Alvin Sanders – Part 2

Panel Discussion – bringing it from Heroic to Everyday (Ken Molberg, Tom Mouw, Steve Highfill)

Practical Suggestions

READ:

• A Framework for Understanding Poverty
  
• Women in Ministry: 4 Views - Klaus
  
• Gifted to Lead: The Art of Leading as a Woman in the Church
  
• Building a Healthy Multiethnic Church
  
• Beyond Racial Gridlock
  
• One Body & One Spirit
  
• See The Samaritan Way Brochure from EFCA.org
  
  • Cybercommunity – EFCA Samaritan way group in Facebook
    
  • www.samaritanway.blogspot.com
    
    
  • Make sure to always have ethnic workshops in the district
    
  • Good Samaritan Retreats
    
  • Equip courses with George Yancey
    

So much of what Alvin shared was story driven that it was impossible to capture, but what a rich time today in various languages and in vivid wonderful color that God has made and that God loves!

EFCA – ReachNational Leadership Summit with Dr. Alvin Sanders

Dr. Sanders is the Director of the EFCA's SAMARITAN WAY Reconciliation and former pastor of River of Life Church in Cincinnati, OH

Developing the "All Peoples" Piece of our Mission

Applied an illustration of how we pretend to want reconciliation and inclusion. We invite, but don't include or make to feel welcomed. From Alvin's experience and dissertation, the EFCA is one of the very few if not only denominations taking proactive steps in this realm. We really want it. Alvin is the only Chief Diversity Officer in any denomination in America. Alvin.sanders@efca.org or call 612-232-1352. Their story is Cincinnati from Riots to Reconciliation. http://www.riveroflifeministries.us/

The Concept of Reconciliation

Reconciliation is God's initiative, restoring a broken world to God's intentions by reconciling all things to Himself through Christ: the relationship between people and God, between people, and with God's created earth. Christians participate with God by being transformed into ambassadors of reconciliation. – Duke Center for Reconciliation

• Genesis 12:1-4
  


• Galatians 3:6-9
  


• Galatians 3:26-29
  


• Colossians 1:18-20
  


• 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
  

Race and ethnicity should mean different things to the world and in the church. (side-bar…who would Jesus vote for?...why would the King of all the earth even care to vote?)

The Role of Culture (Christianity is not bound by culture, where many other religions and societies are)

Culture is about groupness. It encompasses everything that people believe and everything that they do that identifies them as members of a group and distinguishes that group from other groups.

The purpose of culture is to assist people who are not members of a group to know what the rules for acceptable behavior are and to provide consistency and predictability in everyday actions. It's the space where we derive our values, attitudes and beliefs about life.

Are we prisoners or liberators?

• Cultural Destructiveness – eliminate other people's culture
  


• Cultural Incapacity – belief in one's own culture over others
  


• Cultural Blindness – failing to recognize cultural differences or acting as if the cultural differences don't matter
  


• Cultural Pre-competent – a desire to provide an equitable treatment with appropriate cultural sensitivity, combined with not knowing exactly how to proceed.
  


• Cultural Competence – see it, know it, learn from it, embrace it.
  


• Biblical Christianity
  

MORE TO COME…

EFCA – ReachNational Missional Summit with Bob Roberts – session 2

Shift of thought that Muslim Imams not the false prophets who falsely promote Christ, but they are religious leaders in darkness. They are not the enemy. Great commission will be fulfilled through the Middle East. We must go through the religious gate-keepers of the world. What did Paul do with the Rabbis? We must do the same with Muslim leaders. Roberts believes that the Great Commission will be fulfilled by Muslim leaders coming to faith in Christ and proclaiming the Gospel.

What matters most to Muslims? Issue of war and peace between Palestine and Israel. So we must be careful not to so align with Israel that we forsake our Palestinian brothers who are trying to take the gospel there. Muslims want to be with people who believe and live truth. They have more respect for bible-believing evangelicals who are sincere than for liberal Christians who relay the truth doesn't matter as long we all just get along.

Don't start churches for the suburbs, start churches for the world.

Follow Jesus to where all hell is breaking loose – whole church gets involved.

Bang on front door first, but be honest about who you are

Decrease in the West so East can increase.

Go in and embrace the culture, don't fight it.

Serve not to convert, but because we have been converted…because Christ has changed me.

Become their best friend.

Great Commission made all religion go global.

 

IF THIS IS ALL TRUE, WHY PLANT CHURCHES?

Church-planting movement is a Western term, but it is a reality in Asia, not because they created a movement. We can't create movements, because movement go beyond our control. As long as we have control, it is not a movement. The Church is the result of a move back to Jesus. We focus on planting churches, but we need to focus on moving people back to Jesus.

If we want to produce disciples, be with someone who has effectively made disciples. We have to learn from the whole body of Christ.

CHURCH-PLANTING MOVEMENTS:

• Take Time (usually preceded by 100 years of seed-planting) Don't minimize seed-sowing.
  
• (Read historians to understand movements (Rodney Stark))
  
• They are very personal and societal…evangelism through very natural relationships
  
• They are lead by disciples, not preachers
  
• No record of any nation having more than 1 cp movement
  
• Generally come from the Young
  
• Collaborative networks (not how is my tribe, how is the gospel)BUT most important network is your local church planting churches, that's your network.
  
• A thing of the Holy Spirit
  
• Are we burdened and broken hearted because we didn't plant a church this year from our local church?
  

What is coming next? Church-planting movements have been tribal and national, but coming up are international, global, multi-ethnic church-planting movements. How do we get ready for this?

 

We go from gospel to pastor to church to disciples to society to world.

World go from gospel to disciple to society leading to a church. So don't focus on raising more preachers, raise more disciples.

In China it's every disciple a church-planter.

We need more apostolic pastors to raise disciples and planters. We need church-planting churches that plant churches for that will go beyond its own generation that start for the next generation. Raise planters to plant not just for their generation but for the next generation. Don't start churches just for ourselves. Apostolic leaders who are broken and honest and givers and riskers and evangelistic and mystic and design and …

Start with the society, not the church.

TRAINING PLANTERS

• Verbalize what God has called you to do.
  
• Verbalize what you value – convictions about truth that determines behavior.
  
• Verbalize vision
  
• Verbalize purpose
  
• Verbalize strategy
  
• Do Delegation
  
• Perform Evaluation
  

Its organic, not a curriculum or a notebook. It comes from DNA, from living it.

WE MUST GO TO WHERE GOD IS EVIDENTLY AND CLEARLY WORKING IN THE OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD AND OBSERVE AND LEARN FROM THEM!

 

In America we are trying to reinvent the church while the rest of the world is simply being it! The new church will be organic and not created!

EFCA – ReachNational Missional Summit with Bob Roberts, Jr. a.m. Session

Author of 3 Books – Glocalization, Transformation, & Churches that Multiply

Word captures from our sessions with Bob

 

Internationals get it, younger people get it, but most western pastors and religious leaders don't get it.

Talk about redefining the church is a waste of time – it's the people in the church that want to redefine it, but people coming to Jesus will love the church. We just need to redefine the Sunday Event.

Post-modern world doesn't exist, but the post-modern west does exist. Post-modernism is the discovery of an affluent society that having everything doesn't fulfill.

America is lost, and the reverse engineering of missions from the east will reach us. When our churches aren't growing, what makes us the experts when churches around the world are growing and reaching people like nothing in the west.

The great commission will be complete in 10 to 15 years as we are able to take to gospel globally like never before because of connectivity and because of the passion of eastern Christians. Only sin will keep it from being fulfilled.

There is no one way to do church – "Liquid Church".

How to's are what the boomers wanted, but the "why's" are what the busters and xers want.

When is Jesus going to be enough for you? – the question God placed in Bob's heart when the ministry was much smaller. When is it about God's Kingdom and not our empires? The church exists not for the church but for the carrying out of the gospel in the community and the world. Don't view yourself as a pastor to your church, view yourself and your church as a missionary to your community.

What does it mean to live the sermon on the mount? What does the Kingdom of God look like lived-out among God's people? Not just external signs, but internal transformation.

2 Core Questions

1. Is the gospel sufficient to transform a person? - Yes
   
2. Is the gospel sufficient to transform a community? – Yes
   

Why is this not happening in America? (Finish with mind, morality, marriage and ministry in tact). The kingdom of God is more than the Sunday Event. Our view is that the church brings pressure to bear on culture. It is not just enough to have right theology, we must have the right spirit to match. Reality – everything is the realm of the Father with or without the church. How would our theology be different if it weren't formed because of heresies, but simply out of the Word of God? It's a case of seeking God and obeying God. With the Spirit of God, people can understand the Word of God without us!

Word "missions" is not in the Bible, "kingdom" is. The church is missions, Kingdom in and Kingdom out. We are lost to modernity and success and consumerism and industrialism. When people leave a church because of style of worship, they don't even get what worship is…style doesn't matter, Jesus does. Churches lead by "stars" not "godly souls."

We have vocationalized missions when the whole church is supposed to be the missionary to the whole church not just professionals.

There are no closed countries, there's just stupid evangelism and intelligent engagement.

 

Net Effect of the Kingdom is TRANSFORMATION flowing from and around as an interactive relationship with God. Do a sermon series on how to hear God, you'll pack your church out. The early church didn't preach that series, they simply lived it! Teach private worship to bring power to your corporate worship. Real worship, Transparent connections, Glocal Impact. God is not impressed by our dollars. God wants the new DNA. WERE ARE CALLED TO THE KINGDOM, NOT CALLED TO PREACH. WHAT IS THE NET EFFECT OF WHAT GOD IS WANTING US TO DO?

Teach people that their job is their number one ministry!

Our Kingdom Job Description – make disciples! Remember, disciple-making is not linear, it is not fill-in-the-blank, it is life transformation.

WHAT IS THE GRID? Old Testament – Israel. New Testament – Church. But Bob suggests that neither are the grid, society is! Make Disciples. All Nations. How does the gospel jump cultures? (From all Jews to the Gentiles). When gospel lays upon the grid of the church it gets choked, when it lays upon society, it goes viral. Consider Abraham with no structure for worship becoming an obedient follower of God – All nations cf. great commission – all nations. The church is to be birthed out of evangelism, not designed to do evangelism. (see pg 46 of Glocalization). When religion becomes a domain of society, it becomes a competitor. Faith should be present in all domains as disciples are present in all domains of society, so faith become viral as lived out in the domains of culture.

Engage the society first and let the church evolve from that!