Light of the World, a City on A Hill
…thinking out loud about living missionally in the city of Sydney so that the city will come to know Jesus…Archive for missional
Festivities, Fireworks and Pumpkin Soup
Well the Annual Stanhope Fireworks festival happened last night (postponed from orginal timing because of rain).
It was a really great night…but let me start from the beginning:
We (Stanhope Anglican) had the opportunity to participate in the Festival in some capacity and after some strategising we decided we needed to do something that a) blessed the community and b) gave us opportunities to meet and talk to people.
From these objectives the idea of a soup stall came together and this is what we did.
We set up a big marquee with a serving table for dispensing soup and selling glow sticks. We also provided an area of tables and chairs where people could sit, relax and enjoy their soup. This was warmed by a couple of outdoor gas heaters to provide maximum comfort. To top it off, kids colouring activities were provided free of charge to help out the parents. The whole area was heavily branded with our logos, so there was no doubt as to who we were.
Aside form the glow sticks, Pumpkin soup was our sole product…and it was a winner. By the end of the night, we had sold over 170 cups of steaming soup. I can pin the success down to 2 factors: 1) the soup was really, really good (in fact a number of people told us it was the best they had ever tasted!) and 2) at $1 a cup, it was outstanding value on a cold night.
Now at $1 a cup we weren’t in it to make money (though I’m pretty sure we covered our costs). Our objective was community connection and to this end I believe God blessed our endeavours. 170 cups meant at least 100 connections with different people. Some of these were short (20 seconds) and some were longer (I had a few 5-10 min conversations). In all cases we were able to serve with a smile and a heart to bless.
If anyone is looking for a way to meet people and connect with their communites, getting involved in events like the Stanhope Festival is a great way to do it.
Connecting with Stanhope
The annual Stanhope Winter Festival & Fireworks is happening next weekend.
My church is using the opportunity to be involved and connect with our community in a hopefully meaningful way.
We had two aims in deciding what to do:
- Be a blessing to the people there
- Provide an opportunity to talk to people for a few minutes
To this end we are running a stall selling nice hot pumkin soup. To encourage people to stay and chat we are offering tables and chairs and free kids helium balloon decoration. All under some gas heaters which should be appreciated on what will be a cold night.
Please pray for us…
Total Church on Journey’s In Between
Matt Stone is a Sydney based missional thinker and former Sydney Anglican (he’s gone Baptist, but we still love him).
Matt comments on the recent Total Church conference and peripheral discussions on his blog.
If you were at the conference or have some views to share, head on over to Matt’s blog.
Reflections on Total Church
Here are some hits from the Total Church conference that I managed to capture:
Total Church is all about Christians living out their lives in community that is shaped in every way by the Gospel. (this was hammered throughout…made sense to me)
The gospel is the air we need to breath every single day – it’s not just something we pull out for evangelistic purposes. (I had already come to this conviction recently…the need to preach the gospel to believers not just un-believers)
The life of the believer is one of joyful repentance (Luther). It’s like we are continually saved, continually responding to the gospel. (Same as above)
We model to a watching world our covenantal life together. (It seems to me we don’t show the watching world anything much better/different than what they already experience…tough call)
Mission is the central purpose of the church in the world – central, not peripheral. (Pretty standard, missional thinking here)
More often than not the gospel and mission becomes the last bolt-on element to our lives.
So decision making goes: Job -> Location -> House -> School -> Church -> Gospel/Mission.
Instead it should be: Gospel/Mission -> Church -> Location/School/House/Job
(The above observations are so so true…The Crowded House guys really challenge their people to think very counterculturally on this)
When you use the word church, you are immediately mis-communicating as the word has so much baggage and misperception. (I have sympathy for this view, though I am in two minds about what to do about it)
The bedrock of gospel ministry - Long Term, Low Key, Relational (this was foundational…as an approach this seems so much more authentic than hit ‘em hard, confrontational evangelism)
Living with gospel intentionality in the everyday ordinary things of life. (gospel intentionality was a phrase that permeated the whole day. It very much underpinned the above ministry approach)
A commitment to building relationships and living out the gospel and talking about it as part of normal conversation. May require the introverted people to become relational. (Yep…fire up introverts)
I am reading the Total Church book at the moment which is helping to round out the concept. One key outtake, which others have also noted, is the concept of Evangelism in community, which really exhorts outside relationships being built in the context of the gospel community living out it’s life in all it’s dimensions. I really like the concept, but doing it in practice requires a huge shift in praxis, and it’s foreign to our fiercely individualistic culture.
Total Church Conference
I am taking the day off work next Tuesday to go along to the “Total Church” conference being pulled together by my friend Shane Rogerson.
I am really looking forward to hearing from Steve Timmis, and also hanging out with brothers and sisters from different backgrounds and situations. I’m hoping I’ll get to meet some people I only currently know digitally.
No doubt it will provide much food for thought (and blogging).
Reformed Missology - Preface
As I have mentioned in a previous post, I intend to put some thoughts up on how a reformed theology might inform and shape our missiology. Before doing that I wanted to give some prefatory comments.
First, I am not intending on exhaustively defending a reformed theology - there are others much better qualified than I to do this. The validity of the viewpoint will be assumed.
I will not be suggesting that my conclusions are the be all and end all.
I will inevitably “contrast” against a more free-will orientated viewpoint, but will try to be as gracious as possible in doing so.
Here we go…
All Talk, No Action
Stephen Murray laments the fact that there is a lot of talk about church planting in his home country of South Africa, but not much actual church planting.
We do some here, but not a great deal.
Is this an area where we are also all talk, no action?
Are there other areas?
Playground Connection
I had a good Easter weekend. My main challenge was to keep refocusing my kids on Jesus and away from Chocolate and the Easter Bunny. Cursed Secularism!
Got along to services (I’ve stopped calling them “Church”) on Friday (Rouse Hill) and Sunday (Stanhope) both of which were encouraging times of remembering Jesus’ work on the Cross.
Numbers seemed a little down in my estimation. Some people were holidaying no doubt. I heard someone say, though, that a bunch of people were up at KEC (Easter Convention up the Mountains). Now churching up there is all good, but does this leave the gatherings back down the mountain somewhat anaemic on one of the days of the year where visitors are likely to be joining? Something to think about.
I took the kids to the park across the road yesterday for a play. Before long another dad came along with his two kids to do the same. I pushed past my natural tendency to keep quiet and introduced myself with a handshake. My new acquaintance and I chatted for 15 minutes, getting to know a bit about each other. He and his wife live around the corner and as we were parting company he told me to give him a call if ever I needed help with anything.
Wow. Just like that.
Connection is sometimes easier than we think.
Christology, Missiology, Ecclesiology
I have been steadily ploughing through my recent Amazon haul of books and am finding them all really helpful.
I will post some more complete thoughts later, but for now I wanted to mention a line of thinking that has come out from a number of authors, and has resonated with me.
The view is that we first and foremost must understand and define our Christology (who Jesus is and what is the Gospel) and this in turn drives and shapes our Missiology (why are we here, what are we here to do) and then against the backdrop of our cultural context we form our Ecclesiology (what we do and how we do it).
Michael Frost explicitly spells this out in his “Exiles” book.
I think sometimes my faith tribe (and others like it) can be a bit “Pauline”, i.e. skewed toward the NT Epistles, and in turn de-emphaise the Gospels, reducing them to “Jesus died, rose, ascended,believe in him and be saved”.
I am now trying to re-discover the Gospels and perhaps move towards more well rounded view of ‘the’ Gospel.
Counter Cultural Living - Part 4
Andrew Cameron (Social Exec Committee - Syd Anglicans) responds to a recent article in today’s SMH.
The original article is here. In it, the writer seeks to legitimise “middle age” women taking their happiness into their own hands and giving their less-than-perfect husbands the flick.
I really like Andrew’s response, and I think we can learn something from it.
He presents an alternative picture, of what it looks like to work through the trials of tribulations of marriage towards the deep sense of oneness that God intended (and not surprisingly even secular people yearn for). Cameron holds out his own marriage, not to boast, but to show this alternative picture grounded in reality.
I think this is what we must do.
