TheyCallMePastorBryan

I stumbled across a post from missional blogger David Fitch’s website today, which describes almost to a t the sort of process we are following to start a missional community in southeast Portland.

In the article, Fitch identifies 5 issues that any group looking to start a missional community must deal with.  I’d like to highlight his number 5 especially:

5. PREPARE FOR A SUSTAINABLE WAY OF LIFE OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME. (as opposed to projected growth and financial sustainability after three years). EXPECT GROWTH TO BE SLOW, BUT OF MIRACULOUS VARIETY. YOU MAY START WITH 10-20 PEOPLE, EXPECT NO SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS FOR THE FIRST FIVE YEARS. IT TAKES FIVE YEARS TO BUILD A MISSIONAL PRESENCE. BY THE FIFTH TO EIGHT YEAR,  GROWTH WILL HAPPEN.

Read the rest: [Not a "Franchise": Steps to Seeding a Missional Community in the Neighborhood]

This is by far the hardest to understand and to expect.  That is, it takes a lot of time for relationships to develop, for the living out of faith and so on.  It seems counter productive, because most of us to are trying to cultivate missional expressions of community are confident folks.  We believe that we can parachute in and immediately, people will be impressed by us and want to know what it is we’re doing.  But this is not realistic.  As my mentor and president of Christian Associates (the missions organization I work with), Rob Fairbanks, says about the church plant he led, “it was a ten year overnight success.”

The reality that this sort of project takes time is a big reason we need to learn to “think decadely” (an expression coined by Rob).  That is, instead of thinking what we’ll see a year or 2 years down the road we need to be thinking that it will take us about ten years.

What I find myself struggling with on this is that it’s one thing to recognize this as true, but it’s another to beat it into my brain.  How do we work against the expectation that our communities will take off immediately?  That’s the question I think missional leaders need to be wrestling with.

What do you think, how should leaders work to keep the expectations for a group at a sane level?

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It’s been interesting to observe the weather in Portland this February.  We had a warm spell for quite a while that had been really looking like we were going to have an early spring but alas, it was not to be.

February has been an interesting month.  I’ve been out of Portland as much as I’ve been in and I’ve been out of town for at least part of every weekend this month.  I’m looking forward to getting back into a normal swing of things and thinking about the future of this blog and what I’ll write about.  I’m sure you’ve probably seen that in the last little while I’ve started expanding my range beyond theology.  It’s not really that I’m losing interest in theology, it’s just I start to reach a point where I start to g insane if all I’m doing is writing about church stuff and theology but not being active in it.  That sort of writing just isn’t appealing to me.

I haven’t really wrote much about what I’m doing now.  I’ve been pretty hesitant to write about what I’m doing with my ministry vocation since seeing the Anchor die as a dream.  I’ve been moved a lot lately, reflecting on John 12:24

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. (NLT)

With that said, I’m starting to be okay with it and a little less hesitant to talk about what we’re doing now.  A year ago, after we decided it would be good to put the Anchor to rest, a couple experienced ministry friends and myself put our heads together and started dreaming about a new missional community for Southeast Portland.  It was a welcome thing and one which I’ve been excited to be a part of planning.  We spent a few months praying and planning and making sure it was something that we should be pursuing and have found ourselves really feeling like it was what we were to be a part of.

So last fall we started meeting with a small group and discussing the sort of stance that it takes to be the sort of community we hope to be.  Out of that group we’ve got about 12 folks who are continuing to pursue what that sort of missional community looks like.  I guess I share this because I’d love to have people praying for our thing.  Having already tried to lead one group and seen it fail, I know how tenuous these things are.  So please pray for us.  Pray that God would build us up and that He would be making us aware of where He is already at work in our neighborhoods.

And if you know people who are wanting to be a part of a non-traditional, missional community in Portland, put them in contact with me.  I’d love to invite them into what we’re doing, or at least tell them about it so they can dream their own dreams.

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When a minister reads out of the Bible, I am sure that at least nine times out of ten the people who happen to be listening at all hear not what is really being said but only what they expect to hear read. And I think that what most people expect to hear read from the Bible is an edifying story, an uplifting thought, a moral lesson—something elevating, obvious, and boring. So that is exactly what very often they do hear. Only that is too bad because if you really listen…there is no telling what you might hear. - Frederick Buechner (HT:InternetMonk)

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ChristianityToday has a great interview with Rob Bell on preaching called “Tying the Clouds Together” that is worth
checking out.  I’ve posted a couple quotes below that I found especially interesting.

What else have you found unhelpful when preaching?

Focusing too much on something in the text that is an issue of hairsplitting debate among theologians. You are assuming that people care as much about the debate as you do. Somebody may be sitting there thinking, “Dude, I’m a plumber. I didn’t know that was a debate, and I didn’t know that it needed to be resolved. I’m just trying to figure out life with God and you spent sixteen minutes letting me know that you understood the origins of this particular Greek word.” Some things just aren’t helpful.

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Your NOOMA video series has been popular. What do you think about the increasing number of preachers and churches using video technology to expand their reach?

It’s powerful but there’s also a dark side. Video is not church. You put images and music on a screen, and people will listen. But it’s also dangerous. You’re playing with fire. I think video technology deserves to be scrutinized heavily.

Go a little deeper. What makes video dangerous?

I don’t think we know yet what the long-term impact will be on disciple-making. In 10 years we may discover what particular kind of Christ follower is formed by video preaching. I see warning lights on my dashboard. It’s unclear what video may do to the ways we conceive of life together.

In the New Testament, there are 43 “one another” passages, and during a Sunday morning service you might be able to practice three or four of them. And as the service gets large, you can probably do fewer. A massive group setting is also dangerous. You can come, sit, listen, and go home and think, I’ve been to church, even if you haven’t practiced any “one anothers.” And with video that only gets more intense. I’m not sure that’s the direction we want to be heading.

We want to be calling people to deep bonds of solidarity with one another. We may gather in a massive group, but from the stage I often say, “This is just a church service. Church is actually about caring for one another, and serving one another, and speaking truth to one another in love. Don’t get the two confused.”

The evidence suggests that video can have a fast and broad impact. So what’s the alternative?

There is something more powerful than simply beaming yourself into other locations, and that is raising up disciples. Over time that will go farther and faster, but right now it will be more work and slower. With technology today it’s easy to spend all of your energies reproducing your own voice, but there is a longer view that says, what if instead of beaming video to those ten locations, we train ten people who can go there and lead? That’s a very basic question that should be in the mix somewhere.

I love his input about the downside to video venues, especially the emphasis on discipleship in leading and leadership development.  I feel like it’s very complimentary to some of my own problems with video venues.

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