Basecamp part 2 – Call, Vision and Character

Basecamp, the new Frontiers Church Planting weekend, was not only a time for meeting some great people with big visions and a desire to see the nations reached it was also an excellent time of teaching on the subject of church planting.

We were blessed with having a number of excellent speakers over the weekend including David Stroud, Matt Hatch and Tony Thompson. The teaching was fairly basic in some ways but brought to life through the speakers sharing their experience of church planting, how they had done it and the issues they had faced and overcome.

David Stroud took the first session focusing on Character, Vision and Call.

CHARACTER

• Humility
• Conviction
• Endurance
• Stability
• Security in who we are in Christ
• Strong relationship with the Lord
• Secure marriage
• Good follower

On CALL we looked at the different ways God can call you to church plant.

These included

• God speaking into your heart
• Prophetic calling
• Dreams and vision
• Being asked by someone to do it

And finally VISION based on

• Scripture
• You
• Context

These need to be in equal tension with each other, best described as triangle with equal sides and angles                                           

Finally we looked at the skills of the church planter

• Motivated for the lost
• Able to gather lost and believers
• Self Starter
• Manage time and set goals
• Raise up other leaders
• Cast Vision
• Communicate to a small group
• Communicate clearly
• Preach to 30 – 70 people

This is some list of things and against some Mrs Beatthedrum and I do well in others we fail miserably. The good news for us is that God is involved and wants to be part of the process or changing us, or to some degree sanctify us so we become the people he wants us to be.

So we have a lot to learn, a lot to change, a lot to repent of, a lot to do and a lot of prayer is needed. For us the big thing is that God is involved and wants to do this through us.

There will be a lot of hard, difficult work ahead, but it will be worth it if we can bring Him more glory

Time to reap and a time to sow – but usually a time to administrate and a time to minister to the flock

 

I am currently wading through Ed Stetzers “Planting Missional Churches” which is probably the best book I have read on church planting (will do a review of it when I am finished). One of the things that has really stood out in my reading so far is the section on leaders of church plants. In this section Stetzer breaks down a plant leader’s week into four activities, evangelism, ministry, study and administration. He then looks at the proportion of time that should be used up in a leader’s week by each of these items. He bases his week on 50 hours for a full time leader and 11 for a bi-vocational leader.

Full Time

Evangelism – 15 hours (3 Hours bi-vocational)

Ministry – 15 hours (3 Hours bi-vocational)

Study / Sermon prep – 10 hours (3 Hours bi-vocational)

Administration – 10 hours (2 Hours bi-vocational)

Now this is for church plant elders and elders in new churches, however I was left wondering about elders in other longer established churches. My thinking was around the 15 hours of evangelism a week for full time elders. I wondered how many elders in the UK actually get anywhere near to this figure. Their time is often taken up with ministry and administration and the two things that probably get neglected are the study and evangelism.

In all the churches I have been a part of, most of which have been New Frontiers or Covenant Ministries churches, the elders have got bogged down in ministry and have typically left the evangelism to the congregation unless it was a major event. Evangelism in these churches has then typically not been the way of life for the church; ministry is seen as being more important and spiritual gift such as prophecy and words of knowledge are the things people seek, and looking after one another in the church is the focus, not the salvation of the lost.

This left me wondering why, then the obvious hit me.

The biblical definition of leadership or eldership is that of ancient Middle Eastern shepherds. These shepherds, unlike today’s shepherds who herd their flocks, used to train the sheep to follow after them. So if this is the biblical method of leadership then the flock will follow after the leaders. Christ followed Father, and we are to follow Christ.

Maybe this is the cause of the malaise in the British church; too many leaders have got stuck into ‘Ministry’ and forgotten the call to evangelism.

What can be done?

I guess Elders need to be encouraged to start to actively pursue personal evangelism as a way of life and calling. We also need to rise up new leaders who are evangelism focused who can leader and train others into the great work Father has called us into.

Also a large amount of pressure is placed on elders by us the body for them to take on more and more ministry tasks and more and more administration functions, we need to step up to the plate and help them. This will ease the burden on them, increase our experience and hopefully leave more space for people to reach the lost.

Elders also need to learn to delegate some of the ministry and administration functions so that they can concentrate on study and evangelism. After all this is what the apostles did in Acts 6:2. This might be hard for some elders as they have had either bad experiences of this in the past or have a ‘if you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself, mentality’. Delegation is something that has to be learned for most of us.

NOTE: This is not a ‘pop’ at my eldership who work hard and carry the burden of the church with integrity and a real servant heart. It is a general comment about the health of the British church in general.

Why we don’t do mission. (Part one – Follow the leader)

While I was away in the land of the sweaty sock and deep fried mars bar my wife and I were pondering why our church is not very mission focused. By which I mean it is not very evangelistic or outward looking. So I thought I would put down some of our conclusions in a series of posts on the old blog for people to chew over, flame me and ponder. These are in no way an attack on anyone but just our thoughts and musings on why as a whole we don’t do ‘mission’.

The first thing we came up with was leadership. Always a tricky one to talk about but here goes.

Before I start can I just point out again this is not an attack on anyone or ‘slagging off’ the eldership of my church but a general problem that gets in the way of the church being missional.

If a church is to be missional then the leadership of that church also need to be missional. The church needs to see what a missional lifestyle is like and it needs to see it worked out in their leaders lives. Now I do not think that leaders need to be super heros but they should be leading the way for the rest of the church.

Surely it is hard for them to encourage their church to be evangelistic if the church never sees them speaking to or bringing non Christians to events.

Of course mention that to some leaders and you get the answer “All my time is taken up with the church etc” What a load of “Philippian rubbish”!!

They have no more or less time than the rest of us. They have a Job to do just as I have a job to do or you have a job to do, whether that is as a student, teacher, businessman, housewife, fishmonger, hangman or fighter pilot. That job however should not get in the way of their core calling and ours, which is the same for all of us the Great Commission to go and make disciples.

So if a leader is not fulfilling this role then how can he or she expect the people they lead to do the same.

There is a clear biblical precedent that can be seen here.

Father – Jesus – Disciples (Paul) – the rest of us.

Jesus only does what He sees the Father doing – John 5:19

The disciples and later Paul copy what they saw Jesus doing – Matthew 10

Paul then tells us to imitate him and his life. – 1 Corinthians 4:16 (granted not specifically talking about evangelism) similar in Hebrews 6:12

There is of course a specific verse Hebrews 13:7 that clearly states that we are to imitate our leaders.

If the leaders are non-evangelistic (note I am not talking here about evangelists which are something completely different) then in all probability the church will not be outward looking. This will be true in all areas of church life if the leaders are not seen doing it then it is highly unlikely that the church will do it.

We need our leaders to stand up and become role models for us.

Showing us how to lead a witnessing lifestyle and how to create relationships with people that lead them into the love and grace of Jesus.

This is of course a great responsibility for the leadership and many will say they do not know how to do it.

We can all sit back and say we are not good at a particular ‘thing’ but mission is what we are called to and for. Therefore it is something we should want to do. There are no excuses (See previous) whether we are pew fillers or leaders.

There is another problem here of course and that is of hypocrisy. Note to self: Oh no a harsh word, people will not like it.

I have sat through some great teaching on mission and reaching out to the lost. I have heard some great sermons about it. I will now let you into a secret I have sat there, listening to a leader teach / preach and thought “Well you don’t do it so why should I, you hypocrite!”

The dark recesses of the drummers mind unfold again!

You see the biggest way a leader can turn off the people to doing something is being all talk and no action. To tell the people to do something then skive off into the background. Personally I hate that. It really annoys me.

So leaders please don’t do it.

The church needs leaders to be like roman centurions. The roman centurions lead a century (80 not 100 legionaries you nugget) and they lead from the front. They were picked for their fighting prowess and their courage. Raised from the ranks of the legion they gained their promotion by being savage fighters who did great acts of heroism. In action their casualty rate among was very  high as they fought in the hardest tightest spots.

What the church does not need is leaders in the mould of the First World War Generals who sat back in comfortable barracks, pushing figures across the a map and sending soldiers to their death to win a few yards of ground (see Meltchett in Blackadder goes forth)

If you are a leader and are reading this just imagine (dream sequence commences)

A church filled with people who want to spread the good news about Jesus, who are wanting to reach the lost, who are bringing them to your services. Who demand more guest services and fight to get their friends to the outreach events.

If you want that to happen then you need to start the ball rolling.

LEAD YOUR PEOPLE

(In the next instalment we will look at the church service Why we don’t do mission – There is no way I am bring my friends to this!)