Taught our first Partners Class last night. Here is an overview and an outline of the class. Before jumping into things I shared three reasons why we are having a Partners Class. Then, inbetween coffee and brownies in the Schwedland’s living room, we all went around and shared something that has shaped our story and how we got connected with Austin City Life. That was the best part.

Why A Partners Class?

1. Why Partners not Members? Some churches do members classes; we have a Partners Class. There are some really good members classes out there, but there are also a lot of jacked up ideas of what it means to be a member of a church, especially for de-churched or unchurched people. So, we decided to go with “Partners class” to clearly communicate that the church is a partnership of Spirit-led disciples who follow Jesus. The church isn’t a country club bound by exclusive membership; it’s a missional community bound together by the gospel. Everyone is invited to be a partner. It’s about responsible partnership, not exclusive relationships.

2. Three Reasons for a Partners Class

o Cultivate Community: lets us get to know one another more intimately, ask questions. It also allows us to shepherd you more effectively, so you aren’t just some random person in a seat (1 Tim 5:9; 2 Cor 2:6-7).

o Clarify the Gospel: allows us to communicate clearly the gospel of Christ and what we consider essential and non-essential doctrines of the church.

o Communicate Mission: fosters sense of mission through ACL vision and explore how you can fit into that mission.

3. What to expect: In addition to Gospel, Community, & Mission, we will:

o Share the History and Vision of Austin City Life.

o Upon completion of the class we will not issue certificates. We will ask that your City Group Leader indicate your participation in the life and mission of your community. Your participation is evidence that you are, indeed, a partner in our mission.

In an effort to cultivate Missional Leaders, we have identified some key qualities and questions.

Qualities: Some of the qualities we are looking for are presupposed by the questionnaire below. However, here are a few, very practical questions to ask that will reveal missional leader readiness.

• Can they articulate both the Gospel and your vision?
• Are they embodying the gospel and mission in community?
• Have you known them long enough to trust their character and skill?
• Have you spent enough time with them to know whether or not they can say to their missional community, “Imitate me.”?
• Are they imitating you?
• Do they have an increased grocery bill from sharing meals with Christians and non-Christians (stole that from Mark Moore)?
• Do they demonstrate a willingness to be inconvenienced by community and mission?

Questions: We created a questionaire that I adapted from Drew Goodmanson. Each prospective City Group leader filled it out and then met with me to go over it. It has been very helpful in screening, cultivating, and shepherding leaders.

At Austin City Life we talk about the “apologetic power of a Jesus-centered missional community.” What do we mean by this? We believe that one of the greatest apologetics–arguments for the gospel–is a community that embodies the gospel in missional form, a church that invites unbelievers and skeptics into an unpretentious community of imperfect, winsome believers who are laboring to renew their communities and cities socially and spiritually in and through the gospel of Christ.

We believe that Jesus calls us to make relationships and mend the brokenness of our city as an end in itself, not merely as a way to convert someone. We are against a bait-and-switch evangelism. Rather, we are imperfectly trying to engage people and culture in a way that betters individuals, families, and cities. In Luke 4 and Isaiah 61 Jesus made a connection between the “good news” and restored cities. We are trying to live that connection out, believing that it will compel others to embrace Jesus and join us in living our this apologetic.

This is, in fact, the legacy of the early Church. Historian Rodney Stark comments on the response of the early Church to suffering and broken cities:

…religion did not merely offer psychological antidotes for the misery of life; it actually made life less miserable. The power of Christianity lay not in its promise of otherworldly compensations for suffering in this life, as has so often been proposed. The truly revolutionary aspect of Christianity lay in moral imperatives such as “Love one’s neighbor as one’s self, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and “When you did it to the least of my brethren, you did it to me.” These were not just slogans. Members did nurse the sick, even during epidemics; they did support orphans, widows, the elderly, and the poor…

Stark goes on to note that Christiainity gained converts because of this kind of faith. This is not bumper sticker Christianity–pithy slogans and empty actions. Social mission was part of the very nature of the church. It is our hope and practice that Austin City Life does not merely offer psychological antidotes for the misery of life; but that we actually made life less miserable as well as more hopeful.

Neil Cole’s Organic Church was an overnight success. I have referred back to several times for organic church principles that have shaped Austin City Life. However, Cole’s newest book Search and Rescue: Becoming a Disciple Who Makes a Difference struggles to stay afloat.

The hyper-sensitive Calvinist shouldn’t judge the book by its cover. This is not an Arminian tirade on Calvinist failures at mission, though recent research appears to support such conclusions. Using the metaphor of “search and rescue”, Cole is not trying to make a statement regarding Total Depravity, that we are alive and afloat in our sin, versus dead and drowned in depravity. Rather, Cole uses his lifeguard experience as an illustration of how the church should make disciples, which includes “seeking and saving the lost”. And here is his where the book begins to drown.

Part 1

The book is littered with pictures and inundated with stories from Cole’s lifeguard days in California. I’m all for a good illustration, but Cole takes this way too far, dominating the entire book. Not only is this filler, it obscures some of his helpful comments on discipleship. In addition to riding the wave of lifeguard stories, in the first half of the book, Cole also attempts to surf 2 Timothy for discipleship principles and insights. Unfortunately, he offers mainly superficial observations and poor exegesis, particularly his comments on why we should not follow the reward structure of farmer/athlete/soldier in 1 Timothy 2 at a motivation for discipleship. He doesn’t seem to get Christian Hedonism. However, it’s great to see him addressing the notion of motivation in discipleship, in which he deconstructs religion and other forms of external motivation, pointing to the gospel as “that which transforms the soul” (97). You can skip the first four chapters of the book and go straight to chapter five, where he develops his insights from Organic Church on building the church by multiplication, not addition. If this is new to you, its worth reading about in either book.

Part 2

The second half of Search and Rescue is self-admittedly a rework of Cultivating a Life for God, which rehearses the story and structure of Life Transformation Groups (LTGs). These groups of 2-3 are formed around three practices: 1) Confession of sin 2) Reading lots of Scripture 3) Praying for the lost. They are simple, reproducible, and strategic. Before I came across Cole, I had been doing something similar with friends for several years. I really like the simplicity and reproducibility of the LTG concept. Cole has inspired me to implement my own version—Fight Clubs—in our church. A summary of LTGs is found on page 175.

Conclusion

Cole’s strength is questioning the status quo. He doesn’t do a lot of that in this book. However, when he does it is refreshing and edgy. Like saying that we slow down the obedience of disciples when we run them through content heavy discipleship material. Or that the Early Church met in accountability groups. Or that when pastors talk about Greek and Hebrew from the pulpit they separate themselves from the flock and distance the church from the Bible.

All in all, the book isn’t worth buying, especially if you have read Cole’s other stuff. I’ve shared most of the nuggets and purchased it in hope of finding much more. In fact, the richest paragraph in the book comes from Alan Hirsch’s preface:

It was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity the other side of complexity.” Simple answers, offered without taking into account the vast intricacies of human life in an infitine universe, are close to being out right worthless to any human being in need of real truth that addresses real, live situations. Simplicity this side of complexity simply doesn’t fit or resonate with our condition and is not worth a dime. However, when simplicity presents itself beyond the complexities that we all face, and it takes into account the nuanced and often perplexing situation we find ourselves in, the these truths are worth all that we own.

Frank Viola, Paul Young, and Wolfgang Simson will be speaking at the Organic Leadership conference in Dallas, August 28-31.

Drew Goodmanson and Kaleo church have been kind enough to share some of their missional thinking documents with me while planting Austin City Life. Now fellow Acts 29 planters, Goodmanson and Fairchild will be sharing through Shapevine in an online interview. They do theology and missiology very well.

Check it out.

HT:SM

Misssional ecclesiology is a buzzword among planters, but very few are actually pushing this kind of ecclesiology through the structure and systems of their churches. Soma and Kaleo churches are an exception. Along with author of Drama of Scripture, Michael Goheen, these churches are hosting a “Church Bootcamp” symposium. The registration is restricted to 60, so hurry to register. I’d be there but that is too close t our launch.