Intersected

Alvin Reid’s praying for revival. Based on his list, I’m praying too.

I am praying for revival, but a revival that will:

• change our paradigm from maintaining our institutions to advancing a movement, including a greater passion for propagating the gospel than fighting the culture wars; 

• rescue us from consumerism and give us a passion to serve others;
• give us a greater love for unchanging truth than our personal preferences;

• take us from sectarian nit-picking to a hunger for biblical unity;
• focus our hearts less on impressing each other and more on loving the lost;

• make us continually love the Word while affirming creative ways to communicate it in our ever-changing world;

• add to our programmatic, attractional witness a missional lifestyle to penetrate the unchurched culture, meeting people where they live rather than in our institutions.
• challenge our youth not only to hate the things of this world, but to sacrifice all for the sake of the gospel;

• give us a hunger for the nations of the world and the great cities of the West;
• create a church planting movement the likes of which the world has never known.

Great post from Scott Thomas, director of the Acts 29 Network on how church planters can parent children who love God

1. Depend on the grace of God, the Spirit of God and the wisdom of God for guidance and provision every day.
2. Love them sacrificially with your time. Dads should also be “present” for every aspect of their child’s life. Your kids only have one Daddy.
3. Enjoy the ride. Don’t stress over the house or their messy clothes. Laugh often; hug more.
4. As a couple, set clear boundaries and discipline consistently. The goal of discipline is to teach that God has standards of obedience and that He is the One who has absolute authority in our lives. Teach the gospel clearly in your discipline: a) Identity as a child belonging to a family, b) sin separates, c) sin has consequences, d) confession, e) repentance, f) reconciliation. Share this story of the Redeemer every time you exercise discipline.
5. Make your home a place of grace where it is safe to make mistakes, be yourself, have fun, try out new dance moves and bring friend’s over. Practice being a gospel community as a family. Practice confrontation, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Doesn’t get much better than this

So, the Ann Arbor News is closing, to be replaced by AnnArbor.com. Good thing? Most definitely no. There will be less true reporting, and more opinion, more attitude, more candor, which is not a good thing.

I think this will negatively affect coverage of U of M sports. I’m not all that impressed by their coverage now, and there’s no way that they can compete against sites like mgoblog.com, mvictors.com, and umhoops.com.

I think this will negatively affect coverage of high sports. Who will be out covering the Huron girls’ soccer games, or the Pioneer swim meets, or Ypsi track meets? By reducing this coverage, and the lose of the “Ann Arbor News Player of the Year”, students will have less media coverage and less exposure to recruiters from colleges. Could some students not be able to afford coverage because the scholarship that they would have received with more coverage wasn’t available?

I think this will negatively affect coverage of religion. Right now, the AA News does an okay job of reporting about religion. By moving things online and relying on citizen journalists, there’s no incentive for people to report on things they don’t care about, and as I’ve written about before, Ann Arbor doesn’t care much about religion.

I think this will negatively affect people who don’t have access to technology. Do we really think that people will take a bus to the library to read AnnArbor.com on a public computer? There has already been a study examining the closing of the Cincinnati Post and they reported that

The shutdown of a newspaper has an immediate and measurable impact on local political engagement, according to a new study by economists at Princeton University.

Assessing the consequences of the closing of the Cincinnati Post at the end of 2007, the researchers found that fewer people voted in subsequent elections, fewer candidates ran in opposition to the incumbents and that, as a result, the incumbents had a better chance of being returned to office.

Does this mean that the only people who will be involved and truly in the know will be elite?

It’s a sad day when a newspaper closes. I like sitting down and reading a physical product, feeling the paper and getting dirty from the ink. It forces me to think local. When they ask people from where they get their news, they always say “TV” or “Internet”. No reporter ever follows up with “Where do you get your local news?” Very soon, the answer to that question will be “Nowhere”

From Ed Stetzer at SendRDU’s March Church Planting Forum. Full title Pitfalls in Planting: What We and Others Do that Undermine the Work and How to Avoid Them

• 68% of church plants exist after 4 years
  • Mean attendance is under 100
• Most church plants fail because planter is not prepared
• “The things that drive you are the demons that bring you down”
• Every church Ed has planted had a negative impact on his personal spiritual growth

1. Lack of Spiritual Preparation

• Must have a spiritually robust life, must be a spiritual self-feeder
• Spiritual dissatisfaction won’t be solved by planting a church
• Must be pastoring your family
• Prepare for spiritual warfare

2. Stressful Family Relationships

• Need to tend  your own garden with your family
• Don’t plant a church when one is willing and one is enthusiastic
• Guard your family
  • Don’t make the church your mistress
  • Value of someone from the outside looking in on your marriage and inquiring about it. 

3. Inadequate Training

• You learn enough to think you’re qualified, but you don’t survive your first contact with the enemy
• “Drunk with vision”
• Know more about church planting than you think you know
• Matt Keller The Up the Middle Church, “I wish someone had told me to have more than one idea”
• Read lots of books, get lots of ideas
• “Know the place before  you know the plan”
• “Too many church planters plant in their head instead of in their community”
• Specific training needed (principle-specific training, not model-specific training)
• Not every tool will work in ever setting
• Read
  • Launch: Starting a New Church from Scratch by Nelson Searcy & Kerrick Thomas
  • Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church by Mark Driscoll
  • Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century: A Comprehensive Guide for New Churches and Those Desiring Renewal by Aubrey Malphurs
  • Community of Kindness by Steve Sjogren & Rob Lewin
  • Planting Missional Churches by Ed Stetzer
  • The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community by Hugh Halter & Matt Smay
  • The Forgotten Ways, Reactivating the Missional Church by Alan Hirsch
  • Starting New Churches on Purpose by Ron Silvia
  • Planting Churches Cross-Culturally: North America and Beyond by David J. Hesselgrave
  • Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World by David Garrison

4. Lack of Accountability

• Church planters have more abilities that lead to success than maturity to handle it
• Need someone to ask you “Are you making the right decisions?”

5. Unrealistic Expectations

• If church planter has realistic expectations, there is a much, much higher chance of survival for church plant
• Normal in North America is plant a church and in four years, attendance is 100
• Church planting is much harder today, no church planting movements in Europe
• Don’t be discouraged

6. Broken Partnerships

• Broken relationships between mother and daughter churches
• “Mother’s remorse”
• Church planters get focused on the plant, and forget about the partners
• Paul and Barnabus reporting back to the Antioch church

From Q&A

• Celebrate in Church Planting
  • Baptist General Conference (Converge)
  • Local churches owning church planting (Keller, Driscoll, Patrick, Roberts)
• Enable people to speak into your life with authority (“in your life-ness”)
  • You’re not accountable to someone unless they know your propensity to sin
  • Getting past the superficial trivialities in your marriage regarding planting
• Planting Plans
  • Hold your models loosely and Jesus tightly
  • Missional/Incarnational  - maybe no plan, so don’t expect funding

Fascinating email debate between two conservative Catholic intellectuals, Princeton University legal scholar Robert P. George and Douglas Kmiec, a Pepperdine University legal scholar. Kmiec was one of the most outspoken “pro-life” Obama supportors during the most recent election and George is a contributor at MoralAccountability.com. We have now entered a brave, new world that will bring about the destruction of much life. My heart is broken for the age we are now entering.

The first one is mandatory. One other is needed as well (not every one).

1. Have I responded to the gospel call & received the Spirit? 
2. Is the Holy Spirit out ahead of me planting the church?
3. Is my church planting call obvious to other godly leaders? (Acts 2:14)
4. Has God confirmed my church plant by showing up in miraculous power? (Acts 3 & 4)
5. Am I reaching lost people to start my plant? (Acts 8:5-9, 12)
6. Has Jesus showed up & told me to plant? (Acts 9:15-16)
7. Has God called me to plant through a vision? (Acts 10-11:18; 16:9-10)
8. Has God providentially relocated me to plant? (Acts 11:19-21)
9. Is God sending me to plant because my church does not much need me? (Acts 13:1-3)
10. Is God calling me to plant because I am wasting my time in a toxic place? (14:1-7)
11. Am I called to be a catalytic church planter or plant a church planting church center?(Acts 14:23-26)
12. Has God called me to plant by giving me a deep burden for a city/people? (Acts 17:16)
13. Has God called me to plant by giving me a core group? (Acts 18:7-8)

From Acts 29

Examining myself for these, #1 is a definite.

#4 and #8 – Mom getting healed of her tumor was definitely miraculous and that pulling us back to Ann Arbor  is the relocation part

#9 – I think our departure from New Life goes here. There wasn’t much need for me at a college student church when I feel called to reach people like my neighbors and co-workers

#11 – The latter “church planting church center”. One of my dreams is to be the pastor of a grandparent church.

#12 – Most definitely. I can’t imagine planting anywhere but Ann Arbor, MI

I can’t wait to see how God will move over the next months and years.

This informative Triperspectival Leadership Diagram comes courtesy of Drew Goodmanson, church website guru and co-founder/pastor at Kaleo Church.

From Jody Fox

We must teach our children and teenagers what Biblical love is. The Bible tells us that God is love (1 John 4:16). So therefore, “we love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19). The love that we show should be modeled upon the love that Christ showed us on the cross of Calvary. This love is a sacrificial, selfless and continual love that does not play with one’s emotions or seek to fulfill one’s self gratification.

The love of Christ is eternal and cannot be removed from those who call upon the name of the Lord for salvation. It’s a love that is never ending and eternal. It’s a love that cannot be divorced from us. For Romans 8:35-39 tells us that nothing can “…separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Our marriages and our relationships then should be based off of the love of Christ. That he underwent the wrath of God, died on the cross for our sins, was buried, and on the third day rose from the dead. Until we understand and receive this great love of God on our behalf, our dating and marriage relationships will fall short of the love they could and should possess. The love of God then is our guide to healthy relationships and a proclamation of the love of Christ, for marriage is a Biblical institution given by God to model and proclaim Christ and His love for the church (Ephesians 5:22-33).

So then we must first model the Gospel of Jesus Christ by allowing the love of Christ to overflow from us to our families. Second, we must teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is overflowing with love, to our families. Finally, we must help direct and guide our families to Jesus Christ, for He will save all who call upon Him and give them an eternal home with Christ where His love will be unceasing and abounding forever.