Reggie McNeal -- Missional Renaissance
Kentucky Baptist Convention Building / January 22, 2009
Good News about Christianity's growth around the world....
- Fastest growing religion in the world is Christianity / 80 million Christians in India alone in the past 10 years. 90% of new churches are house churches.
- Campus Crusade is partnering to launch 1 million new churches (house/pouch) in the next few years.
- Churches grow out of a movement, rather than having a movement grow out of a new church.
- The movement in China outstrips the growth in India – more than 10,000 per day ++
- Indonesia growth is over 18% b/c of the Tsunami and the the acts of love and compassion that followed the disaster.
- In the 20th Century Africa went from 3% to 40%+ Christian
- The Christian truth is on the move in spite of hardships all over the world. It’s Pentecost somewhere in the world right now.
News in the U.S., Europe and Australia is not so good....
Everywhere the Western Model / Constantian model of church went down is struggling. Australia is under 5% Christian. Sweden 2%. The bastion/centerpiece of Christianity in Europe is crumbling.
- Pollsters in America are getting it wrong when they say that 40% of Americans are attending church. Our buildings couldn't hold 40%....
- We are the largest English speaking mission field in the world here in the U.S.
- If we don’t wake up we’re gonna miss what God is up to. The first half of the Book of Acts was the Church trying to catch up to the Holy Spirit. God didn’t follow the protocol that the early church expected and the church had to move fast. The Holy Spirit is running wild in the streets outside the walls of the church.
- God’s not waiting on us to get it to do it!
- Blackaby was right … find out what God is up to and get in on it.
- Let’s learn from what the Holy Spirit is doing where they are experiencing Pentecost.
We are seeing something that is bigger than the Church sector.
In the Renaissance we had people coming together from multiple disciplines to do new things. God’s creating a conversation across the domains of our culture that’s it’s gonna be impossible in our lifetime to think of the church the way we used to think of the church.
In the Renaissance we had people coming together from multiple disciplines to do new things. God’s creating a conversation across the domains of our culture that’s it’s gonna be impossible in our lifetime to think of the church the way we used to think of the church.
We can get in on this by making 3 critical shifts…
This will take scorecard revamps from How Many / How Often / How Much …. This scorecard does not serve to celebrat the dimensional richness of missional living.
- Expand the bandwidth of what we measure to celebrate missional richness.
- The missional church is the people of God partnering with Him on His mission for the world.
- The mission is always being played out in the world – beyond the world.
- In the old world the church was the point – the church was the mission – God was creating The Church. So, if we measured the ‘church stuff’ then we could see what God was doing. However, now we’ve learned that God is always at work beyond His people and His work is not shrink-wrapped down to the size of the local church.
Shift 1 = From Internal to external focus
- Internal focus is built on the assumption that is we got ‘church’ right then she would take care of the world. We have the best churches that we’ve ever had complete with all the bells and whistles. But, have we had the impact that we hoped that we’d have? This is the ‘churchcentric’ worldview. I’m not talking about adding one weekend a year where we go out and paint the school. A shift in emphasis is tectonic shift of record keeping, programming, etc.
- In Church Centric Churches our job was to turn the world into ‘us’ and then get them to be like us and work on church stuff. Maybe we’ve run out of people who want to buy what we’re selling. Over here we’re trying to lob something into the culture from the church like a bomb.
- In the internal focus deal God exists at ‘church’ and we have to take Him out in to go bags.
- The reason the house church is so viral is because it’s about who they are and they are just being the body on the move out in the real world/culture.
A better strategy than evangelism – why don’t we have a blessing strategy instead of an evangelism strategy?
- Let’s go out this week and practice being the people of God. Go out and bless three people this week—and be sure that one of them doesn’t deserve it! I’m not talking about random acts of kindness, I’m talking about starting conversations. The core prhase of a ‘blesser’ of people is: I’ll ask God to help you.
- You can simply ask the wait staff at a restaurant, ‘How can I ask God to bless you?’
- God loves to show off!!
- And, then, tell the stories of what happened.
- To be the people of God you’ve got to believe God – not just believe ‘in God’ – HUGEMONGOUS difference because then, a person orders their life around who God is and what He’s up to in the world.
- Our job is to bless the world and then watch what God does in the lives of people. Get caught up in the wind of the Holy Spirit and just get out there and bless people.
- Study Holy Trinity in London England about what’s going on with their Alpha Groups.
- ‘Are you one of those blessing people?’
When the church is the destination you are attractional. However, when The Kingdom becomes the destination THEN you’re on the way becoming an Incarnational Kingdom oriented church.
Just as an airport is not the destination…so, the church is not the destination.
The focus of the gathering is to celebrate what God is doing away from the gathering….
A pastor in Titus County Texas stated his vision statement for his church in 2009 was ‘’There will be no hungry kids in Titus County and in three years there’ll be no child leaving 3rd grade without being able to read English.”
BTW, on every Wednesday evening they’re doing the backpack program – churches are filling backpacks on Wednesday that free/reduced priced lunch kids can take home so that they won’t be hungry. A church of 400 is feeding thousands of pounds of food each week. Children pack the backpacks on Wednesday evenings. Kids are learning to serve by packing backpacks. Young people who can drive are delivering the backpacks. Now, not just food is going in the backpacks but prayer request sheets. You gotta believe God can use this actual physical program to bless people.
Just as an airport is not the destination…so, the church is not the destination.
The focus of the gathering is to celebrate what God is doing away from the gathering….
A pastor in Titus County Texas stated his vision statement for his church in 2009 was ‘’There will be no hungry kids in Titus County and in three years there’ll be no child leaving 3rd grade without being able to read English.”
BTW, on every Wednesday evening they’re doing the backpack program – churches are filling backpacks on Wednesday that free/reduced priced lunch kids can take home so that they won’t be hungry. A church of 400 is feeding thousands of pounds of food each week. Children pack the backpacks on Wednesday evenings. Kids are learning to serve by packing backpacks. Young people who can drive are delivering the backpacks. Now, not just food is going in the backpacks but prayer request sheets. You gotta believe God can use this actual physical program to bless people.
To do something huge you’ll have to work with other churches and agencies to get this done.
- One staff meeting was go somewhere and pray….’ God help me see what you see.’ – for an hour or two. They shredded the staff agenda that they had and they focused on the dealio. This so changed them that they sent the whole church out to do this one Sunday and they wanted to see what the people saw. Tell us what God showed you.
- Wouldn’t that be a great initiative to turn out church and go listen for what God is up to??
- The Millenials get this….the have core values to support the Missional Church. They have a desire to go out and make it a better world. It’s Obama calling everyone to service on MLK Day, it’s Bono. Volunteerism is on the rise.
- I’m telling every church I work with to ‘Adopt a School’ or at least a 3rd grade class and work on literacy because studies show that if a kids leaves 3rd grade and can't read english he/she is gonna have a very hard time.
In the old world we were trying to get them to connect to us….now, we’re trying to connect to the world.
- Go to kidshopeusa website to learn how to adopt a school, etc.
- You practice saying in the mirror before you go, ‘How can we help?’
- In the old world is was about Silos….the missional church has a whole new view of culture and understands that God already has his people in all these places to serve and influence.
- Invest in the community.
- Doing good greases the skids for God in the view of the world. The Atheist has a hard time dismissing the ‘recurring good’.
If you call the party you’ll find all kinds of people to help. You can go out there and find all kinds of ways to be salt and light.
- Let the church call the party to order and invite the community to help.
- The ‘institutional’ church does not reflect well the values and mission of Jesus.
- Our role in the Kingdom right now is to be the church.
- What is gonna be our role in the economy going south?? Wallace Kent’s question…
- Reggie’s answer, ‘You’ve got to take care of your people’ within the body. And, then you’ve got to make a radical commitment to serve those in the community as well.
- A church in Texas made a commitment to those in her body who lost their jobs that noone would loose their homes.
- The early church moved forward on sacrifice and service. It will be the same today for churches that will shine a light on who Jesus is.
THM for me (this is what I think I’m hearing…): Play bigger, do BIGGER stuff so that other’s can join us. Throw bigger parties so that the community can help and so that other churches and agencies can take part in what’s going on. Keep moving out in faith so that others can take part in what’s goin on and the resources will be there.
- Look for ways to release people to go out and meet the needs of the community.
- There is a rise of the ‘missional community’ – it’s beyond house church. It’s not a bounded set. It’s an alternative technology of reaching people that need the Gospel.
- The church system is like Exxon and Mobile and we know what to do with oil from Shale, etc.
- What I’m begging the existing church to do is to invest in the alternative technologies that ‘missional communities’ will bring to us.
Re-score-carding this thing….
Let’s use a resource reallocation model to build our score card
Resource Internal External
Prayer about us about the world out there
Example: Crossroads church in Cinci is being sure that every single public school teacher has a prayer partner. ‘What you’re doing is so important that I’m asking God to bless you. If there’s ever anything that I can do please let me know. Here’s my email and here’s my phone if you need me please let me know.
Serving our way into influence…
You could extend this prayer experience to public officials and you could put more emphasis on praying for the community outside of the church.
Re-allocate your staff’s prayer time.
Staff office hours community hours
Example: every staff person in every community I know of is out in
the community serving them.
Example: an executive pastor that took the position of the head of
soccer and he won’t be at church in the building on Sundays for two
years.
Example: Crossroads church in Cinci is being sure that every single public school teacher has a prayer partner. ‘What you’re doing is so important that I’m asking God to bless you. If there’s ever anything that I can do please let me know. Here’s my email and here’s my phone if you need me please let me know.
Serving our way into influence…
You could extend this prayer experience to public officials and you could put more emphasis on praying for the community outside of the church.
Re-allocate your staff’s prayer time.
Staff office hours community hours
Example: every staff person in every community I know of is out in
the community serving them.
Example: an executive pastor that took the position of the head of
soccer and he won’t be at church in the building on Sundays for two
years.
THM: Expect Staff to find ways to connect in the community.
Money how much did we take in? How much went out?
Facilities How to keep the people out vs. build it for the com first
Ask: How would missionaries approach this?
Think about funding a community initiative to support and without exception that will get funded first. People are ready to invest in the community and in kids. The twenty somethings are not laying back to give money to build a church building.
Technology Supported Ministry Creates Ministry
- The Internet is LIVING SPACE for twentysomethings….
- Check out ‘second life’
- Add to Scorecard: Why would I need to go to any other website to learn how to serve the community?
Shift 3 = Move from Program Driven to People Development
It’s quite easy in the program driven model for the staff to have a meeting where the people we are called to serve never make it into the discussion. It requires a lot of intentionality to move to a people development culture. At Phos Hilaron Church the The bottom line question
about everything we do is:
‘’does this build an Apprentice of Jesus out of ordinary people”
What if ‘better marriages, better relationships with our kids, and loving our neighbors’ made it to the scorecard?
How do you develop the culture of People Development? (aka, Spiritual Life Development as Primary Purpose - remember, Jesus' command to 'make disciples' -- we call em 'apprentices' around Phos)
- The old days of clergy telling people how to live their lives is over. They will let us help shape them but they won’t let us template their spiritual journeys anymore. We’re in a culture that expects customization and they start where they want to start in the matrix. Starbucks has 87,000 possibilities on how to do their coffee.
- Maybe the reason we reach so few people is that we only serve lattes from 11 to 12 on Sundays…..
- We are moving into an asynchronous culture.
- Church used to be a lot simpler.
- In the early days of your church try not to lock yourself into a 52 week cycle of doing church.
- Trend: People at different life stages want a different kind of church experience anyway….one of the biggest exiters are the empty nesters who are worn out from the program driven church. Postcongregationalist boomers are a group worth thinking about.
Debriefing is part of a people development culture. Give people time and space to make sense out of what’s happening in their lives.
(this is the OBT in an LXG at Phos / the whole 'culture' of doing life together out in homes with low 'content agenda' centered on simple truth applied to real life is a 'debrief space' )
- Help people ‘exhale’ like an asthmatic even in our corporate gatherings. Give them a brief ‘something’ to talk about in the gathering. Ask em, ‘what was the best thing about your week?’, etc.
- Information by itself does not change behavior. It has to be processed and it has to be brought into our real life. (for Phos this is part of the importance of the OBT in LXGs)
Make sure that ‘people’ are the central issue of everything in what you do. It’s about making connections with real life and how people grow from what we’re doing.
Let’s say that you want to get really intentional about ramping up ‘life coaching’ in your church…..and you want to give people a chance to give people a chance to really talk about their life.
(common response: ‘I’ve been here for 30 years and noone has ever asked me how I’m doing)
Key idea: Building YOU is Building the Church.
5 Questions we used for life coaching processes …
Case Study: two dozen interviewers worked with 300 people….we published the questions ahead of time:
We literally just want to have a conversation with you. We want to know how to help you grow.
1. What do you enjoy doing? (because what you enjoy doing may be just how God wants to bless this world)
We literally just want to have a conversation with you. We want to know how to help you grow.
1. What do you enjoy doing? (because what you enjoy doing may be just how God wants to bless this world)
2. Where do you see God most at work in your life right now?
3. What would you like to see God do in your life over the next 3 to 6 months? How can we help? When you ask the question you’ve just changed the scorecard in your church.
Story: the YMCA meeting I had with Jason after I became a YMCA charter member: “Reggie we’re gonna turn you into a fully devoted fitness guy and then we’re gonna make you look like Arnold Swartznegger!" Key question that Jason asked me was: Reggie what would like to accomplish at the YMCA?
4. How would you like to serve other people and how can we help?
5. How can we pray for you?
Follow this up occasionally with an ‘hey, how’s it going, really?’ conversation.
- This all starts with you and with your staff. Are you developing yourself? Your staff? Your lay leadership?
- The reason North American church culture shifted to a program driven model was that it seemed like a faster/easier way to make disciples.
- Every place where you can, pay attention to your people.
When you focus on people development you begin to say to your people and ACT OUT via your scheduling/systems and programs: We’re gonna be more intentional about YOUR growth than anything else around here. AND, we’re gonna empower you to change the world.
In A.D. 30 noone has a ‘church job’ – they were Apostles. I’m a missionary to a culture not on a church staff. I’m a missionary with a support base from the xyz church.
- In a people development culture you’re gonna be far more engaged with people than with programs and program development.
- An Apostolic leader says, ‘Follow Me’ -- that requires transparency, heart on heart, etc. It doesn’t come from curriculum.
- Your life becomes transparent and available to the people you want to lead. You become a servant of them.
- Apostolic leadership is transparent and genuine spirituality. An apostolic leader has the ‘stink of Jesus’ on em. You can’t explain their lives any other way.
- Can people sense in us a connectedness to Jesus and a cause to die for?
- OUR Personal Spiritual Development is PARAMOUNT to leading effectively.
- Apostolic leaders know how to raise their own support…you’ll have to have multiple income streams. Venture Capitalists may be able to write the check and pay the way. There’s all different kinds of ways to support your way through this.
- How are you developing your ability to be employed and employable outside of your ministry? This is a question that I ask all of my coaching clients.
Jeff Fuson serves as Point Leader for Phos Hilaron Church near Louisville Kentucky. Jeff's # 1 passion is being a husband and daddy. A close second is seeing people grow spiritually. As a Professional Speaker Jeff also serves as a Keynote Speaker & Trainer crafting & delivering high impact keynote addresses & training events for Entrepreneurs, Banks, Credit Unions, and small to medium sized non-profit & for profit enterprises. He's got one incredible wife and 3 awesome children.
