Redefining the Success of Evangelism

Mike Brantley has done another great post where he dialogues with his brother in law Gavin Knight (a successful church leader of a mainline Christian Congregation.) He was asked by gavin on how you define success in the Missional Church paradigm. Mike Brantley replied:

Measuring success: Just had a conversation this past week of how we are doing that. Souls in heaven is the ultimate isn’t it?! What we (our community and not able to speak for anyone else) is using a pathway: not interested, potential contact, contact, participating, journeying, embracing the Gospel, grounding, serving, growing, reproducing, catalyst... This left to right scale is a method we use to measure where we are with EVERY contact... From a Rona (whom you know) to Justin (latest newsletter) they are on there; what we are doing is discussed, what next, managing the conversational journey with them, etc. SO there is a measure of success as we move them along.

Anyway, there are many great things that are said in this post, especially some really practical thoughts on Missiology (the study of how to do mission in the culture we live.) You can find the full post here.

Stop Look and Listen

Many a times I forget to listen. I'm a ENFP and I'm naturally excitable and can get extremely focused on dreams, cuases and ideas. I attempt to convince people that the ideas I have are the most important and most valuable for them. Some are just personally very, very important to me (Like the best way to have a coffee - its a heresy to do certain things to your coffee and I will tell them about it in no uncertain terms - i'm also a coffee snob - no star bucks for me!) but there are other ideas that I think I have some good thoughts on or things that we should be doing that I will tell you about becuase I'm excited about them. I'm naturally an advocate and will advocate strongly for my passions. But the issue with this is I can forget to listen, listen to the other voices that are crying out to be heard and to be listened to.

I had a good lesson in this over the last few days. Me and my younger brother Ben went up to the Wairapa for a guys day at the maslins farm. Most of those who went are probrably about five or six years my younger. I found the conversations fascinating to listen to from a vantage point. Some of the conclusions that they were coming out with sounded fairly similar to what I came out with at thier age. Others represented conclusions I had just come to now.

I just love the idealism though with teenagers. The willingness to give ideas and challenge the past preconceptions. Some of thier thoughts made me cringe and I just had to say something. Like when one of the guys said "The morning church focuses too much on mission." It was one of those moments (due to my passion for mission!) that I had to respond. But most of the time I listened.

It was great, we had some awesome conversations in the car on the way back. One on the dangers of prosperity doctrine, the bahai religion (which was short and sweet) and one conversation of buddhism. I enjoy the willingness they had to talk about different beleif systems while refering to christianity as the story beleive is the one true story of redemption, love, grace, our human condition and who God really is.

Conversation is really important to me. I need it. It gives me great stimulous. Over the last couple of years I have had some really really good conversations about spirituality and I hope to have many more over the years. I really enjoy hearing the desires of peoples hearts. I love being able to wrestle with people, share my life with them. I enjoy humbly being a prescence of Jesus in these enviroments sharing my life with people.

Listening is important too. I walked down into town yesterday. I stopped at the top of the hill and looked out upon the beautiful city that I live in. I had another moment of realisation that God has put me here for a reason, that this is when God wants me and that I've been called to be in a conversation with this city.

The importance of listening is that only then can we learn what makes the places we live beat, what is causing pain in the place we live, what causes pain to the people who live thier. We need to listen to both the dreams of those around us and the pains of those around us. Only then do we have to right to humbly respond.

I dislike the way many have come to beleive there is a culture war going on within society between "family values" or "Christian values" and secular society. Many times they have come to beleive there is no hope for society (denying the awesome power of Jesus to change the hearts of people) and closing themselves off from the lost. At worst they decide that to show that they are right, they bomb abortion clinics or treat homosexuals as unhuman through slurs and isolation. Rather than being agents of love and grace and being Jesus and bringing the message of love and forgiveness to the lost. Dialoging and sharing life as Jesus would do.

But I also find it disheartening to see the truth become less and less relevant. People who turn to alcohol, drugs, sex, work, money etc for fulfillment only to find there is no wholeness in these ventures, they find that all thier quests end in the words of the writer of ecclessiates that they are "meaningless, a chasing after the wind."

As you know I beleive that Jesus offers a new way to be human. He offers wholeness for us broken vessels. Jesus came to earth and lived among us to show love, to show a new way to live, and went to die on a cross as an ultimate act of love becoming forsaken so we could be forgiven and so we could have hope in the resurrection of the dead and receive eternal life.

Becuase of this I beleive we need to be constantly in conversation with the lost, the hungry, the lonely, the poor, and the weak. Sharing Jesus with everyone in the way we live.

So we should remember to stop look and listen to those around us.

Graces Accidental Conversation

I read this on Kingdom Grace yesterday. Its amazing what occurs when we stop and listen to those voices that are there to talk to us.

I had to go to the dentist yesterday for a regular cleaning and exam. Good news, no cavities and my blood pressure is 100/60. Most of the time was spent with the hygienist. The dentist is usually in and out in less than 5 minutes. They say nice things to me like, “You’ve got great teeth for your age.”

The patient before me was a Lutheran pastor. When I sat down, the hygienist told me that he was trying to convert her. I asked her, “From what?” and she said, “From the Catholic church.”
She went on to explain that she and her husband are both “cradle Catholics” but they have been unhappy with the new priest in town, so they haven’t been going to church and want to start going somewhere more regularly. I asked, “So you’re trying to decide if you want to be a good Lutheran or a bad Catholic?”

At this point, her hands were in my mouth. She laughed and said, “Oh well, I’m probably going to hell either way.”

Thus began an interesting one-sided conversation with only nods and “awwww”s from me. “This priest is so conservative. The last time we were there, he said that if you use birth control, you might as well not bother coming to church.”

“I am used to tuning out the priest, but my husband is pretty upset.”

“We might visit the Lutheran church, but they have closed communion. Really I shouldn’t be taking communion anyway since I haven’t been to confession.”

She went on to explain how she does confession. She said she takes an outline of the ten commandments and lists her sins in the appropriate category and makes subcategories so she doesn’t miss any. She said one priest laughed when he saw her outline.

“All of the Catholics taking communion can’t be going to confession. If they were, the confession hours would be a lot longer than they are.”

“I guess the Lutherans just shoot their confessions straight up to God.”

“Our daughter has been learning bible stories at her preschool. But I am afraid we are dropping the ball at home. Since we are “cradle Catholics” we don’t know anything about our religion. We haven’t ever paid attention.”

“The other day, one of my patients told me he has a new Bible, and it is written in plain, everyday language. Can you believe that?! I thought they were all like the one I have, full of thee’s and thou’s. I called him at home and asked him about it and ordered one for myself on Amazon.”

“I haven’t decided yet what to give up for lent.”

“Time for fluoride. Okay, bite down gently on this and hold your mouth closed.”

It was ironic to me to run into this great spiritual conversation and literally not get to say a word. In less than a half hour she hit on the topics of church, liturgy, scripture, baptism, communion, sin, and eternity, all with a serious curiosity about what role God plays in a person’s life. It was fascinating listening. I am not sure what I would have said, given the chance, but in this case, I had no choice except to be a good listener.

I think its really important to listen, and be willing to humbly posture in a spirit of love. Only then will we truly learn, grow and develop. Only then can we get to the heart of where people are really at.

Interesting Trademe Message Board

Capital Mosaics connections at Mount Mosaic have set up a fascinating message board that asks the question
What puts you off church the most?

Check it out here

here are some of the thoughts that caught my attention.


"don't go to Church because I don't believe in God - simple really."


"Coz I don't need to go to church to believe there might be a God, and I certainly don't need to be preached to or saved."


"boredom and the failure of most churches to keep up with the times. If a church is not progressive enough to keep up with science, evolution, music etc and either ignores them or worse, tries to tell you it is evil then they just push you away."


and the one that really got me


"in answer to # 1 question the people that go there"

and

"I don't need to go to church to have a relationship with God. Plus there are too many 'actors' in there who as soon as they leave spark up their smokes and zoom off to the liquor store before heading to a party where they'll have fights and throw bottles on the roads....all on a Sunday."


For more on the this subject read
They like Jesus but not the Church" by Dan Kimbal or "Unchristian" by Gabe Lyons

Conversation with Mike Brantley

One of the many issues I have been wrestling with over the last year or two is the church and the shape of church in this millenium. I have a number of people who are on the journey with me showing me, enlightening me on approaches to church in the new millenium. I have the priviledge of having numerous great mentors who have helped me along the journey to figuring out the centre.

One of them is my friend Mike Brantley. Mike Brantley attended Onslow community church while I was there and provided me with some of the background, and helped me take some steps to where I am now in my faith. I learned from his style of leadership, speaking and his ability to teach the word.

As I went through the hard times in my faith over the last year and went through thinking about what is church really about? How it should be shaped, etc, etc, Mike Brantley was one of those people who was in the back of my mind to get into contact with. A few weeks I ago decided to contact him and start a dialogue. Read where we are up to in the dialogue here. Hopefully it provides you with some richness as it has me. I am wanting to become more passionate for my Lord and saviour. I want to see New Zealand changed, I want to bring people into the kingdom. I want to spread the kingdom further and wider. Not based on institutional models or systems, but based on christ. More on this later....