From Pastor Chris - Everyday Missiology

Yesterday I attempted to lay some groundwork for what "missional church" means for us. This has been a popular and trendy subject among leaders and scholars within Christianity for more than a decade. Only recently has it become a more popular conversation among evangelicals.

I offered my reflections out of Ephesians 3:1-13, paying particular attention to verses 6 and 10. The mystery of God, his promises to redeem his people, has been made available to all people through faith in Christ (v.6). It is the work of the church to make this mystery known, especially through the uniting of Jew and Gentile to the one body of Christ (v.13). There is a lot more that could be said but simply speaking, the gospel is what God has done in Christ and the result is peace with God and peace with one another. It is the mission of the church to declare the peace made possible with Christ and to demonstrate in our lives.

In the past, churches in the west existed in a culture where Christianity was the default religion of most people. Ministry then was designed to wake up nominal believers and this is expressed in ministry styles that assume people will show up. Today the default worldview is secularism and being a part of a church is no longer considered a necessary part of life. Therefore, the church must take on a missionary posture to the culture and adopt forms of ministry that go to people instead of assuming they will come to the church.

But the primary concern is how do we do this? This is where the "missional church" discussion gets very confusing very fast and means drastically different things to different churches. Some of it at least means speaking to idols of the culture, yet also affirming good things about the culture.

In Everyday Church, Tim Chester and Steve Timmis offer some good basic questions to begin to think about what mission looks like in everyday life (pp. 42-43). These are worth reflecting on in your own life and in your small group. These are basic questions a missionary would ask in a new culture.

Where?
Where are the places and activities we can meet people?
Where do people experience community?
Are there existing social networks with which we can engage, or do we need to find ways of creating community within a neighborhood?
Where should we be to have missional opportunities?

When?
What are the patterns and timescales of our neighborhood?
When are the times we can connect with people?
How do people organize their time?
What cultural experiences and celebrations do people value? How might these be used as bridges to the gospel?
When should we be available to have missional opportunities?

What?
What are people's fears, hopes, and hurts?
What gospel stories are told in the neighborhood? What gives people identity? How do they account for wrong in the world? What is their solution? What are their hopes?
What are the barrier beliefs or assumptions that cause people to dismiss the gospel?
What sins will the gospel first confront and heal?
In what ways are people self-righteous?
What is the good news for people in this neighborhood?
What will church look like for people in this neighborhood?

This week I am meeting with fellow pastors to discuss some of these ideas in their own neighborhoods following a similar list of questions. I encourage you to begin asking some of these questions about your own neighbors and neighborhoods!

A Review of What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done

I have increasingly found that it is difficult to keep track of all the different things I need to do. I remember trying to use a Franklin Covey planner and being rather unsuccessful. We even got an official training day to go with it by a guy preaching the gospel of Franklin Covey, that the planner literally saved his life. Add to this that our technological society has made it possible to consume information at a dizzying rate, and it becomes rather confusing what to focus on next. So when I noticed a few good reviews about Matt Perman's book I thought I would check it out.

What's Best Next is a very easy and quick read. You may not even have to read it all but just jump to the highlights at the end of the chapter and resources at the back. Perman designed the book for busy people, but you should not think there are not worthwhile details in the chapters. The book aims to sift through all the business books and productivity books with a Christian lens. The best part about Perman's book is the fact you feel like you don't need to go read the dozens of books out there like it. This is a one stop shop taking all best stuff from books like Getting Things Done.

The book has seven parts and the first two seek to give us the proper motivation and direction for being productive. In the first part he argues that efficiency is not the aim but effectiveness. We ought to view effectiveness, however, with an eternal perspective. We need to be God-centered and other-centered in the things we do. We ought to work out of gratitude and desire to love God and others, not out of a need to make a name for ourselves or gain God's acceptance.

The second part of the book seeks to connect productivity more closely with the gospel. Matt Perman has served in John Piper's Desiring God ministry for years, so it should come as no surprise to those familiar with Piper's ministry that everything flows from the doctrine of justification. This is the only part of the book where I have some criticism. His tagline is "the only way to be productive is to realize you don't have to be productive." There is a lot of good stuff in chapter 7 and it is a very clear explanation of the gospel. Briefly, I think it could have been more clear that because Christ has paid our unpayable debt out of love for us, we now know that we owe him our life and we desire to do all that we can to please him, to love him, in everything we do (1 Cor. 6:19-20; Rom. 12:1-2; 1 Jn. 5:1-3). Certainly, good works do not earn us favor with God, and our good works flow from our new life in Christ. But it is because we have been united with him, we participate with him by the Spirit to do what we ought to do (2 Pet. 1:3-7; Phil. 2:12-13). On page 121 he interviews theologian Michael Horton and here it gets at these things more clearly.

My nitpicking aside, the best stuff in this book is in part 3-7 (chs. 11-24). He arranges it all under the acronym D.A.R.E. - Define, Architect, Reduce, and Execute. Let me give a few highlights that I think were helpful. The first is to establish routines in your week, not lists. Create the appropriate to-do lists within your routines. The point is to order your life around your purpose and to not let it be dictated too much by external forces. (In Franklin Covey language this was the "third wall" of the non-urgent priorities of others). He also had some helpful tips about handling email, generating more time through delegation and automating, and how to handle interruptions. There is a wealth of good tips here. But, as I was reminded this last week, all these things are recommendations. It is really about getting you to think through some principles to make your work more effective.

Lastly, I really appreciated his emphasis on using your work to love your neighbor and bless people, particularly efforts to alleviate poverty throughout the world. It guarded this book from saying its about God, and then sounding like its really just about you and your productivity. It isn't. It is about God enabling you to become an agent of loving people with all the gifts and resources he has given you.

Silicon Valley is full of super A-types like Matt Perman who can't sit still for more than 30-secs. Come to think of it, perhaps the strongest criticism of this book would be devoting more attention to rest. All in all, I would strongly recommend this, especially to all of the super busy tech people I know. Just make sure your routines include ceasing and remembering you can't do everything. (If only your employers would recognize this!) For as Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

Matt Perman. What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014.

Musings on The Lego Movie

Last Friday we have our first successful first go hosting an outdoor Film and Theology. We showed the LEGO Movie but the only downside was we didn't get to offer some reflections on the movie afterwards due to the late start. But the atmosphere outdoors was really fun and we had a great turnout.

We had some handouts for thought provoking discussion with a link to a theological review of the movie. But not everyone may have checked those out so we thought it would be good to post them.

Be sure to check out the links below to some good theological reviews of some rather complex and insightful themes in the movie!

Questions to ponder:

1) Is everything AWESOME? Why? Why not?
2) Are there rules and order in life? How are they established?
3) Are you more orderly or creativity? Where does this come from?
4) Has someone tried to KRAGLE you?
5) Have you intentionally or unintentionally KRAGLED others?
6) How does God help us live – and thrive – in between creativity and order? 

A good review by the author of Cinemagogue: Never LEGO of hope for reconciliation (SPOILER ALERT)

Another review by our own Andrew Thompson: LEGO and let God

- Pastor Chris

From Pastor Chris: Go and Learn Mercy

Matthew 9:13 - Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

This last Sunday I challenged our church to put to practice that Jesus saves sinners with scandalous mercy. Jesus went to the least, the lost, the outcast, the sick, the broken, and showed them compassion and called them to follow him. God desires that we extend the mercy we have received through Christ more than he cares about external things in worship services or being a good person.

We need to go to people and allow ourselves to be scandalized by who responds to God's mercy in Jesus. But I especially called us to begin to do it through the ministry of Moriah's Mission. This is the ministry that Justin and Victoria Nelson have been working to establish since God brought their daughter Moriah into their lives. Our church has a great opportunity to serve medically fragile children and their families and to demonstrate God's call to be merciful.

Our goal is to serve the children, families, and even staff of Children's Recovery Center and the Saratoga Subacute with the compassion of Jesus. Serving children with special needs can be a little intimidating. Our aim is not to make them a project, but simply to be the hands and feet of Jesus. We desire to come alongside with events that serve the children and by providing emotional and spiritual support.

There are three ways we want to show the mercy of Jesus through Moriah's Mission:

1) Provide a holiday meals or activities and sponsor field trips (e.g. Monterey Bay Aquarium)

They loved it last year when we provided a Thanksgiving meal and Christmas party. They love it when we raise money for kids to go the Monterey Bay Aquarium. These are easy to get involved with: you can cook, deliver food, or help raise funds for these events. We are exploring the opportunity of doing a Blood Drive with them this fall.

2) Provide a group of volunteers to just be there for the kids and families on a consistent basis

We hope this fall to coordinate a group of volunteers to be there regularly to read to kids, play a game or assist the Nelson's with their kids so they can visit the CRC or Saratoga. The key is consistency (twice a month or weekly).

3) Provide services for Bible studies or memorial service

We used to provide a worship service that became a Bible study on a monthly basis there. We want to do that again. We also have essentially done a memorial service on two occasions for a child and a staff member. They deeply cherished us assisting in the bereavement process. This is basically the role of a chaplain that Justin, myself and a few others can provide.

If this interests you in any way, please come to a meeting for Moriah's Mission on July 10th at 7:00pm in the small social hall. We will go over vision and next steps and begin to move toward greater involvement with the CRC and Saratoga Subacute.

Projecting Worship

Our church has been without a main projector for several months now. We have gotten by with a consumer grade projector setup in the first pew but not everyone can see it very well. We knew a new higher grade projector would not be cheap and the initial bid we got back was much higher than expected. We have sifted through an initial estimate and come up with a more reasonable solution. But it is still a significant expense and this raises the question whether its worth it.

Our desire is to create an appropriate environment to worship Jesus. The most important is that we preach Christ from the Word and that we exalt Christ with our voices, prayers, and sacraments. But we must make our worship accessible to visitors and outsiders. It is not enough that our worship exalts Jesus it also needs to be comprehensible to outsiders. We do not exalt Jesus for our own sake, but for the sake of the mission that all may know him and believe in him. This principle is observed in Acts 2:5, 12, 37 and 1 Cor. 14:23-25. Non-believers were expected to be in the worship service and that service ought to be intelligible, although not necessarily comfortable, for them.

But there are two concerns which are more apparent but they are secondary concerns. The first is if its a worthwhile investment and good stewardship of our resources. The second is whether it is aesthetically pleasing. It would be to view it from a pure practical standpoint to only consider it a stewardship issue. If one viewed it from the point of view of pure aesthetics and technology, money would be no concern at all. Clearly these two can be pitted against each other but it does not need to be so.

Putting all these concerns together, let me list several reasons why a projector is a worthwhile investment even though it will be a sacrificial gift for us.

1) God cares about art and that it is done well for its own sake. God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them and called them very good (Gen. 1:31). The first account of someone being filled with Spirit was an artist, for the purpose of decorating the tabernacle (Ex. 31:1-11). God commanded art and technology to be used well in construction of the tabernacle and the temple (see Ex. 25-27). Technology is a part of the aesthetic and the technique employed for art. It does matter how it is done and different technologies communicate art differently. In our day, video makes our worship more accessible and over a 10 year life of a projector is not a significant cost difference versus printing lyrics on paper for everyone.

2) Our worship service is not just for the sake of worshipping Jesus for our enjoyment, but that he may be proclaimed to the nations (Is. 2:2-4; 56:6-8). We must consider how people outside of the church would perceive our service. Our aim is that the "secrets of the heart" (1 Cor. 14:25) may be revealed through our worship and proclamation of the gospel.

3) God is to be worshipped, not art or technology (Ex. 20:1-4). It can be used well to glorify him and reflect his creativity or idolatrously to reflect our rebellion against him. It is important for us to make our use of technology an aid to worship and maintain our feel of authenticity.

4) Doing things poorly excludes visitors and outsiders. This is the implication of making worship comprehensible to outsiders. Tim Keller makes the point that a poor worship service excludes people who do not have a relationship with the pastor or worship leader or anyone else in the church. Insiders are very forgiving of mistakes and poor quality because they have a relationship and know the challenges. But an outsider first notices what was done poorly. But when it is done reasonably well it includes people because it is not a distraction and demonstrates we went to some effort to make it accessible to them.

There is more that could be said but I am persuaded it is a worthwhile investment for us mostly because we can create a better worship experience and do so in a way to serve the mission. The only drawback is that it is a significant investment for our church at this time. Because of that our Elder Board has created three funding goals.

Goal 1 - If we are able to raise $35,000 we will be able to get a new projector system and basic lighting upgrades.
Goal 2 - If we are able to raise $50,000 we will be able to do a two projector system, accomplish some delayed audio maintenance, and improve audio and video in the chapel with inexpensive consumer grade equipment.

I am extremely happy to say more than 30% of our initial goal as already come in through some very generous donations. This means we only need another $23,000 in order to reach our "pull the trigger" goal.

Thank you so much for all your sacrificial gifts and continued support of our ministry. May the Lord be with you and enable us all to serve him in his mission of redemption.

Pastor Chris

You can give here:
http://www.dwellsj.com/#!mediatechupdate/c1rsm

Check out these links for helpful commentary on related issues:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/article/how-to-discourage-artists-in-the-church
http://download.redeemer.com/pdf/learn/resources/Evangelistic_Worship-Keller.pdf

Ministry Updates and Waiting on the Lord

It was good to be back with our Dwell Church family this past Sunday. Thank you again for receiving Bernard Emerson and Alvin Lin. In your prayers, please remember them as Bernard continues to lead his church plant towards regular worship services with The Way Church in Oakland. Pray for Alvin and our sister church East Valley as they will also be undergoing a leadership transition. Pastor John Helveston has served East Valley for 25 years and will be retiring to care for his ailing mother in Mississippi.

I want to follow up on a couple of ministry updates we have given in the past week. Many of you have been awaiting an update on a new projector. We received a quote that we gave to you that was much more than any of us expected. We are working hard to bring that number down as much as possible and even do what we can ourselves. We are working to balance what will enhance our worship experience, set us up for the future, and be as economical as possible. If you have further questions or concerns, please ask myself or any of our Elders.

The second thing I want to announce is that Beth Thompson will be our Children's Director! Dwell has hired Beth on a part-time basis to oversee the equipping and coordination of volunteers for the Children's Ministry and ensuring we have quality curriculum at every level. It is very important that we do children's ministry well and we now have the resources to pursue this.

One last thought I wanted to leave with you. Psalm 31:24 says, "Be strong, let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord." This is the last verse of a Psalm that cries out to the Lord to deliver the psalmist from various struggles in life. The theme of waiting on the Lord is frequent in the Psalms and we often move past it without reflecting on it much. Waiting in scripture is often an active waiting. It is not a call to be passive but to be diligent in reminding ourselves of God's grace, of pressing forward in faith He will act, and a charge for us not give up hope. Waiting on the Lord does not mean doing nothing. It means we speak to our hearts by reminding ourselves of the redemption he has secured for us in Christ. It means we continue to be faithful with all He has called us to do. So we press forward, not because there is nothing else to do, but because we might miss Him at work if we take our eyes off the prize.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Chris

From Pastor Chris: Moving Forward

Ecclesiastes 3:22 (ESV)

So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?

Thank you to all of you for receiving Bernard and Alvin the last few weeks while I took some time to reflect on our ministry and my place within it. My family and I got get away for a few days in Mendocino and had the privilege of worshipping with a few other co-laborers of the gospel in San Jose. I want to say thanks to everyone for your support and encouragement over the last few weeks. It has been a gift of grace to hear of your care and concern for me, Cassie, and Calvin.

Due to Jason's departure, it was necessary for me to get out of some of my routines and have time to meet with pastors and speak with mentors and our Elders to assess where we are so that we can continue to move forward with our ministry into the future. We have reviewed in part what we are good at and what we are not.  I have sought feedback on what my strengths and weaknesses are and as a Board we have talked openly and honestly about our individual strengths and weaknesses. I got a rare chance to visit some other churches, meet their pastors, and have read what I can about churches that successfully manage significant leadership changes.

I have been immensely encouraged about the current state of our church and our future. I am confident about being able to continue to serve here at Dwell and the overall health of our church. But we are under no illusion about things we have to do better: for our church, myself, and each individual elder. We will continue this assessment. The work is not done but we feel confident about moving forward. Therefore, I want to give you a preview of things you can pray with us about as we continue to develop our ministry and grow as leaders.

We hope to create a clearer strategy for our ministry over the coming months. We are thankful for so much of the leadership Jason gave us over the years and we desire to make that more clear, more accessible, and more fruitful.

-John Lunsford and I will be attending a "Next Steps" training later this week for church plants that have crossed the 3-5 year benchmark and for established churches looking to grow after years of pruning.
-We will be hiring a Children's Director in the next few weeks so expect to hear more soon.
-We will be presenting the costs for a new projector system, along with a few other improvements to the facilities.
-We want to create a long term strategy for investing in our people and equipping them to use the gifts God has given them in Christ to see a slice of his kingdom break into each other's lives and our greater community.

I want you to know: Cassie and I love this church and all of you. We are immensely blessed to have the privilege to serve with you. It is a joy to do ministry with you. I am grateful to be a part of Dwell Christian Church and hope to see the Lord continue to use us for his kingdom.

- Pastor Chris