Standing on the shoulders of two hundred years

This Christmas we celebrate two hundred years since Samuel Marsden's inaugural preaching of the Good News in Aotearoa. Over two hundred years the Good News has moved from the Bay of Islands to every corner of our country, expressed in thousands of churches, organisations and ministries, in messages, actions and the arts. 

It's important to make sure that we understand events like this and what they where the catalyst for. There's plenty of things you could look at if you are interested, but two things worth a mention would be this article from our national movement and even more recently the NZ Herald had this article breaking down the events of the day.

“We are standing on the shoulders of two hundred years of the Good News being preached and outworked in our country in all kinds of ways. That’s a long time, and within that are a lot of stories, and within this large narrative is, for us, a new story. ”

I don't want to post more information, or retell the story, but just want to share an excitement in my heart for the heritage we have, in which we are grafted. We are standing on the shoulders of two hundred years of the Good News being preached and outworked in our country in all kinds of ways. That's a long time, and within that are a lot of stories, and within this large narrative is, for us, a new story.

This new story is one of us hearing God's voice to plant a church and beginning to see that 'word' become a reality. Over the last couple of months we have seen something that was just invisible – something that was just in our hearts – start to become visible. People have started to gather around and join in as we begin this journey within this giant movement of the Good News impacting Aotearoa. 

So, because of such an occasion, I have some reflections I hope we can be.

I hope we can plant something that joyfully declares Te Rongopai o Ihu Karaiti – the Good News of Jesus Christ – in word, sign and deed.

I hope we can plant something that plays it's part in this narrative well, making a difference for the good of our nation, standing for the injustices to be found and finding the needs to be met. 

I hope we can plant something that looks back to look forward, knowing the shoulders we stand on – both the good and the bad – and doing all that we can to be the peacemakers in our time for the Church and the world.

I hope that we can plant something that can be a part of the next two hundred years and beyond.

Why we still haven't got out a whiteboard

Last night we had our second monthly gathering with twenty people crammed into our lounge, which was quite a cosy feeling on such a hot, muggy Auckland evening. We shared a meal, chatted, worshipped and prayed, and it was great.

Planting a church is a balance of listening to the Lord for His direction, figuring out what to do with that, and making plans. We have our timeline which we are using as a trajectory, but we don't know all the details yet. I'm becoming increasingly aware that the season we are in at the moment is to enjoy being in God's presence and hearing from Him, and leave cranking out the whiteboard and markers to brainstorm the exact plans for a little while longer yet.

At times people ask me "So, what are we doing?" and deep down I am tempted to try lay out a five-step plan or a bunch of tangible things we can achieve and do. I guess that's just the sign of the culture we live in where people want to know the measurable goals and steps. We want to know what an organisation is doing as a sign of whether it's successful or worth their buy-in. I get that, I fall victim to thinking we have to do this too.

But the words of Jesus call us to a counter-cultural way to make plans and measure success.

In John 15, Jesus says that He is the vine and we are the branches, and that if we abide in Him we will bear fruit. There is a warning in what Jesus is saying here: don't get this around the wrong way. Jesus' advice is that the first "do" must be to abide in Him, and from that all the right things will come.

The season we are in as we head into Christmas, a January summer break, and then kick off again in February, is to do what Jesus says in this passage. We're going to enjoy the privilege of enjoying Christ while there isn't a hundred other things that can rob us of that, and learn how it feels to make this our first port-of-call in all that we do as a church. 

One of the highlights of last night was that we had a friend, Andy Campbell, visit us as our guest and lead us in worship. To finish the set he used this song, which lyrically echoes the sense I have of what we are to do at the moment:

“O Lord we seek your face

Your Spirit, truth and grace

Breathe on us

Spirit, breathe on us”

Enjoy this song for yourself, and if you would, please join us in praying that we would have eyes to see and ears to hear what He is beckoning us towards, because until we feel we are getting this right, we won't be getting that whiteboard out in a hurry.

Advent and waiting to begin

Earlier this week my wife, Gabrielle, hung up our Christmas wreath on the front door. This tells me two things: one, Advent has begun and it’s nearly Christmas, and two, we only have one more month left in 2014 before our big journey of 2015 commences; planting Central Vineyard church. 

A major theme of Advent is waiting, and waiting is what we have been doing for quite a few months now - we’ve been waiting to start this journey, and we’ve had small glimpses of getting things underway while always knowing that the summer break over Christmas and New Year is a big deal for the average Kiwi, so we best keep the pressure off till it’s out of the way.

This time of waiting has become a bit like a “rolling-start” for us (a way some motor races begin, where the contestants, rather than racing from a complete stand-still, all drive slowly beside each other until the light goes green and then it’s flat-out racing). Several months ago we started to gather a small “engine room” core team, we launched our presence and identity online, last month we had our first gathering with a dozen people in our lounge, and this month it looks like it will be above twenty people. Slowly support is growing, word is spreading and there is something emerging out of what had just been an idea and a sense of God speaking to us.

This Advent we are joining with the global Church in waiting for the coming of Emmanuel, but also, we are waiting for the end of a year of waiting, and the beginning of a year of starting what we have been waiting for.

P.S. To make the most of the Advent journey, I highly recommend these videos being released by 24/7 Prayer:

December Gathering

If you're interested in our church plant journey in 2015, we'd love it if you could join us and our growing core team for our final gathering of 2014. We'll have dinner, a chat around what's ahead and some worship and ministry.

Our special guest joining us this month is a friend of ours, Andy Campbell from St Paul's Symonds St and leader of Worship Central NZ.

Just let us know you're coming by commenting below, or by emailing us, so we can cater a feast for you.

When

Wednesday, Dec 10th, 6pm for those who want to join in on dinner or 7.30pm for those who want to just come for the meeting. (But why would you?)

Where

 

Please pray this prayer with us

“...I saw the Lord...”

— Isaiah 6:1

It's humbling to know that all over the world people are praying for myself, my wife and our team that is growing around us. What a thing to know that people are interceding for us, petitioning for us and praising with us.

Some have asked us directly, "What can we pray for you?" Well, it seems that we now have an idea how to answer that question.

It's been said that before you have a vision for God, you must have a vision of God. We don't want to start to create anything with our team without first having a refreshed sense of who God is and what He is speaking over us. We know from John 5 that the Father is always up to something, and we want to start with what He is up to.

And so in saying that, can I ask you to pray this prayer with us as you pray for us and our church plant:

Father, we want to see You more clearly.

Christ, we want to hear Your beckoning. 

Spirit, we want to receive more of what You are already doing.

If you have any nudges of God saying something to you for us, we'd love to know them, so please write us a message and let us know. 

And so it begins, with fire.

Today I woke up grateful for two things:

Number one, the grease fire that started in our BBQ as we cooked steaks for dinner didn't burn our house down.

Number two, we have started. Last night we began our church plant journey with the first gathering at our house of core team members and people who are interested. A dozen people came to our house to eat, chat and pray, and there were a few apologies from people who would have liked to have been there and couldn't make it.

“The night started with a fire on the BBQ, and it ended with one of those Acts 2 moments of “fire” settling on people as we sought the gifts of God’s Spirit together in a relaxed and informal manner, seeing what God was speaking to each of us. ”

And so we ate, we talked and we prayed. There was a joy in our lounge as we laughed at things together, heard each others stories and the way God had brought us together. But the highlight for me was that we had invited a guest from our sending church to join us for the night who spoke prophetically over us all.

The night started with a fire on the BBQ, and it ended with one of those Acts 2 moments of "fire" settling on people as we sought the gifts of God's Spirit together in a relaxed and informal manner, seeing what God was speaking to each of us. 

Our hope is that these monthly gatherings will steadily keep growing over the coming months, that they will become too big for our lounge and we will have to find another location, but for now we are enjoying the moment. God is leading people to this mission of planting this church in our city, and moving in peoples lives already.

Today I pray that the fire never goes out.

Why are you planting where you're planting?

It's been pretty amazing launching our church plant initiative over the weekend, and we've already had some questions from people such as, "Why are you planting where you are planting?"

Well, we're glad you've asked and here are a couple of quick answers:

“We have been called to the city, but we haven’t pinpointed a location yet. For now we are prayerfully establishing who we want to be in this city, starting to figure out where we fit around the existing church expressions already doing great things here and starting to see where we can meet a need.”

It seems good to us and the Holy Spirit

We have had an amazing adventure already of hearing God's voice for us throughout the last twelve months, discerning that we should be planting in the central suburbs, just a click out of downtown Auckland. How do we know? There’s been some prophetic words given to us, some interesting opportunities have arisen, and when we ourselves think of planting in the central suburbs our hearts are strangely warmed like one of those moments the early Church went through (in Acts 15) where it seems good to us and the Holy Spirit.

Where we think we might be

We have been called to the city, but we haven't pinpointed a location yet. For now we are prayerfully establishing who we want to be in this city, starting to figure out where we fit in around the existing church expressions already doing great things here and starting to see where we can meet a need. Our hunch for the future is it will be somewhere along a band stretching from Mt Eden, around the perimeter of Newmarket and across to Mission Bay, but we’ll tackle that at a later date in the timeline.

Census data shows growth and growth means a need for more churches 

We recently looked at the census statistics of some of the areas we feel called to and were surprised to find significant growth. A great example was the 20-35 year old demographic growing in several areas from just a couple of hundred in 2003, to now in the thousands living in those areas. Those numbers are people, which means plenty of people to reach and serve. With growth comes new projects in the city–a good example is the new Auckland University campus being built in Newmarket–and we are excited to be a church plant that will be able to be around with these new things in the future, as well as finding the needs that need to be met that come along with them. 

What's with your church logo?

“We live in a world where everything communicates something and the same can be said of our logo. There is a lot of intention behind it and so we thought we’d share with you what the story is.”

Why it’s got four arms

We chose a four armed cross to represent the four directions we want to remind ourselves to keep moving towards, these are:

Up: God and the redemptive story of the Kingdom of God.
Down: Us, as the embodiment of that Kingdom.
Right and Left: Loving others by gathering together and being missional into the world. 

Why it’s not balanced

As followers of Jesus, we don't need to be perfect. We come as we are into a relationship with him, no matter who we are and how 'unbalanced' our lives might seem. And if you’ve been following Jesus for a while, you’ll probably know that sometimes things can’t be put into a nice tidy package. Sometimes multiple things need to be held and wrestled with together. We call this tension, this holding-of-multiple-things, rather than clutching to just one thing. 

As a church we want to hold lots of things in tension, for example:

God is awesome and magnificent yet he also intimately dwells in us by His Spirit,
His Kingdom is here yet it’s still to come,
we are to gather in community yet we are to go and be missional in the world,
we love the Bible and all the heritage of the Church yet believe God’s Spirit freshly leads us and gifts us today for new things…

We could go on. It’s all a juggling act of holding these things in tension together, and we want our logo to remind us of that everyday.

Why it’s an X

An X has a central point. The central point we are aiming for is glorifying Jesus and making disciples who do the same with their lives, That’s the central focus in all that we are going to do.

And why “Central”?

Well, that’s for the same reason as our logo being an “X”: we want to make Jesus the central point of our existence. But also it's because we are planting in the central suburbs of Auckland City. 

Why plant a church? Part one, context.

“Planting a church means placing ourselves into the context of the grand narrative: the Kingdom of God.”

Have you ever had one of those moments when you just don’t know why you are doing what you’re doing anymore? Ever lost the essence, or maybe forgotten the context? Have you ever spent weeks, months or years working on something to find out you left the “main thing” behind you and now you’re just holding onto something that is peripheral, or a side-issue?

As I look at the current narrative of the Church, I can see many places in its story that this is happening to us. It seems some of us are a forgetful bunch. Others of us are an uninformed bunch who have never known the true essence of what this is supposed to be all about, never been told the real climax of the story of God, and as a result, the part we play in it now.

For example, perhaps you look around at the pain and brokenness in this world and ask the question, “What is the point? Where is God in all of this? I thought He was supposed to be good, and powerful…?” 

Good question. 

What you’re asking there is the core essence of the narrative about God. So let me take a moment to tell you the story of God engaging with this world – key phrase there, engaging. 

The macro-narrative of Scripture tells us of a God who engaged with the world that He had created right from when it broke itself, up to now and will continue to do so into the future. The agenda has always been to get it back to the way it was right back at the very start: perfect. Perfect in relationship with this God, with itself and with it’s surroundings. And this story of God, this narrative of shalom, has a climactic moment when the renewing (note: renewing – making things new again) activity of this God takes on skin and bone in the arrival of Jesus Christ.

Right, let’s take a breath from that big moment, settle ourselves down again and pull out some specifics. How exactly has God gone about renewing creation?

In the Bible is a group of four books called the Gospels. These four books are the collective record of Jesus ministering in the world. Now, let’s say you were to read them and ask a great question like, “What was the core theme of Jesus’ ministry?” As a friend put it to me the other day, what is the “essence of the essence?” Well, over and over this is what you will keep finding: a phrase called “the Kingdom of God”

God’s perfect rule was breaking into the brokenness of all of creation through the words, miraculous demonstrations and deeds of Jesus. Jesus was restoring things back to the way they were always meant to be, putting things back to rights as they were once created to be. The renewing message of the Kingdom was demonstrated by Jesus when He:
healed the sick;
calmed a storm;
preached about a new hope;
cast out demons;
restored outcasts to right-standing in a community;
broke barriers of clean/unclean, man/woman, Jew/Gentile;
miraculously fed multitudes;
taught on a new way to be human in this world;
ate with outsiders;
and many more things all to demonstrate what it looks like when the Kingdom of God breaks in and collides with this broken world. The Good News of the Kingdom is the climactic crescendo, and Jesus played it out for the world to experience.

But then He did something crazy. 

At the beginning of the book of Acts, we see how He tagged in a bunch of people, effectively saying: You do this. You must keep sharing this message and doing this mission.

Enter: the Church. 

This group of people became His body, empowered by the very same Spirit that had empowered Jesus. With the cry, “Jesus is Lord!” they continued and radically laid their lives down to further His message and the mission of bringing the Good News: “the Kingdom of God is near! Turn and see!” 

“Our story has become too small and stingy. The narrative of the Kingdom is not us just having faith here and now to go somewhere later when we die. The Kingdom narrative is one of our new Spirit-filled lives engaging with God’s activity in this world now; our faith invites us to live this ‘God is making all things new’ hope.”

Two millennia later, the group of people with this message and mission is now us. Sadly, it seems that most of the time we seem to sell ourselves short. We have made Jesus’ message a bit easier to grasp, and just stop at “us” and our “personal salvation” which is all about having faith to get us to heaven – so no wonder we ask questions about the brokenness of the world, and wonder where God is. Our story has become too small and stingy. The narrative of the Kingdom is not us just having faith here and now to go somewhere later when we die. The Kingdom narrative is one of our new Spirit-filled lives engaging with God’s activity in this world now; our faith invites us to live this ‘God is making all things new’ hope. The narrative we are invited in to join is: “the Kingdom of God is near! Turn and see!” 

We are invited to see this message and mission for all it’s worth and join in. Christ has started a re-humanising movement: He spoke on this new life, He showed what it looked like to live aware of it and He showed how to live it once you have encountered it. The life of the Kingdom is near, as near as your next action, or words you speak, or prayer you pray. With those things you can help see the Kingdom colliding into this present reality.

So is this the narrative of God you know? 

Planting a church means placing ourselves into the context of the grand narrative: the Kingdom of God. It’s this message of the Kingdom lived out by the words we speak, the prayers for miraculous demonstration and the deeds of doing good works that we start our answer, because it is the context in which Jesus started the Church.

Why plant a church? Part two, embody.

“Planting a church means embodying the Kingdom of God; making the invisible, visible.”

Imagine if every idea ever had, just stayed that: an idea. 

What if every thought never left being thought? 
What if every concept never saw it’s way further to the finished project? 
And what if every vision was never bought in to?

Ideas stay ideas unless they progress from a thought, or a concept, or a vision, to some kind of reality. They need embodiment, they need to take on flesh; they need incarnation.

In the opening chapter of the Gospel of John, we find these incarnational words about Jesus:

“So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.”
_ JOHN 1:14

God’s plan of restoring creation was no longer just an idea – it had become a reality. The plan had literally taken on “flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.” Or as Paul would later put it in his letter to the Colossians, 

“Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.”
_COLOSSIANS 1:15

Christ is the tangible, touchable, real incarnation of God’s redemptive plan, putting flesh on all the Divine ideas and prophecies of Israel’s history, bringing all of the invisible and ambiguous things of the Kingdom of God into reality: 

Here. And. Now.

Wait. Now?

“As Christ-followers, we become an incarnation, embodiers of the Kingdom agenda to make all things new.”

Yes, because as you might recall from part one, Jesus’ ministry and mission didn’t stop in the grave with Him. It rose with Him and was passed on to His followers, to continue going to the ends of the earth. As Christ-followers, we become an incarnation, embodiers of the Kingdom agenda to make all things new.

Which brings me back to my opening thought. Imagine if every idea ever had, just stayed that: an idea.

Now, let’s take that thought and team it up with this movement of Jesus.

God’s redemptive work in the world isn’t just an idea anymore, but it’s movement could stall at you. Will you, or will you not, choose to further embody this movement of the Kingdom? 

Planting a church means embodying the Kingdom of God; making the invisible, visible. Anytime a group of people gather in a community to embody the agenda of the Kingdom of God, we have a church, and when it’s viewed like that, a church is always a good thing. The world needs more of these incarnational gatherings – gatherings of people who are being a visible sign of the invisible God in their communities, cities and ultimately all of creation.