8 Ways to Easily be Missional

Posted on April 7, 2009

Missional is not an event we tack onto our already busy lives. It is our life. Mission should be the way we live, not something we add onto life: As you go, make disciples; Walk wisely towards outsiders; Let your speech always be seasoned with salt; be prepared to give a defense for your hope. We can be missional in everyday ways without even overloading our schedules. Here are a few suggestions:

  1. Eat with Non-Christians. We all eat three meals a day. Why not make a habit of sharing one of those meals with a non-Christian or with a family of non-Christians? Go to lunch with a co-worker, not by yourself. Invite the neighbors over for family dinner. If it’s too much work to cook a big dinner, just order pizza and put the focus on conversation. When you go out for a meal, invite a non-Christian friend. Or take your family to family-style restaurants where you can sit at the table with strangers and strike up conversations (Mighty Fine Burgers, Buca di Peppo, The Blue Dahlia, etc). Have cookouts and invite Christians and non-Christians. Flee the Christian subculture.
  2. Walk, Don’t Drive. If you live in a walkable area, make a practice of getting out and walking around your neighborhood, apartment complex, or campus. Instead of driving to the mailbox, convenience store, or apartment office, walk to get mail, groceries, and stuff. Be deliberate in your walk. Say hello to people you don’t know. Strike up conversations. Attract attention by walking the dog, taking a 6-pack (and share), bringing the kids. Make friends. Get out of your house! Last night I spend an hour outside gardening with my family. We had good conversations with 3-4 neighbors. Take interest in your neighbors. Ask questions. Engage. Pray as you go. Save some gas, the planet.
  3. Be a Regular. Instead of hopping all over the city for gas, groceries, haircuts, eating out, and coffee, go to the same places. Get to know the staff. Go to the same places at the same times. Smile. Ask questions. Be a regular. I have friends at coffee shops all over the city. My friends at Starbucks donate a ton of left over pastries to our church 2-3 times a week. We use for church gatherings and occasionally give to the homeless. Build relationships. Be a Regular.
  4. Hobby with Non-Christians. Pick a hobby that you can share. Get out and do something you enjoy with others. Try City League sports. Local rowing and cycling teams. Share your hobby by teaching lessons. Teach sewing lessons, piano lessons, violin, guitar, knitting, tennis lessons. Be prayerful. Be intentional. Be winsome. Have fun. Be yourself.
  5. Talk to Your Co-workers. How hard is that? Take your breaks with intentionality. Go out with your team or task force after work. Show interest in your co-workers. Pick four and pray for them. Form mom’s groups in your neighborhood and don’t make them exclusively non-Christian. Schedule play dates with the neighbors’ kids. Work on mission.
  6. Volunteer with Non-Profits. Find a non-profit in your part of the city and take Saturday a month to serve your city. Bring your neighbors, your friends, or your small group. Spend time with your church serving your city. Once a month. You can do it!
  7. Participate in City Events. Instead of playing X-Box, watching TV, or surfing the net, participate in city events. Go to fundraisers, festivals, clean-ups, summer shows, and concerts. Participate missionally. Strike up conversation. Study the culture. Reflect on what you see and hear. Pray for the city. Love the city. Participate with the city.
  8. Serve your Neighbors. Help a neighbor by weeding, mowing, building a cabinet, fixing a car. Stop by the neighborhood association or apartment office and ask if there is anything you can do to help improve things. Ask your local Police and Fire Stations if there is anything you can do to help them. Get creative. Just serve!

Don’t make the mistake of making “missional” another thing to add to your schedule. Instead, make your existing schedule missional. Check out this related article on integrating Gospel, Community and Mission into everyday life.

8 Ways to be Missional (without overloading your schedule)

Posted on April 7, 2009

Missional is not an event we tack onto our already busy lives. It is our life. Mission should be the way we live, not something we add onto life: “As you go, make disciples….”; “Walk wisely towards outsiders”; “Let your speech always be seasoned with salt”; “be prepared to give a defense for your hope”. We can be missional in everyday ways without even overloading our schedules. Here are a few suggestions:

  1. Eat with Non-Christians. We all eat three meals a day. Why not make a habit of sharing one of those meals with a non-Christian or with a family of non-Christians? Go to lunch with a co-worker, not by yourself. Invite the neighbors over for family dinner. If it’s too much work to cook a big dinner, just order pizza and put the focus on conversation. When you go out for a meal, invite a non-Christian friend. Or take your family to family-style restaurants where you can sit at the table with strangers and strike up conversations (Mighty Fine Burgers, Buca di Peppo, The Blue Dahlia, etc). Have cookouts and invite Christians and non-Christians. Flee the Christian subculture.
  2. Walk, Don’t Drive. If you live in a walkable area, make a practice of getting out and walking around your neighborhood, apartment complex, or campus. Instead of driving to the mailbox, convenience store, or apartment office, walk to get mail, groceries, and stuff. Be deliberate in your walk. Say hello to people you don’t know. Strike up conversations. Attract attention by walking the dog, taking a 6-pack (and share), bringing the kids. Make friends. Get out of your house! Last night I spend an hour outside gardening with my family. We had good conversations with 3-4 neighbors. Take interest in your neighbors. Ask questions. Engage. Pray as you go. Save some gas, the planet.
  3. Be a Regular. Instead of hopping all over the city for gas, groceries, haircuts, eating out, and coffee, go to the same places. Get to know the staff. Go to the same places at the same times. Smile. Ask questions. Be a regular. I have friends at coffee shops all over the city. My friends at Starbucks donate a ton of left over pastries to our church 2-3 times a week. We use for church gatherings and occasionally give to the homeless. Build relationships. Be a Regular.
  4. Hobby with Non-Christians. Pick a hobby that you can share. Get out and do something you enjoy with others. Try City League sports. Local rowing and cycling teams. Share your hobby by teaching lessons. Teach sewing lessons, piano lessons, violin, guitar, knitting, tennis lessons. Be prayerful. Be intentional. Be winsome. Have fun. Be yourself.
  5. Talk to Your Co-workers. How hard is that? Take your breaks with intentionality. Go out with your team or task force after work. Show interest in your co-workers. Pick four and pray for them. Form mom’s groups in your neighborhood and don’t make them exclusively non-Christian. Schedule play dates with the neighbors’ kids. Work on mission.
  6. Volunteer with Non-Profits. Find a non-profit in your part of the city and take Saturday a month to serve your city. Bring your neighbors, your friends, or your small group. Spend time with your church serving your city. Once a month. You can do it!
  7. Participate in City Events. Instead of playing X-Box, watching TV, or surfing the net, participate in city events. Go to fundraisers, festivals, clean-ups, summer shows, and concerts. Participate missionally. Strike up conversation. Study the culture. Reflect on what you see and hear. Pray for the city. Love the city. Participate with the city.
  8. Serve your Neighbors. Help a neighbor by weeding, mowing, building a cabinet, fixing a car. Stop by the neighborhood association or apartment office and ask if there is anything you can do to help improve things. Ask your local Police and Fire Stations if there is anything you can do to help them. Get creative. Just serve!

Don’t make the mistake of making “missional” another thing to add to your schedule. Instead, make your existing schedule missional. Check out this related article on integrating Gospel, Community and Mission into everyday life.

Counseling on Mission

Posted on April 7, 2009

As a church planters we often reach unreached, unbelieving, and very broken people. As a result, pastoral wisdom and gospel-centered counseling quickly become an important skills. After all, the biblical office we hold is not church planter but elder-pastor. How are you cultivating pastoral wisdom? How are you growing in your capacity to shepherd your flock with wisdom, truth, and love? Are you spending time with “slow” or “challenging” people each week? Or do you gravitate to “teachable” people, neglecting the weak and hurting sheep?

Why Counsel?

Why should we spend time counseling when we could be evangelizing or preaching? Because in order to plant healthy missional churches, we must grow in gospel depth and breadth. In order to guard and guide our people well, it is imperative that church planters have a regular intake of wisdom (applied theology) from which we can counsel, disciple, train, and lead. As we mature, our sermons should deepen with pastoral application that grows from spending time with struggling sheep. The best application is mined, not from homiletical brainstorming, but from pastoral counseling. Why counsel? Counseling the church is: 1) part of our calling/office 2) critical to healthy community and mission 3) essential for insightful application 4) part of being a church that speaks the truth in love.

Growing in Pastoral Wisdom

Nothing like regular time with unchurched, newly believing, broken people will alert you to the need for gospel-centered counseling. For years I’ve been reading the materials put out by Christian Counseling Education Foundation. I’ll never forget the first time I heard David Powlison speak with such measured wisdom at the Desiring God Conference in 1999. Since then, I have read The Journal of Biblical Counseling, followed nouthetic literature, and started a certificate program in biblical counseling with CCEF. CCEF offers tremendous insight into human motivation and how the gospel applies to everything from addiction to garden variety idolatry. I highly recommend the Journal, their books, and distance education.

Westminster Bookstore carries all CCEF materials at heavy discounts and highlights Best Sellers of the Month. CCEF offers a host of articles on a whole range of counseling issues for free on their topical resource page. In addition, you can buy a CD ROM of all the JBC articles from 1977-2005. Add to these resources, the fine work of Tim Chester. See especially You Can Change, The Busy Christian’s Guide to Busyness. Tim and Steve Timmis are currently working on a Gospel-centered Life Series that will be a tremendous help to equipping us to counsel on mission. And very soon, I will be releasing a short book called Fight Club: Gospel-centered Discipleship.

Counsel on Mission

Counseling on mission is critical. If we do not counsel while we are on mission, we will fail in planting missional churches. Gospel-centered counseling is the overflow of gospel-centered church planting. If our churches aren’t founded and shephered in the gospel, then church planting will devolve into service planting or crusade speaking. Mission must be accompanied by counseling. Without counseling, churchplanting devolves into mission minus discipleship, which hardly mission at all.

Gospel-centered Parenting

Posted on April 5, 2009

The following summary is taken from Tim Chester and contains some great advice on parenting. I also recommend Tedd Tripp’s books, though I don’t endorse everything in them.

Tedd Tripp, author of Shepherding a Child’s Heart – the best-selling, gospel-centred book on parenting recently visited us in Sheffield to talk about parenting.Tripp’s latest book is Instructing a Child’s Heart which is also available in the States as a DVD. I’ve included a promo video at the end of this post.

‘Above all else, guard the heart for it is the wellspring of life.’ (Proverbs 4.23).

Parenting must be heart-centred for the heart is the wellspring of life.  The heart in the biblical terms is not simply the seat of emotions. We think, discern, fear and so on with our hearts. Our heart is our inner self. (1 Samuel 16.7; Deuteronomy 10.12; 1 Chronicles 28.9; Proverbs 3.5-6; 2 Chronicles 16.9; 1 Kings 8.57-58.; Matthew 15.8, 17-20;
Luke 6.43-45.)

It is not enough to tackle behaviour through manipulation (bribery, shame, threats etc.). When we only tackle behaviour:

1. The real need is not addressed.
2. We present a false basis for ethics (selfish ethics)
3. The heart is being wrongly trained. E.g. we might teach children to fear others.
4. The gospel will not be central. When we manipulate we appeal to idols in the child’s heart (appealing to pride, greed etc.).
5. Manipulation shows  our idols of our hearts (our idolatrous desire for pride, control, ease, convenience, fear of man).

Where to go with this?

1. The Bible reveals hearts (Hebrews 4.12).

2. There is always a ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘why’ of behaviour. But we confuse the ‘when’ and the ‘why’. We answer the ‘why’ question by saying ‘when’ – i.e. pointing to circumstances – when the answer is in the heart.

3. We all have a profound need for grace (Ezekiel 36.25-27). Help your children understand their need for the gospel.

We need to help our children understand thir hearts and their need hearts. It’s not that we never address behaviour. If a child is hitting his sister we don’t wait for heart change! But we must have a bigger vision a long-term focus on the heart.

Under five-year-olds
Two-year-olds do not have sufficient self-awareness to address heart issues with them. But we can teach them to live under loving authority and introduce the biblical language of the heart and its motivations.

Most parents give away their authority before even their children go to school as we negotiate with them and let them override our decisions. We shouldn’t teach five-year-olds to be decision-makers – we should model good decisions and obedience to authority. Teach them that it is a blessing to live under wise and loving authority.

How can we regain authority when we have given it away? Start with instruction. ‘Mum and Dad gave gained some new insights from God’s word that will help us as a family. Sorry we didn’t see this before.’ So start with instruction and then set new parametres.

Five to twelve year-olds
We often address behaviour because behaviour is visible. But doing the right thing for the wrong motive is hypocrisy. We also expose our hypocrisy: ‘I can’t believe you’re so selfish!’ = hypocrisy. Instead we can share our common need and our common hope in Christ. We’ll never got to the grace of the gospel if we’re manipulating behaviour.

Goals with our Teenagers
1. Internalization of the gospel. We want them to embrace God’s truth as their own living faith. Shepherd their interaction with God’s word – not just reprimanding, but taking them to God’s word. ‘I didn’t write this book –
this is God’s word.’ Helping them are the vitality and relevance of God’s word.

2. Shepherding through the inevitable periods of doubt. Don’t panic, but talk openly about doubts.

3. Developing a relationship that leads to mutuality as adults under God. We need to move from parent instructing child, to a mutual relationship of care.

Three foundations for teens from Proverbs 1

1. Fear of the Lord (Proverbs 1.7). Show the greatness and excellence of God.

2. Remembering your parents’ words (Proverbs 1.8-9). Remind them that no one loves them like you do. Their friends are fickle, but parents love and sacrifice no matter what.

3. Disassociation from the wicked (Proverbs 1.10-19). The attractiveness with the wicked is camaraderie – a sense of belonging. Make home a great place of belonging.