Ben Sternke

Field notes on life and mission with God after Christendom

Church Plant Vision

A Missional Proposal, Part 6: More Values

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We’re continuing to post on the vision and values of our church plant.

So far: 1. “Why?” – 2. Our mission – 3. Skeptics and Dreamers – 4. Missionary communities – 5. Journey, Honesty, Community

Today, four more values: Participation, Oikos, Simplicity, and Wonder

PARTICIPATION

As followers of Jesus, we believe that we are not called to be spectators, but participants. Everyone gets to play in the kingdom of God. Therefore, we want to see what God is doing and join Him in it throughout the week, not just for a few hours a week. Our community structures will reflect this value, providing opportunity and need for everyone to step up and contribute in the areas the Spirit has gifted them.

OIKOS

Oikos is a Greek word that means family, sphere of influence or relationships. Most people come to embrace and live out the way of Jesus because of relationships with others in their oikos. Therefore, we take our oikoi (that’s the plural) very seriously; our spheres of influence, connections, networks, relationships with those who are spiritually disconnected. We see our vocation as sacred. We believe that people will become followers of Jesus through our intentional time, effort, energy, love, prayer, faith and life with them.

SIMPLICITY

In an age of hyper-stimulation, we value simplicity over spectacle, substance over appearance, spiritual nutrition over immediate gratification, sustained attention over serial distraction, long-term formation over short-term excitement. We value doing ministry simply enough that we can be shaped and formed by common spiritual disciplines without expending undue effort in making something more complex than it needs to be. We desire to keep our structures lean, lightweight, and low-maintenance.

WONDER

We live in a cynical age. It’s easy to go along with that attitude, and you’ll get a few laughs for awhile, but we want to be people who are overwhelmed with joy because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We want to be people who respond to God with wonder, passion, and heartfelt worship, even if we lose some “face” because of it.

Next post – Creativity, Roots, Justice, Truth

A Missional Proposal, Part 5: Our Values

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As you may have heard, some friends and I are planting a church. This post is part of a series I’m doing that outlines some of the vision God has given us. I’d love to interact with you about it.

So far: 1. “Why?” – 2. Our mission – 3. Skeptics and Dreamers – 4. Missionary communities.

That covers the sense of mission God has given us, as well as the kind of community we are envisioning. Now it’s time to talk values: how we intend to go move out into the mission together. The first three values are Journey, Honesty, and Community…

JOURNEY

Following Jesus means we’re part of God’s Story. It means we’re on a journey, walking together toward a goal. It means process, change, growth, doubt, and struggle. We want to make “relational space” for skeptics, strangers, doubters, and searchers to explore faith. We want to learn how to listen to one another and walk with those that society has marginalized.

HONESTY

We want to place a high value on honesty, even when we don’t end up looking so great because of it. We want to be known for who we really are, even in our doubts and questions. We value the unconvinced explorer and the courageous questioner. We want to cultivate a community where there is no pretense, preening, or status games. We want to be as honest as possible with God and others about our lives, a community of people who know how to say “I messed up.”

COMMUNITY

We value honest, grace-filled, face-to-face connections with others. Community is not a commodity we can consume, it is something we enter into by spending a lot of time together, serving one another, listening to one another, investing in one another, and forgiving one another (because we’ll all need it). Valuing community means inviting others into our actual lives, with all the mess and inconvenience that comes with it.

Next post – Participation, Oikos, Simplicity, Wonder

A Missional Proposal, Part 4: Missionary Communities

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As you may have heard, some friends and I are planting a church. This post is part of a series I’m doing that outlines some of the vision God has given us. I’d love to interact with you about it.

1. “Why?” – 2. Our mission – 3. Skeptics and Dreamers, and now Part 4 – our vision to become a missionary community.

A COMMUNITY OF MISSIONARIES

The word “missional” gets bandied about a lot nowadays, and tends to mean “whatever I think the church ought to be doing that it isn’t doing.” However, when we talk about being a missional church, we mean that we want to become a missionary congregation, where the community at large thinks of itself not as a collection of isolated consumers of religious goods and services, but as a sent community, launched by the Holy Spirit to embody and proclaim the good news of Jesus in our neighborhoods, workplaces and “third places.” We want to cultivate a community ethos of missional engagement where people begin to see themselves as missionaries, sent to their city / community / neighborhood / workplace as agents of healing and hope, moving in fresh extensions and fresh expressions of the kingdom of God. We desire to equip people to be a breath of fresh, Spirit-infused air to their spheres of influence, joining with God in his work of blessing, reconciling, and renewing the messy, broken world we live in.

We also want to be a sending church, a community where the missional impulse of God’s people is cultivated and resourced so we are constantly sending people in formal and informal ways. We want to be more serious about our sending capacity than our seating capacity. We want the questions “How are we serving our neighbors this week?” and “How are we equipping people to live missionally this week?” to be more interesting than “How many people were in Sunday worship this week?”

Thus our definition of success will not be based solely on how many people come to our gatherings or how much money they are giving, but rather whether or not we are cultivating followers of the Way of Christ. We will be looking to see if our community is cultivating people who see and do life “on earth as it is in heaven.”

“…the kind of people who serve rather than dominate, who forgive and seek reconciliation rather than bear grudges and persist in alienating others, who feed the hungry and visit those in prison without any fanfare or expectations of return.  They are the kind of people who speak out against injustice, who are more concerned about others’ welfare than their own, the kind of people willing to risk their lives so that others may live.” [1]

More than just a building or an institution or a great worship service, we desire to be a Jesus-shaped movement, where we take his words seriously and seek to be transformed into his image, loving one another as Jesus has loved us, living in the new creation life that has been given to us and moving out as ministers of reconciliation to the skeptics and dreamers of Fort Wayne.

KINGDOM-MINDED and CITY-FOCUSED

We will strive to cultivate partnerships with other churches across Fort Wayne, working together to see Fort Wayne renewed by the grace and love of God.

More than simply looking for “our tribe” to increase, we will be actively seeking the renewal of the city through partnering with other like-minded churches and agencies in the city in official and un-official ways.

We aren’t interested in simply carving out our own little self-sustaining religious space in Fort Wayne as much as we are interested in instigating a kingdom movement in Fort Wayne and beyond. We want to dream dreams as big as God’s and join him in the renewal of all things.

Next post – Values: Journey, Honesty, Community

[1] Stephen Fowl and Gregory Jones, Reading in Communion (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock), 1998.

A Missional Proposal, Part 3: Skeptics and Dreamers

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As you may have heard, some friends and I are planting a church. This post is part of a series I’m doing that outlines some of the vision God has given us. I’d love to interact with you about it.

We’ve answered the “Why” question and looked at our mission. Now it’s take to use our imaginations and talk vision (who we’d like to become as a community).

OUR VISION

We want our community to be known as a safe place for skeptics and dreamers to explore the gospel.

We aren’t very interested in making church “cooler” in the sense of having a polished presentation and professional production values in worship services. Instead we want to cultivate communities that are connecting with the un-churched and de-churched, but not in a salesman-y way. Not as a program. Not with hidden agendas and motives, but with genuine friendship and love. Jesus connected with those on the margins, and our passion is to follow him in that way, helping those who are spiritually disconnected experience the transforming love of God that comes through the good news of Jesus. G.K. Chesteron wrote, “The church is the only institution that exists solely for the benefit of non-members.” So in essence, we are here for people who are not here.

We want to be intentional about humbly, authentically engaging with those who have left the church, those who are doubting and questioning, those who are disillusioned and hurting, those who dream of another world. We desire to cultivate a community where these skeptics and dreamers can be organically connected to the renewing, healing love of God, be equipped as followers of Jesus, and sent as ambassadors of God’s kingdom.

Lesslie Newbigin wrote, “The best apologetic of the gospel is a congregation that believes it.” In an age that views all truth claims with skepticism and suspicion, the best evidence that the gospel of Jesus is true is a flesh-and-blood community that is honestly and openly seeking to live out the implications of the gospel. The message of the gospel must be expressed holistically, through words (kerygma), a new kind of community (koinonia), and that community’s simple service to the culture it find itself in (diakonia). (A few Greek words for the theology nerds out there!)

We believe the gospel really does change everything, starting with us. We’re going to seek to embody the good news of Jesus in our community as a vital part of our evangelism strategy. We would love it if it was said of our community what was said of Christians in the second and third century by intrigued seekers: “Behold how they love one another!” and “Not only do they take care of their own poor, but they’re taking some of our poor, as well.” Through a life of genuine Christian community and simple service, the message of the gospel takes on flesh and can become intelligible and attractive to post-Christian people.

Next post – Missionary Communities

A Missional Proposal, Part 2: Our Mission

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As you may have heard, some friends and I are planting a church. I am posting some of the central parts of our vision. The first post answered the question “Why are we doing this?” and now we turn to our mission: the core of what we feel called to do.

Our Mission

Ever since Jesus sent his disciples out, the church has had a mission, so in one sense finding a mission shouldn’t be all that hard for a church plant. 🙂 For example, Jesus told his disciples:

  • “Proclaim the good news to all creation” (Mark 16:15).
  • “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21).
  • “Make disciples of all peoples, baptizing them… and teaching them…” (Matt 28:19-20).
  • “You will be my witnesses… to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

God’s people have a mission by default, and it is rooted in God’s mission, which is that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, all creation would experience the wholeness and liberating joy that come from loving God, trusting Jesus and living in the Spirit.

Our mission is simply a local expression of that greater vision:

to see people renewed by the love of God,
equip them as faithful followers of Jesus,
and send them out by the power of the Holy Spirit
to be a voice of hope and healing to a messy, broken world.

Deep worship, spiritual formation, and holistic mission in the context of authentic, caring community.

Next post – Skeptics and Dreamers