Pete McMartin has served up a beautiful story of a family working out their faith in Jesus in the Downtown Eastside. The progressive integration of the Gospel into the spaces where we live-work-play is what we have been talking about Cityview. I’m so glad to have another story of someone doing it! As we each listen and respond to Jesus our lives won’t necessary look like Kathryn Walker’s, but I do think there are some common missional aspects that can be. Before I lay them out let’s get some engagement on this question: What do you think should be true of all followers of Jesus Christ?
Author: Craig
the compassion of Jesus
I enjoy Open Table. When we share the meal and time together as brothers and sisters in
Christ on Thursdays at Cityview for our community meal I get really excited about what Jesus is doing in our lives. Plus we have really good food! This week we prepared ourselves for the Lord’s Supper by reflecting on the compassion of Jesus. Its really a bit surprising. Our cultural disposition is quite accusatory towards those who preach. But when it came to compassion that’s exactly what Jesus did.
You see compassion is to be moved toward another person by the reality of their condition. In this case Jesus arrived on the other side of the lake with his tired and hungry disciples seeking a quiet place. But instead of quiet they found a crowd. Jesus “saw the large crowd and had compassion on them because they were sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.”
Obviously Jesus was an entertaining teacher; he taught through the day and past dinner. But more than that was going on. He recognized that the most desperate hunger of the crowd’s souls could only be met by truth, by Him, by the good news of His Kingdom. So he taught them. The truth could set them free. Now before you shut Jesus and the church off, see what happens next in the account from Mark.
The disciples, probably being really hungry themselves, recognized that the crowds of people where in a desperate situation for food. They were away from the towns and villages and the families that had spent the day with Jesus were now very hungry. The Disciples wanted Jesus to send them away. This is not compassion. The disciples were not moved toward the people. Rather, once they recognized the condition of the crowd, the disciples wanted to be done with them. I love what happened next.
Jesus told the disciples to feed the crowd. When they protested that it would cost eight months of wages, Jesus told them to see “what they had.” In other words Jesus told them go find out what this community had. When they came back with five loaves and two fish, Jesus took this community offering and fed them all. They collected twelve baskets of leftovers. Now that’s hard to believe. And in case you are wondering the disciples had a hard time accepting Jesus’ authority of nature as well. Just notice that even within the next twelve hours they were astonished that Jesus had this kind of authority.
My observations here are about the compassion of Jesus. 1. He was moved towards people because of their condition: their interior world was lacking truth, specifically the truth about Him and the Kingdom; so, he taught them. 2. He was moved towards people because of their condition the physical reality of hunger; so, he had his disciples gather what was already present in the community and share it beyond what one would have thought possible.
I believe Jesus was nurturing the spiritual motives necessary for His disciples to be a movement: Complete trust and dependence in Him and compassion for the lost. If we are to join Jesus in His work we must ask the Holy Spirit to nurture these motives in us. Otherwise, we will keep our mouths shut in a culture that is suspect of truth proclamations and we will run away from people whose needs exceed what we have in our pockets. Two aspects of our ministry of the gospel of the Kingdom that must be held together tightly: proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus’ grace and the sharing of our community’s resources in the name, power, and character of Jesus. Clearly Glenn Beck is not the first to struggle with Jesus’ ability to hold these two realities together, nor will he be the last.
wow we were on the road 16 years ago…
Sixteen years ago Ellen and I were still two and half days away from Vancouver. We were driving across the continent to plant our lives here because of a vision of people transformed by Jesus Christ loving this city and the world. We were excited, hopeful, and probably a bit proud–even over confident. But, we were warmly welcomed by our new friends in the core of Gladstone, which became Cityview Baptist Church. Over the years I have looked back often at the picture I have of one of our first Sundays together and I have treasured the faith we all had that God was going to do something! I am astonished with the trust they give us as young 25 year old hopefuls!
And God has done something. I rejoice now in the hundreds of people we have been able to share the Gospel and life with in this City. I have been blessed with neighbours and friends who have immensely enriched my life. One of the things that has remained true of Cityview is that we are a people willing to risk and try new things. Confidence is helpful. Trust is essential. And listening to Jesus and discerning His direction is the way. I have always sought for us to individually and corporately wrestle with discerning Jesus’ voice. He is Lord…not me!
This year the Strategic Leadership Team at Cityview has taken another big step in our vision of creating communities of devoted followers in Vancouver and around the world. They have given me time to invest in people in the UBC Campus Community. We are convinced that God loves the students and people who live, work, and play there. And we have heard God’s call to join with other faithful people like Rich Carruthers, Suzanne Perry, and the students in Born for More to plant the Gospel in the diverse communities that together form UBC.
Our vision is to see a network of house churches or simple churches meeting in homes, coffee shops, and community gathering places because of the transforming work of Jesus and His Gospel of grace in our lives. Currently I am spending two and half days a week in the UBC Campus Community getting to know people, their patterns of life, their hopes and dreams, and their spiritual journey stories. As well, I am sharing the Gospel and including people in our community of faith.
This week I was so encouraged by a text from a friend. “Hey Craig…you still making trips out to UBC? I want to encourage you – I think that’s the coolest thing! Reminds me of soldiers that go into foreign area to do recon…” So my response was thanks…and you should come out with me! Now I know that you all can’t come out with me, but do pray for us. Pray the Luke 10:2b prayer…that the Lord of the Harvest will raise up workers for the Harvest. We have seen the Lord answer this and we are looking for new disciples of Jesus who will grow in faith and become part of the team.
After 16 years I have had to ask myself, why do I have to keep complicating my life? I have often done “two things” the whole time we have been here. It’s just the way the Lord has wired me and my family up and the way Jesus has invited me to be a part of what He is doing. I have said all along that our call to Vancouver has really been a call to follow Jesus. I wish that kind of life for every one of you.
“I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me–the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.” Acts 20:24
Church 3.0 by Neil Cole
A few years ago I was confronted with this observation: “Your system is perfectly designed for the results you are getting.”
Ok frustration. What adjustments could we make to see our system, our experience of church actually become part of the movement that Jesus envisioned—making disciples of all nations and teaching them to obey everything He commanded? How can we make reproducing disciples and therefore reproducing communities? What am I missing? What needs to change in me?
These questions set me on a journey and that journey has found an accompanying voice in the writings of Neil Cole. Neil has been a pastor of an organic church movement in California called Awakening Chapels for quite a few years now and he has been coaching house church/simple church planters. In the attempt to convey what he has been learning through actual praxis he has written several books:
Nurturing a Life for God
Organic Church
Organic Leadership
Search and Rescue
Church 3.0
In Church 3.0, published by Jossey-Bass, Neil’s thesis is that the adjustments required for a disciple-making movement is more than a functional or structural shift, it is an internal shift to a different way of thinking, believing and applying Jesus’ teaching from the typical (church 2.0) experience. Anyone familiar with the organic missional church conversation will recognize the shift that is occurring across the world in the way many of us “do church.” However, what is new in this book is that Cole is able to look back now on a variety of ways of applying the common principles accepted by people in the organic church conversation for movements and point to different expressions of them. There is not just one way of doing this!
Some of the things I appreciate about Church 3.0.
Like his friend Alan Hirsh, Neil Cole emphasizes the Lordship of Jesus, the authority and power of God’s Word, the sacrificial engagement of followers of Jesus with people where they live, work, play, and the joy of a church community flexing their gifts for and with each other. In Church 3.0 Neil delivers an insightful walk through Acts and the different multiplication impacts the following “church models” had: Jerusalem, Antioch, Thessalonica, Rome, and finally Ephesus. The move from centralized to decentralized mission networks is most helpful for dispelling the myth of purity in an organic church network. His discussion on the “pragmatic” concerns also opens a window on what his network has been learning about evangelism, the ordinances, kids, heresy concerns, and finances.
My appreciation for Neil’s work has been its consistent emphasis on three areas: 1. working out a mission lifestyle where people live, work, play. 2. His concern for planting the Gospel over planting churches. And 3. Ways for passing on the DNA (Divine Truth, Nurturing Relationships, and Apostolic Mission) required for a multiplication of disciples three and four generations out from us.
money sex and power
“God gave us sex, money, and power to steward. Yes, these are dangerous things to steward and we see the whole world obsessed with them. But as we fear them, we abdicate our stewardship of them. And what happens when we who are called to steward abdicate our role? Hollywood took on the task to steward how the world should view sex; Wall Street took on the task of how we should steward money; and Washington took over the task of how we should steward power. These are unconnected governors and they haven’t done the job very well, but how could they if they are disconnected from the Creator of these things?” p. 103 City Signals, Brad Smith.
urbanfoot 