CN | AND: Gathered & Scattered Church in Harmony

City Notes (CN): Books in 25 minutes or less

As stated in the last post, CN will provide you with more than a book review. They will give you direct quotes from some books I've read in the last year, so you can get a taste of the overall theme of the book and then begin to chew on what your life might look like if you applied what you read. Each book will have three parts to keep the posts brief so you can read the quotes in ten minutes or less, while also whetting your appetite for the next round. Here is a link to the previous post:

• CN | AND: Gathered & Scattered Church Where You Are

A great complement to the book and these notes is a talk given by Hugh Halter featured in these videos: "Creating Incarnational Community," "Inspire: Go" and "Inspire: Go the Way Jesus Would Go."  

Gathered & Scattered Church | Chapter 4: Spiritual Transformation for Missional Churches

"A disciple is not someone who stays the same. A disciple is someone struggling to live a life of heartfelt love and obedience to the Father, living and dying for the higher purposes of God’s kingdom. Disciples are called out of their selfish ambitions, and they understand that the longer they follow Jesus, the more uncomfortable they will be and the more sacrifice and effort it will require. Disciples expect tension! They wake up each day expecting that the Father will lead and guide their day; they have given ownership of all they have back to God, for him to direct. They trust God for supernatural provision; they let faith in God win out over safety, common sense, or worldly wisdom; moreover, their relationship with God is deeply integrated with a community of other believers, and they have many relationships with people in the non-Christian culture. They view Scripture as God’s message to a missional people instead of a series of self-help slogans; they pray out of desperation for the circumstances they find themselves in as they walk in the world instead of simply doing things in isolation; and they view the church as a community of fellow passionaries joyfully gathering to see each other, as opposed to strangers they sing songs with once a week." – pg. 94

"…whenever you find people integrating community, communion, and mission, the kingdom becomes tangible and people find Christ. Our primary purpose is really spiritual formation, discipleship, or apprenticeship after Christ. … the community sphere represents a more biblical and inclusive sense of social arrangements where very 'unlike' people can all feel a deep sense of belonging. We’d say it’s a place where saints (Christians) and sojourners (spiritually disoriented God-seekers) can actually be together. The mission sphere represents the more holistic gospel issues of caring for the poor and the marginalized, and essentially doing acts in the world with people who represent God’s heart in heaven. And the communion sphere represents those activities that relate to our connection or communion with God." – pgs. 95-96

" … if we focus primarily on the communion sphere and Christians start hanging out primarily with other Christians, what naturally forms is not a kingdom-oriented Jesus people, but modern-day Pharisees. You’ll get people with lots of head knowledge, lots of experience spending time in religious environments, myopic, social/spiritual/relational circles, and a strong focus on obedience and outward behavior. A lack of contact with the lives of worldly, non-Christians will almost always produce a fervently religious person. You may end up with the opposite of what Jesus actually wants to produce in our churches. … If you put too much weight in the mission sphere, you’ll tend to create social workers. And if you overemphasize inclusive community, you’ll have some great parties but no one will move toward Christ or toward maturity in the Christian faith. …(we) must learn to live out (our) faith in relationship with those who have little to no faith, and learn that pure religion that pleases God involves service to people." – pgs. 99-101

"In my feeble mind, I can’t get past Jesus saying something like, 'To get people to be like me is actually the toughest thing in the whole world to do. It was the same for me back in my day. So all I did was invite people to follow me, go where I went, watch me do what I did, experience what I experienced, and then send them off to do the same. After that, I usually debriefed or helped them work through the difficulty and the tensions, and I taught them about the kingdom, the Father, and my way of life. When it didn’t go too well, I confronted them; when they got bummed out, I encouraged them. I always raised the bar much higher for them than they would have raised it for themselves; I forced them to learn together in community. In fact, I left them because I knew that if I allowed them to always feel safer by me, they’d never learn to trust the Holy Spirit, to work together, or to take ownership of my mission." – pg. 101

"Somehow Jesus had a way of cutting through the throngs of people to pick out the ones who seemed a bit more curious than the rest. Jesus wasn’t all that interested in keeping or growing the crowd. He didn’t waste time and emotional energy planning programs or leading strategic efforts trying to draw people to a consumer-oriented environment. And he wasn’t too worried about opening the front door or closing the back door to his group of disciples. Instead, Jesus preferred to allow people to observe him and make that extra effort to figure him out. He knew that the real seekers would keep pursuing him and wouldn’t be satisfied until they had come to him. … An observance period allows people a chance to develop genuine interest, which in turn gives the community the time to hear their story and find the most meaningful ways of initiating them into congregational structures and the rhythms and mission of the church. … Sadly, many people really are satisfied living as consumers, and they are just looking for a place to hold their beliefs together and to provide a sense of belonging relationally. In other words, all they want are some sermons and some friends. Now, neither of these is bad in and of itself, and any person who grows into a community ought to find that these come naturally; but if they are the only two reasons people are coming to our church, we have to realize they aren’t looking for transformation, either for themselves or for the world." – pgs. 105-106

"Jesus held his cards pretty tight for a while, but as his plan began to unfold, he let people know and discover his story. Early on he healed or talked to someone and then encouraged them not to tell anyone; later he let them in on the reality of his story. If they didn’t ask who he was, he’d prompt it: 'Who do you say I am?' Then later, he them know what life with him would be like: 'You’ll have no place to lay your head; you’re going to have to prioritize me over your traditions and family; you’re going to have to bear a cross of your own if you go with me. You’ll have to become last and serve people all the time, because I will be following whatever I see my Father doing; and he’s working hard all the time, so you can expect that, too.' Jesus wanted them to know his story. In observance, I want people to hear the stories of as many of our people as possible because people are not drawn to mission statements anymore. They are drawn to stories like their own. Leery, tapped-out Christians need to hear from people who know what it’s like to be tapped out. Jaded leaders need to hear from other jaded leaders, and confused people, broken people, and curious people need to find others like them. For observance to work, you as the leader need to change your posture. Stop acting as if you are a desperate leader trying to get people to come to your church. Stop worrying about assimilating them. Be yourself, tell your story, and passionately say what your heart feels; and if people are sniffing the same air, you will find some fellow kingdom sojourners. If you attract anyone without giving them the real spiel, you’ll get what you deserve and find yourself doing a lot of exit interviews later. ... Spiritual transformation modeled after the life of Christ is one huge story, and it should absolutely inspire people out of their mundane worldview, but it should also scare the south side of Hades out of them." – pgs. 107-108

“Call them out. ... We put on a nice meal, light some candles, decant some nice wine, and have a lovely talk about the church’s vision, recap our story, give them time to express how they have processed their spiritual journey in light of ours – and then ... 'First, we want you all to know that we’re honored you have resonated with what you’ve seen so far, and we think it’s really cool you’ve made it through a tough time of observance. We didn’t want to move too fast toward you, and we didn’t feel it was the right thing to ask you to do anything. We just wanted to give you time to see if God may be calling you to us. The way to think of our church is as a mission to (insert city). We are all done with 'going to church' and we are really serious about trying to become a church to this city. Mission is what God’s called us to and church is something he builds us into as we go with him into the world. So if at this point you are ready to come and die with us, we’d love to have you with us.'" – pg. 109

"I have learned that people love to get called out as long as they are being called in context of friendship and from those who have already made the commitment. Most of the ruts people fall into occur because we haven’t called them to anything greater. A great quote I once learned describes this process perfectly: 'In the absence of vision, pettiness prevails.' In other words, when someone is bored, he or she will start critiquing, judging, making problems, and consuming. … Calling people to leave their nets, to prioritize God’s mission over their own, to live by faith, to take up their cross, to deny self, and to seek first God’s kingdom and righteous life is what seekers are desperate to hear. Let me challenge you to take a risk and start inviting people as Jesus did. Begin personally to invite higher-level leaders to your home, give them your best time, and trust that if you’re honest about how hard Christianity is and how their lives will change, God will build his church – the one he’s entrusted to you to lead well." – pg. 111

"Preparation is a commitment to mentor them through heart issues as well as beginning the reorientation back to missional living. When people are processing our missional church, I always let them know that it will be hard, it won’t carve out for them an easy path, it won’t provide all the services they may have gotten from the next church; but we will provide a pathway for them to find God in fresh ways out in the streets, in their family, and in the lives of those they really care about. ... Whereas a time of observance purifies motives, surfaces personal issues, clarifies values, and calls people to something bigger, preparation pushes people into an active posture that will connect them with real needs and real people so that their hearts can be reformed after the heart of God. … We created a Tangible Kingdom Primer that combines spiritual formation practices of Scripture meditation, thoughtful reflection, and prayer with missional habits. Each day you dive in with God and each week provides some experiences that flesh out what you are processing. One week you simply throw a party. Another week, you find things you don’t need in your home, sell them on Craigslist, pool the money, and give to people in need. Another week, cross the road to connect with a neighbor you’ve always seen but not related with, walking around the block to meet someone whose head you’ve only seen while mowing the yard on the other side of the fence. Yet another week, go to a public place where you can watch people, and we ask you to imagine the struggles people may be living with. Then we just ask you to pray for the faces you’re looking at. None of these practices are hard or difficult, but they get you out of your home or church where you can imagine and envision God at work. In doing so, your heart starts to beat to the rhythm of God’s heart again. Jesus’ preparation style wasn’t your typical classroom prep; it was on-the-street training, doing things he was going to ask them to own and initiate on their own after he was gone. His prep was hard at times – they struggled, got angry, wanted to quit, got confused, and self-analyzed – but they grew! They were being spiritually formed, and I believe we must move spiritual formation out into the streets again and give people time to get some wind in their sails before we ask them to do church again." – pgs. 112, 114

" … we never fully perfect this new missional life, but we keep moving ahead. It’s critical to communicate this because the idea of 'trying harder' has generally been a letdown for most people. We often remind them that our goal is not just to get them into an incarnational community so much as to see them learn to live this way intuitively. ... '(from Tangible Kingdom Primer) If you perceive it as one more program you need to add to your already complicated life, you’ll never make it. But if you understand this as something more fundamental, that is, something central to who you are, then you may be surprised at what God can do in your life. … Learning to live intuitively is important because life rarely happens in steps, programs, or logical sequences. In fact, most of the time, it just happens. Developing an intuitive, incarnational lifestyle is an organic process and it depends on our willingness to listen and respond to God’s direction. For it to emerge, we must learn to trust and lean on faith and the Holy Spirit, being sure that God is faithfully working in and through us." – pg. 116

" … what does dying look like in real life?...(It’s) living well and being willing to give time, resources, and relationship to people who are looking for what you have. It’s opening your home for dinners, inviting sojourning people into your family time, recreation, and hobbies, and into your spiritual community. It’s not rocket science or martyrdom at a biblical story level, but you do have to die to your natural bent to live exclusively to yourself. You have to let Christ’s mission dictate how you live. It’s really about the direction of your life, not a state of perfection. It’s serious, but it’s also a beautifully whimsical life without legalistic pressure or self-judgment. … participation is just an invitation to stay in the game with Jesus and others who take his call seriously. … Jesus raised the bar on the front end and then lowered it once he had the hearts of people. He let them observe what he did, and then he prepared the sojourners to follow him in death. To those who were willing to carry his load, he taught that his burden was actually quite light. … Start preparing them, pray over them, send them publicly, and then relax and help them learn to relax. What you’ve just invited them into is … an intuitive life that will change everything they’ve ever known about following Jesus." – pgs. 117-118

"Partnership … represents a level of leadership where someone is actually partnering or taking ownership of not only their own growth, but also the growth of others. It can represent your paid staff and your elders, but it also represents any Christian who has positioned his life so that he has the time, resources, and energy to shepherd people. … partners tend to reveal themselves to you through their faithful commitment, giftedness, stability, and the ways they sacrifice for the larger community. Yet we also find that they, too, need to be called out. Most of the best leaders we had didn’t think they really had what we wanted, and it’s always a powerful time when you take someone aside and acknowledge (privately and before the community) their natural spiritual authority and influence. For many churches, partnership should really represent everything from the paid staff, to the elders and deacons, and on down to the level of your church membership. … We recognize that not every Christian will grow to the level of a partner in the gospel or to the level of a missionary, but every Christian can grow to a level of functional participation. Even if they aren’t a full partner, they are still on mission with you.” – pgs. 119-121

Chapter 5: The Big AND: Gathered and Scattered in Perfect Harmony

"Ralph Winter shows in his article, 'The Two Structures of God’s Redemptive Mission,' that the New Testament church formed modalically around the idea of a local synagogue, the only difference being that now it was a ‘Christian’ synagogue that included non-Jews. This structure was local in nature, met weekly or even daily for some type of community-based spiritual direction, and it had designated leaders who kept the people together. Alongside the modality was a unique community completely focused on people outside the traditional gathered setting. He notes that Paul’s calling to the Gentiles instigated and modeled the first truly sodalic missions community and set in order a partnership of both the gathered and scattered church. Before Paul, Jews were coming to faith and through the persecution the church was 'on the move,' but in most cases they soon settled in a synagogue as a modality. Paul’s missionary community was distinct from this and gives us a better picture of the unique sodalic calling." – pg. 125

"Although many today think the monastery was a cloistered, separatist, nonmissional environment, Ralph Winter in his article, 'The Two Structures of God’s Redemptive Mission,' brilliantly shows that during the medieval times, as the Roman empire was beginning to erode, it was actually the monasteries that served as sodalic missions communities. They not only renewed the local church structures, but also laid the framework for world evangelization and met many social needs for centuries throughout Europe. While we tend to think of monasteries as local churches, in many instances the monastic movements were known for their 'second decision' passion to serve the needs of people around the world in times of crisis and war – even caring for the needs of those dying from diseases and plagues that ravaged entire regions. They were hard-core, second-decision communities that compelled their people to take more serious oaths of service, spiritual commitment, and social action. … 'the most outstanding illustration in the early Medieval period of the importance of the relationship between modality and sodality is the collaboration between Gregory the Great and a man later called Augustine of Canterbury (from Winter’s article).’” – pg. 126

“The two arms of the church can work together! Like a good, honest marriage, where you work through tension for the sake of growth and depth in the relationship, the sodalic and modalic are meant to be together. In fact, they must be together for the church to be whole and expanding in influence. … Just as the Roman church lost spiritual influence on the culture in medieval times, our contemporary churches, with their strong modalic emphasis, have also lost influence in our culture. If you were to ask our unchurched culture today why their spiritual search doesn’t lead them naturally to the local church on the corner, they’ll often share that they feel the church (modality) is financially self-indulgent, socially cliquish and content to minister to its own people. It’s at a time like this that the sodalic arm must step up and begin telling a new story that inspires curiosity with those outside the church." – pgs. 127-128

 

“Evidence suggests that the pullback to the modalic in the life of the church will always be stronger than the inclination toward the sodalic. Take, for example, the modern-day church plant movement and how it has developed over the last twenty years. Although every church plant should be a sodalic initiative, sadly, in the last two decades, many churches have hived off modalic leaders instead. Typically, these modalic leaders bring along with them about fifty to a hundred modalic followers and end up starting another modality. This happens because we are throwing with one arm. When young leaders grow up doing modalic activities inside a local church, even those who may feel an entrepreneurial call outward tend to reproduce cookie-cutter expressions instead of contextually sensitive new works. Inevitably, transfer growth becomes our primary focus. … God’s church moves forward, reproduces, and survives from generation to generation because of our sodalic calling. Any sodalic work will eventually turn modalic as a result of the need to disciple and nurture newcomers to faith, but typically, the missional DNA and fervor wanes and static ministry structures set in. There is really nothing wrong with this process … as long as the sodalic continues to push outward. Practically, this can be accomplished by simply forming our church plant teams, pastoral staff, and elder boards with an equal number of both sodalic- and modalic-oriented leaders. Yes, there will be more tension and lively discussions, but it’s all part of the bride working together." – pg. 134

"(from Matt. 28:18-20)…Notice the two sides of the church here in the words of Jesus. There is the sodalic 'go' and the modalic 'make disciples,' and the sodalic 'of all nations' and the modalic 'teaching them to obey.' What most people miss is the big AND right in the middle. ... The sodalic is strong as church is propelled forward in much smaller social contexts anywhere a few committed disciples are together. They expand quickly because a church can meet in a home, a pub, or a beach. The modalic is still there as they learn to gather for teaching, shepherding, discipleship, care and the like. … Austin New Church, founded by Brandon Hatmaker is one example. Starting as a nonprofit social needs-based sodality, a church quickly formed, grew to several hundred, and has now sanctioned several other church plants within fifteen miles. Interestingly, Brandon carries his ordination with a Baptist denomination and received funding from them, but now serves as a missional church plant director for the Free Methodists and receives funding from Hill Country Bible Church to help support other church planters completely unaffiliated with any of the aforementioned denominations. The greater the collaboration, the greater the potential. The more aggressive the partnerships, the more expansive the movement becomes. … One distinguishing mark of churches who have the AND is that they are aggressive on training their people.” – pg. 136

" … any movement must ultimately be about the church. The apostle Paul, who lived a decentralized life, living organically and unfettered to one local community, still guided his writing, words, prayers, and actions to start, stabilize, or support a church. If you want to see real missional kingdom movement, you’re going to have to develop some type of modalic expression where people are not only brought to Christ, but held together under Christ." – pg. 139

" ... the bigger reality is that God is the head of the church AND the Lord of the harvest. It’s a known statistic that the churches that give away, that take risks, that send out, and that sacrificially push their people out, create vacuums that God fills with even more. People often ask us, 'So if you put most of your eggs in decentralizing people out into incarnational communities, if you give them permission to give their money freely to meet needs in their neighborhood contexts, and if you encourage people to go deeper spiritually, teaching and shepherding each other without such a dependency on you as pastors, why in the heck would they ever actually come back to a corporate church gathering or give money to the centralized aspect?' My answer is that they are drawn toward the center because the center has empowered them. They simply want to be together and they want to see the influence of their community keep growing." – pg. 141

Next post: CN | AND: Gathered & Scattered Church Transformation

– Sully
 
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