A Bold and Brave Move

Meeting in rented facilities is not a big deal for most church plants. But I think it's a pretty big deal for a church in the southern USA to sell their building and meet in rented facilities so that they can invest their money to help people. Thanks for showing the church building world that it can be done.

Check out the story of Rolling Hills Baptist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina who sold their building and now meet in a movie theatre.

Imagine if shrinking congregations would be willing to sell their buildings and help people in need or invest in hiring a number of community outreach workers to develop community run programs. Or imagine if the RC church sold off some of their highly visible assets and did the same thing.

It reminds me of a brainstorming session we had at Yonge Street Mission a few years (15) ago where I suggested that we sell all our property (probably worth about $20 million at the time), invest in more program staff and run our programs in rented facilities. Nobody else thought it was a good idea. Turns out that they moved in the opposite direction and now own twice as much real estate as they did back then. But they have also invested in hiring about twice as many program staff and are running a lot of good programs in downtown Toronto.

Four Streams

I was in Birmingham Alabama this past week to participate in a conference jointly hosted by the National City Impact Roundtable and the Mission America Coalition. Here's the brochure.

The City Impact Roundtables (CIR) have developed out of Mission America Coalition meetings. Christian transformational leaders from cities across the world have gathered twice a year for the purpose of building relationships, sharing kingdom-sized vision for holistic evangelism and revival, and praying together for united ministry throughout the Body of Christ. They have met in the roundtable format so that participants might also be contributors to the "city-reaching" process in their area. The CIR is a peer-to-peer meeting of Christian leaders who are prayerfully seeking the unity of the Church for holistic evangelism, the revival and renewal of the Church, leading to a cultural awakening and transformation.


The National City Impact Roundtable (CIR) examined four streams of cityreaching:
► Presence-Based (creating the environment in the city through unity and persevering prayer which welcomes in the presence of the Holy Spirit bringing in revival and transformation) with George Otis, Jr.
► Christian Community Development with John Perkins and the three "R's" (Relocation - moving into the area that needs redevelopment. Reconciliation - bringing harmony and peacemaking to those who are at odds with the system and with one another [particularly along racial lines] and redistribution - returning the power and influence back to those who live in the neighbourhood so that they can say that they have done it themselves),
► Evangelism with Paul Cedar (which focuses on evangelistic activities involving a Prayer/Care/Share approach involving the whole church sharing the whole Gospel with the whole city), and
► Marketplace Ministry (encouraging those who work outside of full time ministry positions to be ministers in their workplace environment and creating ministry through the "church of your workplace") featuring a panel that included Brad Fieldhouse, Steve Capper, Kent Humphrey and Bob Varney.

David Kinnaman wrapped up the event with a presentation of the research he did connected with his book "UnChristian".

The description of the four streams is actually very helpful in understanding different ways of approaching ministry in the city (even though there are more than four - these are just the best developed). Sometimes working in a city as large as Toronto is very overwhelming. All kinds of people have ideas of how to reach the city or transform the city or win the city for Christ. Their ideas are sincere but they often work at cross purposes because they have different approaches. These approaches are not wrong - they just focus on different faces of the mission.

At MissionGTA we tend to focus more on the "presence-based" style of city reaching. As such we invest in prayer for the city and gathering Christian leaders to act together in unity. The main activities are the Toronto City Hall Pastors and Leaders Prayer gatherings, The Global Day of Prayer and occasional prayer summits and targeted prayer events.

Movements

I’m reading Steve Addison’s Movements that Change the World. There’s lots of good stuff in here and I’m being reminded of some of the teaching I received as I was ministering on campus in my university days. I remember talking about a movement that would capture the hearts of students to follow Jesus and disciple others. I didn’t fully get it in those days and I’m not sure I fully get it now. It’s just that there are moments in the history of humanity that change everything that follows and creates a way of thinking that seemed impossible before that moment happened. Those moments are when movements are started. The following is a brief quote from his chapter on “Why Movements Matter.”

“Mission has a threefold reality. First there is a message: mission assumes a distinct view of truth concerning the nature of God and the nature of salvation. Second mission involves the communication of both truth and a new way of life. Third the purpose of mission is conversion. People accept the message, are integrated into the community of faith and begin to practice a new way of life – a new life committed to following Jesus and sharing the truth about him with others.

“As a missionary movement our message centers on Jesus Christ the son of God who was crucified for our sins and is the only source of salvation for a lost world. Second as a missionary movement we have an agenda for change. Jesus calls all who would follow him to a new life of obedience to his will. Third mission involves the conversion of individuals and their inclusion into the body of Christ, which is the church, the people of God. There is no mission without the church and there is no discipleship without the community of faith.

“If this is what it means to be the missionary people of God what do "missionaries" do? Eckhard Schnabel explains: “Missionaries establish contact with non-Christians, they proclaim good news of Jesus the Messiah and Savior (proclamation, preaching teaching, instruction), they lead people to faith in Jesus Christ (conversion, baptism), and integrate the new believers into the local community of the followers of Jesus (Lord's supper, transformation of social and moral behavior, charity).” We have the message of the cross. We have new life in Christ. We have a mandate to make disciples and multiply churches everywhere. We are a missionary people.”

Having Tea

Sometimes very difficult things are done in a long series of simple steps. Alex Dyer said it this way:

“One important lesson I continue to learn in mission is that I am not in charge. It is God who extends the invitation and God who is in charge of the mission. Being open to God's mission means discerning where God is leading us, without our own expectations getting in the way. With this re-orientation, our mission is not a to-do list to remedy all the world's problems but rather begins with discernment on what God is calling us to do. We realize we are part of something beyond ourselves and we leave behind the delusion that this is dependent upon our performance. Our call to mission does not come from a sense of duty, rather from a sense of wondrous anticipation about what God has in store for us.

"We realize we are NOT called to solve all the world's problems. We are called to participate in God's mission. DAILY! After a few months in Cairo, I told my supervisor that I did not feel much like a missionary. I spent a lot of time talking to Sudanese refugees and drinking tea with them. My supervisor told me that is where mission work happens. It is the engaging with one another, in being present and sharing each other's stories. A large part of mission work is having tea.”