Keys to Success and Barriers to Growth (3 of 3)

After a short break for the summer holiday, we return with the third in our series exploring learnings for churches from the Imagine Pilot Project. Here we summarize a number of issues that churches we have worked with have faced that are around the question of process.

We have always sought to be clear with churches that Imagine outlines a process for churches to follow rather than a programme. In other words, this is not a tightly defined, one size fits all approach, but churches can follow a series of steps at their own pace and employing their own creativity.

Briefly outlined there are three phases to the process that we have walked through with churches:

1. Discover a new way of looking at the church – spend time considering the connection between the gathered and the scattered modes of the church. To support this and stimulate imagination we have provided the two Imagine magazines and the Imagine DVD.
2. Engage in active listening – for this we have given churches a survey which allows them to hear the issues their members on the Frontline and begins a dialogue in the congregation around this question.
3. Make a number of simple actions (one degree shifts) that signal a new way of being as a congregation and that seek to honour the Frontline and enhance the connections.

Simple as this process is, in practice the churches we have worked with have encountered a number of natural challenges which means that this process isn’t necessarily as smooth or as easy as it may appear. The most common of these have been:

Losing momentum
Changing too much too quickly is not often a problem for churches! No, the challenge has often been to implement changes clearly, regularly and tangibly enough for people to see the difference that is being made and to ensure that momentum is not lost.

Chris Wright on the Mission of God’s People

Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission, Biblical Theology for Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 304pp., ISBN 9780310291121.

Zondervan provide a pdf excerpt (here) of Chris Wright’s latest book. The chapter titles are below, but the excerpt includes a detailed table of contents (as well as the first chapter) which whets the appetite for what is clearly going to be an excellent book.

Queuing the Questions

1. Who Are We and What Are We Here For?

Arriving at Answers

2. People Who Know the Story They Are Part Of
3. People Who Care for Creation
4. People Who Are a Blessing to the Nations
5. People Who Walk in God’s Way
6. People Who Are Redeemed for Redemptive Living
7. People Who Represent God to the World
8. People Who Attract Others to God

Interlude – Pause for Thought

9. People Who Know the One Living God and Saviour
10. People Who Bear Witness to the Living God
11. People Who Proclaim the Gospel of Christ
12. People Who Send and Are Sent
13. People Who Live and Work in the Public Square
14. People Who Praise and Pray

Reflecting on Relevance

15. The Journey So Far and the Journey Ahead

Event: Antony Billington on Gospel-Shaped Discipleship

LICC's Head of Theology, Antony Billington, will be delivering a six lecture series on 'Gospel Shaped Discipleship' at LICC this autumn.

This series explores key facets of what this looks like for Christians and churches today - introducing some core theological themes at the heart of a gospel-shaped perspective on discipleship.

Lectures run 1.00pm-1.50pm, with the option to stay on for discussion afterwards.

Wednesday 13 October 2010: Beginning with the Gospel

Wednesday 20 October 2010: Engaging with the Word
Wednesday 3 November 2010: Belonging to the Church
Wednesday 10 November 2010: Walking with the Lord
Wednesday 24 November 2010: Living in the World
Wednesday 1 December 2010: Standing in God's Grace


Single lectures cost £5, or pay £10 for three, or £18 for the series of six.

Book here.

Keys to Success and Barriers to Growth (2 of 3)

In this series we are exploring some of the learnings for churches from the Imagine Pilot Project. In the first post we looked at a number of problems with perspective. Here we explore a second dimension:

Problems with Participation
Addressing the issue of participation we look at a set of issues encountered by churches around who should be involved in the process of becoming a whole-life disciplemaking community. Often this means changing a number of our preconceptions about who should be involved and how to go about it.

1) Thinking we know the solution
Old and established methods will not enable us to resolve the question of how to release people as whole-life disciples. Few leaders have received the appropriate training that leads to the effective release of people into their callings and we must recognise that much of what we have been taught emerges out of a church-centric rather than a mission-centric mindset. Further, we cannot depend upon a pastoral response to the issues people face on the Frontline, as Hendrik Kraemer put it:

…the laity should not be seen primarily as the needy, ignorant and helpless, but as that part of the Church that has to carry the brunt of the burden of encounter with the world in and around themselves, and to voice and incarnate the Church’s or better, Christ’s relevance to the whole range of human life.

So as leaders, we must begin by acknowledging that we don’t have all the answers. We have to begin by respecting the wisdom of the body and recognising that we are not the experts about problems faced on the Frontline. This leads to a redefinition of the role of the leader. As Mark Gibbs and Ralph Morton put it in their book God’s Frozen People:

The Missional Church...Simple

There are some ideas you just whish you'd had first, like this excellent 2 minute introduction to the missional church...enjoy!

Baptism and the Whole-life Disciple

When do we become a whole-life disciple? What fuels our discipleship? I'd like to suggest that our identity and comissioning as a disciple is firmly rooted in our baptism. There is much more to say about this and hopefully we will explore it further elsewhere, but I recently came across this quote by the Swiss theologian Hans-Ruedi Weber from his article The Ministry of the Laity - Reconsidered from an Old Testament Perspective that helpfully encapsulates this idea. He writes:

a) Baptism is the ordination of the laity which authorises them to participate in Christ’s ministry in and for the world. Baptism is therefore the starting point for a theology on the laity.

b) Baptism introduces each church member into a basic apostolic succession. Just as each apostle is called, so each member of the apostolic Church is called to discipleship and mission.

c) In baptism each Christian becomes the responsible steward of the gifts of grace, the ‘charismata’ which have been given to him. These ‘charismata’ have to be used both for the up-building of the Church and for Christian service in and through the ‘secular’ jobs of the church members.

d) In baptism, each member of the Church is introduced into the dying and uprising with Christ, who, as the eternal High Priest, offered himself to become the victim for the salvation of the world.

From their baptism onwards, all Christians are therefore called to share in Christ’s priestly work by offering themselves in love and obedience to God and in love and service of men.

Keys to Success and Barriers to Growth (1 of 3)

In an earlier series we explored 5 values for a whole-life disciplemaking church. Now, based on our experience with the Imagine Pilot Project, I’d like to give space to exploring some of the keys to success and barriers to growth in becoming a whole-life community. We start by exploring the barriers.

From experience we know the sobering reality:

• In some places whole-life discipleship will flourish
• In many places it will not flourish as much as it could do

This is not easy work. Becoming a church that seeks to equip its members for the whole of life is a slow, long term process. Often it takes a long time of concerted effort to begin to see green shoots of change and churches encounter many challenges and distractions as they make the journey.

So, can we identify the barriers that get in the way?