Preparing for Retreat #1

Dear friends...

In late January 2015, (Friday Jan 30 to Sunday Feb 1 to be exact) Christ The Way Church - a new church in Manchester NH, will retreat together.  Really this is a leadership retreat, as the small group that currently gathers are all leaders, each of us in our own style, gifting, perspectives and strengths.  This is no surprise since the Holy Spirit, inspiring Peter writes for us: "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light".( 1 Peter 2:9, NIV)

So our theology of church includes the idea that we are each priests before God - each of us directly 'in-breathed' by God, and so each of us the expectation that God is speaking to us, in-spiring us to live out His will in our individual life and in our collective shared life as a church.  Wow!   As your pastor, then, my role is not to conjure up a vision for us as a church, but to listen to what the Holy Spirit Himself is saying on and through each of us - to discern the 'sweet agreement' between us.  I anticipate that each of us will have a different view of our church, a different dream, because we are different members of the same body.  To use a New Testament simile, (read 1 Corinthians chapter 12 at this point) the foot will have a different perspective than the eye or the ear. Each is valid and necessary.  The vision for our little church will emerge as we all contribute and help to refine the collective vision.  If God is in our retreat, we can expect a gracious consensus.

Note that all Christians do not agree this on.  There are some beloved brothers and sisters that expect pastoral leadership to be dictatorial - like Moses coming down the mountain.  That may be, in some cases.  Church history teaches us that in times of social crisis, God often works with a fiery prophet.  But not all fiery prophets are from God, and moreover it is normative for God to work through gracious consensus.  So that is my expectation.  We shall see!

So here is my first question to get your minds thinking together, and to get out hearts opened to God in prayerful, hopeful, optimistic and joyful expectation:

When you think of Christ The Way church - your church, our church, God's church, what do you hope for?

• for the next 3 months?
• for the next 12 months?
• for the next 3 years?

Please don't let your thought fall away.  Write down now - on a precious scrap of paper, on an email, wherever, what you are thinking.  Just write down the key words if there isn't time to write out whole sentences.  Please email me to let me know.  I will gather and share amongst us.  If you want to write to me in confidence do.  

Blessings to each of you.  God has given me a sharp love for each of you.  I carry you in my hearts and lift you in my prayers.

Pastor Eddy

Beauty and stars

I met a woman yesterday who told me, with no little pride, that she was a non-believer.  She doesn't believe in God, never has and has no interest in God at all.  I respect that, and perhaps can guess where it might be coming from.  We had a pleasant congenial conversation as I took interest in her.  She is deeply committed to the community.  She has served terms in town politics - on school boards, appropriations committees, doing the hard and unpaid work of a community leader.  She started a community band that is going strong long after health issues forced her to quit leading it.  She lives by the 'golden rule' - and says she is a good person.  What she means is - she is not intentionally mean to people.  She is a  nice person.  Indeed I enjoyed chatting with her.
Is she at peace?  No, she isn't.  I sense it.  Neither with herself, nor the universe/God/whatever is out there.

I asked her one leading question:  what does she feel when she watches a beautiful sunset at the oceanside?  She prevaricated and said she appreciated it but didn't 'feel' anything. Fair enough.  It was a leading question and she saw it for what it was.

I shared that for me, I connect with God in natural beauty: the thousand thousand stars in a midnight blue sky; the thousand thousand shade of green in Spring, or orange in Fall; the eternal lapping of the sea on a stony beach; the dragon fly that lands on my arm as I sit on my little deck.  These are touch-points for me - where heaven bends down to touch the earth.

This morning I walked my dog - nothing new there - and the pre-dawn air was cold on my face.  The sky was dazzling with stars.  (Yes, I did get out my cell phone and use Google Sky Maps to identify a few stars - I couldn't help myself.) I thanked God for such beauty and allowed my heart to fill with praise and then give that praise to God as a wordless prayer of worship.  Just a private conversation - me to God, while Penny the dog snuffled in the grass.
Then as I played with my dog - throwing a stick in the darkness, the sun slowly rose.  It's vast light flooded the sky until no stars where visible - only the perfect blue of an autumn morning in New England.

I reflected that our lives are like the little stars - individual, gathered in clusters and bright and beautiful - even the stars that don't acknowledge or sense the coming dawn.  Then the great 'morning star' arises - Christ Himself, whose holy brilliance does not extinguish the little stars, or eclipse them.  No - the stars are still in their place,  They are just overwhelmed by the perfect beauty of the God who reached down to humankind and took all our darkness into Himself and yet rises again to bring them the purest and most beautiful light.  We are indeed made in His image.

Being, Doing, in Business and in Life

It's been said that we focus on doing things in the middle chapters of our lives.  Often times we define ourselves by our roles: husband, wife, father, mother, boss, engineer, chaplain, pastor, son, daughter etc.  In the later chapters of our lives we shift our focus from what we do, to who we are.  The stuff we do is still important, meaningful; and provides purpose, but we need to go deeper.  Who are we?  the location of our significance shifts from 'doing' to 'being'.  The spring of our identity is found to be rooted somewhere deeper than our roles.
     The ancient Hebrews understood this and spoke of grief, joy, life and even the eventual embrace of death to come from deep within.  They located this 'place' idiomatically as from within their kidneys or intestines.  We still speak of have the gall, or have the guts. Once Greek became the lingua franca, the idiom used was the heart.  In our hearts we find truth, meaning purpose and identity.
     As I think I have commented elsewhere, the heart has become overused in our time.  What the Bible means when it speaks of the 'heart' is that core of our character from which spring two things: our relationship and our motives. (I borrow here from the holiness thinking of Tom Noble.  Thanks for your clarity, Professor Noble!)
     So if we want to chart our journey in the quest for discover our identity and purpose, we should assess our relationships,and then our motives.  For example - are they healthy?  Do they serve me first, or others first (a good definition of love in action.)  To they embrace the marginalized, the needy, the vulnerable and those with no voice?  Or do I only use relationships to meet my needs, climb my social ladder and leverage to my advantage?
     The journey towards Christ is a journey is which we are changed ever more into His likeness. The more we study Him, the more we live His commandments to love God, love others, and most difficult of all perhaps, to love ourselves - we are transformed. Of course you will always be you and I will always be me - we are unique AND we are made in the image of God.  My parents told me that we become like the people we spend time with.  It's true, and it applies to spiritual growth too.
     Spending time with Christ, in reading and applying the books of the New Testament (in the context of the Old Testament(, in praying with and for others, in serving the humble in society, and most of all in worship and enjoying this gift of life...we grow more like God.  We are lights in the darkness, salt to a bland and rotting world, a city on a hill, a thousand points of light.

Enjoy the quest.

The Police, Authority, Responsibility and a social contract

The events in Ferguson, MO have tragically highlighted the role of police people in our society.  My own perspective is as an English immigrant to the US, and now a US citizen.  There are comparisons between policing in the UK and US that stand out to me:

In the UK, police people usually see themselves as a part of the society that they serve.

In the US , police people often sees themselves as apart from society, in authority over it, including the privilege to use deadly force.

    There are guns in the UK, as there are in the US ... not so many, for sure, but the bad guys have them, so      let's not think that makes a huge difference.

     In the UK a police person would say to you "I am a policeman(woman/officer)".  

     In the US a police person would say to you "I am police", as if it were a nationality or a tribal identity, rather that a role.

     

In the UK the police are understood to be a non-military part of an integrated society.  Police people are us, in uniform, protecting us and keeping the peace.

In the US the police are understood to be a military force, separate and distinct from 'us' who have authority to enforce the law upon us.

In the ancient world, the Romans saw nature as chaotic and terrifying.  To create peace, the natural order had to be vanquished, suppressed and conquered with brute force - or else it would get out of hand.  Everything Roman is about domination, enforcement.

By Contrast, the Greek saw nature as complex, manageable, organic.  To create peace one lived in harmony with the natural order, coercing, motivating and training it.  Everything Greek is about interaction, communication, appreciation. 

To be sure, I don't many many police people on America.  The ones I do know are wise, kind and gentle people whom I trust.  But then again, I live in New Hampshire, which along with Iowa is one of the safest of all the States. To be sure also, the police in the UK are not perfect, and I read of scandals in the 18 years I have lived mainly in the US.

I hope for a sea-change in American society where our police leaders shift from Roman to Greek.  I hope to never hear again about law 'enforcement', but about policing of, for and by our society.

Our Father

Our Father,

Whose existence fills and beautifies where You are,
May Your name alone among all names, be honored, revered and worshipped.
May Your holy reign come fully into force here, where we are.
May Your desire, wishes and intentions direct all things,
especially where we are, just like where You are
Indeed may those two places be the same!  And I beg you, start this revolution in me!

I'm utterly dependent on You, moment by moment, for every kind of food that I need,
Only You can forgive me for my selfish, disobedient, foolish, brokenness,
Teach me to be forgiving like You are, towards other people
Protect me from my vulnerabilities and weaknesses,
Protect and save me from darkness and evil

You alone are King of all existence!
All power belongs to You!
My grand and noble Emperor and Father!

May all this be so, now and for all times.
May this be so.

Bible; Sacraments; Charity; Fellowship

I don’t like the word ‘evangelical’ any more.  What it denotes has been lost it what it now connotes, which all too often leads to the word being used either as a fundamentalist banner to be waved at perceived enemies, or as a pejorative term by those who embrace other theological or social positions. 

Instead I’ll use ‘friendship with Jesus Christ’ as a means to express the high, wonderful and mysterious calling of walking The Way of Jesus.   Friendship with Christ involves encountering the Risen Word of God (Jesus) in ever-new ways, as we engage in a life which is wholly a life of worship to God.  That’s all well and good, but how is the Christian, or rather, the friend of God, to put one foot in front of another as we walk along the Way?

Four words are useful here:

Bible – the written word of God, in which we encounter The Living Word of God.  The Bible may be read, studied and lived out.  This is the primary means of encountering Christ.  The Holy Spirit, who always points to Christ, will lift the words from the pages into our hearts and minds as we read, and hours, days, week and years afterwards.

Sacraments:  Christ comes to us in special ways as we obey his commands.  All Christians recognize that we encounter Christ in baptism and in communion (Eucharist).  I personally would also embrace marriage as a sacrament, for those who choose it.  Catholic and Orthodox Christians will embrace other practices as sacraments too, such as confirmation/chrismation, holy orders, reconciliation and anointing with oil.  In all cases, these acts of obedience and dependence upon Christ acts as channels in our lives through which Christ gives Himself to us.

Charity – or perhaps Charity and Service.   John Wesley would call them acts of charity – the active living out of the good news by loving others, especially the marginalized, those with no voice, the humble and our enemies.  When we live out our trust in Jesus, it honors Him, brings Him glory and makes us more like Him – we are changed by obedience.  We encounter Christ.  

Fellowship.  Much as the church is easy to criticize, it is Jesus’ idea, and His gift to each of us.  We belong together.  Church is where we can bring our gifts and talents to bless others, and also be blessed by others; where we can become known, and know others; where we can pray for and be prayed for.  Fellowship - the living and worshiping together – reflects the relationships within the Holy Trinity, into which all humankind is invited – by amazing grace.   As we fellowship, forgive and build each other up, we encounter Christ and become more Christ-like.

A Childhood Moment

Monsoon rains drum the tin roof

Turning Singapore lawn into muddy mire

Dad playing chess with brother Andy

on the cool covered veranda

Grooming him for life as a man.

I arrange my plastic army to conquer Tibby, the sleeping cat.

Later, I will read my books with

Watercolor pictures of English scenes

Enid Blyton and Rudyard Kipling

will fill my dreams tonight.

Mum writes her weekly letter home

thin blue airmail paper, elegant hand

a faithful thread to a place that we are from

family, home, slow paced and considered.

How Wide is Jesus? A Paradox.

Paradox - the phenomenon of holding two truth that are in tension with each other.  The Christian Way is full of them.  That's OK - it's not a problem.  Indeed it is exactly what we should expect and hope for.  As I often remind my patients and church family, we are complicated, life is complicated and God is very complex. So if we found that Christianity was simple, with clear answers for every life-issue and theological itch, we ought to be suspicious that the faith might be phony, contrived and manufactured.  Instead what we find is that this complex God reveals Himself into our complexity and the complexity of life, in some very simple ways, while leaving some areas of our experience complex.  This feels very real to me and encourages me to trust this God in the areas of thought and experience that I find complicated. 

     When I think about just how complex God is across space and time, and how limited my capacity to understand and comprehend is, I must conclude that there will be much about God and this life and universe that He has created, that I would not understand.  To expect that I would understand everything would be the height of arrogance and foolishness. So, we arrive at our starting point - there is paradox in a mature and reasonable (reasoning) faith. 

     

     One such paradox I have been thinking about recently is the exclusivity and inclusivity of Jesus.  Just how wide is this Jesus and just how narrow?  In the book of Ephesians in the New Testament of the Bible, Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit writes "… that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,  that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Chapter 3 verses 17 to 19, emphasis added by me).  So this Jesus is very wide, tall and deep – or at least His love is.  And since God IS love (1 John 4:8) we can think that the Scripture tells us that Jesus is wide.  This supported and rounded out by dozens of references in scripture to the broad invitation that God offers to all people, peoples, or all cultures and times to come to a live-saving relationship with Him (e.g. John 3:16, 2 Peter 3:9, 1 Timothy 2:1-4 etc.)

    At the same time Jesus’ words, captured by Matthew (Matthew 7:13-14) say “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”  So this wide Jesus offers a narrow gate and a steep/hard road?  What is this gate and road exactly?  The answers seems to be in the most well-known of Jesus’ saying that are exclusive: (John 14:6, my emphasis added) “ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me””.  Taking the context into account and other interpretive guidelines, I think it is reasonable to put these two statements next to each other and conclude that Jesus is presenting Himself as the narrow and exclusive gateway, and His truth and life as the steep/hard path that leads to God The Father.

     

     So we have a universally broad invitation to a deep, broad and tall life of God’s love that must thread through a narrow gate (Jesus) and along a steep and hard path.  Paradox.

This is not some esoteric theological clever observation, fodder for some intellectually impressive sermon.  It’s where the rubber meets the road.  As I pray with a devoted, faithful and kind Muslim patient in hospital, who clearly has a long and steady love for God, resulting in the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, kindness, faithfulness, self-control etc.) in advance of many Christians, I am confronted with the broad call of the Holy Spirit (Google ‘prevenient grace’ dear reader) that calls all people to faith in God through Christ.  Yet is this dear person experiencing the life of Christ without ever knowing it, or Him, explicitly? Can God be saving people in other faith traditions without their conscious identification with the name of Yeshua (Jesus), the Messiah (Christ)?  I then ponder how many western modern Christians are saved by the blood of Christ with scant understanding of His Jewishness, or the depth of substitutionary atonement.  Worse, I then ponder how many ‘Christians ‘ believe they are saved without ever deeply laying down their lives and submitting to the Lordship of Christ, but rather saying a one-time prayer and then tipping the hat to Jesus as a sort of passing admiration for the rest of their life.   It’s complex.

     So what are we left with?  A loving God, who through His own merits and efforts has opened a Way for us to live with Him in the contentment and peace of our original design – with Him reigning at the center of who we are (individually and collectively).  This Way is the cross and blood of Jesus Christ, exclusively.  The safest, most assured way to have such a restored life is to explicitly acknowledge Jesus as Lord, and His death as the way out of our sin, shame and alienation from God; to claim His resurrection as our promised freedom from death, through death and suffering, into forever-life with God and each other.  There may be ways in which the broad grace and love of God reaches some, but this is the narrow gate, and that’s the Way I will walk, now and always.   The truth I understand I will embrace and respond to.  The paradoxes…I leave those at Jesus feet as a work-in-progress. 

Exponential East 2014 Closing Session

Oscar Muriu from Kenya
"It is possible to evade a multitude of sorrows by the cultivation of an insignificant life." Robert Henry. 

Is what I am living for, worth Christ dying for? 

No great advanced have been made for the cross of Christ by men and women who were unwilling to give up there lives. 

David Ferguson 

Luke 19:10 the mission of Christ is to seek and save the lost. 

Bill Hybels

2 terrible reasons for planting a church

1. It's hip and trendy.  Likely to end 3 years later bloodied and wounded, usually end up vowing to avoid church planting for good and perhaps to give up on church for good.  There is that morning perhaps 6 months into a plant when it become clear that some people are betting their farm onto your leadership.  You will need to be fueled by something deeper than what is hip and trending. 
2. to shortcut the developmental process required to become a senior pastor.  Do not allow people who you want to fire to go plant a church instead. 

2 great reasons to plant a church

1. You are so bound in Spirit (Acts 20) that you can't do anyone else.  Paul said he had a rope around his heart and could not be dissuaded.  Bill Hybels has been sustained by the strength of his call...one time was just a whisper away from quitting Willowcreek. Hymn Amazing Grace says we are a wretch compared to the brilliance of God. Grace is the huge gift that is completely undeserved. 
2. Plant a church only if no other ministry will satisfy your calling.

Exponential East - Preaching to the Unbeliever

Matt Chandler Luke 15
Tax collectors had purchased the right to tax their fellow Jews, from and for a Roman occupation that murdered and raped hundreds perhaps thousands of Jews.  Sinners were a class of people...lepers, prostitutes, slave traders, and other grimy people.  Jesus simultaneously will deconstructs their worldview and reconstruct it to God's.  All good preaching must do this. 
Three quick parables. Lost sheep. Lost coin, prodigal son. 
Prodigal son.  How do you think the grimy crowd heard it?  How do you think Jesus knew that worldview of the sinners?  Because he ate with them all the time. Don't live vicariously through other preachers.  Experience the lost yourself. 
Trust your Bible.  Preaching is unbelievably mysterious.  The Word is to be trusted...it transformed...we can't. 
Trust the Holy Spirit...you are powerless.  
Preach it like we believe it.  We ought to be passionately on fire for what we are preaching. 

James Meeks: Preaching the Announcements.
Whatever you want your people to do...preach that. 
If it is bring your friend to church Sunday...preach on the friends digging open the roof to let their sick friend down to Jesus.  If you have 30 minutes in front of people, use it to tell them what you want them to do. 

Andy Stanley...preaching to unchurched and churched people together...double barreled preaching
Approach is everything.  Content is important, but approach is more important.  Imagine a difficult conversation with the wife..you know the big idea and the application, but if you have the wrong approach...you'll just end up apologizing. 
If you don't care what people do with what you say...the truth is...you don't care about people.
Am I ready to change my approach?
1 Cor 9.  Win as many as possible.  Win win win its all about numbers to Paul. 
Are you here to make a point or to make a difference?
His desire is to roll people around in a scripture so much and get such clear and helpful applications that even if they don't believe the scripture they leave saying Wow that was helpful, I think I will come back.  That's success for him as a preacher.
In a biblically illiterate society, the approach we take to the bible is critically important.
So do this one tweak for unchurched people and help your churched people communicate to unchurched people. 
Here it is: stop saying "the Bible says..." or "scripture says" or "the Word say" because when we do we communicate that the foundation of our faith is not the Bible.  It is not.  The foundation of our faith is an event...the resurrection.  They were not expecting the resurrection.  The first three chapters of the book of acts did not repeat the parables of Jesus but they talked about Jesus coming back to life.
The problem with 'The Bible says' is what else the Bible says...like stoning adulterers. We don't have a problem with this is that we have sorted all this out...we are Christians. They haven't.
We take the Bible seriously because we take Jesus seriously and Jesus took the Old Testament seriously. 
Instead of saying 'the Bible says', cite an author.
James, the brother of Jesus writes...
Paul, who hated Christians and became one, writes...
Peter, who lost faith in the end writes...
See, everyone has dismisses the Bible, certainly the OT...but nobody says Jesus was a bad guy.  Everyone wants a piece of Jesus.

Tee it up.  What would you have to do to convince your brother than you are the son of God?   Well James was invisible until after the resurrection and he says...

Talk about the Bible as a collection of inspired manuscripts and we are so happy someone put them together is a book.  If you pull out one card from the Bible deck and find it a scientific problem and dismiss it all.  No..you can't do that with the resurrection.  

We did this with marriage ... Forget talking about biblical marriage...all the marriages discussed in the bible were bad marriages.  Instead we can talk about NT marriage of mutual submission and service.

If anyone can predict their own death and resurrection, I will go with that guy and take whatever He says. 

Exponential East 2014 Plenary Wednesday morning

Danielle Strickland, Salvation Army
Witnessing takes a change in the way we see.  See people. 

Hugh Halter.  National director, Missio. 
Incarnational evangelism...uses the line diagram form his book Flesh. 
Incarnation...deeply diving into humanity...not afraid of them...diving into their stuff...
Reputation...Christlike
Conversation...with genuine friends...Paul...until Christ be formed in you. 
Confrontation...Wil happen naturally. 
Transformation

Michael Frost
"of course words are necessary.  Unexplained deeds, of themselves, do not constitue the mission of God." Bosh, responding to the quote from St. Francis of Assisi to preach the Gospel always and if necessary use words. 
Colossians 4:2-6 so there are some people gifted as evangelists.  Pray they both have opportunities to evangelize, boldness and clarity of message.  Paul asks such prayers from them, but not for them.  Paul doesn't think everyone is an evangelist. Rather he expects us to be able to answer questions about Jesus.  Which presumes that we are living a life worth asking questions about.  Do I live a questionable, intriguing life? Live a life that is sobfreaking weird that people want to know what's exquisitly different about it.  
(Note to self...is this a great guilt trip?)
Christians didn't subvert the Roman Empire...with door hangers and evangecubes.  julien the Apostate, Roman Empiror writes to every Roman Governers warning the Empire could be lost because of the Christians and he then lists allnthevbehaviours of the Christians. Those Christians proclaimed Christ and loved people...tended their graves...welcomed them into their homes.
If no one is asking us questions, are we doing it right. 

He tells a story of a shoe store owner who invites people to tell him their life story and he will then recommend which shoes they will like.  Listening to people is so radical.  He gets invited to all kinds of parties, weddings, etc. and only then will share his faith.  

Exponential East 2014 How To Plant Churches Using Alpha

Met James Charlton Director, Ministry Development from Chicago area. 
Alpha leads from friendship.  First people belong, then they belhave then they believe.  Hmmm. Not to sure about the order of those last two. 
Ric Thorpe Planted 3 churches in Inner city London with Alpha.
Creating a culture of invitation in your church.  Alpha is a stepping stone to church.  A safe place to ask any question.  Used to reach non Christian people.  
About 50% of people invited come, says Willow Creek guy.
Some of those who complete the course will become a part of your church.
Another guy comments that missional communities get you to know people in your community but no decisions for Christ. Alpha did that for him. 
Rickmsays alpha materials are free and downloadable. 
Non believers help each other in a group...community exploring faith.
Develops leaders in the church plant. 
Graham Singh says Alpha gives your leaders a forum to develop their theology too. As a group helper they can learn to be a quiet welcoming presence.  

Alpha.org/run

Ideal size is 10 to 15 people for a group but it's key to get a leader and helper that non Christians can relate to.  Typically use a media to teach.  Emphasize the importance of the Holy Spirit weekend. 
The first 2 years one often has Christian coming and then that tapers off. Push through this until non Christians start to come. Then you'll be into a good place where each course feed the next with invitees and invitees. 

Exponential East Dave Gibbons session

Dave Gibbons Session 1: Ancient Future: Old School Truth, New School Tools

Condo church...
Recently seeing the big church as often failing the mission of Christ...people moving in from the world to serve in the church.  Instead, find out who they are by knowing them, affirming their essence, blessing them with our inheritance, and releasing them back to their environment for Jesus. How to help people grow?  Four steps:

Assessment
What is the Father doing in that person?  Jesus said I do what I see my Father doing.  Strength Finders is inadequate.  It fails to recognize the pain of the person and their weaknesses and addictions.  A persons pain can often shape their destiny.  We often confess and then bury our pain.  Our pain can become a gift...Gods strength is made perfect in our weakness.
Art form called kintsugi: dropped pottery fixed with gold seams..is more valuable broken than it was before.  Our pain becomes a source of my authority.  Embrace the Pain.
Know their story...what energies and deenergises them.  Draw a picture of their house when they were 9 years old and out their people in the house or outside.  Gets them to tell their story...what is God doing...their essence.  Don't focus on their career...those change.  But who they are. 
His three tools for assessment...the timeline, the energy matrix and the house. To help him discern their essence...positives and challenges...and then design their journey with them. In three areas...work, relationships and inner life. 

Holistic Process: Three concentric circles. Moutside circle is who they are in terms of work.  next circle in who they are in terms of relationships, inner circle is for their inner life.

Jesus was a liquid leader...adapted and flowed. He became human...how about that for adaptation? So develop liquid leaders...third culture leaders...like Paul...Jew to gentile to Samaritan to Roman...a peaceful joyful servant. 

The Four Platforms for shaping someone
A residency intern model...from a Rabbinical models...as Rob Bell says they would be so close to the Rabbibthat they caught the dust from their feet.  this is expensive ... Have people live with you and learn from you.  The American dream is to be independent...end alone in a nursing home yearning for meaningful relationships.  See documentary in Netflix called Happy. Think about widows and orphans and love them in the city...single moms and divorced men.  Justice is the hard work of love.  It's not normal to ask people to live with you. Invite them into your neighborhood.  I can have true love today as we rub shoulders through the hard stuff.  Healthy.
Tribes model...commit to do as much life together as possible...kinda second best to the residency program.  Do this with as diverse a group of people as possible. Richness has often been lost in the church when we organize by ethnic group.  Unify is not association..it has to be deeper than that.  Collaboration is equal gifts different sacrifice.  It's famiy.  Shane Claibourne in Philadelphia.  Live like a family, each throwing their money into a pot to share.  Be prepared to give away stuff.
Customized Experiences
Creative resources products or tools.  People don't need your prepackaged answers but you good questions to lead them to the truth. Self-discovery is the best teacher. 
Pick 'the one' person and equip them. These four platforms can enable it to do it. 

Recommends book Jack Deere...The Beginners Guide To Prophesy....helps evangelicals move into the area of gifts...go through the book and practice with each other...did this over 7 years with his church. His church is now alive with the Holy Spirits power.
Dave@xealots.org is his email address. 

Exponential East Session Six

Bob Franquiz
Marketing
Internal : people who already attend your church.  Peripheral: people who know someone who attends your church. We reach the internal by preaching the gospel to them.  We reach the peripheral by friendship evangelism, relationships.  The External: people who don't know that your church exists. How do we reach them?
Of course most people come to our church because someone invited them...we don't do anything else. Personal invitation will usually be primary.  We leave on the table all those who have no connection to us.

Promotional Outreach..
.reaches primarily low hanging fruit.  When we do direct mail just to zip codes, might as well flush our money away.  So segment tat list...eliminate Muslim families and focus on people just moved into town.  Facebook ad is 80 characters...less than a tweet...has to be a hook
need a simple track able message.  Be invitational so they meet you in person. Track results.  Forget about doing 'great branding in your community'. no. Measure people who show up.
One is the Loneliest Number
The Principal of Massive Action.  How do we do lots of things at the same time?  20 thing sat the same time. Don't just do one thing...one egg in the one basket.  Not everyone responds to the one marketing approach.  Email, mailers, Facebook, mothers day specials..etc etc.  multiple ways of outreach are best. 

Know who we are trying to reach. Don't try to reach everyone. Who has God best equipped me to reach? Who can my church reach? Multiple churches can reach a whole city. What is my church's role in that?  When we walk into the room we ask is there anybody here like me? What are my demographics and psychographics...the way we think, values and worldviews. Every city has micro populations...people who will get my jokes. We may look very different but we actually are similar because we all think about the world in the same way. We probably won't reach the urban poor and the urban professionals at the same time.
Match your message, your media and your market. This is the difference between a home run and a base hit. No one under the Agee of 35 listens to the radio...so radio ads won't reach them, but would be great for reaching empty nesters.  It's not about getting people there...just give people $5 bills at the door. It's about getting people to stay.  Students don't get direct mail...its the parents that get the mail.  Twitter and Instagram for young people.  Facebook is getting older. 
Use your budget strategically.  Limited budget...not like the Federal Government...we can't print more money.  Billboards are reminder advertising to enhance billion dollar campaigns. that's why billboards just say 'Coke'.  Not 'buy a Coke'.  There are better ways to create calls to action.
Get people's attention.  Everyone is allergic to boring. Prefer to get people upset than bored.  The worse thing is to get ignored. 3 second rule...you have 3 seconds to get noticed. A 3 by 5 postcard is so smaller the print will be tiny.  For just a few cents more you can use and 8 by 11 card and make it readable.  People say no to what is confusing. Designers want to create a work of art. But no one will frame it. The goal of design is to give the message the best opportunity to communicate. Make the stamp crooked on the envelope...gets 3% more response
Learn from each campaign.  Just try to keep getting better.  he once rejected direct mail until he realized that it worked on him. 

Exponential East Session Five

Peyton Jones...Churchplanter Magazine

Like Hugh Halter, we have to be active and alert at the front end, mid and back end of people journey to Christ.  Bivocational church planters are his heroes. You go into church planting for Jesus not money. 
You can get the podcast through iTunes. Text the keyword FREE to 5624494000 to get the link.
Today's message is The Blender.
He started a book group in Borders for the DaVinci Code...30 people came...not a purpose driven church but an accidental church.  The people afterwards asked that since Dan Brown is bunk, can we continue to read the gospels now? 
So put Starbucks,a book club and people in a blender, and church can come out of it. 
His book ChurchZero is all about this...building ground zero churches up out of the ashes of the 
Post modern post everything ashes of the traditional church. Don't read the books of Acts so much as jump in and live it. 
He was a psych nurse and can tell the difference between a demoniac and a psych sick person.

Open air church.  The holy Spirit is at the front line, on mission churches.  God cares about people, is penetrating the kingdom of darkness and is in the battle.  GO and you will receive power from on high. Get so out of your comfort zone that you must rely on the Holy Spirit. How infrequently we talk about our need for a power that we do not possess? You have to be the Acts Chapter One church before you can be the Acts Chapter Two church.  You have to have mission and adventures...not be a spiritual country club.  That's why youth have to go on mission trips to get it.  
The missional movement is taking us more first century.  

Tozer said ... He quotes about the need for people of the Spirit rather than scholarship. 
He reads Acts 2.
They used their ears, their eyes, their mouths.  This can help us understand first century church planting.
The crowd heard.  The Holy Spirit is connecting people. The HS fills the gap between the speaker and the listener. Only the Holy Spirit saves people.  Remember to preach and ask the Holy Spirit to come.

Church in Starbucks. For an u saved person to walk through the door of the church is as hard as for us to walk through the door of a strip club .  ( note to self...maybe more like a mosque)
Open air preaching is ineffective for 90% of the population, but effective for the 10% of the population that the regular church just can't reach.  Open mic nights and gay coffee houses.  These are the churches that Jesus would go to.  Xbox churches on Sunday evenings?  Hospitable space.

They use their mouths. Only Christians want a one hour services.  Unsaved people want to go longer. 

If we want to learn how to be a great Spirit filled church...learn from Acts. 

Exponential East Session Four

Hugh Halter - Evangelism track and missional author
Wrote the Gathered and Scattered church for pastors wanting to shift their churches towards being missional. He hated writing and reading, doesn't like being a pastor but loves lost people.  He likes proclamational evangelism but the world has changed. We have to do something. Church attendance plummeting and this is likely to continue. Nobody will be in the room to hear us.
How do we do evangelism to the people who don't go to a building on Sunday. How do we engage this as incarnational people.  This is the stuff of his latest book.
Followers now pick their leaders. 
The basic grid is: This is the Way of Jesus:

incarnation > Reputation > Conversation > Confrontation > Transformation. 

Incarnation 1 John 1:15. Jesus to save us yes, but also to teach us how to be human. 
Paul says he will stay with them until Christ is formed in them. Our job is to form Jesus in people.  He doesn't talk about evangelism in his church but how to be like Jesus..then evangelism will happen naturally.  The truth became flesh and moved into our neighborhood.  If we incarnate like Jesus, people will begin to talk...

Reputation...people will talk to others or just in their head.  Leads to conversation.

Incarnation...most people believe in God...they are honest when they say they are spiritual. To help them with their dissonance, Jesus stood in front of them and modeled God. We are modeling God. Google 'Jesus was' and it's all positive. Google 'Christians are' and it's all negative. The challenge is to be authentic and love with heart.  John 17 intimate relationship Father to Jesus, Jesus to his Disciples. He prays the heart of evangelism...incarnation.  The heart of evangelism is not conversion but adoption.  Our motivation is not to see the church grow but to build family.  Our posture as a pastor is as a brother or a sister. 

People outside the church have deep stories , mostly about a bad church or Christian...they can't figure it out so they don't mess with it. He had a two coffee rule...terrible rule...it takes more than two coffees to bring someone to faith...it takes hundreds of dinners, inconvenient late nights, watching their kids play bad basketball...that's incarnational evangelism. 

Jesus worked a job.  The Adamic curse...Jesus submitted to the curse of work. Stonemason and maybe carpenter. Our work is a fertile place for bringing people to Christ.  Trappist monks were the only ones who didn't beg for money...they worked for their money.  This is reputation. Jesus got into public fights. He moves away from his disciples, pissed off at seeing people abused and finds leather to make a whip and turns over the tables.  This is human Jesus.  You bet the families talked about it that night around their supper tables.  You need a public fight to care about the world. Incarnational reputation...Jesus was a friend to sinners.  That's his approach.  No pulpit of bullhorn but eating and drinking with sinners. 

Jesus went to the cross for sin, but he sat with people and overlooked their sin. All the time. Eating with sinners does not condone their sin.  Will we be friends of sinners?  If Jesus was the only baker in town, yes, he would bake a cake for a gay couple, says Hugh. 

Love your neighbor.  How is that going for you?  James says pure religion is giving priority to the widow and orphan.  Do we find it easy to say gay lifestyle is a sin while we help ourselves to an unneeded donut. 

Friendship is the primary context for evangelism because you get to know then in the context of their stories. Otherwise to can find yourself judging people. 

Being a friend of sinners leads to conversations. Dignify where people are at. Good news draws people. People came to Jesus.  When we have a Jesus reputation people will come to me, and my people, because they are good news people. 

Conversations leads to confrontation.  Make friends of lost people genuinely, invite them to dinner with your most enjoyable saved people.  Tells a story of an unsaved guy becoming part of their circle of saved friends and at some point wanting to then come to a social and prayer evening.  They'll pick up on your faith and they will try to get their head around your faith and that will bring some confrontation, and they will bring themselves to faith. 

So the book is written as a dispels hip course and an evangelism course.  You were never meant to be a solo incarnational person but part of an incarnational community.  Just get reading groups going. 

The two things that work are prayer and redemptive relationships.