thechurchblog

I haven’t written in awhile – chalk it up to having too many other things to do, I guess. Things are still stirring in my head, however. There is a mission field among the Post-Christian, and I believe thechurchblog is still a great way to share ideas and strategies for communicating the glory of God and the truth of Jesus Christ to them.
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“rawbbie” writes:

I have recently moved to Las Cruces, that’s not included in my profile. I’m actually from Farmington. I left a great church when I moved down here, one that I chose with much prayer and agony. Now I’m chosing a new church with much prayer and not yet any agony but it will soon come. I guess I should start at how I got to choosing my last church and then you’ll see how hard my new decision will be.

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Justin writes:

“Here is something from one of my ethnomusicology clases. It’s is a model (by a man named Ian Collinge) is from a discussion board from one of my classes. We were discussing ‘heart music’ and whether it was a good idea for people in Africa to learn Chinese or Brazilian worship songs, as some are doing. Ian bleieves that it is important for a local body of believers to develop a collection of worship music based on four elements of a group’s identity.”

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I’ve been talking an awful lot, now. If you’ve been following the blog, post your thoughts! Just email them to stories@thechurchblog.org.

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Continuing on with observations and ruminations from the Acts-29 Boot Camp, I’ve been camping on the concept of what makes church attractive to the masses. We’ve done it all at my church, tried everything to keep people interested in coming and relating to the church in their everyday lives. Some ideas have worked, some haven’t. The common thread is that we are constantly looking for the “next idea” – the next big thing that will keep people interested in the things of God. What if the “next big thing” is just preaching a big Jesus?

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Mark Driscoll, the pastor of Mars Hill and the founder of the Acts29 Network, spent the morning talking about theology. Specifically, he breaks it down to four categories: (1) Christology, or “who is Jesus?”; (2) Ecclesiology, or “how does the Bible strucure our church leaders most effectively?”; (3) Missiology, or “what is Jesus’ mission for our church where we live?”; and (4) Ministry, or “how does Jesus want me to help serve His mission in our culture through our church?”

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This was the title of the first talk of the evening given by Dr. Ed Stetzer. As I mentioned in the last post, Dr. Stetzer is a relatively young guy, but he has a vast experience in the world of church planting, having been involved in it since 1988 (I was still in high-school then).

Missiology is simply the study of missions. The word “missional” is used a lot these days, especially in the context of the Emerging Church. It means, quite simply, to act in and be identified in missions. Just like the word “adversarial” means to act as an advisary. As for church planting, it is a missional endeavor in that church planting is a true venue for people to ask the hard questions about missions.

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My wife and I are in Dallas, TX attending the Acts29 Network “Boot Camp” for prospective church planters. I haven’t written anything about them in the past, although I did mention that my wife and I were going to be going to this conference. Nevertheless, I recommend spending some time on their site, as well as their parent church Mars Hill in Seattle, Washington. They are living the church planting model, that’s for sure.

The first night of the conference was spent on introductions and expectations for the week. Our main speaker was Dr. Ed Stetzer from the Southern Baptist Convention North American Mission Board. Surprise! A Baptist leading off on an independent denomination’s church planting conference!

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My wife and I are going to the Acts29 church planting “Boot Camp” in Dallas next month. We are hoping to learn a lot from folks who have been there and done that before. They are the ones who always quote the stark statistic that 80% of church plants fail in their first year.

I hope to bring back a lot of information that we might apply at Mesilla Park Community Church.

What is the bare-minimum set of requirements for a group to be called a church? Does it need a pastor? A building? Do they need to regularly observe holy communion? What about worship? Sermons? Do they need to be accountable to a sister church? What about legal issues?

What does the world call a church? Could that perhaps be a good measure? Can a small house church have the same image to a community as a large “brick and mortar” church? Can a local church pastor who hasn’t been through seminary receive the respect that a Roman Catholic priest or Methodist minister can?

When is a church part of The Church, and when is it just flying solo?
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