Missio Dei Suburbia

How Do You Measure Success?

Yesterday morning, a bunch of us passed along this note on Twitter: 'Over 80% of church plants in the US fail but churches in the Acts 29 church planting network have a 95% success rate.' That news is both exciting and humbling for those of us in A29 who are well aware that we're not that smart and we're not particularly more gifted than some of the guys who have crashed and burned in planting.

A few minutes after I tossed out that information, I had someone I respect push back a little, wondering if our definition of success lines up with how Jesus defines success, pointing me to John 4:35-38. If you read that text and listen to the stories of people whose church plants have shut down, it's hard to ignore the work of God in proverbially making lemonade out of lemons.

So how do we define success?

Seth Godin talks about a hierarchy of success and the critical importance of attitude:

• Why are you doing this at all?
• What's your bias in dealing with people and problems?
• How do you deal with failure?
• When will you quit?
• How do you treat competitors?
• What personality are you looking for in the people you hire?
• What's it like to work for you? Why? Is that a deliberate choice?
• What sort of decisions do you make when no one is looking?

Over at the Desiring God blog, Mike Thate reminds us that:

there is an outright war over who gets to define “success.” There is some irony in this story in that my flight originated in Manhattan, a monument to success. But what is success? And who gets to define it? While success benchmarks are of course both entirely natural and often helpful—e.g. a manager’s use of statistical evaluation to determine a batting lineup or pitching rotation or a trader’s measuring financial turn on investment to evaluate market share—they should also be held in suspicion. Who is defining it? Once success is defined, desired outcomes and lifestyles are set for many. In this sense, they can become totalizing and subsuming.

And finally, Skye Jethani reminds us that our success - our legitimacy - is found in what Jesus has done for us.

Keepin' Mama Happy: Sources of Satisfaction and Stress for Church Planting Wives

Global Church Advancement (GCA) shares six primary and eight secondary sources of satisfaction and stress in church planting wives.

Primary Sources:

1. The Husband
2. Support System
3. Sabbath Rest
4. Reliance on Christ
5. Boundary Ambiguity
6. Physical Health

Secondary Sources:

1. Changed Lives
2. Commitment and Sense of Calling to Church Planting
3. Family Time
4. Raising Kids
5. Church Growth
6. Expectations
7. Finances
8. Use of Gifts and Abilities

Read the rest of the post here.

Monday Is For Fighting - Matt Chandler on Making War

Leadership Journal interviews Matt Chandler - one question that fits well with what we deal with in Fight Clubs:

LJ: What does warring against sin look like?

MC: Sanctification here at The Village begins by answering two questions. What stirs your affections for Jesus Christ? And what robs you of those affections? Many of the things that stifle growth are morally neutral. They're not bad things. Facebook is not bad. Television and movies are not bad. I enjoy TV, but it doesn't take long for me to begin to find humorous on TV what the Lord finds heartbreaking.

The same goes for following sports. It's not wrong, but if I start watching sports, I begin to care too much. I get stupid. If 19-year-old boys are ruining your day because of what they do with a ball, that's a problem. These things rob my affections for Christ. I want to fill my life with things that stir my affections for him. After a funeral I walked around the cemetery and found a grave of a guy who died when he was my age. I felt my mortality in that moment and it made me love the Lord. It really did. Some types of epic films do that for me, and so does angst-filled music.

We want our people to think beyond simply what's right and wrong. We want them to fill their lives with things that stir their affections for Jesus Christ and, as best as they can, to walk away from things that rob those affections—even when they're not immoral.

Read the whole interview here.

Scott Thomas on Replanting

Christ Community Church is a replant - an organic description of a process that mechanically can feel like taking a machine apart piece-by-piece, discarding the parts that are unsalvageable (and no, I'm not talking about people), cleaning up what can be repaired and building out a church that gets the job done.

I spoke on replanting at an Acts 29 boot camp in Dallas last year - and almost ten months later, I get calls about replanting every week. Some men intentionally walk into a church knowing it needs this kind of work; more often it's not until someone has been part of a particular church and its particular culture and processes that they discover a church that needs to die and experience ecclesiastical resurrection.

Scott Thomas is the director of Acts 29. He also has experience in replanting churches - and he's writing a five-part series on replanting that's well worth your time. The truth is, we need patient, compassionate, courageous, persistent men who will love dying churches well enough to help them die well and experience new life.

Broken Creation, Broken Humanity

Really nice piece in The Austin Statesman by Jonathan Dodson:

When I hear the word gospel, I hear overtones of creation, of Jesus making all things new. This is especially good news because, if polar bears and the Amazon need to be renewed, I, a broken, very imperfect sinner also need to be renewed. In fact, it is humanity that has wrecked so much of creation. The Gospel holds out hope not just for a broken creation, but for a broken humanity.

Check out the whole thing here.

The Gospel - Power to Renew the World

“The ‘gospel’ is the good news that through Jesus, the Messiah, the power of God’s kingdom has entered history to renew the whole world. Through the Savior God has established his reign. When we believe and rely on Jesus’ work and record (rather than ours) for our relationship to God, that kingdom power comes upon us and begins to work through us. We witness this radical new way of living by our renewed lives, beautiful community, social justice, and cultural transformation. The good news brings new life. The gospel motivates, guides, and empowers every aspect of our living and worship.”

- Jim Belcher, Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional

Bibliophile - Deep Church

Steve McCoy reviews Jim Belcher's Deep Church - a book Tim Keller calls 'an important book':

I think the bottom line is that Deep Church is about the roots of the traditional church, the helpful questioning and critique of the emerging church, and better answers than many in the EC could deliver. You could say that Belcher (as one in the EC) finally found the answers to the EC's questions while staying thoroughly biblical and theological, solidly traditional and historical. These are the answers so many of us have been looking for and only finding in bits and pieces along the way. They aren't new answers. But they have never been explained better as they pertain to the emerging church and the traditional church.

On Campus - Leadership Nuggets

Benson Hines has put together a list of 'leadership nuggets' based on what he learned and experienced during his first year working in campus ministry. Definitely worth a look if your mission is on campus - as ministry staff or a student.

A Gospel-Centered Reader

Tim Brister and I have only been in the same room once (St. Louis in the fall of 2008) but I really appreciate the work he does on his blog and have enjoyed our interactions over the phone and through Twitter - plus, he shares an appreciation for the Alabama Crimson Tide, so he's half a step away from sainthood.

So I'd be crazier than Mike Gundy (man, that video never gets old) to not pass along a series of resources that Tim has put together called A Gospel-Centered Reader. Whether it's for your personal use or help in leading a group of people, you need to put this to good use:

1.  Gospel Coalition Foundation Documents
2.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration
3.  Together for the Gospel Statement (PDF)
4.  The Centrality of the Gospel by Tim Keller (PDF)
5.  The Biblical Gospel by D.A. Carson (PDF)
6.  Gospel-Driven Sanctification by Jerry Bridges (PDF)
7.  The Transforming Power of the Gospel – Steve Childers (PDF)
8.  The Gospel and the Poor by Tim Keller (PDF)
9.  Fight Clubs: Gospel-Centered Discipleship by Jonathan Dodson (PDF)
10. The Gospel Centered Life by Bob Thune (study)
11.  Gospel-Centered Ministry by Tim Keller (PDF)
12.  How to Preach the Gospel to Yourself by David Fairchild (Sermon MSS)
13.  The Gospel: Key to Change by Tim Keller (PDF)
14.  God Strengthens Us by the Gospel by John Piper
15.  Advancing the Gospel in the 21st Century Part 2 by Tim Keller
16.  Gospel-Centered Preaching by Steve Childers (not online)
17.  Gospel Christianity (1.0) (2.0) (3.0) by Tim Keller (studies)
18.  The Gospel in Its Many Forms by Tim Keller
19.  How Does the Gospel Save Believers? (Part 2) (Part 3) by John Piper
20.  Gospel-Centered by Joe Thorn
21.  Being the Church in Our Culture by Tim Keller (PDF)
22.  Preach the Gospel to Yourself by Tim Challies
23.  What Do I Mean by a Gospel-Driven Life? (Part 2 | Part 3) by John Fonville
24.  The Gospel-Driven Life by Harry Reeder III

Choosing Thomas

The Dallas Morning News has posted a video about the story of T. K. and Deidrea Laux, an evangelical couple who decided to give birth to their son, Thomas, despite the fact that he had the DNA abnormality Trisomy 13.

There isn't a person I know who's watched this who hasn't ended up crying like a baby - this is what happens when we come face-to-face with the realities of a broken world and the curse-reversing effects of a love fueled by the gospel.