Lesslie Newbigin – Born 100 Years Ago Today
Read a great article at Christianity Today about a pioneer in the faith, Lesslie Newbigin. We owe much of our modern missional thinking to this man and his innovative thinking.
Heart for the City
During our gatherings on Sunday nights we are studying through the book of Nehemiah. One of the reasons I chose to teach through Nehemiah as we are establishing The Bridge here in Fort Collins is due to Nehemiah’s heart for the city of Jerusalem. When Nehemiah heard the news of Jerusalem’s plight he sat down and wept for many days. His heart broke for the condition of his city.
When was the last time your heart broke for the condition of your city? Nehemiah was simply displaying the heart of His God. A heart that compelled Jesus to humble Himself by taking on human flesh and then willingly become sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). This was Jesus’ mission…to restore humanity and all of creation back to its created goodness (Gen. 1:31 cf. Rev. 21:5).
It is my desire to plant a church here in FoCo that is on this same mission with God (John 20:21). A church with a heart that bleeds for the city, a city filled with broken and devastated people who desperately need to be restored and redeemed by their Creator.
Will you join God on this mission?
Here is a poem written by Francis DuBose that really captures the heart of what it means to be missional (Thank you to Tommy O’Keefe for making me aware of this great piece).
I choose the city…
Not simply to live in it,
to see it,
to hear it;
But to touch it;
yes, to embrace it,
to hold it,
To feel the wild glory of its
pulsating soul,
To move over its wide,
hurried broadways,
To stand stilled and sobered
at the nowhere of its dead-end streets,
To be trapped with it in its
pain and problems,
To be at once chilled by its ill
and covered with its confetti.
I choose the city because I choose God,
Because I choose humanity,
Because I choose the divine-human
struggle–
The struggle which will be won
Not in the serene path through
meadow and wood,
among the bees and birds, and flowers,
But in the city street
Made by the hand of man
Through the gift of God–
Main Street: the final battle field,
The scene of the ultimate struggle,
Where man chooses right
Because he is free to choose wrong.
Babylon, dirty and daring–
Babylon, yes–
Babylon today–
Tomorrow…
The New Jerusalem!
Staying on Mission
Over the last several weeks, in our series in the gospel of Luke (9:1-26 “Our Mission” and 9:27-62 “Things that Derail our Mission”), I have been preaching about our mission as believers. The theme of the gospel of Luke is found in 19:10,
“for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Jesus, the first missionary, humbled himself and condescended to our culture filled with sin and all its repurcussions (Phil. 2:1-11). Unfortunately many churches that claim to follow Jesus are not on His mission but have settled for a pseudo-mission of moralism and isolationism which has resulted in an impotent Church that cares more about picketing, the anti-Christ, the timing of Jesus’ return, and conspiracy theories than it does about the lost people Jesus’ explicitly called us to convert into disciples (Matthew 28:18-20).
Because Jesus knows we’re not that smart He made our mission pretty simple,
“Go make disciples…”
In standard fashion we have convoluted this command and in the process we have veered off of our mission of taking the gospel to everyone who is living in separation from God.
As Mark Driscoll so often says, it’s about “taking the timeless truth of the gospel to the lost using timely methods.”
Jesus, Paul, and every effective missionary since has understood contextualization. In 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 Paul makes it clear that he was willing to do anything apart from sin to bring the gospel to his context in a way that resonates with them.
“Contextualization is about making the church as culturally accessible as possible without compromising the truth of Christian belief. In this, what is sought is timeless truth and timely methods. In other words, contextualization is not making the gospel relevant, but showing the relevance of the gospel.” (Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears ,Vintage Church, p. 228)
Why is it that certain segments of Christianity are so afraid of this concept? Why are so many churches, pastors, and Christians content to isolate themselves in their Bible bubbles when we know full well that Jesus engaged His culture? Why do we insist on hanging on to our tried and true “methods” of ministry when we can clearly see they are failing?
Oh and why are those “methods” acceptable but anything that doesn’t fit into our little box labeled “philosophy of ministry” aren’t?
Our Mission
This past Sunday I taught Luke 9:1-27, and I spoke about “Our Mission” as Christians. Our mission is not new or something we have to cook up…in fact it’s the very same mission that motivated God to become a man and die in our place. Therefore in order to find our mission we simply have to align ourselves with the mission of God and allow Him to fulfill His purposes through us (Ephesians 2:10).
In this video Ed Stetzer and David Fitch dialogue about our mission and what it means for churches to be “missional” (a buzz word that has made it’s way into the vernacular of many church leaders today).
[vimeo 2750000]
America: The New Mission Field
I think it’s time the Church begins to rethink Missions.
It is no surprise that we are living in a post-Christian America. But the figures and stats compiled in this Navigators article are astounding.
“According to George Barna: “With its 195 million unchurched people, America has become the new mission field. America has more unchurched people than the entire populations of all but 11 of the world’s 194 nations.”*
According to Lost in America, by Tom Clegg and Warren Bird, 2001: “The unchurched population in the United States is so extensive that, were it a nation, it would be the fifth-largest on the planet. . . . Researchers and analysts describe North America as the world’s third-largest mission field.”
According to Os Guiness, in World Evangelization, Vol. 18, No 65, 1993: “The three strongest national challenges to the Gospel in the modern world are Japan, Western Europe, and the United States.”
According to George Gallup in 1997, only ten years ago: “More than 44% of American adults 18 and over are unchurched; 120 million Americans have no substantial Christian memory.”
Barna affirms Gallup. Consider: “America’s secularization has gone from only 15% in the 1950s up to 40% in 2001; and headed for 60% percent by 2010!” (Secularization means basing the decisions of one’s life on a secular humanist, relativist moral world view. Judeo-Christian values and the Bible are no longer the moral foundation of decision making in life for the vast majority of Americans.)
According to America: An Emerging Mission Field in World Christian Encyclopedia, Second Edition p.27: “In 2000, the United States sent out 118,200 missionaries, but it also received 33,200. Ironically, the world’s largest missionary-sending country has now become the world’s largest missionary-receiving country.” Not to mention:
o The world’s largest Buddhist temple is located in Boulder, CO, USA!
o The world’s largest Muslim training center is in New York City, USA!
o The world’s largest training center for transcendental meditation is in Fairfield, Iowa, USA!
According to Leighthon Ford, evangelist and Christian leader, “North America is now the largest mission field in the English-speaking world” (Cities’ and surrounding areas’ concentrated populations make them obvious targets for sharing the Gospel).
The number of churches in Chicago has decreased by 900 in the last 10 years! In many cases what were once churches are now condominiums.
England, the once great Christian missionary-sending nation for centuries, before America, now has more mosques than churches, and must itself be reached all over again with the Gospel! We are on this same path.
Did you realize that less than one in ten people who make a decision to follow Jesus do so in the context of a church setting?* Most people will enter into a relationship with Jesus by seeing His life and Kingdom lived out in the lives of family members or friends.
As part of the Navigators Metro Mission team, it is our passion to not only reach and disciple the lost for the Kingdom, but to encourage and help others in our New York City Tri-State area to do the same-right where God has placed them in life. The job, the neighborhood, the family, and the friends where He has planted you is absolutely no accident.
Scripture tells us that this is your mission field, and it is as significant to God as any in the world! He ordained and planned, in eternity past, to reach it through you. We find this indicated, among other places, in Ephesians 1:3-10 and 2:10. Jesus said in Acts 1:8, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”
Your world is as much on His heart as any part of the whole world, for which He died. “Come follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” We have also found what Jesus said in Matthew 9:37 to be so very true: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.”"
For more information on this subject you can read this article at the Internet Monk.
Agents for Christ
These are my friends “Agents of Christ”. They are two families (the James’ and the Chaffee’s) who sold everything they have so that they could travel the country coming alongside churches to help them in the area of evangelism and drug and alcohol abuse prevention.
Please pray for them as they put on evangelism classes, preach the gospel, share their testimonies with young people, and minister to whomever the Lord leads them to as the travel from city to city in their motor home and van.
Currently they are in the Phoenix area and plan to travel to New Mexico and Texas over the next month and then eventually all the way across the south and then up the east coast.
If you are a pastor or church leader in these areas and you are interested in having them come alongside your church you can contact them from their website here.
little church that does BIG things (Part 2)
I think there are 3 main reasons why pastors and churches don’t look beyond their 4 walls to reach their community. And in reality #1 leads to #2 and 3.
1. No vision
2. No money
3. No help
In other words no vision perpetuates itself whereas sensitivity to the Lord, unique ideas, and thinking outside of the box is contagious and infuses excitement into the body. A lack of vision also leads to the lack of funds and help. Why would people want to give their money or time to a church or pastor that has no vision?
Pastors are funny people. We tend to complain about problems that we’ve created. It’s kind of like marriage…men complain about their wives but what they fail to realize is that she is a reflection of them. If your wife is a nagging control freak then take a good long look in the mirror my friend because she is a product of your own stupidity.
But I digress…
I found that when I quit worrying about why soccer families missed so many services and why the church wasn’t growing and I just began to disciple the folks that were there and look beyond the 4 walls the problems that seemed so big to me actually disappeared.
It was during this epiphany that we began to do what for us were some big things…I detailed one of them in part 1 of this post. Some large outreaches that were way over our heads. In the summer of 2005 we began a summer festival called SonFest. My heart in this idea was to create a comfortable atmosphere where families could bring their kids and listen to some music and hear the gospel. We bring in 4-5 bands that play throughout the day. We cook up some hamburgers and hotdogs. We put on a mini-carnival for the kids with jump houses, water slide, petting zoo, and tons of games and candy. This year we added dramas with a clear presentation of the gospel after each one. We hold SonFest in a highly visible downtown park and typically we have 2 to 3 thousand people come throughout the day. We then hold our Sunday morning service in the park the following morning and we usually have about twice our normal Sunday attendance.
In addition to SonFest we also took over a local soup kitchen about a year ago. The former directors were real tired and decided that it was either time to find someone else or shut the doors. They approached us and asked if we would be interested in taking over the management of The Oasis. Initially I thought to myself, “are you kidding! We don’t have the man power or money to take this on.”
But after seeking the Lord and discussing it with our leadership we felt like it was the right thing to do. However the only way we thought it would work was if we hired a person from our church to manage it. At the time the current leaders (husband and wife) were volunteers but I knew that if we tried to go this route we would end up in the same boat they were in eventually. Immediately I thought of a women in our church who had just closed down a restaurant that her and friend ran together. She had food preperation and management experience and she has a tremendous heart for the Lord and people. She jumped at the opportunity and has been doing an amazing job. The Oasis serves lunch to about 50 people a day, 6 days a week. We also give away food boxes and financial assistance through that ministry. It has been a huge step of faith for us but God has provided and we are privileged to reach out to the “least of these” in our community.
In addition to these larger outreaches we have done some smaller scale events and projects. Some have been great successes; like a leaf raking outreach we did a few years ago where we went to different neighborhoods and raked leaves for people and then shared the gospel with them as they looked on dumbfounded.
Some have been pretty major failures, like the “equine clinic” we put on about a year ago…horses are a big deal here so we thought we would be relevant and reach out to the horse people 
We brought in a guy who uses horses and horse training as a means to introduce people to the gospel. First of all I don’t know anything about horses so I asked a guy in the church to oversee the event. He pretty much flaked out and dropped the ball on most of his commitments. I had to pick up the slack and things went from bad to horrible. The horse outreach guy did a fair job of communicating the gospel with horses but it came across a bit canned and pretty cheesy. But what was really bad was the concert that followed. We invited this country band to come and play for us to follow up our good ol’ time. Well the problem was that nobody (and I mean nobody) from the community stayed for the concert. We literally had 9 people stay for the concert and all of them were from our church; people who felt obligated to be there. The lead singer of the band kept inviting people to church the next day and then finally realized all 9 of us were members. It was a disaster.
In your attempt to be a little church that does BIG things you will win some and lose others but don’t ever get discouraged. Keep praying, keep seeking God for wisdom and creative ideas as to how you can reach your community with the amazing gospel message.
If there is any way I can help you to implement some of your ideas into your church don’t hesitate to call or shoot me an email.
blessings,
ryan
(541) 416-9009 (office)
ryanATcalvarycrookcountyDOTcom (email)
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