Warwick, Dave, Robyn, Caro, Jono, Marty, Deb and Myself all traveled up to Copacabana Beach for our bi-annual Staff Attack.
RADICAL REFORMISSION by Mark Driscoll was our pre-reading material and we discussed and learnt more about Church Planting as there is the idea floating around for new meetings next year - perhaps a 5pm and 7pm.
Mark Driscoll is a champ... he is a passionate gospel driven bloke who is also crazy about meeting our culture where it is at with the truths of the gospel. Answering our culture's questions with the gospel. To meet our "breakneck, isolated, selfish, debt ridden, confused and lonely world" (pg165) with the good news of our Saviour Jesus Christ.
He has a great equation to help you think about how just to do that...
GOSPEL (Jesus) + CULTURE (Neighbours) + CHURCH (Brothers)
= Radical Reformission
= Radical Reformission
If you lack one of these in your equation then you can end up with a Parachurch(-church) or Liberalism (-gospel) or Fundamentalism (-culture). I found this really helpful in identifying weakness and dangers for ministries I am involved in.
Dricoll has some poignant comments to make about Church Culture and our World's Culture:
I personally found the warning of finding the balance of NOSTALGIA vs INNOVATION. My tendency I think would lean towards having an ignorance toward church history and lessons from it in pursuit of innovation...
I need to be careful that I don't get caught up in the "fast paced & ever changing culture of insanity" (pg 52-53). I must pray that God would keep me focused and heading toward the goal of Jesus and all things in him, through him, to him and by him...
I also found great comfort in Driscoll's image of himself and his hard work in ministry, I think it is an image that many pastors and those in ministry can easily relate to:
We discussed things like Why, When, How, What... A quote comes to mind from another article we read by Stephen Timmis on Church Planting: Key Principles
Dricoll has some poignant comments to make about Church Culture and our World's Culture:
"the longer someone is a Christian, the greater the propensity to diminish the Jesus of the Bible until he bevomes a predictable little God who ceases to surprise them" - pg 27At Matthias and all Christians need to take heed of this warning and to keep reading/teaching/preaching from the Gospel accounts of Jesus. We need to keep meeting Jesus on the pages of these accounts - the radical redeemer that dined with sinners... we need to see how he lived and pray for it to penetrate our hearts and transform our lives.
I personally found the warning of finding the balance of NOSTALGIA vs INNOVATION. My tendency I think would lean towards having an ignorance toward church history and lessons from it in pursuit of innovation...
I need to be careful that I don't get caught up in the "fast paced & ever changing culture of insanity" (pg 52-53). I must pray that God would keep me focused and heading toward the goal of Jesus and all things in him, through him, to him and by him...
I also found great comfort in Driscoll's image of himself and his hard work in ministry, I think it is an image that many pastors and those in ministry can easily relate to:
"I don't really know what I'm doing so I read every book I can find & cling to the Bible like a kid who can't swim but somehow found a life preserver in the middle fo the ocean" - pg 183But the continued comfort to that is that it by the power and strength of our almighty and it's God who uses us in our weakness and nothing will change his glorious plan:
"God will continue to seek worshipers, and Jesus will continue to save people from Satan, sin and death in miraculous ways" pg200This was a helpful leap board & background into thinking about church planting. We looked also at the Great Commission and 1 Corinthians 1 - which are also very useful and helpful background texts!
We discussed things like Why, When, How, What... A quote comes to mind from another article we read by Stephen Timmis on Church Planting: Key Principles
"the single most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven is planting new churches"- Peter C WagnerI don't know if I agree with it being the 'single most' but I was convinced it is a very effective tool. And it looks like the next few months shall be exciting and busy time thinking through the logistics of it all.
Pray that the staff would remain faithful to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ as we think through this more and show our dependence on God by being devoted to prayer. Pray that many in our congregations would be excited by the ideas of furthering the gospel in Sydney's East.
Other than that we had a tops time bonding as staff team. Tuesday night we went out for Thai in Terigal and then came back to enjoy the night full of tired people being silly - Dave was making us funny funny limericks (Something about a Fartyn Martyn), eye spy and 20 questions: why oh why did they find my people so hard to guess - Pippi Longstocking and David Bowie. EASY!!!
_____________________________________________
MARK DRISCOLL
www.marshillchurch.org/
www.theresurgence.com/md_blog
2 comments:
Sounds really good!!
Will be praying for the staff team - that you will all bring much glory to God as you continue to seek to take His word out to Sydney's east!
I miss you guys!
I LOVED Pippi :)
I miss the old staff attacks. Good to hear you guys had such a good time. Shame our Rector does not have a holiday house in Copacabana. Good to see you briefly on the weekend at KYCK. Thanks again for the dance contest.
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