I’m very excited to announce the Fall launch of Porterbrook Austin, sponsored by sister church Soma Community! The Porterbrook Network was created by Steve Timmis & Tim Chester of The Crowded House, co-authors of the book Total Church.

What is Porterbrook Austin?

The Porterbrook Network is a robust, mobile, gospel-centered, training program for missional leaders. As the PBrook Austin site points out, this program is for church leaders, church planters, or simply Christians wanting to deepen their theological understanding and become more mission-focused.

Several Austin City Life people will start P’Brook Austin this Fall. Check out the website and consider joining them to grow more deeply in Gospel, Community, and Misson!

Porterbrook Austin Program Options

• Theology for Everyone: Take classes à la carte or start the 24 course program to complete over a two year period.
• Pastors, Planters & Missionaries: Take classes à la carte or start the advanced, full two-year program.

Registration

Sign-up by September 8th, 2010. More information and pricing can be found on the links above for each program. You can also check out ‘What Is Porterbrook Austin‘ and ‘Which Program is For Me‘.

Tomorrow I will be speaking at the Brazos Valley Church Planters Network in Brenham, Texas. Justin Hyde of Christ Church Brenham was kind enough to invite me. I’ll be speaking on Churching the Gospel in Your Culture. Over the course of two talks, my aim will be to help missional leaders:

1. To understand the Gospel in light of culture.
   
2. To understand Culture in light of the Gospel.
   
3. To Church the Gospel in the light and darkness of your culture.

Register Here

Conference 2010 Flyer

In 2009 Tim Chester and I spoke at the LEAD ’09 conference which focused on Leading the Church in Gospel, Community, and Mission. The conference was packed with great content which has been captured on video and audio. Some of the sessions include:

• Community as a Lifestyle
• Conversion to Mission
• Fight Clubs: Gospel-centered Discipleship
• Mission as a Lifestyle

1. Know God

2. Know Your People

3. Know Your Neighborhood

4. Don’t Go Alone

5. Say Who you Are & Aren’t Every   Week

Read the rest of the 1o Tips for Missional Community Leaders with notes at Resurgence.

Missional Church is in full swing. In classic American fashion, we’ve created a whole industry around it—Networks, Conferences, Books, Blogs, Seminars, Schools, Workbooks, Degrees, and so on. Missional is becoming common parlance among American evangelicals. But at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. What kind of impact is missional church making?

Ed Stetzer reported a disappointing trend in 2008 of continued decline in conversions, church growth, and church starts. Church plants are popping up everywhere, but not faster than established churches are closing their doors. It appears that The Next Christendom isn’t returning to the shores of the West anytime soon. In fact, according to Gallup, cultural Christianity is on the decline. Are we to then assume that the missional church movement is a failure, a fad?

There are several reasons why Missional Church isn’t working. Here I will focus on one reason—syncretistic missional ecclesiology. Syncretistic missional ecclesiology (SME) is the fusion of missional church with institutional church. In other cultural contexts, syncretistic ecclesiology combines Christian church values and practices with other religious institutions like Buddhist temple life. Here we are concerned with the American context, the resurgence of missional church and its unhealthy integration into the institutional church.

Institutional Missional Church

Although many leaders and churches have embraced missional language and theology, they are still having trouble translating mission into their own communities. Why? Because church plants are fusing missional ecclesiology with their prior experience of institutional church. The nature of missional church requires more than cosmetic adjustments to our inherited forms of church. Missional ecclesiology requires an entirely new way of thinking about church, from the bottom up. Church plants and established churches have failed to recognize this important point. As a result, they have created a syncretistic ecclesiology, blending institutional church with missional church. This syncretism is both theologically and practically defective. Sometimes the blending of institutional and missional church is only functionally defective, prone to failure. Other times it is theologically defective, prone to heresy and correction. Here we will primarily focus on functionally defective SME.

Syncretistic Missional Church Practices

How do you know if you are approaching mission institutionally? Here are a few ways:

• Institutional mission relies on preaching, teaching, and writing to implement missional ecclesiology.
• Institutional mission adopts a program of mission during a set season of the year to implement missional ecclesiology.
• Institutional mission focuses on evangelistic and social justice events to implement missional ecclesiology.
• Institutional mission sees mission as a line item in the church budget, not mission as the whole budget.
• Institutional mission views mission as an implication of the gospel, not as part of the gospel.

While these institutional approaches are not bad, they are not enough. Church leadership and practices must be consonant with the nature of mission. The nature of mission is Spirit-initiated not man-made, organic not institutional, training not just teaching, relational not programmatic, gradual not instant. What we need is not institutional mission, but intuitive mission

Intuitive Missional Church

Intuitive mission relies on the intuition of the Spirit through the guidance of the Word to embed a gospel that is missional. It is not primarily concerned with implementation but with cultivation of DNA (see Hirsch’s Apostolic Genius). Intuitive mission is soaked in the Spirit’s guidance. It discerns missional leadership patterns in Scripture. It understands that mission is gospel-centric. It approaches mission as something to be cultivated. Here are some ways to know if you are practicing intuitive mission:

• Intuitive mission relies on Spirit-led prayer that begins with repentance over the sins of institutional, individualistic Christianity in neglecting the mission of the church and diminishing the glory of Christ.
• Intuitive mission discerns missional leadership patterns from Scripture instead of uncritically implementing business models of leadership.
• Intuitive mission cultivates missional DNA through personal and communal forms of training instead of relying primarily upon professional, monological communication.
• Intuitive mission spends lots of time with people not programs, so that we have networks of relationships in which we can authenticate the gospel we preach.
• Intuitive mission does “everyday things with gospel intentionality”, instead of seeing mission as either an evangelistic or social justice event.

If missional ecclesiology is to sufficiently permeate our churches and change our point in history, then we will have to do a better job of spotting our institutionalism. We will need to rigorously weed out unhealthy syncretistic missional ecclesiology. Throw out institutional mission while retaining our rich traditions. Cultivate intuitive mission practices that remain faithful to the gospel and force a gracious, deliberate, and discerning reworking of institutional mission. It is a difficult process. I fall back into my inherited patterns of ecclesiology all the time, so pray for me. I welcome your help. Let’s push mission all the way through our churches, by the grace of God, to see his gospel permeate every aspect of life.

The following post was written by Nate Navarro, Director of Missional Community for Austin City Life.

Too Busy to Lead

If you lead a missional community then chances are you are tired. You are doing your best to be a pastor and friend to your community, a missionary in your neighborhood and workplace, lead your family in a steady state of community and mission, and praying your community will grow in their understanding of the Gospel, all while struggling to believe the good news yourself.

While youre at it, don’t forget the never ending task list. I mean, who is gonna bring the main dish and the desert on Wednesday night?”, where are we serving our neighborhood this month?, who is lining up childcare this week?, who is keeping track of the prayer requests? It goes on, and on, and on, and on.

Oh yes, did I mention you probably have a job. In Austin you most likely are holding down a high stress gig putting in about 50 hours a week. Oh wait, you have a family too! That’s right, your son wants a ride to soccer practice and is secretly hoping you volunteer to coach the team. Your daughter would like you to read 15 princess books to her before bedtime, and your wife actually wants to go out to dinner and talk about something other than your ministry. Imagine that!

Reasons We Lead

If you are a leader chances are you do too much. Some of your reasons are good: you love God; you love the church; you’re a natural leader. Leading is a way for you to serve the Body and build the Kingdom. Some of your reasons are not so good: you love being heard, love feeling important, and you’re identity is so wrapped up in what you do as opposed to who you are that you simply cannot stop working and leading. In all of this, we desperately need the Gospel, and the gospel is probably telling us we need to lead less. Lead less for more ministry.

Rethinking Missional Community Leadership

Two years and 8 missional communities since our very first City Group (Core Team), Austin City Life is revamping our City Group leadership structure. Previously, we had a CG leader responsible for the pastoral and missional leadership of the group. We told them to share leadership, get a leader in training for multiplication, and rely on Jesus and the Spirit for strength. Now, we are moving towards appointing 5 leaders, not one. They are:

1. CITY GROUP LEADER-facilitates a community that is growing in Gospel, Community, and Mission.
2. MISSIONAL LEADER- We serve our neighborhoods together monthly. This leader takes the lead on all the details: the when, where, and how of the monthly service project.
3. PRAYER LEADER- This person records all the prayer requests and sends out a weekly update, reminding the community to pray for one another and the city.
4. HOST LEADER- This leader opens their home/apartment/dorm room to be an inviting place for the community to share meals, discuss life and truth, and to pray for one another and the city.
5. HOSPITALITY LEADER – We eat together. This leader coordinates the meal schedule and the who is bringing what?

Benefits of Shared Leadership

This new model of shared leadership in our missional communities will produce healthier communities and leaders, and ultimately will be good for our church, our city, and the kingdom. How?

1. Fewer leaders will become casualties of burnout.
2. Five leaders gives your group more people, with more buy in, creating a stronger core.
3. New Christians can begin to serve right away. Last I checked, your theology doesn’t have to be nails to be in charge of the meal schedule. New Christians can become involved in leadership early on, and can grow along the way, instead of standing on the sidelines watching all the tired people lead.
4. Future City Group leaders emerge as they thrive in their roles leading MISSION and PRAYER.
5. We avoid the personality-driven City Group. Gospel Community is center and forefront in our groups, rather than the talent, charisma, and drive of a leader.

Let’s get honest, tired leaders are not attractive. Even the most gifted, charismatic, God and people loving leaders can lose the vision of what it means to lead a missional community under the burden of too many responsibilities and a never ending to do list. Sadly, this leads to duty driven (rather than joy filled) leadership, and when that happens, we are in danger of leading already busy Austinites in more busyness , while creating a new legalism called Missional Community.

More Leaders; Less Work. Share Leadership; Grow in Community. Strengthen Mission; Advance the Gospel.

Leadership Journal put together a missional tree of books that have played a formative role in shpaing the missional church in North America. Ironically, some of the more profound influencers haven’t written books on missional church. How accurate do you think the tree is? Which books have helped you grow missional disciples/churches most and why?

HT: Alan Hirsch

It’s easy to get stuck planting your own church. With so much to do in the first couple of years, it’s difficult  to think beyond the boundaries of your own plant. The funny thing is that most church plant visions are bigger than their own church, like ours—“redemptively engaging peoples and cultures“? Or what about “To call every person to the Life Change found in Jesus Christ”? Yet, if our visions are going to translate into reality, planters need to work in partnership with like-minded leaders, churches, planters, and organizations to see their God-sized visions fulfilled.

In Austin, we are discovering planters who want to think beyond planting to city renewal. The remarkable level of kingdom-mindedness has fostered an attitude among planters that suggest moving from planting to movement is possible. With churches and plants partnering together, we envision a Christ-centered, context-sensitive church planting movement for social and spiritual renewal of Austin and beyond. This is the vision of PlantR, a trans-denominational network committed to helping church planters plant and reproduce healthy missional churches.

PlantR is coming into its first full year as a formal network. We have a lot of dreams about seeing this vision fulfilled. But what is most exciting is the people who are willing to partner across theological and denominational lines to bless a city in the name of Christ. Our cool new website, designed by John Chandler at Strange Idea Labs, is up and is filling out. Consider joining us by:

• Check out the site and adding it to your links
• Comment on the blog
• Joining the Network and participate in the Forums (on the way)
• Check out the church plant map
• Come to our first 2009 monthly meeting on Thursday, Jan 22.

We need your help to reach this city! Look for more thoughts to come on moving from planting to movement in the future. I will be co-leading a breakout on this topic at the Missional Community Leader Conference on Feb 6-7.

As we continue the process of developing deacons, our most recent meeting focused on The Practice of Deacons. A previous post lists resources for A Theology of Deacons, the focus of our first meeting. In attempting to work out the practice of deacons, we found it helpful to make a distinction between two areas of service—community and mission-focused deacons.

There are two main areas of service community-focused and mission-focused service. Mission-focused deacons serve in ways that change over time. For example, the Early Church probably didn’t have Media or Arts Deacons but they did have deacons that served widows and orphans. As the church expands and contracts throughout history, moving from continent to continent, culture to culture, the expression of the church varies. As a result, there are some areas of service that remain the same and others that change. Consequently, the cultural and historical expression of the church requires deacons that serve the mission of the church and deacons that serve a church of mission.

There are deacon ministries that are pretty standard, transcultural and transhistorical such as: mission/social justice, community/benevolence, financial. These ministries have historical and biblical precedent, focusing not so much on outward mission but more on inward ministry to the community of faith. In summary, there are community-focused and mission-focused areas of ministry for deacons, ministries that serve the mission of the church and ministries that serve the church of mission.

Less is more

These critiques highlight two important issues that need to be addressed by leaders in the missional church.  The first is the tendency toward elitism in current models of leadership.  The pastor as scholar/teacher and as technician/professional reinforces a strong top-down understanding of spiritual authority and ministry.  The expectation is that ministry leaders can (or should) know it all and do it all. This of course puts more pressure on pastors to “prove” themselves in a culture of rising leadership expectations.

Read Dunbar’s whole article here.