Missio Dei Suburbia

Gospel, Community, Mission - Questions for People Who Struggle

Here are three questions I've started asking people who are struggling with life:

• Who's walking through this with you? (Big Idea: you were created for community)
• Who are you serving this week? (Big Idea: you were created to join God in his mission)
• Are you moving closer to or further away from Jesus? (Big Idea: you were created for Jesus)

These serve as basic ontological questions for those of us who suffer - reminding us of both our identity and purpose. They've been helpful with other Christians but last week I had two opportunities to ask these questions to people who aren't part of Jesus' family...yet. Both conversations were fruitful - both for the present situation and in providing open doors in the days ahead.

The Necessity of Mission for Small Groups

From Drew Goodmanson:

Kaleo Church is still learning what it means to be a community of believers gathering throughout the week in homes across the county. We call these groups Missional Communities. Why? Our desire is that we would be gospel-centered communities on mission. As we’ve got a few years into this church plant there are a couple observations:

To Clarify…A Missional Community is not PRIMARILY:
1. A Small Group
2. A Bible Study
3. A Support Group
4. A Social Activist Group
5. A Weekly Meeting

1. Small Groups as Bible Studies are the easiest to form but the most dangerous.
Why are they dangerous? In our early days we did much more class or Bible study gatherings. What we found is that theology “in theory” often leads to knowledge without wisdom. Thinking through the problem of evil and suffering in abstraction is quite different than sitting next to a young couple that lost their baby. Groups should use theology to re-orient people back to God/Truth but in such a way that it is focused on heart transformation and right thinking. Sometimes we call this teaching “theology on mission” since the aim of the theology is directed to specific worldview conversion.

2. Small Groups that deal with Support of one-another inevitably become exclusive and accommodating.
While not as easy as a Bible study, a support group can become the default when people are not on mission. Recently a church decided to move to a neighborhood small group model. Several of the ‘established’ small groups resisted. They provided an apologetic saying that their group had 30-years of deep relationship building that wouldn’t allow others to jump into this deepness they sought. 30 years of not being on mission will lead to exclusiveness and without mission the group will never get beyond itself.

3. Missional groups without a Community Centered on the Gospel can not last.
A missional group will quickly run into circumstances that require it to drink from the grace-renewal well of the gospel. Groups that gather around good causes and can-do attitude will eventually peter out as people become absorbed into something else or lack the motivation to continue.

Mission is a necessity for small groups to avoid #1 & #2 because mission requires gospel-supporting of one another that causes us to stand on the promises and truths in God’s word. Our hope is that our understanding of God’s word is intensified, our support through gospeling of one another is continual and the result is mission that causes us to seek the Kingdom of God first in all we do.

Community or Bowling Alone?

Collin Hansen writes about the uncertainty that surrounds the relationship between a struggling economy and people's desire for community. Optimistically, Christians believe that an economic unraveling will go a long way to convincing people that they need each other. Pessimistically, it appears that we're not looking to share our struggles but to hide from each other and watch a different favorite TV show every night in isolation from our friends and neighbors.

The church has an opportunity to cut against the grain of culture and learn how to live in community. But let's be careful - because far too often, community in the church is disconnected from mission and has no intention of gathering in people who don't know Jesus into our life.

Quoting Robert Putnam, who wrote Bowling Alone, Hansen writes:

As Putnam observes in Bowling Alone, the demands of private piety and church-based service can insulate evangelicals from the needs outside their homes and churches.

"Most evangelical volunteering, however, supports the religious life of the congregation itself—teaching Sunday school, singing in the choir, ushering at worship services—but does not extend to the broader community as much as volunteering by members of other faiths," Putnam writes.

Worshiping God is a worthy priority, of course. The very act can even attract outsiders to investigate what marks our faith communities as unique. But if we depend on this outreach method alone, our churches become safe havens for respectable Christians. We give alms, but we do not give ourselves. And our neighbors will never learn what kind of life-giving community they could find inside.

Maybe We Need To Find Another Song To Sing...

One of our great challenges as a church is to approach community as a way of life, not just as a disconnected series of events. We are finding this to be a rich discovery that sometimes threatens to leave people behind.

Apparently we're not alone - from Bob Thune, Lead Pastor of Coram Deo in Omaha:

When we planted Coram Deo, we made the radical assumption that people would actually be willing to pursue intentional community. Perhaps this assumption was faulty. Though many people in our church have made intentional decisions to be in community with one another, many others have not. The objections are generally the same: busyness, crazy work or school schedules, family obligations. But could it be that what keeps us from community is not that we are “too busy,” but that we are simply not disciplined?

Keep reading...

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?

Why You Should Twitter

[UPDATE: PC Magazine gives their top 10 Twittering tips for beginners]

As Bill Kinnon writes, Twitter is the 'new front porch' - an way to keep up with people and their stories. I was thinking about this yesterday because one of the families in our church had a baby on Sunday and Twitter would have been a great way to let people know and pass along congratulations to Mark and Jessica.

As a pastor, I find it weird that people a) struggle to see me as an actual human and b) sincerely care about what I do and where I go. Twitter helps me keep my life in front of people. If you're on Twitter you can follow me: @mattadair

For churches, there's a really helpful e-book that you can buy here for $5 called 'The Reason Your Church Should Twitter.' Here's what's in the book:

Chapter 1 - Twitter as a Megaphone - One-to-many, targeted information. Highly useful for the church & each individual ministry.

Chapter 2 - Twitter as a Conversation - Engage with staff, volunteers, members, visitors & others with interactive dialogue. Easier and faster than email.

Chapter 3 - Twitter for Pastors - Perception matters. The humanizing of a leader is often a missing element in the connection between the church leadership and the congregants.

Chapter 4 - Setting Up Twitter in 1 Minute or Less - A step-by-step guide with pictures to show even the technically challenged how to set up Twitter.

Chapter 5 - How to Tweet - What should you say? What should you not say? How should you say it? Practical advice with easy to follow instructions.

Chapter 6 - To Follow and Be Followed - Learn how to reach just the right people with just the right message and find out who you should follow - and why.

Chapter 7 - Making Twitter Even Easier - An introduction and overview of useful (and usually free) tools to make using Twitter even more useful and easy!

Chapter 8 - Churches Using Twitter - Just like it sounds. Click and see what other churches are doing with Twitter.

Chapter 9 - Unexpected Bonuses - From a list of interesting ways Twitter is being used to cautions and recommendations for what to look for, this chapter is good food for thought and inspiration.

Chapter 10 - Deciding on a Twitter Strategy - Deciding to use Twitter is one thing; how your church will use it - effectively - is covered in this very important chapter.

Tim Chester - Gospel and Community Intersect in Church Planting

From The Resurgence:

The guy I first started church planting with used to tell the story of the first time he attended a church business meeting. He’d recently been converted and was looking forward to plotting the downfall of Satan with the other members of the church. What a letdown! They spent the meeting talking about the restrooms in the church building. Somehow churches have a tendency towards maintenance mode.

The great thing about church planting is that it puts mission at the heart of church. When you’re eight people meeting in someone’s front room—as the Crowded House was once—then you can’t help but be about mission.

But church planting also puts the church at the heart of mission. So much evangelism today is about me doing my thing with my friends. We have evangelistic ministries divorced from the church. This is not the New Testament way. New Testament mission was church planting.

Mission at the heart of church. The church at the heart of mission. Welcome to church planting.

A Better Way to Do Groups

How do you get groups that embrace community and engage in mission?

Groups that focus on community and not mission will most likely never get to mission.

Groups that focus on mission do community because they have to since community is the primary means of mission.

Anyone else see what needs to happen?

Ordinary Lives With Gospel Intentionality

Two of our core values at Christ Church are gospel and community - the book Total Church has been really helpful in shaping how these come together for us with this idea of people living ordinary lives with gospel intentionality. Over at the Resurgence blog, Tim Chester (one of the authors of Total Church) talks about the idea.