Creation Project » Missional Church

Superficial Contextualization

Jonathan Dodson — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:06:26 +0000

Most of what is done in the name of contextualization isn’t contextualization at all. Two misuses of contextualization among so-called missional churches are, first, a superficial approach to culture and, second, gospel contamination that results from this approach.

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PlantR: Reorganizing a Network for Movement

Jonathan Dodson — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 04:45:38 +0000

I’m incredibly excited about what’s happening through church planting in our city. There is a remarkable level of partnership and kingdom-mindedness among church planters in Austin, attributable only to the the Spirit of God. PlantR, our church planting city network, recently underwent a significant reorganization.

Struggle to Execute on a City Vision

The vision of PlantR is to catalyze a Christ-centered, context-sensitive church planting movement for the social and spiritual renewal of Austin and beyond. Since the beginning, we have struggled to understand how to best facilitate this vision with such a diverse group of church planting methods, ecclesiologies, and theologies. Should we carve the city up into districts to prioritize city renewal through church planting? That sounds awfully parochial. Prioritize planting areas? By what standards? Ethnicity, income, poverty, least reached? The PlantR board has debated this for several years.

In the meantime, we continually pressed ahead with our vision by our three-fold purpose of Networking, Resourcing, & Encouraging church planters for city renewal. Many church planters need:

Encouragement from someone with whom they can pray, bear burdens, and lick wounds. If the planter doesn’t make it, the church does make it. Churches have to make it to make movement.
Networking to increase social interaction, create space for swapping best practices, establish coaching relationships, and increase kingdom partnership for Christ’s mission. Movements are typically comprised of networks of networks.
Resourcing to equip the planter with local knowledge, missional ecclesiology, and church planting training. Some of the best resourcing can happen on-the-fly, when the leader acutely feels the need for it.

To varying degrees of success, PlantR has delivered on these three purposes through a Monthly Meeting. However, the strategic element for city renewal and movement continued to elude us. Then, we had a break-through idea. What if we took strategy out of our hands and placed it in the hands of the planters? This sparked an entire reorg of our structure.

Missional Hubs & MicroConferences

We decided to do away with the centralized Monthly Meeting and reorganize the network around smaller gatherings of church planters called Missional Hubs.

Missional Hubs are regional gatherings of church leaders that meet regularly to network and encourage one another for the renewal of a specific region of the city.

Our hope and prayer is that missional partnerships and strategy will bubble up from these smaller groups of planters as they labor alongside one another in a shared space in the city. Now that they are interacting with planters “in their backyard”, our hope is that they will work together on initiatives and strategies to renew, for instance, South Austin. Groups of planters working for Christ-centered renewal in smaller parts of the city suddenly makes the vision a bit more manageable. However, we didn’t want to leave planters un-resourced, so we also developed MicroConferences.

MicroConferences are uniquely focused conferences that occur quarterly to resource a Christ-centered church planting movement.

These MicroConferences allow us to handpick leaders to speak into the movement in the various areas of theology, methodology, strategic planning, and pastoral care. In addition, the regional breakouts allow us to customize content and work for real, local challenges on mission in the greater Austin area. For instance, Hispanic church planting on the Eastside. Where can you find a breakout on that at a national conference? The Microconference connects top-level missional thinking to street-level missional practice in our city. On that note, Im thrilled to announce that Jeff Vanderstelt will be speaking into our movement on the topic of Missional Community on January 10!

Register (ASAP) and read more about the Missional Community Microconference on Jan 10!
Also, check out our new website which reflects the PlantR reorg!

Building a Discipling Culture (review)

Jonathan Dodson — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:48:17 +0000

This is a review of Mike Breen’s Building a Discipleship Culture. (Available only as an eBook. It’s worth your $7.49.)

I appreciate Mike Breen’s radical focus on discipleship. He points out that many leaders in the West, while often well-educated, are poorly trained for disciple-making. In seminaries we learn exegesis, systematic theology, church history, and pastoral duties but all too often the basics of making a disciples are left out. While there are exceptions, in general, he’s right. It’s true. Things do need to change.

Some Strengths of the Book

Build a discipleship culture. This is what Breen does well. Build. Equip. Change. If you’re looking for a book to help you to create a discipleship culture, look no more. He does this through structure and insight. The second half of the book is devoted to discipleship structure. He calls for Huddles, small groups of disciples who meet regularly to encourage and disciple one another. These huddles have multiplication built into them. They are kind of like Fight Clubs but with much more structure and intentionality.

What I enjoyed most about this book were the discipling insights, things like Invitation and Challenge. Invitation and challenge was one way Jesus made disciples. He invited them into his life, but not just to be his buddies; he also challenged them. Too much buddying is done in the name of discipleship. We need to deepen in our security in Christ to love others enough to exhort, challenge, and correct them with grace and truth. Breen notes that Jesus created a “highly supportive but highly challenging culture.”

I was teaching through a holistic discipleship class in our local church while reading Building a Discipleship Culture, and to my surprise, there were a lot of overlaps in our structures and insights. This was affirming, as Mike has been at it a bit more than me. Discipleship, if it is going to be true to God’s intention, has to be intentional, integrated, and informed. Mike says roughly the same thing when he calls for three environments: Classroom, Apprenticeship, and Immersion. Most Westerners never get beyond the classroom. Discipleship remains at arms length idea, not a personal investment.

Now, don’t jump to conclusions by lumping Mike into an anti-theology camp. He says teaching and doctrine are “incredibly important”, but goes on to point out how Jesus taught important doctrines in the context of relationship and ministry immersion. So, in building a discipleship culture its important that we integrate information with intentionality in the context of relationships. I really like this statement:

“The best discipling relationships always have an intentional, ‘organized’ component to them, as well as a less formal, ‘organic’ component.”

It’s true. Go all organic and its hard to grow well. Even plants often need support. Go all intentional and relationships can be reduced to meetings and information transfer. We need both intentionality and relationship. For these insights and many others, Building a Discipleship Culture is worth reading!

Overstatements in the Book

Now, Mike and I have exchanged a few winsome emails about some things he says in his book. And, if I understand correctly, he has a tendency to overstatement (of course none of us do!). In light of that, here are a few that I think need qualifying:

“Disciples are the only thing that Jesus cares about, and its the only number that Jesus is counting.” Really? Jesus doesn’t care about our doctrine or church polity? And is Jesus counting disciples because he’s basing our worth as a disciple on how many disciples we have, or is he counting because he died for his disciples? Counting can be a dangerous thing.
So what is the engine of the church? Discipleship. “If you make disciples, you will always get the church. But if you try to build the church, you will rarely get disciples.” There’s some truth to this statement, but it’s not a truism. Disciples have been made without making churches throughout church history. Very often they end up as cults. Alternatively, many churches are started that don’t mature and multiply disciples but instead gather Christians to Sunday events. This probably needs nuancing.

The Engine of the Church

If discipleship is the engine of the church, we put our hope in pragmatism, albeit Jesus imitating pragmatism. But the hope of every disciple and would be disciple is not the method of discipleship but the might of the gospel! The gospel, not discipleship, is the engine of the church. I asked Mike about this and he gave a helpful response:

All metaphors break down at some point and I’m sure saying discipleship is the engine breaks down on many levels, though i think it works on many levels too. I don’t know that I was trying to make a significant theological statement so much as point to a reality of causation that I believe exists/doesn’t exist in the church. I think you could say discipleship is the fuel and the Gospel is the engine and the point is still proven. Without fuel, the car is still going no where, just as it wouldn’t without an engine.

Point taken! Then I say, “Let’s start the engine, fill it up, and start making disciples!” Let’s build discipleship culture with the gospel of Jesus right in the middle of it!

ACL Digital Report & Gospel Community Video!

Jonathan Dodson — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:05:57 +0000

Check out these Evidences of Grace from ACL in our cool annual report (thanks Beth Copher). You can scroll through the digital booklet, and check out a video on Gospel Community in John’s life!

Read Austin City Life’s 2011 Annual Report:

Open publication – Free publishing – More austin

Gospel Community:

Listen to the audio from our ”Family Sunday” service

The Pastor_ Identity. Church. Mission.

Jonathan Dodson — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:36:59 +0000

I felt strongly about these talks as I wrote and delivered them. Listening to the first talk on Pastoral Identity, I was reminded just how important they are—for me. I hope you’ll find them helpful too.

Session 1 - The Pastor’s Identity: Gospel-formed Leadership
Session 2 - The Pastor’s Church: Shepherding Sinners as Disciples
Session 3 - The Pastor’s Mission: Your Role in the Mission of the Church

How to Keep Missional Communities Healthy

Jonathan Dodson — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 23:28:34 +0000

One of the questions I’m asked most is: “How do you keep missional communities healthy?” “How do you help them grow?” At Austin City Life, we’ve learned this one the hard way. Among the many mistakes we’ve made, you can include:

Installing (unqualified) leaders too fast
Multiplying without vision or a clear process
Making mission a project and unclear in focus

We’ve rectified these failures through listening to our leaders, developing several tools, and then training them accordingly. Before pointing to the tools we’ve found helpful in nurturing healthy missional communities, I’d like to stress two key things.

Missional Communities Talk About Missional Community

If church really is a family, then there’s no taboo topic. Healthy families hash out problems, confront challenges, resolve conflict, reflect on their relationships, and plan to be better families. Healthy missional communities must do the same. Growing missional communities talk about their missional community (not theoretical ones). They celebrate the evidences of grace, encourage one another in their strengths, affirm growth in grace, and they talk about their areas of growth. We talk about the growth of our relationships and collective mission in terms of how we’re doing at having gospel conversations, practicing steady state community, and living around our identified mission. These conversations keep legalism from creeping in, or help us ferret it out, where we’ve come to judge one another based on missional community performance. These conversations also create space for repentance over selfishness or indifference.

Missional Communities Talk to God Together

Missional Communities that don’t pray practice a kind of missional self-righteousness. Prayerless MCs believe the lie that they can handle mission on their own. If they have the right conversations, do the right planning, and identify the right mission, then “Boom” they can have missional success. Last time I checked Luke 10, Jesus is the Lord of the harvest, not me, my missional community, or my strategies. As Lord, he calls us, not just to pray, but to plead with him. He instructs his groups of disciples to plead for more workers in his ripe harvest field, to pray for more people to turn from merciless lords to the one, true Merciful Lord.

Even Jesus prayed for the harvest. He asked the Father for strength, guidance, and grace throughout his ministry. Most of all, he prayed to the Father because, quite simply, he loved the Father (John 17). If it’s true that Jesus prayed a lot because he was the most dependent human being that every lived, then doesn’t it follow that we, not only imitate his practice, but also join him in prayer in pursuit of the harvest of his death?

If it is also true that he prayed because he enjoyed the Father’s presence, then shouldn’t love compel us to pray? And wouldn’t it be love that would compel us to go, to share the gospel when we are embarrassed, to serve the poor when we are tired, and to life up the name of Christ in the fellowship of the Father, Son, and Spirit? Jesus put it like this: “If you love me, you will keep my commands.” Love gets white-hot in prayer. It glows. That’s what happened in the Transfiguration. Jesus glowed with white-hot joy in the presence of God, and then turned his face toward Jerusalem to secure God’s mission with his very own blood.

Prayerless mission is the height of self-righteousness. Plus, its pretty loveless. Its saying to God, “I’ve got your mission covered. I can handle hardened hearts. Why don’t you do something more important, like applaud at my missional ingenuity.” I don’t need your love; i’ll just use your mission to love myself. Get a whole group of prayerless people on mission together, and we’re asking for it. We’re asking for failure, humility, and sickness. Unhealthy missional community results from loveless, prayerless missional community. The good news is that the Father is waiting, not with his arms crossed, but with them wide open to receive our repentance and to hear our pleas! What a gracious God we serve!

3 Tools God Can Work Through

Here are three tools for the three issues I listed up top. They are imperfect but God has a history of working through imperfect people, especially when they bank on his perfection.

Lord, help us. Lord, use us. Lord forgive us. Lord reap your Harvest. Lord, be glorified. Amen.

Making the Gospel Viral (via discipleship)

Jonathan Dodson — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 20:54:46 +0000

I’m incredibly excited about what is happening in our church right now. We’re really dialing in on discipleship, more than ever, in a variety of ways. As we assessed the health of our church, we evaluated the four “selfs” of a viable church plant.

Self-Governing – a church led by a plurality of elders
Self-Sustaining – a church financially supported by its own people
Self-Reproducing – a church that multiplies disciples, missional communities, and church plants
Self-Gospeling – a church that is equipped to apply the gospel to itself and to its own cultural context

Our Steps towards Viral Discipleship

After sharing our progress on each “self” on a Sunday morning, we have focused in on Self-reproducing. In order to avoid becoming a church that has a shelf-life, we need to reproduce on a micro and macro level. We need reproductive gospel DNA. Although our staff and some of our leadership were practicing reproductive discipleship; it was not viral. Therefore, I wrote a paper on “The Missing Ingredient of Reproductive Discipleship” and discussed it with our elders and staff. Then, after refining our thoughts, we then turned our attention to practical steps for cultivating reproductive discipleship. Those steps included:

Casting Vision to our Leaders about Reproductive Disciple-making
A message on The Mission of Making Disciples
Working through a Gospel/Community/Mission Primer in our missional communities.
Our MCs making a missional commitment to disciple-making.
Identifying & training disciples through 12: Making the Gospel Viral [audio]

We’re hopeful that this will lead to viral discipleship and missional faithfulness in passing the gospel of Jesus on. Pray for us if you think about it.

Alan Hirsch on Missional Discipleship

Jonathan Dodson — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:16:54 +0000

At our inaugural PlantR Microconference, we are hosting Alan Hirsch on the topic of Missional Discipleship. Session 2 is on Incarnational Mission (how to make disciples).

Incarnation As Mission

We are sent like the Father sent the Son–incarnation.
Jesus is in the neighborhood for 30 years and nobody knew.
This way of incarnating the gospel is the most profound way God has ever engaged the world.
If the incarnation is the way God sends, then we must become incarnational.
The apostles worked with the message Jesus is Lord and that was enough.
You don’t commute to your mission.

Incarnating the Gospel via Discipleship (6 Ps)

Presence – God is with you on mission not just for you.
Proximity – Context is everything. Take your “small group” and put it out in public.

For more on Alan’s work on Missional Discipleship see my 3 posts on his book Untamed or just buy the book!

6 Conferences I’m Going To

Jonathan Dodson — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 22:37:27 +0000

Here are some event & conferences I am looking forward to speaking at this Fall. I’ll be presenting fresh material at a lot of these. In particular, I’ll be focusing on what I’m calling Integrated Discipleship (theology meets practice big time), the Challenges of Missional Community (stories of failure, difficulty, and struggle to make MCs work).

Most of these are currently live for Registration!

The GCM Collective Conference -
CITY LEADERSHIP: MicroConference on Missional Community
Initiative 22: Montreal, QC
Gospel-Centered Discipleship (w/ Joe Thorn) – site coming…
Acts 29 Regional Church Planter Cohort
Orlando Grace Men’s Conference

City Seminary, PlantR, GCD, & Arts Update!

Jonathan Dodson — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 14:10:28 +0000

There are so many great things in the works, I thought I would give a bullet list of things to look for this Fall:

City Seminary: 2 stellar courses that will fit, inspire, and equip everyone in our church! Registration starts soon! First Micro
PlantR: Microconferences & Missional Hubs start this Fall. Don’t miss this Thursday meeting if you’re a local church planter! RSVP for free BBQ lunch!
GospelCenteredDiscipleship.com – our launch of this all things GCD site is just days away. The content is top-notch and will equip many to make, mature, and multiply gospel-centered disciples!
The Gospel & Domestic Arts: Don’t miss this week-long series of posts on how people in Austin City Life are pushing the gospel through ordinary things