Church Planting in North America

Watch this video. The statistics presented here are pretty staggering.

Church = a self-theologizing community?

I like what I've been reading by this guy! This is the second part of his review of Breaking the Missional Code. Stetzer and Putnam refer to three types of emergent churches: relevants, reconstructionists, and revisionists. They appreciate and promote the first two types, but warn against the third type. You can read more here.

Bolger is not so sure that being a revisionist is so bad. (Actually, he doesn't like the term revisionist, so he uses a self-theologizing, which is pretty different). Here's what he writes:

In the nineteenth century, Rufus Anderson and Henry Venn contributed a new idea to missiology -- that of the three-self formula. They advocated that a new church work or mission, if it is to become indigenous, must be self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing. My colleague, Charles Van Engen, mission theologian (and former President of the Reformed Church of America), advocates a fourth 'self' -- self-theologizing. Why his addition to the formula?

A new community must be self-theologizing or it will become nominal. Self-theologizing, how? To become an indigenous expression of faith, a community must form its life around scripture, engaging their culture within a praxis-reflection orientation. In other words, the community goes deep into the word in order to answer the questions of their culture. They 'practice' those answers in the world, and then reflect biblically again. Instead of self-theologizing, however, what frequently happens is that new faith communities are given a theology that answers nineteenth-century questions, or sixteenth-century questions, or fifth-century questions. These historical works will undoubtedly be helpful, but they will inevitably leave some questions unanswered. Each context presents its own issues. If the deep questions of a culture go unanswered, then Christians will seek answers elsewhere, without reference to scripture, thus inviting in nominality.

What Stetzman and Putman call revisionist I see as self-theologizing: reading scripture in light of a culture's questions. These emerging "self-theologians" copy the example of historical theologians engaging their particular culture) but they do not necessarily copy their responses.

Find Your Own Calcutta

Can I share a goal? I never want NCC to feel like a church. I want us to feel like a movement. The church is way too static these days! The church is called to knock down the gates of hell. The church is the vehicle whereby heaven invades hell.

That is why the world resonated with Mother Teresa. She brought heaven to a hell hole. By the way, I love the advice Mother Teresa gave when someone asked them how they could make a difference with their life the way she'd made with hers. Mother Teresa said, "Find Your Own Calcutta."

Tim Keller on How Churches Will Be Effective in City-Centers

This is from the current issue of Vineyard's Cutting Edge church planting publication.

1. Hold the historic Christian gospel-- orthodox and Biblical in doctrine and practice, but are neither legalistic nor liberal, neither doctrinalist nor pietist, neither individualistic nor collectivistic.

2. Have a positive regard for the city; recognize that it is the most strategic possible place for ministry.

3. Neither over or under adapt to the culture of those in their surrounding neighborhood and culture.

4. Are intensely, creatively evangelistic and effective in reaching not just people who are already traditional or conservative but who are very secular.

5. Relentlessly emphasize and seek to build strong, "thick" counter-cultural Christian community in cities, especially through cell groups.

6. Are holistic, ministering in both word and deed to their community and the poor in extremely creative and generous ways.

7. Have a bias toward being multi-ethnic-- seek to be at least as multi-ethnic as their neighborhood.

8. Are arts and culture friendly; both supportive of Christian witness in "secular work" and willing to train people for cultural leadership, not just church leadership.

9. See church planting as a ministry as natural and important as discipleship, music, education, and pastoral care.

Howard Snyder on Missional Church

Howard Snyder in Decoding the Church writes of missional church in chapter 3. The missional church is genetically missional, an alternative community, a covenant community, and Trinitarian.

Genetically Missional

The church is genetically missional because it is the community of Jesus Christ, God’s great missionary. It is the body of Christ, the community called into existence by the mission of God. this is the starting point for all ecclesiology… Mission is the church’s DNA, even if mission often gets suppressed in practice.

An Alternative Community

A missional church is an alternative community called to build its own culture, economy, and lifestyle in the world and among all peoples. A faithful fchurch is a visible alternative to both neopagan society and to ecclesial models of Christendom that clash with the church’s basic DNA… The church is an alternative community when its mission is the kingdom of God. Its mission makes it countercultural. ANd it is an alternative reality when it exists as a covenant community.

A Covenant Community

A mssional church is covenantal. The church is the covenanted community of God’s reign. The covenant calls the church to ministry and mission, to “equip [God’s people] for the work of ministry (Eph 4:12) and to structure its life and mission accordingly.

A Trinitarian Community

A missional church is Trinitarian. The Trinity teaches us about ecclesiology and mission. Because the church is Trinitarian — based on what God the Father has done and will do through Christ by the power of the Spirit — the church is at the same time incarnational and eschatological.

Read the rest of this post here.

Three Questions for Church Evaluation

Craig Groeschel of LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK) shares three questions on his blog that are valuable in evaluating the quality and effectiveness of your church.

1. If you weren’t on staff at your church, would you worship there?
2. If you didn’t know ANYTHING about Jesus, what would you know about him after a normal weekend at your church?
3. If you had a loved one who didn’t know Christ, and they had one week left to live, would you take them to your church or another?

Interview with Bob Roberts

This is a great interview of Bob Roberts by the people with Out of Ur. The interview is titled "We Aren't About Weekends." Northwood Church, where Roberts pastors, has made some intentional decisions on what they are and, more importantly, what they aren't, going to be about.

What are we going to be about?

This post comes from a missional community in Florida. I've been deeply influenced by what they've written (primarily this post). There's some good language here.

Seven Guiding Principles on Church Structure

This post is from Mark Batterson, pastor of National Community Church in D.C.