As many of you know, The Renew Community is proud to be a part of a growing missional church planting network called The Ecclesia Network. Ecclesia hosts a missional church planters' training week and assessment time in Richmond, VA each May. It's held at a Richmond Hill, a monastery/retreat center overlooking the city of Richmond. You enter into the rhythms of prayer and communal meals with the community throughout the week of training. It's a fantastic experience.

I attended last year's training and found it to be the most fruitful environment – both theologically and practically – to be equipped for starting and cultivating Renew. It was a fantastic investment of my time and money.

Even if you are in the early stages of processing and pondering the possibility of being a part of a missional church plant I highly recommend this training week as well. We will be sending at least one person from Renew to this event (hopefully more!) and I
may be going down for a few days as well.
We would love for you to be
there also!

If you're interested see the PDF attachment below.

Download 2009 ecclesia church planters brochure general

Also, if you can't make the Ecclesia Church Planters' Training but you're interested in being involved in the missional church conversation, you should make plans to attend the Ecclesia National Gathering next month in Washington, DC. Eddie Gibbs, Mike Breen, Darrell Guder and Jon Tyson will be speaking. The gathering is open to any and all who are interested (click here for more information). A few of us from the area will be driving down and we'd love for you to attend as well.

That’s what we’re striving for with this new faith community called The Renew Community.

Just this week I realized something: I’m so humbled, honored and proud of our Renew launch team and the ways we are intentionally striving to live out the gospel every single day of the week, not just on Sundays.
Sure, we’re not perfect, but we’re growing and its inspiring to see the way they are serving and loving and leading.

We’ve said over and over again is that we’re more interested in launching people first, before services. That we want to be known more for our sending capacity than our seating capacity.
And I believe we’re catching that!
Our team is striving towards a more holistic understanding of the gospel – individually and with others.

There’s a lot brewing this month that I’m really excited about…

-People are impacting their oikos. Oikos is a Greek word that means “family, household, sphere of influence. We all live in several “relational neighborhoods” (i.e. geographical, vocational, social, demographic, physographic, geneaological, etc). We’re seeing unofficial connections happening, friendships that are forging and spontaneous activities and relational spaces are emerging. We’re attempting to live as missionaries who are ‘cleverly disguised’ as businessmen and teachers and college students and engineers and stay-at-home moms. The stories emerging from people being intentional in their oikos has been so encouraging and inspiring.

-Our house churches are off to a great start. They’re eating meals together, sharing their stories, exploring the Scriptures, adopting a family/school/organization where they are serving on mission at least once a month and throwing parties for their friends and neighbors at least once a month as well. So many fun stories have already emerged from these house churches – I may share some of them some time in the future…

-We’re serving at least twice a week at Manna on Main (the main soup kitchen/food bank/financial assistance organization in our community) by cooking/preparing meals and/or serving meals to the under-resourced and marginalized.

-We’re serving at the North Penn Boys and Girls Club in their tutoring program, weight lifting program and helping to teach leadership classes. We’ve helped them with a blood drive last weekend. Others are considering coaching flag football.

-The Lansdale Farmers Market continues to take form and shape. Last summer we went to the borough leaders and asked “Would a farmers market be of help to the community?” They liked the idea and a team has been working very hard with other people from the community to see a farmers market start late spring/early summer in Lansdale. We’re very excited about it! The LFM graciously received a grant for $12,000 from the North Penn Community Health Foundation to help us bring fresh fruits and vegetables from local venders to promote a healthy and sustainable lifestyle.

The LFM team holds an open to the public meeting once a month.  About 50 different North Penn residents have come to one of these meetings to offer their help and their willingness to volunteer. The LFM team is constantly looking for people who would want to help serve to make this happen so if you are interested shoot us an email here.

-Every Tuesday morning a group of guys meetings at Zoto’s Diner to eat, hang out and discuss three questions: (1) Where did you see God at work this week? (2) How did you join him this week? (3) How did you resist him this week? They’ve been great conversations as we strive to pay attention to God and learn to respond appropriately.

-We’ve been proposing some ideas and initiatives to borough council, the North Penn Regional Council for the Arts and the Lansdale Performing Arts Center for some ways we can help to cultivate the arts in the area. There are many artists who desire to connect with a community of artists and who long to exhibit and express their art in spaces in the commnity. We’re attempting to work to see that happen. There is a lot of potential here!

On Saturday February 21 at 10 am we’re hosting another Clean up day around downtown Lansdale. We’re meeting at Railroad Plaza (next to the train station) to clean up the area around the Kugel Ball, Main Street and the train station as a way of serving the community to make it look clean and nice. This event is open to the public and you are more than welcome to join us!

-On Tuesday night February 24 at 7:30 we’re hosting an evening called Doubt Night to connect with skeptics and create space to air out our doubts, questions and thoughts regarding faith, life, Jesus, God and the Church. Should be fun! We’d love to have you! Find out more information here. We’ve also created a facebook group…join us.

Other things we planning for later this spring…

-We will be hosting a Forum on Homelessness and Suburban Poverty. We will have a diverse panel of experts who work closely with homelessness and suburban poverty in the borough and in the Montgomery and Bucks counties. This will be educational and will intend to help residents in the community to know how we best address the systemic issues of poverty and homelessness in our region. More information to come. Stay tuned to our website.

-Do you enjoy gardening? One of our house churches have people who are passionate about the environment and ecological sustainability. They are working towards starting a Community Garden. Many of the fruits and vegetables that come from this community garden will go to those on our community who need them most.

-We will be hosting a financial seminar called Strategies for Surviving an Economic Downturn. We know the economy has been difficult for thousands of families in our area. We are bringing in my dad to teach a seminar in late March about practical ways we can work towards a more financially healthy lifestyle (reducing and getting out of debt, creating a budget, etc). We’re doing this to bless the community and equip them in this difficult time.

-We will be sponsoring an Invisible Children Film Viewing and Discussion. More information to come later on this.

-Area-wide prayer walk: Prayer is important. All we do cannot be from us. We’re simply attempting to follow after what God has already been doing. We’ll be hosting a Saturday morning time this spring to do two things: walk…and pray! More details to come.

-And, Lord willing, we’re looking to hold our first public corporate gathering this spring. Stay tuned!

Exciting stuff!

Oh, by the way: if you live in and around the area we would love for to join us for any and all of these things listed above.

Regardless if we know you (yet) or not.

Regardless of your faith background.

Regardless if you are currently involved with us at Renew or not.

We would love to have you join us for any of these events.
If you want to be involved just let us know.

Log onto our website or contact us.

On Sunday afternoon Tracy and I facilitated a training session for our House Church Shepherds.
At the beginning of the session I handed each one of them an ash tray (97 cents a piece at Wal-Mart) and asked three questions:

(1) What are you thinking and feeling when you see this?
(2) Why did I give you one of these as a house church shepherd?
(3) How can this object work as a symbol to remind us of our mission?

We had a great discussion.
People caught on quickly.
They knew where I was going with it.

We say that we desire for Renew to be a faith community for skeptics and dreamers.
We're wanting to focus on the dechurched and the unchurched (rather than the overly-churched).
We say that the only rule is that no perfect people are allowed.
We say that we are here for people who are not here*

Just over 1 in 5 Americans smoke (21%). If house churches at Renew are not going to be Christian clubs for the already convinced but instead are outward-focused communities of love where each month they are exploring, celebrating and serving together what it means to be in a relationship with Jesus, then there's a good chance that people will be using these trays.

House churches at Renew are going to be messy.
They are going to be uncomfortable.
And we've got to learn to be okay with the mess.
In fact, in some ways the beautiful messiness is appealing.

When we look at Jesus in the Gospels we see the God-man who was accused in a derogatory manner of being pals with sinful people (though I am sure he took that as a compliment). We see that he's accused of being a drunk and eating way too much food. We read that he was accused of being around the wrong crowd.  This begs the question: If we are passionate and obedient followers of Jesus living in his ways, might we be accused of similar things?

There's one thing I'm convinced of as I read the life patterns of Jesus in the gospels: if Jesus were here today, in 2008, he would be hanging around in places with people who would need an ashtray.

The point of me giving ashtrays to our Shepherds is not to make a statement about smoking.
It's not a judgment against smokers (I have friends who smoke).
Whether our house church shepherds see their trays being used in their house churches or not is not even the point.
The point is that these ashtrays can act as a helpful metaphor to remind us to stay on mission, to be an externally-focused community of faith who exists to see people enter into a life of unbelievable purpose and adventure and joy, whether they light up or not.

__________
*yet

But what caught my eye was the last line of the church sign and I just had to take a picture of it on my phone.

Imagine if every church believed that the ministers were the people of God? That would have some amazing implications on how we do church.

We have a lot of fun together when we meet (but don't tell anyone…because I think there is a rule that you are not allowed to have fun at "board meetings"). It really helps that we're all friends first, which provides such rich opportunities to see Renew move forward, as we fight for every missional yard possible. And to do this we push back, challenge each other, process out loud, dream and make decisions together – in addition to catching up on our lives.

Last night we opened by looking at Matthew 9:37-38:

The Amplified Bible translates it well: "So pray to the Lord of the harvest to force out and thrust laborers into his harvest." There is an urgency to this sending out.

We have said often that at Renew we want to be a faith community known more for our sending capacity than our seating capacity.
We want it to be a place of equipping and sending.
We strongly believe that if the church is not about training, equipping and sending out people to be missionaries we aren't doing our job.

Which is why Matthew 9 is so important.
Jesus says that we need to ask – urgently seek God and pray – that he would send more people out.
It may seem obvious but what Jesus is saying is that the harvest is ripe with transformational potential – its ready – and yet there are few willing to go out and work in those fields that are ripe with that potential.
And its his field – he does what he wants with it. We're workers under his direction and authority.

We prayed last night that God would bring people to us, not so we keep them here under our roof, but so we can equip them adequately and then send them out into the world to be missionaries cleverly disguised as plumbers, attorneys, businessmen, students, stay-at-home moms…and even as pastors.
We prayed that we would train people sufficiently to be passionate followers of Jesus.
We prayed that we would train up future leaders and pastors and shepherds to see the kingdom expanded.

We're sending out several house churches that will start officially within the next two weeks.
We also strongly believe that we need to be planting another church out from under Renew within the next five years – whether that's locally, regionally, nationally or internationally.

As Darrell Guder writes, we're trying to cultivate an ethos where we have a strategy for gathering, but we also have strategies for when we all scatter.

Would you pray for us at Renew?
Would you pray for our leadership – that we would have wisdom and courage to follow Jesus who sends us out?
Would you pray that we would be a sending church?
Would you pray that we would be a place committed to consistently, humbly, courageously, faithfully asking God to send workers out into the harvest?  

Church planting is the most difficult thing I've ever done.
It's the scariest thing I've ever done.
And yet, I have never had so much fun in my life.

Yeah, that's right: ministry can actually be fun!
Megan and I are loving the place we're in right now.
What an exciting and perilous journey church planting is.

I still don't know what I'm doing (please don't tell anyone I said that…) but I'm beginning to sense that where I'm at right now is a good place to be.

I am studying up on this because I've been asked to preach at Franconia Mennonite Church at their Sunday morning service on November 16. This church has a real, genuine heart for adoption and sees it as an important way to flesh out the gospel in the family. Each year for the past three years Franconia has hosted "Adoption Sunday," a day to highlight adoption by focusing on the heart of God and how he cares for the alien, the orphan and the widow. They have asked that we share Carter's story and then teach on God's heart for adopting us into his family.

I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to tell Carter's story in order to highlight God's story – the gospel message, Paul says, is about God adopting us into his family, calling us to be his kids.

Later that evening I am scheduled to preach at a church in Bethlehem – should make for a good, but very busy day.