4 I's for Mission

Last week I had the priviledge of doing some coaching with individuals and couples applying to be Apprentices or Church planters in the region.  Part of the opportunity was to look afresh at some of the ideas and areas we were asking the candidates to consider.  One of those areas of consideration was the Four I's.  More than just for church planters, however, I found it a helpful list for anyone who seeks to be living with mission intentionality.  With that in mind I offer it here for you consideration:

Identify- Where is it that God has you?  What are the needs in the community around you.  There are physical, emotional and, importantly, spiritual needs around us.  What are the pockets where Jesus is needed?

Invest- How is it that you can spend you time, energy and resources to love and serve those around you.  How can you invest your life to engage relationally with your neighbours?  How can you pour into people's lives with genuine, authentic relationships?

Invite- What can you do to recognize where people are at and intentionally invite them to consider the next step in a spiritual journey?  Perhaps it is questions to promt spiritual exploration.  Perhaps it is an invitation to make a decision for Jesus.  Perhaps it is an invitation into a discipling relationship.  Whatever the situation, how can you invite the next step?

Increase- The heart of the Great Commission is a call to make disciples, who in turn make disciples, thus creating multiplication.  What plan do you have to walk someone down a journey of maturation, to equip, encourage and empower them towards a life of bearing fruit?  

I found this to be a great check for my life, a good framework upon which to hang specific details that I can work through for my context.  Let me encourage you to think through it for yourself.  

A special thanks to my colleagues at NAMB, Send Toronto and Send Vancouver for the refresher and the opportunity to pour into others!

10 Tips for Living on Mission

If everything worked out correctly, I am away for a short one day getaway with the love of my life.   So I thought it would be a great time to share this post that came across my twitter feed from @SendNetwork.  Below is a link to an article written by Bryan Barley that appeared at www.sendnetwork.com.  Some great, practical, simple and straight forward thoughts to get you started thinking about living missionally within your community.  Enjoy!

10 Tips for Living On Mission In Your Community

3 Books Every Canadian Church Palnter Should Read

If you are involved in church planting in any capacity, you probably have a list of books you have, or still have to read.   How to books, books of best practice, books of mission, discipleship or theology etc.  Let me take a moment, take a slightly different track, and make a plug for some fiction.  I admit, my reading of fiction is somewhat sporadic.  Between books on mission and theology, commentaries and sermons, I can go weeks or months without reading fiction.  Every time I do, however, I come away rewarded by such a rich experience.  There is something about fiction that helps us not just read about a people and culture, but somehow manages to submerge us within that culture, to see how it is lived out, and provides us with windows into different perspectives by means of thoughfully crafted characters living or experiencing a time, place, circumstance and culture.

So here is a short list of books with Canadian themes, books that will help provide insight into different aspects of Canadian culture and identity.  Three books every Canadian Church Planter should read:

1)  The Orenda by Joseph Boyden - an exploration of the time of first contact between the earliest French arrivals to Canada (specifically Jesuit missionaries) and the First Nations already inhabiting the land. 

2)  No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod - a powerful story of a proud Scottish clan who settled in Cape Breton.  This story beautifully weaves stories and recollections from generations of the clan from the 1700's up to the most recent family members who find themselves in different parts of Canada wrestling with their historic identity as Gaelic Highlander's and Cape Bretoners. 

3)  Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan - this book explores the tensions that have given rise to modern Quebec as it follows the Tallard family, a French Canadian man, his Irish wife and their son who struggles to reconcile his two different ethnic/linguistic identities.  A faciniating look at the French English tensions of Canada as well as the shift in Quebec culture, the place of the church and the rise of modern society.

Admittedly, I chose these books because I have read them more recently and they had an impact on me.  I fully recognize that it is a list that is limited in so many ways.  I would love to hear some thoughts about other great books helping to explore and understand Canadian culture.  What would you add to the list? 

Three P's of Partnership

This past weekend we had the priviledge of hosting a team of leaders from Murray Hill Baptist Church in Jacksonville Florida.  We had a great time as we served together, helped get them acquainted with the city and worshipped together.

 

This team were here not only to serve, as we did some Guerilla Gardening and community clean up, but to learn about the city and our ministry so that they may lead future teams.  

Perhaps the most exciting part of the their time with us was the opportunity to have them join one of our Fellowship groups for worship.  It was a great opportunity for our friends from Florida to meet people from literally around the globe, to hear so many different accents as they fellowshipped and to all come together in worship.  

For our people, it was a great example that although we may be small we are part of a much bigger family.  It also provides such a great example of minstry and mission that people would give of their time, energy and resourses to travel all the way here to come along side us to help us serve and minister in our community.  This is a powerful witness to a young group with seekers and many new and young believers.  

We took the time during our Fellowship meeting to not just celebrate, but to formalize this new partnership with the signing of a covenant.  In that covenant we specifically communicated and committed to the very things we exercised on this first trip:

1) Prayer-it is such an encouragement to a new church plant to know that they are being held up in prayer.  A prayer team is specifically praying for Hamilton.  Prayer is the foundation for any ministry and through it we see God work.

2) Provision- Financial provision is a very real and practical support to any church plant.  Beyond just the money, however, a financial commitment no matter the size, communicates something important about commitment.

3) People- beyond prayer and provision, having people come, whether a short term mission team or even longer term opportunities for individuals of families, is also important.  For the supporting church it helps to place names and faces, sights, sounds and smells to the prayers and support.  It becomes more personal and more important.  For the church plant, it is a shot in the arm of encouragement and importantly allows for a burst of ministry strength and energy as we try to reach a community.

We are very pleased and excited as we move forward with this new partnership.  

And for those who have partnered with us in the past, or continue to walk with us in different ways, a huge thank you for your continued support as well.  

This last photograph is of a quick caricature done of Pastor Doug Axtell of Murray Hill by Oliver Guevara of The Hamilton Fellowships at the end of our worship time.

An Answer To Prayer

I saw the red light flashing on the phone; I had voice mail.  I picked up the hand held receiver and began to scroll through the call display to see if I recognized who may have left a message, but I did not.  I asked Kim if she knew who had called and left the message, to which she replied, " Oh ya, I forgot to tell you. Have a listen, you will never guess who it was."  And she was right, I would have never guessed.    

When I checked my message it was from Tim, one of the guys from the Beer Store.  He had not been out for a few weeks so it was nice to hear from him.  As it turns out, he had not been out to Beer Store Church because he got a job at a local restaurant in the city.  

Getting a job had been Tim's prayer request since we first met him.  He had worked at getting a resume, worked to distribute it, and then waited.  It seemed that there was no one hiring for kitchen work and so he collected bottles each week, came for a sandwich and coffee and we prayed.  Finally, after months and months, someone called and he was hired.  

Tim had called and left a message to thank  us for the coffee and sandwiches which helped him get through many weeks, and to thank us for praying because "every little bit helped." 

On Wearing Pants For The First Time In Months

"I am wearing pants for the first time in months."

That was the first statement of praise this past Sunday as our Fellowship @ Locke began our time of worship.  To be exact, it was not the first time my dad had worn any pants, but the first time that he had worn anything other than elastic waist track pants since his surgery back in February.   Sure it was nice to have on jeans again, but the true celebration was what the jeans represented.  Those jeans represented increased mobility after the surgery and they also represented that all the tubes that once where hooked up have now been taken out, and that his last incision from the feeding tube is almost now healed over.  These are things truly deserving of praise!

As life goes on quickly it is sometimes easy to overlook the truly remarkable things that God does in our midst.   It would be a tragedy, however, if we do not take the time to celebrate pants.    I hope that this is a powerful moment for our Fellowship.  What began as shocking news of my dad's cancer has now become a true praise, and I will go as far a saying a miracle.  It began with a providential finding in which my dad was sent to the wrong specialist for a medical issue he wanted addressed.  This specialist, although unable to address the original concern, decided to do a scan since my dad was in his office and had never had one before.  It was this scan that revealed the cancer that otherwise may have worsened before it was ever discovered.  God was at work.  We as a church took the time to anoint my dad with oil and pray before he began 7 weeks of intense chemo and radiation which was to be followed by a very intensive and invasive surgery.  It is the chemo and radiation treatment that I look back on and say that there was a miracle.  Simply put, my dad experienced little, if any, of the affects that the doctors were concerned and warned him about.  The medical team was astounded that he came through without loosing any hair, without loosing much strength and without ever becoming nauseous or ill.  And because he came through with such good health, he was that much stronger as he entered into the massive, invasive surgery from which he has been able to make such a quick physical recovery.  

So, pants are certainly something to be thankful for.  And for our church, pants are a powerful example of answered prayer and the power of God.  So the next time you are putting on pants, you can remember this story.  Similarly, if you are putting on pants it means God had given you another day and the physical means to do so, all of which are a reason to give thanks and praise. 

Beer Store Breakthrough

What started as serving coffee slowly became coffee (hot chocolate for those who don't drink coffee), sandwiches and conversation.  From there the conversation led to collecting prayer requests, eventually praying for people on the spot and then progressed to gathering a group to pray together on the sidewalk.  Most recently, I have begun to bring a scripture, specifically words of Jesus, starting with His "I Am sayings."  I have been sharing the scripture to begin prayer and then praying that scripture and an application for our lives before praying for individual requests.  This is the shape of what is now referred to as Beer Store Church.  Like many ministries, it has ups and downs, times of prayer and times of breaking up fights, rich times and times of wondering about the point of it all.  Yesterday, however, put a smile on my face; a bit of a breakthrough even.  

We began our prayer with Jesus' words, "I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me."  As soon as we were finished praying someone asked about people that lived before Jesus.  It provided an opportunity to talk of the Old Testament, its relation to the new, about seeing the Gospel in Old Testament texts and to give a brief survey of the Gospel story.  It also, and as importanly, gave me an opportunity to really listen to his questions and comments and better assess where he is spiritually.  

In the end I was really encouraged.  I was  encouraged because I love to talk about that kind of thing and walk with people as we discover truth.  I was encouraged because I have a clearer idea of where he is and can better move forward to meet him where he is at.  I am most encouraged because the question let me know that at least one person was actually engaged in what was going on.  

That in and of itself is reason enough to be there next week!