Why i gave up serving the poor (Claudio Oliver)

I hope the title of this post is a little provocative — thankfully it’s not my title but that of Claudio Oliver a Brazilian Pastor and long term worker and advocate amongst the poor, who is one of SURRENDER:10’s keynote speakers, so I’ll leave him to do the job of explaining just what he means. Safe to say, the concept that Claudio is writing about in this article goes right to the heart of the message of SURRENDER. To read more click below:

http://www.surrender.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/why-I-have-given-up-serving-the-poor.pdf

The Big Story - Where do you fit in?

Replanting: The Story (prt two by Scott Thomas)

The Puritan Idea
In October of 2002, I felt the strong tug of God to become more effective in reaching the unchurched and in structuring the mission of the church more in line with the historical model of the apostles mainly found in the Book of Acts. As a Reformed Baptist, I have read extensively about the Reformation of the church and about the Puritans. Their goal for the church was to renew it back to the pattern of the Bible and away from the traditions of their culture.

The Dream
I dreamed of a body that loved the Lord, loved his word, loved the church, and loved the calling from God to be instruments of righteousness in their community. I dreamed of a people who practiced spiritual holiness, rather than judging others for their lack of adherence to man-made rules. I dreamed of marriages that visibly demonstrated the relationship of Christ and the church. I dreamed of homes that were led by the Holy Spirit, by godly heads of households and by the Scriptures.
I dreamed of a church that had influence in its community: spiritually, morally, evangelistically, and socially. I dreamed of a church that served willingly and enthusiastically according to their spiritual gifts, passions, and God-given abilities.
I dreamed of a church body that had a burning passion to share the gospel in their city, their state, their nation, and their world and to be a vital link for the establishment of churches all across the world. I dreamed of a body that had an insatiable thirst to encounter God in a real, personal, and intimate way.

The Recurring Nightmare
But was it just a dream? Could it be realized? Was I stuck in an endless continuum of leading one self-centered, apathetic, prideful, spiritually-arrogant, biblically-ignorant church after another with no real lasting change? I have always abhorred contented mediocrity, and yet I found myself again in an average church with an above-average indebtedness and a below-average love for one another. That was not exactly what I had hoped for. My own spiritual enthusiasm had grown average itself—and that was on a good day. Had my dream become instead a recurring nightmare of mundane Christianity? I was discouraged and disappointed with myself.
My discouragement did not lead to hopelessness. I fought through the overwhelming struggles to make financial ends meet with the clear call of God to be more spiritually effective. My top priority was to meet with God but that meeting was often overshadowed by meetings with refinancing organizations, with bankers, with creditors, with private loan resources. I felt as a church we had become more responsive to the call of finances than we were to the call of God. I had never made decisions based on finance, until this time. The financial demands were high ($16,000 per month mortgage) and the resources were weak (primarily low enrollment in the affiliated Christian school).

A Whole New Church
I felt the only way to be effective and remain faithful to this church (having served for less than a year at that time) was to start a new church in our youth center with a whole new approach to church ministry. I presented the idea to my pastoral staff. Their response was mixed, but they believed in me and hung on to that even though they couldn't fully catch the vision I had received from God.
They were enthusiastic, however, about the possibility of doing ministry like the New Testament instead of in accordance with the much-too-common phrase heard around the church, "This is the way we've always done it." No one really knew why we did it that way; it was just familiar and comfortable to the staff and congregation.
As a staff, we worked on details and vision for the new church, now called The Encounter Church. It was a regular part of our weekly staff meetings. In fact, it was the most fervent part of our meetings. I passionately worked on ideas for our new church plant and shared them with staff at our subsequent meetings.

First Approval
In January 2003, the church officers (highest ruling body at the time) approved the starting of The Encounter Church. I am not sure they fully knew what it was about, but at least they accepted the idea enough to pursue it from a church-wide basis. I announced it at the annual church business meeting in mid-January and held my breath when I said it would be a church, not just a Bible study.
Very little excitement was generated from that meeting. I guess they had heard unusual ideas at those business meetings before. Perhaps they never came to fruition and they were expecting (hoping?) this one would die as the others. Their silence to me, however, was the primitus annuo (first approval) that we needed to go forward.

God Changes The Plan
One unsettling incident happened in the early spring of that year. Tyler (the student pastor) and I were visiting a church member in the hospital. The hospitalized lady was not available for another hour. While waiting for her, we went to lunch and discussed the ideas we had for the new church. We were both caught being more interested in The Encounter Church than we were in discussing our current church.
I stopped and looked at him and said, "Do you realize we have been talking about Encounter for over an hour and we are both filled with energy and zeal. Do you think that would be true if we had been discussing our original church?" He was silent. I did not realize at the time how that incident would be a seed that would not germinate for a few months.
In May, Tyler and I went to Seattle to attend a church planting conference and to view a couple of churches in that area who held to a similar vision to the one we were pursuing. After attending a 100-person church on Sunday morning and a 1,700-person church in the evening, I pulled Tyler aside and asked him if he felt God was calling us to plant a new church or if he was calling us to replant our current church. He didn't know what to say.
I had heard the disconcerting statement that 3,500 churches in America are closing their doors every year. I had also heard the alarming statement that the church planting organization we were there to learn from (

the Acts 29 Network) had a 100% success rate, compared to the 20% success rate of other church planting attempts.
During the conference and immediately afterward, I sensed a clear call of God to get into the replanting of churches in America, beginning with our church. That is all God had used me to do in the previous pastorates and I had acceded to that calling. I didn't know the extent of that call and I didn't know it included our current church, a 60-year-old church with a rich history.

A Missional Church on Purpose
Many churches had indeed started out as missional churches. To be missional means that the individual members and the body as a whole understand and follow their calling from God to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ fervently to as many people as the Holy Spirit would lead. It means that we are engaged in personal relationships with the lost on purpose in order to show them the love of Christ and how he sacrificed his Son to die for our sins so that we could escape the condemnation already placed upon us as sinners by birth. It is not unusual for a church to lose their vision—our church was no exception.
In general, the congregation where we served did not spend time with unbelievers. In fact, every effort was done to ensure that we would come out from among them and remain separate. Our accompanying Christian school sometimes fed that separatist philosophy. Our church had become a church that had been trained to rapidly identify the lost (by outward appearances) and run from them, fearing their personal holiness would be stained by some contagious strain of sin.

Church Business Is Not The Mission
This church had become an institutional church and I had no interest in running an institution. That would be crazy! It had become a church business staying busy under the roof of the church, and had forgotten that our business is to share Christ with those who have never been under the roof of the church. Our mission is to share Christ with others who, when redeemed themselves, will be affected in such a profound way that they will in turn share Christ with their lost acquaintances, relatives, and friends.
Before my tenure, our church had contracted a consulting firm, and their conclusion was that it was a church for the "already churched community." We had to become personally missional and not leave the evangelism up to the paid staff and the foreign missions program, in which the church found inordinate pride.

A Whole New Church, Again
God called me to lead this church to become a whole new church. We did not try to turn the Winnebago around in a tight cul-de-sac, but we rather traded it in for a whole new vehicle. Jesus said we can't put a new patch on an old garment. Instead, we start again brand new so that Christ's message will be as fresh now as it was in 33 A.D. (

Matt. 9:16-17). I felt strongly called by God to lead the entire church body to follow Christ and replant this church, instead of planting a brand new church with those who desired change. We had to decide if we had the faith to follow God's leading. We did not ever want to be the same!
“And who would patch an old garment with unshrunk cloth? For the patch shrinks and pulls away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger hole than before. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. The old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins. That way both the wine and the wineskins are preserved.” (Matt. 9:16-17 NLT)
To be continued.

Excellence - Why don't we believe in it?

Over the past 18months or so i have been thinking about about the idea of 'Excellence in Ministry' and why in the church of the Nazarene we do not believe in it...well, at least we do not practice it.
I have attended many other churchs where they pay attention to every detail of ministry including the worship service, and how things look, feel, and 'communicate' to the people who are present.
Hillsong Conference is one example of many where excellence in ministry is something that is high on the agenda. They want to do everything they do the best they can with what they have. This means that timing, mood, feel, brand and 'presentation' is important in promoting the gospel. They also believe that when they 'do' ministry that they do it with excellence, excellence of attitude and spirit.
So why does the church of the Nazarene in Australia shy away from and in fact neglect this important aspect of ministry?
Why is it that we seek to do things 'on the cheap' every time?
Why do we not feel it is important to make sure we do everything with excellence?
Why do we feel that it is not important to do things right even if it cost us something?
my answers is this:
1. I think we continue to have an inward, brethren like mentlity where weare seeking to exclude ourselves from the reality fo a changing world and thus are in denial.
2. We shy away from things that cost money and thus alwasy skimp on prmoting the gospel with excellence.
3.We have never allowed ourselves to be 'taught' a better way, in reality we suffer from arrogance...thinking we really do have the best message and so the 'message' should be enough.
4. We are stuck in a time warp.
Maybe these are possible answers...no....maybe?

If we are to call ourselves a holiness people we must realise that a holy life is a deep life where we seek that Jesus be lifted high in all we do, where we want to do our best in all we do, where we want to shine the love of Christ and the good news in a way that glorifies God with our best not our second rate offerings.
It is time for us to evaluate the way we 'do' ministry and the way we use mediums such as the Web, facebook, twitter etc etc and get with the times.
I have passion for this and i pray we all would come to a place where we see excellence as more than a grade but a way of life for the church in service.
Peace

Dreams & Visions

I have been thinking alot about dreams. I was watching the last speech ever given from Martin Luther King on youtube and what a surreal speech it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0FiCxZKuv8

It has this prophetic nature about it, almost like he knew what was coming his way in the coming day. He had a dream for society that was much bigger than a single man or voice! His dream was in a sense 'eternal', it was a dream that looked beyond his own life and abilities.

So what are our dreams and visions that God has given us?

What dreams and visions do Nazarenes have for the church in Australia?

What would you like to see God do in our Church?

What would need to happen to see that vision fullfilled?

Do you see things?

There is an old Hillsong song from the Geoff Bullock days called "We Have A Vision" and while the music is a little cheesy, I've been thinking a lot about the words lately...

"We have a vision for this nation We have a dream for this land..."

And, I have to be honest, I don't really have a vision for this nation, or even for all of South Australia... but I do have a vision for my church.

We don't have a youth group/program at Croydon at the moment. It wouldn't make much sense if we did, since we don't have very many youth-type-people anyway. What we do have, however, is a number of young kids around 7-12 and in a few years these guys will definitely be looking for a youth group and if we want to keep these young people we will need to find a way to cater to their spiritual needs.

So this year we have started a series of activities for the kids we have in this age group. The plan is that we will grow these kids into a youth group.

But we have to start planning for this stuff now!

So, as I think about this stuff there are 2 questions that come to mind...

1. What is your vision?

2. What are you doing now to make that vision a reality.

"Whether it’s across the table with another church leader, at a planning retreat, or talking to the whole church-every time you talk about what could be and should be, you’re casting vision" - Andy Stanley

To check out the article that this quote came from follow this link.