There were some issues raised on the evaluation forms that are just too important to leave in the file, and it is my intention to address those through emails, blogs, and the molsm.tableproject.org. Please continue the conversation by replying to the email or at my blog site. In many of your comments, there seemed to be confusion on the task.
Getting to the basics: Why Simple Church and what was our task at School of Lay Ministry?
There are five (maybe six if you count the alternate ending to the Gospel of Mark) commissions in the New Testament (Mt 28:16-20, Mk 16:15, Lk 24:47, Jn 20:21, and Acts 1:8) We are clearly called by Scripture and the doctrine of the United Methodist Church to make disciples. Further is it the theme of the New Testament to bring the Kingdom of God near. We pray it, if not daily, weekly, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.” We are to transform a broken world—changing lives in Jesus Christ—make disciples, transform the world.
Yet we do not. The church is in decline. We are ineffective in making disciples. Some enter and are not formed. Others, who want to be formed, leave our churches because we do not or cannot show them the way. Our churches are sick and ineffective in following the Great Commission. Yet the authors or Simple Church found that “the healthiest churches in America tended to have a simple process for making disciples. They had clarity about the process. They moved Christians intentionally through the process. They focused on the elements of the process. And they aligned their entire congregations to this process.” (Rainer and Geiger, Simple Church, page ix)
Since our churches do not have a clear method of making disciples (Nobody at SOLM stood up and said, “We have an intentional, visible pathway to discipleship.”), our task was to first be clear about our mission, then to develop an intentional discipleship process that we could recommend to our congregations. The reason we wanted to be clear about the mission, is that the mission drives the process. If a disciple is to love God, part of our process is to connect people in a loving way to God. If a disciple is to love others, we need to connect people in a loving way to others. If a disciple is to be in ministry to a world of need, we need our process to connect them to ministry.
Wouldn’t it be great if our mission not only drove the process but was the process? St. Paul’s in Joplin restates Matthew 28:19-20a as “leading people to an active faith in Jesus Christ where we define an active faith as loving God, loving others, serving the world.” Their mission tells them not only what they are to do, but what a disciple looks like to them. (I’ll have another blog on the Scriptural and Wesleyan basis for such a mission and discipleship description.)
The next task would be “How is a disciple formed?” Just in case you want to follow along in the book, Simple Church, you might want to look at the bold headings on pages 236-240.
We can make “How disciples are formed” simple or complex. While drilling down, asking the questions “how?” five times (for example what does loving God look like? Well, we worship Him. What is worship? Well, it is song and prayer, and hearing the Scripture read and proclaimed. It is offering ourselves to him. We can then ask what each of these look like. What is a good song? Now you’ve asked a question that will take pages to resolve, or not.
For now, let’s stay at the top level. Simply put, we learn to love others in great worship and in relationship with others. This weekend, we experienced great worship on Friday night. We heard Bill O’Neal tell us in his awesome sermon that Acts 2.42 was the basis for growing in love of God and others. We heard of programs like “Alpha” that can move people toward an understanding of God, and of other non-threatening small group studies that can both lead people to know and love God and enter into authentic relationship with one another.
Keeping with simplicity, if a disciple is one who loves God, loves others, and serves the world, then the process of forming them is connecting people to God, connecting people to others, and connecting people to ministry. And that seems to be a logical sequence and in order of increasing commitment (We know it’s messier than that, but stay with the program.).
Simple Church’s next task (page 239) was to take a single church-wide program and place it along side each of the steps. It’s obvious to me that worship is the first one, and to the extent it can be so, great worship. We all can do it better. We dwelled on small groups as a means of connecting to others. Most of us have much work to do. We introduced missions as a means of connecting to ministry. Actually, many of you are probably doing pretty well in this step. If not, flesh it out.
We also talked about movement as being essential (Andy Stanley is quoted in Simple Church as saying that “the church must be designed to never leave people alone.” (page 100). For example, it may be just too great a leap to go from worship to small groups. We need to create small achievable steps, like non-threatening larger group environments of short duration like “Alpha” or other starter groups. We must design our church, our process, to move people to greater levels of spiritual maturity.
This is really about as far as we got with our task. We had you begin preparing a presentation to key laity and your pastor and to nail down some first steps to get you moving along the process. In my own church, my recommended first steps are these: Emphasize radical hospitality and great worship (moving people to and then experiencing God). Then begin small group leadership training while our church’s small group style is being refined. Our new pastor needs adopt and roll out our new mission statement, probably in September.
Now there is work left to be done. When the process is understood, the resources of the congregation need to be aligned to it; and here is the hard part, we need to focus. The programs of the church that do not contribute to making disciples need to be eliminated. The process needs to be uncluttered.
I hope this gets your thoughts started for your home church. Our task is to make disciples, changing lives in Jesus Christ. We must accept that and do it!
Other thoughts later. I’ll be posting this on my blog and at molsm.tableproject.org in the SOLM group. I welcome your comments.
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4 comments:
While it may have been a little confusing during the workshop, I was fortunate that others at my table listened to me. It was at that time I realized that I shouldn't look at the whole picture right now. That vision will come. What I needed to do was just focus on the ground issue: our mission statement. It is confusing.
With that thought I am going to talk with my pastor about this weekend's meeting. Then, I am inviting key lay persons over for dinner and then ask them, “What is our mission statement?” (Currently it is Grow, Know, Show) Then I will continue to ask questions like, "What does that mean to you?” and, “Are we, as a church, doing that?” This will start conversation and hopefully movement in the right direction.
Then, at every opportunity, as I attend meetings I am already involved in, such as Worship Committee, Ministry Council and even at Choir, I will ask them the same questions. Hopefully this will have the church thinking, "Are we doing what we're saying?" Eventually, I will encourage them to look at what we offer now (all the programs and events) and see if they connect with our mission statement. This is were Jai Vaughn's example of post-it notes on a board so everyone can see the layout of our church's ministry. At this point I think is when I will ask the questions, “Who, do you suppose, attends our church?” I will also have ready our demographics that Larry Johnson, District Lay Leader of Ozarks South District said he would be glad to provide me. He was one in our group that listened to my concerns. I realized then the key in networking with others because their experiences will help me know where the Holy Spirit may be leading. Therefore, I felt peace in the midst of the "task" time. Then the idea to use the pamphlet provided by Good Shepherd United Methodist Church, "The Journey, Discover Your Path". Their symbols and descriptions of Exploring, Beginning, Growing and Centering are very helpful. I will then ask all that I encounter, “Where are you on this journey? What changes or additions will you make to grow in your faith?”
There are many more thoughts and questions I have that branch off like, to the Worship committee, “What, in worship, is the most meaningful for you? What is not? How can we make this worship time more meaningful? By sight? By sound?, is our Sanctuary a place where you feels God’s presence?”, etc.
By looking at the basic steps to begin a thought process for the whole family of our church is a wonderful start. Thanks for all the tools provided towards this process of “Simple Church”. I believe that if we just look at the basics, making disciples in Christ, the next steps will come if we take the very first step in asking, “What is our Mission? What does a disciple look like? Are we connecting these two thoughts by providing all that we are as a church family of Christ?”
My ending thought for those who may have felt like me in looking at the whole picture is, remember, God doesn’t call the equipped. God equips the called. Step out in faith and ask the beginning simple questions, “Are we creating opportunities to love God through worship, prayer, reflection and giving? Do we offer Bible studies? Are we using our give and talents to help others?, But most of all, is it making new disciples in Christ and growing those who already believe?”
Also, I what to add that I found it interesting that in today’s devotion in Disciplines titled, “Who am I?” has us read from Genesis 32:22-26. The writer of the devotion, Dan R. Dick, wrote, “To grow as Christian disciples we dedicate our lives to becoming who God wants us to be. And we cannot become who God most desires us to be if we avoid God. We pray, study scripture, reflect on our beliefs, alone and with others. In doing so we will encounter God again and again, and these encounters will transform us.” Wow! What an encouraging statement I can use as I go about this mission. God is Good! All the time!
Robyn, I would say that a disciple looks alot like you--one on a journey ever seeking God's will for you and for your ministry in service of Him.
I would add one thing to your questions of the laity and committees, "What does Grow, Know and Show mean to you and how does it relate to the mission of the church, "To make (new) disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world"? And maybe, how do we make it clear what a disciple is to a 16 year old or a seeker?
Blessings!
Robyn, you might ask your fellow travelers two more questions: 1) If you could write a two sentence description each of "Grow, Know, Show" what would they be (Remember the Vision page of Eric Geiger's church?) 2) If you could tweek the mission in any way, what would it be? e.g. place Know ahead of Grow; and then how would that change the sentences?
Robyn, You get it! You seemed a little disjointed over the weekend but you have it figured out! Don't ever think you are alone either! You are on fire! Cheryl
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