erichesse:

Part One of a Four-Part Series

Luke 10 is an incredibly important text for those who want to live a sent life.

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.

Here are my observations.

Living sent is…

check out this great article that my friend eric hesse posted over at his blog sentness.com. it is about the writings of one of the greatest influences in my life as a missionary/church planter/church planting coach: roland allen.

another great article about roland allen can be found here.

erichesse:

Recently, I’ve been reading selected writings by Roland Allen from his book The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church. For those of you unfamiliar with Allen, he was an early twentieth century Anglican missionary and missiologist who had a profound influence on Lesslie Newbigin. In many ways, much of the current discussion about the missional church finds its roots in Allen’s writings.

At any rate, Allen is obsessed with (in a good way) trying to understand how and why the early church expanded spontaneously, why the church was spontaneously expanding in the East in his day, and why this spontaneous expansion wasn’t happening in the West. Here’s how Allen defines spontaneous expansion.

I mean the expansion which follows the unexhorted and unorganized activity of individual members of the Church explaining to others the Gospel which they have found for themselves; I mean the expansion which follows the irresistible attraction of the Christian Church for men who see its ordered life, and are drawn to it by desire to discover the secret of a life which they instinctively desire to share; I mean also the expansion of the Church by the addition of new Churches.

Essentially, what Allen describes here is a CPM (Church Planting Movement) and a wonderfully concise description of ‘sentness.’ Allen’s analysis as to why this happened is as insightful as his definition.

The rapid and wide expansion of the Church in the early centuries was due in the first place mainly to the spontaneous activity of individuals. A natural instinct to share with others a new-found joy, strengthened and enlightened by the divine Grace of Christ, the Saviour, inevitably tends to impel men to propagate the Gospel. 

As a pastor, one of the lessons Allen has taught me is that the pastoral task is not to control various ministries. Rather, I need to give up control and instead lead people to be compelled by the Spirit. Because we as pastors have excelled at structuring and programming the Spirit right out of our ministries we simply haven’t given the Holy Spirit the freedom to do what He does best—expand his Church. 

Allen goes on to write:

No one, then, was surprised at the spontaneous efforts of individual Christians to convert others to their Faith. They probably thought it quite natural. Thus as men moved about there were constantly springing up new groups of Christians in different places. The Church expanded simply by organizing these little groups as they were converted, handing on to them the organization which she had received from her first founders. It was itself a unity composed of a multitude of little churches any one of which could propagate itself, and consequently the reception of any new group of Christians was a very simple matter. By a simple act the new group was brought into the unity of the Church, and equipped, as its predecessors had been equipped, not only with all the spiritual power and authority necessary for its own life as an organized unit, but also with all the authority needed to repeat the same process whenever one of its members might convert men in any new village or town. Thus the results of the spontaneous labour of any individual Christian were naturally and easily consolidated and established within the unity of the Church.

Sounds like a decentralized network of house churches or a cell church, doesn’t it? For those of us in the position of helping churches and denominations process what it means to be missional it’s helpful to appeal to Allen. We all want spontaneous expansion. A voice from the distant past sometimes carries more weight to skeptics than the current missional writers who are frequently viewed as following the latest fad in evangelicalism.

So let’s read Allen, let’s ask God to give us ears to hear what Spirit says to the Church, and let’s live out of our ‘sentness’ so that we too might see the spontaneous expansion of God’s church.

Alan Hirsch talks about what he says is the DNA of The Church As A Movement:

6 Elements:

1: The Centerpiece of it All: Jesus is Lord. Everything revolves around this.

2.Discipleship/Disciplemaking: How the believer lives out the Lordship of Christ.

3.Missional/Incarnational Impulse: God is the Missionary God and we are a sent people, He sends us among people who need Him to show Him there.

4:Apostolic Environment: we must have missional ministry to have missional churches

5: Organic Systems: Decentralized, every member has the DNA of the whole, every follower of Jesus has the potential in them to do all that God puts in their heart for the advancement of the Mission of Jesus.

6: Communitas, Not Just Community: It is community forged together through common mission and the struggle around this, not just being together but being together on Mission.

What do you think?

Church as Family: 3 of my friends who are pastors and leaders in EFCA sharing about their journey into more organic forms of being the church on the mission of Jesus.

Good stuff.

here’s a video i just shot a couple days ago of our friend jimmie sharing about how she came to be a part of our network of house churches.

a team of college students from faith evangelical free church in fort collins came down for a weekend to reach out to two inner city neighborhoods with us a couple years ago by going door to door with food for easter and inviting people to become a part of our community of organic churches. 

we met jimmie that weekend. it was two shy college gals and i that went up to jimmie’s door and i made the girls do most of the talking and jimmie’s been with us ever since. what a sweetheart she is. 

photo by: techsoup for libraries

Last Tuesday, March 2nd 2010, we met with 3 great young guys from South Carolina who feel God is leading them to Pueblo, CO to plant house churches. It looks like sometime in April or thereabouts Marshall, Brandon (aka Moore), and Jeff (along with his wife who i look forward to meeting when they move out here) will be making the trek to follow the Lord’s call on their lives.

We had a sweet time sharing what God used to move us into organic church life and planting as well as what God has done in bringing about coloradohousechurch, our wide network of simple churches spread across colorado(fyi: i use the terms simple, organic and house almost interchangably wehn describing church. not all house churches are simple nor organic but that’s what i’m praying for among the house church movement: a Spirit led movement of indigenous churches where God is glorified and He leads our lives and meetings in such a way that everyone can easily play the part they are called to and things are so simple that multiplication can take place rapidly.).

please join me in praying for these three guys (and jeff’s wife too) as they come to Colorado to follow Him in living out the mission of seeing disciples made and churches planted in an often neglected city in Colorado: Pueblo. looking forward to helping them get connected here in Colorado and walking with them as they pursue listening to God, doing what He says and teaching others to do the same.

anyway here is what marshall posted to his blog: marshallnorthcutt.tumblr.com.

Denver Update:

So Tuesday we got together with a bunch of other Christ Lovers who are living out the “organic” Church life out.  It was awesome to join together with others who are already doing what God is calling us to.  So we heard everybody’s stories and told ours.  Then we ending our time with just prayer and listening to God to see what He has to say to us and for Pueblo.   Here’s some notes of what came out…

From Tim:  Marshall, You are special.  Wait on me and You are free.  All of you be gentle with yourselves.

From Desi: desistarr.com Don’t try to make anything happen.  Wait on me.  I will renew your strength and give you rest. Fruitfulness will flow naturally from being with me. I am the missionary God. You can trust me completely.

From Margee:  What is God already doing in Pueblo?  How to enter into that?  Pray for the people that God would have to be involved.  Big need for youth.  Pueblo is a dry and weary land where there is no water.

From Sean:  ”For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.” (John 3:34) God has sent you.  Speak His words boldly for he gives you the Spirit, all of Him without limit.  Your boldness is going to be what limits you.  So be bold.  I am proud of you.

From Marty: treasurefield.wordpress.com You can’t teach a Kid to Ride a bike at a Seminar.  God will teach us thru personal discipleship and God will teach thru us, not by us talking at people, but thru discipling and loving people. Put your faith into action.

From John: storiesfromtherevolution.blogspot.com Mission flows from listening.  If you listen to them they will listen to you. If you become world class listeners people will line up at your doors to hear what you have to say.  Also learn to listen to God for everything and focus on teaching others how to listen to God.  ”Be quick to listen and slow to speak…” (James 1:19)

From Hobby: revolutiondenver.com You are one.  You are sent.  You belong to one another.  West Pueblo???

Reggie McNeal, author of The Present Future and Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church and many other books talks about our (mis)understanding of the nature of the church and how we need to transition in our thinking of the church from a what to a who, and how traditional churches can be involved with house churches or missional communities, etc.

check it out and let me know what you think.

very well done video intro to the missional church.

here’s the comment i left at the blog (missionalchurchnetwork.com) which originally published the vid: .

great video. really well done. actually, your blog is very thoughtful as well and a great resource.

anyway, i’ve been so excited to see the missional renaissance that we are experiencing here in north american church thinking. what a breath of fresh air for all of us who have been a part of the church calling the world to come to us but rarely seeing our identity as a community of sent people or people on mission. my only critique or push back against the missional church is that often the focus has been on us being cultural geniuses who exegete our cultures and therefore know what we are to do based upon what is the most appropriate way to contextualize the gospel. while this can work at times i believe that Jesus laid out for us the key to understanding His ministry in Jn 5:19 when He said He does nothing of His own initiative but only what the Father shows Him. it is my thought that in light of Jesus’ own statement about His utter dependance on the Father to set the agenda, that we need to be people who simply live our lives as those who listen to God, do what He says and teach others to do the same. as we do, i expect we will see greater missional fruitfulness as the byproduct of us being first and foremost the listening church, than we ever would if it was up to us to be missional by our own strategic planning. your thoughts?