Dinner and a movi... ng message!

bootcamp diary entry: Wednesday Dinner

We found a great local spot called "Local Harvest" and I had a Missouri Meatball stuffed with all kind of goodness. But what we really devoured was a conversation about the mission and vision of MD.  WE ARE DETERMINED TO NAIL THIS DOWN ASAP!  We bought dome wine and local homemade icecream and had desert in the apartment. My head is swimming with encouraging stuff and my heart is ready to get back and tell Pat this crazy notion that we are full steam ahead.

bootcamp diary entry: Thursday

bfast in the apartment consisted of leftovers: last of the icecream,  finished of the bottom of a sweet Riesling,  bagel with cream cheese,  and coffee. arrived at the conference to have Darrin Patrick speak into the marriage aspects of a church planter. OUCH! started off with familiar stuff from Ephesians 5 and I thought "man I got this thing nailed"!  wasn't too long though that I realized I had been hoodwinked into a very convicting sermon on just how poorly I've included my wife in this church plant notion- and most other areas of my life ad well.  I have some repenting to do when I get home. Darrin's wife ended the session speaking from her heart about what a a husband can do and be in this planting process- man did that help me!

ACTS29 LEONCE CRUMP GOOD STUFF

Bootcamp diary entry: Wednesday afternoon

Speaker: Leonce Crump: The real mission: people meeting Jesus! "to what end" How can we not tell a person about Christ as the reason for our kind acts of mercy.  A powerful communicator with a powerful message that being a Christian means verbalizing the "why" behind the good actions we do.  It's not the gospel if we think we can just continue to do good to others and somehow think that they will eventually figure out that we are Christians. We are called to proclaim the good news in both deed and word 1 Peter 2:9 "that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light". "Preach the word, if need be use words" is commonly touted by Christians and attributed to Fancis of Assisi, however; truth be told this isn't biblical nor can you find a place in his writings that he actually said it. The point Leonce made was compelling- we are called to speak out and not merely perform acts of kindnesses toward others. on a personal note, Having seen the response to hurricane Sandy in NJ I have not seen evidence of any real impact for the sake of the gospel by churches that have supplied aid to the hurting and displaced. The outpouring of volunteers and supplies have been enormous from organizations and individuals,  yet the deeds of unchurched efforfts are equal to those of the church if Chdristians remain silent about the good news of Jesus. There is no difference in the benevolence of saved or unsaved unless Christ is made known in our actions.  Good stuff indeed!

Wednesday ACTS 29 STUFF

bootcamp diary entry: Wednesday wake up
That great pizza last night had great lasting effects on me but I am so psyched to get rolling with the conference. It starts at 1 so we have the morning to acclimate to the setting. It's a beautiful section of the city and the conference is literally a walk in the park to get to.

bootcamp diary entry: Wednesday Conference begins
Had an awesome bfast with Justin n Nathan. At the journey church chatting with acts29 staff. Already made some good connections planning on making more!
First session
Wow!  Worship is ernegetic in a way I've never seen before! "Praise the Lord oh my soul, oh my soul. Worship His holy name"

Speaker John Bryson: "Don't just plant a church, plant a teaching church! One that teaches and trains leaders to plant another church". "itvs better to mot planta church than to plant a jacked up church" . "Church plantingbis miserable and awesome all wrapped up into one".  Matthew 5 (feeding of the 5k) "Your ability to plant a church is like 5 sardines and a few saltines". "Boys take and consume: men give". "There were only 4 peoplr in the garden God, Satan,  Adam, and Eve. . . and Adam still couldn't pin it on himself! "

A29

bootcamp diary entry: Wednesday wake up

That great pizza last night had great lasting effects on me but I am so psyched to get rolling with the conference. It starts at 1 so we have the morning to acclimate to the setting. It's a beautiful section of the city and the conference is literally a walk in the park to get to.

From St. Louis With Love

I was just mulling over the content from the preaching of Dwayne Bond (thus the James Bond reference in the Title). He is an Acts 29 pastor in Charleotte, NC, and spoke on Lessons Learned from Church PLanting.
He gave us a list of things that we can be tempted in as we walk down the road to church planting (or anywhere in leadership for that matter):

Perform, Pretend, Control, Worry, Hate

The interesting thing that I kept thinking was how UN-remarkable the list itself was. Much like the qualifications for an Elder (1 Timothy 3:1-7 , Titus 1:5-9) are required of all believers elsewhere in the Bible, the difference in them is the call God would put on individuals lives. Thus this list is a potential pitfall to any in leadership of our formative years, but also to any that attend and find themselves called to the mission of Missio Dei. It is very insightful to lay these ideas out since for many of us we can relate with several if not all of these lines of thinking to the detriment of the gospel work in our lives.

Here is the core lie that we work from in each of these 5 bad fruits:

We perceive our reality in light of our expectations instead of re-calibrating our reality and expectations around Christ.

Perform

The snare in performance is when we allow our performance to make us feel good abut ourselves in our accomplishments. OR conversely we let our performance make us depressed because of our lack of accomplishments. Our identity is based on what we can and cant do, when instead it should be on Jesus and what He has and will do through us despite ourselves.

Pretend

In essence this is basically "painting on a happy face". Often in Christianity we like to look better than we actually are. We believe that by pretending to be "better" we will somehow magnify the amazing power of the Gospel into some Holy elixir that cleans up all our crap and turns it into roses. In reality all this does is rob the gospel of it's power by making it UN-appealing for all those people who are actually broken and know that there is no way they will ever be clean. These people are right, they never will be clean, so how bout we show them that we aren't actually clean, but simply holy, set apart by Jesus because of His perfection not ours.

Control

Somehow if we can exercise authority over all the areas in our lives we can maximize our opportunities and it will all get done right. NOT! In leadership this mentality robs people of the opportunity to grow, minister, fail, learn, and lead by giving opportunities and then re-claiming or scrapping them at the first sign of mis-managment or failure, or gives the opportunity but not the authority thus keeping it under our control as the leader (micro-management). In general when we attempt to control even our own lives it sets us up for the ultimate failure by replacing God with ourselves. When we are on the throne that is God's it only goes one way. BAD.

Worry

Have you ever worried about the worry that worrying causes? I know. It's bad, right? Worry in leadership sucks you dry! When you worry you take the Sovereignty of God away from Him and make Him as frail and capable of failure as you are. Let me help you out, whether in leadership or not, YOU WILL FAIL, hard and often. But God won't, in fact He is so the complete perfect that He takes our fails and makes than His successes (Genesis 45:4-8). Yep He's that good.

Hate 

Players gonna play; Haters gonna hate. In leadership this is when we seek out anyway we cna downplay the success that others have, or highlight our successes in comparison to others failures. The point is to blow up our ego while shattering others. This is a common practice whether inside or outside leadership. One-Uping, humiliation, false humility, sarcasm can all be tools of the well versed hater (all of which I feel i am very good at, unfortunately). The Kryptonite to Hating is contentment. Being content where God has us and in doing exactly what He has called us to. After all it's all about Jesus any way. His glory not my name.       

 

More stuff from my head n heart

bootcamp diary entry: Tuesday flight
I was wondering when one comes to grips with being identified with the idea that you now introduce yourself as a "church planter"? What in the world must that sound like to someone who is unchurched. Heck even the term unchurched is foreign to the unregenerate. Crap! Unregenerate? When was the last time you used any of these words in a sentence outside of church?

bootcamp diary entry: Tuesday Arrival at apartment
Really nice section of town. God provided a great location for us- within walking distance of our conference. We ate at a local pub and had awesome pizza and a beer- turns out we think it was a gay bar. Anyway, I was thinking over the day. Work, then a funeral, then vote, then pack, then fly here, then eat with my buds. God did some amazing things today.  He powerfully forged ahead of my wife as we attended a very tense funeral. A time that I thought would fill her with fear and strangle her with inferior thoughts turned out to be wonderfully smooth. She summed it up on the way there, "if fear controls us then there's no room for Christ to control us". Pretty good day.

On Mission at ACTS29

Some thoughts on our church planting trip:

bootcamp diary entry: Tuesday night flight

In the air now, somewhere over western PA, with two fellow church planters. How do I know they are going to be good planters? Well, one has their bible open to the first letter Paul wrote to the Thessalonians and the other is reading Community by Brad House. I am highlighting in The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller. I am wondering what God will do after we return. I guess I am concerned about this crazy notion that the God of creation actually needs our help to build His church. I find out tomorrow how this thing works from people who have already navigated through the struggles, sacrifices, and special blessings of starting a church.

Study Session

As I was studying for nursing school at the Barnes and Noble for Rowan University in Glassboro, I was secretly studying the people around me as well. I went to B&N on a mission: to familiarize myself with the culture Misiso Dei is trying to reach. I watched two younger guys make spreadsheets and discuss finance two tables down. To my left was a girl  sitting "coffee shop-style" in an oversized lounge chair reading a book. As my study session progressed, I realized that this is doable. 

Church planting has been a huge (exciting, but huge) task in my head for the past few weeks. Glassboro looks a lot bigger when I look at it as a mission field, a warzone. But watching the people in B&N, I realized these people were just like me. That fact alone gave me peace. Jesus came to save people like me, so there should be absolutely no reason why I need to be intimidated about the seemingly daunting task of planting in Glassboro. But I still wondered, What does it take?

"Glassboro looks a lot bigger when I look at is as a mission field." Post to Twitter

Then a man with a limp started tripping down the escalator. 
I shot up and got to him (the only one who tried, which astounded me). The poor man's cane had fallen the 30ft down the escalator, and I accompanied him the rest of the way down, making sure he didn't' follow all his belongings down as well. After he was situated, I rode back up the escalator and continued studying.

That's what Glassboro needs to see! They need to see Missio Dei in the community, helping to make it better, and sharing Jesus as we go!

We're currently forming a mission statement, but it's only for legalities. We know what mission we have! As we look forward to our soft launch November 4th, lets not forget it! See you Sunday.

Change- by John Gruber

This post was written by John Gruber back in 2008. The truths still apply today, so we'd like to share them with you. Enjoy!

I used to think there were only two certainties in life- death and taxes. While the one is inescapable the other is a constant drain on all the oppressed who are blessed with an income. There is however another definite constant that is unavoidable. It is undeniable and blatantly obvious. It goes on in us and around us everyday. It even happens while we are sleeping. It is change. I write this as a person who is changing and I am writing to you, a person who is different today than you were yesterday, last week, last month, last year.

To say we do not change is to deny a fundamental truth of human existence. However, of all the ways that change happens to you and me, the spiritual changes are often the hardest to recognize. It’s not hard to see the change that marriage makes, or the change in income between the old job, the new job, or no job at all. It’s not hard to see your child change from crawling to walking to running. Yet if you evaluate how you are better suited to live this thing called the Christian life, you may find it a little more difficult to see those areas of needed change.

"To say we do not change is to deny a fundamental truth of human existence." Post to Twitter

One Bible professor said it this way, “Only one word describes the life of a believer, and that word is “change”.” Now I would have said “saved”, “redeemed”. “born again” and so on. The word change truly captures the essence of our spiritual journey and resting place in the Savior, Jesus Christ. I was changed from lost to found, from dead in my sin to alive in Christ, from sinner to saint. As grand and glorious as salvation is, change does not stop upon our acceptance of the free Gift. No, change defines the actual life of true believers. Change from self and the old man to Christ-likeness and towards living out of our new nature. This change is testimony of a God who is alive, active, and pursuing all those who are his children.
 
Often times His desire to change us goes unnoticed, and then there are those ordained moments when He desires to change us in ways so deep and to the core that we wince, cry, and even kick against it. After all, although we can’t deny that we need to change sometimes we just feel safe that things are the way they are. So infinite and deep is our God’s knowledge of what is good for us that change takes on dimensions that are unfamiliar and down right scary to us. 

"So critical is our need to be changed into the image of Christ that God has a no-holds-barred approach in our sanctification process." Post to Twitter

I think of the changes over the past several years in my own life. It seems that the most dark and troublesome times brought about the most deep and lasting change. Those things I feared greatly were used to strip me of the nuts and bolts that I thought life in Christ was all about. My journey began as my wife, Pat, regressed into depression- a depression so deep that our lives were turned inside out. What used to be safe and secure was stripped away. Confidences in finances, job security, physical health, family, friends, church, home, and worst of all, faith evaporated in a few horrific months. Feet that found safety on the firm ground of “normal” found a slippery slope that slid down to a dark, foreboding pit.  Hope in God met squarely with hope in medicine. Faith in God looked face to face with reliance on self. There was no comfort, there was no relief, there was no joy, there was no light. Looking back, I still shutter at the shear horror of that time. I don’t wish it on anyone, in fact I would rather trade places with someone in the pit of depression. I can say this because I know that lasting change has at its very core in a God who changes what we call bad and arduous into something good and holy. So here I am, changed. Seeing in retrospect what was the only solution possible to mold and make Pat and me into children of the King that look more like Him and function in ways that bring Him glory. Those of you reading who know me, know that this child of the King isn’t perfect yet. I need more change, don’t I? Perhaps it will come slow and comfortably, perhaps it will come swiftly and painfully. There are no guarantees as to how God will grow us, but this one fact shows His great and abiding grace and power- He will change us and He will change us for our good and His eternal purposes. Isn’t that worth rejoicing over!

welcome to missio Dei.