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How to Stay in Community on Mission

1. Always ask missionary questions, not just when your missional community forms. For example: “What do the people we are engaging fear, value, or need?” Allow those answers shape how you respond in mission to them, i.e. married university students don’t have a need for shelter and food but they do feel a need for community and education. How could that shape your mission to students? How do their responses change the way you articulate the gospel? See some of Tim Chester’s helpful comments on Identity and Decisions in Community.

2. Pastor people through missional community multiplication. When multiplying a missional community, be sure to identify the general anxiety in a group publicly and pastor the community thru it in the gospel, i.e. “Hey guys, I sense some of you are nervous or disappointed about losing our people to a new mission?” Then after surfacing the anxiety, ask people how we can apply the gospel to that anxiety? Guide the community from anxiety to celebration by hosting a joint party for a new missional community. Multiplication is a celebratory birth, not a mourning of a death. It’s adding to the family!

3. When making decisions that affect the whole group, make them in community, not just “from the top.” For example, the appointment of a new leader in training, the timing and location of a multiplication, should all be a community discussion not a decision handed down from leadership. Talk things through, create space for unity, shared wisdom, united mission.

4. When settling on a missional focus be discerning in your partnerships. Is it okay to share a mission in community with another missional community? As long as there is enough work, it is within your geography, and you can eventually reproduce that mission in your context. Don’t “commute” to your mission. Mission is where you live. Although you can share some mission across missional communities, remember there are two other layers of mission that you can not share: 1) Mission as Neighborhood 2) Mission as Vocation.

Middle Road Repentance

On Sunday we discussed the idea of Repentance. All too often, our notions of repentance too expensive or too cheap. Some of us view repentance as an self-reliant effort to reach deep down into our own spiritual pockets to pay God for our forgiveness. Others of us view repentance as a superficial performance. We slip into the confessional booth, say our sins, slip out, and we are good. Then we keep on sinning. The self-reliant approach is too expensive. The superficial approach is too cheap. What we need is middle-of-the-road repentance.

Middle-of-the-road repentance avoids the dangers of legalistic and loose repentance, while possessing promise for real change. It’s comprised of three elements: Confession, Mortification, and Faith. These three elements aren’t three steps to be followed in sequence, though very often they fall that way. Rather, they are three elements necessary for gospel-centered repentance. Perhaps these rough explanations will be helpful:

Confession of Sin

In order to confess our sin, we have to know our sin. If we’re not looking for it, then we don’t know it, and we cant confess it. How do we know it? Ask the question: “What do I want most?” If it’s not Jesus, then you’ve found your sin(s). Why should we confess? Sin festers, burrows deep down into our souls and we become worse because of it. When we hide sin, we become trapped by it. It corners us in the dark. Confession allows us to bring it out into the light, expose it, to escape its clutches. Confession breaks the power of private sin.

Mortification of Sin

Once we drag sin out into the light, how in the world do we beat it? Fighting sin is a lifelong calling. Sin doesn’t give up easily. It’s set against us. It wants to steal our joy, to kill us. We must take up arms against it. As John Owen said, we must “Be killing sin lest it be killing you.” We fight it. Kill it. Mortify it, but how?  In order to fight sin, we have to understand what makes it tick, what gives it life. We have to figure out where it gets its strength, its power. If we are going to mortify, we have to move beyond the superficial performances of the confessional booth, and into the depths of our hearts, where sin sinks its roots. You might say we need to get to the sin beneath our sin, to its root. In order to get underneath our sin, we have to ask the question “Why?” Why do I choose pride over humility, lust over love, gossip over encouragement, envy over empathy? Why do we sin? Well, fundamentally it’s because believe something about sin. That it is more compelling, more attractive, more satisfying, more trustworthy than Jesus. Underneath every sin there is an idol. It’s down there, fueling our sin, giving it power over us. How? It lies to us. How do we uncover it? Mortify it? Here’s how. Expose its lies. Just ask the question: “What lie am I believing when I do X?

Faith in the Truth

After we’ve figured out the lie, how do we turn the corner in conquering sin? How do we defeat those cyclical sins? Well, whenever we turn from something, we also turn to something . The question is what are we turning to? Another lie or a truth? The first two elements of repentance—Confession and Mortification—are a turning from sin, but complete repentance also includes a turning to. We turn from faith in our idols to faith in God, from lies and turn to truths. This is repentance, a constant turning away from sin and turning to Christ. Repentance is an act of faith. Faith in what? Faith in God’s promises. Owen: “Set faith on work on these promises of God…it is not easily conceived what a train of graces is attended withal, when it goes forth to meet Christ in the promises…” (Mortification, 126). Set faith on these promises because when we go out to meet Jesus he brings a “train of graces” to us that woo us from the deceitful promises of sin into his all-satisfying arms. See, ultimately repentance is about trusting Jesus. It’s about grace. It’s about believing the truths of the gospel, not the lies of idols. How can we get in on this train of graces? Trust Christ. Set faith on the promises. Ask yourself the question: “What promises are opposite the lies I believe?

In You Can Change, Tim Chester helpfully points us to four basic promises. The 4 Gs:

1. God is great – so we don’t have to be in control

2. God is glorious – so we don’t have to fear others

3. God is good – so we don’t have to look elsewhere

4. God is gracious – so we don’t have to prove ourselves

These 4Gs are helpful summaries of God’s various promises, so better yet, find the promises in your Bible that back them up. Find truths to fight lies and start talking back to your idols. Start mortifying your sin! As you do, you’ll find that train of graces that attends God’s promises. You’ll find that God is glorious, good, gracious and great! You’ll find middle-of-the-road repentance.

Helpful Resources on Repentance

Read Good Counsel to Be the Church

Here is an excerpt from my Resurgence Series on Counseling and Mission:

Nothing like regular time with unchurched, newly believing, broken and mature, redeemed sinners–the Church–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 (CCEF). 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 (JBC), 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, especially You Can Change and 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.

Read good counsel, not only for you but for the church. Ground yourself in the wisdom, truth, and joy of the Lord by soaking up gospel-centered resources. Without counseling one another, the church becomes a hollow social community or disconnected spiritual event. Read good counsel to be the church. Share life and truth. Love one another in the grace of Christ and the power of the Spirit.

Books I'm Reading

Missional/Cultural

  • Culture Making, Crouch – a significant contribution to discussion on Christ and Culture, emphasizing not so much the transformation of existing culture, but the creation of new culture.
  • Transforming Worldviews, Paul Hiebert – anything by Hiebert will rock your mind and change your missiology…for good.

Practical

  • A Praying Life, Miller – one of the most realistic, encouraging, prayer inspiring books I have read in a long time.
  • You Can Change, Chester – an accessible, transforming book on gospel centered change
  • Relationships: A Mess Worth Making, Lane – great book on how the gospel shapes and renews all kinds of relationships from family to friends.
  • How People Change, Lane – more nuanced, technical book on how the gospel can lead us into cross-centered change

Theological

  • Justification, N.T. Wright – thoughtful reflections on Justification that aim at keeping the gospel central, clarifying previous statements on justification, and a much needed emphasis on the Spirit in Justification.
  • Christ, our Righteousness, Seifrid – excellent contribution to the NPP debate, particularly his contribution to justification as resurrection, not imputed righteousness
  • Romans, Moo – superb commentary on Romans