Terry McGuire :: Friends blog

For some it is always easier to through money at a need or mission rather then actually becoming physically involved with the issues at hand.

 In what ways do we as leaders encourage people to take part and "do/live" mission rather then simply bankrolling it?

I have been asked this question by more than a few people. I have to admit, I get a bit lost in the semantics my self sometimes. Lately, though, I have been thinking more like a missionary than a pastor (in the traditional sense that is). There are plenty of shepherd/pastors, living within close proximity to where I live. They are serving the Lord, tending their flocks, etc. However, they are all doing primarily the same thing, which is managing what they have instead of searching for the ones they don't have; the ones who might never step foot inside of their church buildings. Don't get me wrong, I love these pastors, most of whom are bi-vocational. They are dedicated men of God who would do anything for the members of their congregations. For most of my ministry I have thought like them, and still do to a large extent. However, I am learning, with the help of men like Ed Stetzer and Alan Hirsch, to think like a missionary.

I want to be in the places where unchurched people gather. I want to bring Christ into those places. Living in post-modern, mostly unchurched America means shifting my thoughts so that they line up with Jesus' thoughts. Did Jesus have a strategy for reaching the lost? If simply going to where lost people are  (which is anywhere and  everywhere) then I guess He had a strategy. For me it simply means living, loving and serving the way Christ did and will do through me.

There's a new church, recently planted near my own field of harvest. They are meeting in a night club, renting some cool, trendy riverside office space. They have an art gallery and an incredible worship service with candles, mood lights, incense, fog machines, a rock band, etc. They are drawing quite a crowd and are about to add a second Sunday morning service to accomodate the crowd they are drawing. They have four pastors, none of whom live in the city they are admittedly attempting to reach. They drive in on Sunday mornings, do there 2 hour gig and then drive out, along with most of their twenty/thirty something congregation, the rest are either college students or do actually live in this city. They do spend time in their offices during the week planning and strategizing how they will grow their church.

Let me say here that I love these guys and what they are doing. However, what they are doing, in my opinion, is not missional/incarnational but attractional. They are merely doing the same thing the church has always done, except with a modern, contemporary twist. Again, that is not necessarily bad, but they're not being as missional as they think and say they are.

My picture of missional and incarnational is living in and engaging the culture, by being who I am in the place God has called me to. This means putting my kids in (God forbid) public school. Enrolling my kids in community activities such as little league baseball, scouting, 4H, etc. and then participating with them on a volunteer basis and meeting other families who live in the same community, send their kids to public school, and sign them up for these same community activities. This isn't an agenda or a program or any attempt to be something I'm not, so that I can hone in on them with the gospel. It is a process, by which I am living in this world, but not of this world; living amongst my neighbors in such a way that they are drawn to what I have, which is peace and joy. It's about developing relationships and friendships and loving my neighbor as myself, so that as Christ lives in me, transforming my life, He also lives and works through me, drawing lost people to Himself and transforming their lives.

For me, that's what it's all about--knowing Christ and making Him known.

A person reads an ad in the newpaper about a church that offers the full meal of Christ in their services.  By meal, I mean it's promised to be filling and satisfiying in every way.  To meet all their needs.  They arrive and are greeted in a friendly manner, taken to a place where they see slides advertising the meal, and they hear people talk about the meal, then we powerpoint the meal and send them on their way.  Unfulfilled, still hungry for the real thing.  Another analogy would be the wine and wineskin.  We have great looking skins, ornate in their appearance and beautiful to the eye, but the wine inside is not sweet and does not taste as wine should.  And people know when it doesn't.  Is the wine in the Church the true wine of Jesus. 

All the things in the Bible are important, but we would agree that the things that Jesus said are most important.  He boiled all the commandments and the law down to loving God and loving others.  Then He gave us a single command, in the spirit of the Shamah, whatever you are doing, wherever you are going, make disciples.  This is the irreducible core of the faith.  You can do more than this and follow Jesus, but not less.  Our churches can vary the wineskin.  But this is the wine.  It has to be there. 

Thoughts?

 Reference:  Howard Snyder:  The Problem of Wineskins, Church Structure in a Technological Age

I have been trying to understand how Biblical leadership works. I have grown up in the evangelical church in the USA and made many asumptions about church leadership based on how I saw it lived out as a child.  I have spent the last 6-7 years unlearning some of what I grew up understanding. I know that some of us are called to function as leaders.  But how do i lead? How do I identify other leaders? and what roles do leaders play in the forming and functioning of the church? Ephesians 4 seems to layout Biblical leadership the best i have seen it. Do you have other thoughts about leadership and how it works?

As we have been praying this year for the Lord to send laborers, He has answered.  I want to share briefly about how this has come about. 

Over two years ago, I had hit a wall.  We had done all the strategizing I thought we could do.  We had new communities everywhere.  Thousands upon thousands of homes being built in the Phoenix area.  No land available within all these master-planned communities...without paying millions.  So I began to pray.  "Lord, you told me to pray for laborers in your harvest.  I know you have them out there somewhere, could you send them please."
Within a month of praying that prayer, I heard from no less than 3 planters who told me that God had put Arizona on their heart.  One was a 14 year veteran from California, another a 7 year veteran from Maryland.  Two more from North Carolina, another from Texas and yet another from California soon followed.  All of these guys were multipliers.  They had born the fruit in their ministry in the past and knew how to implant themselves into the harvest.  They lived incarnationally and know how to make disciples.  And they all came here.  At this time.  God is always very on purpose and on time with His moves and I can't imagine this being done for any other reason than to spawn a movement.

Within this group He has sent us, we now have coaches and mentors who are helping to create the environment needed to reproduce followers of  Jesus and new communities of those people.  As we have seen, He has also brought us fresh and young faces that are tired of being synical and want to see more from and for the church.  They have come into a community of personal and corporate discipleship.  They are eager to follow and to grow into the person they are called to be.  We have seen them begin to develop small influence groups that will provide the kindling for the movement.  They are infected and infectious.  They are learning to live out the essentials, the irreducible core, loving God, loving others, and making disciples.  They are doing so in a rabbinical community, where questions are asked and not answered easily, where tension and conflict are embraced as part of the learning process.  And nothing will ever be the same. 

For old guys like me (43) this is the most fun we've had in years.  Getting to coach these guys and unleash them on the culture with all the tools they need to change it and doing so without having to try and plan it all out.  Just following the leadership of the Spirit as He opens the doors and eyes of people all around us to the truth of Jesus through incarnational disciple-making.  Incarnational church planting.  
Yes, it has begun, and nothing will stop it now.  Not even us.
Praise God. 

And thank you,
David,
Mike,
Ray,
Dennis,
Mark,
Scott,
Mike C,
Judd,
Tim,
Bobby
For joining the movement.

We discussed this on Sunday in our Worship Service, It brought about some very interesting and thought provoking discussions, thought it might be a good one here.

Do you think that a Mentoring Minister has the right to have the person
they are mentoring to cast aside all others, all trainings and all prior
learning and relearn from only them ?