Emergent Brethren

What do you think about a new church canceling it’s second worship service ever in order to watch an NFL game? Would you cheer if your church did this? Or, would you wonder about the spirituality of the pastor and leadership to make such a decision?

I’m not making this up, but a new church plant in Seattle is going to watch a Seahawks game on TV instead of holding their worship service.

Would you like to learn why? Check-out their reasons at: http://www.oamchurch.com/go-hawks-goes-to-church/.

In case you’re very curious, here’s one of the reasons they are doing this: “We’re not salesmen, we’re gardeners. Our job is to cultivate the field God has set us in. Something’s already growing. We see it. Our job is to encourage and develop that growth in people who are seeking a heartfelt relationship with Jesus and each other.”

The leader of this church plant, Jim Henderson, has done more than one evangelism training event with Church of the Brethren. Does he have an idea worth considering?

Jeff

One thing I love about the personality assessment, Clifton StrengthsFinder, is that it reveals how unique a person truly is! The assessment reveals what your top 5 talent or strength themes are out of a possible 34. According to Gallup’s research, to find someone with the same top 5 themes that you have, in the same order is one in over 33.3 million. Thus, there’s only about 250 people in the world with your top 5 themes in your theme order. To go further, Gallup also says that to find someone with the same top eight themes in your same order is one in over 77 billion. So, at this moment, you are a unique person on this planet. No one exists who is just like you!

Today, I read a devotional by Billy Graham. He begins by telling that the first astronauts were required to give twenty answers to the question, “Who are you?” Can you give twenty answers to that question? What kind of answers would you give? Do you know who you really are? Graham writes, “Scientists agree that our desperate search leads all humans to seek heroes and to imitate others, to ‘paste bits and pieces of other people on ourselves’.” What Graham means by that is we imitate others in the way we do things. Yes, we learn by doing, but instead of doing it through our own creativity, we try to act or be like someone else. For example, do you know someone who tries to drive like a Nascar driver on the freeway? Do you know an armchair quarterback who thinks he makes better decisions than the one on the field?

The problem of imitating and trying to be like others is that our true self that God created does not come out. There are many passages, like Psalm 139:13, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb…” God intimately knows us because he uniquely created us! By imitating others, we do not honor the way God created and gifted us.

Graham concludes the devotional by writing, “Consider this: there are three of you. There is the person you think you are. There is the person others think you are. There is the person God knows you are and can be through Christ.” As you go through this day, seek God to understand and be the person you were created to be. Nobody can do things just like you do!

Jeff Glass

Gallup has created a wonderful personality tool called, Clifton StrengthsFinder. It has been proven to help people achieve greater success at work and in relationships. Can it also do the same for personal evangelism? I’m doing research through Bethel Seminary (St. Paul, MN.), to discover if StrengthsFinder can also empower Christians who feel inadequate for personal evangelism.

As part of my Doctor of Ministry research, I surveyed Christians who have taken Clifton StrengthsFinder and who come from a variety of Christian backgrounds. I want to thank everyone who took the survey! Your participation in this survey provided information to support others to be more faithful to God’s call to share our faith.

Soon, I will start a series of posts on how Clifton StrengthsFinder can empower Christians in personal evangelism.

Thank you for assisting in this research!

Jeff Glass

This past Spring, I attended the Church of the Brethren (CoB) church planter’s gathering at Bethany Theological Seminary. It was my first CoB event in almost 3 years. It was good to reconnect with some of the relationships I cultivated during my tenure with the Church of the Brethren General Board.

One of my big take-away’s from the conference was buying the book, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro (Zondervan Press, 2010). I have been mostly using it for my daily devotions since then. Each day has a liturgy that is like a mini Sunday worship service. For someone who enjoys the contemporary praise and worship format, I find it surprising that I enjoy this book so much!

Today, I read a prayer from the book that really touches my heart. May it bless your’s, as well.
Lord God, help us to live out your gospel in the world. We pray for those who do not know your love, tha they would be wooed by your goodness and seduced by your beauty. Form us into a family that runs deeper than biology or nationality or ethnicity, a family that is born again in you. May we be creators of holy mischief and agitators of comfort. . . people who do not accept the world as it is but insist on its becoming what you want it to be. Let us groan as in the pains of childbirth for your kingdome to come on earth as it is in heaven. Help us to be midwives of that kingdom. Amen. (p. 409)

Blessings to you!

Today, Ryan Braught (church planter in Lancaster, PA) posted a review of the book, Viral Jesus: Recovering the Contagious Power of the Gospel. Ryan writes, “The premise of this book is to recover the viral movement nature of the church. Rohde puts it this way, “In the early centuries Christianity was an explosive, viral movement that spread by word of mouth.” He then continues, “But today, the gospel is no longer spreading like wildfire throughout the western world. Slowly, Christianity has morphed into something much different…a stable institutionalized religion that no longer grips us with the excitement and spirituality of the early years.”

Ryan continues: “Rhode lays out 5 key aspects of a viral Jesus movement.
1. Apostolic teams found organic churches and networks that follow Jesus in every gathering. Yet every component, from individual Christians to networks, is easily reproducible and simple in design; simple but not simplistic.
2. Viral Jesus movements are focused on the kingdom, not on the church per se. This is because they are focused on the King and his commands.
3. Viral Jesus movements are founded with the fivefold ministries mentioned in Ephesians 4:11.
4. Viral movements, by their nature, are supernaturally powerful because they are under the authority and power of Jesus.
5. Finally, viral Jesus movements are led by Jesus alone. He is the one who provides stability and control.”

From what Ryan writes, it sounds like this book is written under some of the same premises as The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church by Alan Hirsch and Leonard Sweet. In this book, Hirsch writes that when we recover our spiritual DNA and focus on Jesus, the gospel spreads quickly.

Is it possible for Christianity to spread like a virus in the U.S. today? What might this look like in your community? Have you seen or experienced anything like this?

One of the key quotes for Ryan in the book is, “I believe that Jesus gives ministry success to a person or team because they are obedient, not because they have great technique.”.

If you would like to read more of Ryan’s review of Viral Jesus, click here.

Jeff