Tag: mission

Episode 053: The Why’s and How’s of Global Engagement

In this episode we sit down to talk about how the local church can responsibly and wisely enter into a robust engagement with the work of God’s Spirit around the world.

 

 

The mission of God has been a global story from the beginning… the trick that happens with any local church is that it’s easy to be insular…

 

A little perspective is sometimes what we need… we can often get lulled into a comfort where we’re surprised when bad things happen… we need the global for the gift of perspective…

 

Oftentimes when we go global, we think that we need to go preach, but I think it’s better to go and listen… the problem with the American church is that we go in as saviors and superheroes and we tend to do a very bad job of listening…

 

Missionaries often arrive with some “capital” into situations where people are devoid of it… the problem is that it teaches them to see us as a pile of cash… and it teaches us to see them as poor and needy… the Jesus way is emptying ourselves enough to really enter into relationship…

 

Partnerships are what we are looking for… friendships and partnerships sustain themselves… one of the sobering things we heard in Guatemala and Honduras was that pastors there felt abandon by American churches…

 

Countries are not changed by three-day trips, but by long term strategies based on trust and relationships…

 

My greater goal is to change my church here… to bring transformation to the hearts of my people at New Life… I want to change attitude, narrative, and perspective… the political climate is full of vitriol… we had pastors with tears in their eyes pleading with me to help Americans see them as people of hope and potential…

 

There are times when I’m in moments with folks overseas and I am saying to these brothers and sisters, “You are leading the way…” it is the third world showing the first world how to follow Jesus with all their heart, soul, mind and strength…

 

The global south is the church with the oil in their lamps… you see their reckless abandon and passion for Jesus… their zeal for prayer and for the poor… they have oil that we need… for us not to go harms US in the long term…

Episode 040: A Conversation with Matt Brown

For this conversation, we sat down with Matt Brown to talk about the joy and challenge of evangelism, and how to do it the Jesus Way.

 

 

Matt Brown: https://www.thinke.org/

Pre-order “Truth Plus Love”: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0310355249/

 

When Billy Graham passed away it made me think, “What next step do I need to take to help reach this generation with the gospel?”

 

Pastors need people like me (evangelists) who are passionate about sharing the gospel outside the church… if you struggle with evangelism, find people who inspire you and find ways to step outside in your everyday life…

 

Billy Graham was great at clearly presenting the gospel… more pastors need to think about that, and about how they are giving people a chance to respond…

 

The reality is, there is Holy Spirit power when we preach the gospel… when we talk about Jesus and lift up Jesus God will move in a sovereign way and draw people to himself… we need to make more opportunities for this…

 

The way Billy Graham lived his life was such an example to all of us… nobody is perfect, but he lived with integrity and tried to avoid the stumbling blocks that leaders get caught up on… he lived a life of authenticity and was likable…

 

My question is how can we champion some of the opportunities (presented by the new media) to talk about Jesus and bring the Bible to our world… and how can we have the right spirit when we do it? Church leaders and Christians need to set the pace here…

 

For a long time in my own life, I thought intensity and aggressiveness was the measure of maturity… what I began to realize was that if we live lives of the fruit of the Spirit, with a whole lot of love and joy and peace and kindness, then the gospel is going to look really good to people…

 

1 Corinthians 13 says that if we don’t have love, our words won’t be heard… the gospel can’t be heard through a life of un-love… we need to ask ourselves if what we are about to say is loving, gentle, and full of the Father-heart of God…

 

There’s a difference between being bothered and being burdened… we really need to have God’s heart for people, which comes out in the fruit of the Spirit…

Episode 029: Doing Ministry in a Secular Age

When Jesus told his followers to make disciples in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and all the ends of the earth, he meant that the gospel should be brought to people where they are and in their contexts. So how do we as pastors and leaders bring the gospel to our neighbors in today’s secular age? We talk about it in this week’s essential conversation.

Episode 029 – SHOW NOTES – Doing Ministry in a Secular Age

 

One of my favorite metaphors is to think of the world as like an arena with a retractable roof, where the roof closes and no one really cares… everyone is so consumed with their own life that whether or not there is a God is kind of irrelevant…

 

The new situation makes you learn to say [the gospel] afresh… we’re having to learn how to tell the Story to people who are living in a new situation, but have the same hungers…

 

It’s almost like we’re in an Acts 17 moment… in the collapse of the marriage between Christianity and the culture, there’s a fresh opportunity to stand in the marketplace of ideas and tell people, “God raised Jesus from the dead—what do you think about that?”

 

Today’s climate is such that all belief is contested, and so in one sense we’ve gone to a pre-Christian culture, and in another sense we’ve “evolved” past it… people want the Jesus values without the Jesus claim…

 

We have to get better as pastors and leaders to say to people, “You’re going to serve somebody; you’re going to choose a cross somewhere…and only Jesus says ‘my yoke is easy and my burden is light…’”

 

The ministry of hospitality is one of the best gifts the church gives to the world… in a secular age, we need to be ones who open our doors and hearts and we host people and let the kingdom unfold so that people say, “This is where I need to be…”

 

Beauty is a great way of thinking about how the church can be at its best here… a Rembrandt painting doesn’t need to explain itself to you… it has a way of communicating itself to you and drawing you into it… the church needs to think about its own life that way… let people see!

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • How aware are you and your team about the rising tide of secularism in terms of your ministry process (planning, messaging, programming)? Does it figure at all in your ministry? Why or why not?
  • How would you describe your strategy for equipping your flock to live faithfully and hospitably within our secular age?
  • What can you do to help your congregation see the opportunities of living in this moment?

 

RESOURCES

James. K. A. Smith has written a dense but really helpful summary the new “secular” moment we’re living in called How (Not) To Be Secular. Check it out.

Episode 015: Building Bridges

In this week’s podcast, we take a listen to a recent radio story that tells the story of our recent merger with Iglesia Nueva Vida, a local Spanish-speaking congregation in our city, and now the newest part of the New Life Church family.

 

EPISODE 015 – BUILDING BRIDGES – SHOW NOTES

 

On a macro-level, New Life Church was making a prophetic pronouncement that the Church was going to show the world how to live together…

 

The body of Christ has the ability to show a very divided world how to live together…

 

The Scriptures describe the Spirit as the great unifier of the human race… the church was birthed in a diversified world… and it was the Holy Spirit who was the great unifier…

 

The reason we are so divided is because of a noticeable lack of the Holy Spirit in our lives…

 

When you welcome the Holy Spirit into your church, do not be surprised if he asks you to live alongside people who are different from you… the Holy Spirit is a bridge-builder…

 

When people take a step toward one another and begin to love other human beings, skin color and racial differences begin to melt away and you begin to see the humanity in each other…

 

If the embodiment of the gospel is an earth-to-heaven experience, we should start seeing signposts, we should start seeing heaven being fleshed out among us, so we have to figure out a way for brothers and sisters to worship together…

 

If we’re in the city for the sake of the city, then we need to pastor the entire city… My question for pastors is: are you concerned with every neighborhood in your city?

 

Find out what the poor churches in your city are doing well, and lend them your strength… we weren’t out looking for merger opportunities, but for partners…

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • Do you see the Holy Spirit as the great unifier? What evidence is there in your church culture of that conviction?
  • How have you sensed the Spirit nudging you out of your comfort zone into relationship with others who are different from you? What steps can you take?
  • What can you do to grow in your concern for the whole city, and not just your neighborhood?

 

Episode 013: Developing Ministry with the Hurting

EPISODE 013 – SHOW NOTES – DEVELOPING MINISTRY WITH THE HURTING

For this week’s podcast, we were joined by Matthew Ayers, CEO of Dream Centers of Colorado Springs to talk about how the local church can lead the way in serving the most vulnerable people in their cities.

 

Churches are notoriously bad listeners… the Christian community in America needs to do a better job of asking better questions and listening to the city’s response, and then stepping to the front of the line to meet those needs…

 

It was amazing to me how much good work was happening in our city that we didn’t know about… when we began to explore the areas of pain in our city, we began to unearth some amazing ministries…

 

The early church had a commitment to care for the poor… they took it more seriously than we take it…

 

Most of the people in our church were not aware of the brokenness that was happening in our city… what the Dream Centers brought to New Life was an awareness of the poor… now that they know, I don’t have any trouble motivating them to get involved…

 

The senior pastor of the church has to carry this in a deep way or it will become just a little project on the side…

 

I’ve discovered that this has become a discipleship mechanism for us… people are discovering that they can use what they have to be a blessing to others…

 

The poor are not a problem to be solved but a people to be joined… if you’re not regularly looking into the eyes of the poor, you are probably not seeing Jesus…

 

God’s Spirit is already incredibly active… if we will do the hard work of slowing down, paying attention, talking and listening to others that are already engaged in this way, we have a lot to learn…

 

Any time we get serious about taking care of the poor of our city, you will never lack for resources to do it…

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

1 – On a scale of 1-10, how important is caring for the poor to you and your ministry? Why did you give it the number you did?

2 – What can you begin to do to raise this value in your own heart and in the heart of your congregation?

3 – What would it look like for you to begin genuinely listening to the needs of your city?

4 – How can you begin?

 

RESOURCES

Ray Bakke – Theology as Big as a City

Dream Centers of Colorado Springs

Episode 011: The Church and Race

For this week’s podcast, we’re joined by Pastor Derwin Gray of Transformation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina for a conversation on race, diversity, and leading multiethnic churches.
 

 

Episode 011 – SHOW NOTES – Derwin Gray – The Church and Race

 

We believe that the church is God’s primary vehicle to transform the world, and for us, being multiethnic is intrinsic to the Gospel…

 

Theology is for ecclesiology… God wants a family… and this message isn’t preached… we’ve stripped the Bible of its context and we wonder why we struggle with discipleship…

 

A homogenous church would have been unthinkable to the Apostle Paul… God’s fulfilling his covenant with Abraham must be a front burner issue or we are going to have an underdeveloped view of the gospel…

 

When racism is rarely preached in a church, you can believe that a lot of racism is [present] in that church…

 

I have a pretty good name in Charlotte, and I thought, “If I get treated this way, imagine how people who don’t have my privilege will get treated, constantly…”

 

I think the church is the answer… our Sermon on the Mount ethic needs to shape how we live and move and breathe…

 

We as the church must become a classroom to teach the world what love looks like…

 

Here’s the thing: we haven’t been taught how to do this… we need churches that know how to do this to teach other churches how to do it…

 

You can’t cultivate a multiethnic church if you don’t lead a multiethnic life…

 

You can’t be a consumer and play on a team, but you can be a consumer and be in the church… in the church we’re actually designing our services for you to consume, and so no wonder we struggle with it!

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • Do you believe that the gospel speaks to racial issues? Why or why not?
  • Is your church homogeneous? Why?
  • What can you and your church do to begin to move towards a greater engagement with racial issues and greater ethnic diversity?

 

 

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Derwin Gray – The HD Leader

Special Episode: Welcoming the Stranger: A Conversation on DACA

“Welcoming the Stranger: A Conversation on DACA”

 

Show Notes

This is important because I’m the pastor of a lot of DACA kids… this is not a political point to me… these are real people that we know… they are human beings with real stories…

Often times when these public issues get discussed, we’re tempted to say we need less emotion and more reason… but emotions are an important key in understanding where people are coming from…

When someone exhibits a lot of emotion over something, it shows that it is something they are very concerned about… which makes it an opportunity for empathy…

[As an immigrant], there is a feeling of fear that is hard to shake… there is a sense of vulnerability here even when you do this the right way…

We believe in safe borders and in the rule of law… I believe in safe, legal immigration because its best for human beings… we need to figure out a way to make immigration safe and legal…

The story of the people of God is a story of immigration… to be the people of God is to be waiting for home… there is a very real theological dimension of this… if we can’t feel that human desire [for home], then I need to check my heart…

“So you love the poor? Then tell me what their names are…” this needs to be able to be named… it needs to be situated in the lives of people…

Christians have a unique ability to be empathetic to those who have been displaced because of the story of our Scriptures…

We need to be a prophetic voice to the political system… I’m calling on Congress and on our President and on our state and local officials to make sure this legislation is done well… we need to let the morality of Jesus to overrule political divisiveness…

There’s a price to pay [as a pastor] for this… anytime I bring up immigration from the pulpit, I get scathing rebukes from people because it has become so politicized…

If a pastor will get up and be compassionate and really welcome diverse viewpoints, you’ll see there are truths in all of the camps…

For me, this cannot be some theoretical discussion… pastors, whatever you do, just get to know these people… we need to be compassionate and help them win…

The kingship of Jesus Christ shapes everything… we don’t want to answer these issues through the prism of our politics… we want to let the surprising and shocking kingdom of God confront us and challenge us and cause us to rethink our positions…

Practically, you can get involved in this… there are immigration attorneys that are willing to do pro bono work… we want to help families go through a legal process… they just need someone to walk alongside them…

If we don’t know their names, we have failed the people in our church…

Resources

Evangelical Immigration Table
Christian Community Development Association

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