Category: Missional Church

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.

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.

4 Reasons to Cancel Sunday Service

Posted on April 2, 2009

Last Sunday we canceled our Sunday gathering. We did not have inclement weather. The preaching pastor was not ill. The roads were not blocked. We canceled our service deliberately to take part in Austin’s annual Capitol 10K run and fun run. Over 18,000 people turned out this year.

The run benefits a local charity each year. This year it was Meals on Wheels, a non-profit that delivers groceries and provides services to the home bound and elderly. Our City Groups work with Meals on Wheels so it was a natural cause for us to support. We mobilized our church to participate in the 10K and had a big cookout afterward. In retrospect and in prospect, here are four reasons to cancel your Sunday service.

  1. It enables us to corporately Serve the City, Know the City. By canceling an age-old tradition of Sunday church services, Austin City Life church went public with their commitment to being a church that is genuinely for the city. Instead of gathering in our downtown venue while thousands of runners streamed by, we decided to join our city in a great cause of feeding the needy. We rubbed shoulders with people who need Jesus. We gained a unique perspective of the city. Approaching the capitol with a throng of people, we made our way up Congress St running right to the edge of the capitol building. I poured out prayers for our government and kept running. We saw neighborhoods up close, house after house of people who don’t know Jesus and prayed. We saw the unique architecture and marveled. Heard the great bands and cheered. Laughed at the ridiculous costumes and had a great time with our city. Cancel your service to serve and know the city.
  2. It reinforces how important it is to Be the Church. By canceling our Sunday gathering, we reinforced our belief that church is not merely what we do; it is who we are. Weekend services have actually replaced the church in America. Our landscape is dotted with churchless Christianity. As a new believer said to me recently, it doesn’t matter if I miss a few Sundays because I am with the church throughout the week. Canceling the event and spending time running, cooking, eating, and hanging out was a wonderful reminder that we are the church and that we need one another.
  3. It offers Sabbath rest for a driven society. When we canceled our service, we created much needed rest for many volunteers, deacons, leaders, and pastors. We also created the opportunity for the church to rest in a society that is driven and too busy. We had quite a few people that did not participate in the race. They took the opportunity to relax and enjoy a wonderful day without the demands of work or service attendance. Many of us remarked how nice it was to not be in the service. Is this because we don’t want to worship God, because we don’t love the Word of God, because we are slovenly and indifferent to the gospel? Not at all…but it could also be that it…
  4. Serves as a reminder that very often we are too busy for church. That Sunday “off” came as with unexpected level of refreshment for many? Why? Because very often we are too busy for church. We get so exhausted from our busy lives, that Sunday gatherings of the church are something we discipline ourselves to go to. We work so late that we don’t go to our City Group meetings. We are so exhausted from taking the kids here and there that we can’t imagine having the energy to have people over for dinner to share life with. Unexpectedly, canceling a service can lead people to repentance over sinful busyness and faith in the Sovereign supplier of all things.