Month: October 2008

Soli Deo Gloria Church Plant

David Avila is an experienced church planter whose newest plant, Soli Deo Gloria, is in its early stages in Austin, Texas. David brings not only rich experience of planting failure and success, but also a multi-cultural vision for a multi-cultural city. David is a friend and fellow board member for the Austin PlantR Network. Borrowing heavily from David Garrison, his latest blog post lays out some of SDG’s methodology which includes: Evangel, Dunamis, Movement, Ecclesia, Sola Scriptura, & Indigenous.

Keane – Perfect Symmetry

I became a fan of Keane the first time I heard them live, opening for U2 during the Atomic Bomb tour (side note: Bono’s Recent Speech). The combination of guitarless, piano driven music, soaring vocals, and reflective lyrics makes Keane a unique band. Although Hopes and Fears is their best known album. Under the Iron Sea was a great follow up, featuring some great songs like “Crystal Ball”, “Frog Prince”, “Hamburg Song”. With the release of their latest album Perfect Symmetry, Keane has reworked their sound considerably.

Perfect Symmetry is like Keane meets Culture Club, a real 80s throw back sound. These guys are, after all, children of the 80s. At first I didn’t like it; I love the old, classy Keane, but I haven’t take PS out of my cd player in a week. The first half of the album contains the synthesized sound that smacks of the 80s, but the second half of the album is like the old Keane. There’s no doubt they had fun making this album.

My son loves what he calls “The Monkey Song” also known as “Pretend that You’re Alone.” It’s a song about the ramifications of biological and social darwinism. Tom ties Darwinism to the selfish gene in the following lyric:

We are just the monkeys who fell out of the trees
We are blisters on the earth
And we are not the flowers, we’re the strangling weeds in the meadow
And love is just our way of looking out for ourselves
When we don’t want to live alone
So step into the vacuum, tear off your clothes and be born again

If we are just monkeys that fell out of the trees, then love is simply an emotion, a biological secretion designed for self-protection. Surround yourself with people who “love” you enough to protect you. Of course, this often backfires because our selfish love is more selfish that we could ever imagine. Darwinism empties love of any virtue. Makes you long for an absolute Love.

The rest of the album is scattered with lyrically reflective, poppy 80s tunes. A thought provoking combination. After all, the ideas and experiences Tom Chaplin kicks around are far from pop in substance. Hope you pick it up and enjoy it.

Organic Church?: Models and Methods of Planting

There are a variety of models for church planting that have proven effective. Church Planting Village lists five main models:

  • Program-driven
  • Purpose-driven
  • Relationship-based
  • Seeker-sensitive
  • Ministry-based.

Ed Stetzer includes all but the Program-driven model, but notes that only 19% of planters (among Baptists) actually identify themselves with a model. My guess is that this low percentage is a product of post-modern scorn of models, as well as ignorance regarding models. Whether you like it or not, your church plant methodology will put you in the orbit of some kind of model.

Relationship-driven Models

Relationship-driven models are on the rise and include House, Cell, and Missional Community churches. Because of their relational emphasis, these churches are typically drawn to the more Organic method of church planting. Early in our core team phase, Austin City Life was thinking organically but still held onto “the Launch” as a part of our methodology. Most Organic churches jettison “the launch” in favor of a people-focused ecclesiology. We did just that, but the reason was more Spirit-led than “organic”. I’ll take a stab an explaining what I see as the difference between Organic and Spirit-led church.

Organic Church

As I see it, there are two main types of Organic Churches:

  1. Unintentional Organic: clueless organic church planting because you like stuff that is different. A kind of “wherever it grows” attitude.
  2. Intentionally Organic: informed organic church planting that builds structural lattice for the plant of church to grow on. Relies on gospel soil, relational stalk, and thoughtful structure.

Although we certainly appreciate #2 more than #1, we have sought to cultivate a Spirit-led organic church, which fosters slightly different growth. I’m not saying that the Spirit is absent from the approaches above, so bear with me. The Spirit-led church places its emphasis on relationship/community underneath its reliance on the Holy Spirit to grow and mature a missional church. Spirit first, community second, not community first, Spirit as an holy nod.

Spirit-led Church

The more I learn about being a Spirit-led community, the more I realize I have to learn about what it means to follow the Spirit, not just the organic growth of spiritual disciples. Craig Van Gelder defines the church as: a people of God who are created by the Spirit to live as a missionary community.” For Van Gelder and for us, Spirit-led is more than a nod; it animates decision-making, structure, organization, community, and mission. Van Gelder lays out his theoretical ecclesiology in Essence of the Church and a functional ecclesiology in The Ministry of the Missional Church.

One of the strengths of being a Spirit-led church is the emphasis on church as our identity, not our responsibility; its nature over its function. We need to plant and grow churches based, not on function (organic or otherwise), but on natureSpirit-led missionary communities. On this Van Gelder writes: “Failing to understand the nature of the church can lead to a number of problems. Defining the church functionally—in terms of what it does—can shift our perspective away from understanding the church as a unique community of God’s people.”

Our models and methods should be determined from our ecclesiology, not form our ecclesiology. This is why I make a distinction between theoretical and functional ecclesiology. Others would call the latter a Philosophy of Ministry. Whatever you call it, you models and methods should be primarily governed by the Holy Spirit and a biblical understanding of the nature of the church. In my next post, I’ll try to unpack and illustrate this from our own experiences.