Emergent Brethren

I love hearing about church planters and what they’re accomplishing! This, is in part, why I love to see what Ryan Braught writes (see previous post). Through the years, I’ve followed difference conferences to see what they offer for church planters. One of the best conferences is Exponential, which was recently held.

I got an email from Exponential, offering free resources. In case you’re interested in church planting, I want to pass this offer on to you!

Exponential 2010 – Podcast and Blog Posts
We had an amazing experience with over 3,400 church planting leaders gathered together for Exponential 2010 in Orlando! Over 90% of this year’s attendees said they’d attend again and were pleased with the overall conference experience, speakers, and main sessions. Whether you attended or not, we’ve made over 50 hours of teaching / training from the conference available via the Exponential Podcast. Click here to subscribe via iTunes. Click here for a comprehensive compilation (over 90 pages) of blog posts highlighting various speakers at Exponential 2010.

Whether or not you’re interested in church planting, I hope these resources are an inspiration to you!

Blessings to you!
Jeff

Some of you know Ryan Braught personally, and others know him through this writing here on Emergent Brethren. About once a week, he sends out a prayer request list to several people. In his latest, he names that his church plant is just about to celebrate its first birthday. I think this is a significant event! Please join me and others in praying for Ryan and the new church that Christ has called him to plant.

This is his latest prayer request list:

Hey all,

It’s really hard to believe that Summer is right around the corner and that we are fast approaching our year anniversary as a Church Plant. We have come far but we also have a ways to go. But God has been good and faithful to us and a lot of it can be attributed to each of you and your faithful prayers on behalf of the Veritas community. Thanks so much for your prayers and your support for us. They are very much appreciated. Here are some prayer requests and praises regarding Veritas and our future.

1. Newspaper Article: The other week while at a Church Planting conference I was interviewed for an article in the Lancaster Newspaper. In the article it was mentioned that there was going to be a follow up piece on Veritas and other innovative communities (like my friend Erik and his Definition Collective). Well the article was in the paper on Saturday. Here is the link for you to read (if you haven’t already read it)…. http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/256630

2. Church of the Brethren Church Planting Conference: This past week I was in Richmond, IN at our COB Church Planting conference at Bethany Seminary. It was a good week. The leadership of Rose Madrid-Swetman and Jim Henderson was amazing. Rose was amazing and shared about her missional community in Seattle and reminded me why Veritas exists. Praise God for the voice of “outsiders” who can speak into my life and remind me why we planted Veritas in the first place. My workshop went well and was given good feedback and it was good to share the vision of Veritas with many people. Pray that those in attendance at the conference may seek to plant a church, support church planting, or be involved in church planting in the future. It was a great group of people to spend time with in prayer, worship, fellowship, and study.

3. Missional Opportunities: Pray for us as we enter the summer that we could use this summer as an opportunity to step up our missional presence in the community. Pray that we could reach out to neighbors, and the community as individuals and as a community. Pray for us as we seek to discern ways of serving and blessing the community. (Servolution week, etc…) Pray that God would allow us to see growth in Veritas (not the primary reason for seeking to bless people but as a by-product).

4. Space: Pray for continued discernment with this issue. We have 4 options at this point. 1. Stay at English Presbyterian Church for a while. 2. Lease a space in the city of Lancaster on Liberty Street. 3. Purchase a Church Building that has come up for sale in our area at a very reasonable and affordable price. 4. Lease or Buy another property that we don’t know about yet. So pray for us as we seek to discern our next steps as a community.

5. Finances: Pray for us as we will be sending out Fundraising Letters in the very near future. Pray for those who receive the letters. Pray for openness to supporting the mission of Veritas. Also pray for congregations that I will be seeking to talk with about financial support. Pray for open doors and a willingness to partner with us.

6. Growth: Pray for growth to take place in various areas (spiritual, numerical, missional, relational). Pray that we would realize that we are called to plant and water but God gives the growth. Pray that we would be faithful to the call God has on us and that we wouldn’t worry about the end result, other than just being faithful.

These next 2 things are necessarily prayer requests…

1. If you know of someone who might connect with what we are about at Veritas, please let them know about us. If you have people who have no faith community to be a part of, share with them about Veritas. If you know people in your faith community who might have a calling on their lives to be a part of a church plant, and you would be willing to release them for a time, let us know.
2. If you know of someone or a church who might be interested in learning more about the vision of Veritas and possibly supporting us financially, please let us know. I would be more than willing to meet with them and share with them the vision of Veritas and how they might be able to support us.

Thanks again for your prayers and support for Veritas.

God bless,

Ryan

You can learn more about Veritas at their website.

Jeff

Just wanted to let the Emergent Brethren community that you can download some great tunes on Noise Trade from the Veritas Community. Last summer we produced a CD with original music from several musicians within our community. We called the CD “Music From Our Community”. We were finally able to upload several of the Tracks on Noise Trade and now you can download some great Veritas music. So go to www.noisetrade.com/veritaspa for some great music, share with your friends about the music and Veritas via Social Networking media (Twitter, Facebook, etc…) and if you feel so led you can also support our Veritas community by donating when you download the music.

In honor of Saint Patrick’s Day, which we celebrate tomorrow, I thought I would share some thoughts from the book “The Celtic Way of Evangelism” by George G. Hunter. (We had an amazing Saint Patrick’s Day Party this past Saturday by the way which I’ll write about tomorrow).

I read the book a few years ago and as I look back on it I realized just how influential this book has been in my life, my theological journey and the ministry and mission of Veritas. Here are some random quotes from the book.

“Indeed, the fact that Patrick understood the people and their language, their issues, and their ways, serves as the most strategically significant single insight that was to drive the wider expansion of Celtic Christianity, and stands as perhaps our greatest single learning from this movement. There is no shortcut to understanding the people. When you understand the people, you will often know waht to say and do, and how. When the people know that the Christian understands tehm, infer that maybe the High God understands them too.”

“The apostolic band would probably welcome responsive people into their group fellowship to worship with them, pray with them, minister to them, converse with them, and break bread together. One band member or another would probably join with each responsive person to reach out to relatives and friends. The mission team typically spent weeks or even months, as a ministering community of faith within the tribe. The church that emerged within that tribe would have been astonishingly indigenous.”

“So the British leaders were offended and angered that Patrick was spending priority time with ‘pagans’, ‘sinners’, and ‘barbarians'”

The Celtic model of reaching people: 1. You first establish community with people, or bring them into fellowship of your community of faith. 2. Within fellowship, you engage in conversation, ministry, prayer, and worship. 3. In time, as the discover that they now believe, you invite them to commit.” (Sometimes what we call belonging before believing)

“Evangelism is now about ‘helping people to belong so that they can believe.”

“The Irish and other Celtic peoples were predominately right-brained and, in reaching them, Christianity adapted remarkably from it’s earlier Roman reliance upon words, propositions, concepts and theological abstractions.”

Those are just a few of the thoughts from this great book. As I flipped through it, I realized that I need to read this book again very soon.

I close with this prayer from Saint Patrick:

…Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length, Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

Hi,

Our church is doing a Lenten series based on the Psalms. I was invited to write a few Lenten devotionals for our church website. In case you are looking for something devotional, I offer this:

Fear is a huge motivator that affects our behavior and emotions. In our community group curriculum we read, “Fear is also at the root of our self-protection mechanisms (defensiveness, contempt, criticism, shame, stonewalling, etc.). As eroding as these things are, the worst thing about fear is that it keeps us from love. . .”

In thinking about “Fear” today, I want to take a look at Psalm 3. In the NIV we read, “O LORD, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him.” (v.1-2)

I often get a kick out of how Eugene Peterson paraphrases scripture in The Message, “God! Look! Enemies past counting! Enemies sprouting like mushrooms, mobs of them all around me, roaring their mockery: “Hah! No help for him from God!” (v.1-2)

There are different kinds of fear that affect all of us. At times, we, too, may feel surrounded by insurmountable fears! Some might include going to the dentist, being rejected by a close friend, not doing well on a test, not living up to expectations of your boss, etc. Some fear we anticipate, like the test or dentist appointment. Other fears can come upon us when we least anticipate it.

Last year, after twenty-nine years of employment, I was laid-off. I can’t say it was totally unexpected, but I was still surprised. For months afterwards, I experienced a new kind of fear. It’s one that I’ve not experienced before: fear of what might happen in the future, specifically, financial failure.

This is not a fear that I think about during my waking hours. God is providing in marvelous ways! Instead, this is a fear that can haunt me at night. It wakes me up with crazy thoughts!!

Pastor Matt said the first thing we need to do when we are afraid is to face our fear. I find that when I’m awakened in the middle of the night, the best thing I can do is get-up to journal, read the Bible, and cry-out to God, as David did. I find spending time in these activities to be so much better than wrestling in bed, trying to sleep, with crazy thoughts spinning in my mind.

Fear of what we’re facing can sometimes cause us to doubt that God is really present in our situation. At the Mt. Helix Community Group this week, we had an ice-breaker activity of writing acronyms for the word, DOUBT. I want to share two from our group. Here’s the first one:
D – Disbelief
O – Often
U – Unwittingly
B – Brews
T—Torment

I like this one because when I don’t face my fear, I do feel tormented! In addition to the activities named above that help, I’m a part of a great small group of guys with whom I can share anything. Having this kind of support is invaluable in so many ways!

The second acronym is this:
D – Devoting
O – Ourselves
U – Until
B – Belief
T – Transpires

Sometimes, in spite of what we are feeling, we need to move forward in our faith walk. This may even mean leaning on others to help us trust God in facing our fears. Moving forward can help us find a better place to be with God, to see and experience God’s blessings.

In verses 4 – 5, David writes, “To the LORD I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.”

In his crying aloud to God, a wonderful transformation takes place! Peace comes to David so that he can sleep. The next day he awakes and feels the Lord’s strength and power to sustain him.

How do you experience God in the midst of your worst fear? How do you find strength and help from God? What’s your story?

Jeff Glass