Tag: tim chester

Cultivating a Community of Pastors

Posted on August 29, 2008

We just finished up Part II (Part I – Missional Leadership) of our Summer Leadership Training on Pastoral Leadership. It was a rich time of equipping our leaders to think and practice “pastor one another.” This was for all of our leaders, but is especially appropriate for our City Group Leaders. The first practice of City Groups is to share life and truth. This training equipped our people how to intentionally share life and truth. Unfortunately, most of us don’t naturally want to share our lives or our gospel hope with others; we’d rather, at best, talk around it or about it. But talking about sharing life and truth doesn’t produce gospel-centered community. We have to practice it by pastoring one another–speaking the truth in love. This was our over-arching question: “How do we speak the truth in love to one another?” We answered it in three ways:

  1. Context of Pastoral Leadership: Community-centered Pastoring
  2. Content of Pastoral Leadership: Gospel-centered Pastoring
  3. Contour of Pastoral Leadership: Where and How it Happens

Some reflection from (1) – The Context of Pastoral Leadership.

The vision of Austin City Life is to cultivate communities of Spirit-led disciples who redemptively engage peoples and cultures through Christ for the glory of God. So, what does it mean to “cultivate communities”? Cultivation is a horticultural metaphor. To plant a church is to cultivate a community, not launch a service. Church planting requires sweaty work with people; patience, allowing the plant to grow; and tenderness with the plant. In other words, if we want to cultivate community, it will require more than going to a church service on the weekends and attending a weekly meeting. That’s hardly community; it’s just a couple of meetings, a few hours a week.

We first have to be convinced that the church is a community, really. We are converted, not merely to Christ, but also to his body—the church—to a community of Spirit-led disciples who follow Jesus. Consider the numerous “one another” commands. Consider the nature of Scripture. When Paul wrote a letter to New Testament churches, the pastors did not take it, mimeograph, and hand out individual copies to the church members, and then tell them to take it home and study it. No, the pastors read the letters aloud in the community to the community. The second person plural pronouns “you” were heard, not primarily as a collection of individuals, but as a community of disciples who shared life and truth and mission. They implemented Paul’s commands by loving, exhorting, encouraging, and serving one another, not by privately memorizing Scripture, having quiet times, and attending church. The context of their pastoring was one another. The Word has a community context, and as Tim Chester puts it, “The gospel is a community-centered Gospel.” To pastor one another, then, is to be community-centered. The context of pastoral leadership is community.

Total Church – III (Church Practices)

Posted on August 16, 2008

Throughout the Total Church conference we learned of various ways the Crowded House pushes gospel-centered community and community-centered gospel through their church practices. Here are a few:

  • Baptism: They view baptistm as a visible sign of entrance/way into the community. “It is attractional because it says to others that anyone can come in. It is a declaration of leaving the community of judgment and entering into the community of grace.” Not clean up first, make sure they are a “believer” for a while and then baptize. Baptize upon conversion.
  • Communion: If baptism is the way into the community, communion way to stay in the community. Consider Isaiah 55 as a communion text. It is always a opportunity to proclaim the gospel. Communion as meals, not plastic cups and wafers, creates a community context in which the gospel is celebrated and witnessed.
  • Preaching: The West has unduly given the sermon primacy in the ministry of the Word. In fact, it has reduced the ministry of the Word to the sermon. All the energy, time, and money spent on preparing for a one and a half hour event on Sundays betrays American ecclesiology: the Sunday service is teh church! What we need is a complete ministry of the Word, which includes mutual counseling—“gospeling”—to promote a Word-centered life, not just a sermon-centered service. Crowded House asks the question: “How are we going to live together in submission to the Word.”

Clarifying my Previous Post

Posted on August 14, 2008

After talking with Jeff Vanderstelt at the Total Church conference, I want to clarify something from my previous post. Tim Chester is most definitely Jesus-centered and nothing close to Emergent (community centered). He advocates both gospel-centered community AND community-centered gospel. The previous post simply pointed out that there can be a difference in expression and practice, depending on which way one leans. This is beginning to sound awfully esoteric, perhaps even confusing, so I’ll let it rest there.

Total Church – I (Biblical Theology of Attractional Church)

Posted on August 14, 2008

Today Tim Chester did a biblical theology of the attractional church. Although it was pretty good biblical theology (i’d disagree with some of this interpretations of given texts, such as “kingdom of priests” as a missionary mandate), it was a bit long-winded. I came to Total Church with the hope of working through practical theology, missional ecclesiology, missional leadership development, etc. However, there have been some great take-aways peeping out at the end of the plenaries, Tim’s talk not excluded. I’ll blog on those later.

After disputing the false dichotomy between attractional and incarnational, Tim embarked on a biblical theology of mission. His contention was that a gospel-centered community is a community of people that attract the lost. While this is certainly sometimes the case, a gospel-centered community is also a community, no matter how kind, loving, and mercy-motivated, will receive rejection. Christ and his church are ultimately only effectually attractive to the elect. And what attracts unbelievers in a gospel-centered church is very different from what attracts unbelievers to an attractional church. And this raises an important distinction raised by Mike Gunn during the Q&A.:

Are we attracting people to a community that is gospel-centered (Tim Chester’s central point) or are we attracting them to the proclaimed Christ? This, is an important distinction, one that Tim was not willing to fully concede. Tim insisted that by attracting people to a community that is gospel-centered, people get to know and see the world of redemption, love, grace in a broken community. A rather optomistic read. Mike contended that the church is so broken that we should not try to attract people to a community first, but to Christ first, who is sufficient for our brokenness. Perhaps it’s two sides of the same coin, but which side do you want up? Heads or tails?