Why ‘How do we reach this city? is nearly the right question

It seems an obviously good approach – we live in Sydney, and we should be asking, how do we reach it!

The problem is that the question makes an assumption – that we are starting from scratch, from terra nullius. It didn’t work for Descartes philosophically, and it doesn’t work strategically either. The better question is, from where we are how do we reach this city.

And where we are is the Parish system, back more strongly than ever with Connect ‘09. Every square inch of, and every single person resident in, the Diocese is the specifically allocated mission focus of a community of God’s people. For better or worse, that’s one of our givens. So the question becomes, given we are a Diocese of Parishes, how do we reach this city.

from flickr by Stevpas68

And that seems to me to provide some shape to an answer, something like this:

1. A church planting arm – because we will always be needing more parishes, as the city grows.
2. A church development arm – to help churches do better what they are doing
3. A church ‘gaps’ arm – to help church notice and plug gaps where they are not doing ministry.

The relevance of this: we now have 2 out of 3 of these! This is a terrific step forward. Evangelism ministries will have its focus changed to church planting; and the new mission areas, bringing together the parishes in an area to research and reach the ‘tribes’ and ‘deserts’, is the gaps arm.

But 2 further implications follow from this:

It’s really important that the mission areas not also be given the responsibility as the church development arm. This is for 3 reasons – it will dilute their focus and distract; doing both is too much for any specific structure; but most importantly, a church development arm has no particular relationship to geographical areas, and mission areas are by definition geographical. Church development, on the other hand, is much more a function of the place in the life cycle of the church, and the history and situation of the Rector.

This is why the Area Deanery system has been so ineffective, because it tried to do a contextual task (church development) on a geographical basis (areas). It was never going to work. And if the new mission areas lose their specific focus on developing new ministries to tribes and deserts, then I bet they will fall back into the same pattern as area deaneries.

The upshot: 2 out of 3 ain’t bad; in fact, it’s huge progress. But the next step is to create a genuine, embedded arm of the Diocese for church development, distinct from but integrated with, the other 2 arms.

Then under God, this Diocese of 270 (and growing parishes) will be in a position to reach this city for Christ.

The most repulsive art in all Christendom

When in Rome, …

So we did. On the whole it was fantastic, everything so over the top, except the organisation, which was non-existent. As well, we went to the Vatican museum, lining up for 90 minutes to end up like all the other human cattle in a the most crowded show in Rome – not a good start.

But it was the room dedicated to the Assumption of Mary that got me most. Front and center is a picture of Mary in heaven on a throne being crowned, with depictions of both the Father and the Son beneath her, subservient to her. The symbolism was unmistakable. It made me sick.

The Pope has recently – and perhaps cleverly – held out an olive branch to conservative Anglicans, to come to Rome if they are fed up with Canterbury. There are so many reasons why that would be madness. And right at the top of them is this obscene Mariolotry.

Never!

Calling all those up for intentionally moving out

Under God, and in the power of his strength, CCIW is planting a new congregation – FD@5 (St Alban’s Five Dock, 5pm on Sundays).

The thought behind this is to gather together some of those who are moving out of home / into the inner west, and invite them to do that in a missionally intentional way.

We’re having a lunch for anyone who’s interested in a congregation that has 2 decisive characteristics – it is highly missional from the get-go, and is deeply member-driven, through a clear and coherent structure.

The lunch will be at St Alban’s, Five Dock on Sunday Oct 25, 1-3pm. Anyone interested, please email me (andrew@cciw.org.au) or Marcus Lockard (marcus_lockard@hotmail.com) to let us know for catering purposes.

In praise of long service leave

You know how when you go away, it’s always a last minute crush to get things done, and you almost always forget 1 thing.

Well, I forgot to post the fact that I’d be taking 4 weeks long service leave with my family – Britain and Europe – and do precisely no work / work related stuff – like blogging. But, in the words of a great man – ‘I’ll be back’.

Public vs. Private ethics

The Della Bosca thing is a train wreck.

Not so much for him – although that’s true, and fair enough – but because once again, we see the moral bankruptcy of our public moralising. As a culture, we don’t know what to say to this sort of thing.

Some commentators want to hang him out to dry; others defend him on the basis of the separation of powers – ie. between his public and private life.

Christians jump in and say, you can’t separate those 2 things, they are the acts of one and the same person, and the deception / faithlessness of the private life will be definitive for the public life.

Now, that’s clearly a Christian position (1 Tim 3, Titus 1); exemplariness is a requirement of responsibility. I ma utterly committed to it. And the flip-flopping around of this public / private distinction is pathetic. We need to say something, to speak into this moral mess.

At the same time, it sounds very much like what we are saying is that we are justified by our works. We find it difficult to speak in a way that doesn’t sound merely like moral superiority, carping when someone’s caught with their pants down. Paul says, about gospel ministry: “Who is sufficient for these things?” And his answer is not – “I am, because I live a life sufficiently devoid of gross public sin!” His is a different sufficiency – that of the Spirit. That won’t open the door to adultery. But nor will it sound so carping.

Stipend or wage?

It’s budget time – both for the Diocese and, once they set the key variable (the recommended minimum stipend for ministers), for churches.

from flickr by pfila

One of the things I often hear around this issue is that ministers are paid a stipend in the sense that they are given a  living allowance that enables them to do gospel ministry, and frees them up from having to do other work. On this basis, what a minister gets paid is fundamentally about what it costs to live.

It makes sense, and until recently, I’d never questioned it. But then I got to wondering – is it Biblical?

There are quite a number of texts that speak of the issue of remuneration for those who serve in the church, key amongst which is 1 Tim 5.17-19. And there seem to be 2 principles there:

1. “You shall not muzzle an ox”: it’s not inappropriate for a servant of the gospel to get her or his sustenance from that service
2. “the labourer deserves his wages”: there is an issue of deserving of wages.

The question seems to me to become this: does the second of these principles, which speaks of deserving wages, indicate a correspondence between what a minster should be paid and the work done / responsibility borne  (rather than the cost of living). In other words, ought the principle to be not the minimum it takes to live, but a reflection of the kind of job done?

In know one denomination pegs the role of senior pastor to that of principle of a school, as an attempt to do something like this. I suspect that’s not quite right – very few churches have the number of staff of a school – but it seems to me that something like this might be a more Biblical way to go.

UTS mission this week

I’m speaking at a mission for the UTS Christian group Credo this week and next.

4 (apologetic style) talks and a debate this week, 2 (more directly proclamatory) talks next week. The students have been working incredibly hard to make it unmissable on the campus, and I’m really looking forward to engaging with the campus.

If you get a moment, do pray for the mission, for the courage of the Credo students, for the openness of their friends and contacts, and for me as I strive to be faithful to Christ.

The one thing Chris Swann thinks Mark Driscoll gets right!

Chris Swann – uber-insightful 4th year MTC student and CCIW catechist (not to say incredibly regular blogger) – made a comment last night that crystalised a thought for me.

Church / congregation planting only succeeds by spoiling the relational intensity of planting, which was the necessary pre-requisite to getting the plant off the ground.

Planting starts with a core group – they work, plan, pray and dream hard. It binds them together. Then the plant is launched, and God willing, new people arrive. The only way for the plant to succeed is for the core group to ‘break up’ – to genuinely let go of that intensity and connection, in order to make room for the newcomers. Otherwise, they will always know that they are the second-tier members.

There are lots of ways for this to happen – if there’s a sudden influx of newcomers, it forces the issue. Or if there is a porous structure, so that newcomers are included in the ministry of the congregation from when they arrive.

But either way, a plant will kill itself if it doesn’t break open the relational intensity of the core group!

WANTED: A challenge-hungry passionate preacher and pastor

At CCIW, we have a position vacant – for a servant of Christ, minister of the Word and leader of God’s people (Deacon or Presbyter) who is up for a challenge.

The challenge includes leading a small congregation which is committed to growth into being a medium sized and then large congregation, as well as being part of the leadership team of an innovative congregation plant.

The opportunity is unique in that the full backing, infrastructure and collegiality of a large staff team and office supports this challenge.

So, if you’re at the other end of the spectrum from faint-hearted, feel free to email me on: andrew@cciw.org.au

The newness of the New Covenant

One of the issues the fellowship group I’m part of regularly wrestles is the difference between the Old and New Covenants – what’s new about the NC?  This is the big question of Biblical Theology. One answer holds that the difference was grace. The New Covenant is a covenant of grace, the Old was a covenant of works. Some said that directly, others said that the Jews between the close of the Old Testament (around 400 BC) and the New Testament corrupted an original Old Covenant of grace. Either way, what’s new is grace.

But I’m not so sure. It seems to me that the Old Covenant was always a covenant of grace, and that’s because it was a covenant by election, and election is always pure sovereign grace. All the major covenantal passages (eg. Gen 12.1-3, Gen 15.1-6, Deut 6-7) hammer these themes – election, therefore grace.

So, if grace is not the difference, what is? And what was wrong with the Old Covenant that meant a new one was needed? A more fruitful train of thought is that the Old Covenant had been abused – almost from the beginning – as a reason for presumption. The elect people of God presumed on their election, and that presumption led to sin. In other words, the problem with the Old Covenant was it did not change the heart (or what Paul calls the flesh), so that when sinful hearts met election, they became presumptuous and sinned in their presumption – and on top of that, were exclusive of gentiles, and not the light of the world that they were called to be. This is the constant complaint of all the prophets (see especially Jer 7.1-15, but they all have basically the same message); this is what Jesus says is wrong with the Pharisees (Matt 23), and this is what Paul says is wrong with the Jews (Rom 2.17-29).

The great new thing of the new covenant, therefore, is the gift of the Spirit (Acts 2, Rom 7-8), and the inclusion of the gentiles because the righteousness of God is now revealed and enacted through Jesus, apart from the Law (Rom 3.21). The thing that the New Covenant has in common with the Old is that salvation is all of grace  - the pure free gift of the gracious Living Lord, now brought to completion in his death and resurrection.