Transcription
Hello, this is unit 11 of introduction to missions. I'm your professor Timothy Moore, and we are going to be looking at frameworks for missions that are transferable and reproducible processes. In order to have disciple-making movements and church-planting movements, it's necessary to have transferable, reproducible frameworks.
Um, you should be able to share. Uh, for instance, let's say you are coming to in-person classes and you're staying at the Hilton or Hampton or Comfort Inn, wherever. You're on the fifth floor. You meet a believer, and you're getting on the elevator, and you have from the first to the fifth floor. That believer says, "What are you learning in seminary about being a disciple of Jesus?" Well, our three essentials framework would be a way to be able to share with that person what a disciple is in an elevator ride.
For instance, well, there are three essential parts of being a disciple of Jesus. One is getting truth and promises from God's word, the Bible. The second thing is yielding to the adjustments and assignments of the Holy Spirit. And the third thing is sharing support and encouragement with others who are following Jesus. And we call those the three essentials. And so that's a framework, a way to communicate.
And let's say you're halfway up, uh, when you finish that. Maybe you're at the third floor, and uh, and you got two more floors and maybe a minute or two after you get off the elevator, and they say, "Well, where do you find those things in the Bible?" And you should be able to say, "Well, getting truth and promises are John 8:31, where Jesus said, 'Believers, you become my disciples when you abide in my word, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'" And then Second Peter 1:4 says that God has given us exceedingly great and precious promises, and it's through his promises that we escape the corruption that's in the world through evil desire and partake of his divine nature.
And then the second part, yielding to the adjustments and assignments of the Holy Spirit, that's Galatians 5:16, which says, "Yield yourself to the Holy Spirit." And when we do that, he makes adjustments so that we can be more like Jesus. And he gives assignments, and assignments have names and faces. God loves people. And so he gives us assignments that are people, and he wants us to show his love and to share his light with people.
And then the third thing, support and encouragement. That's Romans 12:15, that says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep." Rejoicing is celebrating. Weeping is the challenges. Life is a mix of celebrations and challenges. And when we rejoice with people in their celebrations, those celebrations are multiplied. And when we um share in people's challenges, they're divided. And so they're lighter and easier to bear. And then that's it. So you've got a full explanation of the essentials of the essential experiences of a disciple.
And then um let's say that person wants to have coffee, and you meet them for breakfast the next morning, and over breakfast they say, "You know, can you talk to me a little bit more about what life with Christ looks like?" Well, our framework for that is called the three distinctives. It is a devotional life, it's a relational life, and it's a missional life.
And so a devotional life is an experience with the three essentials. It's a consistent personal time with God, discovering truth and promises from God's word, being led into the adjustments and assignments of the Holy Spirit. And as you get those, you carry those into relational life. And relational life is sharing what you receive, what believers receive through their personal time with God with spiritual friends. We call that an impact group. And we're we give support and encouragement by praying for one another.
And then the third distinctive is a missional life. And a missional life really is partnering with Christ, uh, individually doing those assignments from the Holy Spirit. And then as a group, uh, meeting needs or healing hurts, uh, being being what we call in missions a gospel presence. When you're meeting a need or you're healing a hurt to demonstrate the love of God, uh, you're being a gospel presence, and you're ready. You're gospel ready. You're ready to share Christ with the people that you're serving when they ask, as 1 Peter 3:15, "always be ready to give an answer to those who ask about the hope that's in you."
So, if you have a devotional life by practicing those three essentials that nurtures your own spiritual growth, then you're a disciple of Jesus Christ. If you have a relational life where spiritual friends are gathering to share from their devotional lives and pray for one another, then you're part of a living church. We're going to see that that an impact group really is a mini church. And then if you have a missional life where you seek to carry out the assignments of the Holy Spirit and you link with spiritual friends to serve so that other people can follow Christ, then you're fulfilling the great commission of Christ in Matthew 28:19-20. And so life with Christ has these three distinctives, the devotional, relational, and missional life. So those are frameworks, three essentials, three distinctives.
Um, I want to focus for just a moment on the aspect of having relational life together with spiritual friends. Um, Hebrews chapter 10:24 and 25 talks about not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together as is the manner of some. Uh, because when you assemble with other believers, it says that you're encouraged to love and good works. And so this relational life can be uh really the mustard seed; the smallest expression of it is you, me, and Jesus. It can be just two people because Jesus said, "Where two or three are gathered, there am I in their midst." And so um when when our devotional life is being shared and that becomes a missional life together, that's what we as mission strategists or missiologists call the ecclesial minimums. Ecclesial means church. The church minimums are devotional, relational, missional life together. It's actually a mini church.
And even as the church grows, it shouldn't be a church with small groups or impact groups. We call those groups that do the three distinctives impact groups. Uh, not just small groups because that has different connotations for different people. But you're making kingdom impact and fulfilling the great commission if you're living out those distinctives together. Those are ecclesial minimums.
So, uh, professor, are you saying that we have a church if I've got three people, uh, that I'm meeting with and we're having devotional life, relational life, and missional life together? Absolutely. Absolutely. That is church. And if a church becomes a church of 10,000 people, it should not be a church uh with impact groups. It should be a church of impact groups.
And so when we launch as a as a mission agency, a mission alliance, when we launch out missionaries and they go somewhere and they plant a new church and uh we refer to that sometimes as a parachute drop church plant. Uh, I've done that a few times in my life where you go into an area. In fact, I did it in in a town north of Seattle. There's no church there, and we fly in and uh, so to speak, and we're like parachute dropped, and we're there in that town, and because we land in that town, there should be a church there that's self-sustaining in two to three years. Well, you don't you don't go out and and try to start a church of a hundred people right away. What you do is you you go out and you serve with gospel readiness and you have one or two people come to Christ and you start an impact group. And then as that group is missional together, more people come to know the Lord. And eventually you start two groups. And then those two groups start four groups. Those four groups start eight groups, and then guess what you have? You have what we call a community church.
Um, the our small groups are up to about 20 to 25 people at max. And then if it gets a little bit beyond that, we call it an outpost. But when it gets beyond 50, we call it a community church. And then from 50 to about 250, that's the community church uh size. And beyond that, we call a macro church. And um a macro church is a church that is a church of impact groups that's fulfilling the great commission.
Now um there are there are many churches, especially across the um the south in in the United States that are incredibly large churches. We call them megachurches. I was raised in western North Carolina. North Carolina has many, many megachurches. In fact, that movement uh it it could we could make an argument that that megachurch movement started in the southeast where I was raised, and then it went across the southeast to Texas, and then it it there are smatterings of areas that have very large churches, and um and I was raised in that uh church growth movement that generated these massive megachurches. Is. And so I I want to uh express to you a a dilemma um in these large megachurches because it's possible to have these large churches. It happens regularly where disciples are not being made. We're gathering large groups of people. We're bringing people in the front door, closing the back door, but they're not they don't look like disciples of Jesus Christ.
And so, um, I was actually educated, uh, 34 years ago. I started Bible college in Dallas, Texas. Uh, and I was actually attending a church and serving in a church that had 28,000 people. At that time, it was the largest church in North America. That was First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. And so I was ministering there and teaching uh Bible study while I was going to Bible college, and uh I have a music background. And so um I went to university before that on on a music scholarship. And so because I have a music background, they were using me to lead choirs and uh and to sing in various groups, and uh that provided a scholarship for me to go to Bible college. Uh, so my very first ministry right off the bat, largest church in America, 28,000 people. And so um I'm going to Bible college in a college connected to that church. And often they would have in front of us in chapel services the leaders of the the largest churches in America. And so I was trained in this megachurch movement, this church growth movement, trained to reach out uh and minister to the felt needs of people to be very aware of their of what they feel as needs and their preferences and generate a very large crowd, to get people in small groups so they'll make relational connections and it will in effect close the back door of the church and the church just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and uh and often what happens is the church becomes very corporate, and the people that are attending are not disciples; they become consumers, and so the church is like a corporate vendor church.
And so after about 18 years of being involved in these large, very large megachurches, um I became pretty troubled that we had all kinds of people coming to church that didn't reflect what Jesus described as a disciple and his great commission to us in Matthew 28:19-20. Uh, "All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth. Go you therefore and make disciples." And so I had studied what he meant, his words, the words of Jesus. What did he mean by making a disciple? And I developed some mission frameworks like I've shared with you about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. And I wasn't seeing that in the church. I became very burdened about it that a shift needed to take place. And I wrote a mission framework to express that shift that needed to take place called the kingdom continuum. And on one side, a continuum is just a line with points along the line. It has a left side, it has a right side. And on the left side is this corporate culture-driven vendor church that has consumers and spectators. And on the other side is the kingdom-driven church that's doing exactly what Jesus said to do to make disciples. And in this continuum, you can see the shift that happens.
And so uh the the consumer church, the vendor church is providing goods and services to meet the needs, the felt needs of the people. I want to become a better businessman. I want to become a better father, a better mother, a better uh friend, uh whatever. Um, they feel that need, and the church is catering to that need, providing these goods and services almost like a beach resort. My wife and I just had an anniversary, and uh we were provided uh a place down in Cabo San Lucas. Uh, if you look at at the previous two units, I'm a little darker in this unit because we spent time on the beach uh in Cabo San Lucas, and it was an all-inclusive resort, and it was a gift to us for our anniversary. And so we got to do that, and uh they they provided something for everybody, and there was a vast staff. This resort was like a small like a town; it would literally three, four thousand people stay at this resort, and you have this staff that they're working all hours of the day to provide everyone everything that they think they need. And you know what I what I uh noticed as I would walk past the pool or this little cabana or this restaurant that was a part of the resort or this little shop, this gift shop. People were complaining. This place was spotless. There was something for for everyone from uh what I I call the tinies to the 90s, for all all generations; there's something to do. And yet people were still complaining. And that's exactly how I felt at times in the large corporate church. We're trying to provide something for everybody, and it people are still complaining. And so it just burns you out. It It's only true 100% of the time. I saw people want to quit ministry. I saw many people quit ministry for good, burn out, break down into a million pieces because it just keeps demanding more. And a shift has to happen because Jesus said, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light."
So what's the shift on the continuum? You have goods and services like the beach resort. And then then on the kingdom church over here, instead of goods and services, you have make disciples. Make disciples. Matthew 28:19. Over here on the consumer church, you have performers. So staff, worship team members, musicians, preachers, ministers, performers running programs. But Ephesians 4:12 says that the leaders of the church are equippers. We are we equip Christians to do the work of ministry. So instead of performers, equippers as staff leaders. Over here you have spectators. People come and they're just watching. But there's none of that in the churches in in scripture that are that are following the leadership of the Holy Spirit in the direction of Jesus. What you have in the scripture in Philippians 1:5, the the apostle Paul says of the people in the church at Philippi, "you became my partners in spreading the gospel." And so the people that were part of the church were called partners, not members, partners. uh, the idea of church membership is something that we developed in in modernity. It is not in the Bible. Partnership is in the Bible. So we don't have membership in the churches that that uh uh either I start or I train other people to start. We have participants and we have partners. We don't have members because you have members of resorts. You have members of Costco. You have you have when you have membership, it's about privileges and benefits. That's not what the church is about. The church is about a mission and about the responsibility to invest our lives in the mission of the kingdom. We all have the same things to invest: time, talents, treasure, and testimony. Everyone has the same thing, and we invest it as partners, not as members demanding benefits.
Over here in the vendor church, the corporate church, you have consumers. The people who attend or members are consumers. But over here in the kingdom church, they're contributors. Over here, everything is driven by human preferences. And over in the kingdom church, everything is driven by biblical priorities. It's chapter and verse. I tell people in our in in the church that I serve, if you want to know why we're doing anything that we do, I'll give you chapter and verse. If I can't give you chapter and verse, we don't need to be doing it. That way, we know we are being driven by biblical priorities. So if instead of being a vendor church, a corporate church, giving goods and services, having performers as staff, spectators in the seats, consumers in the seats, and being driven by human preferences, we are a kingdom-driven church, which is making disciples, leaders are equippers, people who come and are partners in the ministry, contributors of time, talent, treasure, and testimony, and driven by biblical priorities. Here's what happens only 100% of the time. Ephesians 3:20, which says, "Now all glory to God, who is able through his mighty power at work within us to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think." When we can remain a kingdom-driven church, it unleashes what I call the God factor. And we get what God can do, not what we can do. And what God can do is infinitely more than we can ask or even imagine.
So churches are the the the the mustard seed of the church. The mini church is the impact group. Many impact groups that are starting to come together are an outpost or community church. When that grows over 250, that's a macro church. If it stays kingdom driven, it's not a church with impact groups. It's a church of impact groups. It continues to multiply. And that macro is known for its sending capacity, not just its seating capacity, and we're deploying people. The church that uh that I'm a pastor at right now, Christ the King Hope Church, is known here in the valley as a sending church. Almost every Sunday, we're sending people out. We we call them uh I call them SWAT teams or swap teams. SWAT people or SWAT people. And that's an acronym: servants willing and temporary or servants willing and permanent. We're sending people out to churches who need people to serve. And so we're not inwardly focused. We're not trying to build our big organization. We are equipping people, Ephesians 4:12, to be deployed as disciple-makers. And that's what a kingdom-driven church does.
I want to go slip into some more advanced mission strategy. We've looked at the three essentials of discipleship. We've looked at the three distinctives, devotional, relational, and missional. We've looked at the kingdom continuum, which is a tool to see, are we cultured or are we kingdom driven. Okay. The next framework that I want to give you is um a framework for starting an impact group, a missional community that makes multiplies disciples. Let's say you decide next week you want to start an impact group. What does that look like?
Um, you find at least one other person, one or two other people because Jesus said, "Two or three, I'm there in your midst." And when you and you can get together anywhere, in a home, in a coffee shop, uh we have impact groups around the world that meet uh out in forests, in the jungle. Uh, it doesn't matter. You can you can gather anywhere to do this. But when you gather, you're going to do five things. One, you're going to pray. Somebody's going to pray and invite the Holy Spirit to lead the group. And then once you dedicate that to the glory of Jesus, you ask the Holy Spirit to lead the group. The second thing that happens is uh you share; each person is given an opportunity to share from their devotional time with God, the time that they spent with God getting truth and promises from his word. Uh, I have a tool I I've mentioned before, the three essentials book that has a journal where you keep these things and then you take those to your group. You use your three essentials journal to and you bring it to your impact group. That's a great way to do it. And so you the the person leading the group allows everyone to share truths or promises from their personal time with God. People need to be given that opportunity. They don't have to share, but they need to be given the opportunity to share. Number three, they share from the adjustments and assignments that they think the Holy Spirit has given them. Number four, everybody gets prayed for. Um, we try to we try to do this. Everybody prays, and everybody gets prayed for. If somebody's new to the faith or they're seeking, they don't have to pray out loud, but they pray for what the other people other person has shared, maybe the person beside them, and they just say "amen" out loud to let the next person know their prayers done and they can start praying. So, you pray over the adjustments and assignments. Number four, um I'm sorry, number four is praying over the adjustments and assignments. Number five is you seek together a spirit-led common cause, an assignment that the group can do together to show Christ and share Christ in the community. That is uh volunteering or serving with gospel readiness. That's what a common cause is. Um, that's what we call it: common cause, an assignment for the group.
Um, so one more time: one, invite the Holy Spirit's leadership. Number two, everyone has the opportunity to share truths and promises. Number three, everyone has the opportunity to share adjustments and assignments from the Holy Spirit. Number four, everybody gets prayed for. Nobody stands alone. And number five, you you seek together, you ask the Holy Spirit to reveal a common cause mission that your group can do together to show and share Christ.
Now, um there are some things that we call impact group killers. If you don't stick to to that um to to that framework, if you don't stick to that and you allow any of these killers to happen, then the group's only going to die 100% of the time. I've seen this 34 years of doing this. I've seen groups thrive and multiply, and I've seen groups die. And if a group dies, it's because one of these five things are allowed to happen in an ongoing way in the group, and it kills the group 100% of the time. They are: number one, what we call cross-talk. Now what cross-talk is is advice giving or criticism where one person in the group is trying to fix and give advice to another person in the group. You're not there to fix each other. You're not there to give advice to each other in the group. You know what you're there for? To share truth and promises from God's word that you got in your devotional time with God. To share any adjustments and assignments that you receive from the Holy Spirit and to pray for one another. That's it.
The second thing that will kill the group is gossip. Gossip is talking about other people's negative behavior or private life. You're not there to talk about other people's negative behavior or private life. You know what you're there to do? Share truth and promises that you receive in your time with God. Share adjustments and assignments that you receive from the Holy Spirit and to pray for one another. That's what you're there for. Number three, political discussions. An impact group is about sharing truth and promises from God's word. What you receive as an adjustment and assignment from the Holy Spirit and praying for one another. If you allow it to digress into a political discussion, it'll kill the group. Number four, isms, pet belief systems. An impact group is about sharing truth and promises from God's word, adjustments and assignments from the Holy Spirit, and praying for one another. Isms, the only good isms are baptism and evangelism. Every other system of belief that ends in "-ism" causes division in the church. And so, it's just not the place for it. It's not the place to be evangelistic with your ideas about Calvinism, Arminianism, dispensationalism, any "-ism." That's not the place. You know what? It's the place for sharing truth and promises you receive from the time with God and his word, yielding yourself to the Holy Spirit, and sharing the adjustments and assignments that you think you've received, and making sure everybody prays and gets prayed for. That's what it's about.
The last thing that will kill it is just everybody sharing a bunch of good ideas that are not God ideas. Now, what I mean by that is you're there to share the truth and promises from God's word, adjustments and assignments from the Holy Spirit, and also to seek an assignment from the Holy Spirit that is for the entire group. Now, there are people who are just idea people. I'm an idea person. I'm a choleric personality, and I can we can sit and talk, and I can give you 27 ideas about something every 30 minutes. That doesn't mean that God wants us to do all of those things. What God wants us to do is the assignment of the Holy Spirit. That's what the Bible means when it says
His yoke is easy. A yoke is an assignment. The yoke is what they put on two animals to pull apart. That's the assignment, the work that he's leading us to do. And the Bible says his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And so we're not going to be crushed by the weight of assignments from the Lord. We need his assignment because with his assignment comes his power and his resources. And so we seek together the assignment.
If you have two or three people who are caleric personalities like me in the group, and we share 30 different things the group is supposed to do that we think the group might do, and then the group tries to do that, it will only kill the group 100% of the time. All those good ideas that are not God's assignment will kill the group. So one more time, very quick, no cross talk, no gossip, no political discussions, no pet doctrines, no isms, and no waterfall of good ideas. Seek the assignment of the Holy Spirit.
If you're studying Christian leadership, this is a principle of Christian leadership. It's always more important to define what you're not going to do than it is to decide what you're going to do. Because if you don't set the guidelines and guardrails and the boundaries, and um, and I just do that every time I, when I lead an impact group, um, a lot of times there's 10, 12, 15 people in there, and I have a different person each week read the impact group killers because if you read them every week for six or seven weeks and then you stop for three weeks, the group forgets it. Uh, there's an old saying that repetition is the mother of learning. And in First Peter it says we're stirred up by way of reminder. And so we need to be reminded of things.
Hey there, this is Pastor Timothy with CTK Hope Church, and we are in our 40-day emphasis of devotional life with God. Your devotional life is just an expression of your relationship with God. Good relationships are built on two things: quality time and good communication. And so your devotional life is just carving out a few minutes to focus your time and your attention on the Lord and what he has to say to you through his word and some time in prayer. And so we've developed a tool at CTK Hope called 345. It stands for 3 minutes and 45 seconds. That's how long it takes to read or listen to the average chapter of the Bible. But it's more than just reading or listening to the Bible; it's the posture of our heart coming into God's presence. The prophet Isaiah said, "Lord, I sit before you as one to be instructed." And that's a good prayer to pray whenever we um come into that chapter that we're reading in 3:45. Just, "Lord, I'm I'm sitting here as one to be instructed. Speak to my heart, Lord." And the Bible teaches that he will he will reveal truth that sets you free and he will give you promises to empower you to live the kind of life that Jesus described in John 10:10 when he said, "I've come that they may have life and have it more abundantly." And then in John 15:1, he says, "I've come that you may have joy and that your joy might be full." That all starts with our devotional life with God in his word and in prayer. We're not talking about taking an hour. We're talking about a few minutes of quality time in the presence of the Lord, letting him speak to your heart and you speaking to him in prayer. This is where the Christian life, the devotional life with God starts, and it's the foundation of our growth in Christ and living the kind of life that he wants us to live in this world. So, I'm excited to hear the stories of what God speaks to your heart about through his word and and what he changes in your heart and mind through his Holy Spirit as you press into your devotional life with God.
Well, good morning, CTK family. Sorry to scare you. And this is Pastor Given here. And uh, yep. This is what Tanya wakes up to every morning. Tanya and I have been married 40 years. We have a wonderful relationship, a gift from God. And this, unfortunately, this is what she wakes up to every morning: uh, crazy hair and wrinkly. Um, and I'm doing this to prove a point because relationships are like that. They're unruly, um, they've got wrinkles, and uh, we don't always see each other at our at our very best, and you know what? Jesus wants us to come exactly that way, exactly how we are, who we are; he knows already, and uh, so that devotional part of your life, you don't have to have everything figured out, you don't have to wait till you've showered, you don't have to uh have had breakfast or your coffee; uh, you can come to him anytime, and he is going to hear you and take delight in um, so you can come however you are.
And the other thing is that I think is because, and honestly, there are times I think we want to do our best, put on our best for the Lord. Um, but that's for the benefit of others. That's not for him. Um, he loves us just the way we are. Anyway, um, the other thing that I think is really important in our devotional life because it is a relationship, right? Is to spend time with Jesus in ways um like we would with a friend. I know some of you fish and hunt. I know some of you spend time in the outdoors and doing other things like that um and spend time with Jesus there. I know Pastor Timothy has even said that from the pulpit about his time outdoors with the Lord, and that's really important uh for me, as you might have guessed, uh part of my time with the Lord is spent in song, in singing, and uh I love to sing songs, and one of the things that he's told me lately is, "Sing my words back to me," and I felt that he was telling me that. So, um, taking psalms or some other Oh, my time's about, uh, taking psalms and whatnot and, uh, and just singing back his words to him because he delights in you. And you know what, Zephaniah 3 says that he will rejoice over you with joyful songs as well. So, anyway, like I said, come as you are. Just spend time with Jesus. Have a great one. See you tomorrow.
Hey church family, this is Pastor Julia, and we are in our 40-day emphasis on a devotional life with Jesus. And I just wanted to encourage you today with the idea of being in relationship and what that looks like and what Jesus longs for in in that relationship with us. I had a friend who came to visit me uh just a few weeks ago, and I have known her for 45 years of my 50 years on this planet, and we shared a lot of great memories together. We talked about those summers where we had Monopoly games that lasted the entire summer. We shared memories about the times where we would make snow forts in those Minnesota winters. And my favorite was when we decided that we were going to make an ice rink in her backyard, and all we needed to do was hose it down and let it freeze. Um, but it just doesn't work that way. So, we laughed and we cried, and we just had some of the greatest memories. And I thought about that and I thought, you know, is that how I can reflect on my life with Jesus? Can I look back and remember the memories and remember the things that he's done in my life, and can I say that I've been in relationship with him? You know, in 1 John 4:16 it says, "God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them." And I think if I'm going to experience a life with Jesus and be in relationship with him, I need to spend time with him. And I know that life gets crazy busy, but I need to be intentional, and I need to want to be with him. And I did that with my friend for years. We spent a ton of time together. We had a lot of fun together, a lot of memories to share. And I want that with my Jesus. And I want that for you. And he longs for that for us. He wants to be in relationship because he loves us so much. And he just wants us to show that love to him in return. So I just want to encourage you to love on Jesus today, and may he in turn show you his great love for you.