Given the boatload of reading I was doing last year, working on my graduating essay on church planting in resort communities, I think I am positioned to take our group in a more exploratory posture deeper into the idea of missional living.  What does that mean?  It means taking seriously the reality that if we actually mean to follow Christ, we must be about his business – and his business was bringing about the Kingdom of God on earth.  We must be doing what he did – making disciples, each of us, personally, in the place where God has put us.

I love my church, but I recognize that they, like me, have long been poisoned by this idea that doing church is for clergy.  That they are the ones who evangelize, teach, make disciples, baptize, and otherwise grow the church.  That our only obligations are to sing some worship songs to God every Sunday, say Grace before every meal, and do whatever our pastor asks us to do in the name of humility and service.  What a weak, anemic faith that is!

I picked up “Breaking the Missional Code” by Ed Stetzer and David Putman as some thing to read while in the hospital, and it has been good so far because it is putting legs to ideas that need to be explained.  I hope to use ideas from that book as topics of conversation in our Community Group.  They ask some very good questions that we, who hope to reach people for Jesus in our neighbourhood, need to ask ourselves.

One startling thing that they point out is that as a church increases its “evangelism training” the actual evangelism of that church goes down.  Conversely, it appears the most effective evangelists are new converts, with no training.  A comparison is drawn to the Woman at the Well that Jesus met – who went back to town and told the whole Samaritan village about Jesus and saw great numbers believe in him as a result.

Evangelism training has a place, but it really seems that the most effective means of engaging people with the gospel is in two respects – relationally (which takes no training really – but does take a lot of emotional and temporal investment), and holistically.   What I mean by holistically is that your faith needs to be lived out.  It needs to inform your actions, choices and way of life to the point where Christianity is not your religion – Christ is your life.  When this happens barriers start to come down.  Hypocrisy is mitigated, because you are not acting one way and talking another.

How does this happen?  It happens when you are being encouraged, supported and motivated towards greater wholeness in Christ.  It is a happening that I really want to see in our Community Group this fall.

BC has been getting a record snow fall this year. We have broken records set in 1964. Shane and I have been shoveling snow. I shoveled twice and Shane has done it more than that. The snow just wouldn’t stop falling. It is now raining and it is nice to hear the water rushing down the gutters finally. We hardly saw any snow plows on the road which meant getting anywhere was difficult. I can’t remember ever seeing this much snow in such a short period of time…. probably because I wasn’t around in 1964.

This year was Dannan’s first Christmas. He enjoyed checking out the Christmas tree in the weeks leading up to the big day and loved to play with the non-breakable ornaments. He needed a few reminders to leave the lights alone but for the most part he was very good around the Christmas tree. As for gifts, he had no clue what to do about the wrapping paper. We tried to interest him in the ripping sound to get a picture or two of him opening his own presents but it didn’t happen. He wanted to see the presents that his brothers had already opened. Once his presents were opened though he quite enjoyed his brothers showing him how they all worked. I think Dannan enjoyed his first Christmas even though he didn’t have a clue what was going on. I wonder how he’ll be for his first birthday in January?

In other news, I finished reading the Bible finally. I finished just before Christmas. I started reading it in January a week or two before Dannan was born. I got busy doing my coursework and took the Summer off from reading. I finally got back into it this Fall and completed it. I don’t know for sure how many weeks it took me to read it but what counts is that I started in January and finished before the next January. I’m pleased with that.

After I finished reading the Bible I needed something else to read so I asked Shane what he would recommend and he suggested “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” which was interesting. It makes me want to read more apologetics books. Usually any books that Shane recommends are written in such a way that I want to pull out a dictionary but this book wasn’t written that way and I actually understood and enjoyed it. The book took only a couple of days for me to chew through and now I’m onto another book.

The one I’m reading now is “Discipling Our Nation”. I’m about halfway through and while I don’t find it as interesting as the apologetics book I do find the statistics regarding churches in Canada quite fascinating. I’ll write more about this book later as I came across something last night that I found intriguing and want to discuss later on.

Already I am realizing, this is exactly what happened to my Dad.  I’ve hread his reasons for leaving church before, to do with hypocrites and serious sin by leaders in the church.  But I think when it comes down to it, if it was really about hypocrites, why didn’t he ever try another church, give anyone else a chance?  Because it simply wasn’t important to him.  He didn’t see why church was essential.

This book may be more useful than I thought.  Download the eBook version for free here.

So the two of these sources collided with me while I was driving to work this morning.  Two songs on my iPod came on – “It’s Probably Me” by Eric Clapton and Sting, and “Your Life is Now” by John Mellencamp.  It occured to me that both of these songs have very Christian overtones, though I somehow doubt the writers thought of that.  (Actually, in retrospect, from what I know of Eric Clapton’s spiritual journey, maybe that one wasn’t unintentional.)  I was picturing actually opening a sermon by having everyone come in with that song playing, or the worship team playing (given the mad skillz of Eric Clapton, maybe I had better play the CD).

I was even thinking of doing some kind of youtube, or powerpoint set to coincide with the lyrics to illustrate some profound points to ponder as the music washes over you.

Just some crazy ideas for the future, I guess.  Two of my favorite things are music and movies.  I will be spending more time thinking about how to exegete them and teach with them as illustrations or foci for points.

I was trying to catch some rays and darken the skin a little before we head to Florida at the end of the month for a little iGo action and a round of Disney.  I made the mistake of leaving the book on my lawn chair.  The boys got out the sprinkler and turned it on full-blast, drenching my lawn chair and my book, borrowed from TWU.  Because of its saturation, I think I’ll be buying the library a new copy, so I’d better enjoy this one!

In that light, I’ll say this: the chapters do go by quickly, and Stetzer does a good job of listing references on each chapter so you can do further reading.  In a lot of ways, since I am 3/4 of the way through the book, I have been disappointed thus far.

I actually started to comment on this book before.  I initially like some of his insights, early on, but as the book moves along, it gets more ordinary.  Not a lot is new in fact.  It is more a synthesis-type book than a new approach.  I find myself in later chapters reading his words which openly rehash material from a variety of other resources.  Not plaigarism – he cites his sources clearly – but just disappointing.  Like if I had read something else I’d get more.

The most recent couple of chapters I read were on building launch teams and on small groups.  The small groups chapter was actually weak.  He only discussed small groups of one model type – and I am not even sure I agree that it’s a good type.  It’s a jack-of-all-trades small group – one that is designed to provide fellowship and community, but also worship, Bible study, and evangelism.  I have become convinced in my time in different small groups that it is impossible to do all these things well when you try to do them in a small group.  Stetzer himself points out all the pitfalls of bringing non-Christians into a group full of Christians – the Christianese that gets flung around, the discomfort of being the “new guy”, the culture shock are all not good things for someone you are trying to introduce to the Gospel.  Not only that, but it also hurts the relationships of the people already there.  To “go deep” and really open up your heart in the safety of Christians is hard enough.  What chance does your group have of real authentic community when strangers keep appearing and disappearing, who could do anything with your deep secrets and fears?

The chapter on building a core did hold some useful discussion, but I was at a loss as to understand how his description of various means of teambuilding reflected unique approaches specifically for the postmodern crowds.  Maybe it’s because I see a much more intensive variety of postmodern people in Canada – specifically in my workplace at a technology company, and also in my studies of Whistler’s church planting challenges.  These people are not just people who don’t believe in existential truth, but live according to that reality.  These are people who have not heard a single positive message about authority, church, or traditional structures like marriage in 30 years – which is the lifespan of the majority I work with.  These are hard-core people.  It’s almost easier to reach new immigrants with a completely foreign paradigm and religion, because at least they believe there is truth out there, and have a greater connection and understanding of family and structure.

For all of its weight, this book feels light.  Too light to be very useful but I will finish it out before passing final judgement.

Another thought by someone else:

• Matt Jones’s glowing review.  I’d actually agree there are lots of good points.  How many are original to Ed?  I don’t know.  Maybe I am being spoilt by how much reading on the internets and such on missional ideas and church planting methods.  Since I had already read these ideas, I wasn’t as blown away by Stetzer’s presentation.

Nelson and Searcy I understand used to work on staff at Saddleback Church with Rick Warren, which explains his glowing reviews of this book.  The book is quite an easy read, and designed overtly as a step-by-step type of book, with not a lot of theologizing about what they are doing. The parts about calling were riveting, probably because one of the critical elements I am pursuing is a confirmation that this is what God wants from us.  This chapter helped considerably.

I was surprised at how much their material tracks with what we did to launch Community of Hope.  From early team formation to the launch, many things seemed similar.  There were several differences between approaches though.

Firstly, they highly recommend between 3 and 6 months of monthly “pre-services” which give you a chance to build buzz and prepare your team for going weekly.  It occurred to me as I read this that perhaps this was what we were missing last summer.  We had two well staffed pushes with volunteers from the USA to reach out into the community, and a major source of frustration for us was that while we did make some solid contacts with people who might have come to church, because we had no church to bring them to, we lost contact with them and dropped the ball completely.  Had we used these two short term missions trips to prepare people for a pre-service, then utilized them to staff the pre-services, then this could have greatly aided out ability to retain and move forward with those contacts that were made.

As an aside, I am a great believer in short term missions for their benefit to those who go on them – I mean it was instrumental in actuating my wife and I into taking more seriously our role in the Kingdom of God.  Also, looking around at the team we travelled with, many of us took huge steps forward in our walks with God as a result of that trip.

Another area of difference which I wasn’t as excited about was small group philosophy. The authors maintained it was a bad idea to start with small groups immediately.  In fact, they recommended that the plant wait at least 6 months before trying to initiate a small group structure in the church.  Their main objection to small groups seemed to be that it would turn the core team’s focus inwards and they would cease to be as outward focused on new people.  We didn’t experience this – we launched with a full battery of small groups.  The instruction pre-launch was so clear that we must stay completely outward focused that it never became an issue.  Then again, maybe this was because we were launching with a relatively mature group of Christians rather than brand new Christians or even seekers.

But I tend to agree more with Phil, our pastor.  Given our church’s philosophy of small groups, and given the reality that small groups are absolutely critical to integrate and make part of your church’s DNA, waiting and letting people get used to life without them could make much more trouble than it helps.  It needs to be programmed into the base-level of expectation – you go to this church, you are in a small group.

One other comment I will make about the book – it seems that launching a successful and rapidly growing church somehow made them instant experts in this field.  It is a good book, and I appreciated the reinforcement of a number of concepts, but they overlooked one critical component that I think largely led to their successful launch.  Right up front, they make clear that within 6 months of arriving in New York, 9/11 happened.  They try to downplay the effect this had on their church’s growth, but I think it had a much larger role than they seem to think.  That disaster had a massive impact on the psyche of the residents of New York and left them much more spiritually open than they would have otherwise have been.  I don’t doubt God was in their church’s timing, and that God was using, through them, a disaster for good by bringing people to him.  But that kind of element is not replicable for other church planters.

Some other reviews of this book:

• Lou Canchicola (who’s got some great quotes from the book highlighted)

Where was this book four and a half years ago?  I could have certainly used it and saved myself from tons of mistakes.

• Andrew Kulp (glowing but brief 2 parter)

…it’s VERY practical and is going to stay on my shelf as a long-term resource as we continue in the process.

• Scott Himes (Good bullet points and summarizes better than I have)

…is a very practical guide for anyone that is planning to start a church or is in the first few years of a church plant.

• Austin Porter (superlatives abound)

If you are looking for practical, down to earth, applicable principles for launching a church then this is the TEXT BOOK to get you on your way.

Anyway, I have a ton of reading to do to research this paper.  I am probably reading slower than I should.  Normally when I write a paper, I find resources and skim them until I hit upon the areas that I need to include for my paper’s subject.  Instead, I am actually reading the whole book as I know that ultimately, it will serve me better as we think about planting our own church one day.

So, currently I am chewing through the 360 page Ed Stetzer tome, “Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age”.  Although the resort community seems to be a microcosm or an ultradense monoculture of postmodernism, there is no question that the overall societal trend is towards this philosophy or worldview.  It is good stuff.  I am just looking at the “generation” question right now and he made a very good point – with postmodern cultures it is almost irrelevant to speak of ages as having anything to do with their worldview anymore.  A postmodern could be of any age and they will have more in common in that case than with anyone just close in age to them.  Limiting oneself to a “generation” will not serve the cause of Christ when it comes to these people.

I’d write more but a) I have to actually work on the paper, and b) I have to ride my bike over to get the van out of the shop.  Bye for now.