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Student churches in the Philippines

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Students planting churches among students on campus? Students graduating with church planting experience who then go to other campus, into professional communities and into new cities and plant churches like they learned while in college? This is happening in one part of the Philippines. College Instructor and Electrical Engineer Pee Jay N. Gealone is leading this initiative.

Pee Jay says,

Our vision is to see multiplying churches across Bicol [area of the Philippines] and eventually across the country that will really bless and transform this nation. We believe that being a Christian is not only about personal change but rather a change that once happened collectively can really transform this country. We want to see Christ-centered multiplying leaders in all sectors of society that are moving into church planting.

Eighteen churches are under Pee Jay’s care with about 600 involved members. So far, students have graduated and are opening campuses for student churches, opening house churches for professionals and opening churches in communities where God sends them.

Losing Zeal as a Church

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Miletus_650px

Paul warned them. What causes a church to lose zeal? Why fizzle after 30-40 years?

I stood there on the site of Miletus where Paul called the Ephesian leaders. It’s not a big place. The entire town was on a peninsula surrounded by water, a few hundred yards across. In the late afternoon cool, I could imagine Paul warning them. The magnificent center of missionary zeal and church expansion in Ephesus would be led astray, even from among the very leaders to whom he was speaking (Ephesians 20:17-38).

There were 3 epicenters of Christianity in the first century. Missionary expansion began in Jerusalem, then moved to Antioch and blossomed in Ephesus.

A few days earlier, I had walked the ancient town of Ephesus where Paul had visited several times and lived and taught for 2 years so that “all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord.”

Ephesus had about a 10 year run of excellence during Paul’s day then another 30 years or so under the leadership of John before his exile, according to tradition. But by the end of the first century when John wrote Revelation from exile on Patmos, the church in Ephesus was losing its zeal. They were still doing “church” but Jesus told them, “you have abandoned the love you had at first.” You don’t burn with my zeal for the lost like you did at first.

TheaterJesus’ warning was in my mind as we sat in the huge stone theater in Ephesus. Jesus must remain the center. Our core activity must remain telling others about the goodness of his kingdom. To cease telling others is to begin to die as a church.

Plumb lines

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When things go bad, it’s seldom because of a disagreement about the destination. It’s almost always a squabble over the day-to-day itinerary, the pace, or the best route to get from here to there. [Larry Osborne, Sticky Teams]

How do you build a team culture? Culture is about how we behave, why we behave the way we do in our organization or team. It’s more complicated that posters on the wall.

Rohan Dredge, in Creating and Discovering Culture, develops some ideas on creating culture. His point: “Listen deeply to what is already in the organisation and evaluate courageously who you need to be to accomplish your mission.” He proposed good parts of the process.

I was in an organization where the director gave a talk every year on the ethos of the organization. It was the first time I had experienced that kind of talk. It was a good part of the process and one which I continued when I became an organizational director.

But I think Larry Osborne has outlined an effective culture-shaping process in his book Sticky Teams: Keeping Your Leadership Team and Staff on the Same Page. The chapter is Staff Alignment and the topic is what Osborne calls plumb lines.

Here are some excerpts:

When things go bad, it’s seldom because of a disagreement about the destination. It’s almost always a squabble over the day-to-day itinerary, the pace, or the best route to get from here to there.

The most powerful tool I’ve found for overcoming these differences and for making sure that my staff is aligned in terms of their day-to-day values and decisions is something I call “ministry plumb lines.”

The purpose of plumb lines is to clarify how we plan to go about reaching the lost or glorifying God in this church at this time.

Effective leaders are almost always a little bit weird. They approach ministry and life a few degrees off center. That’s what sets them apart. They see and sense things that others miss. But sadly, most leaders have no tool to communicate their thought process or the unique values and perspective that drive their decisions. Again, that’s where the value of plumb lines comes in. It gives your staff and team something to gauge their own thought processes, assumptions, and decisions by. It gives them a track to run on.

If forced to choose between a great mission statement and a clear set of plumb lines, I’d choose the plumb lines every time. That’s because the devil and most disagreements are in the details. I find it relatively easy to get our entire staff headed in the same direction and aiming at the same goal. I find it much more difficult to ensure that everyone is taking the same route to get there.

I had wrongly assumed that alignment around our mission and goals automatically meant agreement about the best methods to get there.

What Osborne is talking about is creating an organizational culture that lives out the mission and values in daily decisions by every member of the organization. That’s culture.

Seeing an example of Osborne’s plumb lines in one area is very clarifying:

North Coast Church’s Plumb Lines for World Missions

  • Everyone needs Jesus. Since no one comes to the Father except through Jesus, we will give top priority to ministries and missions that actually bring people to Christ rather than those that focus solely on meeting physical needs.
  • All people are of equal value in the sight of God. Therefore, we will give top priority to ministries and missions where the harvest and return on investment is greatest.
  • The local church is God’s plan A. There is no plan B. Therefore, we will give top priority to ministries and missions that either plant churches or build up existing local churches.
  • Middlemen just get in the way. Therefore, we will not function as a middleman filtering communication or doling out financial support. Instead, we will encourage direct contact between our people and the missionaries and organizations they support. This will result in a less impressive missions’ budget, but it will produce far greater hands-on kingdom involvement.

Each begins with a cultural value statement then embeds that value of the church into a practical action. Osborne says this is how the church extends it’s values throughout the organization with consistency.

Who does your team need to be to accomplish your mission and how are you developing those values?

Getting to 4th generation church multiplication

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“If you are not getting to fourth-generation church multiplication, it is probably because you are going too slow.”

I sat back in my chair in the restaurant and thought about the boldness of that statement. I had been invited into this conversation with George Patterson by Jared Nelms and Koudjo Nenonene of The Timothy Initiative. George is a retired church planting missionary.

George went on to say, “To get to 4th generation church multiplication, go fast. When you go fast, people focus on obedience and on following the commands of Christ. When you go slow, people focus on knowledge and on getting the details right. Multiplication is usually a casualty.”

George was saying that rather than focus initially on depth of knowledge and the right details, which will come over time, focus primarily on obedience and on rapid reproduction immediately after salvation. This missional DNA is the health that will grow churches. Depth and maturity will result over time as healthy churches obey Christ and grow.

George emphasized baptizing as soon as practical and engaging new believers in sharing Christ with their family and friends immediately after salvation. George also talked about the basic commands of Christ that needed to be taught in the first weeks of a new church. He identified seven general commands of Christ that he sees demonstrated in the early church in Acts 2:37-47:

  • Repentance, belief, and receiving the Holy Spirit through regeneration.
  • Baptism
  • The breaking of bread in the Lord’s supper
  • Loving your neighbor and impacting the community
  • Prayer
  • Giving
  • Making disciples

George feels that these basic commands of Christ are crucial in the first few weeks of a new believer’s life and the early weeks of a new church’s life. He said, “If you are not teaching the basic commands quickly, Satan will rush in and fill the new believers with good things, biblical things that keep them from crowning Christ as Lord. The key is obedience to Jesus’ commands, not knowledge of doctrine or theology.”

If you would like to hear more from George Patterson, I found an excellent interview online courtesy of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Reaching 5 billion

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Over 7 billion people that share our planet today. About 2 billion of them claim to share our faith in Jesus Christ. Not all share exactly what we believe, but let’s keep it at 2 billion for a nice round number. That leaves 5 billion. They do not wake up each morning looking forward to walking through the day with the creator of all days. Many have never heard his name. Others have heard, but not in a way they can understand.

Paul shared this same concern when he wrote:

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

That is where Kay and I come in. We have been sent. And we are also in the sending business. What if we can mobilize the 2 billion to reach out to the 5 billion?

What would it take to develop a systematic outreach among the 5 billion in every language, every demographic group, every business? It would take a permanent group that meets regularly, that loves Jesus, and is committed to living righteously and telling others about him. This a church.

We have thought this through. Most rural villages are about 1,000 people in size. Most suburban neighborhood developments are about 1,000 people. Most urban high-rise apartments are grouped into about 1,000 people. So if we  put one of these missionally-focused churches among every 1,000 people, 5 million churches are needed among the 5 billion. We need them evenly distributed so there is a light among every cluster, so that the church of Jesus is available to every person that shares our planet.

That is why we have set a goal of 5 million new churches, a church in every urban high-rise, every suburban neighborhood, every rural village, and every digital community.