Updates from September, 2008 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Mark 12:42 pm on September 9, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Missional House Churches – J.D. Payne 

    Wow!  Trina and I have been taking a beating here the last few days!  We’ve both been fighting off sickness, the weather dropped like 35 degrees in two days, and we just got back from a FULL weekend!  Wanna see some rockin’ pics of my beautiful wife drawing at the Orchard?  Check out her site here, or see the post here and here.  Man, she’s so cool. :)

    Today’s lunch was AWESOME!  It seriously made me question what line of work I’m in.  Really, who wouldn’t want to work at a hole-in-the-wall hot dog shop named “The Wiener…and Still Champion!”  Rockin’.  Take my advice:  Next time you’re in Chicago, look around and find one of the thousands of hot dog carts on any random street corner and find the one with the fattest guy with the greasiest shirt selling dogs.  Buy from him.  Cuz you KNOW that it’s gonna taste the best (he’s eating them too)!

    I’m reading J.D. Payne’s Missional House Churches, which so far has been a more academic, statistical look at the surge of organic and emerging churches in North America.  I’ve scanned chapter 2, which gives a broad overview of the hundreds of house churches he interviewed across the continent, and as soon as I get permission from Payne, I’ll post it here or on my resources page.

    One of the more interesting things I read is that in your standard-issue church in North America, it takes 86 Christians per year to bring one non-Christian to Christ.

    That’s an 86:1 membership to baptism ratio.  Not so hot.

    In Payne’s study, he found that the membership to baptism ratio among the house churches he interviewed ranged from 4.3:1 to 2.3:1.  WOW!  At the high end of the range, it takes about 4 Christians to bring another to Christ!  And in some churches, that ratio is more like 2 to 1!  He writes,

    “The gravity of these numbers should not be passed over casually.  Ratios of this size automatically place these churches among the lowest baptismal ratios in the world.  Any traditional congregations manifesting such numbers would automatically be considered the most effective evangelistic churches in North America.” (page 75)

    Thankfully, Payne is not out to get traditional churches – he attends one himself – instead he is making a plea for the whole Body of Christ to take notice of this missional strategy.  There is (sometimes for good reason) distrust of especially isolationist house churches, and yeah – they’re out there.  But there will always be a counterfiet from the Enemy when he sees the power of God at work.

    The power is found in authentic relationships – a majority of these churches (67%) say the primary way they brought others to faith in Christ is through honest, serving friendships.  Christians made an intentional effort not to be a “come to us” church, but rather a “go and tell” church – living and speaking boldly among their friends/co-workers.

    Maybe I’ll put some more of Payne’s findings up if its still interesting me in coming days.  Thoughts?

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    • Vanessa 10:45 am on September 15, 2008 Permalink

      I just commented on Katrina’s picture. It is amazing! You guys are awesome, and it looks like you are truly living it up in Chicago town! I’m currenlty reading Jesus for President, and he mentions Reba Place a few times. Sounds like you are involved with great people.

    • Mark 5:37 pm on September 15, 2008 Permalink

      Hey Vanessa!

      So good to hear from you guys! Hope life in Abilene is clipping along! I heard about the recent dev at SHCC! Pretty neat stuff, and you guys are right in the mix. I met a rastafarian missionary type guy who is moving to Oahu. I mentioned you guys to him. We were both so pumped!

  • Mark 8:40 am on September 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Find or be Found? 

    Somehow, one of my posts on the Chicago Spiritual Map made it to the Chicago Sun-Times.  If anyone knows how, let me know! :)   You can see the article here.

    I’m beginning to think more specifically about strategies for sharing the gospel with those God has put in my life here in Chicago.  The first few months seem to have been marked by our getting settled, and being awake to who God was putting in our path.  So many have come and gone – friends came in to visit virtually every week since we moved in!  But who are those who God is strategically placing in our life share the Good News with?

    Thinking organically about mission, how much initiative does the missionary take?  Where does the efforts of the missionary stop and the “divine appointments and connections” of God begin?  Is that a false question?  What I’m wondering is: how much do I involve myself in “advertising” what I’m doing to an anonymous audience (flyers, public events, etc) to find those who are ready to take the next step, and how much do I simply let those interested find me?

    My instinct says, “wait – just let your good deeds shine,” but I’ll be completely honest, either I don’t have many good deeds, or that strategy doesn’t actually work – because no stranger or friend has ever come up to me and said, “Wow – you’re such a (nice) (just) (generous) guy, I think I’ll become a Christian.”  Another instinct I have is to cast the nets wide, and pull in any fish that get caught, then let God do the sorting (as to who I’m to invest in).

    I think about a farmer – when sowing seed, he throws it everywhere!  He “broadcasts” his message to the ground, his seed, saying, “Grow this, if you can!”  Then he nurtures the earth that shows progress – the other ground he either ignores or plants something else.  Is the same true with the work of the missionary? Then again, once the farmer has done all the work he can, all he can do is sit back and wait for the Lord to deliver.  See my previous post on work and provision here.

    What if I posted flyers for a discovery bible study?  What if I hit the streets and held up a sign offering prayer?  What if I hung out at a coffeeshop with a note on my table saying, “I’ll buy your drink if you tell me your story?”  What if I performed at a ‘spoken word’ messages of Christ’s love?  What if I became more candid in my conversations with co-workers about my relationship with God?  What if…

    …I spoke with words and life the profound message…the alternative story…of God’s salvation?

    Goes without saying, but then again, maybe it needs to be said now more than ever:   God’s love for me (or anyone involved in serving him) is not wrapped up in my works for him.  He loves his children even before they are born, before they can do anything to earn his love.

    Now as one called to share the gospel, I will put my whole heart and mind to the task!  And engage God’s love and counsel every step of the way.

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    • thepriesthood 3:36 pm on September 6, 2008 Permalink

      so the Sun Times is just hi-jacking blogs w/out permission? it’s both good and kinda scary. props on a good article.

    • Curtis Hinson (via Facebook) 9:08 am on September 9, 2008 Permalink

      The Sun-Times eh? Wow! You're a local for sure man, that's awesome.

  • Mark 5:53 pm on September 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Waiting Tables; Waiting for the Lord 

    I enjoyed spending some more time with our friends/co-workers at Reba Place Fellowship.  We are continuing to see how we can partner with them in following the Lord together and sharing the Gospel with new people groups around the city.  Allan Howe, one of the leaders of the fellowship met with us today, along with several from Good News Partners, an inner city homeless ministry.  As is usual when talking to those on the edge of Kingdom life, the question of “how will this be funded” floated to the surface.

    This issue has been on my mind for quite some time now.  It seems that too many people have a desire or a vision for a radical work or ministry, but too few have the capacity to see it come to fruition.  Underfunding could stem from any number of reasons.  Whether its an issue with the skill of vision casting, or a dreamer’s desire to be so radical that it leaves him/her unaccountable to the larger body of Christ, or maybe its an issue of spiritual warfare, or its just that God’s timing for a ministry is not quite our own… It seems that ministries increasingly will have to pay attention to their funding if they are to remain sustainable in effective ministry.

    Some have concluded that they cannot receive funding from congregations or missions organizations and instead feel called to “tentmaking.”  Tentmaking is just a fancy way of saying that you use your job to pay for your vocation, and that your business fuses organically with God’s mission.  The apostle Paul, Priscilla and Aquilla did that, and so have countless others.  Others believe that support from churches is where they need to be.  That’s cool too.  “A worker deserves his wages,” Jesus said, and spent time as a mason as well as receiving his living wage from women who had rich husbands (some of which were in business with Herod himself!).  Others still find a workable blend of both roads.

    A few books that have shaped my thinking on this are Getting Sent: A Relational Approach to Support Raising, by Pete Sommer, No More Mondays, by Dan Miller, Missions and Money: Affluence as a Missionary Problem, by Jon Bonk, and Profit for the Lord: Economic Activities in the Moravian Missions and the Basel Mission Trading Company, by William Danker.

    While I think that those called to a missionary must learn that the world does not revolve around them and their ministry (and that we must learn to become accountable to the larger body of Christ in relational and financial ways), I also think that each ministry must seek eventual self-sustainability.  In order to do this, we must allow the “creative starter” giftings of the missionary to encourage entrepreneurial capital ventures, but keep it from becoming a means of significant distraction from their real work of training leaders to plant churches.  It is not a bad thing for students training to be missionaries to take some key business classes to help them get their arms around economic enterprise.

    At the same time, I would hope that financial ties to the rest of the Body of Christ would never be completely severed.  Much like a biological family – even after the children are grown, they help each other out when times get rough or share resources for special interest projects (like a family reunion, or supporting a needy member of the family).

    Reba has found that when a group shares resources, more risks can be made – both in ministry and in business.  It’s easier to start a business when you instantly have nearly 100 people financially backing you!

    Ultimately though, we work and sweat and prepare – and then we must wait for the Lord to provide.  Right now I work part time at a restaurant in the neighborhood.  I run around like crazy setting the place up in hopes that when we open the doors at 5:30, there will be people interested in eating there, receiving my work, and (mostly unbeknownst to them) supporting urban missions!  There’s an interesting passage in Isaiah 40 that says,

    “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

    “Waiting” on the Lord includes lots of work!  But their strength comes from the Lord, and from knowing that ultimately the Lord will be their resource.  When it comes to financial life and ministry today, not much has changed.

    I look forward to the day when, like the apostles in Acts 6, I can hand off “waiting tables” to others.  For the time being however, I am learning in my job what it means to earn a living, and seeking humility as a server even as I reach out to those I work with as one who has found the Peace that changes lives.  I’m thankful that Jesus gave us flexibilty in this area of funding missions – and I learn so much from others who are much father into this experiment than I am.

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    • Chadd 8:30 am on September 4, 2008 Permalink

      I enjoyed catching you for a minute yesterday Mark–good to for me to listen in to your thinking on this blog. By the way, of the books you mentioned above, which one or two would you recommend to start with?

      love you bro…

    • Mark 8:51 am on September 4, 2008 Permalink

      I haven’t completed Profit for the Lord, but that has been the most intriguing missions strategy I’ve seen in Christian history. Other than that though, I’d read Getting Sent – as a green-behind-the-ears missionary wondering how fund raising would be possible, it was helpful. For a more established guy like yourself, it may not be for you. No More Mondays may be the best recommendation – since it helps you think outside the box of traditional income generation and allow you to do what you love at the same time. This book has been really helpful for Kat and I as of late.

    • Phil 6:46 pm on September 4, 2008 Permalink

      Mark,

      Thank you for this post, and some similar thoughts you shared with me yesterday.

      God bless!

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