Repenting, Praying and Hoping for Gospel Renewal in Emmaus City and Worcester, Massachusetts
With Emmaus City, we want to be a city renewing church. In relation to this desire, I've shared how Jonathan Dodson and City Life Church in Austin, Texas has helped shape what this means for us in Worcester, MA. A video featuring their story helps show how City Life does this in their city. Here is the link to the post where I reflect on this and more:
Recently, I began reading the Redeemer City to City Church Planter manual, which features the story of Tim Keller and how Redeemer Presbyterian Church was planted in Manhattan, NYC in the spring of 1989. Redeemer City to City was later started by the church and has now planted more than 300 churches in 45 cities around the world, including in Europe, Latin America, Africa, Australia, and the Asian-Pacific. I also love Redeemer's series of videos, New Birth Portraits, and the amazing and personal stories of how Jesus reached these people in NYC.
But how did such a movement that can only be credited to God begin? What I found so refreshing was that it began with a humble prayer.
Originally, Keller did not want to be the pastor of Redeemer. He was only "ten percent open to the idea." When he discussed this with friends and shared with them how the challenge of church planting in NYC had embarrassed him inside, he said:
"I immediately recognized that my prayer and spiritual life would now be incapable of handling such a project. I realized I had really gotten 'flabby.' I repented and began renewing spiritually."
Repent and renew.
This combination has not relented in my head and heart since I read those words on a plane ride from Boston to Oklahoma City this past weekend. Why? Because it's exactly what I need to hear and remember again and again.
If the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, Jesus can take the foolish and the weak and make them wise and strong in Him. His grace is that sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). But am I willing to turn to that truth in Him? Am I asking Him to renew my mind so that I can learn how to live, and serve, and sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2)? No matter my lack of prayer, Scripture memorization, evangelism, discipline, faithfulness and trust, am I willing to repent and renew right now when He calls me to do something I know only He can do? In other words, do I really believe in the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit to change me today, tomorrow, in the coming year and every year ahead?
What if the Redeemer was walking the Emmaus City road with us in Worcester, MA?
Below is a story of what the life of a church can look like in a city when the posture of the people is one of repentance and renewal. While I could simply provide a small snapshot of the story of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, NYC from Spring '89 - '91 from the words of Tim Keller, instead I'm going to adapt the story for you so you can journey with spiritual imagination through what God could do in Worcester.
Obviously, Worcester is not Manhattan, I am not Tim Keller, and the committed people of Emmaus City are not the people who were committed to Redeemer in NYC in 1989. But we serve the same God, proclaim the gospel of the same Jesus, and trust in His Word and His Spirit to transform people's hearts. And if we don't, we need to. Desperately.
So take a minute and ask yourself, "Do I really believe that through the same repentance and renewal, a group of people looking to start a church in Worcester could be gripped and empowered to see the gospel of Jesus do a similar work here?"
If not, would you be willing to turn to God and ask for His Spirit to renew you and His church in Worcester?
Capturing a picture of what a church that believed the gospel in Worcester specifically should and could be like.
"(Worcester) is unmanageable. You must not think you are going to tame and save it. You must respect it.
When I interviewed anyone, Christian or non-Christian, I asked two questions:
1) 'What kind of church would really help and appeal to people here in Worcester?'; and
2) 'Do you know of anyone else who could give me more information and might be interested in this new church?'
Worcester was fast 'de-homogenizing ' economically and culturally. There was a growing new professional class of knowledge workers. There was a dizzying variety of new immigrant working-class communities. And the poor of the inner city were becoming more isolated from other groups. Almost all of the evangelical Protestant churches, however, had been serving the shrinking and aging English speaking middle class. To reach the emerging Worcester there would have to be a generation of new churches among the educated, liberal upwardly mobile young professionals, the non-English speaking new immigrants and their children, and among the poor. ... The power and life and yet brokenness of the city captured my imagination.
Everyone feels inadequate for any ministry, but this was different. I knew that I was as humanly well-equipped as anyone to try this ministry, but I also knew that this was well beyond the human abilities of anyone at all. That meant only one thing: it would not be my talent, but my love for, and dependence on, God that would be the critical factor ... I felt that my spirituality would be laid bare for all (worst of all, for me) to see. But the opportunity was too ripe ... I prayed and was reading Gurnall's A Christian in Complete Armour one day and came upon a passage: 'It requires more prowess and greatness of spirit to obey God faithfully than to command an army of men; more greatness to be a Christian than a captain.' I realized that it was an illusion to imagine that I would have to start being brave ... I should have been living bravely all along. Even if I turned down the opportunity to plant a church in Worcester, I could not go back to being a coward.
First Community, Vision and Values – February-March
The next great test was for a small group of leaders to come together and 'own' a unified vision. I decided that the meeting was not going to be a Bible study, but a prayer and vision meeting. Our purpose was to get a picture of what a church that believed the gospel in Worcester specifically should and could be like.
The first weeks we asked: 'What are your Worcester non-Christian friends like?' In other words, we brainstormed a spiritual profile of a Worcester non-Christian. Then we started planning based on that profile. We asked: 'What kind of church will be true to the needs of people like this and yet still be solidly Biblical?' I remember that some weeks we also asked: 'What needs are not being addressed by the other churches that are around?' After the first hour of brainstorming, we prayed for the second hour.
The earliest vision (which we called then a 'philosophy of ministry') that I have written down from those meetings had the following purpose statement:
To transform the city of Worcester by enabling residents in the city to reach their web of relationships for Christ, and through time to change the city and towns in central Massachusetts.
The vision statement was designed to answer the question: Why start a church in a city that already has lots of churches? The answer was: To have a church for people who live and work in Worcester to which they can grow in faith, but also to which they can include their friends who don't believe.
I also had the following convictions written down, which were much like our core values today:
1) The gospel. The law yet grace. The gospel transforms everything. Neither a legalistic church nor a cheap grace church.
2) The Bible. Authoritative but convenantal and personal. Not just a book of rules but not merely literature.
3) The City. God loves the city. The kingdom of God is to grow in the city. Not withdrawing from it but not just reflecting the values of the city.
4) The Church. A connectional form. Very distinctive and true to our locale and our community, yet accountable to other churches in the region and the country.
Some other things that we learned together in those two months:
1) We needed to reveal our historic roots. "Presbyterian" and "Episcopalian" (and "Congregational" in Worcester) were virtually the only Protestant names that most people knew of. All others meant "cult" to them. We should not play down our heritage.
2) We needed to preach with intelligence, and no Christian jargon. In general, people from Worcester want to think and be confronted, not just soothed and confirmed. Yet they are Biblically illiterate, and the preaching must assume very little foundational belief or Christian knowledge.
3) We had a high enthusiasm to saturate all members with a mindset of friendship evangelism. The preaching and worship was to assume the presence of non-Christians even before we knew if any were there. If we preached as if they were there, they most definitely would be invited. Christians here were longing to bring their non-believing friends ... We realized that the most crucial event in the life of our church was the moment a Christian came to worship and said, 'I want my skeptical friends to hear this!'
4) We needed to reject a negative view of the city.
I found the following three statements continually scribbled down on note paper that I wrote to myself before talking to people about the church. This is the closest thing to an early vision presentation we had.
1) We want to be, not just a congregation for ourselves, but also for our friends who do not yet believe in Christ at this point in their lives. (Behind this was the conviction that the gospel is the key to changing anyone. It is the thing that both believers and non-believers need to hear constantly.)
2) We want to be, not just a ministry for ourselves, but also for the peace and benefit of the entire city. Our aim is not just a greater church, but a greater city.
3) We want to be, not just a single church, but a movement of the gospel serving all churches and planting new churches. (Behind this was the conviction that the real church is so diverse, encompassing all races, classes and cultures, that no congregation alone can really represent Christ to the city.)
Evening Service – April-September XX
We decided to start with a Sunday evening service at 6:30 p.m. We decided not to call it 'worship' but 'a time of teaching and getting to know one another as we consider launching a new church in Worcester.' This way, we felt we would take some pressure off of ourselves to do absolutely everything right. Also, it took pressure off the attendees. They were not really coming to a 'church' yet so they didn't have to feel like they had to make a commitment. We agreed that everyone in the core group would invite people, hoping to get XX people there for the first service.
Morning Service – September XX-August XX (1 year)
On the last Sunday of September XX, we 'officially' opened with a morning worship service. Both services attracted 90 people, with 30 coming to both AM and PM (thus immediately there were 150 people in attendance). In the fall, the first conversions began to occur. A sense of God's power was evident. After services, the church both upstairs and downstairs would be filled with people in groups, usually talking for another hour, often about deeply personal and spiritual issues. Because the church was still small, I (and the other leaders) could meet most everyone new who was there each week. It became evident that about 20% of the attendees each week were non-Christians. We began a coordinating group which acted as an informal steering committee. It met for prayer every Friday morning. Every week, nearly every member told stories of non-Christians they were bringing to Emmaus City or meeting at Emmaus City. By January, attendance averaged over 200. In the spring, we began a 4:00 PM service which was identical to the AM service. By June, the overall attendance was nearly 300, and during July and August the numbers actually grew toward 400.
One of the most formative experiences of my career was meeting each week with people who had come to services. Usually they came up to me after a service and said, 'I want to talk to you.' I had no office and no staff to manage, and so for the first six to nine months, I probably met 25-30 people every week (often in the XX Cafe) just to talk to them about spiritual issues. To my surprise, a large number of them were non-Christians and they ushered me into several worlds I had not known about. One woman was a $700 a night call girl with an Ivy League degree. Many young men and women spoke to me about their lives as gay people. I learned quickly about the pressures of a career in stocks and investments. I spoke to Buddhists and Muslims. The most interesting effect of all this was on my preaching. Each week, I had a couple dozen people giving me very direct feedback (often unwittingly) about my sermons. I quickly saw what parts of my preaching were hitting the target and what parts were confusing or missing people. My preaching was changed steadily through the bombardment of so much real-life evaluation.
We discovered that over two-thirds of the people on our mailing list could walk to church, since they lived in the closest zip codes.
Ministry Watersheds – Evangelism and Renewal – Fall XX-Spring XX (18 months)
The first ministry watershed or goal was to become a church that had a spiritual renewal dynamic in the heart of our ministry. Was the gospel going to be a power, so that sleepy and nominal Christians woke up, and so that really secular non-believers who lived and worked in Worcester got converted? And could this become a real dynamic so conversions happened systematically, not just 'one off' here and there?
The fall of XX showed a lot of growth, but it wasn't until the turn of the year that it became clear how many non-Christians were being brought to services. And then many of them began to embrace the faith. This created a terrific excitement among believers, and many believers in the city who ordinarily would not have preferred Emmaus City now came in order to bring non-Christian friends. Then the fall of XX brought an explosion of new growth. In September, the AM and PM services were drawing around 300 people each, so over 500 people (minus repeat attendees) were coming. Solid and sound conversions now began happening in a continual stream.
During these first three years, there was the same feeling of inevitability that comes during times of awakening. The gospel seemed brand new, sleepy/nominal Christians awoke with a start, and people got converted every week. The air was charged with a kind of electricity. Every decision turned out to be wise. Everyone performed above and beyond their gifts and abilities.
In the fall of XX we began another AM service so that, eventually, service times were 10:00 AM, 11:30 AM, 4:00 PM, and 6:30 PM. By late spring XX, attendance had risen to almost 700. In the spring of XX (two years after the first public meeting), I took in our first 200 members. We received 90 men and 110 women. Eighteen of the men voluntarily told me that they had been gay (I hadn't asked anyone), and that they are ready to put that behind them and lead the Christian life without it. Informally, I discovered that 25-30% of the members were new believers through ministry in or around Emmaus City. After this, we began to do many adult baptisms. Each month, I baptized Jewish people and former atheists and Buddhists and many other new believers.
For the few years, we had a basic staff of five members (including the pastor and his wife). This group lived in the city and all deeply bought into the vision. All were directly and personally fruitful in leading people to Christ. All were also generalists and performed multiple ministry tasks.
After two years, the first elders, deacons and deaconesses were elected."
Adapted from the Redeemer Church Planting Center: Renewing Cities Around the World Through Church Planting Church Planter Manual by Timothy J. Keller and J. Allen Thompson, pgs. 7-15
What will the story of Emmaus City be in Worcester?
Do you believe a story like this could happen in Worcester?
The story above is what happened with Redeemer in Manhattan between 1989-1991. This is not Emmaus City's story. Yet. But could we have one just as powerful for people in our neighborhoods in our city and the surrounding towns?
The first mistake would be thinking that somehow we can make this happen. The second mistake would be believing that God can't.
The gospel is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes (Romans 1:16-17). Everyone. The Christian and the non-Christian. Followers of Jesus in Worcester, we need to pray for God to restore the joy of our great salvation in us and ask Him to fill us with joy and peace from His Spirt to sustain us (Romans 15:13, Psalm 51:12). Too often, many of us have only done what comes naturally and comfortably. That kind of life is not why Jesus sent us His Holy Spirit. He sent us the Spirit so we wouldn't be afraid, so we could boldly be going in His name where things seem and often times are dangerous, knowing Jesus can not only lead us to others, but also give us the opportunity to share Him with them (John 14:26-27). We were made to love God, love our neighbors, and consider others above ourselves (Mark 12:29-31, Philippians 2:3). We were made to serve and to be sent with peace and power (Mark 10:43-44, John 20:20-21). We were made to lose what we settle for in life for Jesus, and grasp onto His good news so that we can find the resurrection life He gives (Mark 8:34-36, John 11:25-26). And He is able to do even more than all we can ask or even possibly imagine (Ephesians 3:20-21).
We need to repent and renew if we are going to see Jesus reveal the power of the gospel in Worcester and central Massachusetts.
And this starts with Him revealing the power of the gospel in me again. Again, I need to turn to our loving God and ask for His renewal.
Will you join me?
Next post: City Renewing Church | Trinity Grace Church: What might sacred roots look like in Worcester, MA?
– Sully
Curiosity piqued? Something inside you being stirred? Go ahead and connect. For other updates, like and follow Emmaus City on Facebook.
No comments:
Post a Comment