Mark Moore's Blog

Total Church - US Book Release

It has been one year since I posted on Total Church, written by Tim Chester & Steve Timmis. To this day, I still receive requests from people wanting to know if I have any copies of the book. The good news is that you can now pre-order the book from Amazon in the US. The book is scheduled for release on September 30, 2008.

There is not a single book on church that I would more highly recommend. The content of this book is lived out every day in The Crowded House and in the lives of the two men who have authored the book.

Order a copy for yourself.

Order copies for your leaders.

Force the book to sell out and have to be printed again. If that were the case, perhaps the church would become total again.

Technorati Tags: steve timmis, tim chester, Total Church Conference

Update on Pastor Sudhakar

Thanks to all of you who have been praying for Pastor Sudhakar in India. I really appreciate those of you who made mention of him on your blogs. Last night, Mike Gunn finally received some news out of India. Please continue to pray.

Dear Pastor Mike Gunn,

Thank you so much for mobilizing so many people to pray for me which is a great encouragement to me in times of trouble. There is a momentum in our city as more pastors are united in fighting for the rights of christian relegion freedom...

This makes me work more vigorously for the Lord ,what may happen to me I don't care, one thing I know for sure until I finish His work on the earth nothing is going to happen to me. I am overwhelmed with joy because so many brothers and sisters in ACTS 29 are covering me with their prayers.

Sudhakar

Technorati Tags: a29i, acts 29, persecuted church

Persecution in India

Please pray for my friend Pastor Sudhakar.

Pastor Sudhakar is a church planter/pastor in India who is planting churches in the "slums" of India amongst the poorest and most outcast. God has been very gracious and has blessed the ministry of Pastor Sudhakar so that many have come to Christ. I had the privilege of spending some time with him a couple of years ago. Over the course of our meal together I sensed that I was sitting with a man who has an unwavering commitment to the gospel and an unquestionable love for the people that he serves in his church. This, I thought, is a real man of God.

Pastor Sudhakar's work in India is now a part of the Acts 29 Network and we are working to help him with training his pastors, funding, etc. It is a privilege to be in gospel partnership with him.

This week, very concerning news came from India to us from Pastor Sudhakar. I am going to let you read it in his own words:

"On 9th( Sunday) of this month a group of 20 young people came while we were worshipping and beaten me and some women of our church and in return they have lodged a counter complaint on me putting allegation on me by saying i am converting lot of Hindus into Christianity. Kindly pray for me as the case is in the court."

Then, yesterday, we received this update via a letter from him to Mike Gunn:

Dear pastor Mike Gunn, 

I am very much comforted by seeing your letter. I know there are some people who love me and pray for me which is my strength to push forward in times of trouble and persecutions.

Today the Judge will decide wether i will get anticipatry bail or not. Please pray.

Four anti- communial groups called RSS, VHP, Bajarangdal and Hindu Vahini together attacked me and our church people.

Hindu Vahini is the worst among these groups who killed two pastors brutually three years back in our city. They poured acid, cut the pastors into peaces and put them in a gunny bag and thrown thier bodies in the outskirts of the city.

These days the persecutions are increasing and as many non christians in my area are turning into christianity now they have targetted me.

I know without Gods will nothing will happen to me and at the same time i am trying to be careful and vigilant.

I really appriciate your prayers and concern for me. I will let you know the court proceedings as time goes on.

- Pastor Sudhakar

I'm posting this for three reasons. First, awareness. The idea of persecution is often times out of sight and out of mind for Christians living in the west. We must be aware of the fact that our brothers and sisters in Christ are being persecuted for their faith everyday while we sit around and gripe and complain over the "time commitment" of being involved in a small group. Second, I post this in order to implore you to pray. Please pray for Pastor Sudhakar and his church. Pray for God's grace and mercy to him during this trial and with the continual persecution of his church. Pray that in his suffering Christ would be glorified and made to look beautiful to the people of India. Finally, pray for the four groups listed -- RSS, VHP, Bajarandgal, and Hindu Vahini. Pray that the gospel would convict them of their sin and the supremacy of Jesus and that they would turn to Jesus and repentance and faith. Pray especially for the Hindu Vahini group who is responsible for the brutal execution of at least two pastors. Pray the leader of the Hindu Vahini group would be converted to the gospel like Saul of Tarsus. Pray that he would be used to reach India with the gospel.

As I receive any updates on Pastor Sudhakar I will be sure to let you know. For those of you who are pastors, would you please have your churches join our church tomorrow in praying for Pastor Sudhakar.

Technorati Tags: a29i, acts 29, persecuted church

Believing and Living the Gospel

This week I will be teaching from Acts 2:42-47. This is such a powerful text as it focuses on the earliest Christian community and their commitment to one another and the resulting impact of the gospel mission. While thinking about this subject and doing some reading, I couldn't help but think about how right Lesslie Newbigin was when he said:

I have come to feel that the primary reality of which we have to take account in seeking for a Christian impact on public life is the Christian congregation. How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. I am, of course, not denying the importance of the many activities by which we seek to challenge public life with the gospel - evangelistic campaigns, distribution of Bibles and Christian literature, conferences, and even books such as this one. But I am saying that these are all secondary, and that they have power to accomplish their purpose only as they are rooted in and lead back to a believing community.

Notice this phrase, "a congregation of men and women who believe [the gospel] and live by it." The earliest Christian community of the book of Acts not only believed the gospel (Acts 2:41), but they lived by it (Acts 2:42-47). I wonder how many of our churches are truly gospel centered communities who both believe the gospel and live by the gospel? What would it look like if our churches truly began to live like the earliest Christian communities of Acts 2? It would certainly look like a radical commitment to Jesus as both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). It would certainly look like a radical commitment to the people of the Lord (Acts 2:44-45). I'm also certain that it would be so foreign to what we know as church today that we probably would not know what to call it.

Maybe what this means is that we should examine what we know as church today and think of something else to call it.

Technorati Tags: church, mission, missional church

Missional Neighbor

Our church is very intentional about church being the missional community of God's people and not being a location or an event. A couple of weeks ago we all committed to pray for our neighbors in a very focused sort of way. We exchanged names with one another and I happened to get Casey Bedell's names. The paper read, "Blonde Girl and Spanish Girl." So, for the past couple of weeks I have been praying for a "blonde girl and spanish girl" without knowing their names. Today I read Casey's blog and was encouraged by what he had posted. Being missional is not a reprogramming of church, it is a rethinking of the very nature of the gospel.

Here's Casey's post:

Recently my pastor Mark Moore asked me about my neighbors. I ashamedly looked down to the ground and said, "yeah, I have two neighbors, blondy and spanish." Sadly thats all I knew about them, ones hair color and ones ethnicity. But recently I got the courage to get to know my neighbors, well one of the two at least. (read more)

Technorati Tags: gospel, mission, missional church

APEST Test

Alan Hirsch has developed a new "online profiling instrument designed to assist you to find your ministry style in relation to the fivefold ministry of Ephesians 4 (Apostolic, Prophetic, Evangelistic, Shepherding, Teaching)." It is called the APEST Test and I took it this week, pretty sure that I knew exactly what the outcome would be, and sure enough it pegged me right on target.

> Primary 1: Apostolic - 22

> Primary 2: Evangelistic - 21

> Secondary 1: Prophetic - 16

> Secondary 2: Teaching - 14

> Secondary 3: Shepherding - 2

The numbers for each role represent the strength of each area of gifting. There is a reason why I feel that tests like these are important for leadership assessment--they tell you who you need with you. Most of us, like me, can peg ourselves before we take these types of tests. We know what we are good at, what we are not so good at, and what we are down right terrible at. When evaluating the above results, I should make two decisions. First, what am I going to do in ministry that allows me to exercise the strength of my gifting? Second, who am I going to work with that compliments my weakness? Allow me to illustrate. Last weekend was the NFL draft. For rabid football fans like me, I couldn't wait to see how things unfolded and was grateful to ESPN for providing me hours of meaningless coverage. During the first round, the Cleveland Browns selected an offensive lineman as well as a quarterback. This is great strategy; draft one to block for the other while he throws the football. Pretty simple. Now, imagine how stupid it would be if they had drafted two quarterbacks and expected one to play offensive line because they needed a lineman and none were available. The 200 pound quarterback would quickly be leveled by massive defensive tackle blasting through the line to crush the "real quarterback". The result: two crushed quarterback. The even bigger result: they would consistently lose the game.

Why is it that when it comes to ministry, we often times ignore these simple principles and move forward with men out of position? Our failure to understand biblical roles has caused us to consistently lose the game. This has led to the rise of parachurch ministries, restless pastors, disgruntled church members, and a host of other things, not least of which is the lack of gospel movement.

Here is the link to the APEST Test if you are interested in taking it. It takes about five minutes to complete.

Technorati Tags: alan hirsch, apest test, apostolic ministry, church planting, missional church

Early Church Growth

This Sunday, I begin a new series in my church preaching through the book of Acts. I am very excited about this series and cannot wait to get started. One of the main reasons for this is that I really feel my church is in a transitional stage as we move from being a church plant to a church planting church. We planted our first church (sent people out of ours) two weeks ago and I am prayerful that we will plant at least two more in the next year. Our prayer is that God would use us to plant at least 100 churches in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex, as well as be involved in many other church plants internationally. For this reason alone, Acts is a good place for our church to camp out for a while.

With that said, much of my thinking lately has been related to the earliest Christian communities and the expansion of the church up until the time of Christendom. I recently posted on this in "How did the early church grow?" I will admit, I am a self-confessed junkie when it comes to reading books and commentaries related to what I am currently thinking about, experiencing, and preaching (see a partial list here). This afternoon I spent some time reading some books that I had not previously read on Acts. One of the books, Acts by James Montgomery Boice, struck a chord in the preface.

"When I first began to study and preach on Acts nearly ten years ago I was struck by a number of things. One was the rapid, amazing growth of the early church. Humanly speaking, it had nothing going for it. It had no money, no proven leaders, no technological tools for propagating the gospel. And it faced enormous obstacles. It was utterly new. It taught truths that were incredible to the unregenerate world. It was the subject of the most intense hatreds and persecutions. Yet, as Luke records its growth in this document (Acts), it spread from Jerusalem, which was an obscure corner of the world, to Rome, the world's capital, all within the lifetime of the first generation of believers."

Later in the book, Boice writes:

"Historians have asked how this first generation of Christians, who for the most part were unlearned men and women, could have propagated the gospel so rapidly. Adolf Harnack, a German church historian of the nineteenth century, knew how. He said, 'We cannot hesitate to believe that the great mission of Christianity was in reality accomplished by means of informal missionaries.' That was the secret. Every Christian--not just a formal order of missionaries supplied by the Christians at home--considered it his or her obligation bear witness."

The more you study the early church and the way it grew, the more it is impossible to excuse the way so few of today's church members participate in the mission of the gospel. The church was never intended to be an institution that provides religious goods and services to Christians. The church was, and is still, the people through who Jesus continues to bring about redemption to the world. It is perfectly clear from studying the New Testament and studying the current state of the church that we have over professionalized the church at the expense of stifling growth. Ouch! That is hard to read for me, a professional minister of the gospel. But, it is true. We may not have stifled the growth of our churches, but we have in many ways stifled the growth of our people. The bigger the church the more professional things must be, and that means less and less involvement for the unlearned and unprofessional. Honestly, it leaves you wondering whether or not many of the leaders of the early church would even have a place of leadership in many of our modern churches.

Oh well, at this point I'm beginning to preach and it is still Friday evening. My wife just walked into my study and told me dinner is ready. The food she has cooked smells great and I cannot wait to eat, so I'm out of here.

Technorati Tags: early church, missional church, acts

Characteristics of the Missional Church

Scott Thomas, the director of Acts 29, has posted an excellent new article on the Acts 29 blog entitled What is a Missional Church? It is an excellent article that I highly recommend. Among other things, the article contains thirteen characteristics of the missional church. I have included them here, although I recommend you read the entire article.

1. A missional church primarily understands the centrality of the gospel (1 Cor. 15:1-4; 2:2; Gal. 6:14). Man was created in the image of God. Adam disobeyed God and his sin has affected all of mankind. Christ's sacrificial atonement is the only way of redemption and reconciliation to God. This alone motivates us to be consumed with the mission of God.

2. A missional church embraces the calling of God to act as a missionary into its own culture (Mt. 4:19; Acts 16:20; 17:6). Its members approach natural relationships, activities, community, and occupation or school as opportunities to influence for the gospel.

3. A missional church acknowledges its purpose is to glorify God by taking Christ into the irreligious world (Mt. 28:18-20). It is not self-absorbed in its own life but rather absorbed in the life-giving mission of Jesus.

4. A missional church boldly and intentionally encounters unbelievers like Christ (Luke 7:34; Acts 16:20; 17:6). Its goal is not separation but redemption without compromised values.

5. A missional church actively seeks to be trained and equipped as a missionary through its gospel community (Eph. 4:11-16). Every member is personally equipped to engage friends and neighbors with the gospel.

6. A missional church is deeply dependent upon the Holy Spirit as an agent for evangelizing the lost world (Acts 1:8; 4:8, 31; 13:9). Lost people are saved by the Holy Spirit when and how He determines.

7. A missional church commits to the authoritative, infallible, inerrant, inspired, all-sufficient Scriptures (2 Timothy 3:14-17; Acts 2:42). The authority of all missionary work is founded in the truth that God has a clear Word to communicate to the world.

8. A missional church develops relationships with the lost for the purpose of incarnating Christ (Matt. 5:13-16). It seeks to intentionally develop meaningful relationships with the numerous acquaintances in their lives.

9. A missional church uses sacrificial love as its means of witness (John 15:12-17; 1 John 4:19-21). Every believer is constrained to practically and sincerely demonstrate extravagant love to non-believers.

10. A missional church helps others to find Jesus in their own way and timing, rather than forcing them to "turn or burn" (1 Cor. 9:20-23). It is the sovereign God who uses us as we humbly relate to other's misperceptions of the gospel.

11. A missional church is affected in every area of its life through a calling by God to be an agent for the gospel (Acts 4:13, 31-35). As the gospel redeems our lives it changes us and challenges us toward God's mission.

12. A missional church practices its faith in community-groups of people together (Acts 2:42-45; Phil. 1:27). It seeks to participate in true community like our triune Godhead.

13. A missional church worships God in an authentic, personal and evangelistic way (John 4:23-24). We worship a Savior who left us here to be captured by His mission.

Technorati Tags: acts 29, church planting, missional church

How did the early church grow?

A few months ago I read Alan Hirsch's new book, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. The introduction captured my attention and pointed out some things that have challenged my thinking from the moment I first read them. Hirsch tells a story of attending a seminar on missional church in which the speaker asked the question, "How many Christians do you think there were in the year AD 100?" The speaker then asked, "How many Christians do you think there were just before Constantine came on the scene, say, AD 310?" The answer is mind-boggling.

> AD 100 as few as 25,000 Christians

> AD 310 up to 20,000,000 Christians

Hirsch says that the speaker then asked a question that has haunted him to this day: "How did they do this? How did they go from being a small movement to the most significant religious force in the Roman Empire in two centuries?" Wow. That is a haunting question. However, what has haunted me is what he points out next. Hirsch points out that when attempting to answer the question of how the early church grew, one must consider several factors in the equation. What are those factors?

> They were an illegal religion throughout this period.

> They didn't have any church buildings as we know them.

> They didn't even have the Scriptures as we know them.

> They didn't have an institution or the professional form of leadership normally associated with it.

> They didn't have seeker-sensitive services, youth groups, worship bands, seminaries, commentaries, etc.

> They actually made it hard to join the church.

It is impossible to read something like that and walk away without being phased. From 25,000 to 20,000,000 in 200 years?!?! No buildings?!?! No Bible?!?! No professional leaders?!?! No bands?!?! What would we teach at our church planting conferences? Consider these things again in light of the typical conference on church planting:

> They were an illegal religion throughout this period. What would we do in place of our workshops on incorporation and 501(c)(3) and liability insurance?

> They didn't have any church buildings as we know them. What would we do in place of our workshops on building location, visibility, esthetics, building funds, etc?

> They didn't even have the Scriptures as we know them. What would we do in place of our workshops on expository preaching?

> They didn't have an institution or the professional form of leadership normally associated with it. What would we do in place of our workshops on hiring staff such as children's pastor, men's ministry leader, etc.?

> They didn't have seeker-sensitive services, youth groups, worship bands, seminaries, commentaries, etc. What would we do in place of our workshops on how to do "worship music" that is relevant?

> They actually made it hard to join the church. What would we do with our workshops on follow-up?

I guess we would have to spend our time focusing on things such as how to be hospitable to all the people who will be in your house jacking up your way of life because they won't leave and they keep bringing all of their whacked out friends over all the time. Which would probably mean that we would have to focus a lot of attention on discipleship and training people how to live out the gospel in their workplaces. If that were the case, I guess we would no longer need so many conferences at all because the work of Ephesians 5 would be carried out in local churches that were changing cities because of the gospel.

Just something to think about.........and hopefully to screw up your life like it has screwed up mine.

Technorati Tags: alan hirsch, church planting, missional church

Steve Timmis & Total Church

While I was in the UK last week, I had breakfast with Steve Timmis of The Crowded House. From their website, "The Crowded House is a network of missionary congregations in Sheffield with a commitment to church planting. Most of our churches meet in homes. We want to offer a place of belonging. We are committed to: mission through community - we believe that the life of the Christian family is a powerful apologetic for the gospel; community in mission - we want to be congregations focused on the gospel and church planting."

I really enjoyed my time with Steve and the conversation we shared was very stimulating and thought provoking. I will be with him again next week in Seattle and am looking forward to continuing our conversation. Steve has written a new book, with Tim Chester, entitled Total Church. The book is published by IVP and is due out in the Spring of 2007. Below is an introduction to the book as it appears on Tim Chester's blog. From this introduction it's not hard to tell why I said that my time spent with Steve was stimulating and thought provoking. Here you go:

Two key principles should shape church life: gospel and community. Christians are called to a dual fidelity: fidelity to the core content of the gospel and fidelity to the primary context of a believing community. Whether we are thinking about evangelism, social involvement, pastoral care, apologetics, discipleship or teaching, the content is consistently the Christian gospel and the context is consistently the Christian community. What we do is always defined by the gospel and the context is always our belonging in the church. Our identity as Christians is defined by the gospel and the community. (more)

Technorati Tags: books, church planting, emerging church, gospel, missional church, tim chester, steve timmis