Seminar in Missions

During these three weeks (May 16-June 3), I am in Abilene teaching two courses in ACU’s Seminar in Missions.

It is a transitional time. Becky and I taught Introduction to World Evangelization for probably our last time. For much of the past seventeen and a half years we have taught this course three times a year (Fall, Spring, Summer) to hundreds of students. The skit of “Sceptor and Hoe” moves from this undergraduate missions course to an application in some of our Church Planting Workshops.

Sherwood Lingenfelter, author of Ministering Cross-Culturally (and other books) and provost of Fuller Theological Seminary, is this years’ resource person at the three-day Mission Focus between the two sessions of the Seminar. One evening Lingenfelter met with faculty members at Sonny Guild’s home. He made a comment about church planting that I thought was insightful. He said that church planting cannot be learned in an institution but must be learned like “the laying of bricks,” within the contexts of active incarnational ministry.

I will shortly begin teaching Folk Religion and New Spiritualities. I anticipate a good group of students serving as missionaries and ministers from many part of the world. I am reorganizing the course and putting it on PowerPoint for the first time. I find that this course is ideal for domestic church planters who will minister in post-modern contexts where new spiritualities are flourishing as well as those who minister among Spiritists in Brazil, Shintoists in Japan, and practitioners of African Traditional Religion.

During evenings and in-between activities, Becky and I have enjoyed making presentations to some possible future church planters. We are amazed at the number of people coming into church planting and the developing interest in church planting.

In the midst of all the activities in Abilene, we continue to make plans for the Dallas-Ft. Worth Church Planting Workshop which will be hosted by the South MacArthur Church of Christ in Irving, August 26-27, 2005. The topic of the workshop this year will be “What kind of Churches Should We Plant? The Nature of Missional Church Planting.”

We have also been organizing the Discovery Labs for church planters entering Mission Alive, scheduled for June 20-23 and Sept. 8-11.

We ask for your prayers as we juggle the many activities of our life and ministry.

Two church plantings. God's work is evident yet very different.

On Thursday we had our first Huddle of church planters. Chris Chappotin and Randy and Judy Dean met at our house for prayer, discussion, and planning in regard to their church plantings.

During our Huddle, we prayerfully and submissively dealt with the nuts and bolts of planting a missional church. We discussed (1) the spiritual formation of seekers and members, (2) summer plans (Kids’ Camp, barbecues, Life Transformation groups, modes of spiritual formation, internships) and (3) a power point of ministry flow charts to help us think through the varying models of church planting and how they reflect the purposes and mission of God.

As we talked, we compared God’s mighty work in two different church plantings.

God is using Chris and Heidi Chappotin to plant Christ Journey in southwest Fort Worth (in the area of the intersection of I-35W and Highway 1187). Christ Journey has only a small core team of four families and three singles. The first initial small group is beginning to grow through developing spiritual relationships with searchers and unbelievers.

Becky and I “joined the journey” for their second small group meeting on Sunday evening. Seventeen adults and 6 children piled into the Chappotins’ living room. Five of these were searchers, including two sisters, their mother, the husband of one of the sisters, and the boy friend of the other. Both sisters were pregnant. It was evident to us that the visitors were impressed with the loving fellowship, awe of God, and authentic Christian expressions that they were experiencing. Our prayer is that this fellowship grows via evangelism rather than inviting Christian leaders from other local churches to join in launching the church. Chris and Heidi are going through a significant time of growth as they learn how to be God’s ministers of reconciliation and guide others in their team to also develop spiritual friendships.

Currently the team of Christ Journey is in the core development stage. They will launch other small groups out of the existing one in the next few months and launch the public worship service on Sept. 25. Their new web site is at www.christjourney.net and Chris’ blog is at www.1moremile.blogspot.com. The journey continues . . . . as God leads.

Randy and Judy Dean are planting the Parker County Church on the western side of Weatherford, about 30 minutes by road from the Chappotins. The Parker County church launched a public service with 60 members and then realized that they need resource people to help them and contacted Mission Alive. They represent a phenomena occurring in many areas. Dedicated Christians felt the strictures of sectarian Christianity, with all of its anger and control, and decided that they could only be faithful to God by planting another church. They rejected the denominational title “Church of Christ” (because of its sectarian heritage in their area) while holding to the fundamental Restoration beliefs of the centrality of scripture, the priesthood of all believers, believers’ baptism for forgiveness of sins, and the centrality of the Lord’s Supper in order to remember the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Their singing is acappella. They have the strength of mature leadership and adequate finances to support themselves. They, however, have started a new church with the old paradigm of a settled church intact. They also have all the emotions of leaving a larger fellowship who now declares them “liberal.”

One thing I know: God is working in this fellowship to renew His people! Some significant questions are: “Can they come to a unified vision of God’s mission through them and their fellowship? Can they become evangelistic?” The role of Mission Alive is to guide them along the way by providing labs, mentoring, coaching, and spiritual conversations in Huddles.

Neither of these models is ideal. The ideal church planting intentionally comes out of a visionary church who realizes that God is a God who gives of himself as he has done in Jesus Christ. Thus, the church sends a few families called to church planting out of its fellowship to plant another church every few years. This process energizes the mother church and leads to a church planting movement. I am currently witnessing God’s work in a number of churches leading them to intentionally plant another church in 2006. Mission Alive is honored to be part of this movement.

Two church plantings. God’s work is evident yet very different.

“God, give us wisdom.”

Our weekend; The Christian Affirmation

For some months Becky and I and others in Mission Alive have been praying for Hispanic and African-American leaders to partner with us in church planting. We were privileged this weekend to have Eloy and Rebecca Garcia and with us as guests. They live in Austin where Eloy ministers at the Southside Church of Christ. Eloy previously worked at the University of Texas as the student adviser of the Masters of Business Administration Program and then as the director of the MBA program. Before working at UT, Eloy served as a church planter and trainer of leaders in Lubbock, El Paso, and Dallas. These impeccable credentials, however, are secondary to Eloy’s call from God to be a church planter and to nurture other church plantings. He is visionary yet gentle, passionate nevertheless patient. We pray that they will come into the September Discovery Lab.

We also met this weekend with the shepherds and evangelist of the New Heritage church in Allen. We found them to be a wonderful group of visionary leaders with an orientation toward church planting. This is not a typical church. They are only two years old, have approximately 180 members, and do not denominate themselves as a “Church of Christ” but still hold strong restoration beliefs on the centrality of Christ, the importance of scripture, and the nature of salvation. Many of their members, including their preaching minister, were once part of another area church and thus define themselves in contrast to their sectarian, sometimes authoritarian heritage. Can Mission Alive work with them in church planting while also working with more traditional Churches of Christ? We hope (but wonder if) that time has come.

Gabe Peterson, our apprentice, referred me to The Christian Affirmation at http://www.christianaffirmation.org/, which first appeared in the Christian Chronicle. It is interesting to note the categories discussed: focus on scripture, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, worship (with a specific statement about a cappella singing), and concern about legalism. The focus is on important, historical forms of the Christian faith rather than the Christian worldview which these rituals are to visually and tactilely reveal. The points reflect the distinct “litmus” test issues (with the exception of the gender issue) of Churches of Christ. I wonder if these issues can and should be discussed in a paper in isolation from the broader pictures and narratives of Christian theology. Will this statement “clarify . . . identity” or become another source of fragmentation (sides solidify and inadvertently people are either in or out, agree or disagree). Gabe incisively writes,

“My thought is that the document has the best intentions, possibly even trying to create tradition, define identity and possibly unify a fractured fellowship (form a creed that isn’t a test of fellowship with other Christians, but of unity within a fractured anti-creedal fellowship) in the midst of our anti-tradition and identity crisis (when historically the church has formed creeds in the midst of various crises). My fear is that it could be a watershed mark and defining point for a division, or fragmentation, that we are in midst of and have been in the midst of for the past ~25 years. Yet the great irony, if this is the case, is that the first real written creed (Nicea) comes after Constantine, when the church in various ways merged with culture, and if we truly believe we are living in post-Constantinian church, and in a post-denominational era – then why are we writing creeds?”

I appreciate the concerns of the writers of the affirmation and pray for the unity of our fellowship, who are on a journey defining identity. I pray that our identity may be found in Christ alone so that we might truly be the church of Christ.