The Institute of Evangelism

Every Church an Evangelizing Community!

Good Idea is our online magazine where you’ll find inspiration, tips, ideas, and stories of how God is working in other churches. Every month we offer one good idea to help churches grow in sharing the faith.

Good Idea!

Prayer and Food: Keys to Church Plant Growth

by and .

Sean: In last month’s Good Idea you gave us an overview of life and ministry at St. Clair and of “missional families” in particular. Can we go a little deeper? I’m wondering if we could explore in the area of prayer and discipleship. You say that prayer is the key to everything you do. What does that look like in your missional families? How do you pray and what do you pray for?

Matt: Prayer is one of our key practices. We try and explore different ways of praying in our missional families. I know one “mish fam” (that’s the best slang we have!) that spends time in silence and listening prayer consistently each week. One of our missional families has used the prayer of examen in their meetings to help people reflect on their days. We often do the fairly typical prayer for people’s needs within our missional families. One thing we try and stress is not to ask people to give their opinions or solve their problems but to bring it before God. We may take time to pray for friends, co-workers, neighbours who don’t yet know Jesus or are struggling in certain ways.

The missional family I was in last year took time at the end of each gathering to have one family stand in the middle and have everyone gather round them and lay hands on them and pray for them. We have had missional families who have prayer walked their neighbourhoods asking for God’s shalom to come in those geographical places. In each of our prayer “initiatives” we try and include our children so this is a normative practice for them.

 

Sean: I entered the Anglican church later in life, and I’m deeply grateful for new relationships and for the gifts of the Anglican tradition, but I’ve noticed that many people in the church (I suspect this would be true of other mainline denominations) struggle with the idea of informal, lay-led group prayer outside of Sunday worship, especially with children. Can you say why this kind of prayer matters so much for missional ministry? What are the practical benefits of praying like this? Perhaps you’ve got a story or two.

Matt: That’s a great question. Depending on what tradition you are from, prayer can be seen as something that really spiritual people or “prayer warriors” or wonderful older ladies do. I think that has caused the majority of people to see prayer as distant or disconnected from them. We have to put ministry and particularly prayer back in the hands of the laity.

The one time in the gospels that the disciples ask Jesus to teach them something is how to pray (Luke 11:1). Jesus starts by reminding them of who they are praying to. They are children of God and he is a father who receives their prayer lovingly. And he encourages them to pray for comfort, peace, strength, guidance and for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

I realize this can be hard in small group settings, especially if it’s not a regular practice.

Last year someone from one of our missional families came to speak to me. She said she had never prayed out loud in public before and felt nervous because she didn’t always know what to say and others seemed more eloquent than her. I told this person not to worry. Prayer takes different forms and there was no pressure at all, and I normally just pray honestly what’s on my heart and mind. Eloquence and long prayers didn’t seem to impress Jesus. The following week we prayed for another family and my friend was the first person to pray. It was so great to see her step out and trust God.

But your question zeroes in on “missional ministry.” Praying for each other as people living into the mission of God every day is so important. We can get exhausted and disillusioned at times, and life can be difficult and painful. And we can be tempted to do everything on our own strength and forget that it’s God who invites us into his mission and equips us for it. Quite a few times we have prayed for people who want to share the good news of Jesus with friends or co-workers and then that week they have had opportunities to share with them or invite them out to missional family. We have also seen people encouraged and strengthened as we have prayed for them—including people beyond our church community.

One time we took some school supplies and back packs to a local elementary school to help with children who didn’t have new supplies. Some moms in our group baked cookies for the teachers to say how thankful we were for them. As we handed the backpacks over, the principal was expressing her gratitude. Without thinking I asked if I could pray for her and the school and she agreed. We stood in the front reception area and prayed blessing over the school and teachers. When we had finished the principal was moved to tears and so appreciative.

 

Sean: Wow, that’s a great story. I’m guessing that was a moving experience for you too. Gathering together in prayer, trusting God for his provision, listening for his leading, praying for each other and for others—these are really important aspects of discipleship. Can you expand on discipleship more generally? How are people learning to follow Jesus in missional families? And what are some of key practices of missional family that help with the learning?

Matt: At the end of Jesus earthly ministry he gathers his followers together and with some final instructions says “Go and make disciples of all nations”. What does it mean to be a disciple? In our modern context, it would be something like apprenticeship. Jesus gathered a small group of people who did life with him every day. They learned from him and then tried to practice everything he had shown them.

In most of our church traditions we have confined discipleship to an hour or two on a Sunday morning. While Sunday is deeply formational, we need a more rounded approach to discipleship. What does it look like to be in relationship with God and each other the rest of the week? Missional families is part of the answer to that for us. But it’s also about engaging certain practices in our life together—practices that go back to the early church. We’ve identified 5 core practices: 1) Eating together; 2) Prayer, which we’ve talked about; 3) Engagement with scripture; 4) Caring for each other; and 5) Serving the wider community.

This is what we are trying to live out during the week. There are times when we focus more on one practice than others, depending on what season of life the group is going through, but this is what we’re aspiring to, with Jesus at the center. I should say that we’re also careful not to pressure people or give the impression that our apprenticeship with Jesus is somehow meritorious. The practices don’t gain us favour with God, but they do serve as a conduit for the Spirit to move.

 

Sean: You mention above the importance of food for discipleship. Can you expand on that? I think we could all appreciate how shared meals can bring people together. But how does it help us to follow Jesus in life together? And how does it do that in connection with our neighbors?

Matt: A wise person once said if you take meals and mountains out of the scripture, it’s a much shorter Bible. Meals are central to the biblical narrative and also important to the life of Jesus. When you read the gospels you notice Jesus eating with people on a regular basis. He is eating with his close companions and also those far from the kingdom. And he does this as both a host and a guest.

My sense is that sharing meals is central to God’s mission. We can think of our Bible studies and prayer times as spiritual but eating with people as just something we do. A friend of mine who owns a local coffee shop here in Hamilton but wouldn’t claim to be a Jesus follower once said to me “Matt, I think a meal is a sacred thing”. I think that’s right, especially when we recognize Jesus at the center. Meals help us to drop our defenses and to listen closely to each other with empathy. They keep life whole.

We need to remember that hospitality for Jesus isn’t simply about entertaining people you know. It also includes welcoming the stranger. In our missional families, we talk about what it means to be the kind of hosts who welcome strangers. We also explore how to be good guests in the wider community. In a very individualist culture to invite someone for dinner or welcome invitations from others can be a hugely significant thing. It helps with loneliness, of course, which is a real problem. But table fellowship can be a wonderful way to encounter Jesus and to introduce the gospel to others in the midst of daily life.

 

Sean: Thanks so much Matt! We’re already looking forward to our third and final interview with you when we’ll discuss how children and youth are discipled and minister within your missional families.

 

From the Director of the Institute of Evangelism

Learning to Pray Like a Church Plant

What can established churches learn about prayer from church plants? Here are at least six things:

  1. Prayer should be the starting point of ministry. Church plants begin with someone hearing a call from God to share the gospel in a new way in a particular place and time. In this sense listening to God is the starting point for every church plant. This calling and all its ramifications can only be further fleshed out by both listening and talking to God. This places prayer the very heart of church planting, whereas in more established churches prayer can sometimes end up being relegated to Sunday morning or little more than a ‘tag on’ to open or close meetings.
  2. Prayer should have a decidedly missional focus. Church plants, by their very nature, tend to place disciple-making at the very forefront of their planning and practices. They tend to pray more intentionally for people who don’t yet know the love of God and for all their members to share their faith with someone new. Prayers with this evangelistic focus are often rare and sometimes completely missing in more established churches. Let’s bring this focus back.
  3. Prayer should flow from a deep dependency on God. It’s often in settings of experimentation and uncertainty, such as church plants, that people are forced to really rely on God’s direction and power. Because of this, prayer takes on an urgency and nurtures a real dependency. All too often established churches begin to focus inwardly, risking less and so losing that key sense of reliance on God.
  4. Prayer should involve everyone. Church plants, particularly those that start in small groups, necessarily reclaim the role of lay people in the practice of prayer. This is something that can be lost in established churches that may unwittingly cause lay people to feel ‘less qualified’ to pray than their clergy.
  5. Prayer should come in many forms. Since most church plants lack a centralized building many naturally use small groups meeting in peoples’ homes to disciple people. Diverse practices of prayer often emerge in these groups since they’re driven by a less centralized and uniform mentality. A prayer walk through the neighbourhood, silent ‘listening prayer’, the Prayer of Examen, extemporaneous prayer for the broader community, laying on of hands with prayer for a member, historic written prayers; these are all often found in such contexts. Sometimes in more established churches corporate prayer begins to mirror whatever form is modeled during the Sunday worship service.
  6. Prayer should be naturally linked to food! When people meet in small groups there is almost always food involved, and often a shared meal. This is not detached from the prayer time of these groups but is intrinsically a part of it. Members learn of the struggles and joys of each other and their neighbourhood as they serve up lasagna and pass around the garlic bread. The content of their prayers is deeply linked to the hospitality and relationship building they share over food together. Increasingly, established churches are learning that the bigger you become the smaller you must become. Perhaps this is especially true when it comes to people praying together for the needs of both themselves and their neighbourhoods.

Which of these lessons is most needed in your community of faith?

 

 

How a ‘Missional Family’ Became a Church Plant

by and .

This past fall, I had the opportunity to connect with Matt Pamplin, a church planter from Hamilton, Ontario. I invited Matt to speak as a guest lecturer in my church planting course at Wycliffe College. We enjoyed his talk so much that I later asked if he would like to expand on it as an interview for a Good Idea article. Below is the first of a three part interview. I hope you will find Matt’s story as helpful and challenging as I have.

Sean: Tell me a little about St. Clair Community Church. I understand that your community emerged out of a small group, or what you are now calling a missional family. How did that happen?

Matt: I was on staff at a healthy established church In Waterdown, Ontario, about a 20-minute drive from my home in downtown Hamilton. Things were going well. My wife and I loved the church but had felt a call to the neighbourhood we were living in and where we had built some strong friendships with our neighbours. During this time a few friends / families who lived downtown were also “commuting” to Waterdown for church. So we decided to gather some people to pray for our neighbourhood and the city of Hamilton.

Prayer was the starting point and continues to be the source of everything we do. The presence of Jesus is the engine of the church. We often think if we run better programs or have better plans things will grow but if we don’t pray or seek his presence we don’t have anything. So we prayed, ate together, shared communion, spent time in the scripture and asked “How do we love our neighbourhood?” We prayed and gathered for over a year and realized that we wanted to be a family joined together on mission. So when we “officially” planted a Sunday gathering, we started with these midweek groups that we called missional families.

 

Sean: So you were gathering as a small group before you knew that you were planting a church—instinctively, as a way of engaging your wider community. Usually it’s the other way around.

Matt: Very true! We just felt called to pray, listen to Jesus and then do what Jesus said. That was really the heart of what we did, and then a church grew almost accidentally out of that. A pastor, who we have learnt a lot from, Mike Breen, says “If you make disciples you will get the church, but if you start with the church you may not make disciples”. This has been really helpful to us, we felt called to make disciples of Jesus by living as a family on mission and see what happens. That was our starting point as opposed to getting a building, projector, great Bible teacher, etc. and trying to form a crowd. We prayed and then asked our neighbours and people who lived in the community what their dreams, hopes, fears and heartaches were. We wanted to reflect our neighbourhood (which has historically had lots of economic disparity). A friend while praying for us during this time said he had a word for us: “If you take care of the least of these, I’ll take care of your church”.

 

Sean: I understand that you continue to practice missional families as a church community. How would you describe these groups and what do they do?

Matt: Missional families are central to all we do. We feel called to make disciples and to do that we need a context. We can’t make disciples simply by meeting in a large group for an hour once a week. Jesus and Paul, throughout the New Testament, gather together in a smaller context to live out the way of Jesus every day. We say our missional families are not a once a week meeting but they do involve one.

We now have around 14 missional families at St. Clair that are spread throughout the city. They are based around 5 practices: Eating together (there is always a meal involved), praying together, engaging in scripture together, caring for each other and serving together. The serving involves loving people outside our existing missional families. Each missional family bases their serving on a question “Are we called to our neighbourhood or a network”. The neighbourhood is the place we live in and the network is a group of people drawn together by affinity, interest or life experience—things like school activities, arts community, sports teams, refugee support, etc. We ask each missional family to pray and see where they are called to serve and love.

 

Sean: Traditionally one of the big challenges of small groups is that they can so easily turn inward and become huddle-like. How do you remain open and on mission together?

Matt: This is a challenge for every church I think, ourselves included. We meet with our leaders for training during the year and continue to remind them of the vision and values of missional family. Each of our missional families is open to new people and we want them to multiply. We don’t talk about splitting but multiplying. When a group gets too big (which many have) we pray and send out some new leaders to start their own missional family based around “mission”. We then ask if other people want to join them rather than just splitting the group in half. We also use Sunday mornings to teach and reiterate the fact that the church is a missionary people. We often say we “gather” on Sundays to remind ourselves we are a “scattered people”. We also believe that if we truly pray and seek Jesus, prayer always grows legs and leaves the prayer room.

 

Sean: I’ve heard that one of your current missional families is set to plant a church in another part of the city? So the story continues! Can you say how that’s come about and maybe share a few highlights and challenges?

Matt: My wife and I were leading a missional family and then launched two new ones out of ours. So we decided to go and join one of the new couples leading this group to help support and encourage them. They were meeting in their home in the next neighbourhood over. On the first night there were just two families and a single lady from our community. During the year more people started to join until we had no room in their house (there were 18 children in the group). We also had some other families from St. Clair who had bought homes in that neighbourhood who said they were interested in joining. During the time this missional family was growing we felt as a leadership team that we should church plant again. So we invited our community to pray. We spent a year praying with no pre-conceived ideas of where or what it should be, and during that time we sensed that God was doing something in the neighbourhood the missional family was in. So we told our church we would be planting again and in September started meeting as a missional family that would birth the church plant.

 

Sean: That’s great. I’m noticing a theme in your story: the centrality of prayer. It seems this takes precedence over everything, which is good news for people who may not think of themselves as particularly skilled or gifted for missional work. We can all pray! And we can all take small steps in response to God’s leading.

What advice would you have for people in an existing congregation if they are wanting to experiment with something like missional families? What would be a good place to begin, and what are some of the key perspectives and practices that incline in this direction?

Matt: I think start small and be willing to experiment. We heard a phrase during planting that has been really helpful to us: “It’s evolution not revolution because in revolutions too many people die”. We have said to a few people just start a small gathering that lives out the practices of family on mission and invite people to be part of it. You don’t have to overhaul everything but just start with this. Two of the key practices are eating together and having children as part of the missional family. I’ll say more about that later*, but we’ve learned so much from this. It has been an amazing journey for us but it hasn’t been easy and we are continuing to learn and grow every day.

*see next month’s Good Idea

From the Director of the Institute of Evangelism

Church Planting Turned on its Head

So let’s assume that for some crazy reason you have decided to plant a church. How will you go about it? There are a number of different models you could choose from.

One model prevalent across the centuries has been the ‘mother-daughter’ church plant. It’s a predominantly top-down model that often begins with a decision to plant a church in a new residential area. Denominational executives meeting with the leaders of an established church is a usual starting point. Funds are raised from both of these sources. A planting-team is formed from the ‘mother church’ with a lead planter often provided by the denomination. Land is purchased, a building is built, advertising is done, doors in the new area are knocked on, and collective worship begins. The new church hopes to grow largely by attracting people to come to its Sunday services. Financial support, from both the ‘mother’ church and the denomination, may be relied on for a decade or more.

This model depends on the intentional support of both robust and mission-focused denominations and established churches of significant financial means. There is usually a strong family resemblance between the ‘mother’ and ‘daughter’ churches. They share denominational affiliation, organizational structures, leadership practices, worship style, and congregational demographics. Even their buildings share a particular architectural style. This model requires significant financial support from the start. It is heavily grounded in a denomination, land, buildings and salaried clergy. It was a model prevalent throughout Christendom. And it is a model that is increasingly rare today.

What are we to say about the decline of this model of church planting? Shouldn’t we be concerned that countless new subdivisions are being built today without a church building rising in their midst? Shouldn’t we be troubled that so few established churches are today embarking on ‘mother-daughter’ church plants? Not necessarily.

What if the ‘mother-daughter’ model so effective at one time is being superseded by another model better suited for today’s post-Christendom context? What if God is doing a ‘new yet ancient’ thing?

A very different model of church plant is explored in this month’s Good Idea. It’s a distinctly bottom-up model. We’re not even sure if ‘model’ is the right word in this case, since like many of these sorts of church plants they don’t actually begin with the intent to plant a new church! They may begin with someone who has a desire to simply pray for their neighbourhood. They then may gather some others from the neighbourhood around them; meeting to share food, read Scripture together, talk about the strengths and needs of the neighbourhood, and pray for its flourishing. No Master plan, no funds, no land, no building. And yet such small groups then grow and multiply, eventually coming to a point when they recognize they have planted a new church.

What are the possible advantages of this model for today? As I see it there are several:

  1. It begins less with an idea to plant a church and more with a desire to pray about where God is leading them to offer their gifts in service to His kingdom. Prayer and mission are the starting point, without the outcome of a new church driving the agenda.
  2. It is founded on, and encourages, a more contextually-driven form of ministry focused less on replication of an established church’s practices and more on an incarnational ministry within a specific neighbourhood.
  3. It is more flexible and responsive, since it isn’t burdened down in its formational stages with the high cost of land and buildings or with complex denominational structures.
  4. It is highly relational in an era when a large percentage of the population are living alone. This focus on relationships returns disciple-making to an ancient model involving a life-long discipline. It suggests that growing as an apprentice of Jesus is not a six-week course but an ongoing walk within the community of faith.
  5. It is a model of church planting that even small and less well-heeled congregations can engage in as they seek to live in a particular locale as a sign, foretaste and instrument of the Kingdom of God.

Will this bottom-up model of church planting become more the norm than the exception in our post-Christendom context? I think it’s highly likely.

Seven Reasons You Should Not Become A Christian (And One Reason You Should)

by .

The world divides into two categories: those who divide the world into two categories and those who don’t. I’m one of the first. So the people reading this divide into two broad groups: some are people who have decided that they want to be followers of Jesus, Christians; others are people who are not sure about Christianity. In the second category, you’re probably a spiritual person but you’re not into organized religion (oxymoron though that is). You’re exploring your spirituality but you’re not ready to commit to any one religion. In other words, you’re a normal person.

This article is particularly for the normal people, but others can listen in. What I want to do is to write as clearly as I can about what it means to be a Christian today. Personally, I long for people to become Christians. But I know too that people have to take their time over a big question like their spirituality, to figure out their options. I have no interest in manipulating people into becoming Christians, or disguising what it’s really like to be a Christian. The trouble with people who get rushed or manipulated into becoming Christians is that they wake up one day and think, “What on earth have I done? I didn’t mean that at all. Let me out of here!” And that’s no good for them or for the Christian religion.

So I want to try to tell it like it is, both the good stuff about Christianity and the difficult stuff. And before we’re done, I hope you will be thinking, “You know, I never knew that Christian faith was like that. Maybe I do want to be a Christian after all. What do I do now?” So at the end I will tell you as simply as I know how just how you can become a Christian.

So: seven reasons you should not become a Christian—and one reason you should.

REASONS WHY NOT

1. The Church is morally compromised

. . . Because you will be joining an institution which is morally compromised. If you become a Christian, people will be amazed that you choose to identify yourself with such an institution. I promise you, they’ll say: What about the crusades? What about the Inquisition? What about the role of missionaries in the colonial movement of the 19th century? What about residential schools and pedophile clergy?

There’s a lot your new family has to answer for. And Christians can’t just brush those things off even though we might like to: we have to admit, yes, those things did happen in our family, and we are embarrassed and ashamed of them, not least because they are unworthy of the name of Jesus. But at the same time, as you get to know the history of your new family, you will discover a less well-known fact: Christians have done and continue to do some wonderful things in the world in the name of Jesus Christ. Christians started the first hospitals, the first orphanages, many of the first schools. They pioneered such things as the abolition of slavery, industrial reform, and prison reform. Even today, they are involved all over the world in working for literacy, development, justice and medical care. They are following Jesus’ teaching:

You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am. . . . I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. (John 13:13-15)

Even in those areas where Christians have been criticized, the criticisms are not the whole story, though they are often the only part you may hear. Take the role of Christians in the spread of European empires. Surprisingly, there is a positive side. It can be a very moving experience to hear African or First Nations leaders say (as I have), “Yes, some evil things were done. But we are deeply grateful that the missionaries brought us the Christian message.”

So there are two sides. But I need to warn you: if you become a Christian, you will hear much more about the failures than about the successes.

 

2. Christians aren’t always nice

 . . . Because you won’t like every Christian you meet, and some you will dislike very much indeed. I can tell you from personal experience, some Christians are—to be blunt—weird. Some of them have poor taste in music and clothes; some have political leanings that are somewhat to the right of Attila the Hun; some have dandruff and bad breath. Frankly, they’re not the people I would choose to hang out with in a million years. Yet I am expected to hang out with them and treat them like family—in the good sense, that is: it’s all too easy to treat them like family in the bad sense.

But then I remind myself what church is all about. It’s not just a place you go once a week to meet with cool, sophisticated, like-minded people, as though it were an art appreciation class or a chess club.

You know what church is at its heart? It’s God saying to people of all shapes and sizes and cultures and ages, who really have nothing in common: Get together, get yourselves organized, learn to love one another, and show the world what it means to be a beautiful community. Yes, being involved with other Christians can be tough, but what a breathtaking project to be involved in. It’s crazy, so crazy that only God would have thought it up.

Here’s how one early Christian writer summed up God’s plan:

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female: for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Paul’s Letter to the Galatians 3:28)

And you know what? Some of those people you would presently try to avoid will turn out to be the most wonderful people you have ever met. And, of course, that’s part of God’s plan. 

 

3. Won’t you have to condemn other religions?

. . . Because you don’t want to become intolerant and condemn other religions. There is a common perception that if you are a Christian, it means you think everybody else is completely wrong and probably going to hell.

I can’t improve on what C. S. Lewis says about this (well, that’s true of many things):

If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. . . . But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic, there is only one right answer to a sum . . . but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others.1

Put it another way. The God of Christian spirituality is a God whose light is available to people in every culture and every century. As a result, I want to acknowledge all truth and all love, wherever it’s to be found.

But as a Christian, I also believe that the place where the light of God is most clearly focused is in the person of Jesus Christ. There is no-one like him among all the religions of the world!2 So it’s actually a caricature to say Christians think they are 100% right and everybody else is 100% wrong. But it is true that Christians think they have something special: and that something is Jesus.

 

4. People may make fun of you

. . . Because they may think of you as a religious fanatic or a Jesus freak or a Bible-thumper. You know the kind of thing. Wesley So is a world-class chess player and a Christian. He writes about his experience:

“On the small planet where elite chess players dwell, very few people worship Jesus Christ. If anyone discovers that you’re one of those “superstitious,” “narrow-minded idiots,” you’re likely to see nasty comments accumulate on your Facebook fan page. On a regular basis, I receive emails from strangers lecturing me about the dangers of following Jesus. Out of pity or disgust, they wonder how I, the world’s second-ranked chess player, can be so “weak-minded.”3

People won’t necessarily see the positive side of what’s happened to you; sometimes they won’t want to know. It doesn’t matter to them that you have a greater sense of being yourself than ever before, they may not notice that your laughter is fuller and healthier, it may escape them that you have a sense of stability and satisfaction that wasn’t there before. One lawyer friend put it this way: “When I opened my life to Jesus, I had a sense of being more fully alive than I had ever been before.”

You will know that you haven’t become a religious freak: to you religion will simply be a means to enjoying God more, not an end in itself. You will know that there’ll be no church in heaven because the building will be complete, and the scaffolding will drop away. But people around you may not know or care.

You will take comfort in Jesus’ words:

Blessed are you when people revile you or persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. (Matthew 5:11-2)

 

5. It will require sacrifices

. . . Because Jesus said that following him would be in some ways (not all!) like choosing death. His words are very sobering, especially when you think that his original hearers would have seen people literally “taking up their cross” and heading off to execution—by crucifixion:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. (Luke 9:23)

My friend Ken’s parents would not attend his wedding because he was marrying another Christian. In a job interview, Stu was asked if his Christian convictions meant he would not tell a lie for the good of the company. He told them he wouldn’t. He did not get the job.

Or I think of friends of mine who decided to work with youth off the street. Their friends warned them that if they did that, their silver would get stolen and they’d catch hepatitis. They went ahead with their work anyway. What happened? Their silver was stolen and they caught hepatitis. But they did amazing work. And they didn’t complain, because they knew Christians are called to sacrifice.

It can be much worse than that, of course. In some parts of the world today, followers of Jesus are being persecuted, bombed, imprisoned, discriminated against, and spat on for no other reason except that they are self-identified Christians. The freedom Christians presently experience in the west is a historical aberration: it may not last. If you decide to follow Jesus, there will be sacrifices. In Jesus’ own time, some people decided not to follow him because he warned them that it would be tough.4

But sometimes we don’t notice the fact that Jesus also said there would be life on the other side of those sacrifices, even in this life:

Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life. (Luke 18:29-30)

This next reason may be the toughest of all, and in some ways it’s the key too all the others:

 

6. It means handing the leadership of your life over to God

. . . Because, if you’re a follower of Jesus, you are no longer in charge of your own destiny. That’s radical. Following Jesus may well mean giving up your dreams, or a treasured career, or a wonderful relationship. Quite early in my Christian life, I had to give up a relationship with a girl I cared for very deeply, simply because she was not a serious follower of Jesus and I wanted to be. Another personal example: my family and I are in Canada today because we believed that was what Jesus wanted us to do. If you are a Canadian, don’t be insulted if I say we had no interest in coming to Canada, and we only came because we believed our lives were to be spent doing what Jesus wanted, not what we wanted.

Of course, if you are a follower of Jesus, you know that obeying him brings life. Think of it this way. My son Ben is a trumpeter. When he was a teenager, after several years of trumpet lessons, he began to have lessons with one of Canada’s top trumpeters. At the very first lesson, Mr. Oades said to Ben:

“Ben, your embouchure is totally wrong. You’re going to have to learn a whole new technique. It’ll be tough, but if you’re going to get anywhere with your trumpet, this is what you have to do.”

Do you think Ben did it? He could have said, “No way. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ll do what’s comfortable for me. I just gotta be me!” In fact, he didn’t. Instead, he obeyed. He worked at what Mr. Oades had said until it became second nature and he could move ahead in his playing. Why did he do that? Because Robert Oades was such a great trumpet player and a great teacher. Did it undermine Ben’s individuality and creativity? No way. In fact, it enabled him to develop his individuality and creativity way beyond what would have been possible otherwise.

So why do Christians try to obey Jesus? Because he is (among many things) a great teacher, The Great Teacher, the one best qualified to teach us what life is all about. Once, when Jesus’ teaching struck his disciples as particularly difficult, he asked if they were thinking of leaving him, and they replied,

Lord, to whom who can we go? You have the words of eternal life! (John 6:68)

That’s why most followers of Jesus persevere. His words bring true life.

 

7. You don’t think you could keep it up

. . . Because you may say, “The way you’re describing being a Christian sounds quite attractive but very difficult. You’ve told me people might make fun of me, and I might be persecuted, and I’ve got to do what Jesus wants instead of what I want, and you think I should do this for the rest of my life. Right?” Right.

Your concern is a perfectly reasonable one. But, you know what? God knows all that, and God has provided sufficient resources to make it possible. What resources are those? There are lots. Let me name just two:

In becoming a Christian, you join a family—also known as the church. A church that takes seriously its responsibility to be a community of followers of Jesus will also help you personally to follow Jesus. Its worship will help you be refreshed in the presence of God. Its teaching will help you work out your faith in daily life. And the friends you make there will listen to you, support you, and pray for you.

For years, I met with a bunch of guys every other Saturday morning, in a group called “Saturday Stuff for Guys.” There we shared our joys and our sorrows, our insights and our doubts, we studied the Bible and we prayed for one another. Actually, don’t tell anyone this, but we loved one another (being guys, we don’t like to say so). Personally, I would have found it 100% more difficult to live the Christian life without them. Fellowship with other Christians is crucial.

Let me tell you about another resource. In the middle of the twentieth century, a church leader called Archbishop William Temple said something like this:

It’s no good giving me a play like Hamlet or King Lear and telling me to write a play like that. Shakespeare could do it; I can’t. And it is no good showing me a life like the life of Jesus and telling me to live a life like that. Jesus could do it; I can’t. But if the genius of Shakespeare could come and live in me, then I could write plays like his. And if the Spirit of Jesus could come and live in me, then I could live a life like his.5

And, of course, that is the case: the Spirit of Jesus, who is the Spirit of God, is available to us, to breathe life and energy into our efforts to follow Jesus. The Spirit gives us strength when we feel weak, gives us guidance when we are confused, and picks us up when we fall. In fact, the God of the Universe is personally committed to helping us make it to the end of the journey. Paul, one of the earliest Christian teachers, wrote:

I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the Day of Jesus Christ. (Paul’s Letter to the Philippians 1:6)

 

So . . . seven reasons you should not become a Christian. But there is

ONE REASON YOU SHOULD

and it is this (drumroll, please!):

This is what life is all about!

. . . Because the God who made you loves you more deeply than you can ever imagine, and that God longs for a friendship with you. More than that, in that friendship you will learn to live as God’s person in God’s world in God’s way. And you will discover the part God designed you to fulfil in God’s plan to redeem the world from evil, suffering and dysfunction. And that is the greatest adventure that can ever befall a human being. In fact, it is what human beings were made for.

How can you know the friendship of God and become the person God longs for you to be? By deciding to become a follower of Jesus. Why Jesus? Because Jesus is this God come in person to our world to rescue us, to guide us, to teach us.

So what do you think? If you are not put off by the seven difficulties, if you are drawn by the awesome potential of the one reason, what should you do? I want to invite you to take a step today. I don’t know you or where you’re at with all of this stuff, so I don’t know what step would be right for you. Once again, let me divide my readers into two groups:

It may be that all this is very new to you. Maybe you didn’t know Christian spirituality was like this. So for you, the best thing may be to read one of the very first biographies of Jesus to be written. They are found in a little book called The New Testament, the second part of the Bible. It might actually be helpful for you to join a group of people who are also trying to figure out this Jesus stuff, and work with them till you get some answers. If this describes you—it’s new to you, but you want to investigate it for yourself—here’s the sort of thing you might like to say to Jesus:

Jesus: I am curious about the things I’ve heard about you, and I want to know if they are true. Please help me learn about you and find out how these things can be true for me. Amen.

 Or you might be a person who says, “You know, I’ve been thinking about this stuff for some time. I’m kinda sitting on the fence. But I think this is what I want, I think this is what I need.” Maybe for you it’s time to say yes to Jesus, to get down off the fence and start following, with all that involves.

If this is you, and if you want to begin following Jesus now, here’s the sort of thing you might like to say to Jesus:

Jesus: Thank you for inviting me to follow you. Right now, I want to say “YES” to your invitation. Please give me your Spirit so that I can begin to live as your person in your world in your way. Amen.

 

The end of the beginning

If you have followed me this far, you will realize that getting to this point is not the end of your search, but the beginning of a whole new life. In some ways, it’s like an engagement: you and Jesus privately making a lifelong commitment to each other—or—better—you saying yes to Jesus’ invitation to new life with him!

But engagements are normally followed by marriage, where the promises made in private are made again, this time publicly, in front of a community of family and friends. In the Christian faith, this public ceremony is known as baptism. You can tell how significant this is because, in countries where Christians are persecuted, it is often after baptism that the persecution begins, because then the new believer’s faith is no longer secret but is known to everyone.

So, if you are serious about this new life—and why would you not be?—you need to think about getting baptized.6 Perhaps you are already involved in a Christian community—a church. If so, they will know what to do! If you have a Christian friend, they will probably introduce you to their church, who will also know how to help you. 7

If you would like to discuss any of what I’ve written here, feel free to email me at john.bowen@utoronto.ca. I’d love to hear from you! And if you find it difficult to find a copy of the New Testament, I’d be happy to send you one free of charge.

There are more articles on this website on this kind of topic. You should check out Becoming a Christian: A Practical Guide to the Why and the How; and The School of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Living as a Christian.

_______________________________________

1 “The Rival Conceptions of God” in Mere Christianity.
2 For a historical analysis of this topic, see Professor Edwin Yamauchi’s article, “What’s So Special About Jesus?” at http://institute.wycliffecollege.ca/1999/03/whats-so-special-about-jesus-compared-with-buddha-muhammad-socrates-and-zoroaster/.
3 Wesley So, “I’m a Rare Breed: An Elite Chess Player Who’s Open About His Faith,” Christianity Today, August 18, 2017. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/september/im-rare-breed-elite-chess-player-whos-open-about-his-faith.html.
4 John 6:66
5 Paraphrased in John R. W. Stott, The Radical Disciple: Some Neglected Aspects of our Calling (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 37. I have not been able to find the primary source of Temple’s words.
6 If you have already been baptised, perhaps as a baby, there is no need to do it again. Most churches make provision for circumstances like yours, by giving space for “Renewal of Baptismal Vows” and similar ceremonies.
7 If you have neither a church nor a friend, and don’t know where to begin, email me.

xxx

This article was originally published on this website in 2002 and was updated by the author in 2018.

Café Church – why, how, and what now?

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Let’s link arms with the bold leaders at the Jerusalem Council. Let’s decide not to do anything that makes it unnecessarily difficult for those who are turning to God. Let’s go deep. But let’s be wide. Let’s be so wide that the whole world knows the church isn’t for church people. It’s for people people. For everybody!” Andy Stanley (North Point Ministries)

Why and how it all began

 “What if we took our monthly Celebration Café service from inside the church and offered something similar in an actual coffee shop?

That was the question that simply would not let go.

A very informal Sunday afternoon service in the foyer of the church building had been up and running for quite some time. The prime reason for this additional service was to welcome new people into the mix. But those new people still had to take the big step of coming into a strange building. Why not reverse the scene? Why not make it as easy as possible?

Sounds great. But how? And where?

In a flash, a friend quickly piped up: “I know someone who runs a coffee shop. Perhaps he’d be open to the idea”.

With that, two of us made our way down to ‘Big Guy’s Little Coffee Shop’ on Lakeshore Blvd. W. in Toronto, with this crazy idea to ask the owner. “What would you think, Steve, if we offered a super simple ‘church’ experience here in your shop once in awhile?” Steve’s response: “Sure; when do you want to start?”

We had no idea as to when, but at least we now knew where. What a gift!

For the next four months, we met regularly at Big Guy’s to pray and dream about what a little Café Church might look like. This was often accompanied with prayer walks in the area. Finally, on what would prove to be the coldest night of the year, the little team gave it a shot. Café Church was launched.

While January 2015 celebrated the birth of Café Church, this baby has been developing gently ever since, perhaps even to the place of learning how to crawl, if not stand. Proverbs encourages us to ‘train up a child in the way s/he should go and they will not depart from it’. Perhaps this relates well to this little mission base. 2016 saw an actual core of people develop over the winter and spring months and a dozen people came to identify with Café Church as ‘their own’.

Taking it Outside

The summer of 2016 involved taking Café Church ‘outside under the big blue sky’, as we made use of a nearby park. The program became all the more accessible for people who otherwise may be a bit reluctant to enter a confined space. Additionally, there is something wonderfully healthy for a small community like this to sing and share God’s praises out in the open, and to actually pray out in the open.

On each summer occasion, passers-by took the time to express their appreciation for the gathering. Some of them felt ministered to (example: a Hindu family that came to grieve the loss of their dad on the anniversary of his death).

January 23rd, 2017 marked the second anniversary of this little project. It proved to be one of those ‘standing room only’ events, with much celebration and gratitude. To put this in perspective, a ‘standing room only’ event at Big Guy’s Little Coffee Shop only requires 30+ people. J

During the Winter and Spring months of 2017, the Café Church community grew in trust and love. It became quite common for members to request time for a listening ear and prayer during the week. Some joined an Addictions program we offer at CCSJ; others came to special events at the church. One lady dived into a book study at CCSJ and soon took leadership in leading the same study in her neighborhood with non-church goers. She has blossomed in her faith.

But what we celebrate above all is the care and support people exhibit during and following the circle prayer times. Members share their struggles quite openly.

As with the previous summer, Café Church on the Lake Shore held the July and August gatherings ‘under the big blue sky’. A simple BBQ, much singing, guest speakers, and a time to pray for one another and for the wider community all fit together well. Also, the attendance for these gatherings was nearly double that of the core. It was a delight to see people bringing their friends and neighbors to these times of joy.

Where do we go from here?

There remains a tri-focus with this little mission base. It springs up from 2 Timothy 3:17:

  • that the person of God
  • would be thoroughly equipped
  • for every good work

We will continue to work and pray with three hopes in mind:

  1. that all who identify with Café Church on the Lake Shore will come to a place of humble certainty of ‘belonging’ to Christ
  2. that all who share in that awareness of belonging will ‘grow in the grace and knowledge of God’, going deeper in their walk with Christ.
  3. that all who continue to abide and grow in Christ will discover a passion to serve and share in gospel ministry.

 

We are aware of the potential danger of becoming a holy huddle. It doesn’t take long to lose concern for those who are on the outside looking in. With this flashing as an amber light in my thoughts and prayers, an ongoing challenge will be to help cultivate a compassionate evangelistic attitude while also encouraging people to discover more of what it means to follow Jesus.

One new member wrote and shared this poem at one of our gathering – a lovely moment.

we all need a sanctuary
we all need a shelter
somewhere 
to come out of the wind
and the snow.
here we are known
known by name 
people he speak our tongue
a place where we receive 
the gift of home 
where all our masks
and all our fears 
disintegrate at the threshold
of each heart’s unreserved welcome
 
here
our spirits join
as one through the unseen
movement
of the one whose life we know
 
our eyes
see past the surface
and our ears
hear the calling of our names
and in this holy
blessed embrace
we find a place of safety

How One Church turned Ping Pong into Mission

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St. Christopher’s, a predominantly Chinese church in north Toronto, has a group of members who, for years, have loved to play ping pong. However, since November of 2017 ping pong has become a missional bridge as our church began to build a relationship with a local Toronto high school. 

 

We discovered that many teens at Bayview Secondary also love to play ping pong. The problem was they had nowhere to play. As a result, the church decided to start a Ping Pong/Board Game club on Thursday afternoons. The church’s English Ministry Pastor, Michele Taylor, spearheaded this new outreach to local students. In the meantime, we purchased 16 new ping pong rackets.

 

Ping Pong leads to Relationship-building

The Ping Pong/Board Game club started with 8 youth. It has steadily grown to 25 students; tripling in just 4 months. Every Thursday at 4:30 p.m., Pastor Michele leads a discussion time with the teens about mental health issues or Christian teachings. Relationships have started to grow. In the meantime, a couple who had joined the church in the spring of 2017, brought over 10 new people to play ping pong weekly. This led to St. Christopher offering ping pong sessions on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. Now there are dozens of people playing ping pong weekly at St Christopher’s! More new relationships are flourishing.

Besides being a great way to build relationships with people in the neighbourhood, we wondered how we could channel this excellent enthusiasm for an even greater good. We decided to use this momentum to both strengthen our church team spirit and partner with our new friends to raise money for a great cause.

 

FaithWorks Fundraising Event

We decided to have a fundraising event for FaithWorks, a diocesan fund that provides much needed support to 18 non-profit organizations under its umbrella. The vehicle to raise money, while also furthering new relationships, would be an 18-hour Ping Pong Relay Marathon.

Once this idea was shared, everyone got excited about making it happen. An organizing committee set two goals: raise $6000 and have 60 people participate in the relay. All players endeavoured to find individuals to sponsor them. In our church announcements, we urged all church members, “If you are not playing, please sponsor someone else to play.” The responses were extremely positive!

 

Marathon Relay Days

We started each of the two marathon relay days (March 22 and 24) with a prayer to remember the ministries of all eighteen FaithWorks organizations. These organizations provide much needed support to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. There was tremendous energy in the room to support that work. Then the games began!

Some people came to play for an hour, others played for 6 hours. By the end of Day 1, we raised $2950 with 53 players. Then on Day 2, by the 12th hour, we were edging close to our target of $6000. By the end of the 18th hour, we surpassed our target and reached $8812. Donations continued to flow and by the time all donations were in we had raised $9002 with over 60 players contributing to the project!

 

God and Ping Pong

Parishioners and people from the community not only had a great time playing and raising money. They also had a wonderful opportunity to get to know each other. Many of these relationships continue to thrive. One person has started to join in one of our outreach groups. We thank God for all these blessings! As Paul says in Romans 8:28, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” The last few months have taught our church that God can even work Ping Pong into his plans.

God’s Ideas in Ordinary Places

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This column usually features a “good idea” somebody had for reaching people with the Gospel. I want to depart from that a bit, and share a few stories which demonstrate that God often brings people to his Church and to Himself without anybody’s good idea, and in the most ordinary of circumstances. 

A Church Kitchen

I was eating a TV dinner for my lunch in the church kitchen. My wife had cheerfully told me she had only paid $2.99 for it. It was worth every penny and no more! A pleasant-looking man came into the kitchen, and thinking he was a delivery-man, I asked if I could help him. He replied in slightly formal English, “Yes, I would like to know how to become a Christian.”

Eagerly putting my dinner aside, I took the gentleman into my office. He was from a Middle Eastern country. When he was a boy he had seen a bad Hollywood movie on the life of Jesus Christ. He vowed to himself that if he ever were to leave his homeland, he would become a follower of Jesus Christ. I asked him why he had chosen our Anglican Church, and he replied that news of his baptism would be less likely to reach his homeland. Such news could put his family members in danger. I had the joy of baptizing him some months later. I also had the joy of baptizing his older sister, again, in rather unusual circumstances.

What a thrill! No elaborate plans on my part, but the sovereignty of Almighty God, bringing to fruition the decades-old vow of a little boy.

A Condo Building

Bev was a woman in her 70’s who warmly welcomed Diana and me when we moved into a new condo. She had us over a few times. I have no recollection of how she started the conversation, but here’s what she said. She’d had a serious illness most of her life, but she was the type of person who didn’t let it stop her from being a wife, a mother of two boys, and a sharp business person. Her husband had no interest in church, and when her boys reached their teens, it was just too hard to get them to church without her husband’s support. Not an original story, I’m sure. So she gave up. But her husband had died recently, and the appearance of the local Anglican clergyman in her condo complex, triggered a repressed desire on Bev’s part, for the things of God.

She recruited her next-door neighbour, whose story was almost identical, and for a year Bev and her friend trotted the twenty-minute walk to the 8:00 a.m. Eucharist at my church. Bev was supposed to walk to alleviate the life-long illness that was finally to claim her life.

I was always a little embarrassed. Attendance at the early service was pretty small. But these two ladies loved it. Every Sunday they raved about the sermon, and the liturgy. Both were making up for lost time, and as it turned out, their zeal was justified. Both Bev and her friend died just a year after they had started the journey back to church.

I still think from time to time of these two ladies who came out of nowhere to give their lives to Jesus Christ. What a blessed year! How could I be so blessed! Again, the sovereign work of God.

A Funeral Service

My final story is of a middle-aged couple who came to a funeral service for the elderly lady who lived next door to them. They came out of courtesy for the family and respect for their neighbour, who had been a faithful worshiper and a mentor to many young women. The funeral was to have been a one-time visit to the church. But something drew them back the following Sunday. Something called an ‘Alpha Course was being offered, and they had a sense they were supposed to sign up. Nobody invited them, nobody ‘witnessed’ to them. In the course of Alpha, they both fell in love with the Lord Jesus. They haven’t looked back.

A church kitchen, a condo building, a funeral service. Just ordinary places. And yet God uses ordinary places, as well as our ‘good ideas’. Let’s be on the lookout when in the most ordinary circumstances, God sends people to us whom God has already prepared for his Kingdom. What a joy to be allowed to stand by and watch.

Practicing Collective Neighbourliness

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 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

What does it mean for the church to obey the “greatest commandment” as we read it in Matthew 22:35-40?

At one level — the level of the individual — it seems almost too obvious to be worth the time it will take to read this reflection. For, what else is a Christian than the one who seeks to occupy the crux of this cruciform commandment, where its two fundamental axes meet: the vertical axis that calls us to love the God who is “above” us and the horizontal axis which calls us to love the one(s) near us — our neighbours?

But if we think about this at another level — the collective level — things become a little bit more complicated. While it is true that most congregations are pretty good at collectively loving God (in worship), it is less obvious if these congregations collectively love their neighbours as well.

 

A Problem for the Church

This has become a problem for the church – a serious problem at that. In some cases the survival of a congregation will depend upon the development of a new competency; or, more precisely, the reactivation of an older virtue: something we might call collective neighbourliness. There was a time, not too long ago, when the people we lived near were the same people we went to church with. But two things have changed: many of our neighbours have stopped going to church, and many of us have stopped living in the neighbourhoods where our churches are. Many congregations now find themselves disconnected from their local communities. The way for churches to reconnect with their neighbourhoods is to reactivate their commitment to the second clause of the great commandment and to consider ways of doing so collectively, as congregations.

 

Three principles to support this reactivation:

  1. If the church is to carry out the great commission (Matt 28:19-20), it must obey the great(est) commandment.

The first principle is implicit in what I have already been saying. The church will be in no position to “make disciples” (at least not disciples of Jesus Christ), if it is not wholeheartedly loving God and loving its neighbours.

 

  1. For the church to love its neighbours well, it needs to learn to love its neighbourhood.

The second principle attunes us to the collective nature of neighbourliness in the church. This principle identifies the neighbourhood, or what some traditions call the parish, as the inevitable context of congregational ministry. The desire for a flourishing congregation is inseparable from the pursuit of a flourishing neighbourhood. To paraphrase the prophet Jeremiah: “in the neighbourhood’s welfare the church will find its welfare.”

Urban planners recognize neighbourhoods to be the basic unit of urban life. Their scale is large enough to support a vibrant and whole social existence, but small enough that changes or qualitative enhancements can still be generated from neighbours themselves. It is worth considering whether neighbourhoods might also be seen as the basic unit of parish ministry — and not something peripheral to it. If this is the case, then learning to love our neighbourhoods might require us to expand our inherited ministry tool kits. Neighbourhood well-being would no longer fall under the ministry category of “outreach,” but become a core (and resourced!) practice of the church. Loving our neighbourhoods might require us to learn to become lay urban planners, amateur policy analysts, or part-time affordable housing advocates, depending upon our contexts.

Some of these capacities may already be present in our congregations and it will be a matter of recognizing and empowering those who offer them. But often times we will have to look beyond the church walls — to the neighbourhood. However, if we begin to see the neighbourhood as the basic unit of parish ministry, then we will also begin to see that neighbourhoods are more than just the sum of their needs. We will also see the tremendous assets that exist there. Accessing these assets, however, will require yet another capacity: partnership building.

 

  1. Collective neighbourliness requires partnership.

The third and final principle of collective neighbourliness assumes the second principle. For, neighbourhoods are made up not just of individual neighbours, but of schools, businesses, community groups, service agencies, and other faith communities, many of which are also seeking the welfare of the neighbourhood. In some cases, they are doing so more effectively than that church!

One such framework, adapted from The New Parish, sees neighbourhood partnership building on a continuum of neighbourliness. At one end we have the personal practice of being a good neighbour in our everyday lives. At the other end of the continuum are the significant, strategic, and sustainable institutional partnerships which impact neighbourhood well being over the long term. This might be a food security initiative, an affordable housing project, or any number of contextually relevant joint initiatives. In between the personal practice and the institutional partnerships, however, lie a whole range of connections that the church can cultivate. These include intentional practices of neighbourliness within congregations, joint projects with other churches, interfaith partnerships within a geographical area, and neighbourhood collaborations that serve the common good.

 

A well-known prayer by the late Archbishop Oscar Romero reminds us of the “sense of liberation” that accompanies the realization that “we cannot do everything.” Letting go of the illusion that we can do it all, furthermore, opens up a space for God’s grace to intervene. To this important piece of wisdom I would only add that such grace can sometimes arrive in the form of a neighbourhood partner and that we should learn to see and appreciate such partnerships as grace. In order to have the eyes to see this grace, I suggest, we will need to cultivate the collective virtue of neighbourliness within our congregations and understand the neighbourhood as the fundamental context of ministry.

From the Director of the Institute of Evangelism


So what can your church do to love the neighbouhood?

When Jesus was asked what it meant to love one’s neighbor he told the story of a Samaritan spending his own time, energy and money to physically care for a stranger, someone the broader culture told him was his enemy.

This month’s article pushes us, as churches, to see the deep connection between the people who are our neighbours and the physical reality of neighbourhoods themselves. If you’re ready to grow in this area the following questions may stimulate your church to some new acts of grace and goodness:

  1. If there is an elementary school in your neighbourhood, do they need volunteers to read with special needs students? Would they partner with you to offer an after school homework club? What are the challenges they face? Could your church donate student backpacks with school supplies, or balls or skipping ropes to encourage more active play? Could you partner with the local mosque or businesses to provide a healthy morning snack once a week to kids who may not have had breakfast?
  2. If there a nursing home in your neighbourhood, could your choir shift their weekly practice to the common room in the home so that residents could join in or listen to the hymns and anthems? Could your church form a ‘friendly visitors’ team made up of a variety of ages to begin to build relationships with lonely residents?
  3. If there are issues around affordable housing, addiction, or senior loneliness in your neighbourhood, what social service agencies, collectives, or community groups could help you get informed about these issues and work with you to figure out how you might better work toward the flourishing of your neighbourhood?
  4. Can you build a relationship with businesses, a firehall, police or ambulance centre in your neighbourhood so that you work together for the strengthening of the broader community? What might you do to celebrate, thank, and support those who work so hard for the greater good?
  5. If an MPP or MP has a constituency office in your neighbourhood, are they aware of the various outreach projects and programs your church is involved in? Do you pray for them as leaders, and open your building up for candidate debates and townhalls?

There are so many practical ways to build relationships with our neighbourhoods and demonstrate to them the love of God. All we need to do is pay prayerful attention to how God is already at work there. Then, again with plenty of prayer, we can begin to see what new things God wants us to do, roll up our sleeves, and begin to love our neighbours as we should. Besides demonstrating the unconditional love of God, building this sort of loving relationship can be an important foundation for sharing with others about that love.

?

The Evangelism Spectrum – Where are You?

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It is true that people’s attitudes inevitably shape the culture of a church. This is especially true about people’s attitudes toward evangelism. How Christians feel about evangelism will inevitably shape their understanding of the mission of the Church. It will affect how their church spends money and time. It will affect the events they hold, the programs they run and the resources they buy. It will affect what they talk about and how they use their building. It will affect the relationships they build in their neighbourhood. Churches in which evangelism and disciple-making are central will structure and conduct themselves very differently than churches focused elsewhere.


 


Churches are typically made up of people with a variety of attitudes toward sharing their faith. 


Often these attitudes have been formed by unexamined assumptions, images and experiences. And many of these are not positive. When they hear the word ‘evangelism’ many people first think of discredited televangelists, strangers handing out tracts, street preachers, or the ring of a doorbell interrupting their dinner.


 


How can we cultivate churches full of people with a healthier view of evangelism?


Wouldn’t it be amazing if all the people that are a part of your church felt quietly confident about sharing their faith with their unchurched or de-churched friends, family, colleagues and neighbours? How can we help Christians embrace their apostolic calling? These are great questions for leaders of churches across North America to consider.


I’d like to suggest that to grapple with these questions churches must take a ruthless inventory of their attitude toward sharing their faith. Is it terrifying? Is it simply a nice concept? Is it an important value (among a number of values)? Or is it at the core of who they are?


 


Begin with truth-telling


Honesty about present attitudes towards evangelism is the first step towards growing your ability to share the faith, both individually and as a community. Below is a numerical spectrum. What percentage of the members of your church do you think would define themselves in the following ways?


Where do you find yourself on this spectrum?


    

  1. “I want to believe in God but I’m not sure exactly what that looks like or entails.”
    2. 

  2. “I was taught that faith in God is a private matter. I don’t talk about my beliefs to anyone else.”
    3. 

  3. “I believe talking about faith is primarily the pastor/priest/preacher’s job.”
    4. 

  4. “I know the church is supposed to share the faith but I’m just not an evangelist!”
    5. 

  5. “I know we’re all supposed to share our faith but I don’t feel I know the basics well enough to do that.”
    6. 

  6. “I’d like to be able to share my faith but I don’t know how to do that without offending people.”
    7. 

  7. “I’m beginning to feel comfortable talking about my faith with others in my church.”
    8. 

  8. “I feel confident sharing the story of my faith journey with people who ask about it.”
    9. 

  9. “I’m excited to share with people in my life about what my faith means to me.”
    10. 

  10. “I’ve now had the experience of sharing my faith with someone in my life.”
    11. 

  11. “I love building relationships with my non-Christian friends, neighbours and colleagues, and am finding they are often curious to hear about why I am a person of Christian faith.”
    12. 

  12. “God seems to be opening up more and more opportunities for me to share about the Christian faith with others, who often respond with curiosity and then take steps towards faith themselves.”
    13. 



Why not invite your whole congregation into a conversation about their attitude toward evangelism?


 


Next, help people move along the spectrum


Preach, teach, study and pray for your congregation to move along this spectrum; growing in their love and ability to share Christ. If faith has become privatized, teach about the apostolic calling of the Church. Jesus said ‘As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” If they have a professionalized view of evangelism, help them tell their own story of what their faith means to them. If they lack confidence in the basic tenets of the faith, teach them an overview of the gospel message and ground them in the biblical story. If they lack a passion to share the gospel explore with them stories of how lives, families and communities are changed by people coming to know Jesus.


 


Raise the profile of evangelism


Churches that place evangelism and disciple-making at their center are also communities in which stories of changed lives abound. Make time during your regular worship services to have someone share for a few minutes about a time when their faith made a real difference in their lives. When have people found God’s comfort, reassurance, direction, challenge or correction? Find ways throughout the life of your church (i.e. website, annual report, special events, blogs) to share these stories. Christians who cannot share with other Christians about how God has been at work are very unlikely to share that with non-Christians.


 


Finally, celebrate!


Everyone loves a good celebration so plan ahead for a celebration focused on evangelism and disciple-making. Celebrate stories of people coming to faith. Yes, it’s great to celebrate the harvest. Services of baptism are a natural time for this. But don’t forget to also celebrate stories of people growing in their ability to share their faith with others. Even stories of people planting the first seeds of faith can be a real encouragement to others.


In the history of North America there has never been a time of greater potential for sharing the Christian faith. But this will only happen if churches again place their apostolic calling at their very core.














                

                        
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