Wineskins for Discipleship

What We Value

2009-07-20T09:12:00.002-05:00

What do you value most on the first night of small group? The number of people who show up? Or the one life that begins the process of change?

In the 1700s, the spiritual climate of a generation was shaped by two important figures- George Whitfield and John Wesley. Both preached to huge crowds and led high profile ministries.

George Whitfield was regarded as the best preacher of his time, and he has left us a legacy of Biblically rich and stirring, convicting sermons that are as relevant today as they were then.

John Wesley was a good preacher, as well, but he prioritized investment in people over the sermon. His legacy can be found in people-- the millions of followers in churches all over the world that have been left in his wake.

I'd personally rather be a John Wesley than a George Whitfield-- a legacy that is found not only on some dusty bookshelves, but in the everyday, walking around lives of people. But that's harder to do because you can't see the immediate success. Recognizing that his legacy was dependent not only on his own gifts and abilities, but also on the gifts and skills of those he discipled, Wesley organized his followers into groups called “class meetings.” At each meeting, the participants shared what they were learning from Bible study, what they were praying for, where they were struggling, and where they were growing.

Wesley also invested significant time and energy in the development of young preachers. Even today, you can visit the chapel that he built at Bristol in which he installed a glass window above the sanctuary from which he could watch his young emerging ministers preach. Afterwards, he would meet with each of them and evaluate their progress.

Over 200 years later, we see the powerful results of Wesley's vision to prioritize people. Wesley’s movement brought us the United Methodist Church, the Methodist Church of Great Britain, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Wesleyan Church, representing millions of Christ followers today.

So what should we value most-- how many people show up? how well we led a group discussion? We tend to value most the things we can measure most readily and easily, but placing priority on those things might short-circuit the greater purpose of our group. If we value the growth of one person-- no matter how small or how long it takes-- we will build the Kingdom of God through people.

Baptism by the Bay 2009

2009-07-19T09:33:00.002-05:00

Getting excited about Baptism by the Bay this afternoon! Since we don't have a church building, we have to get creative about how we handle baptism, and I think that has resulted in celebrations that are much more meaningful and memorable. In the Fall, we do a baptism after a Catacombs worship celebration. In the Spring, we do a baptism on the Saturday night before Easter. And in the summer, we have our Baptism by the Bay-- the biggest and most public event. And it's one of the things that reminds me every year why I do what I do and makes me feel so privileged and humbled that I get to do it.

It also makes me re-think how we help people grow in their faith. Baptism prep fell under my portfolio 4 years ago when I came on staff with NCC full-time. Now, we are bigger with more and larger locations. But we are preparing people for baptism the same way. I'm re-imagining it.

What do you do to prepare people for baptism? What are other churches doing?

Leaving Well

2009-07-17T21:12:00.002-05:00

We say goodbye to a lot of NCCers every year. It's exciting to say goodbye to good leaders like the Lunds or the Coons or the Kittermans who follow their passion and the call of God overseas. It's bittersweet to say goodbye to our students and interns who are with us for just a few years or even months. And it's hard to say goodbye to those who just don't feel like we are the right "fit" anymore.

This is perhaps one of the best reasons to leave I have ever seen.

Thanks for your leadership, DeAndre. We are going to miss you. I'll be sad not to see you at Command Central at Union Station on Sunday mornings. But I commend your decision and honor your integrity and leadership.

Giddy

2009-07-17T13:25:00.002-05:00

While I'm feeling energetically drained, I'm also feeling giddy (Heather Zempel is experiencing an awful lot of emotion today!) The giddiness is coming from my brand new ESV study Bible! This is the first study Bible I have purchased since high school. And that one was New King James Version. I figured it was about time to invest in a new one with new notes and new translation.

For whatever its worth, I typically read out of something like NLT or NIV. Study out of NASB. Stretch by reading out of Message. And now I'm excited about diving into ESV.

I know it's probably weird-- especially considering how consumeristic we can get in the US about religious goods and services-- but there is something about purchasing a new Bible that re-invigorates my desire to read it and study it.

Energetically Drained

2009-07-17T13:18:00.003-05:00

Do you ever feel completely energized and completely drained all at the same time? That's what the past week has done for me. I've been absent from the blog but present in the following:

Entered into 25 hours of roundtable discussion with 40 disciple-makers, mentors, and coaches about the future of spiritual transformation and discipleship.
Hung out with one of my best friends and awesome zone leaders, Leslie.
Ate a pulled pork stuffed potato at Corky's.
Ate some Christie Cookies at the Opryland Hotel.
Taught my 20-month old niece the fist bump.
Completed audio and video recordings to accompany my upcoming study, Sacred Roads.
On a related note, got a copy of the almost final draft for my upcoming study, Sacred Roads!
Bought my first pair of Pumas. (that's not very important, but I thought I would throw it in)

The conversations on discipleship were enough to leave me energetically drained, and I hope to capture some more of those thoughts later. In the meantime, I'm getting ready for Leadership 101 and Baptism by the Bay!

Nuggets from the DMC

2009-07-14T20:06:00.002-05:00

I'm sitting in the Scarritt Bennet Conference Center in Nashville, Tennessee talking with 40 of the most humble yet brilliant minds in the area of discipleship and mentoring. It's the Discipleship-Mentoring-Coaching Summit (DMC). I'll blog more extensively about it later, but here are a few nuggets:

Who do you love so much that you are praying for them every day to become more like Jesus? Who loves you so much that they are praying for you every day to become like Jesus? Who do you love so much that you cannot allow them to continue living the way they are? Who loves you so much that they cannot allow you to continue living as you are? We haven't loved each other enough to tell the truth.
The younger generation has heard about the love of God but not the fear of the Lord.
Are we performers or are we prophets?
There can be no life change without life exchange.
The more time you spend in front of people, the more time you need to spend alone with God.
The way you measure fruitfulness is the extent to which you have invested in the 3rd and 4th generations (2 Timothy 2:2)
The martyrs did not just die for a cause; they died for a person.
We should not have hope in what we can do but in who He is.
It is more important to be prophetic than relevant.

Principles and Parables

2009-07-10T20:43:00.002-05:00

The Pharisees found comfort in living according to principles. Preaching principles. Holding people to principles. They measured themselves by the checklist. In response, Jesus did not teach principles but taught in parables. He scrapped the checklist and invited us into a story.

And yet tonight, as I prepare my message for this weekend, I find myself reducing the parables of Jesus to...principles. Turning the stories into checklists.

Something about that doesn't settle right with me.

Wisdom from C. S. Lewis

2009-07-07T23:08:00.002-05:00

This challenges me:

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, exploit."

Looking forward to talking about the Good Samaritan story at NCC this weekend.

In the Land of Cherry Pie and Sunscreen

2009-07-07T21:16:00.002-05:00

I'm absent. With leave. Spending a little time with my family in Mobile, Alabama this week. Enjoying all the usual things- cherry pie, chocolate pie, coke in glass bottles, BBQ, fried fish, beach, running around in 150% humidity, connecting with friends. Love it.

Making Disciples

2009-07-03T09:07:00.001-05:00

"Disciples cannot be mass-produced; they must be handcrafted."- John Ortberg

Check out Monvee, a diagnostic tool that helps customize spiritual transformation for individuals. I'm fascinated and plan to find out more.

What I'm Reading

2009-07-03T08:22:00.002-05:00

I should really write an entire post on each book I've been reading recently, but it's July 3 and I don't have that much discipline. So here's a snapshot.

Just spent 9 months in Dallas Willard's Renovation of the Heart, and that's making my head spin in more directions than I can count. At NCC, we want our small groups to function as disciple-making communities, so we are constantly re-thinking and re-imagining how to do that. My zone leaders and I originally decided to dig into Renovation of the Heart for the purpose of focusing on our own spiritual growth (and each of us got a significant butt-kicking in that process). Nine months later, we are also thinking through the lens of spiritual formation in the groups we are responsible for. We may have some minor methodological shifts on the horizon.

I spent a month in Leviticus. It all started, well, about a month ago, when I found myself defending the importance of the book and spouting all the reasons Christians should read it. And I gave that speech twice in one week. That made me think it was time to revisit the book. I get excited about something new every time I read Leviticus, but my overwhelming takeaway in June was gratitude. I'm so thankful for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, for the atonement, and for our ability to approach God. I'm so thankful that my day as a minister does not consist of draining blood and twisting the heads off of birds.

One more- Math and the Mona Lisa. Alright, so I haven't quite finished this one yet but I'm close. My two favorite museums on the National Mall are the National Gallery of Art and the Air and Space Museum. Art and Science. I'm weird. Both prominently display Math and the Mona Lisa in their bookstores, and I've been tempted to buy it for a couple of years. I finally got it, and I'm loving it. It's good for the creative juices, so I'll just leave it there and maybe post more on it later.

Unlearning What You Have Learned

2009-06-27T14:52:00.002-05:00

Interrupting the A18: Neighborhoods Posts for another comment about creativity.

One of my favorite long distance mentors, Yoda, said, "You must unlearn what you have learned." That's the theme of this great TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson about how school has educated us out of our creativity (thanks for the link, Dave!).

He said, "If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original" and that our school systems are organized around eliminating wrongness. Wrong isn't good or a virtue, but when we are petrified of it, we cease to take risks and we no longer discover anything new. Picasso said that all children are born artists; the challenge is to remain an artist as we grow up.

How can we ensure we remain artists? How can we take calculated risks and find ways to make meaningful and productive mistakes? How can we create opportunities for trial and error, for learning from failure, for approaching everything as an experiment? I want to live with a mindset that the greatest risk is to take no risk at all.

A18 in MY Neighborhood

2009-06-26T08:01:00.002-05:00

We kicked off A18: Neighborhoods at NCC last weekend, but my own group didn't kick off until last night. We had an awesome time hanging out with folks from Northeast DC, eating pizza (thanks Ian and Bekah), and sharing our expectations for the remainder of the summer. I sensed that beautiful collision of holy excitement and holy fear that often precedes a move of God. We decided to be the hands and feet of God in our neighborhoods this week by simply picking up trash as we see it. It might seem like a small thing, but in our neighborhood, a small act of picking up trash goes a long way. And on a personal level, it settles our hearts in an attitude of serving.

A18: Neighborhoods Kickoff Message

2009-06-23T23:35:00.002-05:00

The A18: Neighborhoods sermon series kicked off this weekend. Here's a link to the message:

http://theaterchurch.com/media/message/mission/

A18: Neighborhoods Promo Video

2009-06-23T10:47:00.001-05:00

We kicked off our A18: Neighborhoods sermon series and small group semester this weekend. Love the promotion video that Dave Schmidgall, Brad McMath, Will Johnston, and others put together.

neighborhood trailer from National Community Church on Vimeo.

A18: Neighborhoods Confession

2009-06-22T15:47:00.002-05:00

We kicked off our A18: Neighborhoods Experiment yesterday! Basically, this is our first church-wide alignment series. We've decided to fuse our missions department and our small group department to send every NCC small group on a mission trip to their neighborhoods this summer.

We ended services yesterday with a statement of confession:

We come to you today in humility, knowing that we have missed the point of your mission repeatedly in our lives. Forgive us for settling for a manmade gospel of convenience instead of embracing the true Gospel of the cross. Forgive us for focusing on ourselves instead of on those you have called us to serve. Forgive us for waiting on history instead of writing it.

Today, we accept the challenge to walk in your footsteps. We will set aside our selfish ambition, take up our cross, and follow you. We will be witnesses in our homes and in our workplaces. We will serve those that you place in our path. And we follow you with great anticipation to see your Kingdom established in our lives and in the neighborhoods of Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia. We ask for your favor and blessing, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Think Outside the Box

2009-06-18T09:14:00.003-05:00

It's impossible to think outside the box if we never get outside the box. Maybe that's why Jesus did so little discipleship inside the four walls of the religious institutions and so much discipleship on the road and on the go.

Yesterday, I headed to NYC for a quick day trip with a couple of friends. I've been wanting to go to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) for a while. Knowing that Ryan would rather watch paint dry in the basement than gaze at Matisse, I decided to spare him the drudgery and went with two artist friends.

It was visual overload. So many significant pieces. Picasso, Matisse, Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Miro, Duchamps, Dali, Seurat, Warhol...room after room. Works that changed art history, culture, and even a little bit in the way I see the world. My synapses were firing in a million different directions. I don't know what it all means yet, but I know I engaged in a lot of thinking outside my usual box and that will ultimately translate into new metaphors and stories that will inform how I approach ministry. And perhaps more importantly, how I live as a human being stumbling through life trying to love God and love people better.

If we want to do ministry that is innovative and creative, then we have to hit escape velocity from our traditional ministry environments. We need to get into movie theaters and art museums and history books and nature and environments that spark activity in the parts of our brain that aren't often accessed. It will give us more to see.

Pilgrimage Sites

2009-06-15T07:57:00.002-05:00

I'm compiling a list of pilgrimage sites for my book with Threads. Here's a lit of the 5 places that were particularly meaningful to me and a list of 5 places that I really want to go.

My Favorite Spots (which all happen to be in the Holy Land)
Church of the Holy Sepulcher
Sea of Galilee
Synagogue at Capernaum
Qumran/Dead Sea
Jordan River

Places I Really Want to Go
St. Catherine's Monastery (Mt. Sinai, Egypt)
Camino de Santiago (Spain)
Castle Church (Wittenberg, Germany)
Isle of Iona (Scotland)
Ephesus (Turkey)

A18:Neighborhoods Curriculum Drafts

2009-06-12T15:44:00.003-05:00

This summer, we are experimenting with our first ever church-wide alignment series. Which means we had to write a curriculum in-house. And when I say "we," it was definitely a team writing effort. Huge thanks to Brandt Siegel and his amazing team. I just sent a review draft version to our leaders so they could get a sneak peak. We'll spend the weekend cleaning up and then make hard copies for distribution to groups.

Here are the topics:

Mission: Taking the Gospel to Neighborhoods and Nations (Acts 1:8)
Presence: Being Salt and Light (Matthew 5)
Power: The Daring and Dangerous Act of Prayer (Acts 9)
Compassion: Seeing, Loving, and Giving to Others (Luke 10)
Conversation: Crossing Cultures (John 4)
Strategy: Building Solutions (Nehemiah)

Chart Your Course

2009-06-12T09:45:00.002-05:00

Our Discipleship Atlas will be released this weekend at NCC!! I'm so excited!

This summer, we are doing groups a little bit differently. Every small group will be based on a neighborhood- the geographic neighborhood where you live, the marketplace neighborhood where you work, or an interest neighborhood where you play. For six weeks, we will follow a sermon-based curriculum that explores the questions "who is my neighbor" and "how do I love them?" The summer will culminate with every small group creatively and prayerfully sharing the love of Christ in a practical way with their neighbors.

Holiness

2009-06-11T08:21:00.002-05:00

Back to Leviticus 11 and more serious questions concerning its text. Verse 45b: "You must therefore be holy because I am holy." We can't skip past this one because it shows up again in the New Testament. Twice.

1 Thessalonians 4:7- "God has called us to be holy, not to live impure lives."

1 Peter 1:16- "You must be holy because I am holy."

There's a worship song that became popular when I was in college that stated "Holiness is what I long for, holiness is what I need." While I always felt genuine singing the latter half of that, I never knew for sure that I really meant the first part of it. For me, it seemed that holiness always worked its way into the same cognitive category as legalism. I know that's not true, but I never really understood how to properly "long" for holiness.

Perhaps it begins with a longing for God. After all, He is holy. And He is who and what we need.

No Catfish, Either?

2009-06-11T08:11:00.003-05:00

One of my deepest theological questions has always revolved around food: Will there be BBQ in heaven? The deeper issue is whether or not Jewish levitical law regarding food will be applicable.

This morning, I was reading through Leviticus 11 and realized again that catfish are questionable, as well. The fish must have fins and scales to be permissible. I learned at a very young age the difference between cleaning a catfish and cleaning a bass or bream-- you gotta skin it. So catfish are out, too.

Man, forget rich people having trouble getting to heaven...what about Southerners?

God is Jealous- Sermon Webcast

2009-06-10T07:42:00.002-05:00

The video of my recent sermon, God is Jealous, has been posted here.

You can check out all of the God Is sermon series online at our media center.

Greater Things Workshop

2009-06-09T07:53:00.001-05:00

The Greater Things Workshop is back for the summer!!

The workshop is an NCC sponsored workshop aimed at current and future entrepreneurs who want to advance the kingdom of God through their ventures. The goals of the GTWorkshop are to allow God to do greater things in us, for us, and through us via our businesses, faith-based organizations, and non-profits; to assist Christian entrepreneurs in establishing the foundations of a successful organization - foundations anchored in scripture and sound business theory; and to create a forum for Christian entrepreneurs to share their challenges and successes in an environment enveloped in prayer. The Summer Workshop will be held Thursday evening, June 25, 2009 5:00 pm – 10:00 pm and Friday all day, June 26, 2009 8:30 am – 5:00 pm. Registration deadline is Friday, June 19, 2009 and the cost is $145.00. For more information contact: greaterthingsworkshop@gmail.com.

Greater Freedom: Turning your venture over to God
Greater Vision: Seeing the unseeable and achieving the unachievable through the power of God
Greater Results: Turning vision into reality
Greater Identity: Bringing who you are to what you do
Greater Foundation: Running your organization by “the Book”

Online Training

2009-06-08T10:01:00.002-05:00

So, I'm thinking about transitioning to an online system for training leaders. Any thoughts? If you are doing it or have tried it, I'd love to hear what works, what doesn't work, what you would do differently if you were to start all over again, etc.

If you are considering it, then check out what Alan Danielson is doing at Journeychurch.tv. This is a great low-cost option if you are just starting out.