All posts tagged Reformission

Driscoll: Missional Church

by Hugh on July 9, 2008 in Faith with 1 Comment

me-and-mark-driscoll Carrying on from Mark’s first talk on Spirit-Led Missions he went on to speak about what a Missional church is. Firstly he concluded his 8-point definition of a church:

Regenerated Church membership
Qualified Leadership (male eldership)
Gathers regularly for preaching and worship
Sacraments ministered correctly (Baptism and Communion)
Unity in Word and Spirit
Discipline for holiness
Loves all people
Evangelises and makes disciples

He went on expanding on point 8 to talk about all of church being on mission, citing Leslie Newbiggin who spoke of being engaged in mission that understands its culture. Driscoll then gave four examples of churches and how they respond to culture:

Bombshelter - the fundamentalist church that hides from culture, treating church as a safe haven from it. They preach against the culture in an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality, they’re not missional.
Mirror - the liberal church that is simply a reflection of the culture.
Parasite - the church that takes all the benefits that a culture provides but does not serve, give to, or love that culture.
City within a City – the church loves Jesus, believes the Bible and lives differently within the culture, it invites others to join in the distinctive living.

Obviously he’s with the fourth church! Driscoll then went through the 12 aspects of a missional church – he got to 4, having spent about half an hour on the 3rd!

Church is a missional outpost, it exists to grow, to put on more services, set up new campuses and plant new churches.
Every Christian is a Missionary. The gospel needs to be preached every week (to encourage inviting friends) and members need to be trained in doctrine and apologetics (so they can answer questions).
Aware of Local Culture. Mark talked through most forms of media (TV, radio, Internet, blogs, social networking) and how he uses them, he spoke of watching TV missionally – seeing the idols displayed in the media, people’s personal heavens. He also chatted about knowing the places where people socialise and speaking to those in the know about what people get up to.
Contending and Contextualizing the Gospel. Mark spoke first on 1 Corinthians 9:22 – “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some”. He spoke of having ‘timeless truths and timely methods’, of being ‘seeker-sensible’. In conclusion he gave one of the most clear explanations of contextualization I have heard him give – he said…

“you do not need to make the gospel relevent, but you do need to show that the gospel is relevent”

Afterwards it was good to see a little party from UCCF present and I was able to chat with Scott Thomas about Acts29, church planting and the partnership with Steve Timmis culminating in an event at St. James Clerkenwell on Friday night and the Dwell conference on Saturday. And being a geek, I went and got a picture with Mark – he has a really large head…

Chandler: Core Values

by Hugh on July 7, 2008 in Faith, Talks with 1 Comment

Matt Chandler from the Village Church is currently on sabbatical, but I need to let you know about some recent good sermons. He’s got to about chapter 9 of a big series on Luke (20 sermons so far), it’s awesome stuff!

Back in May, Matt finished a 5-part topical series on the church core-values which is well worth a listen to:

What is Truth?

What is Christian Spirituality? – really good, what true Spirit-filled churches should be like!

What is Community?

What is Foot-Washing?

What is Missional Living?

These sermons and others will go into my good sermons database page – it’s just a bit of fun for me but hopefully as I keep updating it, it will be a great resource to find good sermons in one place!

Also, Matt Chandler’s church, The Village are doing a building project and have launched a new website for that including some video testimonies from some members – here’s an example…

New Books

by Hugh on July 6, 2008 in Books, Faith with No comments

Tim Keller has a new book coming out in October called ‘The Prodigal God‘, it’s an exposition of the ‘Parable of the Prodigal Sons’ and I get the impression that like ‘Reason for God’ it will be accessible for both Christians and non-Christians alike. It’s released on the 30th and you can currently pre-order from Amazon for around �9, I’m hoping that the Good Book Company might have it in stock at a similar price nearer the time, I’ll let you know.

Here’s a short interview with Keller about the book, and a response from Keller about the use of the word ‘Prodigal’ in relation to God.

Also, Mark Driscoll has lots of books coming out this year which has prompted the launch of Resurgence Literature publishing (ReLit). The first book was Vintage Jesus, I’ve finally got round to reading that so I’ll review it soon.

The latest books out (released last week) are a series of 4 books – ‘A Book You’ll Actually Read‘ – they’re less than 100 pages on ‘The Old Testament’, ‘The New Testament’, ‘Church Leadership’ and ‘Who is God?’. These are the square shaped ones (left). At the end of July there’s a book called ‘Practical Theology for Women’ coming out by Wendy Alsup, a deacon at Mars Hill. ‘Death by Love‘ (right) is coming out at the end of September, from what I gather it is based on Driscoll’s ‘Christ on the Cross’ series and then put in to a letter format. Finally in January 2009 ‘Vintage Church‘ (middle) is being released, subtitled ‘Timeless Truths and Timely Methods’ – it’s in the style of the Vintage Jesus book and I’m guessing will be similar to the Radical Reformission, probably with more of a focus on some of his sermon series (1 Corinthians, Nehemiah) and some practical suggestions. One more thing, they’re also publishing other non-Mars-Hill books, so far just Total Church by Timmis and Chester.

$A Book You\'ll Actually Read$ Vintage Church Death by Love

Last week I picked up some books for myself at EMA – Total Church (Timmis and Chester), Why we’re not Emergent (some American guys), and The Gospel and Personal Evangelism (Dever)… will give some thoughts when I get round to reading.

EMA 2008 (Day 1)

by Hugh on June 25, 2008 in Faith with No comments

EMA 2008

Today I went to the first day of a 3 day conference called the Evangelical Ministry Assembly, it’s run by the Proclamation Trust at St. Helen’s Bishopsgate in central London. This is the 25th year of the conference and the theme this year is Preaching – “Him We Proclaim”.

Christopher Ash – Why Preaching?

He gave a defence of preaching, stating that preaching works because it transcends cultural differences – although we can add our own constraints to it. He spoke about the authority of the preacher (a borrowed authority) and the ‘prophetic’ nature of preaching.

Simon Austen – Ephesians

This was an expostion of Ephesians 1 and 2 focusing on the themes of identity and what it means to be Church.

Steve Timmis – ‘Getting in touch with God’s global mission’

This was my choice from the seminar stream, ended up sitting next to the Big Moon Man. Steve started with two underlying principles: Theology – Who is God? and Ecclesiology – What is the Church? He took us to Revelation 4 & 5, revealing that God’s mission is all about his Son. Then to Ephesians, seeing that Christ rules his Church (his body) and that it is called to live as “communities of light”.

He then went through ’10 Top Tips’ answering questions along the way, here are those tips;

Be ravished by Christ
Preach, teach and gossip Christ
Extend your boundaries of application beyond “read Bible, pray more, tell someone about Jesus”
Plant churches among unreached people groups around you
Get your church involved in another part of the world
Work from a realistic, achievable activity to a transforming one
Work from realistic giving, to sacrificial giving
Give away your best
Recognise mutual benefit
Keep it about God’s Kingdom, not yours

John Woodhouse – Colossians

Whoever does the last session has a tough job, it’s pretty stuffy, a lot of people are tired from the day plus travelling to get there… I’ll be gracious and say I was too tired to concentrate.

Dwell London

by Hugh on June 17, 2008 in Faith with 2 Comments

There’s only 150 tickets left for the Dwell Conference happening on Saturday 12th July in Central London. It’s for anyone interested in church planting in whatever form that takes. Speakers are Mark Driscoll, Scott Thomas and Steve Timmis, and it will cost you the bargain price of �21. To hear what kind of things go on you can listen to talks from Dwell New York conference from the Acts29 Network. Sign up for your tickets now from the Good Book Company!

Sussex Gospel Partnership

by Hugh on April 26, 2008 in Faith with 3 Comments

Today BH hosted the annual Sussex Gospel Partnership conference, entitled “The Mission Minded Church”… the purpose of regional gospel partnerships is to encourage and equip evangelical churches in Sussex to work together; to support training schemes, conferences, evangelism and ultimately church planting.

Today we were joined by guest speaker Steve Timmis from Crowded House, along with 300 Christians from the partnership from all around Sussex. Steve gave two main talks from Philippians about being a gospel shaped church, and encouraged us all as gospel citizens to be gospel ministers. Steve said some great things in explanation of the text and in very practical application. He said some things which I imagined might have been a bit edgy to some there, but it’s always good to be challenged and rebuked by God’s word!

Would highly recommend listening to the talks… there were also 3 seminars; mission to 50-70s, 18-30s and families….

Talks from BH website

On the subject of the BH website, watch this space… the new look will be launched some time after exams… but this is top secret!!

Chandler on Preaching

by Hugh on April 3, 2008 in Faith with No comments

This is one of the pre-Resurgence conference videos – Matt Chandler, Advice for Preachers… Live Preaching, Live the Gospel… burn for the text… possessed by the text…

Chandler on Luke

by Hugh on March 23, 2008 in Faith with 2 Comments

Since September 2007, Matt Chandler from The Village Church, in Dallas, Texas, has been preaching through Luke’s Gospel, he’s up to around chapter 6. It’s really good stuff, a nice length to listen to and very challenging. Add it to your podcast feed!

Chandler is mates with Driscoll and doing a similar kind of Reformed Missional church, like Mars Hill. But, in a different place, so it’s interesting listening to a similar style/methodology/missiology, but preaching into a different context/culture. Driscoll is dealing with postmodern, liberal, pagan, Seattle-ites. Chandler on the other hand is largely dealing with Fundamentalist Bible-belters and Osteen-Prosperity types, so has lots to say to those who are religious or brought up in Christian tradition.

Starting to think about how to best do this kind of Reformission in the UK… thoughts to follow over the next few months…

A bit of TK

by Hugh on December 29, 2007 in Books, Faith with No comments

I do like a bit of TK (Tim Keller), as does Povey, who is officially a TK-geek. As it happens, Mark Driscoll is also a TK-geek, stating in one of his sermons that he rips most of his material from TK – in other news Driscoll joined Facebook last week, over 1000 friends already, most of whom, like me have never met him.

Keller - Reason for God Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed TK at EMA and listen to a bit of his stuff every now and then. Although the one thing that does annoy me is that most of his sermons cost money, not cheap either! But one free one, a good one is available at BeThinking on the subject of exclusivity and other religions and worldviews, he’s great at analysing and deconstructing worldviews.

Newbigin - Gospel in a Pluralist Society Exciting news for TK fans, he’s written a book! The book is titled ‘The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Scepticism’ , and I’m guessing picks up some of the same of the same themes as the BeThinking talk. You can read a bit more about it on the Redeemer website, he has a little page called ‘Yes, I wrote a book‘. It’s released on the 14th February and will cost �12 on Amazon, although the cover looks pretty bad, looks like it’s been published by Banner!

Another book that caught my attention recently was Lesslie Newbign’s ‘The Gospel in a Pluralist Society’, after it was recommended by both Driscoll and Keller, who I would regard as being two of the key thinkers on what you might call Reformission, so I think I shall try and get myself a copy some time.

Confessions of a Reformission Rev.

by Hugh on September 25, 2007 in Books, Faith with No comments

Read this book while on the train to Budapest… this book is the story of Mars Hill church in Seattle, along with some insights into various aspects of missiology and ecclesiology from Driscoll along the way.

The Criticisms

The two main criticisms I’ve heard about this book, and Driscoll’s ministry are; 1) the chapters are all based around the size of the church, 2) there’s lots of inappropriate things that Driscoll has done that he refers to.

Having read the book I think these are flawed criticisms – first, the book is about the growth of the church, and a vision for more growth, having targets is healthy for mission and focus, in one of his sermons Driscoll says about his church “Is it all about numbers? Well yeh it is because numbers are people and we want to serve as many people as God gives us.” Second, the book is called Confessions not everything here is presented as the right way to do things and Driscoll often talks about the times he has come to repent of his mistakes in ministry.

Key Points

Mission – Driscoll starts off with some of the themes of ‘Radical Reformission’, in all of the decisions he takes in Mars Hill he always makes sure that the focus is kept on the church mission – to reach Seattle with the gospel. Sometimes he has to “put dogs down” when there are people getting in the way of this mission.

Change – when a church grows from 50-4000 in less than 10 years there’s inevitably going to be some radical changes taking place. It’s interesting to hear about Driscoll’s personal change, distancing himself from the liberal Emergent movement and embracing Reformed theology, and how through preaching through Romans the church established this position. Driscoll makes some controversial, sometimes unpopular decisions, but is always looking to keep the church vision focused and ready to grow.

Management – a lot of what Driscoll does seems very experimental, but is always done under the authority of Scripture and the council of other pastors. Firstly, I like the basis of leadership, where rather than recruiting external leaders, that new leaders are raised up and trained within the church, and the idea of hiring staff slowly and firing quickly. And there’s lots of good thoughts about being a pastor, leading a church, leading an eldership team and managing staff, members, change and growth.

Questions – it’s not really a study guide, but at the end of each chapter Driscoll asks the readers some questions about their churches and their attitudes. Driscoll is on a mission and is constantly questioning why we do things, Driscoll brings us back to the Bible for the answers…

Overall…

You have to remember that this book is the story of a specific church in a specific place. And also that it’s a book of confessions… not everything is said and done is ‘good’. But, Driscoll’s passion for evangelism, for leading and building a church is worth the read alone, his thoughts on how to lead/pastor the church may seem a bit strange sometimes, but I love them, because he always goes back to the gospel mission and what the Bible says as his lead and guide.

As I understand the book is now out of date, the church has grown even more and has started multi-site services, with preaching streamed by satellite. Driscoll ends the book with a vision and strategy to see a church of 20,000, I suspect an updated edition will not be too far away!

As ever, it’s an easy read, full of humour and sarcasm, couldn’t put it down. Other reviews of the book can be found at… Reformissionary, Tim Challies, thebluefish

Gonna read about the ‘Cambridge Seven’ now…