Missio Dei Suburbia

How Do You Measure Success?

Yesterday morning, a bunch of us passed along this note on Twitter: 'Over 80% of church plants in the US fail but churches in the Acts 29 church planting network have a 95% success rate.' That news is both exciting and humbling for those of us in A29 who are well aware that we're not that smart and we're not particularly more gifted than some of the guys who have crashed and burned in planting.

A few minutes after I tossed out that information, I had someone I respect push back a little, wondering if our definition of success lines up with how Jesus defines success, pointing me to John 4:35-38. If you read that text and listen to the stories of people whose church plants have shut down, it's hard to ignore the work of God in proverbially making lemonade out of lemons.

So how do we define success?

Seth Godin talks about a hierarchy of success and the critical importance of attitude:

• Why are you doing this at all?
• What's your bias in dealing with people and problems?
• How do you deal with failure?
• When will you quit?
• How do you treat competitors?
• What personality are you looking for in the people you hire?
• What's it like to work for you? Why? Is that a deliberate choice?
• What sort of decisions do you make when no one is looking?

Over at the Desiring God blog, Mike Thate reminds us that:

there is an outright war over who gets to define “success.” There is some irony in this story in that my flight originated in Manhattan, a monument to success. But what is success? And who gets to define it? While success benchmarks are of course both entirely natural and often helpful—e.g. a manager’s use of statistical evaluation to determine a batting lineup or pitching rotation or a trader’s measuring financial turn on investment to evaluate market share—they should also be held in suspicion. Who is defining it? Once success is defined, desired outcomes and lifestyles are set for many. In this sense, they can become totalizing and subsuming.

And finally, Skye Jethani reminds us that our success - our legitimacy - is found in what Jesus has done for us.

The Vanishing Suburbs

Completely agree with Kevin Cawley's post below:

It has been interesting to read some of the conversations related to Time Magazine's The New Calvinism (10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now).

I haven't seen as many Christians talking about No. 2: Recycling the Suburbs:

The American suburb as we know it is dying. The implosion began with the housing bust, which started in and has hit hardest the once vibrant neighborhoods outside the urban core. Shopping malls and big-box retail stores, the commercial anchors of the suburbs, are going dark — an estimated 148,000 stores closed last year, the most since 2001. But the shift is deeper than the economic downturn. Thanks to changing demographics, including a steady decline in the percentage of households with kids and a growing preference for urban -amenities among Americans young and old, the suburban dream of the big house with the big lawn is vanishing. The Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech predicts that by 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (on one-sixth of an acre [675 sq m] or more) in the U.S. (read more)

A29 Pastor in the New York Times and Boston Globe

Quite the story...

Boston Globe

New York Times

David Brooks - A Call to the Middle

In this morning's New York Times:

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Tim Keller on Preaching, Cities, and Culture

Adrian Warnock blogged Tim Keller's talks last week at a Newfrontiers event. Videos of each talk are located here:

Preaching to Change Them in Their Seats

Why Cities Matter

Relate to the Culture

Driscoll Interview at SEBTS - Culture, Planting, Pastoring

Mark Driscoll has received a lot of recent media attention due to the seemingly incongruous topics of sex and Jesus but here's a change of pace - an excellent interview done with Mark by Dr. David Nelson of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary on culture, church planting and pastoring.

Being Missional Is Trendy

Some really great stuff from The Resurgence:

Attractional and Missional by Tim Chester

The problem with a lot of attractional churches is not their missiology, but their ecclesiology. Church is seen as a meeting. Attracting means attracting people to an event or even a performance. But biblical mission is about a community life, ordinary life, lived under God’s Word that attracts people to God.

What's In a Name by Steve Timmis

The idea of missional communities has become trendy. This enables larger churches to devolve the routine stuff of church life to smaller groups throughout the week while retaining a central teaching session, usually on a Sunday. But why call them “missional” when we have a perfectly good word at our disposal in “gospel”? Gospel communities is exactly what they are: communities that are all about the gospel because they are formed by the gospel and exist for the gospel.

Gospel & Community at Work by Jonathan Dodson

Although some vocations are not as sociable as others, the gospel compels us to work for community and reconciliation. To honor, serve, and love those that are different from us, even the employees that get on our nerves. What if you became an agent of reconciliation and community in your workplace? Company morale and output would likely increase, and so would the glory of God in your life. Perhaps some repentance from go-it-alone work is in order. The rural wisdom of work swapping could take us a long way in cultivating better work, better relationships, and better communities. Wouldn’t it be great if Christians led the way?

Driscoll on CNN

The Mark Driscoll national media tour continues - NYT Magazine, Nightline and now he's on CNN this weekend with comedian DL Hughley.

What I liked about this exchange is that Mark was able to take a dude who's going to approach a topic like sex flippantly and get his respect and open the door to a conversation about Jesus. If DL was living in Seattle, I'd lay money that he'd be sitting in one of the Mars Hill worship gatherings this weekend.

Sexy Boots - A Call to the Church?

Bob Flayhart, pastor of Oak Mountain Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, wonders if this isn't part of the message in U2's song 'Get On Your Boots':

So, Church, cry out to Christ to meet this broken world with His grace; Cry out that He will put on His boots and trample His enemies that foster hatred and violence. And Church, come join the song and fight against evil...fight against the violence and hatred...Church, be the redemptive force in the world you are called to be! Now, do I know that Bono means all this...not really. After all, he hasn't called me and talked about the song. But I will say this...what I've written would be completely in line with the symbolism and poetic layering he has used in the past.

The rest of the post is here. What do you think?

 

Doubting Your Doubts

'...it seemed good to me...to write an orderly account...that you may have certainty...' (Luke 1:3-4)

Everyone struggles with doubt. No one should want to stay there. Because of Christ, no one has to stay there.

May that hope make us compassionate and courageous in 2009.