Renov8

(All of my posts from Renov8 will be at this page. Refresh (and comment) often.)

Urban Expression

The questions to be answered: What is God doing in my nhood and how can I discern that? What does the missio dei look like in a particular place? How do you know if something is an act of God or just social action?

Church planters used to think they were “bringing God to the nhood”. We do not “bring God with us” into the nhood; he is already there.

The simplistic, attractional programmatic model is no longer working. We must distinguish between unchurched and dechurched. Dechurched (former church-goer) demographic is shrinking; unchurched/neverchurched demographic is growing immensely.

“God’s church does not have a mission; God’s mission has a church” – Stuart Murray

We used to know ahead of time what a church plant would look like… because we were targeting the dechurched.  A plant among un/neverchurched is far less predictable, which is why the nomenclature of the “emerging church” has caught on.

At this point I was more or less on board. After this I wasn’t in total disagreement but my attitude about the talk took a turn.

He spoke a lot about Shalom being “the dream of God for his creation”… the goal of missio dei. Fine, all will be well… all things new… reconciliation. But next he said that “God is not choosey about who he uses to bring shalom. Partners and allies everywhere…” In other words – and this is something I heard all afternoon – God uses people who don’t know themselves that God is using them. Well, yes, this is partly true but I’m not sure it’s correct to paint this as normative. But that seemed to be the gist of the talk, that God’s preferred way of working in the world is through people other than Christians.

I am willing to be challenged and expanded on this so feel free to comment.

3 things planters bring:

1. The story of God, interpretation. We help people see what God is doing in that neighborhood

2. Spiritual resources to weary shalom seekers

3. Catalyze a community of faith that makes sense of what God is doing in that community and mediate those spiritual resources

Do we believe that the Holy Spirit can work even where the name of Jesus is not yet known? She assumes we do. Again, he may but we should not paint this as normative.

“Don’t just sit there. DO something!” often results in unprepared short-termers who sometimes do damage. Rather say “Don’t just do something. Sit there.” In other words, live there. Don’t just act hastily; consider your actions first.

Social networking in neighborhoods: find out who makes things happen in the community. Basically, cozy up to the community influencers. Is this really a Jesus model? Didn’t he tend to be with the people who had no influence because they were outcasts?

Is God able to work beyond the “walls of the church”? She assumes he is. Again, yes he might, but the church is his preferred instrument throughout the NT.

She came right out and said, “Get rid of your church building.” This would encourage nhood involvement and huge benefits would result. This came up again in the Q&A an she backed away from it some.

“Take a lesson from this movie that came out last year: Yes Man.” Her point? Say yes to any invitation you receive. To parties, meals, etc. but the relationships opened opportunities we otherwise wouldn’t have got.

What will your neighborhood look like when the kingdom has fully come?

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All of this leaves me with some questions: If people are already agents of shalom, is there any need for them to respond to the gospel or any consequence for rejecting it? The presenters seem to be saying that people are generally good and are actually already doing God’s work. We just need to awaken them to the fact that this is what they’re doing.

If this is the case, when do we tell them about the need for repentance? Do we tell them? Wouldn’t their response be “What would I repent of? You already told me I’m doing the work of God.

In a morning session, Anthony Brown told us that, “The gospel is meant to provoke a public response because it is public news. The message must be clear; people must know that there is a decision to be made.” This is what seems to be missing in this session: any indication that a public response or decision needs to be made.

Without getting too far into eschatology, asking a question like, “What will your neighborhood look like when the kingdom has fully come?” without acknowledging (with much regret and sadness) that those who have not responded to the gospel and made a decision about Christ as savior and lord will be eternally separated from God seems a little disingenuous.

This is not to say that the presenters presented lies, only that they didn’t bring the whole truth. Jesus is a demanding savior, and he is as demanding of those who have not put their trust in him as he is of those who have.

Engage.

(All of my posts from Renov8 will be at this page. Refresh (and comment) often.)

Anthony Brown (bio) is the Director of Education for Forge and also teaches at Regent College.

The mission is God’s, not ours. This has been repeated throughout the conference, at every session I’ve been at so far.

Brown led us through Luke 9:1-11  to find basic principles/foundations of Christian mission.

In this passage Jesus gives the twelve power and authority, sends them, and instructs to take nothing. They do as he says.

The ministry Jesus gives them is indistinguishable from his own. He doesn’t give them a mission; he invites them into his mission. (Echoes of Eugene Peterson)

We need to ask: Does the mission we engage in look the same as the mission of Jesus or have we found missions for ourselves that look nothing like the mission of Jesus.

We are called to do the same work as Jesus in the world.  The mission is his, not ours. Our mission is not growth or to keep the doors open. We don’t mind accepting a mission from Jesus, but we want to do it our way. When we do this we’re not really participating in his mission. Be willing to do it, and also to do it his way.

Mission is always communal. He calls them together, gives them a mission; they return as a group. We’re not supposed to be free agents pursuing our own missions, checking in with each other every once in a while; we are supposed to engage Jesus mission as a group of disciples. The only togetherness we experience is once a week at our Sunday gatherings.

The love of God must be proclaimed in both word and deed. All injustice is demonically inspired. Demonic deliverance can be social, economical etc.

He instructs the twelve to distinguish themselves from other teachers… don’t take funds or clothing or food, rely on God’s provision, don’t seek earthly rewards as part of the mission. How can we call others to trust in God if we don’t really trust God ourselves to provide our daily bread? His restrictions were designed to draw them closer to God, to trust him fully.

So much outreach is powerless because we don’t truly trust God… while we implore others to do so. If we are to be a foretaste of the kingdom, to show a better life, the kingdom way, we must live our lives together with them.

It is important to ACCEPT hospitality, especially when extended by those who are seeking God. Their success depended on the hospitality of those to whom they were sent.

Re: following Jesus, are you the chicken or the pig? The chicken makes a contribution, but the pig gives everything. As Christians we are to give everything, not just what we can easily produce again.

The message must be clear; people must know that there is a decision to be made, but we are not to retaliate if they reject Christ.

“The gospel is meant to provoke a public response because it is public news.”

In V1 they are called “the twelve”; in v10 they are called “the apostles” – mission transforms us into “sent ones”. We must engage in mission if we want to be conformed to the image of Christ. We can only discover our identity by following him into mission.

This was a rich hour of Bible teaching with relevant application. I like this guy.

 (All of my posts from Renov8 will be at this page. Refresh (and comment) often.)

Wednesday morning plenary session – Glenn Smith (bio). Glenn is a prof at McGill University.

Who is this God we serve and why does he love neighborhoods so much?

“We cannot separate God’s mission from the church’s existence and action.”

If you’re looking for an unreached people group, a university campus is a good place to start.

The privatization of life is an increasing problem. Many live alone, so the poor get diffused all over.  The question is no longer “Where is the church?”, but “How will we pursue mission in a biblical way WITH our neigborhoods? What kind of Christian followers will we BE?”

Glenn talked about three horizons we must explore if we’re going to have an authentic missional encounter with our neighborhoods. By his definition, a horizon is the place where the plane meets the sky.

Horizon 1. Engagement w Gods revelation in creation, scripture, and Jesus
Scripture:
There is widespread disengagement from biblical texts. The dilemma is we don’t take it seriously… we use it but we don’t listen to it. It only transforms us as we get involved in transformation. Many have community (based on Trinity), but they don’t do anything while, by example, the Trinity is active. We cannot separate God’s mission from the church’s existence and action. “He doesn’t just be, he is being in action.”

2. The church with the city
The church must intersect with Canadian city. We must take “place” seriously – history of city, identity of people, their preoccupations

We must understand the core (functions, demographics, social makeup, economic livelihood, etc), the behavior (different ways of doing life), and the outside/boundaries.

We must understand how Canadian cities have evolved (population shifts). For example, 1/3 Canadians live in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal Add Calgary and Edmonton and you’re at 50%. Poverty is now diffused, not in certain nhoods (ghettos).
Canadian cities are very different from American cities. In form, density, transportation,

3. Engagement of the church w the neighborhood
Fourfold agenda
1.    As Christians we need to commit to being the entity that interprets the triune God and his revelation to the neighborhood
a.    The first and maybe only bible people will read is us
b.    Stand for what God stands for
2.    We must bear witness to the God of Jesus and all his teachings in word and deed
a.    Faith MUST be a public identity, not a private practice
b.    If you have a problem with discipleship then you have a problem w evangelism
c.    Poverty is about broken relationships… (think about it)
d.    Pursue sustainable nhood development, and in this context we propose Jesus
3.    We must take spiritual formation, discipleship, and church education seriously
a.    Live out your faith in the nhood and FOR the nhood
b.    Spiritual poverty and illiteracy
4.    We must bring together the heart and the head in preaching and theological education
a.    Churches live disembodies spiritualities excarnational faith (Charles Taylor) we live our spirituality only in our heads, not in our bodies
b.    People in nhood want to know who we are, not just what we believe
c.    How do we move from excarnational to incarnational faith?

We don’t have anything to offer our nhoods other than the triune God.

There are a number of people tweeting and blogging the conference. Here are some ways you can follow:

Follow everyone tweeting the conference with the #rv8 tag.

Here are some bloggers that are liveblogging:
Nick Melazzo
Troy Selley
Rohadi
Dave Harder
Ben Klassen
Keith Waara
The Official Renov8 blog is here

All of my posts from Renov8 will be at this page. Refresh (and comment) often.

If you know of any others, leave it in the comments and I’ll add to the list.

(All of my posts from Renov8 can be found here)

(Whoever planned the music for this session had their head on straight: the singing actually involved the assembled attendees. The music was led by a 10-person home church, accompanied by only an acoustic guitar and some hand-drums. Sure, this seemed a little neo-hippy at first, but by the end they had almost everyone in the sanctuary singing, and that’s what’s important.)

Ok, the Michael Frost session:

Frost framed his talk around several stories of people who became vigilantes for the kingdom of God, people who were fed up with the status quo and took drastic, self-sacrificial action. These people are “missional heroes” but this should be the norm for all Christians.

One was a pastor in Cambodia who moved into a community that had been displaced by its government with 30 minutes notice. “He moved his pregnant wife into a mosquito infested slum, and read the book of Acts, and the Kingdom of God is unfolding in the middle of hell.” Frost asks this man what books he read that inspired such courage and zeal. “Acts, John, Luke…” the man replies.

One was a pastor who took action of the alcohol-related crime in his community by assembling a team of “street pastors” to assist people in their various states of drunken stupor. This was more effective than the city’s $2-million plan to deal with the problem.

One was a businessman in Texas who saw deplorable conditions in a trailer park and ended up buying the entire trailer park and tending to its transformation.

“The goal of Christian mission is not church planting or church growth, not building up a kingdom. The goal is alerting people to the reign and rule of God in Christ.”

“How do you alert people to the rule and reign of God in Christ? You create foretaste. Our lives should be like movie trailers: they should make others say ‘I want to see more of that’” When people see the kingdom at work, we can tell them it’s a trailer of the blockbuster to come. He worked this metaphor well.

His point is this: As churches, let’s orient ourselves around the needs of our neighborhood, and this will look different depending on the environment we’re in. Most churches offer their neighborhoods a big Sunday service and little else.

Jesus chooses a term with both civic and religious connotations (“ecclesia”) to describe his followers. Yes, we gather to worship and to be taught but also to be recognized as good and wise and true by our communities. We are the sent to add value to our neighborhoods, to be God’s sent gift into our neighborhoods so that it will be better with us than without us.

“Most of our communities don’t even know that we’re there, and if we were gone, they wouldn’t miss us. If our church were taken away from our neighborhood, would they grieve for their loss?”

We shouldn’t have to talk about knocking down walls – how did it come to this? It was never meant to be this way – that we would wall ourselves up, away from people in need.

“To whom has God sent you? There is no such thing as an unsent Christian. Go where God sends you. Make a home there. Love those people. Put deep roots into that place. Live there, love them, and never leave them.”

Frost gave a good presentation of and a challenge to participate in incarnational ministry.

All of my posts from Renov8 will be at this page. Refresh (and comment) often.

(All of my posts from Renov8 will be at this page. Refresh (and comment) often.)

Got up at 4:15 this morning to get ready and catch a 7:15 flight to Calgary.

This is the first time I’ve flown on a plane with one screen per person. When we first sat down I could see that 5 of the screens visible to me were parked on NHL highlights. Mine was one of them.  One screen per person is actually a little distracting. Every time I look up I see a variety of channels. This doesn’t help with the motion sickness.

Everything has gone very smoothly so far. The company is good; a group of bright and witty fellow travelers always makes the journey more enjoyable.

6:30PM
30 minutes to show time and the place is beginning to buzz. This church is (to use an annoying neologism) GINOURMOUS. I hear that this is the biggest church in Canada and that about 7000 people come through here on a weekend. The building is bigger than some malls I’ve seen – and it has a better foodcourt.

The first session is “Vision for Transforming Neighbourhoods” with Michael Frost.

I’ll be back to post after the session…

This week I’ll be in Calgary at Renov8 and I’ll be liveblogging the sessions that I’m at (providing they have wifi available).

A list of the speakers can be found here and seminars/workshops here.

All of my posts from Renov8 will be at this page. Refresh (and comment) often.