It has been a great week at the A29 conference & ministering at Providence Bible Church but I am massively ready to see my family! I am getting ready to board my flight & should see my babe & crew in about 5 hours – yeah!
The gathering at PBC yesterday was very sweet. Nearly 2.5 hours of singing, testomonies, fellowship, preaching, praises, presenting Restore, deliberate prayer – definitely a celebration! Particularly sweet was the spontaneous testimony of a recently released ex-con. He was full of Christ & scripture.
It was fun to take an industrial strength weedwacker & lawnmower to the yard of a friend I stayed with. Denver grows thorny weeds on steroids! Green shreds were flying everywhere. The before & after pictures reminds me of what Jesus does for His people. He restores us! 2 Cor 5:17, Rom 8:28-30. May God use us to be the clay pots that bring the glorious & life-transforming message of the gospel to multitudes!
I am looking forward to ministering God’s word at GTBC next Sunday – hard to believe it will be my second to last time!
Well I better send this off before the announcement to turn off all electronic devices comes. Wheels up!
Thursday was packed full & very profitable. After being reminded in my morning jog that the elevation of Denver is, uh, slightly higher than Portland I hit the second & last day of the Acts 29 Bootcamp. Among several strong messages, Sam Storms preached from Acts 17, sharing 4 powerful truths for impacting our communities. Check out the sermon in a few days at the A29 website if you get a chance. At the conference I also met 2 couples who have a similiar post-conversion journey as mine who are ministering in a community just outside Detroit. Pretty cool!
At the end of the conference I set off on foot to hook up with the team at Providence Bible Church. Putting my USMC navigation schools to “good use” I walked 2 miles in the wrong direction (but I was talking to Susan on my phone!). So I then set out on the right direction & managed to thumb a ride to the Fivepoints neighborhood. The guy who picked me up said it has been a long time since he saw someone do that in this area! Starving, & with not many restaurants in this section of town, I thankfully found a soul food joint called Coleman’s Taste of…Detroit! The owners used to live in Detroit. Great food! Great conversation! After supper I sat in on a meeting with PBC regarding non-profit corp issues & then later presented the ministry of Soma. Turned in close to 2AM.
Great day! Thank you Jesus!
When we were at Soma School we heard the “Story of God”. What a refreshing way to look at the Bible. The Bible is a story and should be read as one. The whole point of the Bible also is JESUS. From Soma Web Site:
For thousands of years, stories and oral traditions were the key means for Jewish and Christian people to learn about and experience God. Soma Communities interacts with the biblical narrative through stories as one of our primary ways of teaching and engaging the Word. Often, we use an ancient Hebrew process, now called Storying. This is proving to be very effective with people of all ages in our media-literate, story-oriented North American context. We interact with these stories as a way to understand, experience and connect with God through his Word in community. Here, you can interact with Soma as we experience the Story of God in our larger weekend Gatherings, and beyond, in this blog…
We are going through the Story chronologically. These stories make up what we call the “Redemptive Arc”. The line of questions we ask are designed to help us see the redemptive work of God from the beginning of the Story. It is not meant to teach us everything that we could possibly see in the story…that’s for another day. To fully engage this with us you will want to start at the beginning by listening to the narrative and interacting with the questions for the PROLOGUE: Beginnings story. Continue from there to the next story, and so on.
Hello from the L2 Church facility (a renovated old theater) in Denver!
This Acts 29 church planting conference began with a time of musical worship – I was gripped by the words “The power that conquered the grave lives in me.” Wow! Jeff Vanderstelt then spoke on making disciples who make disciples. Leadership is nothing less. And by the empowering of the Spirit this is how the Gospel Advance surges forward through the ages in every context.
After lunch I attended a small group session on leadership development by Mark Bruskas of Mars Hill New Mexico. Good stuff! Coming up next are sessions on Engaging your Culture by Jeffrey Ventrella & Engaging your Bible by Sam Storms. Time to head in.
Acts 20:24
So Kwame Kilpatrick was sentenced today to 5 years in jail.
A city that was once the crown jewel of the midwest, having been reduced to a shell of what it once was is punishing one of their own that was elected to protect their very interest.
We are not so very different in some ways. We have been given the truth about the very creator of this earth. We have been given the Gospel that saves men souls, but are we being a good steward of that message that God has entrusted us with?
What we have been called to do is simply reap the harvest that God has been growing.
Matthew 9:35-38 (New International Version)
The Workers Are Few
35Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 36When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Jesus was talking to his disciples in the above verses. What if their response was “When my 401K is a certain size, I’ll reap, When my kids get to college I’ll then reap, When my life gets less chaotic I’ll reap?” The list could go on and on with excuses as to why we are not reaping as Jesus has instructed his disciples.
The real truth though is there are those who will come into the kingdom. Are you doing your part to reap the ones that God has called you to reap or are you “not that kind of radical” and are you a part of “the workers are few”?
I personally don’t think he means that there are worker Christians and non worker Christians. I think he means that their are few “Christians” that are really Christians.
What are you doing with what God has entrusted you with? Kwame Kilpatrick used his position and power to advance his own agenda and not the agenda of Detroit and now he is reaping his reward. What reward will you reap?
It is fun to see the toil of labor turn into tearful joy when God brings one into the kingdom that you have had direct influence with. Jesus made it all possible through his perfect life that had him toil and labor and then die, but all for a purpose so that when he rose again the fruits of his labor would then empower our labor so that people would be reaped into everlasting fellowship with the creator of earth.
Tomorrow afternoon I leave for Denver to attend the Acts 29 church planting conference & then preach at Providence Bible Church, an inner city church.
The theme of the Denver church planting boot camp is “ENGAGE: If God is in it, act like He is.” It begins Tuesday evening with a reception for A29 members. The following two days the conference is in full swing with 8 main sessions. You can find details on the speakers & messages here. In addition I will attend two coaching intensives, one on community groups & the other on leadership development. I am looking forward to this opportunity to spend time with & learning from others who have a passion for planting churches!
Then at the end of the week I will have the privilege of hanging with my brothers & sisters at Providence Bible Church. Ministering at this church over 2 years ago was actually instrumental in galvanizing our God-given desire to plant an urban church. My ministry with PBC this weekend will include presenting an hour long overview of Soma School at an elder meeting, sharing the vision of Restore Church to the body, & then preaching in the Sunday morning worship gathering.
So a little bit about the pics: Jason & Jen Janz, Mike & Jason talking at the Gospel Coalition Conference ’09, PBC’s Sunday gathering building, PBC’s Thanksgiving football game, & my tiled fireplace. (OK, so Jason tiled our fireplace on a visit when he preached at GTBC & this is a not so subtle reminder to pray for the sale of our house!) Oh yeah, I added the Colorado Rockies logo because I hope to catch a game even though the National League is the JVs of the Majors.
You can check out a promotional piece for the Engage Conference here & short video about Providence Bible Church here.
Continuing our series in the BBC’s Requiem of Detroit we learn about the post war growth of the auto industry. During this era Detroit was known as the Jewel of the Midwest.
The materialism prevalent in our society to this day was greatly influenced by the marketing approaches of automakers – motivate people to constantly want the latest & the greatest.
The car was now seen not so much as a practical form of transportation for getting people to one place to another but as dream machine to give substitute satisfactions to people who couldn’t find it in other places in their lives….What’s good for GM became good for America. Increasingly the rhythm of American life became set by the obsolescence engineered in Detroit which would transform America to a new consumer utopia where a buyer’s dream could be turned to cash.
In this clip you will take a haunting walk through the massive & dilapidated Fisher Body Plant. The segment also traces the birth & growth of suburbia.
The post war period saw Detroit pioneer the great American escape from the cities to utopia but to get there Detroiters needed cars & freeways to drive there. The creation of the freeway system into the heart of the city literally ripped apart neighborhoods.
Whether you agree or not with the conclusions of these videos the information provided is informative.
And remember, what began in a garden is going to end in the ultimate city, the New Jerusalem!
I am very grateful to share that I have been accepted into the Acts 29 church planting network for the planting of Restore Church in Detroit. You can now check us out on the candidate map. An Acts 29 candidate becomes a full member when he meets specified conditions (I was given none) & gathers 40 committed adults.
The assessment process is fairly intense. It included completing a number of detailed documents like my testimony & call narrative; an overview of my marriage & family life; my theological & pastoral positions; my planting strategy and timeline; and an in depth questionnaire completed by Susan regarding her testimony, our marriage history, my shepherding in the home, & her sense of our call to plant Restore. Several references by those I have served with & discipled were also required. Additionally I took entrepreneurial and DISC assessments. Following this I had a 90 minute phone interview with Tyler Powell, the Church Planting Strategist with the Acts 29 Network. Finally, my wife & I met last month with 3 Acts 29 pastors for a 2 hour interview (You can read about that interview by an intern who sat in on our assessment here). Whew! But really good stuff in giving gospel centered feedback on our strengths & weaknesses. I heartily commend Acts 29 assessment for anyone considering church planting.
I am attracted to Acts 29 by the gospel centered, reformed, missional, & complementarian positions. I am also attracted to the organization’s position on closed hand & open hand issues and the statements on what they do & do not believe. Our friends at Church of the Cross in Arizona (I attended Soma School with Wade last week) share some good thoughts on Why Acts 29?
Now the real work begins. Are you ready to join us on this exciting adventure?
If I want to reach my neighbor with the gospel I need to know him & the forces that have shaped his thinking. The same goes for seeking to reach a city. In that vein we are continuing our postings of BBC’s Requiem for Detroit.
In this third segment we learn about the pre-depression growth of the auto industry, the rise of the unions & the struggles that took place, the second massive wave of immigration from the south, & the growing African-American night life scene.
The corporate gathering is not the point of the church but a punctuation & celebration of 24/7 gospel living. For that reason we were particularly excited to meet with the Tacoma missional communities this AM – what a celebration it was! Then with some new church planter friends from Missouri & San Francisco we enjoyed several hours touring the Seattle fish market. We are ending the day sitting in on missional group leader discipleship training.
