At this point we plan to walk through Marietta and pick up trash in various places (streets, parks, etc..) I will be calling the borough office tomorrow to see if there is anything we could do for them.

Anyway I am so excited about what is going on and the future of Veritas. And that’s why I had to write this because I am excited and I just can’t hide it….

Ryan Braught is a church planter who’s put many posts on this website. The church that he is planting, Veritas, is holding its first regular worship service this Sunday!

Here’s what Ryan wrote a few days ago for prayer requests:

1. Launch Sunday: Pray that God would be drawing people to come to the Launch Sunday. Pray that all the various details that need to be done this week will get done. Pray that everything would come together and that Sunday morning at 10:45 AM would be an amazing experience. Pray for those who come who are “true prospects” that they would feel welcomed, loved, and experience God and that they would want to return.

This week is exciting and there is a lot to do (write a sermon, get a bunch of stuff, set up, finish painting the Veritots room, etc… Pray that I won’t be so busy that I forget to stop and pray and seek God’s guidance.

If you’re not on Ryan’s prayer list, I would invite you to join with many who are praying for these requests. Let’s pray for God to do a mighty work through Ryan and the people that God has called to partner with Ryan in this effort!

Blessings to you all,
Jeff Glass