C2C in Oct

Hey all

It is so good to be home. A very fruitful trip but looking forward to this next spiritual semester. Being away has delayed some q's about C2C. Here is one of the questions:

Someone asked me who would benefit from the C2C convo we are having in Oct at Rock Harbor here in Orange County...

Given the interactory nature of the time together, I suspect it will be very helpful for:

1. The lead pastor - the ministry will be very empowering for captaincy and collaboration,

2. The elders - who, in team, will be wrestling with the primary matters that do lie before us,

3. Those planters - who are either new to the journey or who are wanting this journey, getting them there will be very helpful [including their wives],

4. The worship catalysts - we will have a number of worshippers lead, which will provide some width in the area where the ancient and the prophetic meet,

5. The kingdom entrepreneur - who blurs the lines between church and the marketplace seeking to empower both.

Hope this helps...

Don't forget to get your team registered

Muchos gracias

Making too much of Elders?

It is wonderful to be back home here in LA. I was saying to the Father this morning that I was so thankful to spend the last 3 months seeing what he was doing around the world... I return to LA with such encouragement but wanting to see so much more happen here in our "Jerusalem". Here, we are still way too impressed with book sellers, conference speakers and leaders of large churches. It is so difficult to break from the celebrity minded church world to truly celebrate the stories of the great warriors of the kingdom, who will never get those accolades down here but will have great rewards in heaven.

A thought. The evangelicals has fought so long and hard to establish the true and wondrous biblical integrity of elder led churches. I will always be so grateful for those who labor with little reward, to return the church to her textual integrity. Being a bible lover, both in theological content as well as in ecclesiological shape, I do tend to get a little tender when we dismiss clear biblical shape for modern architecture - it will not last, at best being a one generational story of effect.

A thought developed. Have we now stopped our humble conversation around this matter and forgotten to keep learning? In many elder led churches around the world, I see them getting exhausted which is matched by the congregation getting frustrated for all that can happen has to be through the elders exclusively - very difficult if the E team have become the narrow part of the hour glass...

A thought expanded. Going back to the early church as seen in the book of Acts, what do we do with some of these case studies -

• Acts 6 - the matter of the Hellenist and Hebrew widow conflict was resolved by the new layer of leaders we believe to have been 'deacons' - this valid role was not one the elders were to give themselves to - the result - the word of God continued to increase...
• Acts 13 - the role of prophets and teachers was weighty and specific. There was no evidence that they were elders, yet they were task specific, empowered to fulfill this mandate as they worshipped, fasted and prayed, they sent Paul and Barnabas on assignment - no elders were seemingly involved...
• Acts 15 - is the great theological debate. The apostles bring the key voices to the Jerusalem base for resolution. Those involved were "the apostles and the elders and the whole church" [vs 22]. The picture presented here is a most inspiring one of collaboration of apostles [the E4 gifts], the elders [the E team] and the whole church [the priesthood], not just the elders behind closed doors...
• Acts 18 - keeps ever before us the role of marketplace voices, in this case folks who never seemingly hold a specific position of leadership in the church but are pivotal in the entrepreneurial conversation - here helping start the Corinthian church. Their eyes, ears and voices are so key to keeping the church sharp and moving forward...

Busy pastors simply become professional managers - managing moments, money, manpower and methods. This rends to deplete them and slowly grind the church to a desperate stumble. Can it be that we have to rethink this role and rethink who we bring into which conversations in our evolving church growth. Where and how in our churches, are our prophets celebrated? Where are those with the gifts of leadership and administration empowered? Where are those with marketplace lenses heard and legitimized? We simply must get the right people in the room for the right conversations or the elders will be over valued and over extended.

Just thinking...

Your church a case study...

Can you help?

I am writing a book about Replanting /Rebranding a church. It would be wonderful if I could your church as a case study on how you did it. What are the lessons you learnt en route? Mistakes made and moments of genius...

Send it to me at chris@southlands.net

Prophetic Word - 4 Years later

Prophetic words are not just to be processed / weighed at the time. I review of the word and its accuracy needs be made a few years later to test its veracity. Here is a word given in London in 2007. It was given to a group of leaders about the next few years. I am astounded by its accuracy and how it has happened....

"God is linking hearts and hands across various streams all over the world. The way in which we operate as a team, of necessity, needs to adjust. It is a very exciting and strategic time for us as a team yet a critical time. We need to be so focused on God and His plans that we are like Amos 3:7 says “Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing this plan to His servants the prophets.”

I felt that we need to open our hearts and see what is really inside them because as God brings strategic people across our paths for cross-pollination, there must not be any pride or arrogance. God wants to pour His Love into our hearts so that we can truly embrace those of other flows.

I believe that the way in which we have been functioning has been shown to us by God but He is saying that season has now come to an end. He has entrusted us with bringing into being the Biblical model and He is now calling us to move into a way in which we have never been before. I sense that the team within teams and the various teams are going to change in nature, as 5-fold people go out together and compliment each others’ giftings and bring a wider and deeper equipping into the Body of Christ.

I also feel that some lead elders are going to be ‘freed up’ to pursue the translocal in a new way. Some may hand over and yet others may be able to pursue this in a way that has not as yet been done.

I also saw this time as the birthing of a second baby - That we are through the 3^rd trimester and into the birth canal. Labour brings pain and there will be, and have been those pangs which have been sharp and sore. However, the waters have broken and I believe that as this “second wave” of God’s plans for NCMI is birthed there is a greater outpouring of His precious Holy Spirit on us. In a natural family when a second child is born, you don’t discard the first or ignore the first-born, but together, as a family you rejoice in the new life that God has given you. In NCMI I feel that we are so very blessed and grateful for what God has birthed through and in the “first-born” but the season of new life is taking place. We have felt the movement as God has fashioned and is fashioning, as He has formed and is forming the next part of this plan for us. There is the excitement of the unknown and yet the sense of “how will this take place?” I feel God is saying it is still a “little by little” but each “little” is going to be a massive step. Adjustments will need to take place in a family to cater for the second baby and in our team, lead elders, elders, deacons and saints hearts need to be wide open to the new thing that God is doing.

As a team, once again and yet again, we need to model this with humility, wisdom and love."

A portion of my Replanting book - a case study from Titus

I. Leadership:

No change is possible without strong, focused, intentioned, humble, Jesus loving leadership. A precise of this call to lead, reveals Paul’s clear insight as to what is needed to Replant this community. It is not for the faint hearted. It will certainly not be achieved by being politically correct, not by trying to be the ‘nice guy’. It requires a loving, tender but robust form of leadership, whose focus is on the applause of heaven in laboring with an eternal mandate and not a temporal popularity contest that may offer a short term success but offer no long term, multi-generational transition.

Firstly Paul calls Titus to appoint elders. This is the highest level of biblical authority in a local church. There are no other levels or layers of authority over them – not denominational, organizational nor dictatorial by one person. In the plurality, they are men who are to lead the church clearly in government and direction, finding the heart of God together.

Secondly, Paul clearly lays out who qualifies for such a task. When one compares this list with that in 1 Timothy 3, they are remarkably similar. However, could it be that this is not some random checklist Titus is to use to matrix the next leadership team? May I suggest another reason? In Genesis 1, there is a clear divine intention that God sculpted in his created order. The text repeatedly says: “ Each will produce after their own kind” [vs 12, 21, 24, 25,]. I do wonder if this is less about a checklist for qualification and more about the kind of believer that this Replant will produce, so it does require this kind of leader to be in place. These ‘qualifications’ so called, are surely a bottom line reality for all believers. This will be achieved if the leaders exhude these qualities and disciple others into this lifestyle.

Thirdly, Paul empowers Titus to act boldly. With Holy Spirit wisdom, Titus is called to be courageous to turn a tough ship around. Using the Old Testament matrix of “Prophet, Priest and King”, the Replanter must surely have a high ‘king’ quotient [meaning government and leadership] in his make up. These are some of the commissioning verbs that Paul uses: “they must be silenced…show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works…in your teaching show integrity, dignity and sound speech…declare these things…rebuke with all authority…I want you to insist on these things…avoid foolish controversies…warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him…

Elders.

My silence has been journeying through South Africa and nor having wifi readily available.

I would like to reconsider the eldership conversation in the light of all that the Father is doing around the world. Would anyone like to feed through your thoughts?

Glenridge... my notes from Sunday

The Glenridge Transition.

Feel extremely honored to be part of the Glenridge story.

We did not know that all this would have happened when the 40 of us started out back

in 1983. We simply had a dream in our hearts. I am not even sure that we knew the

width, depth and breadth of this dream.

All these years later, we stand on much a major weighty and pivotal moment in the

Glenridge story. My mandate today is to charge you, the wonderful Glenrdge

community. You have made this more than we ever dreamed. You believed in us when

we were young, wild and foolish. You saw something impossible being birthed beyond

our youthful excesses and leadership impediments. You bought into a God authored

dream that took us on a redemption journey that has covered the globe with Gods

grace, and engaged friends on a sacrificial journey together. You are the true heroes of

the story. We were in the ops rooms planning, startegizing, praying and believing but

you all have hit the beaches with the conviction that we have a job to complete... We will

change the world.

Genesis introduces us to 3 essential pieces of this shaping:

1. Time

2. Seasons

3. Redemption

Time.... Introduces us to the notion of life is a story made up of daily unfoldings like

pages turning as well as chapters, chunky God times in our lives...

Seasons... Whereby God gives us a new truth, a big idea and stakes it into out hearts

through all the tests that the 4 seasons bring

Redemption... Which was announced to Satan when the Father said: "he will bruise

your head and you will bruise his heel"... I suspect all the angelic hosts leaned forward

to see what would happen now... Something powerful was just announced but they did

not know what that was... The great pro to-evangelicum.

To this great community, I call you to the author of this great redemption story...

When Joshua was set up for the new chapter in the Israel story of redemption, we tend

to take Joshua chapter 1 and focus in on Joshua or the people, yet the true emphasis of

the chapter is God. These precious people were about to encounter the Father in ways

they never had. This is a chapter of discovering the Theology in Transition:

- the Lord said... He is the intimate, affectionate, immanent God who does not watch

from a distance... He speaks and needs to be listened to out of his love for us,

- the land I am giving you ... He is generous, exceedingly abundantly more that we can

ask or imagine,

- as I promised to Moses- he is a God on continuity, a Multi-generational God, who does

not lie, there is no shadow of turning in him!

- as I was with Moses - the promise of an ongoing adventure... This is not over yet, the

gospel still has to be preached, there will still be times of uncertainty, doubt,

vulnerability, questioning these leaders and wondering, but as I was with Chris and

Rory...

- the land I swore to their fathers - he is a God of blessing and inheritance, there'd are

many lands to confuse shores to reach, businesses to establish, schools to facilitate

churches to plant, homeless to house, great gospel stories to discover...

- have I not commanded you - we serve of God of the word! We drink the word, study

the word, chew / mediate on the word, obey the word and never get stuck on a one

season revelation of the word, but continuously humble ourselves to new

understandings and new calls to obedience,

- the Lord your God is with you - the great paracletos, the wondrous adventure of faith,

the sense of awe that God believes is us, has called us to live a life that is humanly

impossible, but with God all things are possible, this is an adventure of faith, and

onlyGod can make this happen if we obey... there's are new battles to fight and new

enemies to conquer

- the Lord your God is providing you a place - every person is essential, valuable,

strategic, a place where you can offer your divinely appointed contribution to let this

kingdom advance, his will be done, like heaven like earth

- the Lord gives you rest... Find his favor, grace and satisfying presence, find the

sabbatical God... This is not a time tone driven, productivity minded. Find rest in this

chapter, living in the sabbatical nature of our God.

1. Embrace this new chapter... Meryl, the great Glenridge team of the first 14 years

laid the foundation... A radical community of friends who be so inspired by the

wondrous gospel story that we would lay down our lives for that and do it with

friends.Lose that and we lose the essence that is Glenridge. We were born on the

streets of Durban preaching this glorious gospel.

2. Rory, Mel and the team in the next 14 years took that foundation and enlarged her,

adding to the stones that we put in place greater understanding and revelation, and

then put Glenridge in her rightful place as a church that was tender and sensitive,

strong and tenacious, intimate yet large, personal yet impacting

3. Now in this new chapter, whilst upholding the fundamental DNA, Ryan, Melissa and

this team will take you on an entrepreneurial adventure. It will be strong and bold. It

will be characterized by courage and zeal. There will be a strong Holy Spirit leading

matched with clear gifts of leadership and administration needed to catalyze this

growth. Once again you will hear the battle cry "we have never been this way

before." buy into this journey with graven humility , a sense of historical continuity yet

- new horizons, unchartered waters and a strong gospel centered energy that will

drive you, motivate you and captivate you.