Hey all, our new podcast is finally up along with some of our past sermons that were not posted on our previous podcast. We had to switch hosts and in doing so needed to create a new podcast. Our old podcast on iTunes was listed as “East End Ecclesia Sermons” the new podcast is just listed as “East End Ecclesia.”
If you would like to go directly to our iTunes podcast to subscribe you can follow this link: East End Ecclesia on Itunes.
One love,
Eric
Three weeks ago we started a weekly Sunday morning service in the back of a Turkish coffee shop in central Lawrenceville. The first series that I’m teaching is on the Lord’s prayer. This past week I taught on “give us this day our daily bread”. One of the main points in the sermon was that God will provide for us what we need, but will not necessarily provide for our greed. The reality is that God often provides for us more than our daily bread, but often God provides us more than we need so that through us He can provide others their daily bread.
In the midst of my sermon prep I came across a quote by a Pagan philosopher named Aristides who wrote around 125ad. I was so convicted by this quote.
We so often talk about wanting to be like the early church. As I plant E3 my desire is that we would be a church that sees God move through us as He did with the early church. But as I’ve studied, one thing I have found is that the early church’s witness was not summed up in a program, marketing, cool worship, etc. The church’s witness was so powerful because the early Christians were radically devoted to God, each other, and the world around them. This devotion was so extreme that even the Pagans of the day had to take notice. This is the context in which Aristides is writing concerning this new Christian movement. Here is the quote:
“if they hear that any of their number is imprisoned or oppressed, all of them provide for his needs. And if there is among them a man that is poor and needy and they have not an abundance of necessities, they fast for three days that they may supply the needy with their necessary food.”
When I read this quote I’m so convicted. Notice how Aristides notes that the early Christians not only provided for others out of their access, but even when they themselves barely had enough, they would go without for a few days just so that they would have enough to care for others. As I read this I think about how much I have, how much God has given me, and yet I still struggle at times to let go of some of my comforts in order to care for others in need. I have to be honest, I don’t know if put in the same circumstances as many in the early church, I would fast to provide for others. But the reality is, I’m not in the place where I would have to do that. The reality right now is that God has provided me enough that I only need to let go of my access to care for my brother and neighbor. What is haunting me is that so often I get consumed with needing more “access” instead of looking at what I can cut out to be able to provide for the needs of others.
After preaching this sermon, I’m really starting to look at my finances and priorities. Too often we begin to think that all that we have has been given to us for us. But the reality is, yes some of what we have been given has been given to us by our Father for our needs and pleasure, but I believe that much of what God has given us is not for us, but, that through us God can provide for the needs of others. Right now Coleen and I are looking at all of the “stuff” we have that we just let sit around. So much that we have is wasted while right down the street there are those with nothing! I don’t know what it will look like, but I know that we need to change some things.
Now I don’t think it is wrong to have stuff, I don’t think we are all called to a “monastic” vow of poverty. I believe that God often blesses us and in the proper context we are to enjoy those things God has given us. To continue the analogy from the Lord’s prayer, some time God gives us our daily bread along with a steak and some cheese cake. And it is Ok to enjoy that steak (at least I hope so or I’m in trouble cause I love a good steak). But often God will provide for us 3 loaves of bread and while we enjoy two of the loaves one is left to rot and be thrown away. The issue is not enjoying what God has given us and turning it back to Him in praise. The issue is hording what He has given us as we let it go to waste. Coleen just told me tonight that she is bothered because all around us are loaves of bread that are rotting, while others are waiting, hoping to receive their daily bread.
I’m asking all of you, are you hoarding that extra loaf of bread that God gave you so that through you He could provide another person their daily bread? Or in other words are you taking what God has given you to meet your needs and the extra He provided to feed you greed? Or are you thanking God for providing your need and looking at the extra provisions He has blessed you with as a means to provide for the needs of others?
To any of you that follow my blog and use Apple’s iTunes, we are now podcasting E3′s sermons on iTunes. So if you want to follow the preaching here or make sure I’m not a heretic 
Please subscribe to our podcast and drop me a line to let me know what you think.
Here is the link for iTunes: (East End Ecclesia podcast)
You can also download the sermons on the “Media” tab on our website.
Well, we had our first Sunday morning study this past Sunday. It was such a blessing to be able to begin sharing from God’s word through preaching. If any of you know me, it has been killing me to not be able to preach these past months while starting E3!
We are starting a sermon series called “Living on a Prayer”, looking at what it would look like to live out the Lord’s prayer. This Sunday I preached the first sermon entitled “to what end is your prayer directed”. Next week we are going to look at the second part of the Lord’s prayer “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. I’m excited for this sermon because this coming week I will be sharing the foundation of the mission of E3, “manefesting God’s kingdom in our city according to His sovereign will”.
For those of you who follow my blog but don’t live in the area, I’ve begun recording the sermons and will post them on the website under the “media” tab. Also I’m trying to figure out how to set up a podcast through I tunes, so when we get that up and running I will post the link here.
Thank you for all your prayers, and thank you to all of you that came out last Sunday. May God continue to build His Church to transform this city for His Glory.
Back when I played Rugby I was always the team “hit-man”. What I mean by this is that if there was a particularly large or “dirty” player on the apposing team, I was the one who was supposed to “make sure to contain that player.” I remember one particular game in which the opposing team had a rather large and imposing player that was purposefully seeking to injure some of our key players. Mid way through the match my coach called me over and told me to do whatever I could to “take care of” that particular player. Now of course I tried to fulfill my assignment within the rules, but this was Rugby so there isn’t much you aren’t allowed to do!
As I think back, the reality is I was never told to watch the occasional small guy who was not impacting the game. I was never told “hey Eric that slow passive guy wearing #3 isn’t doing much, make sure you hit him hard every time he gets the ball.” No in Rugby just as in other sports, you focus your resources on stopping the biggest threats.
To take the analogy further, when a nation is at war it always seeks to focus it’s limited military resources on the areas of greatest threat. This reality has given me great excitement while working to plant E3.
If what is true in Rugby and war is also true in the spiritual realm then God is up to something big in Pittsburgh’s East End. I say that I’m greatly excited because as soon as I think we have weathered the storm and I begin to think we have pressed beyond the opposition, a new wave of attacks come our way. I’m not going to lie, trying to get this church up and running in inner city Pittsburgh has been incredibly hard, some times scary, and often frustrating. But one of the things that keep me excited is the fact that God has shown me again and again that He is in this and the enemy has shown me again and again that he doesn’t want this to happen.
A realization I had a while back is that Satan is not like God. Ok now I know that we all know this, but I think we often miss the implication of this reality. Satan and his deamons are limited, created beings. This means that they are not omnipresent (able to be everywhere), they are not omnipotent (unlimited power), and they are limited in number. So if Satan or his fallen angels are attacking one person, that means that they cannot be attacking another person at the same time. If the enemy’s resources are being used to attack one area, those resources are not available to attack somewhere else.
Now Satan is fallen and twisted but from all I know, he is not stupid. Just as no coach is going to use his best players to contain the worst player on the other team. Or just as no general will expend his resources to control a region that has no strategic value. Satan is not going to use his limited resources to appose Christians that are not a threat to his agenda.
As much as I would like for things to come together more easily up here and often I wish things would finally work without having to have so many obstacles. I realize that if things just happened easily with no opposition, deep down I would be disappointed, because that would mean that the enemy is not threatened by what God is doing through us in this city.
Now there have been days that I’ve contemplated giving up, wondering if this is all worth it. But then I prayer walk my neighborhood and see all of the lostness, all of the pain, violence, poverty, hurt, and brokenness. Then I’m reminded that this is God’s kingdom and these are God’s children that Jesus died for. I’m reminded that Jesus is Lord and Will Take Back His Kingdom and has by grace allowed me to participate in His great mission. So, yeah I’m often tired and frustrated, but I love the fact that the enemy is ticked and I’m reminded that Christ will build His Church.
When my coach would call on me to handle the big threats from the opposing team, I would take that as a great honor. Sure I got beat up and often injured trying to handle these other players. But man did I feel proud of my broken nose, or black eye, because these battle scars came from getting to go up against the best the opposing team had to offer. In the same way I’m beginning to understand (in a small degree) Paul’s boasting in his persecution, because when the Lord puts us in the face of great attacks, it is a great honor.
I say this to encourage those of you who have stepped out in obedience to God’s calling and have faced attacks and opposition from the enemy. Stand strong, because it is exciting to know that the enemy views you as a threat. When you have that “spiritual” black eye or broken nose, wear it with honor, because the Lord has entrusted you to go up against the best that the enemy has to offer.
My son (Judah) will be 2 in July. He is in a really great stage. His personality is really beginning to come out, he talks nonstop (Coleen seems to be more fluent in his language), and he loves to go for walks outside. I love when we go out shopping or walk around the block and I hear this sweet little voice saying “daddy hand, daddy hand.” When we go anywhere Judah wants to make sure he is holding Daddy or Mommy’s hand. Now I’m pretty sure by the time he is 16 this may not be the case, but for now it is pretty sweet. As I look back at my journey in planting EEE in light of my walks with Judah I’ve realized a powerful truth.
To be honest I felt a calling to plant a church in Pittsburgh for a while before I actually stepped forward to begin this journey. I fought God’s calling because I was afraid, not so much about planting a church or moving back to Pittsburgh. I was afraid that I would make the wrong decision. Actually the fear of pursuing the wrong path has been with me as long as I’ve been in ministry. It seems that when I feel God calling me to something I always begin to question “what if I begin to pursue this and it is not what God was calling me to do?” I had this idea in my head that if I would happen to pursue a path God had not laid out for me I would end up so far down the road that I would never be able to return to the true calling God had for me. The funny thing is I was so afraid of disobeying God’s call to do something, that I would decide to do nothing, which is certainly disobedience to God’s call.
I would love to tell you that if you are prayerfully pursuing God’s calling you will never misread His call. I would also love to tell you that as I’ve stepped out and began down the path of following God in planting this church I never tried to pursue a wrong direction. But the reality is no matter how well intentioned we are we will miss read God’s calling and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to go down dead end roads while planting East End Ecclesia. I’ve pursued locations that ended up not being the right location, I’ve pursued facilities that ended up not being the right place, I’ve written countless numbers of pages laying out a vision and strategy that are now in the scrap pile. This journey has been far from being a brisk stroll down a clearly marked path. But one thing I can say for certain is that every time I began down the wrong path God has redirected me to the path He has laid out.
As an example, I spent about 3 months trying to make connections, acquire a facility, and begin a weekly bible study in a neighborhood called East Liberty. I was sure this was the place we were supposed to plant. It was a great location in the center of the East End and it was at a cross road for many of the East End neighborhoods we are hoping to reach. Yet we are now planting our church in another neighborhood called Lawrenceville, in another section of the East End, with a different strategy on reaching the diverse neighborhoods of the East End. How did I get to this place? It was by grabbing Hold of the Father in prayer and continuing to walk in light of His call.
I’ve come to realize that stepping out on mission for God is much like Judah stepping off of our porch to go for a walk through the neighborhood. If Judah and I were going for a walk down to the corner store, Judah’s only responsibility is to hold tight to his daddy’s hand and keep walking. Judah is a bright young 22 month old but he still hasn’t figured out how to get around the East End yet. Of course it doesn’t matter if Judah knows exactly how to get to the corner store or the playground, actually it doesn’t even matter if he knows what our destination is. The only thing that matters is that he keeps walking and holds on to daddy’s hand. Now when Judah and I go for a walk he doesn’t always keep on the path to our destination. He often gets distracted and begins to head towards roads other than the one we are taking.
As I walked with Judah I began to wonder, what type of father would I be if as we walked Judah began to head towards the busy street or go down the wrong road and I responded by saying “well son, stinks for you that you decided to head down the wrong road and I let him head into traffic or get lost down some side street.” I’m guessing you would not think too highly of my parenting skills. Just so you know when Judah tries to go down the wrong path, I hold on to his hand a little tighter and redirect him down the path we are taking.
As long as Judah is walking and holding his daddy’s hand he knows that daddy will lead him to where we are going.
If this is true about a child and his fallible daddy, how much more will this be true when we walk with our Perfect Heavenly Father. As we step off our porch into the great journey of Mission with our Father, we are responsible for two things, to keep walking and to hold tight to our Daddy’s hand. I can attest to this in my own experience planting EEE. I’ve started down many “wrong” roads, but as I hold on to the Father in prayer He has continued to be faithful to squeeze my hand a bit tighter and redirect my steps.
I want to challenge all of us, if you feel God has called you to step out on mission for Him, you may not know what it will look like, you may not even know where you are going, but you can have confidence that as long as you are holding tight to your Daddy’s hand He will not allow you to go too far down the wrong path.
Do you truly trust our Heavenly Father? If so get off the porch, hold tight to your Daddy’s hand, and begin walking.
o Paraphrase: Lord protect us from temptation and deception and keep us pure in the midst of the evil around us. o Focus 5 days praying that God would protect us from sin and compromise, as we establish East End Ecclesia.
o 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.
o There seems to be 2 common responses to culture when it comes to the church. The first is a response of retreat. These are the churches that say that the world is so evil we must separate from it in order to remain pure. These churches often refuse to go to secular establishments, refuse to have non Christian friends, and often create a parallel “Christian” culture so that they will not have to involve themselves with the messy secular culture around them. This response has an appearance of wisdom, but it forgets that God has not just called us to be holy, but also to be on mission. The other error in this response is that it places trust in the external environment of the individual as the primary source of sanctification, instead of the internal work of the Holy Spirit. In other words by their actions they are saying that it is your environment that makes you Holy, not the work of God within you. On the other hand some churches respond to culture with a mentality of compromise. These are the churches that often say that we need to relate to the secular world in order to reach the world. In some ways this is true, but often for the sake of being “accepted” by the surrounding culture they accept many of the fallen aspects of the surrounding culture. In the effort to “connect” with the world they begin to “conform” or resemble the fallen world around them. This verse is part of a larger prayer that Christ prays for His disciples. In this part of the prayer Jesus is praying that we would not be separatists, yet also that we would not be conformists. In other words we are to be like Christ, who did not remain distant but instead came into the fallen world walking among fallen men. Though Christ “incarnated” or came into fallen human culture, He also remained pure, reflecting God’s perfect will “within” the culture of His day. o Today pray that we would not retreat from the messiness of our city. Pray also that while in the midst of the fallen culture we would remain distinct, reflecting God’s intentions not the city’s perversions.
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” John 5:39-40
To begin my little exposition of the things that will make up the heart of this new ministry, I must begin with the term “Christocentric”. Christocentric simply means “Christ Centered.” I place this first because it is of the utmost importance. Take out Christ and there is no Christianity. As we see in Jesus’ statement recorded in John 5:30-40, Christ is at the center of God’s revelation. The books that we commonly call the Old Testament were written to prepare the way for Christ, pointing forward to the coming messiah. Then we have the Gospels that declare that the messiah has come. Finally there are the Epistles that look back to the coming of the messiah, working through how we should then respond to this history changing event. The beginning of the story is the Father creating everything through the Son and the end depicts all of creation being restored back to Him through the Son. He is described in scripture as the author and perfecter of our faith, the alpha and omega, the king of kings and the suffering servant, he is both the lamb of God and the conquering lion of Judah. I don’t think there are many churches that would not acknowledge that Christ must be center in all that we do. It is easy to say that as a church we are Christocentric, but working out what that really means is a different story.
When a church says that it is Christocentric, it must first elaborate on what “christ” is center. Almost every heresy found throughout church history had christ at the center of their theology or at least gave him a high position. The Gnostic heresy of the 2nd through 4th century was very christ centered. The problem is that the “christ” they had at the center was a carrier of a divine knowledge, who came to free the divine spark within men from their physical prisons created by the evil demi-God Yahweh. Some Gnostics even denied that Jesus had a physical body. Sure christ was central for the Gnostics, but that christ was far from the 2nd person of the Trinity incarnated as the Man Jesus of Nazareth. There are so many christs out there. There is the Jesus of Mormonism that focuses on a christ that is an example to us, as our oldest brother, the first of the heavenly father’s spirit children. There is the christ that came as our great investment broker, coming to make all of us rich and prosperous as long as we are good people and we invest in his kingdom which happens to be a certain church or ministry. There is the christ that came as a 1st century hippie, showing us how to live in harmony with each other, care for the environment, and get along with people of other religions. You get the picture, there are a lot of christs being thrown around, so making sure we have the true Christ is as important as being Christocentric. I have heard it said “in the begining God made man in His image and since then man has been trying to return the favor.” We can be fully man centered in our ministry, yet take our own desires and image, slap the term Christ on it, and feel that we are a Christocentric ministry. When I say that we are Christocentric, I am talking about the eternally begotten Son of God, incarnated as the man Jesus, who died as a propitiation for the atonement of our sins, and now sits at the right hand of the Father restoring all things back to Him, patiently awaiting the final judgment of all creation.
Another important qualifier when talking about being Christocentric is what aspect of Christ is center. “The way of Jesus” is a popular mantra for churches that are reaching people in my generation. What they mean by this is that they focus on Christ as our great example. When they claim that we should be walking in the “way of Jesus” they are being fully biblical. Jesus walked this earth as the perfect human, He walked this earth in the manner in which we were intended to walk. The problem occurs when we allow this to be central in our focus on Christ. The Person of Christ, not the example of Christ, is the “way” to God. Dr. Tim Keller once said that “the Gospel is good news, not good advice.” The good news is found in the work of a person, not the advice found in His example. Our ministry, our lives, and our hope must be in the person and work of Christ, not in our ability to emulate the life of Christ. Am I saying that we then should not seek to follow the “way of Christ”? By no means, what I am saying is that in order to be fully Christocentric we must have the whole of Christ as center, His life, His death and resurrections, and His Glorification. On the other hand there are many churches that focus only on the “doctrine” of Christ. Christ may be center in these churches, but only the theological implications of Christs atonement are recognized. It is almost as if Jesus is some one we study, not someone we have an intimate relationship with, follow, and model our lives after. I could go on with examples, but the point is that when we seek to be Christocentric, we must seek to place the whole of Christ as center. I remember studying the Ethiopian Coptic church a few years ago. It was interesting to see how differently the Ethiopian church depicted Christ from how we commonly depict Christ in the west. They regularly referred to Christ as the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Conquering lion of Judah. Their art depicted a glorified Christ as a warrior king. They would often depict Him as a powerful African man in Kingly robes, prepared to judge the earth with a sword in hand. This is so different than how we often depict and talk about Christ in the US. We like the earthly suffering servant. We talk about the lamb of God, and love the stories of Jesus with the little children. We usually depict Jesus as a frail Scandinavian hippie, kneeling broken in prayer. Who is right, the Ethiopians or the Americans? I think both are right and both are wrong. First Christ was neither African or Scandinavian, he was a Jew from the tribe of Judah, but what He looked like really doesn’t matter. The important thing is that Christ is both the suffering servant and the King of Kings. Affirming the teaching of the scriptures the counsel of Chalcedon stated that Christ is both truly God and Truly man. As biblically orthodox Christians we must acknowledge the full nature of Christ. He was a man who walked this earth, loved the unlovable, suffered, and died on a cross. But He is also the eternal Son of God, risen from the grave, seated at the right hand of the Father, and will stand as judge over the whole creation. Christ is both the slain lamb and the conquering lion.
It is critical that we not just say we are a “christocentric” church, without truly seeking to place the whole of Christ at the center of all that we do. To be truly Christocentric is to have the historical, biblically revealed Christ as the center of all that we say and do. We must have the Person and work of Christ as the end focus of all we preach, do, and say. Our hope must lie in the faithfulness and sufficiency of the Person and work of Christ. Our lives and our ministry must be modeled after Christ, since He lived as the prototypical human, He is our only perfect example. So as a Christocentric church plant we will seek to care for the poor, love the unlovable, fight injustice, seek reconciliation, and stand against the false religious institutions of the world as Christ did. But we will also proclaim the death and resurrection of Christ, pointing people to the person and work of Christ as our only hope for redemption. We will both follow Christ as our “Rabbi” and fall on our face before Him crying out “my Lord and my God.”
I’ve been working on laying the ground work for this new church plant over the past few months. It has been an exciting yet tedious job. There are many of the standard areas that need to be covered, the vision, mission statement, doctrine, core values, strategies, and church structure. As I have worked through these things I have come up with 11 things that will be the values that will shape the approach of the church. I don’t know what to call these 11 things, they are kind of like values but I wouldn’t call them the core values because not all of these 11 things are really core realities. They are more 11 things that will lay out the groundwork for how we will do ministry in Pittsburgh, but they are not doctrines. So for a lack of a better term I am calling them the DNA of the church. I’m not sold on the term, but unless some one out there has a better term, I will be going with DNA. Basically your DNA is a code that is written within all of your cells that will determine what you will be like. At least that is my non scientific understanding of it. Anyway I wanted to just list the 11 things that will make up the DNA of the church. Over the next few posts I will explain each of these realities. I’m hoping to get some input on these 11 realities and maybe someone out there after reading this will have a better way of describing these realities. The DNA consists of these 11 things.
Christocentric
Scriptural
Missional
Holistic
Relational
Incarnational
Counter Cultural
Multicultural
Historical
Creative
Experimental
Like I said I will explain these things later on. But for now I just wanted to throw this out there and maybe begin to get some feed back on the DNA of the church. As for now, I’m keeping it short because I have to finish a pamphlet to be used for raising support. If working through the foundations of the church plant is exciting and sometimes tedious, raising support is scary and often times very undesirable. Maybe I’ll throw on some TBN and pick up some pointers, they seem to be able to raise a lot of money! Just Kidding If you ever see me on the TV with an expensive Italian suit, some Gold, and a few thrones behind me, please pray that the Lord will take me out. No I’m more just hoping I can just pray for a few days and magically the funding will be there so I don’t have to do the whole fund raising thing!! But in case that doesn’t work I’m going to work on the back up plan and put together the fund raising pamphlet and work on a strategic plan for raising support.
One thing that is hard for me is simplifying things. I’m really good at elaborating on things, but I’m not so good at simplifying. I always want to explain the “why” behind the “what” when I speak or write. I guess it comes from the fact that I don’t like when people speak about “what” they think without ever explaining “why” their belief is true. So for me it is very hard to condense my thoughts into a sentence or a few bullet points. This has made it really hard as I work on the written materials for the new church plant. I just finished a church plant proposal that is roughly around 35 pages long. I guess that is ok for me, but I’m not thinking churches and potential support partners will be real interested in reading a mini theses about this new church plant. When I was at a recent church planting boot camp, they encouraged us to have a short sentence long vision statement, have 3 to 5 values to define your church, and have a phrase that sums up your churches mission. The reasoning behind this is that your average visitor and potential supporters need something to catch their attention and stick in their mind. The argument is that you will have plenty of time through preaching, meeting with people, and classes to elaborate on your vision and values, so you don’t need to have everything spelled out on the front page of your website. My first reaction is to write this off as just gimmicky marketing. But the more I think about it, I realize that I want to write this advice off because it will be really hard for me to condense everything and not elaborate, giving arguments for the why behind the vision, values, and mission. So I took the advice and worked on condensing my vision, values, and mission. As I worked on condensing things I began to get frustrated as I wrestled with coming up with a short phrase that will capture the essence of what the new church will be about. I looked at other churches and they all have catchy wordplays or statements to capture the essence of what they are about and I felt they were all much better than anything I could come up with. I checked out Mosaics website and they have written on the front page “Mosaic: a community of faith, hope, and love.” Other churches had things such as “loving God, loving each other, loving the world” or “transforming the world with the love of Christ.” You get the idea, it is that statement that is to capture the essence of what you are about but can fit on a business card. The problem was that all of my attempts at a mission statement thing would only fit on a business card if the card came with a small book attached to it. So as I looked again over my many poor attempts at a mission statement I noticed one common thread that was behind every statement I wrote. That thread was the reality that we are to be about what God has said we are to be about. As I think about it, if the church has a mission, that mission must flow out of the will of God. We must be about what God desires us to be about or we are no longer His church, we will become just a man made social ministry. So as I looked at all of the statements I wrote, I realized that what I’m trying to get across is that we are seeking to fully be the church that God had intended. So the statement that I’m going with is “East End Ecclesia: seeking to be what God intended.” I actually kind of like the statement even though I’m still not very found of catch phrases. The reality is seeking to be what God intended should be our life long pursuit as a church. That is what we desire to be, His church fulfilling His mission His way. I guess the rest of the sermons I preach to the church will be trying to work through the reality of what it is to be what God has intended as a church. The key is to actually keep this statement central. It is so easy to begin to seek to be the most innovative church, seek to be the largest church, seek to be just like the current popular mega church, or seek to be the church that existed during your favorite era of church history. The hard narrow road is to submit to God’s authority, wrestle with the scriptures, and continually analyze your church and the many cultural influences that shape your view of what church should be. Sometimes being the church that God intended isn’t the easiest way to go, it isn’t always the most pragmatic approach, and it often will not result in the growth that other models will give you. But I think that being a part of the radical vision God casts for his church far out weighs any temporal feeling of ease or success. I don’t know if any church ever gets it right, but I do think some churches are continually striving to be what God intended while other are just striving to be what works.
I’ll be honest here, I’m not to fond of the modern western church culture. Part of my testimony is the fact that I never had a problem with Jesus (even though I didn’t know a lot about Him) but I didn’t want to have anything to do with Christianity because of the church culture I saw around me. Even after I got saved I never felt very inspired by “church”, but as I began reading the scriptures I saw this picture in the book of Acts of this radical movement of sold out revolutionaries changing the world for the name of Christ. After reading the Gospels and Acts for the first time I was set on fire and I spent the next few years of my life studying the scriptures because I was so in love with the picture of God’s intent for the church that was painted in the scriptures. I studied church history so that I could better understand how we got to where we are and I was so encouraged by some of the great reformations that occurred multiple times through out church history. I loved the idea of continual reformation that the early protestant reformers taught. They taught that the church must continually reform itself because culture is always changing and we are always straying away from God’s intent. I love that and I wanted to be a part of that continual reformation, leading the church to rediscover its roots.
Over the weekend I really started thinking about why I want to plant a church, why I went into ministry in the first place? The main reason is because God has called me. But in that calling I have felt that my calling is to in some way seek to be a reformer. I don’t want to plant a church. I don’t even like church that much. I want to plant the Ecclesia (the greek term we have translated as Church) that God intended when He sent His Son to die upon that Cross to redeem a people unto Himself, so that they may be sent out into the world to flip everything on its head, proclaiming the coming kingdom of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I’m not impressed by large churches, I’m not impressed by hip relevant churches, I’m not impressed by innovative churches, but I am consumed by a passion to be a part of continuing that radical revolution started by our Lord and Savior 2000 years ago. So I guess the mission is what it is, to be what God intended, and the rest our lives will be working out what that looks like. But for me if this new church plant is not continually being transformed into the church that God intended, then I have no desire to plant it, because there are plenty of other good social clubs out there.