Why go all the way to New York to learn about church planting?

It’s a good question and I have been asked it a few times.  City to City is a church planting training centre set up by Redeemer Church in New York City.

Redeemer has a 5000 strong congregation of mainly young professionals and is led by Tim Keller.  One of the unique things about this church is its view on world wide mission.  It believes –as we do- that Jesus has given the church the job of sharing Jesus throughout the entire world.  But they don’t send out missionaries even though they easily could afford to.  They believe that the best way to share the good news of Jesus with everyone is by planting new churches, which reflect local people, in all the major cities throughout the world.
Over the 20 years Redeemer (itself a church plant) has been around, it has planted dozens of churches and helped to plant many hundreds more!  So they have a vast vision, depth of experience and amount of knowledge on the subject of international, culturally relevant church planting.

While we were in New York we had to go and visit many church plants.  Some actual plants of Redeemer and others supported by them.  Of course, none of them would have worked in East Ham, but then they shouldn’t!  But each one was mainly made up of local people, who had come to faith through the birth and life of the new church.  We went to a jazz church in the art district of Brooklyn, a youth & students congregation in the East Village, a posh church in the Upper West Side, to just mention a few.  We also got to have lunch with and hear the stories and experiences of the lead planters in each of these churches.

My favourite was the church that reminded me most of Bonny Downs.  It was a church of about 150 people and in a multi cultural district made up of Greeks, Jews and a variety of other people groups.  It was a poor community and had bags of life.! The church itself met in a Jewish Synagogue.    One of the coolest things about the church was that it was only 5 years old and had already planted another sister church and was in the process of planting another one, both in neighbouring communities.  Even with their limited recourses they had a vision for and were expanding and seeing the Kingdom of God grow!

It wasn’t just the churches we visited that helped to inspire me.  On the course were 15 other church planters from all over the world.  From Japan, South Africa, Mexico, Malaysia, Greece, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Czech Republic, Canada, Argentina, France, Romania and oh yes East London!  They were an amazing and encouraging bunch of people and full of inspiring stories.  We were able to share our troubles, questions, doubts and passions together.  It was a good reminder that even though we were all from completely different cultural backgrounds we were all part of the same family.

The teaching was amazing and Emelie and I are full of vision and ideas for how we can help grow a congregation that will transform the Flanders area and beyond!
So why did I go to New York?  The quality teaching, the great examples of diverse churches, the international church planters…and it was a beautiful city to explore.

I was excited to go to New York but I am ten times more excited to be back and I can’t wait to see what God is going to grow out of our little but mighty church!

BenAboutLondon

Vision Part 1: "We want to see Jesus..."

Hi guys, sorry it's been a while.  I had a loooot of thinking to do after New York and didn't want to let anything slip about any changes without speaking to key people first.  I've done that now but still have a lot to think about.  One of the first things I am thinking through is our church vision.  

Our awesome vision is this "We want to see JESUS transforming LIVES, changing our COMMUNITY and the WORLD!"  Great isn't it!?  But how does this work out?  What does it mean for us?  Those are a couple of the questions I'm bashing out at the moment.  Over the next couple of weeks I'll be putting up on my blog thoughts as to how this vision fleshes out in my mind.  I'm not wanting to change our vision just want to understand it better in order to share it better.

So here we go...

Vision Part 1: "We want to see JESUS..." 
Colossians 1:15-18, Philippians 2:5-11, 1John 5:20

Everything we do is about Jesus!

Jesus is fully God revealed in person.  Through Jesus everything was created.  Everything was created to shine with Jesus beauty.  Not only is Jesus our amazing creator but He wants us to be in relationship with Him. 

"Christ is exactly like God, who cannot be seen.  He is the first-born Son, superior to all creation.  Everything was created by him, everything in heaven and on earth, everything seen and unseen,  including all forces and powers, and all rulers and authorities.  All things were created by God's Son, and everything was made for him.  God's Son was before all else, and by him everything is held together.  He is the head of his body, which is the church. He is the very beginning, the first to be raised from death, so that he would be above all others." Colossians 1:15-18

That’s why Jesus came to earth 2000 years ago as a person like you and me, so we could really see and understand what He is like.

 

That’s why Jesus grew up and taught us about His Heavenly Father, so we could understand that God wants us to be part of His forever family. 

That’s why Jesus loved, helped and healed all sorts of people that others looked down on, so we could understand that it doesn’t matter what other people think of us, He loves us!

"Christ was truly God. But he did not try to remain equal with God.  Instead he gave up everything and became a slave, when he became like one of us. Christ was humble. He obeyed God and even died on a cross. Then God gave Christ the highest place and honoured his name above all others." Philppians 2:6-9

That’s why Jesus was treated like a criminal and died on a Cross.   Jesus saved us from our selfishness and sin by taking the punishment we deserve. 

That’s why Jesus defeated death when He came back to life, so that death wouldn’t be our end either and we can know Him forever.

"We know that Jesus Christ the Son of God has come and has shown us the true God. And because of Jesus, we now belong to the true God who gives eternal life." 1John 5:20

That is why Jesus now lives in Heaven ruling as King, so we can live to know Him and share His forever love with the world.

As a church we want to know Jesus more and more and share Him with others.

This is a working progress so please let me know what you think.  What is missing?  What you like?

BenAboutLondon 

Church Planting Rule No.1 "Love your community to life!"

Many church plants start in certain communities for negative reasons.  High crime, low church attendance, poverty to name a few.   That's not necessarily a bad thing but there is a danger of falling into a trap of being depressing.  Instead of inspiring hope in a community we can affirm people’s negativity.  You can even attract some people by pointing out how bad a community is.  Many people in the community will agree and join in the discussion of how bad things are and who let it get that way.

I was challenged once when watching a Documentory series on BBC1 (I think it was called "The Estate we're in") some years ago about a woman who turned communities round from being crime-dens to being fantastic places to live.  This woman had sucessfully turned around one estate before and a camera crew was following her exploits as she moved into an new rundown estate to do the same.  She wasn't a Christian and was in fact a chain-smoking, hard skinned, battle axe.  She was incredibly stubborn and refused to focus on the negative.  Instead she used her stubborn streak to make the best of the positive things she saw in an area.

On the episode I saw, this lady was talking with a single mum who lived in fear in a tower block.  The mother said, "I was on the phone with my best friend earlier and she said she wanted to come and live near me.  I told her she was mad and no one should ever come to this hell hole."  The lady responded, "No, this is a great place to live and it's going to be even better.  Think about it you and I live here and we're lovely!"  The amazing thing is that lady turned that community around, with her single handed stubbornness to focus on the positive!   It was contagious and inspiring.

If she could do that without Jesus, think of the amazing potential we have in our church plants with Him!

"Little children, you are from God and have overcome, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world."" 1John 4:4

Jesus loved this messed up world.  He didn't come down to it just to remind us how bad it is or how bad we are.  He came because he saw something that was beautiful and worth saving.    Even in the worst people and darkest situations the world has to offer, there are faint images of our Heavenly Father.  And to Jesus they are worth dying for.

"Then God said, "Let us make man in our image..."" Genesis 1:26 

People are beautiful.  Communities are beautiful.  And every community should become more beautiful if a church is living and loving in it.

Let's be inspirational and stubbornly contagious with our positive attitudes towards the places where God has asked us to serve Him and love others.

Tough challenge but that's the gospel...

A square outside the box (why we started Cafe Church)

Our Church-plants main meeting is called Cafe Church.  We didn't set out to do a cafe style meeting.  We weren't unhappy with our normal church services, in fact we loved them.  Our mother church (Bonny Downs at The Well) has a family atmosphere with lively charismatic (but not too charismatic) worship and relevant, encouraging and challenging teaching.   It was a real battle to leave and start a new church only a stones throw away.  We only went because we were called to do so, not because we were unhappy.

To make things more strange about our new style of church meeting, I am what most people may think as a traditional evangelical.  I'm not trying to be emerging or radical in my theology.  I hold a traditional evangelical view on the Bible, God as trinity, original sin, salvation only in Jesus through repentance, judgment and hell, yadda yadda yadda...  you get the point.   I remember after being told for the millionth time, "In order to plant a church you need to be radical thinker who thinks outside the box!" thinking, "then why has God called me?"  Actually when I looked at the people who deeply had a call to the church-plant we were all the "traditionals".  I was getting frustrated, if the radical people want us to be more "radical" then why don't they join us?

It took us nearly two years to come up with the idea of Cafe Church.  Our vision was to make church easier for people to step into.   Yet we didn't want to just scrap everything and start again.  We prayed and studied the Bible looking for what church was boiled down.  What we found was that people who love God want to get closer to Him are the church.   I remember getting so stressed out on Sunday mornings trying to get the music sorted and the projector working and noticing every little thing that didn't quite work, that I missed opportunities to chat and pray with people.   So the idea of Cafe Church -to us- came out of a desire to make people central to what we do.

One of my big hang ups about Cafe Church before we actually did it was that we'd go soft on the Bible.  I had this idea that a relaxed style of meeting meant a relaxed approach to the Bible.  Boy was I wrong!  The Bible is central to what we do.   We read it aloud together, study it around our tables and then feed it all back to the group.   I have found that together we can get really deep into God's word.  As the teacher/preacher it keeps me on my toes because I'm not always sure what people might say.  I find this keeps it all fresh and relevant.  When I just straight preach, no matter how much I research and pray I am never 100% sure I'm scratching where enough people are itching.  But in Cafe Church people say where there itches are.  If anything I need to know the passage better than ever because I never no where the roller-coaster will lead (and yes there are times I feel sick and want to get off).

I still love preaching and am passionate about it's importance and power.  However, preaching shouldn't be a one way thing.  We need to allow ourselves to be in conversational teaching with people.  That's how this generation has been taught to learn, though asking questions.   So lets give them room to ask them and give them opportunity to find the answers.   I am still traditional in my theology but believe the way I teach my theology should be relevant to my mission field.


All cafe style church meetings will be different.  Some are like normal services with comfy chairs, some are in Starbucks, some are in sports pavilions.  They should be different because the people they are trying to reach are different.

I am a square outside the box.  I most naturally fit into a traditional church setting.  I feel comfortable there, singing modern songs and listening to a good 30 minute preach.  But to reach the people God wants me to reach I need to leave my nice, old, comfortable box and move into shape that fits the people in my culture and community.  The second to last thing I want to be is radical but the last thing I want to be is irrelevant.

If you want to find out exactly how we run our take on Cafe Church then visit our website.

Ben