Below is some outstanding advice for all Christians, but especially for churchplanters on living missionally.

How to Enter Your Community Missionally

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. First impressions are critical to any new venture. Some experts say that within three seconds people have made judgements about you – looking at surface clues to size you up. Others say that within seven to seventeen seconds of interacting with a new acquaintance their opinion is formed. If we as leaders are going to enter a community missionally we need to consider our attitudes, actions and appearance. Years ago I picked up these five ways for entering a community from Dr. John Fuder. Each one, taken seriously, will properly position any pastor or church planter to effectively enter a new community. When entering a community we should:

• Intercessor – One must humbly petition heaven for their community. Asking God to reveal himself to the community and to reveal to the planter how He is at work already in that community.
• Learner – One must enter as a student of their community and the cultural make up of that community. Asking good questions to community leaders and long time residents is a good place to start.
• Servant – One must enter with the mindset of a servant. Church planters should not just enter a community to serve individuals but to discover ways to serve the community as a whole. Some communities see churches as takers in a community and not givers. Church planters have an opportunity to change that mentality.
• Friend or Ally – One must go into a community for the purpose of building long lasting relationships and fostering healthy partnerships. Informal and formal alliances will be crucial for you to gain creditability among those you are trying to reach.
• Story Teller – People love stories and telling God’s story is the reason we are entering the community. Church planters and pastors need to learn how to tell three stories well: 1) Their personal faith story. 2) The story of their call to the community. 3) God’s story of redemption.

Taken from Gary Rohrmayer, churchplanting guru. Gary is the BGC churchplanting director, author of First and Next Steps curriculum and contributor to 1000s of churchplanting efforts. Another outstanding resource for filling articles of incorporation to how to build a launch team in Coachnet.net, of which Gary is a part.

Christianity Today just published an interview with N. T. Wright focusing on the material and methods of his new book.

When I first read Simply Christian I found the apologetic in the first four chapters rather weak. This article clarifies Wright’s apologetic method–not A plus B equals C, but painting the power of a compelling story of which we are all a part, for everlasting good or ill. The latter half of the book, in my opinion, is a good introduction to biblical theology.

Here are a few quotes from the article:

On his “postmodern” method over and against the “modernist” approach of C. S. Lewis:

“And if the argument has a compelling force, it’s not the force of A plus B equals C, where there’s no escape. I want you to try seeing yourself as part of the picture that we’ve painted. Or try humming one of the parts of this symphony that we’re writing, and see if it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense while nonetheless being very challenging.”

On defunked approaches to knowing God:

“In other words, don’t assume that you’ve got God taped, and fit Jesus into that. Do it the other way. We all come with some ideas of God. Allow those ideas to be shaped around Jesus. That is the real challenge of New Testament Christology.”

On the worship & the mission of the Church:

“Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is that the gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you. You, in turn, can be part of the transforming work.”

“The key to mission is always worship. You can only be reflecting the love of God into the world if you are worshiping the true God who creates the world out of overflowing self-giving love. The more you look at that God and celebrate that love, the more you have to be reflecting that overflowing self-giving love into the world.”

I am four days into reading the Bible in a year and am already a few chapters behind. These plans, as we all know, create a tension. On one end I feel pulled upward to read more Scripture and a variety at that (4 chapters a day, 2 from each testament). I get more biblical information. On the other end, I am pulled downward, to center in less Scripture (a few verses). I get more meditation. We have all heard pastors talk about the value of reading large amounts of Scripture. Why? Because we tend to get the whole picture a little more clearly, and therefore, the reasoning goes, we comprehend the little bits better. Seeing the parts in light of the whole.

The tension that arises, however, is do we sacrifice quality for quantity, meditation for information? Mortimer Adler’s words come to mind: There are three purposes for reading–information, entertainment, and understanding. Most people never make it to the third. Is it possible to read four chapters a day, from different testaments, genres, and authors and not sacrifice understanding? By taking in so much information do we glut ourselves from ever reading meditation? In The Book Shop, Penelope Fitzgerald writes about a farmer’s cows whose teeth become so dull, that they can no longer masticate. As a result, they don’t get their nutrients and end up dying of malnutrition? Is the reading the Bible in a year a deadly diet? Does quantity have to trump quality, information understanding?

In Genesis 1-2, I have been reminded of the perfect yet incomplete act of creation. God formed and populated the unruly, dark, formless and void with orderly light and life. God sang with rhythm–harmony and melody. Night and day, water and earth were divided, but complemented. The steady beat of order pounded out. Sun and moon over day and night. Birds and fish over air and water. Cattle and creeping things over the ground. The sweet solo, Eden, and duet man and woman placed in the garden to cultivate and populate creation. God forever over all and in all. But creation was incomplete. Fruit did not fall of trees and babies didn’t spring up from the ground. Work was required to cultivate and poplulate, not just Eden but the entire earth! That was, after all, Adam’s responsiblity. Clearly, man was to finish what God had begun–an entire world filled with his image and order, through beauty and culture.

In Ezra 1-2, I have been reminded of that the order continued but amidst disorder and disobedience. The corporate Adam, Israel, failed to be fruitful and multiply and rule and subdue with integrity and devotion to God. Exile followed. Ezra 1 recalls the return of Israel from exile to Jerusalem to build the Lord a house, a temple, a place where God and man could meet and a city from which the orderly purposes of God and creation could flow. The fruits of culture are gathered for the rebuliding–gold, silver, goods, cattle, valuables. Even a pagan king participated. People were assigned tasks to carry out the rebuilding, a microcosm of what Adam was commanded to carry out on a macroscale. As people streamed to Jerusalem, cities flourished and culture was created. The law was opened and order established.

Matthew 1 reminds me that Israel failed, along with Adam. It begins with the geneaology of Jesus, the Messiah, promised in Gen 3.15 who would crush evil and de-creation, promoting light and life even in exchange for the dimming of his own. A sordid and splendid family history–kings, harlots, servants, adulterers, and a birth surrounded by controversy. Yet Jesus would remain pure, restore order, and release from exile all who would turn from evil and embrace him–the good and beautiful–participating in his work to put creation back on track, peopled and cultivated with beauty and order.

Does reading a lot of biblical information preclude meditation and worship? Hardly. To draw that conclusion is to confuse the cows’ diet with their dulled teeth. What we need is the good grass of his Word and sharp teeth to chew over the chunks of creation and redemption. Whether we are reading a chapter or a verse, the whole story should stand forth as one of wonderful beauty and order, creation and redemption in and through none other than Jesus. Looking through the lens of Matthew 1, I marvel at creation, God and the future with deeper awe. I consider the eternal worth of all men, the glorious destiny of this creation, and the wisdom of a ineffable God, who has drawn me into this grand story through revealed information and renewed understanding.

He’s new to me. I heard him last night on the way back to the mall to find my lost wallet with my Xmas gift cards. At 9:30 pm, driving through the pouring rain to a location 15 minutes away from our apartment, I pondered the providence of losing my commercial credit of roughly $150. I flipped through radio stations, mingling the static with prayer, and landed on “Sweetly Broken” by Jeremy Riddle. This proved to be a sweet providence–well worth the loss of time and money. This song surges from sweet piety to a simple, powerful reminder of the Mercy, Joy & Justice of the Cross. I was reminded of the inordinate wealth of my new creation inheritance and sweetly broken.

Sweetly Broken Video

Oh, and found my wallet, sweet..but not sweeter.