Our Journey in believing in Church Planting – Seeing some problems

Before you read this you may want to read our post on “Why Church Planting must be Discipleship“

On and off, We have spent the larger parts of both of our lives around church environments, being involved in youth groups, small groups and church services. We’ve been involved in incredible dynamic missions and prayer communities, and we’ve been working 9-5 jobs in places where we were the only believers.

We have experienced so much of the life of Jesus, so much good teaching, so much empowering of the holy spirit, but then sometimes, when we are out, amongst those who are not believers, it seems like it counts for nothing. We feel mute, under confident, and powerless to see things change for the better.

We saw many excellent young people get involved in youth groups and missions bases, have genuine and incredible experiences from Jesus, read his word with discipline, pray with fervor, and then go out to their everyday lives and combust. The more we see this, the more heart breaking it is.

Even in our own lives we get shocked at how full of life and energy for the things of the kingdom we can be and then, 2 days later, feel empty, alone and over run by the tide of secularism and unbelief. I hadn’t recognised this, or at least hadn’t allowed myself too until about a year ago, when I went to South Africa.

We had been dreaming about going to South Africa since before we were married, and finally we were going as a part of our DTS outreach. We were looking with new eyes, this wasn’t a place where I was going for a 2 week cultural experience, our hearts were already invested in this little township. We were full of faith and expectation that God could work in this place, and that we may be part of what he was doing there for the foreseeable future. It wasn’t our first time in Africa, but it was the first time we had come with the tough questions about it at the front of our minds knowing we couldn’t continue on without finding out the answers.

Our first 3 month time was fruitful, we saw people healed, come to faith, be nurtured in corporate prayer, enter community, worship, be known, seek God, be filled with faith for what God could do in the community around them. We worked with a local church, teaching their youth group about following Jesus, and then taking them on to the streets to reach their neighbours, by praying for healing. The change in the youth group was so impactful that the church ended changing their whole mission statement to include a focus of reaching their community.

The after 3 months, we packed up, and got ready to leave. We gathered our african friends who we had poured so much time, friendship and prayer into and said goodbye. Some of the men shared emotionally, and usual things for african men, about how we had been the first true friends they had ever had who were white, others about how they longed to do something like a DTS program that we had done.

Finally one of the africans we had worked closest with said with tears ‘Sometimes I think it would be better if missionaries didn’t come, because its too hard to say goodbye’. It didn’t really hit me at the time, I was fairly well entrenched in my belief that it is better to do a little good than none at all, in fact I still believe that. I understood how hard it was for him to make such close friends and then feel the loss of that. As I continued to think about what he had said, I realized, underneath his feelings of loss, was another sentiment; “I can’t live the same fullness of life that comes from following Jesus with you, without you”.

This statement began me asking different questions, questions for next time…keep reading!

An African Hero of mine – Sbu Jali

Yes, we are still in India, and are loving being a part of what God is doing here, but our hearts are definately still for Africa too.

Over the past few months we have become increasingly convinced that the answer to Africa’s problems are it’s people coming to Jesus, following Him with a radical obedience. That is why I have an African hero, not someone who is maybe influential in national politics or business or recorded in history books, yet at least, but one of our friends Sbusiso Jali.

Africa needs it’s men to stand up, it needs them to take hold of the call of God for their lives to see their communities, countries and continent redeemed through the gospel, and we are honoured to know and have as one of our best friends a forerunner of this movement. Sbu has served Jesus with integrity, passion and commitment ever since we have known him. He is a man with a servants heart and we want to commend him to you:

Please read his newsletter below to get a taste of the fruit of what God is doing through him, read below:

Sbu’s Newsletter Lower Quality

If you’d like to keep up to date with Sbu’s newsletters or you can help commit to support him prayerfully or financially, send him an email – JALISBUSISO@YAHOO.COM

40 Days before re-incarnation

Shortly before, in fact only around a week before arriving here in India, the family we have been living with lost a husband, father, and grandfather. Ever since we have stayed here we have had the pleasure to meet some members of the tibetan family who have emigrated overseas. A buddhist monk who lives in Nepal, A US Airforceman, A lady living in Queens, New York, and the sister who has the status of ‘Lady’ (When married to a Sir (MBE/OBE) in England. Including the family of 5 that live in the building we have been able to share this time with this host of people who came for the 40 day funeral ritual that buddhism requires.

After someone dies in Buddhism, there follows 40 days of Puja (prayer) using beads, lighting candles, incense, chanting, bashing cymbals, drumming and deep groans, all aimed at adding positive karma or good works to the person allowing them to re-incarnate into a better life.

Because of this belief in re-incarnation, members of the buddhist religion including the family we are staying with, do not allow each other to grieve or be sad because re-incarnation is considered a better thing than to have stayed alive, one more step towards enlightenment.

Observing this belief system, especially during a time where it had such real implications, was difficult for us. At different times we would have unexpected but divinely planned run-ins to different family members in quiet areas of the large house. We were able to share how we believe each life is precious, and how is was appropriate to feel the loss and pain. 3 seperate times, Rachel and I were able to comfort a member of the family as they were given the space to express their pain and loss in tears.

At the end of the Puja time of 40 days, a feast is prepared and a stocking of food gifts are prepared for everyone who knew the person who has died. Our family had 300 families they would make food hampers for, and Rachel was able to spend time with them and help pack these hampers. Later that day we were invited to the private family meal that signals the re-incarnation, a sure sign our presence and help had been a blessing. On their 4-storey high rooftop overlooking the mountains they made an awning with an old indian army parachute, we all sat underneath, sharing the meal for a man we had never known, speaking in broken english.

Please pray for our tibetan friends as we seek to display the love of Jesus in action and word.

The Power of Vulnerability

I recently watched the talk above by Brene Brown which was posted on the TED website. Have you heard of TED, its a great source of brain caffiene, hundreds of 10 – 25 min talks on alsmost every subject to get you thinking.

If you can’t see the version above try the youtube one here:

A few quotes worth mulling over:

“Connection is why we are here, the ability to be connected, it’s neurobiologically how we are wired”

“The thing that absolutely unravels connection is shame”

“The only people who don’t experience shame are those who have no capacity for for empathy and connection”

“The less you talk about [shame] the more you have it”

“Underpinning shame is “Im not good enough”

“In order to allow connection [relationship] to happen we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen”

“People who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging…Thats it, they believe they are worthy”

“The original meaning of the word Courage was  ”to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart”

“The courage is that these people have the courage to be [or acknowledge] imperfect.”

“As it turns our we can’t practice compassion with others, if we can’t treat ourselves kindly.”

“They fully embraced vulnerability…they didn’t talk about vulnerability being comfortable..they talked about it being necessary”

“The willingness to say “I Love you” first, the willingness to do something where there were no guarantees”

“Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but its also appears that its also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love”

“You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning.”

“Blame is described…a way to discharge pain and discomfort.”

So much of the above are the things that I think we as followers struggle with, sure we narrate the story a little differently, but we are not immune in anyway to the above.

Our acceptance of our need of Jesus is exactly the acceptance of imperfection, but as soon as we have finished with that moment of vulnerability, we create social christian spaces, churches, homegroups etc as places where we must perform, use the right words, look like we have it together. We end up buying into the same thing our society does, numb.

Next time someone opens up about their imperfection, resist the temptation to look down at your toes, hoping this moment of seeing the mirror of our own inner imperfection ends soon and we can believe we ‘have it all together’.

Interesting, isn’t it, that we neuro-biologically wired, by our creator for connection. Why do you think God filled the New Testament with guidance on how to treat other people, why after rightly order behind Loving God, to keep us from straight person-pleasing, God says Love others as yourself.

When we turn that around we also come to the realisation, the oppurtunity to love others, is, in turn, an oppurtunity to love ourselves.

Much of us spend our lives living with our pre-salvation identity of sinner, yes we sin, be we are no longer sinners, we are new creations. God loves us, God likes us, we must begin to love what God loves and like what God likes.

Look for ways to be open, share your brokeness, and thank Jesus he has given us a way to be made new in him, not just by patching up our brokeness.

Be willing to Love others first, knowing they could reject you, but knowing that we are, and will continue to be loved in Jesus.

Afternote: Thanks to Matt Hulst for the video, and to Roger Dell’Erba for turning round the second commandment for me here.

Everyone gets to play – Some Questions for you

Last post we talked about discipleship returning to its central place in our approach to evangelism and missions, but I want to say first this time, that evangelism and missions aren’t some technical new christian industry that the few are employed into, but the everyday living out of following Jesus that every believer is called into.

For many of us, it looks different, many of us spend most of our days in the same environment, an office, a home, wondering what would it look like if the Kingdom of God came into this place?

Some other of us work jobs where we travel, meeting people for short periods of time and wonder, What would it be like to be a tranformative witness for Jesus to these people? Others of us live away from our traditional homes seeking to serve a people group find these truths and lead themselves into kingdom living.

What are some of the questions you ask when you think about wanting to see the kingdom of God impact where you spend your week?

Why Church Planting must be Discipleship

For the last 12 months or more we have been studying and working out in practice what it looks like to church plant in the various areas (Africa and now Northern India) we have been working. The reason our desire is to specifically plant church as a mode of missions comes from many places both in the bible and through some of our own experiences in mission, but a central text which led us to it what the classic missionary scripture – Matt 28:19 Go and make DISCIPLES of All Nations, Baptizing them…

Make Disciples, two words which have both comforted and haunted us as we seek to ‘bring the kingdom’ where ever we have gone in the last few years. Africa itself is another encouragement to plant churches that foster disciple-making. This may shock some, but Africa HAS been reached with the Gospel, that is to say, the information of the Gospel. It is estimated that some 90% of African have heard the gospel, missiologist, those that study mission practices, have called this ‘evangelised’.

But wait a minuite, lets think about africa for a minuite – Every statistic that represents Africas health, education, and morality continues on a downward slope! If this is Africa’s current state and there has been such a large spread decision or salvation-based response to the gospel then what is wrong. Isn’t the Gospel good news, shouldn’t it heal, restore, renew and bring life? Yes, of course it is all these things, but I believe we have come to a time where God is revealing some holes in our thinking.

A decision for the gospel is important, a response, an acceptance of salvation is central to christian life, but in our approaches to evangelism we have left out the core of what it is to be ‘saved’ and that is to ‘follow Jesus’. Following Jesus is how we are known as disciples, and it is as Neitzche once said ‘A Long obedience in the same diection’. For those of us who have active desire to see the gospel go out, there should be an expectation that lives, families and communities will truly be transformed, but as we have seen, this needs much more than just a decision. The life of a disciple is a life where we are invited into the life of the trinity, be loved by the Father, commissioned by the Son, and empowered by the spirit. We are invited to read the Bible, and look to obey its words, to pray to receive the faith to implement the kingdom of heaven on earth throughout our days.

I believe it is when we redress the balance in evangelism and missions, of seeing discipleship takes its right place in our approaches and mindsets that we will see the type of exponential kingdom fruitfulness that Jesus had in his time on earth.

We’ll keep fleshing out what we mean some following posts, but jump into the comments now and let us hear your thoughts.

Short Thoughts on Ministry – Pastoral Calling

Recently a good friend of ours asked us about our thoughts on calling and living life as a minister of the gospel. I shared 3 brief thoughts and then some very good and thought provoking statements from Eugene Peterson who’s thinking on this area I admire immensely. I’m sharing them here with you in the hope they may encourage some of you.

1. Jesus said “…I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail” – This tells me to two things, first the apostolic ministry is Jesus’ – he intends to build his church, and we should acknowledge that it takes place inspite of us at many times. To rely on this faithful promise is to acknowledge that the burden for this work rests on the shoulders of the cornerstone, and our question is, like Jesus, asking everyday “What is the Father doing?” and look for creative and grace-filled ways to partner with the ways he is working in people’s lives. Secondly, as someone usefully pointed out to me, gates do not attack, if we are following Jesus, we will be increasing the dominion of his kingdom by being with the lost. In short WE must GO to the lost, we cannot ask of others what we are not willing to live out ourselves.

2. As brothers and sisters ministering to one another, the minister is not so much the shepherd as we are a courageous sheep! Modelling and ‘being the first in line’ to hear, obey and follow the shepherd. Discipleship is modelling and articulating the life of Jesus in ourselves as a roadmap for others.

3. Although Jesus in one sense is deeply concerned with the individual and locality of gospel efforts, His Mission is the ‘Missio Dei’ the mission of God, not just ‘Missio Bodmin’ or ‘Missio Masiphumelele’ – Expect and be excited about unexpected graces in unexpected places, people and ministries, remembering we are alway building a kingdom that already has a king, not a corporation that needs a CEO.

Some thoughtful propositions on pastoral ministry from Eugene Peterson, who, from reading his work, seems to hold much wisdom on what pastoral ministry actually is…I hope it useful reflective material for you -

A lifetime of influence always reflects a person of character.

A pastor is not a job description, it’s a life that’s shaped in a certain way.

We are all shaped by our environments.

To try and model yourself after someone else is almost always a mistake.

Being a pastor is the most context-specific vocation there is.

As a pastor, your life is your vocation.

As a pastor he knew what he wanted to do but didn’t know how to do it.

He didn’t want to be an “entertainment” pastor.

He didn’t want to be Presbyterian, that was like doing bookkeeping.

He wanted to makes sure people knew about God and that they knew each other.

A Holy God, a holy congregation.

He knew he needed to be insistently local, the congregation is a local place.

It has to be personal, you have to have relationships with all of the people.

There was still a church building to be built and funds to be raised.

He realized he had an adrenaline addiction… he liked to compete.

He realized he didn’t know how to be a pastor but realized his congregation didn’t know what was a pastor was either… so he was proactive to make sure they knew who he was as a pastor and so he could know who they were as a church.

He didn’t want to run a church, he wanted to be a pastor.

All of us learn how to do what we are doing while we’re on the job.

None of us are exempt from learning how to be a pastor on the job and to trust the people who are with us on the job.

We need to let other people be ministers along with us.

You need to give people responsibility and authority to create a holy community.

Determine not to look at people as problems to fix.

Do not look at people as resources to use.

Doing either of this is dehumanizing.

Treat people with dignity and as eternal souls, not as ways to make a living.

Most of the leadership models we have given to us in our secular culture have to do with getting something done.

Making money, building something, going on a mission, etc.

A pastor’s chief job is not to get something done but to pay attention to what’s going on and to be able to name it and to encourage it.

We live in a secularized world where leadership positions almost entirely do with having to get something done and figuring out how to do it.

A pastor has a unique position in the church of Christ to be on the ground and local in a community, paying attention to what God is doing and helping people see it through the exposition of Scripture and teaching.

People pay more attention to listening.

The Bible is our Story.

The pastoral vocation has to do with being available to people, to lead them into maturity and in the life of Christ without mimicking you.

People need to grow in Christ in the context of who they are, in their vocations, etc.

Being a pastor is a modest job. We are not important in the economy of the world… we are, however, important in the economy of the Kingdom of God.

Worship, teaching, silence and being present are major parts of being a pastor.

Everybody has a story.

Spiritual formation doesn’t mean getting a bunch of disciplines together and doing them, it means paying attention to what’s going on in your life.

The caution: don’t let culture define our position and our vocation.

Secular culture infiltrates the church… we live in a sea of secularity, it’s hard not to be influenced by it.

Think deeply, pray deeply, read widely in the literature of pastors.

Steep yourself in the community and company of pastors.

This is a unique vocation and we can learn from a lot of people and we need to pay attention to the people who have done it well.

Understand the inner-workings of the pastoral life.

Steep yourself in the literature of the life of faith.

Keep your guard up against the secular stuff going on around us.

There is a lot of pessimism in the church today.

We’ve been in this position so many times … for 2,000 years, and for 2,000 years before that as a Jewish community.

We’ve never been successful at it.

Israel was only faithful every once in awhile…

All throughout it, though, salvation is still working out in spite of us.

Arrived in India

We are Happy to say we have arrived safe and sound in India. We spent a couple of days in New Delhi, which was an amazing introduction to India…we made a short video called “travel” to give you an idea of the things we are seeing, and the death defying traffic we are living through!!

If you can’t see the video above click here or go to http://vimeo.com/23526147 to see it

If your internet is too slow to watch streaming video, right click here and select save target as… to watch it offline

Discovering Salvation – Church in Shacks

Last week we met a man in Masi walking back from the store with a bag of pap (a rice type maize meal that constitutes the base of all meals here), it was mid morning and he was obviously on his way to being drunk. That isn’t too unusual for us here, a large proportion of Masi residents start abusing alcohol on friday evening all the way through to Sunday morning, keeping themselves in the cycle of poverty that created the pain in their lives that they are trying to escape from by drinking.

We get to the mans house as we help him and he invites us in. In the corner of this shack is a lady, stick thin, so much so that it is clear she is in the final stages of AIDs and TB (which in south Africa are virtually synonyms). He later explained the lady was his wife and she had recently been released from a well known local AIDs hospice after her condition improving. Not many people in Masi admit to having the disease and her husband is insistent she simply has a stomach problem, and puts her improving health down to a visit to the sangoma (traditional healer/witchdoctor). A local doctor told us once that a study estimated that for every 1 person seen at a ‘western’ medical clinic in Masi 9 others have opted to visit a sangoma.

We are offered a seat in the normal hospitable Xhosa fashion, and I begin to tell them about how my life was changed by Jesus and how I longed to see other peoples lives changed through the love of God. The man listened smiling, politely nodding at all the right moments, a number of neighbours came in during our visit, all similarly drunk and it was clear this man was well connected in this area of Masi. What was strange though was that his wife stayed away from us, not speaking and even refusing help to cook and carry things from Rachel. As we left we asked if we could pray for their household and asked them whether they would be interested in gathering their neighbours to discover more about Jesus together. They agreed to prayer and seemed open to us coming back. As we prayed I felt the holy spirit urge us to pray for the mans wife. I would normally never ‘force’ prayer on someone who seemed so closed but we are learning in this heightened spiritual environment to be obedient to the voice of God. We asked whether we could pray for her healing and her husband had told us she had lots of pain all week. We prayed and blessed them, and then we left.We agreed to go back that next week to be true to our word but honestly speaking didn’t expect much.

During the next week, I headed back to the house with a Xhosa friend and a cpx student from Malawi as Rachel was sick and couldn’t come in. As I arrived we greeted the wife who was standing outside with a younger lady and man, but quickly discovered the ‘gatekeeper’, the husband, had gone out. I quickly decided that as he was the most engaged and ‘hungry’ person there would be little point trying to push the discovery study, so I asked my Xhosa friend to ask the wife whether we could pray for her health again. This time she responded far more enthusiastically than any of our previous interactions, she said that God had given her no pain that week at all and invited us into the house.The younger lady (who turned out to be her daugher) and younger man (a neighbour half dressed in a shirt and tie for church) also came in and decided they wanted to do this discovery study.

As we began, the husband returned and joined in. We went round sharing one thing we were thankful for in the past week and began to read John 3:16-17.
The discovery method is based around a series of questions which can be applied to any bible passage and encourages the group to self discover the truths and application of that verse, which is known to the most effective and long lasting way that people learn things.

We went through the study with the group and had some great ‘discovery’ moments, particularly the wife who when I asked her what she felt like she had learnt she said that she learnt eternal life came through believing Gods son! The man who came on his way to church (which is a church which is nominally christian and includes ancestor worship, teaching their attendees little of the Gospel of Jesus) said he realised half way through he was going to be late for church, and then said he realised, I guess this is church!

The daughter of the family also agreed to help lead the next discovery study which means we can help her carry it on themselves, building community and discovering God and salvation.
Would you pray with us that this seed of planted would grow into the fruit we are dreaming of here One of many local led community of baptized believers that worships, fellowships, reads the word, leaving with a desire to obey to see individuals, families and communities transformed. This is what we are dreaming of in South Africa!

Reading the bible – Ways to read to learn to Obey

We have been learning lots of ’simple’ ways to read the bible and to understand its meaning, so that we can give it away in the communities we are working in.

Because we are so often dealing with people who have little or no education past basic literacy, most of our complex and intellectual ways of studying the bible aren’t appropriate when we are encouraging people to engage with the word on a regular basis in a way they can easily apply to their lives. So we have been learning a few simple methods, one of which I want to share with you. I have been discovering the beauty of simple inductive bible study, just you, or maybe you and some friends, trusting the Holy Spirit to guide us, desiring to obey Gods work with our lives, living out the word in concrete actions.

So often our tendency can be to distance ourself from the word, to make its interpretation something conceptual, abstract or even ethereal. But most of what we read in the bible is brilliantly practical. Martin Luther said of this distancing, that it was a like a child who put a pillow in the back of their trousers before getting a spanking!

Of course, our desire in reading the word is not to get a metaphorical ’spanking’, but to discover Jesus, and in discovering him, to learn to love him, which means to want to obey him. Not out of some twisted sense of ‘earning’ anything, but because we follow those we love.

So…on with simple bible study, that teaches us to obey: We are going to use Deut 6:4-8.

First Read the passage out loud:

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.[a] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

Then write the passage out in its entirety:
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about then when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Then write out the passage in your own words, the desire isn’t for literalist accuracy as much as it is to rephrase the scripture, by doing this we are doing something similar to turning a diamond round, looking for the different lines, and the way it reflects the light. I’ve often enjoyed reading Eugene Peterson’s MESSAGE translation for this, but I am enjoying even more putting my own words to ‘What I am hearing’ from the passage. That is another key, we are trying to really see, “What might the Holy Spirit be highlighting in this passage for me today”. As anyone who has read the scriptures over a number of years knows, scriptures speak directly, like a double edge sword into our circumstance. We trust that as we pray for the Holy Spirit to be illuminating the verses to us, that His desire to do that is even stronger than ours, even as far to say that He has put that desire in us!

So hears my shot at Deut 6:

There is no other God, YHWH is the only one. Give him all you have from the deepest place of your being, give his commandments meaning to your children, let them be spoken often in the place you spend your days, when you are moving about, when you are resting, and when you begin working. Keep them before you as you work with your hands, and let them be at fore front of your mind in all your thinking. Let them mark the place you live in, so that when people come in they know who God is.

In all the bible study methods we use here, the common key is always, “how can we obey”…all through the bible we see the call the obey as the primary way in which we follow Jesus.

So then I would pray for God to reveal to you, What does it look like for you to obey Jesus in reading this today?” We are not looking for a way to sum up what obedience might be for every aspect of the verse, of course that is the desire, but obedience is one step at a time, and obeying the aspect in your heart that the Holy Spirit is speaking to you TODAY.

So here was my prayer as I did this verse:

God, you know our desire is to worship you with our lives, and that we believe your word. Would you direct how to live your word so that we might love you rightly, and people would know that you are good by our living response to who you are. Amen

Then we write down a statement explaining simply what we will commit to obey…

..Its always helpful to begin the sentence – “I will…” otherwise I have found, that I tend to keep a ‘get out of jail’ free card, by saying ‘I will try…’ or talk about a way that my thinking is changing. Those things, ‘trying’ and ‘changing thinking’ is of course a great step. But we are keen to encourage in our own lives and those we disciple comittments to “follow” Jesus and trust that he will extend the grace to live out the things he is calling us to obey.

So my obedience statement as I prayed through this verse is:

“I will make time around meal times to read the word and discuss it looking for way to love God by obeying what it asks, desiring that our house may be a place where people encounter you Jesus, the word made flesh.”

« Previous Page — Next Page »