I don’t normally post my whole messages here, but this is worth it. It has a little recap of 2011 and has important values for us (as a church and individually) to live out in the new year.
And, I’m not naive, I know some really just want to see the first 5 minutes again where I have my son teaching with me. He had definitely loosened up by the 3rd service!
And I shouldn’t be surprised…according to Wikipedia, Jackson was right that Jelly fish should be called “Jellies” because they aren’t fish!
Tim Keller is one of the most respected pastoral voices in the world today. I think most of us who are a little younger see him as a wise father-figure who is sharp theologically and still has his leadership edge.
It’s compelling to hear his voice among many in this video – and their discontent with simply starting a new church.
HT to my friend Dave Ferguson for this!
This concludes a series of 4 posts about what defines Suncrest. Any healthy church or business knows what they are about…and what they aren’t about. These 4 lists are the absolute non-negotiables for us. It has sparked a few good questions which I may tackle in later posts. Here are the links to the previous 3 posts in case you missed them:
A quick word before I share our Approach to Discipleship. About 5 years ago, our leaders were asking, “How do we know if people at our church are really growing spiritually?” We struggled for a unified answer, but it wasn’t because the Bible was unclear. It was because we all had different backgrounds and preferences that shaped us. The biggest problem was that we used the same language “We want spiritual growth (or discipleship).” But we all had different things we assumed that language meant. Some thought it meant more Bible knowledge. Some thought it meant deep prayer life. Some thought it meant a growing concern for the poor. Some thought it meant being an all-star evangelist. Some didn’t even know what being an evangelist meant!
Worse, it became obvious that if the leaders didn’t have clarity on this, we had no hope of actually shaping the spiritual life of our church in a significant way. So, we went back and studied the scriptures. We especially studied the life of Jesus, the practices he embraced, and the ways he asked us to follow him.
We landed on 4 central practices that are essential to the growth of any Christ-follower. These could break down into subsets with much longer lists, but this is the core. We tried to capture them with single memorable words, short explanatory phrases and then share a few scriptures (there are many we could add) that embody them.
Our Discipleship Approach: Areas in which we strive for Christ-followers to grow
CULTIVATE a personal relationship with Jesus.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. -Jesus in John 15:5
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. -Philippians 3:10
CONNECT in Relationships where truth meets life.
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ… -Ephesians 4:15
They devoted themselves to…the fellowship… -Acts 2:42
CONTRIBUTE by serving.
Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. -Matthew 20:28
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. -Mark 8:34-35
CARE about people far from God.
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” -Luke 19:10
…”Why does he eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” -Mark 2:16-17
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Two quick things:
1. We are careful to align any programs with these practices. It takes focus and discipline, but ALL of our programming is designed to help people with one or more of these. We evaluate our discipleship effectiveness on the basis of these practices.
2. All are important…there is no priority. Some will come more naturally to you than others, but maturity comes from growing in all of them. That means the guy who knows the Bible cover to cover, but doesn’t give a rip about people far from God is immature. The opposite is also true.
I’m doing a series of posts on what defines suncrest. We put it all under a simple umbrella statement: “This is Suncrest…” This is the third of four posts. You can see “Our Culture” by clicking here and see “Our Mission” by clicking here.
Today is about our Theology and it is critically important to us. One of my favorite quotes is from A.W. Tozer when he said:
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
Theology Matters. It shapes us in ways we often are not even aware of.
Our Theology: In Essentials…Unity. In Non-Essentials…Liberty. In all things…Love.
We believe that Scripture in its entirety originated with God and was intended for use by man in all matters of faith and conduct. Scripture reflects the personalities of the human writers who were chosen by God. However, the Bible is a revelation from God alone. It is perfectly accurate, authoritative, complete, and reliable.
The Bible Teaches that God is the sovereign Creator and the Lord of all that exists. He is one and yet exists eternally in three personalities: Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit.
The Bible Teaches that Sin separates us from God. Sin is any conscious thought or action that does not please God. It is the mark of human imperfection and the reason we are in need of reconciliation to God.
The Bible Teaches that Jesus Christ is God’s eternally existing son. He lived on earth in human form as a product of miraculous conception and virgin birth. Jesus lived a sinless life and was a willing sacrifice for the sins of all people by dying on the cross. His resurrection after death provided an opportunity for all people to have abundant and eternal life.
The Bible Teaches that the Holy Spirit is God who comes to live within every believer at conversion. He provides the believer with all that is necessary (direction, gifts, fruit) to live within the will of God.
The Bible Teaches that Human Beings, though created in the very image of God, have chosen to disobey God by sinning. It is only by the perfect sacrifice of Christ that human beings can be reconciled to God.
The Bible Teaches that Salvation is an act of God’s love and grace. This gift from God is free to anyone who chooses to follow Jesus Christ in faith as his/her Savior. That eternal gift is appropriated as a believer demonstrates trust by obeying Him as Lord.
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Please don’t miss the importance of the phrase at the top about Unity in essentials, Liberty in non-essentials, and Love in everything. Suncrest lives out that phrase more beautifully than any church I have ever seen…focusing on the elements we must agree on to be one church and leaving room for diversity and even disagreement among other elements of theology.
One quick example:
The Bible teaches with clarity that Christ will return to earth one day. That is an essential.
There are multiple interpretations of how/when Christ’s return will happen. That is a non-essential. It means you and I might have convictions about our own interpretations, but we can respectfully disagree and still worship, serve, lead, and be used by God to change lives at Suncrest together.
Next up…Our Approach to Discipleship.
I’m doing a short series on the defining aspects of Suncrest. This is Post #2 of 4 about Suncrest. I did “Our Culture” here.
If you have been around Suncrest long, you might have our short mission statement memorized. If you are a leader, you definitely do.
Our Mission: Being Used by God to Change Lives
Side Note: I have to imagine any corporate expert on mission statements would think ours is ludicrous because it is written in the “passive” voice. I think that is critically important though because it defines it is more about God than it is about us.
Still to come…Our Discipleship Approach and Our Theology.
I don’t think I’ve done a series of blog posts before about this. Honestly, that is hard to believe because they are so central to us (and to me). Over the next 4 posts, I will outline the core elements of our church: Mission, Culture, Discipleship Approach, and Theology. We call it “This is Suncrest”
This came to mind because yesterday we had almost all of our staff at a conference that talked about organizational culture/values. So, I’m going to start today with that list.
Our Culture: DNA markers that define our approach to “doing church”
Two quick notes about Culture:
1. Every church (or any business/organization) HAS a culture. Our desire is to be intentional about ours and use our defined culture to guide our approach to how we do church.
2. It is key to remember that this is OUR approach. Different churches have different approaches and we celebrate that. The most important thing is to know what YOUR approach is.
Mission, Discipleship Approach, and Theology are still to come.
I just got an update on the team currently working in Liberia with our friends in Muncie. This trip is through “Hope 2 Liberia”. There are about 20 people on the trip with 8 of them from Suncrest.
It sounds like the team is doing great. Everything from attitudes, to a busy medical clinic to giving clean water systems to families.
They are in the country at the same time as yesterday’s Presidential Election, which can create some stress — the country is handling their own elections for the first time in 20 years! Thankfully, it was mostly peaceful and though there was some controversy in the country from the loser, the international observers declared the re-election of their current president “free and fair”. That is absolutely huge for a developing a country.
If you would stop and pray for these requests they passed on…
1. The generator at the church. It is not working and they use it for power and welding. It is critical to finish the building project at Danny Buegar’s church in Monrovia.
2. Friday is a huge day to engage children with the church. Lots of potential. (I’ve been there for these kinds of things….PLEASE pray!)
3. The team has a lot of members working with the worship services this Sunday. It always stretches the team and is such a blessing to the Liberian people.
Last month, I sat on a panel of multi-site pastors at our NewThing Network gathering. In multi-site, everyone knows you get to (and have to!) reproduce leaders all of the time. But a question came up about using video teaching: “What about reproducing teachers?”
I’ve thought about it a lot so I was glad the question came to me. If I was to narrow our reasons for using it (70% video at 2 campuses and 30% video at one campus), there are two reasons:
Small Reason: Efficiency/Effectiveness. Our Campus Pastors work their tails off. They start early and often don’t shut it down until after an evening meeting. Campus Pastors give input on development of the message, but use that 15 hours/week leading their campus instead of doing message prep.
Big Reason: Unity. How do we stay ONE church across 4 locations? Our campuses have freedom to be unique based on their campus pastor, the community they are in, and the dynamics unique to them (size, personality, and staff/personnel). Video teaching is a big aspect of a unifying experience for us – everyone is getting the same message. I talked to 3 multi-site churches in the last month that are not using video teaching, but they manuscript theirmessage and every teacher has to follow the manuscript (only place they diverge is telling personal stories) to give the message the same unity across their campuses. Unity is HUGE in multi-site.
It is good to be aware of potential pitfalls. For churches with video teaching, here are 2 things to pay attention to
-Does it make the church too centered/dependent on one person? My take: This isn’t particular to multi-site…all churches with a primary teacher should pay attention. It is about personality and leadership style. Are some pastors dictators and ego-maniacs? Yes. Is that a problem? Yes.
-Does it stunt the growth/opportunities/reproduction of other teachers? This is the more important question to me. But since we have gone multi-site, the opportunity for more people to get chances for Sunday morning teaching has increased exponentially and also has a more intentional development process.
Think about this:
When we were ONE site, i would teach 37 times a year and there would be 15 Sundays for others to teach. Usually 12 of those would go to our 2nd teacher and the other 3 got scattered to give others an opportunity. And, we were “free agents” – each person would be on their own to develop their message.
Today, I still teach about the same amount. Across FOUR campuses, there are now 80+ opportunities a year to have others up to teach. Our campus pastors are the most regular teachers and there are still about 15-20 opportunities a year to give others a voice into our church and develop their teaching gift. This year we will have 7 people besides me teach at the St. John Campus. We would have never had that kind of pipeline for teachers before multi-site.
The best part, though, goes far beyond how many chances people get to teach, it is that we have environments for actually helping people develop their thinking on messages, get direction, resources, and feedback. For example, our teaching team meets every Tuesday morning and ALL of our teachers give input on every message — whether I’m going to teach it or one of them.
Reproducing leaders..and teachers. It is what we do.
I mentioned being surveyed for this in a sermon a couple weeks ago. The results came out in a two part blog and now has actually spurred a blog of it’s own. I thought I’d share my answers with you (it seems they were substantially different from how most other pastors answered) and then link the blogs.
I replied to the survey in 5 minutes with the first things that came to mind. Here is what I wish everyone knew:
-You are way more capable than you imagine.
-God is always present. Always. And if you are a Christian, he literally lives inside of you.
-You might have something you think God wants you to do. That might align with doing it through the church, but it might not. It is no less valid or valued if it doesn’t.
-Sharing your weakness increases my respect for you. (And everyone else’s too.)
-Pretending you have it all together means I will not trust you.
-When you handle conflict right…WOW. So powerful.
-I use my formal education about the same amount way you do. It was extremely valuable for how to think, but do you still remember that chapter in your Child Development or Civil Engineering textbook? Me neither.
-No two pastors are the same. That is a very good thing.
-If you never talk to me after church, I’d love for you to introduce yourself.
-If you always talk to me after church, I’d love for you to let someone else introduce himself/herself.
-Don’t wait to be asked. This, of course, helps me as a church leader. I honestly believe it helps you more as a Christ-follower.
Here are the blog links and a little more commentary from me: For the two blogs that summarize all the survey answers: Part One & Part Two & Click here for the new blog devoted to this topic.
My overall reaction to the pastor’s responses? I was disappointed and compassionate.
Disappointed because it really sounds to me like a lot of pastors are not finding joy in their calling and more than a few are whining. I have seen the “poor me” martyr mentality take root in some friends. It only leads to ugly places for their churches, for them, and for their families.
Compassionate, though, because I know my experience at a church like Suncrest is unique and I’ve never had to walk in the shoes many pastors do. In fact, I just stopped to pray for them before I post this. Praying for joy, fruitfulness, and most of all faithfulness to their calling in all circumstances.
I came to Ecuador on Monday and will be back Friday. It’s a quick trip and my first time to South America. Instead of trying to write paragraphs, I thought I’d let the pictures tell the story. I’m here on an observation, educational, and vision trip at the invitation of Stadia (a church planting organization we work with) and Compassion International (the leading child sponsorship organization on the planet.
I’ve spent three days seeing what can happen when church planting works in tandem with lifting children out of poverty. I’m privileged to witness it and can’t help but imagine how this could multiply the impact of a church plant on a community.
Here are some pictures:
Carmen is a young girl being sponsored at a new church we visited.
Tom/Debbie Jones got to meet the actual girl they have sponsored. Amazing.
We did an in home visit for Tom/Debbie's child. Humbling Conditions.
I met Josh 13 years ago teaching High School Students about church planting in New England. Now he is a church planter in Annapolis, MD and we got to re-connect on this trip.
We did some of our transportation this way - with fellow pastors Donnie Williams & Rick Grover
Just for fun...we had a breakfast buffet and these were the options for topping your pancakes!
.Real.Greg.Lee. 
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