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Inviting People to Church or Inviting People to Jesus Pt 1
By jason | May 2, 2008
The Background
This is something that has been stewing in my noggin for some time. Maybe it will help to give the background as best I can.
the early years
I didn’t grow up in church. I came to Jesus ultimately outside of the church. And upon doing so, while I got involved in a youth group my senior year, I didn’t see that the church was very important (and let’s face it most youth groups don’t help you discover the fullness of the church).
Upon entering the university I was fully committed to ministry but this never really meant ministry through the local church. So I was a part of parachurch ministries and my attitude was essentially that I had to go to church because it was in the Bible or something.
So that was my background. The church seemed like an unnecessary evil. It seemed to get in the way. It wasn’t a place to bring friends and it didn’t do much to help foster my personal growth. All that occurred on campus.
sbc-ville
I landed squarely in SBC-ville in seminary and there was a lot of talk about the church this, the church that, but I wasn’t buying it. These people seemed so disconnected from real life that I still didn’t see how the local church was all it was cracked up to be. But now as a non-student (and campus minister) I was needing community that couldn’t be found any longer.
the perfect storm
And so a couple of forces caused me to begin looking freshly at the church and how it could truly become a force for Christ in our world.
1. The Scriptures
I can’t overestimate the importance my reading of the NT was during this period at so many levels. First and foremost I began to wake up to the biblical reality of community. I saw that God’s desire for humanity and in fact his created design of humanity was to exist in community.
And this was coupled with my eyes being opened to the communal vision of the NT. I began to see that the vast majority of commands in the NT are corporate, how we relate to one another. The church is intended to be a community, God’s people. And this caused me to re-assess my own life and my deep rooted self-centeredness (which still lingers to this day!).
I cannot overlook one last major piece from the NT. As most in my generation I liked to think every instance of “church” in the NT was a cosmic reference. I would talk about the Church and therefore downplay the local church. The cognitive dissonance set in as I discovered that over 90% of the references in the NT are to the local church, not the church global. This had huge ramifications for my NT theology and ecclesiology.
2. Campus Ministry
Strangely enough my leadership in campus ministry was also a great spark to realizing the power and importance of the local church. As I saw community happen amongst students I began to realize this could happen for a local church.
I was also became aware of the notion of church planting on college campuses through my interaction with Ministry Training Strategy in Sydney. After months of interaction with some staffers I headed down for a month to learn. The long story short is that their model is to see their campus ministry coupled with church planting. They have mid-week stuff happening but they also had several churches meeting on and around campus. In many ways it’s like the collegiate-focused church planting model we’re beginning to see through NAMB and the MBC.
This affected me at so many levels. Theologically. Philosophically. Missiologically. And for certain, Ecclesiologically.
3. Church Planting
I’m not sure exactly when but it was around the time of learning about MTS and their campus model that I started to discover church planting (this would have been sometime in 2000/2001). Maybe it was the Y2K scare but church planting made sense (as a church we can store more together than any one can individually… lol).
I came across several church planters and church planting groups that were very intriguing. I saw that the church could actually be a force for Christ in our culture. I saw that she could actually help foster community. And as a dude who loves big dreams church planting was a flat-out exciting adventure.
We took part in a launch team of a plant and even began looking at church planting in a collegiate context. But even with this I don’t think I was still convinced of the need and importance of the local church. But a fundamental shift was taking place.
fast forward
Here we are, church planters and seeking to develop a church that is truly a missional community. Our goal is to be a force for Christ in our culture.
But how did we get from the perfect storm to where we are now?
Why would we seek to be a force for Christ in our culture through the local church and not some other vehicle?
Next time: Inviting People to Church or Inviting People to Jesus Pt 2
Topics: Leadership, LifeConnection, Missional Movements |
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:31 pm
looking forward to continuing to hear your thoughts on this…