the blog

So, blogging is all about being real, being authentic right? Well I’m back to school right now and here’s me being real with my first “Paper” in probably 10 years…

“The book of Acts gives us a well organized history of the proliferation of the first “Christian” church from its inception in Jerusalem to the expansion outward, especially through Paul’s journeys as it stretches to Rome. The church began with many signs and wonders, including: the coming of the Holy Spirit in the form of “tongues of fire” above the heads of the disciples, speaking in tongues (many languages), exponential growth, and healings, to name a few. The church also operated in a very communal way, with members eating together, living together, and sharing all their possessions. The early church also dealt with governess, segregation, “law” versus “grace”, heresy, betrayal, and persecution.

One of the typical responses by churches forming today is to look at the church in the book of Acts as normative; even taking snapshots of the church at different points of its development and calling that behavior normative. If we do believe that the book of Acts gives is a guide-map for building a local church, than we really have to look for some general patterns of behavior that we can apply today.

Some of the issues that the early church of Acts dealt with leave us some great patterns that we can bring into the modern church. For example, when the church in Jerusalem began teaching that Gentile Christians must practice the tradition of circumcision, Paul immediately challenged that train of thought. He went directly to James in Jerusalem and argued that this teaching went against teachings of Jesus Christ, and would only lead to an outward religion. We can see this argument throughout the New Testament, and we almost always see that the traditions and outward expressions of religion can lead to pride and legalism. So as we build our churches today we would want to be very careful about traditions and expressions that are imposed on people, leading them away from grace and a relationship based religion.

Another area that the early church showed patterns of normal behavior is in the idea of church planting. As the church grew and expanded, new churches were started in neighboring cities; churches with their own leadership and practices. This was against the model of a central church or synagogue, or holy place of worship. Today we can see that church planting is one of the most successful ways to evangelize. Not only do church plants attract mostly un-churched people, they also create places for people to serve, for ministers to develop, and for new and innovative ideas to be implemented. Church plants are also highly dependent on the faith and tenacity of the members, and require a high level of commitment, just as Paul had as he went and planted churches throughout the Roman Empire.

Those are just a couple examples of some ways we can apply some of the patterns and principles of Acts to today’s churches. I think the most important thing we can to do is to really study what the primary messages are from the stories of the emerging and growing church in Acts. There are many practices that may sound good or look exciting, but have no basis in today’s church culture.”

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So there you have it – hopefully I don’t get slammed too hard from my instructors.

My brother, James, has been living in Virginia for the past few years. He went to Liberty University and has been slowly moving his way into ministry. This weekend he and his team will be launching a church in Midlothian, a suburb of Richmond, called Village Church at Midlothian (I swear Midlothian is a country in Middle Earth from LOTR!).

I had the opportunity to interview Nate Schlomann, one of the pastors, check it out:

1. What process have you gone through up to this point – what have you learned?

One thing that was huge for us is that this isn’t really our first launch, not totally. We gained a lot of experience and perspective starting a church in a college town not too far from here. It’s not completely comparable because there we literally had a $0 budget (not that we’ve got a huge one here), but the experience was still invaluable. It’s hard to imagine going into this completely green. By doing something like that you learn a lot about people and how to lead, a lot of times by making mistakes or at least by noticing things you could have done better.

2. What are some specific & innovative things you are doing to attract/gather/launch?

I don’t know that we’re particularly innovative so much as we’re innovative to our culture. Like, when you live in the blogosphere and see what everyone is doing all over the place, it takes an awful lot to seem innovative. But I do think we’re doing a lot of things really well that people around here haven’t seen before. Not that it’s all about that, but there are a lot of things people need to see that we’ll be doing. We’re preaching the hard parts of God’s Word unapologetically, but at the same time very sensitively to the lost, hurt, and discouraged. That’s a combination that is innovative around here. We’ve definitely got an atmosphere like no one else – music loud, lights low. People just aren’t doing that around here. Innovative for church plants around here, and it’s sad that it is, is we’re aggressively trying to get the word out that we’re here. We passed out 8,000 door hangars last week. We’re doing our best to use facebook and email invites too.

3. What does your launch team look like?

Our launch team is amazing. In a lot of ways it’s really not fair to other launch teams, the talent God has brought together here. We’ve got people to fill a variety of different and complimentary roles. Most new churches have to struggle through some major deficiencies until they are able to bring folks onboard to fill those slots. Not that we’re perfect by any means or that we don’t need help (we do!), but we’re really fortunate for how many different talents God has put together. And I think, making that all the better, we have a very unified team. Most of us were pretty good friends with at least one other person in the team before we started. We didn’t just get thrown together out of seminary or bible school, in other words. The level of commitment in our team, top to bottom, is unusually high.

Thanks Nate!

I’m a huge fan of church plants, I was part of a church plant for 5 years, and have helped my friends and colleages every time a new church is launched in our community. It’s been shown that the most effective thing we can do to reach people with the Gospel is to plant churches. Church plants thrive because the must! There’s not a lot of half hearted leadership in church plants because their existence depends on their commitment to reach unchurched or dechurched people with God’s love, grace, mercy, and truth.

Please keep these guys in your prayers over this weekend as they seek to reach their community for Christ and continue to build his kingdom here on Earth.

Stay tuned for Part 2 with James…

I don’t have a lot of time to blog lately, and tonight is no exception. But I did want to take a minute and share why I am a big Chick-fil-A fan.

I’ve always loved Chick-fil-A, ever since they came to Temecula & Murrieta; before that I had no idea what it was or even how to pronounce it. I loved the food, the service, the fun stuff they did, and just the over all experience. They always seemed to show up at conferences & church events with free food – I knew something was up. Then a couple months ago, I saw Dan Cathy share at the Saddleback Worship Conference about “Creating Raving Fans”, and I was mezmorized – I blogged about it.

After that short exposure to the Chick-fil-A model, I wondered if it would be possible to get him to come to Rancho Community to share with us and encourage our staff – it was shot in the dark. So I sent out an email and in my inbox was a response from our local Chick-fil-A saying that Dan’s son, Andrew was in Southern California and we could possibly get him to come. I was stoked to say the least. I responded and before I knew it we had Andrew booked to share with our entire staff, along with complimentary Chick-fil-A from our local Temecula store, run by Elizabeth Fritz – SCORE!

Needless to say, Andrew Cathy came and shared his heart with us and totally blew us away – I was so grateful. The staff from the Temecula store was amazing, as was the lunch! I recieved a copy of Truett Cathy’s “Eat More Chickin…”, which I am currently reading, and was just energized to continue in my role – to do the best and really go the extra mile for people.

Today (Labor Day), we decided to do something fun with the kids, and the first thing to come to my mind was, Chick-fil-A. Little did we know that today was “wear your team jersey and get a free Chick-fil-A sandwich”. We missed the mem0 and when we got there, the line was out the door, but we were committed. As usual we had an amazing experience, great food & great service. We saw about 3 other people we knew from the community, which is so cool. And the older man that roams the restaurant gave Miles and Macy 2 free Kids Meal tickets. This place knows how to “Create Raving Fans”.

So I just want to send out some props to Chick-fil-A, Andrew, Dan, Elizabeth, Mary-Joe, and the whole Temecula team. Thank you so much, you’ve got a family of fans for life!

It was with heavy hearts that Scott Treadway (Rancho Community Church), and Jim Palmer (Orange County Rescue Mission) announced at a community forum on Thursday evening, August 27th, that the Temecula Murrieta Rescue Mission was pulling its application for the proposed Summerhouse project. For Jen and I it just felt so wrong, thus the title of this post. But we trust that God has a plan to help the least, the last, and the lost and we will continue to support any effort to do so.

I don’t have all the inside information, and legal details that go along with this – but I think I have a pretty good understanding of what happened, and at the very least I have my first hand experiences at both the meeting hosted at Rancho Community Church last Tuesday and the Community meeting at the CRC last Thursday. Also, I need to say that I am not speaking on behalf of Rancho Community or the Temecula Murrieta Rescue Mission – these are just my thoughts.

• We have a mandate (especially if you are a Christian) to help the poor.
• We have poor and homeless people and families in Temecula (and Murrieta, and every surrounding community).
• We have chronically homeless people, we have people who have made terrible choices with their lives, we have people who have just run into impossible situations and have been left with nothing (and everything in between).
• All of these people need help.
• The Summerhouse project (the 20 unit portion) was designed to take in “Families” in transition. This is where I think people have been mis-informed. These families are the SAME families that were living next door to the SAME people who are protesting. These are families who’s children go to the SAME schools as the people who are protesting. These are people who last year were living in 2000+ square foot homes with two cars, two jobs, and two kids…
• The Orange County Rescue mission has a 40+ year successful history of running projects like the proposed Summerhouse (20 Unit) project. They have a comprehensive system that they run families through to give them transitional housing, resource them, and get them back into the middle class society.
• I think what people don’t understand, or won’t understand is that homeless families are in Temecula right now. One of the arguments was that this project would attract homeless; they are here now. And now we have no solution for families, other than local people giving of their personal homes & finances.
• Today I’m sad. Sad because our community failed to recognize and act together to meet the need of families in our own neighborhoods. No wonder there’s no peace amongst nations – we can’t even get it right with those people we see, live with, and work with everyday.
• I’m also sad because fear overcame hope this week in Temecula. Fear of the unknown, fear of giving, fear of opening our hands and sharing our “neighborhood” with those less fortunate, fear of living a life of meaning – helping people around us.
• But I am hopeful, because I believe in a God of restoration and my family and I will continue to work and pray for God’s Kingdom to come on Earth…

If you are feeling like I am, I would encourage you to a) pray (for our city, the opposition, the homeless, the rescue mission) b) write a letter to the city council members showing your support for projects like Summerhouse, and c) volunteer at the Temecula Murrieta Rescue Mission by contacting David Jones at 951.252.1200 or email him.

*Updated*

Here’s a couple links to some other blog posts on Summerhouse:

• James Doezie http://jamesdoezie.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/if-we-have-received-mercy/
• Rich Kirkpatrick http://www.richkirkpatrick.com/rich_kirkpatricks_weblog/2009/08/summerhouse-will-temecula-city-council-cave-in-to-the-misinformed.html

I am blessed to be on a staff at a church where development is a huge value & our leadership is serious about investing in the lives of their staff. Right now we are going through Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together” – it is seriously hitting me between the eyes and right in the gut. Sometimes I find myself finding things very hard to digest and other things speaking right to my soul.

I’m writing this as we are nearly through the entire book, but I’ll probably go back and pull out some content from previous chapters.

Today I was reviewing just the intro to the chapter titled “Ministry” and was just blown away by how DB cuts like a knife into the soul of man. Here’s just some selected quotes from one and a half pages…

“There arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be the greatest” Luke 9:46… This is enough to destroy a fellowship.

…(We must) face this dangerous enemy squarely, and eradicate it… From the first moment when a man meets another person he (or she) is looking for a strategic position he can assume and hold over against that person.

Where is there a person who doesnot with instinctive sureness find the spot where he can stand and defend himeself, but which he will never give up to another, for which he will fight with all of his instict of self-assertation.

It is the struggle of the natural man for self-justification.

Um, all I have to say is: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

This is where so many of us go wrong – and by many of us, I mean me. All I can think of to say is, DB is so right and this verse is the target I want to aim for (read it three times slowly).

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

Phillipians 3:7-9

You thoughts?