Tag Archives: evangelism

Disciples of Jesus Multiply

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Sadly, there are a lot churches that are really good at addition, subtraction and division, but not multiplication.

It’s easy to settle for addition, because at least it is positive growth. Addition is safe. Addition is comfortable. But addition is often the result of a lack of vision and mission. Church leaders get bogged down in caring for the urgent and the existing members are happy because the attention is all on them. Sometimes people move into the area and just naturally look for a church. Put out a sign and we can probably grow through addition.

However, addition is just a step away from subtraction. People start to withdraw from the church when the church has no purpose. I bet more people leave the church out of boredom than from being called to fulfill the Great Commission.

Let’s not even talk about division…

Multiplication requires vision and leadership. Multiplication requires sacrifice and commitment. Multiplication is what disciples of Jesus are doing. Multiplication takes much prayer and a lot of hard work. Multiplication requires evangelism and a passion for making disciples. Bill Hull says,

If the church fails to make disciples, it fails to multiply. If the church fails to multiply, it fails.

We all know that division is failure, but so is subtraction and addition. Multiplication brings glory to God. It is what we are commissioned to do. If it’s division, subtraction, or addition, it may or may not be from God, but if it’s multiplication and it brings Him glory, there’s no doubt it’s of Him!

My Father is glorified by this: that you produce much fruit and prove to be My disciples. (John 15:8 HCSB)

JD Payne in New England

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Today I was a part of a training event for church planters hosted by the Baptist Convention of New England. The guest speaker was JD Payne, author of “Discovering Church Planting: An Introduction to the Whats, Whys, and Hows of Global Church Planting” (Affiliate Link). Everyone in attendance received a copy of the book so I’m sure I’ll be reviewing it here at ChurchETHOS soon.

JD Payne is a national missionary with the North American Mission Board and is an Associate Professor of Church Planting and Evangelism at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY where he also directs their church planting center. He has written two other books and is the founder of northamericanmissions.org.

Here are a couple of insights from JD Payne’s research and missiology from today’s talks (and also from some blog posts and other data I’ve gotten from him in months past):

There are 29 metro areas in the US with fewer than 5% of the population who are evangelical.

When I looked through this data, I discovered that 11 of the 29 metro areas are in New England and I’m living in one of them! Here are some more nuggets:

The way we are planting churches in North America must change. There are 4 billion people around the world who are not following Jesus and 2 billion who have never even heard of him. Our methods need to change if we are going to reach them with the gospel.

Payne’s definition of church planting: evangelism that results in new churches. Question: can you plant a church without evangelism?

If you have a shaky theology then your missiology will be shaky, if your missiology is shaky then your missional practices will be on shaky ground. Our theology informs our missiology informs how we do mission.

Suggested ethical guideline for church planting practices: Since the global need for the gospel is so great, unless God reveals otherwise, we will begin our ministry among people with the greatest need and with a high level of receptivity to the gospel.

Another suggested ethical guideline: Since the world consists of four billion unbelievers, with two billion who have never heard the gospel, our strategy will involve the use of highly reproducible church planting methods.

I couldn’t agree more with JD about these guidelines and some of the thoughts he conveyed at our meeting. I will be sharing more of his insights and my responses in the weeks ahead, but for now I thought I would share some of the highlights!

What are your thoughts to some of his research and insights about church planting in North America?

Embodying Our Faith by Tim Morey

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Embodying Our Faith:
Becoming a Living, Sharing, Practicing Church
by: Tim Morey
Paperback: IVP Books, 2010.
Buy now:  [ Amazon Affiliate Link ]

Tim Morey (D.Min., Fuller Theological Seminary) is a church planter and pastor. His church, Life Covenant Church is located in Torrance, California. He is also on the national church planting team for the Evangelical Covenant Church and is an adjunct professor teaching practical theology at Talbot School of Theology.

Tim Morey asks the following question in his introduction to “Embodying Our Faith”:

“How do we bring the message of Jesus to a culture that is deeply skeptical about truth claims, rejects metanarratives (such as the gospel), considers the church a suspect institution, takes offense at moral judgments and believes any religion will lead them to God?”

When put that way, our task seems a bit overwhelming. However, Morey does a great job of developing a philosophy of church planting for those of us who are church planters while simultaneously making evangelism in a postmodern context a simpler concept to understand. This book is a must read for church planters but it’s also a must read for anyone in the church who seeks to understand how God is moving in our post-Christian, postmodern culture of relativism and how we can join Him in showing love to our neighbors.

Embodied Apologetics

At the root of this book is the concept of “embodied apologetics”. He writes

By this I mean an apologetic that is based more on the weight of our actions than the strength of our arguments.

I underlined this sentence 12 times in my copy of Morey’s book. He’s not saying that we abandon our logical understanding of Truth. In my head I envision a person standing on two feet. One foot represents logical arguments for the gospel. The other foot represents our experience of the gospel. In today’s society, I believe Morey is suggesting that the weight is shifting from one foot to the other; from the logical foot, to the experiential foot. However, we still stand on both feet. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.” We need to maintain our understanding of the truth but realize that many people need to see our faith in action before they will ever consider the truth. Morey spends a lot more time explaining an embodied apologetic than most others who have talked about the concept and I appreciate his ability to take an abstract concept and make it concrete.

More from Morey concerning an embodied apologetic:

The Christian life is not meant to be an objective pursuit of orthodox doctrine but is embodied in those who follow a Person rather than a dogma.

Seldom do you find [in the book of Acts] a proclamation of the gospel without an accompanying experience of the gospel.

Contextualization

From describing an embodied apologetic, Morey then turns to contextualization in the chapter entitled, “Same Wine, Different Skin”. Again, he is able to succinctly describe a vision for the present about how we should contextualize the gospel. Morey wants the church to start being on mission. As church members, we are missionaries in our own neighborhood. He writes:

The task of every missionary is to understand the culture to be reached and to bring the undiluted gospel to that culture in a form that will be understandable to the hearers. This process is known as contextualization.

His point is that we shouldn’t think that this process is only for the missionary in Japan who wears a kimono or the missionary in Ecuador who learns to speak Spanish. In our own communities, we need to begin to grasp the “language” of our neighbors and begin to think more missionally about how to share our lives with them. He quotes Eddie Gibbs:

The contextualized church “represents a serious attempt to engage with the cultural setting in which the local church is endeavoring to bear witness,” whereas the market-driven church “signifies a church that tailors its message and employs any gimmick in order to attract a crowd.”

Clearly, Morey believes we should be more relationship-driven and he calls this “the contextualized church”.

Disciplemaking

Evangelizing baby boomers is like picking fruit from an aging tree, while evangelizing postmoderns is like fertilizing the roots in hope that fruit will one day appear.

Agree? Disagree? In chapters 3 and 4, Morey talks about what it means to make disciples in a postmodern context. In Morey’s mind, we shouldn’t be separating evangelism from discipleship. Jesus didn’t seem to reserve spiritual practices only for those who were “members”. Here’s what Morey says:

Jesus seemed largely unconcerned with who was in and who was out (“You do not want to leave too, do you?” [Jn 6:67]), but simply called all to follow regardless of where they were at in the process, always inviting them to go deeper.

In other words, Morey believes that we are seeing a shift in how people come to Jesus and it may not be a one time event…it might be a process. He describes several shifts for us to consider today:

  • Evangelism as an event to evangelism as a process
  • Impersonal evangelism to personal evangelism
  • Rational apologetics to an embodied apologetic

Too often we present the gospel as a set of truths we must subscribe to, as opposed to a relationship with Jesus.

Elements of an Embodied Apologetic

Throughout the book, Morey is developing a way of thinking about the needs of our postmodern neighbors and how the church naturally meets those needs through an embodied apologetic.

An embodied apologetic must be experiential. Our worship gatherings are, by nature, experiential. Especially when we include elements of communion, prayer, silence,  music, food, Psalms, ancient writings, story, giving, art, meditation, preaching, teaching, and benediction as Morey suggests. This experiential worship resonates with postmoderns who have a need for transcendence.

An embodied apologetic must be communal. This happens through our small groups, hospitality in our homes, mentoring, accountability, confession, etc. These practices really meet the needs of postmoderns who are longing for authentic community.

Finally, an embodied apologetic must be enacted. The church should be active in compassion and justice both locally and globally. This meets the needs of postmoderns who are trying to find their purpose.

These three elements of an embodied apologetic – experiential faith, communal faith, and enacted faith – are the subject of the final three chapters of the book. These last three chapters are extremely practical and helpful. Notice also that all three of these expressions of our faith are extremely natural and Biblical. They may not be easy, but this is the essence of how God wants us to live. There is nothing new about the gospel or even about how to share the gospel, Morey simply does a good job of matching the needs of our postmodern neighbors to the fulfillment of those needs in Jesus as we live, share, and practice our faith in front of others.

You Share Jesus Like A Girl!

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My dad, who is a pastor in Alabama, has been doing a lot of thinking about the story of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman. He has been preaching on the topic at his church and has recently started a blog series about his thoughts. I’m looking forward to hearing more from him about this and I thought I’d let you in on the fun!

One of his thoughts in his first post is about how the disciples went into town to get some food but really didn’t want to be in Samaria. They could’ve used the opportunity to give “living water” to the residents there. However, when the woman realized who Jesus was, she went and told the entire town about Him! Dad writes,

I discovered from this biblical passage that I would rather witness like the woman than to witness like the disciples. She went back to the village and said “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could this be the Messiah? (John 4:28)

When Jesus truly transforms our lives, it’s worth telling people!  I’ll let you read the rest here.

Church Planting is People Planting

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There’s a lot of imagery in Jesus’ parables of sowing seeds. We use the same imagery when we talk about “church planting”. The essence of church planting is simply sowing seeds of the gospel into our neighbors lives. This becomes harder and harder for established churches as the outward focus shifts inward.

But that’s okay! The good news is that anyone can be a people planter!

Regardless of whether or not we are starting a brand new church or are a part of an established church we can be involved in people planting. Every church leader can invest in people. Every church member can invest in people too! Another way to say that is, we are all called to obey the Great Commandment and fulfill the Great Commission.

Plant a seed. Pray! Water it. Pray! Watch it mature. Pray! Repeat!!

Our neighbors need to know about the good news and all of us are called to share it with them. People planting is about investing in the lives of our neighbors. We need church planters to be people planters. We need established church leaders to be people planters. We need church members to be people planters.

He is like a tree planted beside streams of water
that bears its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers. (Psalm 1:3)

Are you a people planter? Are you equipping others to be people planters?

Social Acceptance: A Missional Metric

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tape-measure

This is a guest post from Jon Reid. Jon blogs regularly at Blog One Another. He often writes about the intersections between culture, technology, and Jesus-centered spirituality.

__________

What does your church measure, and why?

Evangelicals are fond of metrics. I don’t think the Church Growth Movement started this, but they took it to new levels, looking for ways to measure things that contribute to increased attendance. As a software engineer, I can certainly appreciate this. But I also know a couple of things from my engineering experience:

  • Whatever you measure will be deemed “important,” even if there are other things that are more important.
  • People will “game the system” to improve the numbers, even if it doesn’t have any true benefit.

Some people claim that this makes metrics worthless, but that is throwing out the baby with the bath water. We just need to keep the numbers in perspective. To twist the Master’s words a bit, “Metrics were made for people, not people for metrics.”

So I think metrics are useful. But what do churches generally measure? Worship service attendance, or “number of butts,” is still the a-number-one metric. Why? Partly because it’s so easy. (This certainly predates the Church Growth Movement. Do you remember the sign off to the side showing “Today’s hymns” and “Last week’s attendance”?) Make no mistake, there is nothing wrong with measuring how many people show up to an event. But if we focus on this number, it will drive us to be event-centric rather than relationship-centric.

Counting butts is an attractional metric.
If you want spiritual metrics, I recommend Natural Church Development.
But what about missional metrics?

Hugh Halter of Missio has offered twelve missional metrics they use which I recommend you check out. Today I want to define another missional metric:

Number of invitations from non-Christians

That is, instead of the number of times you’ve invited them to something, how many times have they invited you? Parties, concerts, movies, game nights, sporting events… This is a measure of your social acceptance by any group you are trying to reach. (Another variation to include is the number of times they’ve asked you for a personal favor.)

“Number of invitations” is not a sufficient metric to show well you are communicating the gospel. But by providing a measure of your social acceptance, it can reveal how you are doing at building friendships — which are the single greatest influence in people choosing to follow Jesus Christ. If you are focusing on a particular group and this number is low, try to determine what it means. (Don’t forget to pray for insight and divine appointments.)

So back to the opening question: What does your church measure, and why? Have metrics helped you live missionally, or distracted you? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

[Photo image courtesy of Darren Hester]

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