Archive for January, 2008

I’m quitting church planting

Friday, January 25th, 2008

That’s right, I’m getting out of the business of starting churches.  The reasons are simple, but they have taken me until the past few months to grasp:

  • Jesus never told us to plant churches.  He said that He would build His church.  (Matt. 16:18)
  • Jesus did tell us to make disciples.  (Matt. 28:18-20)

Part of making proper disciples is teaching them to come together in community, living out what it means to be the Body of Christ.  This involves obeying all the “one another” commands of the New Testament.  So if we do a good job of evangelism and discipleship, the natural result of that will be new churches springing up – new communities of faith.  But that part is the work of Jesus.  He said so.

This has been a very freeing realization for me as a church planter (wait, an ex-church planter).  In the past several months, I worried a lot about what the structure of the churches we planted would look like.  We would love to see an awesome network of house churches spring up in our region of southern Mexico, so we had been trying to figure out how they would be linked together, what authority would look like, etc.  Our church planting coach, Rob, set me straight by basically saying, “Hey, don’t worry about it.  You just organically network new believers and groups by giving them opportunities to befriend one another, and rest assured that they will define the structure at some point.”  And you know, I can see that Rob is right.  We missionaries and church planters can get off track worrying about things that aren’t ours to worry about.  Jesus told us to make disciples, that’s the command we have to obey, and the rest we can leave up to Him.

I’ll still call it church planting, I suppose, just because that’s a widely understood term, but whenever I speak of it you can know that what I really mean is that we’re making disciples and God is working through us to start churches.

Any other church planters want to join me in walking off the job?

Posted in Church Planting and Discipleship | 3 Comments »

The most important spiritual discipline for new disciples

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Three of our mission training school students have been working with a church group here that is in its formative stages.  This past week, they sat me down to ask my advice on a couple of things.  (At this point, I should acknowledge their humility in doing this, because although I oversee our church planting team, I still know very little, especially by way of practical experience.  This is not false humility on my part; this is the reality of us being desperate for leaders in a quickly growing ministry.)  I did have one thought that literally crystalized as it came out of my mouth, and I wanted to share it here.  It came as they were talking about the challenges in trying to get their disciples to do their daily devotions.

My concern in sharing this thought is that I think it could possibly get me burned at the stake in a lot of churches if we still were doing that kind of thing.  It’s hard for me to fully express myself in a short blog post, so if this strikes you wrong, then please dialogue with me about it to get at my real meaning, before writing me off as a heretic.  (The comments section of this post would be a good forum for dialogue, hint, hint.)

What is the most important individual or internal spiritual discipline for a new believer to be developing?  When I’ve gone through evangelism training, I’ve always been given a short list of things we’re supposed to tell new converts to do–read your Bible, pray, go to church, witness to others, etc.  If there is one of those that we emphasize above the others, I feel like it is reading the Bible.  It’s tied up in the whole idea of personal devotions.  But the more I think about it, I disagree that studying the Bible is the most important spiritual discipline for a new believer.  Consider this:

  • In its simplest form, discipleship involves teaching people the commands of Christ (Matt. 28:18-20–see my recent posts on this topic here and here).  The earliest believers, including the ones in all those churches Paul planted, managed to follow Christ without having a complete New Testament, so there must be some way to create good disciples even when all 66 books are not available.  However, we were commanded to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17).
  • Jesus never gave a Bible study model, but He certainly gave a model prayer (Matt. 6:5-13)
  • Jesus read the Scriptures in the synagogues on Sabbath days, but He spent many late hours at night praying.  I’m going to guess that He made it through his 40 day fast without a scroll in hand.  The point I’m making is that the Gospels give me the feeling Jesus’ Bible reading probably happened on a weekly basis, but I think His prayer was much more frequent.

Before you go out looking for firewood to roast me with, think through what I’m saying.  Do not hear me saying that studying Scripture is unimportant, but do hear me saying that prayer is important, and maybe we should shift our focus to more prayer emphasis when helping our disciples grow spiritually.  I would put forth that the new believer’s prayer life is a far better measuring stick of his spirituality than the number of days a week he reads his Bible.

We North Americans are studious book learners, so I think this can be tough for us to swallow.  But put yourself in our shoes here in Oaxaca, or maybe in the shoes of some tribe in Africa or down in the Amazon.  A lot of cultures are much more group oriented than we are.  We’re very individualistic, as seen in terms like “personal devotions” and “personal Savior”.  Especially for other cultures, reading the Bible once a week in a meeting, as was probably done in New Testament times, makes a whole lot more sense than emphasizing personal devotions where you read a passage of the Bible.  Many people are not literate.  But they can all pray.  I think it’s reasonable for prayer to be an always-happening, group or individual activity, and for Bible reading and study to be more of a group activity.  I think there is decent support for this in the New Testament.

We say that following Christ is about a relationship and not just head knowledge.  Prayer emphasizes relationship, whereas Bible study increases head knowledge.

Posted in Church Planting and Discipleship | 4 Comments »

The application of church discipline

Monday, January 21st, 2008

I mentioned a while back that the previous weeks had been some of the most difficult I had had in a long time.  Things have actually not gotten any easier since then, but that’s a story for another time.  One of the difficult things we went through a few weeks back was having to dismiss two of our mission training school students.  I was not very directly involved in that situation, but I learned a lot by watching how the leaders around me handled it.  Even though it’s older news now, I have wanted to come back to it so I could make a couple of comments.

The issue didn’t seem like a big deal in the beginning.  We have rules against guys and girls getting into romantic relationships just for the seven months they’re going through our mission training school.  This is so they can devote themselves to ministry and to spiritual growth.  We had a guy and a girl who began to break some of those rules – being alone one-on-one, communicating via e-mail and instant messanger, etc.  I am going to share a couple of Scripture passages dealing with the confrontation of sin here, so that you can look at them as you follow the process that happened with these two students:

“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you.  If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.  But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’  If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

Matthew 18:15-17

My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.

James 5:19,20

When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.

1 Corinthians 5:4,5

A couple of the guy students saw their brother getting into sin with the young lady by breaking the relationship rules, so they went and confronted him on it.  They did not go to anyone else; they handled it themselves.

The guy did not repent.  Leadership the rules being broken and also found out those two students had confronted the guy with no change.  So a couple members of leadership then went to the guy and the girl, confronted their sin, warned them of the danger of rebellion (the Bible puts this sin on the same level as witchcraft in 1 Samuel 15:23), and called them to repent.  This couple was taking advantage of some gray areas in the rules to deepen their romantic involvement, so leadership made those gray areas black and white by saying, “You can’t do this, this, or this anymore.”

The rule breaking continued.  The couple was caught doing the “this, this, or this” they had been told they couldn’t do.  At this point, leadership took the confrontation to the third and final level.  This meant bringing the couple before the church, which in our context was the entire student body.  The couple was called out in front of the student body, their sin was rebuked, and they were told that if they rebelled again they would be asked to leave the school.

In the days following that third and final confrontation, the couple was once more caught in several instances of doing precisely the things they were told were against the rules.  We had no choice but to ask them to leave the school.  I was in the meeting where this news was broken to the couple, and I was powerfully impacted to see how much love leadership exhibited, the tears they shed, and the way they pled with these two students to repent of their rebellion.  Leadership’s goal was always repentance, and never anything else.  There was no vengeance on their part, only hurt.

Immediately following telling those two the news, we went to the student body to let them know.  The scene that followed was to me a true picture of the Body of Christ.  Upon hearing the news, the students and staff wept; there was hardly a dry eye in the room.  There was some anger and frustration, but the overwhelming feeling was one of brokenness over those two students who refused to repent.  The love for them was tangible.  A soberness about the seriousness of sin also gripped the room.  It seemed to me like a lot of us were realizing that it was only by the grace of God that we weren’t in the same boat.  It just takes a couple of sins left in darkness to lead us into a spiritual bondage that can eventually make it impossible for us to receive correction.  For maybe half and hour, the students cried, hugged one another, and huddled in small groups to pray.  Many encouraging words were spoken to leadership about their handling of the situation and their refusal to allow sin to go on unchecked in the Body.

Here are some things I learned through the whole experience:

  • Not meaning to be cliché, sin is far more dangerous than I ever thought.  It’s deadly.  A few simple sins of pride and unsubmissiveness can lead a person down a road into so much bondage that it’s almost impossible for them to hear the Holy Spirit.  If you get to that point, you’re at the mercy of Satan.  The problem there is that he doesn’t have any.  Now I understand why the Bible uses such harsh language, like “hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed”.  The purpose there, of course, is so that his spirit may be saved.  Proverbs 29:1 warns of the incredible danger of not receiving a rebuke: “A man who remains stiff-necked after many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed–without remedy.”

  • Christians who confront sin in others are often criticized as being unloving, but confrontation is actually the most loving thing you can do for someone in sin (see my previous point if you don’t agree).  I learned how much grace God has through the pattern He gave us in Matthew 18.  The escalating levels of rebuke give the person in sin every chance to humble themself and repent.  It takes an incredible amount of pride to be brought before the entire church Body and still not humble yourself.  The Matthew 18 model is not mean; it is a loving way of trying everything possible to alert the sinner to grave danger.

  • It’s all about the heart.  You could argue that the outward acts of the two students who were dismissed were somewhat trivial.  We have dealt with “worse” sins at different times committed by students who have stayed.  The problem had much less to do with their visible actions and everything to do with the pride and rebellion in their hearts.

I think most of us would agree that the rebuking of sin and church discipline is under-applied in much of the Western church.  But why is that the case, if sin is so incredibly deadly?  Is it because we don’t understand the true power of sin?  Or could it be that we fear man more than we fear God?  Whatever the cause, I hear God calling us back to a practice that was commonplace in the Bible.  Will we love our brothers and sisters enough to do it?

Posted in Global Frontier Missions | 2 Comments »

GFM blogs

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

I am often wanting to put little tidbits on this blog but don’t get the chance to.  Tonight, Erin is at a prayer/worship meeting, and I am at home listening for the kids.  I think Erin wanted me to stay up and wait for her, which means I have some time on my hands.  So we’ll see what all I get to.  Here’s one:

Some of our mission training school students this year have blogs, so Grant recently put a page on the GFM website with links to them.  If you’re a friend of GFM or interested in our ministry for whatever reason, you may enjoy hearing what some of our students have to say.

Posted in Global Frontier Missions | No Comments »

Christianity Rediscovered

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

Our friend and church planting coach, Rob, loaned me a book called Christianity Rediscovered by Vincent J. Donovan.  I have been picking through it just a few pages at a time before I go to sleep at night.  Donovan is a Catholic priest who was a missionary to the Masai tribe in the country of Tanzania in East Africa.  He became disillusioned with the seeming ineffectiveness of many of the traditional missions tactics (schools, hospitals, etc.) that had not yielded one adult believer after seven years of work.  He got permission from a bishop over him to pull free from those activities and “just go and talk to them about God and the Christian message.”  In the book, he shares many of his experiences with evangelizing and discipling the Masai, and he offers reflections on what he learned about God, missions, and the Church through it all.

I have found Donovan’s book both interesting and challenging.  It has stretched me and caused me to reflect.  I’m realizing lately how much you learn about Christianity when viewing it through the lense of a different culture, and that was Donovan’s experience, too.  I think his book is a little more off the beaten path of popular books with Western missionaries, and I recommend it for precisely that reason.  He offers a somewhat unique perspective.  I thought I would share an excerpt I read a couple of days ago, where Donovan reflects on inward versus outward turned Christianity:

“How does one prevent a distorted meaning of Christianity from creeping into a community right at the start?  It is only in the imparting of an outward-turned Christianity that we have any hope of achieving Christianity.  An inward turned Christianity is a dangerous counterfeit, an alluring masquerade.  It is no Christianity at all.

The salvation of one’s own soul, or self-sanctification, or self-perfection, or self-fulfillment may well be the goal of Buddhism or Greek philosophy or modern psychology.  But it is not the goal of Christianity.  For someone to embrace Christianity for the purpose of self-fulfillment or self-salvation is, I think, to betray or to misunderstand Christianity at its deepest level.

The temptation to look inward is one that affects not only individuals, but also whole communities, parishes, dioceses.  In such cases the physical or spiritual well-being of the Christian community becomes the very goal of the community, the whole reason for its existence.  Any ulterior motive for the community’s existence is completely forgotten.  Indeed the only valid reason for the community’s existence is forgotten.

Christianity must be a force that moves outward, and a Christian community is basically in existence ‘for others’.  That is the whole meaning of a Christian community.  A Christian community which spends all its resources on a building campaign for its own needs has long ago left Christianity high and dry on the banks.  Or all its resources on an education program or youth program for that matter.  A Christian community is in existence ‘for others’ not for ‘its own.’”

What thoughts do you have as you read what Donovan says?

Posted in Church Planting and Discipleship | No Comments »

Mexico City photos

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

Here are a few photos from the two days we spent in Mexico City in December:

They put an ice rink in the zócalo(center city square) with ice hockey demonstrations.  That was, umm, unique for Mexico.  The locals said that is the first time they’ve ever done it.

Ice Rink

Shot of the zócalo, with a gigantic Mexican flag in the center and a large cathedral at the rear.

Flag and Cathedral

Another shot of the cathedral.

Cathedral

I couldn’t believe how decorated the zócalo was for Christmas.  It was really cool.

Christmas Decorations

The girls enjoyed a trip to the zoo, which was free – who knew?!

Hippos

The museum of anthropology was really cool.  The only drawback to going with little kids was that we could never stay in one place long enough to learn much about what we were looking at.  Here are some photos, though:

Museum 1

That’s our friend J.C. from Mission Training School who was with us for the day.  Above him is an Aztec calendar.

JC and Calendar

One of the few times Lauryn stood in one place :)   She’s in front of a statue of Cuitlahuac, for whom her kindergarten is named.

Museum 2

This roof at the museum is held up only by that central column.  Pretty impressive!

The Awesome Roof

More museum…

Museum 3

This was interesting – We didn’t catch the whole performance, but these guys spin around upside down until they’re hanging way high up, then they spend several minutes unwinding while they chant, play drums, etc.  This was in the huge park (Parque de Chapultepec) that the zoo, museum of anthropology, and President’s house, among other things, are in.

Hangmen

The Christmas lights all around the zócalo were spectacular at night – the photo doesn’t do them justice.

Christmas Lights

By the end of a long day, Molly was asleep standing up.

Nap Time

And…that’s all folks!

Posted in Family, Photos | No Comments »

Which of these criticisms of house churches is most accurate?

Friday, January 11th, 2008

Over the last year, we have begun focusing on planting house churches.  There are important reasons for this, which I intend to explain over time on this blog.  A lot of debate goes on these days about house churches, though.  Naysayers point to many dangers they perceive in house churches.  That’s why I found this post by Guy Muse so interesting.  I encourage you to read it; it’s a good post.  I love the house church meeting he describes.  In many ways, it is a vision of what we hope to see happening here.

But I would like to invite some participation from my readers here.  Whether you are in favor of, against, or indifferent towards house churches, of the objections listed below that I pulled off Guy’s post, which do you think is the most valid criticism of house churches?  Leave a comment and explain your point of view!

…accountability and proper doctrine would be my two red flags

…the rise of house churches is more [a] mark of unhealthiness

…house churches are dominated by people who do not want to submit themselves to the leadership of the church

…the lack of biblically trained leadership would often create an environment rich in heresy

…early churches meeting in homes, is that descriptive or prescriptive?

…I tend to think of this as more a reaction against the mega church and mega-wannabe

…I think that house churches work better in some cultures than in other cultures

…To me, the key biblical point is not where the church meets. The key point is whether the pastor meets the qualifications of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

…House churches work well in places where there is persecution and a need for secret meeting places.

…I don’t think it would work in my context

Posted in Church Planting and Discipleship | 3 Comments »

5,286 miles later…

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

 A Familiar View

If details bore you, don’t read this post, but if you want a sense of our crazy trip, read on! 

Saturday night we returned from our holiday trip to the United States.  Besides having a great time visiting my family and a number of friends, we drove more than we have ever driven before in such a short period.  Here’s what our trip looked like:

Friday, December 14, we took an overnight bus to Mexico City, where we spent two days hanging out and seeing some of the sights as a family.  (It was $400 cheaper for us to fly out on Monday, so we figured ‘Why not?’)

That Monday, we flew to Houston, where Erin and the girls rented a car and went to visit some friends near San Antonio, TX for a couple of days.  I, meanwhile, flew to Tampa, FL to pick up the minivan we had just bought.  I arrived in Tampa at midnight, was met by the car salesman at 1am, and was in the car by 2am.  I drove an hour to where I would have a breakfast meeting the next morning, then caught a couple of hours of off-and-on sleep in the car.

That morning (Tuesday), I got to hook up with one of our interns from last summer for breakfast.  I then hit the road for Jacksonville, where I had lunch with a mother and daughter who became friends after they came to Oaxaca for a mission trip the summer of 2006.  I was right back on the road after lunch, arriving in Tallahassee to visit and spend the night with friends from Four Oaks Community Church, who we have also gotten to know through mission trips they have taken to Oaxaca.

The cool thing was that Wednesday morning, as I headed towards Texas to meet Erin and the girls, some of our Four Oaks friends were heading the same direction.  I caravanned with them until the New Orleans area, where I stopped to meet with the missions directors of a new church that is planning on sending down a mission trip team this coming summer.  Continuing from there, I caught back up with our Four Oaks friends and was graciously invited to spend the night with them at their aunt’s house in Lake Charles, LA.  They fed me authentic shrimp gumbo (I think that’s the first time I’ve had it), and it was awesome!

The next morning I met with another pastor just east of Houston whose church is coming to Oaxaca this summer.  I then hurried to meet Erin at the car rental return, arriving only about an hour late.  Oops :(   We met up with a college friend of Erin’s that afternoon, and then were taken out to a great Korean restaurant by Korean friends who came on a mission trip in July.  They also were kind enough to host our family for the night.  See how many friends you get to make from all over when you host mission trips?

Friday, December 21, we finally drove to Little Rock, AR and joined my dad and some of my siblings for Christmas.  We had a really fun time visiting together.  Oh yeah, the day after we got to my dad’s, he and I drove to Tulsa, OK and back to pick up my siblings.  (Joint parenting stuff after a divorce is a mess – I don’t recommend it.)  Christmas was good, and the day after my sister Catherine and her boyfriend arrived.  Since we were close already, we took the opportunity to drive to Memphis, TN for a day to visit some extended relatives.

So after all that, our family and my siblings then drove to Sterling, KS (commonly referred to as ‘the middle of nowhere’) to visit my mom.  My sister Hannah surprised the family by coming out from Colorado to visit us, so we had all seven kids in our family together for the first time since mine and Erin’s wedding six years ago.  The time at my mom’s was a great visit, too, highlighted by an impressive fireworks display put on by my brother Ben for New Year’s.

The day after New Year’s it was time to head south again.  We headed out in the morning, meeting another college friend of Erin’s in Oklahoma City for lunch, meeting with leaders of another new mission trip team that night in Austin, TX, and then spending the night in San Antonio, TX.  After putting the car in the shop the morning of January 3 (it has a mysterious oil leak we’re still trying to figure out), we were on the road again by early afternoon.  We crossed the border into Mexico at McAllen, TX at 8pm and then drove on a few hours to a small town called Soto la Marina.

Now we’re up to last Friday, and getting close to home.  We drove on to a beautiful town on the coast of Veracruz, called Costa Esmeralda.  We got in late afternoon, got a hotel room, and spent the evening and the next morning eating out and relaxing on the beach to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary.  Our anniversary was this past Saturday, the 5th of January.  We hit the road about midday Saturday, stopped off in the city of Veracruz for a late lunch at Carl’s Jr., and then were home by 10pm that night.

23 days, 12 states, 2 countries, 11 different sleeping locations, 5286 miles driven, and 92 hours in the car.  And I would do it all over again.  (I can’t speak for Erin.)  It’s hard having family all spread out, but the cool thing is that we get to visit so many more people, now that we have friends all over the place.  Thank you, God, for a good trip, and thank you that we’re now home and settled for a little while!

Posted in Personal Happenings | No Comments »