A brother in Christ and a partner in ministry, Pastor Rashid Emmanuel, was shot dead in Faisalabad, Pakistan, yesterday, after being exonerated from accusations of blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad.
We are grieving Rashid’s death and praying/hoping for the safety of other Christians in Pakistan. The country is 97% Muslim, and though the government has a good record of protecting religious freedom, some radicals among the population are very hostile to Christians. Sources on the ground are complaining that the blasphemy charges were spurious in the first place. Religious freedom advocates have criticized Pakistan’s blasphemy law for being vague and subject to exploitation by those hostile to Christianity:
Section 295-C: Use of derogatory remarks, etc; in respect of the Holy Prophet. Whoever by words, either spoken or written or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.
As previously mentioned, I have been invited to travel to northern New England this fall to speak at a conference on the centrality of the gospel. This is a cool opportunity for me and a significant chance to plant gospel seed in some of the hardest soil in north America.
Any cultural observer or missiologist will agree that the northeastern U.S. is the hardest place on American soil for church planting and renewal. The home of the Great Awakening has now become a bastion of stale, liberal religiosity littered with dead and dying churches. But God is doing something. A resurgence of gospel interest is taking place among many young church leaders. God is calling church planters to forsake ’safer’ soil in the South and move to New England to labor there. And within established churches – many of them hundreds of years old – a desire is growing to rediscover the centrality of the gospel, the mission of Jesus, and the work of church planting.
Please pray for my role in the Lead Conference to further the work God is already doing, for His kingdom and glory.
This fall I am speaking at a conference in New England on the subject of gospel-centered church planting. My task in the opening keynote talk for the conference is to address the question: what is the gospel?
I thought it would be interesting – and helpful in my preparation – to invite blog readers to give their 2 cents on this question. What should I make sure to talk about in order to give a full and robust answer to the question?
In the past few weeks I’ve listened to two sermons by aspiring church planters here in Omaha. In both cases these men tell personal stories of how God has used the Acts 29 Network – and our process for training, assessing, and developing future leaders – as a key resource in their own development.
People ask all the time what exactly our process is for raising up and training church planters. Listening to these stories might help you have a better understanding of why we believe the gospel, mission, and community come together to have a formative influence on young leaders – and how we try to steward what God is doing in their lives for greater influence.
Justin Dean is a church planting resident at our sister church, Core Community… he tells the story of how his first meeting with Ethan and me at an Acts 29 bootcamp in Louisville last year became God’s means of calling him to Omaha for a season. Erick Whigham is one of our emerging leaders at Coram Deo… he tells the story of how God used a conversation with me to temper his expectations and give him patience.
I just returned from 3 days in Phoenix, where I did some teaching and training for church leaders through the Surge Network. Surge is a local coalition of gospel-centered church planters and pastors who want to see the gospel transform the city of Phoenix. They hail from many networks and traditions: Acts 29, Sovereign Grace, Presbyterian (PCA), Baptists, and nondenominational churches. But they are united in their commitment to robust theology, missional church dynamics, and a gospel-centered philosophy of ministry.
One Surge leader explained the vision to me this way: “Right now, a-theological megachurches dominate the landscape of Phoenix and drive much of the religious conversation in our city. But what if, in 10 years, the more Reformed, gospel-centered churches (whether small or large) were driving the conversation? We think that would be a good thing for the gospel, a good thing for church planting, and a good thing for the city of Phoenix.”
Surge revolves around three primary initiatives: a monthly lunch open to all and focused on networking and training; a year-long “Surge School” open to committed leaders who want to develop theologically and missionally; and a small number of church-planting internships and residencies designed to develop and train aspiring church planters. I was invited to speak at the monthly lunch and to teach on gospel-centered ministry for the Surge School.
It’s great to see movements of God like this, where like-minded, gospel-saturated, kingdom-focused leaders come together to advance the mission of God in their city. I wanted to share what the Surge guys are up to in order to urge you to 1) pray for what God is doing in Phoenix and 2) pray for God’s continued grace as we seek to forge similar kingdom partnerships here in Omaha.
It was a great privilege this morning at Coram Deo to have JD and Michele Senkbile back with us. The Senkbiles were an integral part of the original team that founded Coram Deo. They moved to Cape Town, South Africa, in December of 2008 to oversee Acts 29’s church planting work on the African continent. Throughout 2009, the Holy Spirit made it clear that they needed to plant a church in Cape Town as a home base for gospel movement in southern Africa. So in January of 2010, they launched Vox City Church in the heart of Cape Town. The word vox is Latin for voice… Vox City Church desires to be a voice for the gospel in the heart of Cape Town.
If you’re not familiar with JD and the work God has called him to, audio from today’s message will be up shortly on the Resources page or Coram Deo’s iTunes podcast. Keep JD and Michele and their team in your prayers as they seek to shape a biblically faithful, culturally relevant gospel-community-on-mission in this important global city.
One of the best kept secrets in the Acts 29 Network is David Fairchild, lead pastor of Kaleo Church in San Diego. At the first Acts 29 bootcamp I ever attended, David went off on a room full of dudes about why they needed to LOVE theology… and I immediately realized, “This is a tribe of men I want to run with.”
David is a dear friend and partner in ministry who has family in Council Bluffs and is therefore very excited about what we’re doing at Coram Deo. In this video post he explains the tri-perspectival understanding of spiritual leadership which Kaleo and Coram Deo share. For those of you who want to understand how we think about leadership… watch and learn.
The only letter of recommendation we need is you yourselves. Your lives are a letter written in our hearts; everyone can read it and recognize our good work among you. Clearly, you are a letter from Christ showing the result of our ministry among you. This “letter” is written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts. (2 Cor 3:2-3, NLT)
Those who serve faithfully in the mission of God leave their fingerprints all over the life of a church – most notably, as Paul notes, on the hearts and lives of those they minister to.
Last Sunday we said goodbye to over a dozen church members who will move to Austin, Texas, to help form the core of a new church there. They go to plant the seed of the gospel in the soil of Austin’s city-culture, and then to trust the sovereignty of God to raise up a thriving church. I love all of these people for the mark they have made on Coram Deo. But two of them leave a stronger-than-normal “fingerprint” on my life and on the life of our church community: Will Walker and Kendal Haug.
I first met the Walkers in 1999 when they joined our staff team working with Campus Crusade for Christ at the University of Texas. Will and I labored alongside each other in the fraternity system seeking to turn alcohol-drenched frat boys into Christ-centered kingdom laborers. When I showed up on campus in 1997, I started asking students which fraternity was most in need of gospel witness. The answer was unanimous: Sigma Alpha Epsilon. It was one of the largest frat houses on campus, known for drugs, drunkenness, and general debauchery. No one knew of a single Christian there. After a couple years of prayer, patience, and persistent ministry, I surfaced a couple of guys who wanted to follow Jesus. Walker parlayed those few contacts into a small army of disciples: by 2004, over 35 SAE members were immersed in gospel community. The entire culture of the fraternity house changed. Many of Seed Austin’s financial supporters – and even a few members of the launch team – are former SAE’s.
That experience made it clear to me that Walker and I were a unique team. Our complementary gifts and strengths and our strong friendship made for great ministry impact. So when God gave me the vision to start Coram Deo, I began to bug Walker about joining us. I lobbied him throughout 2004 and 2005. Finally, in the summer of 2006, he sensed it was time to make a change. He and Debbie moved to Omaha knowing no one except for Leigh and me. The people of Coram Deo – about 90 strong at that time – graciously welcomed him and took my word for it that we’d be better off with his influence.
They’re no longer taking my word for it. The proof is in the health, growth, and strength of Coram Deo. Walker’s fingerprints are everywhere. He honed our missional community structure so that spiritual formation could take place. He co-authored The Gospel-Centered Life, which has sold 40,000 copies thus far and is shaping gospel DNA in churches far and wide. He personally discipled, counseled, and taught countless people inside and outside of Coram Deo. And perhaps most significantly to me, he “had my back.” He called me to repentance when I needed it, yet stood firmly by my side on dozens of occasions when I was slandered, misunderstood, and disrespected. That sort of thing comes with the territory – Jesus promised nothing less (Matthew 5:11-12). But as any church planter will tell you, it’s nice to have some company.
About a year after Walker showed up, we started recruiting Kendal to join our team. We were in desperate need of a generalist – a jack-of-all-trades kind of guy who could set up a sound system, lead a discipleship group, write HTML code, or do theological research. That person didn’t exist within Coram Deo at the time. Kendal was making good money working for (aka running) bible.org. But he didn’t want to be a computer geek; he wanted to develop as a pastor. So he took a pay cut, raised his own financial support, and moved to Omaha to join our team. When he came, we gave him a simple job description: “Just make sh*% happen.” And that’s exactly what he’s done for almost three years.
Kendal’s genius is simple: he discerns needs and meets them. That goes for relationships, for pastoral ministry, and for functional tasks. When he first got here, I was still showing up 90 minutes early on Sunday mornings to help set up the sound system and manage chaos. He took me aside and said: “Hey, we need you to preach. You just worry about that. Let me handle the rest.” During his two-and-a-half years at Coram Deo, Kendal has majored in that sort of thoughtful execution: discerning the “next stage” and getting us there with excellence, precision, and theological rigor. He’s done this in worship (moving us from one small worship team to a diverse worship team with multiple leaders); communication (building a new website, new member’s forum, and new communication tools); liturgy (systematizing and streamlining the flow and execution of our Sunday gatherings); and special projects (most notably, the worship album ‘Doxology’ which he took from concept to completion).
I’ve played basketball with the same group of guys for years. The result is an unspoken chemistry: I sense the move they’re going to make, the shot they’re going to take, or the defensive weakness they’re seeking to exploit. Working with Walker and Kendal is a lot like that. If you’ve ever been on a team like that, you know what a loss it is for me to launch these guys into the work of church planting. But we’ve always said, “The church exists for mission, not comfort.” This is what it means to be serious about the mission of God.
And though their presence is no longer felt in our community, their fingerprints remain. We are a “letter of recommendation” commending their ministry. May we pick up the torch and write our own letters by sowing the seed of the gospel in the hearts of others.
Tim Keller has written a great “white paper” on how size affects the culture and structures of a church. This paper has been circulating for years among church planting insiders, but Redeemer has finally put it out to the public. I’m posting it here so thoughtful readers can benefit from it.
Coram Deo is facing the transition right now from medium to large church dynamics in Keller’s model (he puts the ‘cusp’ between the two categories at 400-450 in attendance). So if you’re a Coram Deo attender, read it with a view to the adjustments that may be necessary as we move forward. There won’t be a one-to-one correlation in every area (Keller’s model is different than Coram Deo’s), but most of his insights are spot-on.
