If you want established churches to get excited about growing and starting new churches, don’t appeal to their fear that their brand of church is losing influence (even if it is).

The question is not, ”What will we do to keep ourselves from going extinct?”

The question is, “What will we do to show people what God is like?”

The first question is driven by fear.  The second by love.

Leaders motivated by fear are not the people you want working alongside you anyway. They may reach out to the community with you, but they will do it in a way that puts their own interests above the interests of the ones you’re reaching, and that is not Christlike.  That spirit is contagious.

Instead, appeal to people’s desire to show real love to the world.  It has been said that in all of our hearts is a God-shaped hole only God can fill.  We were made to be in relationship with our Creator.  We also were made to love like He does… wildly… sacrificially.  Find the folks who want to show the world what God is like by showing crazy love to their families and the hurting people in their community.  Then see what happens.  You can start by modeling crazy love yourself.  You may get fewer folks to join you in the beginning, but this spirit is contagious, too.  God’s kingdom grows from small beginnings and selfless acts of love.

Categories: the why
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Have you been asked to support church planting because of what it will do for your church or denomination (or your non-denomination as the case may be)?  I used to give these well-intended presentations, but now I’m skeptical.  They go something like this: “Our brand of church is in a state of decline compared to other denominations and the U.S. population growth rate. If we don’t do something, our brand is liable to become obsolete!  We’ll lose our identity.  Let’s not lose our slice of the Churched Population Pie. We need to reach more people to keep our brand of church from going extinct.  The way to do this is by starting more of our kind of churches!  We’ll get to know our neighbors and meet their felt needs.  They’ll see how caring we are and our brand of church will become more attractive.  When they come to our newly planted churches, we’ll win them to Jesus.  Imagine it.  Lost people will be saved, and our brand of church will stay relevant in the 21st century.  That’s why we need to plant churches!”

I get it, but then I don’t get it.  Really, why do we need to keep our slice of the pie?  Why focus our energies on preserving our brand of church?  Jesus Christ said the church he builds will not be stopped (Matthew 16:18).  He didn’t make this promise for your brand of church.  The Church will live on, but maybe church brands, denominations and non-denominations have life cycles.   

But even if your and my brands of church are here to stay, is preserving them really the goal of joining God in mission?  Our “bigger slice of the pie” presentations have emphasized a self-serving reason for Christians to engage their communities, and I think this will come back to haunt us.   Your community desperately needs you to show them the Selfless Savior, not the Self-Preserving Church.  So you want to introduce lost and broken people to the person and hope of Christ.  In the process, God may ask you to give up traditions dear to your heart to show His kind of love to your community.  Jesus’ teachings were full of such ironies.  Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and the humble will be exalted.  The last shall be first and the first shall be last.  Holding onto life leads to death, and dying to oneself leads to life.  For those of us who have grown attached to our ways of doing church, maybe the way to hold onto our church identity is to let go of it.  To borrow another analogy from Jesus Christ, you may be required to let the kernel of wheat fall to the ground and die so that new life can sprout where you are (John 12).  Are you willing to let go of finding your identity inyour church brand and find it in Christ alone?  What wouldn’t you give up so that others could know Him, too?

Go ahead, form new communities of faith, but do it out of sacrificial love.  And spur others on to do the same.  Live this way because you have wild love for God and people, not because church planting could preserve our brand of church and make us successful.  You are preaching Christ and him crucified, not your way of doing church.  The road to becoming a risk-taking, outward-focused church is not paved with self-preservation.

Categories: the why
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People in LA need to hear about the God who delivers!  Several friends have described situations where Christians pleaded with them to be or get “saved,”  and to their disappointment they discovered salvation means no deliverance.  You gotta stop dressing in all black, stop wearing your lip piercings, stop listening to your favorite music, stop this, stop that… Is that really what salvation means?   

“Salvation” is about being delivered from something and to something!  From hell to heaven, you say?  Yes, but God delivers people FROM and TO stuff in the here and now, not just in the ever after.  Check it out!

In the early part of the biblical story, God sent his servant Moses to deliver the people of Israel from slavery and oppression in Egypt, which is a really BIG deal.  But the story doesn’t stop there.  God delivered them to something as well.  He delivered them to enjoy the promised land “of milk and honey” where they were meant to experience a good and lasting relationship (“covenant”) with him.  This deliverance wasn’t just about them.  It was about the rest of the world, too.  God delivered his people to be a “nation of priests” who would intentionally “be a blessing to all nations” intervening on the world’s behalf – thereby showing the world what God is like that all humankind would want to obey God, too.  That was the intent.  The Creator delivering all his created ones, not just Israel, from something and to something.  The first Exodus, the first deliverance.

To make deliverance truly possible for all of us, God eventually sent his Son (“another prophet like Moses” only better).  Through what he accomplished on the Cross, his Son delivered all humankind once and for all from slavery to sin (and delivered all of creation from the consequences of sin), which is a really BIG deal.  But the story doesn’t stop there.  God delivered us all to experience a good and lasting relationship with him.  This deliverance isn’t just about Jesus’ followers.  It is about the rest of the world, too.  Jesus’ followers are meant to love as he does, seek justice, and make disciples of all nations, showing all people what God is like that they would want to follow him, too.  God wants all the world to be delivered from something and to something.  That is the intent.  The ultimate Exodus, the ultimate deliverance!

What’s more, Jesus taught that his deliverence (a.k.a. the “abundant life”), while it will be more fully realized when he returns, begins now!  If that is true, then I am asking myself, what does a delivered life look like? 

Question: What did God deliver you FROM and what did he deliver you TO?

[A brother in Christ at the Hilltop Church in El Segundo, CA showed me the delivered from/to concept.]

Categories: the why
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The participants of the training event I attended this week were asked to watch the “CPM Awareness”* videos at www.cpmtr.org prior to coming.  However, some participants didn’t watch them, so they’re going to go do that when they get home.  If you haven’t seen this 4-part video series, you can view it here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.  Warning: This CPM Awareness series is 6 hours long yet well worth it.  My advice from experience is that it is better to watch a little at a time (45 to 90 minute increments) and discuss it as you go with a spouse, teammate, or small group of friends who share your interest. 

If you are interested in reaching your community for Christ, go start watching some of those videos!  And if you start trying out this stuff in your own community, write to me through the Contacts Page.  I’ll be interested to know what you tried out, how it’s going, and what you’re learning.  We can learn from each other.

(*) “CPM” = church planting movement (I like to call it gospel planting movement).

Categories: the how, the why
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In the beginning (12 years ago) we had no idea we would be laying the foundation for a church planting movement.  In 1996 we were exposed to people in Hollywood who are sold out in love with Jesus Christ, and their life and words led us to fall in love with him, too, like never before.  Then we learned Jesus Christ wants his followers to run into darkness not away from it, to be a light to the world (scripture reference here).  Through events and relationships came a clear prompting to relocate to a ghetto we were conditioned to fear.  No notions of church planting yet, only the clear call to live intentionally for Christ in that community.  As scared, rebellious and self-involved as we were at the time (and still are), we trusted Him enough to obey.  And after the move came even tougher lessons we would have to learn (all obedience-related) before we would receive and get to live out a God-given vision for a church planting movement.

I like that part of our story.  I like that our obedience was to a loving God, not to “the plan.”  As we’ve seen, visions will get refined, strategies will completely change, but our allegiance is to the One who is the same yesterday, today and forever (scripture reference here).  Oh, how we love him.  Do you know him?  He is wonderful.  Truly wonderful.

Categories: the why
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Love motivated us to move to inner-city Los Angeles.  Love for God and love for people who are disconnected from Him.  It wasn’t until after we first moved into a ghetto of Hollywood that the idea of starting new churches came into the picture.  A burden was growing in our hearts for people who will not come to church even when the church asks them to, and for social lepers the church will not go to even when the church is asked to.  That said, our motives weren’t (and still aren’t) entirely pure.  For example, there was the shock value factor.  A part of me liked (still likes) getting a reaction from Christians who say, “Wow, I could never do that.”  But all self-serving motives aside, our primary motivator for living this way has been God’s love.  Last week I was reminded how easy it is to get caught up in doing what it takes to get “results” for our ministry and forget to love the people. Pray we will love as Christ first loved us.

Categories: the why
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This motto was passed on to us, and we have adopted it as our own.  “Let’s make new mistakes!”

In last night’s village gathering we talked about how we’d rather make new mistakes than repeat the old ones.  Hopefully, some of you reading this blog will learn from the new mistakes we are making and have something even better to offer for it!

Something must change about the way we view and do church and missions in North America.

Categories: the why
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