What’s wrong with attractional church?
Outsourcing Mission – Department or Main Purpose? Inherited church tends to assume that mission is one of many…
A. Connecting followers to Jesus
1. Worship and intimacy
We are invited into the kind of relationship Jesus had with daddy.
2. Learning to hear God’s voice
Two-step discipleship process:
Hear God’s voice see
Do what he says do
3. CRAVE groups
a. Neil Cole argues in his excellent book Organic Church that church is the wrong place to focus. Rather, we should focus on multiplying disciples. To do this we need to:
i. Raise the bar of discipleship.
ii. Lower the bar on church.
b. Multiplication requires a process that is
i. Easily reproducible.
ii. Powerful enough to change a life.
c. Our foundational shared practice is the CRAVE group (our variation on Life Transformation Groups). 2-3 people meet weekly or fortnightly. Multiply when the groups grows to 4.
Confess your sins.
Read the Bible (25-30 chapters).
Ask God for lost friends to meet Jesus.
Vineyard ways.
Eat together.
B. Doing mission Jesus-style
1. Joining God in his work.
- Spirit-led mission – power and the prophetic.
- Treasure hunts – Looking for the ultimate treasure.
e.g. Girl’s get together – clues for Kate (red shirt, red bag, blond hair, Lismore, Phyllis, Anita, leaving).
2. Your Kingdom Come.
- When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, the first petition in his model prayer is, ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Mt 6.10).
- This is not ‘Your kingdom come soon’ (NLT), but ‘Your kingdom come here/now’.
- Kingdom people bring God’s generous rule into situations where the devil is wreaking havoc.
i. When we see a situation that is not ‘as it is in heaven’, we are authorized to pray, ‘Your kingdom come’.
ii. We release the blessings of the age to come in the midst of this present evil age. - Look for troubled people and people in trouble and invite the Kingdom to come.
3. Speaking and acting for justice.
C. Inhabiting space – 1st, 2nd and 3rd Places
1. The First Place – Home and Neighbourhood.
a. Choosing to live among the poor.
b. Recovering neighbourhood in the suburbs.
i. Being a good neighbour
ii. Living in the front yard
iii. Hospitality – Giving and receiving
iv. Serving
c. Availability – Being home
i. Proximity
ii. Frequency
iii. Spontaneity
2. The Second Place – Kingdom in the Workplace.
a. Bearing the imago dei.
i. Reflect: Honouring God in your work.
being a faithful employee; partnering with God in creation.
ii. Represent: Joining God in his work in your workplace.
e.g. schools, students, teachers
iii. Rule: Strategic influence
3. The Third Place – Connecting in Social Spaces.
a. Follow the ant trails – clubs, pubs and cafes.
b. Practicing presence.
c. Planting the good news seed in existing places of community
e.g. Jeff, John at the El Cortez
Mounties soccer
D. Organic Growth – Planting faith in new ground
1. Plant, don’t transplant.
2. Apostolic gifting – sending/releasing
- Multiplying groups and leaders.
- Implanting and monitoring missional dna.
3. Display communities of God’s generous rule.