Spirit-Led Ecclesiology: Following the Spirit Through Church-Planting 12/07/08
Speaker: Jonathan Dodson
In the News: Austin Church Planting and City Renewal
The Austin Statesman ran a piece on downtown churches that are committed to renewing the city. The cool thing is that Eileen connected it to other church planting efforts in our local network PlantR.org. Here’s an excerpt:
Some are part of a local church planting network that includes about 40 leaders who aim to spread the message of Jesus throughout the city — not just within the walls of already established churches — and to be a renewing presence both socially and spiritually. These churches are cropping up all over the Austin area, but for some leaders, downtown venues hold a particular appeal.
Similar efforts are happening in cities such as Minneapolis and Seattle where church leaders have established sanctuaries in downtown bars, coffeehouses and warehouses.
Jonathan Dodson, pastor of Austin City Life, said his congregation chooses to worship on “common cultural ground,” the idea being “the church goes to the city. The city does not go to the church.”
Oh, and Austin City Life is covered in about a third of the article. Read the rest here.
Bono on Christmas
I posted this last year and found it just as reflective and awe-inspiring as last year…
This reflection on Christmas occurred after Bono had just returned home, to Dublin, from a long tour with U2. On Christmas Eve Bono went to the famous St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where Jonathan Swift was dean. Apparently he was given a really poor seat, one obstructed by a pillar, making it even more difficult for him to keep his eyes open…but it was there that Christmas story struck him like never before. He writes:
“The idea that God, if there is a force of Logic and Love in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in shit and straw…a child… I just thought: “Wow!” Just the poetry … Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable. There it was. I was sitting there, and it’s not that it hadn’t struck me before, but tears came streaming down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this.”
Isn’t it compelling? The logic and love of a personal God revealing himself, accounting for our person-ality, our propensity to love. And oh, the mercy of God, born in shit and straw, to rescue us from ourselves, our godless gift-giving, and our arrogant disregard for God and for others so that we might know and enjoy him and his new creation forever. And that he, the infinite God, would do it in Christ, in time, in space, in confounding condescension to pivot the course of the entire creation project from despair, destruction, and dereliction to a hopeful, whole, and happy future.
Will you ponder the poetry of Christmas this year, the genius of the incarnation? What obstructions are in your path to dwelling on the vulnerable, inexhaustible power and love of God in Christ? Renounce them and rivet your attention on the Christ.
Excerpt taken from Bono: in conversation (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 124-5.
Wrong Debate: Missional vs. Attractional
Neil Cole has a three part response to Dan Kimball’s Missional Misgivings. There is some lengthy exchange that covers very little distance in their multi-comment conversation; however, this gem emerged from Cole’s final post:
A global survey conducted by Christian Schwartz found that smaller churches consistently scored higher than large churches in seven out of eight qualitative characteristics of a healthy church. A more recent study of churches in America, conducted by Ed Stetzer and Life Way Ministries, revealed that churches of two hundred or less are four times more likely to plant a daughter church than churches of one thousand or more.
So churches of 200 plant more often than churches of a 1000, but they will have to plant 5xs as many churches to reach the one thousand of the megachurch. Methods, methods, methods. We are in the wrong debate. We don’t need to be debating mega vs. micro, attractional vs. organic/incarnational. This is a methods driven conversation, and if we have learned anything from the history of missions it is that God uses a variety of church models to bring in the lost sheep of his kingdom. For a moment, just stretch the conversation beyond America. House churches are immensely effective in China and mega churches incredibly effective in Korea. When it comes to methods, context is king, unless your contextualization of the gospel compromises the its theological integrity, in which case it is no longer contextualization but syncretism.
What we need to be debating is the strength of the gospel that is being preached, taught, shared, and shown in our churches. Are we incarnating and attracting people to a diluted gospel or a strong gospel? Are we incarnating kitsch gospel or kerygmatic gospel? In the end, what are we calling people to? Is our gospel both missional and communal or inward and individualistic? If the latter, then something is wrong with our gospel. Let’s stop debating methods and start debating gospel. Let’s refine the gospel seed we are sowing in America for the sake of our country, our future, and our Lord.