From George Rodrigues:
We are happy to report that the new flooring for the entry way and the front offices has been completed an looks very nice. The hand towel dispensers in the restrooms all have been installed. The rest of the new tables for the fellowship hall have been purchased and new chairs have also been donated. And we are aquiring bids on electrical work for the lighting in the womens shower and video projector and screen in the Fellowship Hall .
Friday, August 31, 2012
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Learning to make friends
I've been sick this week, which means all of my great plans to visit people have been forced to be put on hold. Instead, excluding the hours of being in bed, blowing my nose, or moaning over my head cold, I have spent a lot of time reading.
I've been reading a lot about community organizing. This is based on the fact that Gethsemane is getting more involved with Allied Communities of Tarrant a broad-based community organizing group, linking congregations to one another to work towards change in Tarrant County. I've gone to two trainings over the past year. I have attended the monthly clergy caucus faithfully for the past 18 months. I am helping to organize the delegates assembly for September 23rd, 3 pm, at St. Andrew's UMC.
Why are you spending so much time on meetings since you hate meetings? Because this is the first group that seems to have a concrete understanding of how to help congregations identify the fact that their stuck, give congregations tools to get unstuck, respond to needs in the community, connect to the community, and strengthen themselves. Most groups that invite me to participate either want me to just attend meetings, or they want me to generate a bunch of volunteers... and frankly my congregation is tired and overworked.
Community organizing seems to have a different focus, at least through ACT it does. I hear over and over that congregations need to be strong in order to be there to protect families, and so our first task is to strengthen our congregations. Wow. A group that wants to help me strengthen my church? They want to help me? Not demand that I help them and add to my to-do list? A group that will facilitate leadership development instead of exhaust my exhausted leaders? Sign me up!
So, this week, I finally got around to reading some of the materials I have had sitting on my shelf since the NEXT Church Conference that took place earlier this year.
I could ramble on more about what I learned in the books, and how they connected with scripture... but the biggest thing was seeing how God has lined up: what I learned in the books, what I learned in those training seminars, what I committed to start doing 3 years ago, and what one of our dear ruling elders, Lydia Frias has told me for years. The way to transform the church, the way to energize membership, the way to reach the community, the way to plant new churches, the way to bring God's good news to those in desperate need is the same: one-on-one relational meetings. This link provides a pdf from one congregation. I can't speak to the overarching thoughts, but the description of how to do a meeting is on par for what I am talking about (pages 3 and 4).
Basically, too often in church we meet with people to just chit-chat, complain, or "get things done", pastors included. We rarely spend time trying to understand what motivates a person to serve. We rarely spend time helping a person understand their deeper desires, and how their personal stories affect who they are, what they want at this stage of their lives, and what their struggles are. Pastors know that self-knowledge is a huge part of a person's maturity and ability to serve, but we often don't know how to foster that in our members. As a result, we don't end up developing new leaders, we often just exhaust those who are already leaders. These visits help ourselves and others delve deeper into how our personal stories affect our sense of call and our sense of who God is, and what God is doing in our lives. Asking folks "why" they dream of a congregation that does x, or "what in their childhood/past" has led them to be passionate about reaching kids, feeding the homeless, or reaching the lonely totally changes our understanding of what God is calling us to do and how God is calling us to do something. It helps us identify leaders... and more importantly it affirms the belief that we are a priesthood of all believers, that our particular stories are not just important, they are what makes each Christian a critical, pivotal part of any body of believers.
So... for the past three years I have been trying to improve my visitation of members. I have done better, that is for sure. And I have even started to tell my session members that this needs to be their focus as well. How can anyone lead if we don't know our own people? How can we discern what God's vision is for us if we do not know the personal motivations and stories of our members? How can we discern where God is calling us if we don't know the stories of those who surround us outside the church?
I have done more visits and more intentional visits, but they haven't been these relational one-to-one visits.
My challenge now? Learning to focus visits into relational meetings. My visits are often long and chatty. Lydia often has pointed that out to me... you can get to the heart of a person effectively in 30-45 minutes, respecting their time and energy, by asking the right questions, listening faithfully, and trusting that there will be another visit soon.
I would add, we can do better relational meetings if we focus on the "why?" and the "where does that come from in you?" rather than the "what?".
We focus too often in our ministry and our lives on naming a business plan, and getting a to-do list. But as Christ-followers there is something sacred and powerful in trusting that by knowing a person and by being known, God will transform us and lead us more naturally... Perhaps, even I should say, we should focus on the "who is in front of me?" and know that deeply and the love placed in our hearts will propel us into the callings God has set out for us.
So, as soon as I am less germy, I plan to get started on focused, shorter visits... not chit-chat, but really getting to know a person. To know and to be known. I hope my congregation will do so as well.
I've been reading a lot about community organizing. This is based on the fact that Gethsemane is getting more involved with Allied Communities of Tarrant a broad-based community organizing group, linking congregations to one another to work towards change in Tarrant County. I've gone to two trainings over the past year. I have attended the monthly clergy caucus faithfully for the past 18 months. I am helping to organize the delegates assembly for September 23rd, 3 pm, at St. Andrew's UMC.
Why are you spending so much time on meetings since you hate meetings? Because this is the first group that seems to have a concrete understanding of how to help congregations identify the fact that their stuck, give congregations tools to get unstuck, respond to needs in the community, connect to the community, and strengthen themselves. Most groups that invite me to participate either want me to just attend meetings, or they want me to generate a bunch of volunteers... and frankly my congregation is tired and overworked.
Community organizing seems to have a different focus, at least through ACT it does. I hear over and over that congregations need to be strong in order to be there to protect families, and so our first task is to strengthen our congregations. Wow. A group that wants to help me strengthen my church? They want to help me? Not demand that I help them and add to my to-do list? A group that will facilitate leadership development instead of exhaust my exhausted leaders? Sign me up!
So, this week, I finally got around to reading some of the materials I have had sitting on my shelf since the NEXT Church Conference that took place earlier this year.
I could ramble on more about what I learned in the books, and how they connected with scripture... but the biggest thing was seeing how God has lined up: what I learned in the books, what I learned in those training seminars, what I committed to start doing 3 years ago, and what one of our dear ruling elders, Lydia Frias has told me for years. The way to transform the church, the way to energize membership, the way to reach the community, the way to plant new churches, the way to bring God's good news to those in desperate need is the same: one-on-one relational meetings. This link provides a pdf from one congregation. I can't speak to the overarching thoughts, but the description of how to do a meeting is on par for what I am talking about (pages 3 and 4).
Basically, too often in church we meet with people to just chit-chat, complain, or "get things done", pastors included. We rarely spend time trying to understand what motivates a person to serve. We rarely spend time helping a person understand their deeper desires, and how their personal stories affect who they are, what they want at this stage of their lives, and what their struggles are. Pastors know that self-knowledge is a huge part of a person's maturity and ability to serve, but we often don't know how to foster that in our members. As a result, we don't end up developing new leaders, we often just exhaust those who are already leaders. These visits help ourselves and others delve deeper into how our personal stories affect our sense of call and our sense of who God is, and what God is doing in our lives. Asking folks "why" they dream of a congregation that does x, or "what in their childhood/past" has led them to be passionate about reaching kids, feeding the homeless, or reaching the lonely totally changes our understanding of what God is calling us to do and how God is calling us to do something. It helps us identify leaders... and more importantly it affirms the belief that we are a priesthood of all believers, that our particular stories are not just important, they are what makes each Christian a critical, pivotal part of any body of believers.
So... for the past three years I have been trying to improve my visitation of members. I have done better, that is for sure. And I have even started to tell my session members that this needs to be their focus as well. How can anyone lead if we don't know our own people? How can we discern what God's vision is for us if we do not know the personal motivations and stories of our members? How can we discern where God is calling us if we don't know the stories of those who surround us outside the church?
I have done more visits and more intentional visits, but they haven't been these relational one-to-one visits.
My challenge now? Learning to focus visits into relational meetings. My visits are often long and chatty. Lydia often has pointed that out to me... you can get to the heart of a person effectively in 30-45 minutes, respecting their time and energy, by asking the right questions, listening faithfully, and trusting that there will be another visit soon.
I would add, we can do better relational meetings if we focus on the "why?" and the "where does that come from in you?" rather than the "what?".
We focus too often in our ministry and our lives on naming a business plan, and getting a to-do list. But as Christ-followers there is something sacred and powerful in trusting that by knowing a person and by being known, God will transform us and lead us more naturally... Perhaps, even I should say, we should focus on the "who is in front of me?" and know that deeply and the love placed in our hearts will propel us into the callings God has set out for us.
So, as soon as I am less germy, I plan to get started on focused, shorter visits... not chit-chat, but really getting to know a person. To know and to be known. I hope my congregation will do so as well.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Finally getting around to Final thoughts on ECG2012
So, almost a month later, I realize my need to finally reflect on the second two days of the Evangelism and Church Growth conference.
So, there were two key areas I want to reflect on...
1 - Knowing your Community
This was a series of two workshops I took from Eugene Blackwell, pastor of House of Manna in Pittsburgh. He shared several stories about how he gained a heart for his neighborhood, and how he felt called to plant a new church in response to his established congregation who did not at that time have a heart to do the same kind of outreach and community transformation that Blackwell had in mind.
Blackwell emphasized that you start by "preaching the Gospel". This took a couple of days for me to unpack and understand. In my lingo, what he identified is...
First, build relationships. Jesus did not just stand on a street corner or start a worship service. He talked with people and figured out what they felt their needs were. He got to know folks well enough to hear them ask for mercy in particular areas of their lives. You can't know how to incarnate the Gospel to someone if you don't know that person.
For Blackwell this meant visiting, walking the streets, slowly getting up the nerve to talk to some of the drug users and lower level dealers. It meant learning how the real economics of that neighborhood worked, why people chose crime (i.e. was it to support their kids?). He figured out what peoples' fears were and dreams. He figured out the patterns of pain that had occurred in that community.
Second, make the Gospel real. A la Book of James, you can't say "peace be with you" and leave a person hungry or naked. If a man needs a job, you are called to help find him a job so that when you talk about a Jesus that cares, he believes you. This requires building relationships more broadly, not just in your community, but elsewhere, so you can connect resources with needs. LOTS of work
Third, know your entry points. This is largely cultural. Since Blackwell had grown up in a similar style community in Chicago, he knew that most folks had some grandma somewhere that had gone to church, so he could start out with questions like, "Who is God to you?" If you are reaching out to a largely atheistic culture, those starting point questions might be different... but notice this is the third, not first step.
Fourth, be willing to invest in people long term. Blackwell didn't understand building community as just getting butts in seats to build a church, he understood it as creating real life-long disciples. So, not just getting folks to enter into faith, but to become folks that are daily journeying in faith.
I could see a huge amount of what Blackwell was preaching as connecting directly to what I have heard in community organizing with Allied Communities of Tarrant and IAF. Spend time in one on one relational meetings, understand that folks already know what they need, and we just need to connect to one another to build enough power to really transform communities.
Above all, it highlighted to me that as a church, even with a great program like Academia, we spend a lot of time solving peoples' problems (a lousy version of step 2) and never doing 1, 3, or 4.
2 - Churches building churches
We talked about really important stuff: money, training, process of a church launch, and coaching.
Money
Some of the key reasons that church plants fail according to Tim Morey is overfunding or underfunding. In my synopsis, in the past the PCUSA has been a specialist in overfunding, but we are quickly moving to the opposite extreme. Historically, we largely fund churches for 3 years, and then partly fund them for 3 more years (slight exaggeration, but close). Morey's denominational model funds a plant for 3 years, 1st year with full salary, second two with half salary. He argued that there is something to be gained by a planter having to do fundraising, because they have to be able to share their passion with folk and teach tithing early on.
The challenge with underfunding is you are probably asking a planter to overextend themselves by having to hold down a full-time job and do a huge amount of evangelism.
The biggest thing he said, though, that I heard was the need for the mother church to really be invested in its daughter church... that, in fact, is why Morey recommends those terms... because mothers are invested in wanting their children to become self-sufficient adults (or at least they should). But if that investment is real, then the mother church must have their daughter as a top priority... being willing to share members or donate members without strings attached, increasing tithing and sacrificing financially, and spiritually supporting the endeavor through dedicated prayer and provision of good training and coaching. Just like a parent gains so much through raising kids, a parent/mother church has only gain through this process... but those who are living in fear of there not being enough will be too focused on themselves and not willing to be good parents to a daughter church.
Training
This is taught in several steps...
1 - Being able to articulate and identify what the Gospel is for you and for your community
2 - Prayer: learning how to intercede and develop your own rule for life. If the pastor/planter is not spiritually healthy the church plant is going no where. This is where each planter really takes time to reflect on what they need to be doing daily/weekly/monthly to support their own spiritual growth and discernment as well as spiritually support the new church. HUGE.
I could see that second step being absolutely transformative for a session or new church plant team... I need it.
3 - Context: understand your community and its needs (see earlier reflection on my other workshops).
4 - Evangelism - both missional and attractional models
Missional: focus on meeting people where they are, going out, building the relationships, doing the gospel.
Attractional: being a known enough community that folks seek you out (this is secondary after you already gather a certain group... you have to have something you can invite folks to).
5 - Vision and Values - I saw this as much of the early discernment in the PCUSA Starting New Churches 3.0 book
Process of a Church Launch
I won't go into the details here, but this gave me a huge sense of peace. On some level it was way too detailed, as in "do this for so many months, then do this", but on another level it was very helpful and realistic.
Some basic principles:
Focus on gathering and building a community, not on starting a worship service
Worship service take a lot of planning time and energy, start them slowly or you will sap the energy from your leadership
Make sure to get your foundation right first: identity, values, vision, goals
Evaluate and reevaluate your steps as you go
Do a soft launch before an official Grand Opening
There is something magical about 75, below that, you won't have critical mass for a solid public gathering.
Overall, I left the event feeling like I have the tools I need to enter into faithful discernment with Gethsemane. Now, to just get over my own laziness and make the discernment a priority.
Thank you ECG2012. I hope that this time next year we will have several other leaders from our ministries attending, and that maybe we will have stories to tell as well as stories to hear.
Rev. Lindsay
So, there were two key areas I want to reflect on...
1 - Knowing your Community
This was a series of two workshops I took from Eugene Blackwell, pastor of House of Manna in Pittsburgh. He shared several stories about how he gained a heart for his neighborhood, and how he felt called to plant a new church in response to his established congregation who did not at that time have a heart to do the same kind of outreach and community transformation that Blackwell had in mind.
Blackwell emphasized that you start by "preaching the Gospel". This took a couple of days for me to unpack and understand. In my lingo, what he identified is...
First, build relationships. Jesus did not just stand on a street corner or start a worship service. He talked with people and figured out what they felt their needs were. He got to know folks well enough to hear them ask for mercy in particular areas of their lives. You can't know how to incarnate the Gospel to someone if you don't know that person.
For Blackwell this meant visiting, walking the streets, slowly getting up the nerve to talk to some of the drug users and lower level dealers. It meant learning how the real economics of that neighborhood worked, why people chose crime (i.e. was it to support their kids?). He figured out what peoples' fears were and dreams. He figured out the patterns of pain that had occurred in that community.
Second, make the Gospel real. A la Book of James, you can't say "peace be with you" and leave a person hungry or naked. If a man needs a job, you are called to help find him a job so that when you talk about a Jesus that cares, he believes you. This requires building relationships more broadly, not just in your community, but elsewhere, so you can connect resources with needs. LOTS of work
Third, know your entry points. This is largely cultural. Since Blackwell had grown up in a similar style community in Chicago, he knew that most folks had some grandma somewhere that had gone to church, so he could start out with questions like, "Who is God to you?" If you are reaching out to a largely atheistic culture, those starting point questions might be different... but notice this is the third, not first step.
Fourth, be willing to invest in people long term. Blackwell didn't understand building community as just getting butts in seats to build a church, he understood it as creating real life-long disciples. So, not just getting folks to enter into faith, but to become folks that are daily journeying in faith.
I could see a huge amount of what Blackwell was preaching as connecting directly to what I have heard in community organizing with Allied Communities of Tarrant and IAF. Spend time in one on one relational meetings, understand that folks already know what they need, and we just need to connect to one another to build enough power to really transform communities.
Above all, it highlighted to me that as a church, even with a great program like Academia, we spend a lot of time solving peoples' problems (a lousy version of step 2) and never doing 1, 3, or 4.
2 - Churches building churches
We talked about really important stuff: money, training, process of a church launch, and coaching.
Money
Some of the key reasons that church plants fail according to Tim Morey is overfunding or underfunding. In my synopsis, in the past the PCUSA has been a specialist in overfunding, but we are quickly moving to the opposite extreme. Historically, we largely fund churches for 3 years, and then partly fund them for 3 more years (slight exaggeration, but close). Morey's denominational model funds a plant for 3 years, 1st year with full salary, second two with half salary. He argued that there is something to be gained by a planter having to do fundraising, because they have to be able to share their passion with folk and teach tithing early on.
The challenge with underfunding is you are probably asking a planter to overextend themselves by having to hold down a full-time job and do a huge amount of evangelism.
The biggest thing he said, though, that I heard was the need for the mother church to really be invested in its daughter church... that, in fact, is why Morey recommends those terms... because mothers are invested in wanting their children to become self-sufficient adults (or at least they should). But if that investment is real, then the mother church must have their daughter as a top priority... being willing to share members or donate members without strings attached, increasing tithing and sacrificing financially, and spiritually supporting the endeavor through dedicated prayer and provision of good training and coaching. Just like a parent gains so much through raising kids, a parent/mother church has only gain through this process... but those who are living in fear of there not being enough will be too focused on themselves and not willing to be good parents to a daughter church.
Training
This is taught in several steps...
1 - Being able to articulate and identify what the Gospel is for you and for your community
2 - Prayer: learning how to intercede and develop your own rule for life. If the pastor/planter is not spiritually healthy the church plant is going no where. This is where each planter really takes time to reflect on what they need to be doing daily/weekly/monthly to support their own spiritual growth and discernment as well as spiritually support the new church. HUGE.
I could see that second step being absolutely transformative for a session or new church plant team... I need it.
3 - Context: understand your community and its needs (see earlier reflection on my other workshops).
4 - Evangelism - both missional and attractional models
Missional: focus on meeting people where they are, going out, building the relationships, doing the gospel.
Attractional: being a known enough community that folks seek you out (this is secondary after you already gather a certain group... you have to have something you can invite folks to).
5 - Vision and Values - I saw this as much of the early discernment in the PCUSA Starting New Churches 3.0 book
Process of a Church Launch
I won't go into the details here, but this gave me a huge sense of peace. On some level it was way too detailed, as in "do this for so many months, then do this", but on another level it was very helpful and realistic.
Some basic principles:
Focus on gathering and building a community, not on starting a worship service
Worship service take a lot of planning time and energy, start them slowly or you will sap the energy from your leadership
Make sure to get your foundation right first: identity, values, vision, goals
Evaluate and reevaluate your steps as you go
Do a soft launch before an official Grand Opening
There is something magical about 75, below that, you won't have critical mass for a solid public gathering.
Overall, I left the event feeling like I have the tools I need to enter into faithful discernment with Gethsemane. Now, to just get over my own laziness and make the discernment a priority.
Thank you ECG2012. I hope that this time next year we will have several other leaders from our ministries attending, and that maybe we will have stories to tell as well as stories to hear.
Rev. Lindsay
Monday, August 6, 2012
Missional Discernment Day 3
In the third (and final) day of the Missional Discernment class, we began by reflecting upon the effectiveness of the "walkabout" technique we used on the previous day. Several ideas were generated and some of the group exchanged emails to be able to share our reflections with each other.
The primary class leader, BJ Woodworth, began our next topic with a podcast from a group of Irish Jesuits; the podcast is named "Pray As You Go". The scripture was from Jeremiah 18, regarding the potter's house. The group spent about 30 minutes listening to the reading, then reflecting upon the scripture.
Topics of conversation (more detail to follow):
Douglas
The primary class leader, BJ Woodworth, began our next topic with a podcast from a group of Irish Jesuits; the podcast is named "Pray As You Go". The scripture was from Jeremiah 18, regarding the potter's house. The group spent about 30 minutes listening to the reading, then reflecting upon the scripture.
Topics of conversation (more detail to follow):
- Romans 12:2, regarding our being transformed by God so that we are able to discern his will
- Henry Nouwen, "Moving from Solitude to Community to Ministry" (pdf e-book, available at http://entermission.typepad.com/my_weblog/files/moving_from_solitude_to_community_to_ministry_henri_nouwen.pdf)
- We talked about Jesus' constant prayer to his Father as a way to get his "marching orders" (I have more on this topic from William Paul Young, author of The Shack)
- Paul writes that since the Holy Spirit resides within us, we can know "the deep thoughts of God"
- Jeremiah 30:15-30
Douglas
Missional Discernment Day 2 (Part 2)
Our Missional Discernment small group walking tour of St. Petersburg continued West along Central Avenue, where a number of small restaurants and bars occupy several blocks in the downtown district (see photos). Most of the people we passed were engaged in conversation with each other and so we didn't interrupt anyone to chat. I stopped beside one elderly woman on a scooter eating an ice cream cone, and gave her a friendly "hello" as a hopeful prelude to conversation. She gave me a suspicious look and drove away up the sidewalk.
We detoured North to swing by Williams Park, a city-block sized park that has been used for decades as the main transfer point for all city busses. As a pre-driving teen in the mid-1970s, I frequently rode a bus from my home to Williams Park, then transferred to another bus that took me to the shopping mall on the other side of town. The park looks largely the same although the neighborhood around it has changed. The retail stores that surround the park now include an R-rated nightclub. However First United Methodist Church, where my old Scout Troop has met for years, looks the same (from the outside) as it always has. We stopped to converse with a young man making "roses" by carefully cutting and folding the stem of a palm shrub, which are plentiful in the area. Our group bought a couple of roses from him (see photo).
Our travels ended at the same location as the other 5 "walk about" teams, to a specific address, but none of us were told what we would find there. 620 1st Avenue South is the location of a small independent theater company called The Studio @ 620 (http://www.studio620.org). It is here that a local progressive church group called Missio Dei (http://themissiodei.com/) holds their Sunday worship services (see picture).
Doug McMahon, one of our Missional Discernment class study leaders, is a founding pastor of Missio Dei, and wanted our class to visit their meeting location and meet with some of its other pastors and members. We enjoyed a box lunch (provided by our hotel) and spent two hours in fellowship with each other, asking many questions about how they began, what they expect to do, and what were some of their lessons learned as each of us return to our own congregations to discern how God wants us to expand and grow His church. Since I was staying in town beyond this conference, I was privileged to attend the worship service on the following Sunday (I will soon post a related article). They have between 30 and 90 participants for Sunday morning worship (Doug said their attendance increases greatly when the local college, USF St. Pete Campus, is in session).
As its Latin name implies, Missio Dei (literally, "the Mission of God") is a worship community founded around the principles of reaching out to those in the local community. In addition to the traditional mission elements such as a food pantry and a clothes closet (which they have), they also provide services such as "Laundry Love Project (LLP)", http://themissiodei.com/laundry-love, in which they partner with local laundromats to assist homeless and / or the very poor with the opportunity to wash their clothes. Rather than repeat their many missional elements here, I encourage you to follow the links to their site and see what they do for others in God's name.
Some of the Missio Dei members, unable to find reliable employment individually (for a variety of reasons), have joined together and submitted grant applications to fund a start-up food truck catering business. Several local churches have already pledged partial funds, and they have applied for and are anticipating a PC(USA) grant that would enable them to purchase the food truck and most of the necessary startup costs (including city permits). Some local businesses and churches have offered locations where they can set up and attract their customers. A few of the class members asked Doug if we could get a copy of their submitted grant application to learn about how they intend to start their business, and to see how that process works.
At 3pm, we piled back into our minivans and headed back to the hotel, our heads full of ideas and wonder at the practical ways Missio Dei has found to address their neighborhood.
We detoured North to swing by Williams Park, a city-block sized park that has been used for decades as the main transfer point for all city busses. As a pre-driving teen in the mid-1970s, I frequently rode a bus from my home to Williams Park, then transferred to another bus that took me to the shopping mall on the other side of town. The park looks largely the same although the neighborhood around it has changed. The retail stores that surround the park now include an R-rated nightclub. However First United Methodist Church, where my old Scout Troop has met for years, looks the same (from the outside) as it always has. We stopped to converse with a young man making "roses" by carefully cutting and folding the stem of a palm shrub, which are plentiful in the area. Our group bought a couple of roses from him (see photo).
Our travels ended at the same location as the other 5 "walk about" teams, to a specific address, but none of us were told what we would find there. 620 1st Avenue South is the location of a small independent theater company called The Studio @ 620 (http://www.studio620.org). It is here that a local progressive church group called Missio Dei (http://themissiodei.com/) holds their Sunday worship services (see picture).
Doug McMahon, one of our Missional Discernment class study leaders, is a founding pastor of Missio Dei, and wanted our class to visit their meeting location and meet with some of its other pastors and members. We enjoyed a box lunch (provided by our hotel) and spent two hours in fellowship with each other, asking many questions about how they began, what they expect to do, and what were some of their lessons learned as each of us return to our own congregations to discern how God wants us to expand and grow His church. Since I was staying in town beyond this conference, I was privileged to attend the worship service on the following Sunday (I will soon post a related article). They have between 30 and 90 participants for Sunday morning worship (Doug said their attendance increases greatly when the local college, USF St. Pete Campus, is in session).
As its Latin name implies, Missio Dei (literally, "the Mission of God") is a worship community founded around the principles of reaching out to those in the local community. In addition to the traditional mission elements such as a food pantry and a clothes closet (which they have), they also provide services such as "Laundry Love Project (LLP)", http://themissiodei.com/laundry-love, in which they partner with local laundromats to assist homeless and / or the very poor with the opportunity to wash their clothes. Rather than repeat their many missional elements here, I encourage you to follow the links to their site and see what they do for others in God's name.
Some of the Missio Dei members, unable to find reliable employment individually (for a variety of reasons), have joined together and submitted grant applications to fund a start-up food truck catering business. Several local churches have already pledged partial funds, and they have applied for and are anticipating a PC(USA) grant that would enable them to purchase the food truck and most of the necessary startup costs (including city permits). Some local businesses and churches have offered locations where they can set up and attract their customers. A few of the class members asked Doug if we could get a copy of their submitted grant application to learn about how they intend to start their business, and to see how that process works.
At 3pm, we piled back into our minivans and headed back to the hotel, our heads full of ideas and wonder at the practical ways Missio Dei has found to address their neighborhood.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Disciple-Making Days 1 & 2
One of the things I love about being at a church conference is how it makes the word "connectional" feel so real. We often hear about the PCUSA being a "connectional" church, but the word only truly comes to life for me when I am in a room filled with people from all over the country, of many different races and from many different cultures, all worshipping the same God. This week we've had many opportunities to do just that, and I've felt the relationship we share in our prayers and praise.
Relationship and connectivity are the common threads that tie together the sessions I've attended. Regardless of the specific focus of the workshop or keynote, the message is about building relationships - within our own congregations and reaching out into our communities.
In our workshop on disciple-making, we began by looking at the relationships Jesus developed, and how his teachings always called followers to action: Go. Make. Baptise. Teach. Observe. Remember. BEING a disciple means DOING.
Workshop leader Scott Weimer (pastor of North Avenue PC in Atlanta), guided us through some key words in discipleship, as found in the stories told in the Gospel of John:
We came back to these later in the day when discussing the five leadership principles that his church has adopted:
Yesterday afternoon my workshop group heard first-hand stories of how faith communities have been revived, or sent out to "birth" new communities. Time after time we were reminded that the steps taken by these groups will not work for everyone, but that in building our relationship with Jesus and following His lead, we will find the way to Go, Make, Baptise, Teach, Observe and Remember.
Relationship and connectivity are the common threads that tie together the sessions I've attended. Regardless of the specific focus of the workshop or keynote, the message is about building relationships - within our own congregations and reaching out into our communities.
In our workshop on disciple-making, we began by looking at the relationships Jesus developed, and how his teachings always called followers to action: Go. Make. Baptise. Teach. Observe. Remember. BEING a disciple means DOING.
Workshop leader Scott Weimer (pastor of North Avenue PC in Atlanta), guided us through some key words in discipleship, as found in the stories told in the Gospel of John:
- Follow (Jesus' first words)
- Time (together, with God)
- Born Again (Nicodemus - what must I do?)
- Healing/change
- hunger/thirst
- believing/trusting
- Obey
- Sin no more
- Truth (Jesus) sets you free
- Abiding in Jesus
We came back to these later in the day when discussing the five leadership principles that his church has adopted:
- Model The Way
- Inspire a Shared Vision
- Challenge the Process
- Enable Others to Act
- Encourage the Heart
Yesterday afternoon my workshop group heard first-hand stories of how faith communities have been revived, or sent out to "birth" new communities. Time after time we were reminded that the steps taken by these groups will not work for everyone, but that in building our relationship with Jesus and following His lead, we will find the way to Go, Make, Baptise, Teach, Observe and Remember.
Missional Discernment Day 2 (Part 1)
Wednesday was the "field trip" portion of the Missional Discernment thread within the New Church Development track. Our study leaders BJ and Doug briefed us on our assignment: we were to be dropped off into various neighborhoods near the downtown area of St. Petersburg, in order to conduct an "exegesis" (critical analysis) of the area as a first step toward determining what type of new worship community might be planted there. Our study sheets included several ideas for our observations as well as some typical questions that we would ask the people we met. We divided ourselves into groups of 3 people so as not to be "intimidating" as a larger group. While we were each dropped off in a different neighborhood, our gathering point was a common address, 620 1st Avenue South. We were not supposed to overtly identify ourselves as Christians to allow more "natural" responses to our conversations.
My three-person discernment group began at the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida (USF). Being a graduate of the Tampa campus of USF myself, it was an odd homecoming to see the familiar colors and logos set amidst a new campus setting that I had never seen up close before (I had been driven past the area in previous visits with my parents, who still live in St. Petersburg). The USF St. Petersburg campus has been greatly expanded and renovated over the last decade and is now a sprawling, multi-building area with lots of green spaces. Unfortunately, being early August, the campus itself was largely devoid of people, and we only met a couple of folks willing to speak with us. Ironically our first "speaking engagement" of our walk was with a USF maintenance worker who is mute. Nonetheless, he enthusiastically brought out a notebook and we chatted briefly via pencil and paper. Our first picture is from the USF campus looking over the nearby harbor where many sailboats are moored.
Our route then took us toward the downtown area, where we chatted with one person who was house-hunting on foot with a notepad and pen. It was an oddly refreshing sight in this era of Google Maps Street View and online posting of real estate listings. We met a few construction workers on their lunch break, and a couple of office workers suggested the Dali Museum when we asked them what was the "coolest" thing to see in the area. On our way to the Dali Museum we were caught by a brief rain shower, and our only cover (a nearby tree) was insufficient to keep us dry. We had to abandon the museum stop in order to get back on schedule.
One of the first things I learned about St. Petersburg as a teenager when I started to drive was that the Avenues run East to West, and the Streets run North to South. Our next walking destination was Central Avenue, the "zero point" or dividing line between the North and South avenues of St. Petersburg. Another, less publicized fact about St. Petersburg is that it is largely divided along racial lines as well. Demographically it is the second-most racially "split" major city in the United States (first place being Chicago). The largely African-American population of the "south side" of St. Petersburg begins roughly at 5th Avenue South and continues to the tip of the southern end of the peninsula. North of that dividing line the population is largely Caucasian and/or "white Hispanic" according to demographic studies.
Our entire route, therefore, was directly in the zone where the two ethnicities mix. We noticed a great deal of new construction, both renovation of older buildings and demolition of homes to make way for newer homes and office buildings. In addition to the USF campus expansion mentioned earlier, more of this construction growth can be attributed to an enormous new Children's Hospital (which spawns many supporting businesses such as doctor's offices and supply companies). We observed foreclosed homes across the street from massive new construction growth (see pictures below).
My three-person discernment group began at the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida (USF). Being a graduate of the Tampa campus of USF myself, it was an odd homecoming to see the familiar colors and logos set amidst a new campus setting that I had never seen up close before (I had been driven past the area in previous visits with my parents, who still live in St. Petersburg). The USF St. Petersburg campus has been greatly expanded and renovated over the last decade and is now a sprawling, multi-building area with lots of green spaces. Unfortunately, being early August, the campus itself was largely devoid of people, and we only met a couple of folks willing to speak with us. Ironically our first "speaking engagement" of our walk was with a USF maintenance worker who is mute. Nonetheless, he enthusiastically brought out a notebook and we chatted briefly via pencil and paper. Our first picture is from the USF campus looking over the nearby harbor where many sailboats are moored.
Our route then took us toward the downtown area, where we chatted with one person who was house-hunting on foot with a notepad and pen. It was an oddly refreshing sight in this era of Google Maps Street View and online posting of real estate listings. We met a few construction workers on their lunch break, and a couple of office workers suggested the Dali Museum when we asked them what was the "coolest" thing to see in the area. On our way to the Dali Museum we were caught by a brief rain shower, and our only cover (a nearby tree) was insufficient to keep us dry. We had to abandon the museum stop in order to get back on schedule.
One of the first things I learned about St. Petersburg as a teenager when I started to drive was that the Avenues run East to West, and the Streets run North to South. Our next walking destination was Central Avenue, the "zero point" or dividing line between the North and South avenues of St. Petersburg. Another, less publicized fact about St. Petersburg is that it is largely divided along racial lines as well. Demographically it is the second-most racially "split" major city in the United States (first place being Chicago). The largely African-American population of the "south side" of St. Petersburg begins roughly at 5th Avenue South and continues to the tip of the southern end of the peninsula. North of that dividing line the population is largely Caucasian and/or "white Hispanic" according to demographic studies.
Our entire route, therefore, was directly in the zone where the two ethnicities mix. We noticed a great deal of new construction, both renovation of older buildings and demolition of homes to make way for newer homes and office buildings. In addition to the USF campus expansion mentioned earlier, more of this construction growth can be attributed to an enormous new Children's Hospital (which spawns many supporting businesses such as doctor's offices and supply companies). We observed foreclosed homes across the street from massive new construction growth (see pictures below).
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