Author: Jonathan Dodson

Advice for First Year Planters

Posted on June 19, 2009

Here are a few tips for early stage church planters on everything from fundraising to evangelism:

  • Don’t forget to ask the pagans! If you are fundraising, remember that God used the pagan king Cyrus to fund the rebuilding of an entire city. He can definitely handle your church planting needs. Most pagans know more about your city than you do, and some of them love it more than you.
  • Spend more time with people and less time with books in the first year of church planting. Learn your city, know its lostness, love your city, re-learn how to share the gospel in your context. Fall in love with your target people. The more you know and love them, the better your witness to the gospel will be, including your preaching.
  • Identify the top 10 Obstacles to the Gospel in your Context. Don’t do this from the armchair, do it from anecdotes (conversations) and cultural exegesis (spending time in pockets of resistance or indifference).
  • Identify the top 10 Obstacles to the Church in your Context. Anecdotes and exegesis. Learn the history of hypocrisy in your city or town so that you can apologize and distance yourself from mockeries of the Church. What do people think of when they think “church”?  Have they ever gone to one? Why did they stop?
  • Don’t spend ungodly amounts of money or time on developing your first website. It will all change anyway, several times. You should be with people, not websites and blogs (!). Here are two good, inexpensive web solutions for early stage church planting: Church Root & Clover Sites.

Making Gospel-centered Decisions in Community

Posted on June 19, 2009

Drew Goodmanson shares a good story about how a couple made a gospel-centered decision about moving in community. A great example for all of us. An excerpt:

Recently, in our missional community we have had two families begin the process of searching for a home. Both were considering a location farther away from the community where they could get more home for the money. In our gospel intentional way we asked them what were the motivations behind this. If we are called to be a community on mission with the gospel at the center of everything we do, wouldn’t our decision of where we live profoundly be impacted by this? … What motivates us to move outside the city to buy a bigger home? Comfort? Investment? Safety? If the answer isn’t calling than ultimately this decision is not being made with the gospel at the core…We ultimately need to get down to the heart issues of what motivates people in all our decisions, because if we are not walking in line with the gospel we are worshiping something other than God. These two families have begun to re-consider what they want to prioritize. They recognize that if they moved 20 minutes away it would impact their ability to be gospel intentional. Certainly, if God was calling them to move and their motivation was the gospel at the center, we would embrace this and help them move but our missional community doesn’t see this as the case. These people have been willing to submit this decision and heed the counsel of the community because of the gospel intentionality they desire. (Note: This is not gospel ‘intensity’ these conversations are not heavy-handed or us trying to make decisions for them.) All of us seek to expose our lives to each other and the community around us so that when any decision or circumstance is brought up we examine it through the idea of God’s calling on our life to live as a redemptive people who are servants of our great King…

Gospel-centered Life

Posted on June 17, 2009

Some good friends, Will and Bob, have written some great Gospel-centered Life material. This nine lesson workbook explains and applies the Gospel in a user friendly, thoughtful, and practical way. I got my hands on an early version and was impressed. No doubt the new version is even better!

For samples and more info go here.

Resources for Ezra

Posted on June 17, 2009

In our introduction to the new sermon series on Ezra, Renewal: Return from Exile, we covered a number of historical concepts that were new to many folks in Austin City Life. Here are a few resources to help you dig deeper into Ezra (from introductory to scholarly).

Commentaries

Biblical Overviews

Covenants