GCHQ + Living Hope

GCHQ 

It was time to head to the General Conference (Adventist Church HQ) and our timing was fortunate as it was the National day of prayer and the GC hosted a prayer breakfast. Wintley Phipps sang with brilliant gospel vibrato then unleashed some passionate words including a smackdown on the current political tomfoolery. Here’s a few of his words:

• Prayer is our lifeline to God
• The Devil’s ultimate target is not you or me- it’s the character of God
• The rejection of the character of God is at the root and source of the great controversy
• Satan’s greatest weapon has always been slander of character
• Christianity without Christ is dangerous to the world (pointed reference at Donald Trump etc. here)
• Unless the truth we profess to believe transforms the character and changes the heart, it has no value to us
• There’s no wrong in our world that Christlikeness can’t fix

Another person thanked Wintley then quoted Ghandi: “If you call me a Christian you insult me. If you call me Christlike you honour me.”

—> After a speedy GC tour we found our way to Global Mission, met some of the team and scored a copy of the latest Review magazine which focuses on urban mission

With only a few minutes up our sleeve we raced a few blocks down the road to the local shopping centre (mall) to check out the ABC (Adventist Book Centre). This one is really visible and has a new name – Living Well – and I must say it was pretty impressive. It was a large store that had a great selection of food, including freshly prepared sandwiches and wraps.

Living Hope

Into Virginia we drove until we arrived at Dominion valley where Mark and Teenee Finley moved 6 yrs ago. They settled in a community of 10,000 people (within 16km there’s 150000 people), and they weren’t aware of any Adventists in the area. This is an affluent, mostly Anglo community (including 2 very nice golf courses) that was intended to be the new location for Disney.

God provided a plot of land in the centre of town with parking and a 4.5 million dollar church/community centre was built – with no money in the bank (yep God provided that too!). Mark says the hardest money to raise is money for a small vision. They had a vision for a training centre for young adult pastors around the world, and a community health centre for the local community. So the building is divided into sections for a school of evangelism, a retreat centre, a worship sanctuary, a media centre (all services are streamed) and a health/cooking centre.

The team have been in this facility 3 weeks and I was excited to see it as I’d heard about it when I met the Finley’s in Melbourne in 2007. Here’s a few other words of wisdom from Mark:

• The most unused space in a church are the walls
• Accept anyone and use no standards for fellowship, biblical standards for membership, and higher standards for leadership
• Every church should be a school for training in outreach
• The common indicator in large churches is the passion of the preacher who believes he’s anointed and can grow God’s kingdom
• House church movements need a connection to local church- if the leader goes south the group can too
• Beans, greens, nuts and seeds will help you live longer (that advice was from Teenee)

You can find out more about Living Hope here.

MARYLAND

Today we would learn from an array of churches in Maryland:

Beltsville Church

Beltsville SDA Church has 3 pastors, 2 services and 1000 people who attend at least twice a month (I like that way of counting numbers) and want to plant a church. But the people love Beltsville so much they don’t want to leave – including the team who’re keen to plant. The leaders have decided to try the multi-site approach which means they will start another service at a new location (campus) which will be called ‘Beltsville – Tech Road’. Here they will play the recorded preacher from the mother campus from earlier in the day. New leaders have been trained, the discipleship process clarified, one church board will look after vision, direction and values for both sites, but there will be separate ministry teams who decide what ministry looks like on each campus.

Even though Beltsville is a healthy church with almost no conflict, they are aware that the multi-site model fails if the mother church perceives itself as having authority over the other site/s- or if the new site wants to do its own thing. One Pathfinder club is good, but a SS teacher at one site has no authority over – but can influence – the other site’s SS teacher.

45 people committed to the new location have been meeting on a semi-regular basis and they launch the new location with a Sabbath worship gathering this weekend. They hope to have 200 people. A number of other church leaders believe multi-site is a great option for many established Adventist churches worldwide. It’ll be interesting to see how this group go and what they learn.

Arise

Arise is a 2nd generation Hispanic plant that aims to attract the youth and young adults of parents from traditional Hispanic churches that struggle to adapt to American culture and language. Many youth have left church, but Arise is attracting 60-100 young adults from a few ethnic groups, and is mostly run without a pastor present. We were told that great music and preaching and atmosphere doesn’t matter; CAUSE (a focus on mission) trumps it all, as well as whether it’s a safe place for those who come. Some on our team agreed that Sydney needs more well-planned attempts at 2nd gen churches cause we’ve lost too many youth also.

Arise’s MISSION:

1. Discipleship (practical focus)
2. Community (service projects)
3. Relevance (creative themes, drama etc).
4. Reclaim (spiritual growth and invite others)

Takoma Park

Takoma Park was the heart of Adventism and home of the GC headquarters till 1992. It was once 47% Adventist (including the mayer) but that figure is now around 10%. The Takoma Park SDA Church had been declining in numbers until 72 year old Dr Henry Wright was asked to pastor the church 2 yrs ago. He told us that church attendance has tripled, tithe has increased by $200,000 and last year there were 79 baptisms. How did he do this? Well firstly, he said “as a pastor you try and stay out of God’s way” so he wouldn’t take the credit. He also said that his gift is to grow churches – particularly to restore what was broken. This is some of what he’s done:

1. Assessment (looked at the strength and weaknesses) of the functions, worship, finances, ministries, community relations, building upkeep and membership.
2. Systems – build them so that things (e.g. communication, finances) flow automatically
3. Relationships – these are built in kitchens and lounge rooms (he’s a visiting pastor)
4. Stewardship – teach people how to balance their budget/use $ wisely/get organised and they’ll give
5. Vision – established it in his first year there, and the 5 year plan in his second year
6. Service Sabbath – 4 times a year the church service closes down and people join exisiting community agencies to feed the homeless, visit shut ins, run kids clubs etc.
7. Sabbath Evangelism – the church service is an evangelistic experience and Dr Henry makes an appeal after every sermon

I really loved hearing this guy’s wisdom and experience – a real legend for Jesus.

Lunch Break with Patomic Conference Church Planting Coordinator @ Mark’s Kitchen

What a great name for a cafe! The food was pretty good too. We were also told:

• That introverts make better church planters
• Some church plants in the Patomic conference include one in a crossfit gym and a muslim initiative via house churches (which are more successful if connected with a mother church – otherwise they last 2-3yrs)
• Church Community Builders (CCB) software is used to assist communication between church members – and also helps new comers connect to a church’s ministries. Here’s a description and here’s an example.

Seabrook 

Growth Groups are the ministry that is humming for Seabrook SDA Church at the moment. Their leadership read a book called Activate and visited the church that it’s based on – then applied the principles in their church. The growth groups go for 90 mins max, have 20 people max and meet for 8-10 weeks. Seabrook started with 3 experimental groups but now they have 300 people in multiple small groups from walking groups to groups reading books together. They make signing up easy – via connect cards, the welcome table and on their website. The biggest plus for them is that people now know each other’s names (fellowship) and people are inviting their friends to the groups (outreach).

Restoration Praise Centre

RPC (as it’s known) started in people’s homes but now has a huge building in the most affluent African American community in the USA. It’s got ‘restoration’ in the name because it reached many who’d disconnected from church – most of whom were Millenials. The leaders discovered that Millenials want something to do (but you need to plan it for them), don’t trust easily (but will check if you’re a fake), and need to know the WHY (reason) behind what you’re asking them to do before they’ll get on board.

They launched in 2014 and now have 23 small groups, who – every first Sabbath of the month – serve their community (e.g. helping single mums), then join the postponed 11am service at 3:30pm. 100’s view their service live stream, 600+ attend in person and supposedly their music is fantastic (I haven’t heard it..yet). After finding their congregation wasn’t reading the Bible, they created a daily bible reading called Water for the Thirsty. They talk about this at AY’s and in their small groups and hope to align it to their preaching plan soon. The RPC pastoral team were focused, passionate and intentional – characteristics that were common amongst the churches I’ve seen so far that are doing well.

 

 

 

 

Chestnut REACHing Bucks

The titles of this blog are getting cheesier (the days seem to be getting longer) so lets cut to the cheese…er chase!

Pennsylvania Conference Office

This great old building was a wedding gift in the 1920’s and was purchased by the church in the 1950’s.

We met with the Admin team who were mission focused and told us about:

• Pennsylvania Youth Challenge – a summer door knocking program for youth who get paid to do literature evangelism…and a large number get on board
• Cool Camps – Day camps during summer for young kids, hosted by local churches who are seeing 20-60 kids per church coming (80% from unchurched backgrounds)
• Their ageing membership with not many Adventists in the conference (outside of Philadelphia)
• A ‘spiritual master plan’ in the Adventist schools where the principal, teachers and local pastors plan together how to connect church and school for student impact
• A 2nd generation Hispanic church plant (PYC) which has found it’s feet and reaches non-churched youth through friendship.

Chestnut Hill 

We then drove to a beautiful suburb and stunning late 1800’s church building called Chestnut Hill SDA Church. The leadership team reflected on how the previous pastor had challenged and taught them to engage with their community and had brought a lot of youth/vibrancy to the church. She eventually left them to plant a church near downtown Philly and when a lot of the young adults left as well, those left behind experienced some pain and sorrow. They were gracious and accepting in hindsight – and asked us to remember that when we meet people who’ve been burned by church, we need to be careful not to overcorrect and throw out doctrine, because it points us to Jesus and can be healing.

REACH

We drove toward Philly into poorer metro suburb where the REACH church plant and training school has taken residence in an office. Our team met and ate with church planter Tara VinCross and a dozen or so REACH Evangelism school students (uni age), who’re about to finish a year’s practical study in the suburb doing urban learning (way cool!). The church plant started with 4 and now has around 64 meeting at 11am each Sabbath to serve the community, then at 1:30pm they cram into a small office space to eat and worship together. Restoration is one of their core values, which sees them clean up spare blocks full of junk and turn them into gardens, bring healing to people’s lives and also renovate an old night club into a new community building (which they’re about to move into).

Tara is a gifted and passionate leader and I was inspired by what REACH is doing. Visiting lecturer Dr Gaspar Colon told us that we need to ask and let the community tell us what it needs – and “the church can be the restorer of neighbourhoods”. But it is slow work and we must allow this and be patient 🙂

Bucks County

Back towards the countryside we drove to catch dinner with the leadership team of Bucks County SDA Church. As soon as we walked in the door we were greeted with smiles and handshakes and name tags – and within minutes people were calling us by name. This church has around 160 people, they are incredibly active and have a high % of people involved.

There are 4 components to their mission:

• Community outreach (AA, 1st aid training, food donation, blood drives, finance education (all once or twice a year) plus VIP day, voting centre, harvest day (all bridging events). 60 volunteers have caught the passion. They bridge the gap between the community and God. Jesus spent time with people and we must do the same, they said. “How do you find time?” I ask. “The Holy Spirit.” The amount of stuff they do is incredible!
• Participatory worship. You can’t give what you don’t have.
• Dship/evangelism. They want to equip every member to be a soul winner for Christ. Includes once a year – 7 weekend class.
• PIE (People in Evangelism). They have a team which makes sure everyone is involved in ministry, and trained to do ministry. They mentor leaders.

I wasn’t sure about how all this involvement is seeing the surrounding community come to faith in Jesus, but it sure is great to get a picture of a church that is so active for Jesus and each other. Oh, and they have a healing ministry via this dog too – no joke!

Pennsylvania

We’ve left the buzz of NYC and travelled down to ‘country’ Pennsylvania. I don’t feel like I’m going to do these ministries/churches justice in my descriptions below, but time to blog is a rare thing atm so here goes:

Simplicity mission 

Allentown = poor, lots of single parent homes, substance abuse, higher crime rate than rest of the state, 250,000 people in urban area. Simplicity is an urban mission project – not a church 🙂

Beginnings: A dentist – Jeffrey McAuliffe – was tired of pew sitting and cultural Adventism and wanted to engage with his community and see if he could create a team to address these issues. He started with 6-7 young adults and started meeting and serving the people. Building relationships takes time so they looked for permanent solutions, not quick fixes.

So now after 3 years experimenting, Simplicity have 2 teams who volunteer – young adults and seasoned veterans, Adventists and non-Adventists. They pray each morning and find this practise very encouraging. Simplicity is now self-funded, relies on grants and donations from businesses and churches, but reports to the Conference. They have attempted a bunch of ministries, and continue serving via ESL classes, job search help, cleaning houses, garden clubs and COAL Sabbaths.

We visited the building they rent and base their Simplicity centre and Academy in. The Academy has one small class full of primary aged kids from poor and abusive families who are being loved and taught by an Adventist teacher. I got to hang with some of the kids and heard their love for the school/teacher and saw Simplicity’s plan in action.

Community ministry here is tough, but the Simplicity team are passionate and determined to make an impact. Here’s the kicker (as they say here): when Simplicity asked the community: “If we left would you miss us?” they received the reply: “Yes – you’ve helped provide for us!”

Carnegie Adventist Simple church – Pittsburg

Background: Dave and Belinda Kent had been missionaries in a remote part of PNG for 8 years but told us their ministry in Pittsburg was a tougher gig. Once called ‘hell with the lid off’, Pittsburg used to have the lights still on at 10-11am cause of pollution. Now it’s a very clean city – with 446 bridges – but native Pittsburgers don’t like crossing them and instead stay in their neighbourhood. It’s very tribal and there’s a very small Adventist presence, so the Kent’s moved into one of the neighbourhoods where a building had been purchased and began using it for church/community activities.

Outreach methods: Prayer walking the streets, meeting with community leaders (asking about needs and what had been tried), developed relationships and experimented. They managed to impact the kids in the neighbourhood, who’d ride 2 miles in snow to come to kids church, many who came from troubled backgrounds.

Learnings: Dave and Belinda had to adapt to the people who God gave to them. These were broken people with little Bible knowledge who weren’t even sure God was real. They tried to help people into a posture so they could hear from Jesus themselves – and realise His power. It is slow, difficult work – and traditional models of church don’t work – but they decided “If they go to hell, they’ll have to go through our love to get there.” What an awesome couple.

Harrisburg First SDA 

Harrisburg is an established church – the first we’ve visited on our trip – but it’s doing some good things. The Pastor – Dave Sanner – spoke about the constant need for fundraising to cover the maintenance issues of the building. Over a 2yr period the figure was something like $150,000 – and Dave’s time got caught up in this. Church buildings seem a bit like cars – they require a lot of maintenance over time.

The take away for me was the Cycle of Evangelism model they are following –vimeo.com/channels/iiwwebinar (and Eric Flickinger says don’t try and get the cycle perfect before moving onward). Every ministry they have focused on the question: ‘How is what we are doing reaching the lost?’ and each ministry came up with an answer/plan. The church is healthy when it’s guided by these things.

Redeeming Film

It was a rainy Sunday in NYC but we were fortunate to experience two different ministry’s with a similar target.

Redeemer Presbyterian

Most tourists to New York City will end up in Time Square. Like moths to a lamp, the multi-coloured lights are tourist delights, so they cram into the pedestrian spaces to gaze at the plethora of screens shouting visual invitations their way. Redeemer Presbyterian (West) is only a few blocks away but it’s a visual contrast to Time Square. We visited the 9:30am service and walked into an auditorium that was simple, elegant and minimalist. Whilst some churches use the Time Square approach in their worship gatherings and have flashy visuals – Redeemer has no data projection and uses a detailed bulletin instead. It looked like this from the back row of the lower tier:

String instruments played a couple of classical pieces and then joined the piano and one singer for the hymns which were printed in the bulletin. The fundraising project was mentioned, but it was emphasised that they cared more about increasing the people involved (movement) and cared less about the amount of money (campaign).

Founding Pastor, Tim Keller, then walks to the mic and blows us away with his deep insights into the very well know passage of 1 Cor 13. This guy isn’t dynamic or entertaining, and he hardly used stories or humour. But he’s an incredible teacher, the gospel was preached and I was prolifically writing notes! Is he the reason why this church attracts so many young professionals? Maybe, but my team agreed that the people weren’t very friendly, so other possible factors include the venue, the modern/professional resources, the flow of the services and the larger emphasis of Redeemer on church planting in NYC and across the world.

I guess it goes to show that you don’t need ‘whiz bang’ programs to attract young professionals in secular cities – though they do have a Jazz service at 11:30am 😉

Emily Erhart – Film Maker

We headed across town to Brooklyn and found the Pratt Institute film school and met Christian film maker Emily Erhart. She showed us 3 video clips of her work and explained the first piece she’d created got hammered by the (90%) atheist lecturers and other students. Instead of leaving the school discouraged, she created the film ‘days of dust‘ and found that because it moved people and didn’t show any common Christian symbols, people loved it (though they had different interpretations of what was going on). It received praise, got featured and now she’s the content creator for 17 magazine. The cool thing is this: unlike what happens to so many other Christian kids in a secular Uni, she was the one who influenced them, not the other way around!

When Emily was asked about what connects with secular mindsets, she suggested hyper-realism; something that makes you feel and immerse and forget that you’re watching something – then throw in something to finish that makes people think about their reality. She added that secular people need a reason to believe other than the reason or step that you have in mind. And in spite of it’s obvious religious text, she thought this was one example of what could work via social media sharing: Psallo Collective

6 Churches on the 7th Day

This trip has been packed full and our Sabbath in NYC took things to the next level. We didn’t stay for the whole service at the gatherings (most of them spend the majority of the day together) but the common threads of these church plants was that they are intentionally small, rent space from other church denominations and are passionate about spreading the gospel and planting more churches!

Pelham Parkway Spanish – Bronx

Beginnings: 6-7 people started meeting in a house, started preaching and growing, then in less than a year they had 40 members. The majority are from the Dominican Republic (reflective of the majority of Adventist Hispanic churches in NYC) and they’re renting the building from a Sunday church.

Outreach methods: friends, family, door to door, and tracts at laundry

Goal: to plant another church and baptise 81 people this year (they were having a baptism that afternoon). When the speaker on the platform mentioned they wanted to plant another church- the congregation yelled “Amen!”

Bethany SDA – Bronx

Beginnings: A team of literature evangelists have been in the area for 1-2yrs selling books door to door and decided to plant a church. They were part of the Pelham Spanish group but now rent a Sunday church a short walk away amongst a small shopping strip.

Outreach methods: books door to door, family care services in the new building, food packages to the needy

Goals: They are majority Jamaican but with their English services they’d like to attract any English speakers to their church. They want to be a company in 3 months time and are glad to be a smaller church partly because the people they want to reach have told them big churches are ‘cold’ and smaller ones have better fellowship

Mont Haven Spanish & Fusion English – Bronx

We didn’t initially plan to attend this church but our guide – Dr Manuel Rosario – dropped off his wife and kids here. We realised that it’s one church with two services, one in Spanish and one in English (Fusion – mostly young Caribbean people).

Franco Haitian – Bronx

Beginnings: This church was hard to find amongst the main drag of car servicing garages – in fact the church has a steep garage entrance that you need to walk up and through to find the front door! Inside we found a number of Haitian people and the volume was cranked so high I could feel the French. The majority of these people left other Adventist churches to start this one – and this was their 3rd Sabbath in the building (owned by a Sunday church). BTW- the Conference pays the rent of the church plants here for the first 3 months 🙂

Outreach methods: Prayer. Food. Music. Invite family and friends

Goal: Reach the Haitian people living in the Bronx

Lunch Break at a church-owned evangelism trading centre

NY Filipino – Queens

The Filipino group was in full swing with AY’s when we arrived mid-arvo to their rented facility – another Sunday church! In 2005 a couple of them had a vision to have a Filipino church in NYC, so they started a small group, some literature evangelists came and helped and last August they became a company. Whilst a number came from another Adventist church, they hope to plant again in Manhattan soon, and said Laundromats were a great place to witness (captive audience?).

Southern Asian – Queens

Background: There are 600,000 Indians in NYC and the local Indian pastor initially wanted to target people who spoke Punjabi (from India and Pakistan). But the Pastor realised this target was too small, and that God never asked us to preach just to our own, but to every tribe and tongue. So he changed the name to ‘Southern Asian’ so people who spoke Hindi, Punjabi and English could be included. They rent from the SDA Spanish church who meet in the morning.

Outreach methods: Teach Hindi classes, pray for 3 friends and fast for the person once a month (also read 3 chapters of bible a day). How do you convert a Hindu? Become friends, go slow, then introduce them to Jesus.

Goal: Plant more churches and baptise lots of Hindu’s. It was great to meet a few of the Hindi people who were preparing for baptism. They were dressed in traditional garb and excited to be following Jesus!

In Conclusion

This was one long Sabbath and I’ve never visited so many churches in a row. Yet it was great to meet such passionate people and experience first hand how they’re reaching their community. I didn’t connect to a lot of the worship styles but tomorrow brings some initiatives targeting urban professionals so I look forward to seeing what’s in store…

Greater New York Conference

We’ve touched down in mighty New York City and yesterday we visited the Greater New York Conference office just outside of Queens. As soon as we walked into the building and met some of the staff we got a totally different vibe to our time in Florida. We were invited to sing ‘Marching to Zion’ and the president passionately preached to us via the opening devotional. The leaders reflect the majority of churches – traditional and ethnic – mostly Hispanic and Caribbean.

The whole conference team are very positive and proactive re: church planting, with a goal to plant 100 churches by 2020. Their vision: Every disciple making a disciple, every church planting a church. An old-skool battle cry rally song has been created (we heard it- it was wild) and they focus on repetition to motivate the saints. With low control but high accountability in the church plants they endeavour to reach the 8.5 million people in NY City – and have divided the area into 5 categories of churches: Korean, Franco-Haitian, Multi-ethnic (e.g. Filipino), Hispanic, and English (speaking – but this actually means Caribbean).

For the 1.7 million in Manhattan, we were told there are only 14 churches- one being English speaking (Carribean). Yet here I had some questions- for I’d heard of Church of the Advent Hope and had been to Ephesus SDA in Harlem back on New Year’s Eve in 1999. So perhaps there’s some black conference segregation going on…I will ask more Q’s.

Public evangelism meetings used to be the catalyst for church planting – but they want to move the focus to small groups and other health initiatives for the community. They have a ‘Wellness Retreat’ and a van ministry (‘Wellness on the go’)- where the public can receive blood pressure scans, chair massages, and health age screens. I like this idea and recall there once was a similar van ministry in Sydney.

With NYC being so secular I wonder if any Adventist churches here will reach the urban professionals. There was a pastor who’s planting a church for millennials with a focus on social justice- Pr Everitt Samuel I think is her name.

Woah I’ve got to run- heading to 5 churches this Sabbath morn!

Revitalisation and Hillsong

Yesterday was interesting…for unexpected reasons. It was the last morning of the Exponential conference – the biggest gathering of church planters in the world (can’t be confirmed – but there were 5,000 or so participants). First up was the church revitalisation workshop:

Church Revitalisation Models

An energetic bald guy named Tom Cheyney machine gunned these stats to us:

– 95% of all churches in North America average 100 or less

– Each year 3,500 to 4,000 churches die in North America (900 Southern Baptist alone). 50-60 close their doors each week.

– Your first 15yrs are the glory years of your church plant – then people get stuck in their ways and aren’t as flexible as they used to be.

– By year 35 they struggle to replace the members they loose.

– If we’re going to turn them around, we need a biblical foundation for church revitalisation.

He then outlined 10 models of church revitalisation…from his book which outlined 38 models. In effect he said that all these things will revitalise a dying church; get a new pastor, equip uni students to lead, disciple (mentor) others, look where God is already working, surround yourself with skilled/gifted people, close it down and restart, merge with another church, empower lay (unpaid) pastors, and pay staff.

His stats and advice seemed to never end – but the above points are worth a discussion and practise before moving to the remainder of the 38 models 🙂

Hillsong Methodology

Next we all headed to the main auditorium for the final session. Brian Houston was up first and proceeded to take his allocated 20 mins to warm up whilst describing how Hillsong are now in 16 countries around the globe. He then spoke contrary to the missional/incarnational approach by stating that Hillsong doesn’t take much notice of the context or culture or comments from locals and instead just bring their product to the new city. He conceded that the leadership team and people on stage reflect the cultural makeup of the city- but apart from that they go ahead and just be who God’s asked them to be. And though it’s an attractional model (come to us) and often draws Christians from other churches, one can’t deny Hillsong’s growth (or at least popularity) in many large secular cities of the world. They do seem to speak to the consumer focused youth culture so I’m not sure what else to make of Brian’s comments other than he was having an ‘off day’*.

Brian then highlighted some of Hillsong’s team values – which were actually pretty good:

Team values:

1. What I’m part of is bigger than the part I play

2. We’re not built on the gifts and talents of a few but the sacrifice of many

3. Serve the Lord with a spirit of gladness (“Do we have to come? How long for? What’s the least I have to do to get by?” There’s no gladness in these)

4. This is not my job- this is my life

5. Empowerment starts with me

We got to hear 5 mins of the next speaker but then had to exit to catch a flight. 2 more speakers came to the platform before they were joined by new church planters responding to the Spirit’s burn on their hearts (this is what Twitter told me).

Overall it was a great conference with many more things learnt than I’ve managed to jot down here. USA Churches (SDA and others) are so far advanced in church planting and multiplication thinking- and I can’t relate to the success rates/numbers- but have kept in mind the God drenched context here and have been seeking principles and methods to apply to the secular Sydney context.

New York City here we come 🙂

* This was played immediately before Brian spoke…maybe it threw him?

Exponential Inspiration

OK so the Exponential conference has been in full swing the last couple of days and with 3 workshops, 2 main sessions and 8 speakers each day – I’m inspired, overwhelmed and a bit brain dead! There are 30 workshops to chose from for each session! Below are some takeaways from some of those speakers and some reflections of my own:

Exponential Theme: Becoming Five

We’ve been told the majority of churches are at Level 1 or 2, with good number at 3, and only 4% at level 5. But 5 is where we should be/want to be/hope to be equiped to be!

Level 1- declining

Level 2- plateau

Level 3- addition

Level 4- reproducing

Level 5- multiplication

Personally I’d be happy with addition – but realise multiplication is the ideal 😉

Dave Ferguson (the Exponential President) then outlined the 3 tensions and focus’ of the main session talks:

Motive Q: Is this church about my kingdom or God’s kingdom

Measurements Q: Is this church going to be about growing or sending? Seating capacity or sending capacity?

Methods Q: Am I more about relaxing or risk-taking?

Who is my neighbour? Lance Ford

“Individualism has run a muck in our lives – and most of us don’t know our neighbours.” Lance moved into a new neighbourhood, got to know his neighbours and invited them into his life. Some of them thanked him for not making them his ‘project’. He says our goal is to make communities liveable again. I’m challenged to get to know my neighbours better – cause there’s many living within a few meters of me I hardly know at all. He showed us a simple visual test that I might share with you someday 🙂

Future Travellers – Alan Hirsch and Rob Wegner

Alan outlined how we in the West have inherited the (European) traditional form of church and only put wings on it but haven’t really changed anything. He reckons we’re only successfully reaching 40% of people in society, and 90% of churches are attempting to reach that 40%. Reaching the 60% requires a different methodology – and Forge (America) and Future Travellers is a conversation attempting to address this issue. One practical missional discipleship rhythm Rob introduced was BLESS – which is similar to Mike Frost’s BELLS idea – something I’ve started to implement at my church.

Alan was asked about the Alpha course which has been completed by 3 million people in the UK. Stats suggested only the ‘dechurched’ completed it- not others – and whilst they said yes to Jesus, they said no to (joining) church. Alan suggested Alpha course participants could have become a new church (as opposed to joining an existing church).

A Missional Agenda for Neighbourhood Transformation – Mike Frost

Frosty says the mission of God’s people is to alert everyone everywhere to the universal reign of Christ. We do this by bringing reconciliation (e.g. marriage counselling), justice, beauty (art, food etc.) and wholeness (healing) to our neighbourhoods. We also must learn what our neighbourhood structures, signs, spaces, social interactions, spiritual life and stories tell us. If your church disappeared tomorrow- would the neighbourhood grieve for their loss? Would they miss us? We’re agents of King Jesus showing the world what He looks like 🙂

Quotes/Stats

“The church is the most significant human endeavour that’s ever been attempted. We’re not just changing people’s minds about what they believe- we’re not about changing the name of one God for another- we’re about helping people become human again.” -Erwin McManus

• “59% of Millenials walk away from faith. It’s not providing answers to questions/issues their facing
• 89% say you shouldn’t criticise someone else’s life choices
• 87% of Evangelicals believe Muslims and LBGT’s are the most difficult people to have conversations with
• Teens think it’s morally worse to not recycle than view porn
• 69% say any kind of sexual expression between two consenting adults is acceptable
• You can’t disciple people around sex/sexuality 1.7 times a month (average church attendance) – you need a bunch of sessions together.”                                                                                                                                       

-Dave Kinnaman reflecting on research for his book Good Faith

“If you want to go fast – go alone. If you want to go far – go with others.”

-African Proverb referenced by Oscar Muriu on the need for leaders to have close friends.

One more thought:

I’ve had to take a lot of what’s said with a grain of salt. Church planting seems easier and yields different results here in the US. For example, today some guys spoke of how they planted 20 churches in 6 months. I can’t relate to that. I’d be super excited if God brought 20 baptisms in 6 months. Whilst the US is heading toward secularisation it’s nowhere near the same stage/soil as Australia.

—>  I went to more workshops but that’ll do for now – tomorrow is the last day of the conference and then we fly to New York to visit some church plants!

CREATION Health, Big Wigs & EX begins

Today there were 3 scheduled stops on our itinerary. First up was a visit to a mission development office of Florida Hospital which focuses on CREATION Health. The Adventist Hospital network in the USA is huge, with Florida alone having 24 hospitals. They are intentional about making them mission focused.
In the late 90’s Disney created a utopian suburb here called Celebration and looked for someone to run a hospital. Some Jewish reps from Celebration challenged Florida Hospital to explain the Adventist understanding of health without using Ellen White or the New Teatament. The deal was won using the creation account and from there an array of creative resources around the CREATION health concept have been developed. It’s a seminar, kids resource, way to connect with community, but ultimately a way of thinking and lifestyle. We met a few of their awesome staff today who flooded us with info and top notch resources.

Next up was a chat with most of the big wigs (a.k.a. Administration Team) of the Florida Conference. I was impressed with:

• Their personal, warm, relational approach to each of us
• Their focus on coaching and supporting both church planting and church revitalisation projects
• Their gospel/grace emphasis
• The resources they’ve created to help change church culture

Lastly, this afternoon we attended some pre-conference workshops at the Exponential conference. I walked into one titled ‘The habit of asking’ and discovered it was about seeking $ from people for church ministries/planting – which is not something I’m comfy with. Yet I learnt that we need to put our own nervousness/reticence about asking aside, find stories that don’t use guilt or shame- and give people the opportunity (God wants them to have) to be generous!

Oh- and I must show you a pic of our team of pastors (7 from GSC, 2 from WA):