A Kenny Rogers song I’ve always liked is The Gambler, about a traveler who asks advise of a poker player he meets on a train. After some preliminaries, the Gambler emphasizes one key point. He tells the traveler: You gotta know when to hold ‘em, you gotta know when to fold ‘em, you gotta know when to walk away, you gotta know when to run, you never count your money when you’re sitttin at the table, they’ll be time enough for countin’, when the dealins done”

I’ve always thought this was great advise, applicable in many areas of life, especially the part about knowing when to hold ‘em versus what to walk or run away from. And one of the situations Christian singles will hopefully run away from is a potential marriage partner who doesn’t follow Jesus.

Some of the most difficult marriage counseling situations I have ever encountered over my years pastoring at West Hills Morgan Hill have been those where one spouse loves Jesus and the other didn’t. And the reason is simple. Our spiritual lives and loyalties motivate us from the core of our being. So when our core values are incompatible with those of our spouses, there is always pressure, friction, sparks, disconnect, and this leads to great frustration in homes and marriages, while leaving the Christian partner with no escape route, barring adultery on the part of the spouse or abandonment. And often, this brings great misery-a quiet desparation-to those involved.

So, how does a single Christian girl or guy avoid a marriage unequally yoked? Three ways:

1st, listen to Paul’s instruction to marry, but only in the Lord;

2nd, listen to the voices of those who are unequally yoked. For more on this, see Kathy Keller’s blog post ‘Don’t Take it From Me…..

3rd, simply listen to the Gambler, and R……U……N from a potential partner who doesn’t follow Jesus but who wants to pursue you, girls. And guys, pursue only girls who love Jesus like you do.

Last Sunday, I attended a mission send off for a couple from West Hills and afterwords was able to talk with Amy Syres, a young lady who grew up at West Hills Community, attended and graduated from Azusa Pacific U as a nurse and is now serving as a nurse in Haiti. She told me about the vision she and her friend Jenn have to help moms and children, and this vision of hers impacted me in a couple of ways.

1st, I was encouraged to see her zeal and excitement about the vision she has to help poor moms and children; and 2nd, I was inspired about how Jesus takes common people like you, like me, like Amy, and leads them to do uncommon works for Him, serving people in great need.

To learn more about the Second Mile Ministries vision click here. To learn more about Amy and her friend Jenn, click here.

This is the kinda work Jesus followers should support!!!

In June 2011 close to 900 people came together in San Jose for the Ignite/Church Planter conference, which featured Dr. D.A. Carson and Pastors Matt Chandler,  Mark Driscoll, Scott Thomas and Jeff Vanderstelt as speakers.

For those who were unable to attend, or for those who attended but who would like to listen in on the messages again, the audio of each session is available on the Acts 29 web site.

I’ll be listening again. Hope you do too!!

Check it out and let me know your thoughts.

Were you able to attend the Ignite/Church Planter conference held June 3 and 4 in San Jose, Ca? I’m wondering, how did the Lord use the conference speakers, the worship, the times of interaction with other Jesus followers, the special announcements to impact your life?

Leave a comment and let us know how Christ is moving in your life!

Co hosted by Acts 29 Network, the Gospel Coalition and the NorCal Network for Church Planting, the conference was attended by some 900 people, most of them below the age of 35, worshipping to the tunes of the Zimmerman Band, and absorbing the challenges laid down by five men of God from the Word of God.

Plenary speakers were Dr. D.A. Carson, addressing Gospel Transformation, Gospel Preservation and Gospel Imitation; Pastor Matt Chandler, on Preaching the Gospel; Pastor Mark Driscoll, on The Gospel and Your Family; Acts 29 president Scott Thomas on Gospel Centered Leadership; and Pastor Jeff Vandersteldt on Gospel Centered Discipleship.

As a member of both Acts 29 and the NorCal Network, it was quite a privilege to be involved in this first ever event of it’s kind in the Bay area. Twenty young men filled out contact cards for the NorCal Network, expressing interest in church planting in the Bay area, and many more, I’m sure, contacted Acts 29. In addition, the conference served as a boot camp for any church planter in process with Acts 29.

I was greatly encouraged to see so many young adults interested in the gospel, church planting, and kingdom advancement; and was exceedingly blessed to have talked to many of them personally about Christ and their own aspirations in serving Him.

Please, remember to pray for gospel impact in the wake of Ignite 2011. If you missed it, messages will be uploaded to the Acts 29 web site some time in the near future.

In the New Testament, as Jesus proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and verified it’s presence and his identity through miracles, healing and the like, great crowds began to follow him wherever he went. And he taught the crowds many things about themselves, about God and about the kingdom of God.

In our day, any ministry which draws large crowds like Jesus drew would be hailed as a great success. Jesus had a different perspective however. For him, the crowds were not his primary focus. Rather, he chose to train up a much smaller group of people to carry his message to the world after he was gone.

Around him there was an inner circle of men-Peter, James and John along with nine others who were very close to him. We know these 12 as his first group of disciples (Luke 6: 12-16). There were 70 others who he sent out ahead of him to prepare his way in the countryside (Luke 10: 1); and he was also supported by a small group of prominent women (Lk. 8: 1-3). By the time he returned to his Father, Jesus followers numbered 120 (Acts 1: 15).

When we consider this we are faced with a serious question. In a day when numbers are measurements of success, Jesus surely was very successful. So with such huge crowds following him, why did Jesus choose to invest himself primarily in such a small group of people instead of mobilizing the masses who were following him into an unstoppable movement? I believe we find the answer to this question in the good news Jesus proclaimed and what was accomplished as a result.

Jesus proclaimed the good news that the kingdom of God was at hand. This was the ‘gospel’ he preached. And his goal in proclaiming was to establish the kingdom of God on earth. With that goal in mind, he understood the need for followers who were fully convinced he was God’s Son, who were fully invested in His cause and who understood the truths of the kingdom of God in such a way so as to reproduce in others what he had imbedded in them. He therefore prioritized life on life training by forming a small community of faithful followers who did life with him, observed him in many of life’s situations and were therefore able to imitate what they heard and saw.

Jesus saw teaching and preaching to masses of people as necessary in order to spread knowledge to many people at once. But at the same time, he knew that teaching large groups of people at once, though necessary, was not sufficient. Knowledge can and is communicated effectively to large groups of people at once. But knowledge imparted, though a part of training, stops short of illustrating how said knowledge is lived out. For that to take place, people need models. And a model requires people to do life together.

Jesus approach to training followers was consistent with how God instructed the Israelites to communicate his Law. Israel had become a family/nation by the time Moses gave the instructions found in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. And as a nation, Israel was divided into smaller sub groups-12 tribes, which in turn were broken down into kinship groups, which in turn consisted of individual families. To insure all Israelites knew and lived out God’s instructions, primary teaching responsibility was given, not to the priests and Levites, and not to the prophets, but to family heads. The instruction found in Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 encompasses both instruction and modeling, because, as one Puritan writer once observed, precepts taught are like nails placed in a wall, but example lived out is the hammer which pounds them deep.

Later, Paul, like Moses and Jesus before him took the same approach to training others (see Acts 16: 1-5; 20: 3-6); and it seems clear from what we know of the church in the New Testament that this approach to making disciples was normative.

The West Hills Community of churches has and will continue to value corporate worship on Sundays, where the Word of God is taught and proclaimed to larger groups of people. But we understand that the public teaching of God’s Word to large groups of people at once, though necessary, is not sufficient in to the full training of people to be disciples of Jesus. Community groups, on the other hand, provide the smaller, life on life context where discipleship can take place.

And so, as I wrote in an earlier blog post, so I say again, we desire to see community groups become:

1) The essential expression of the church outside Sunday corporate worship;

2) The primary context for making disciples;

3) The primary point of assimilation for new people connecting with the West Hills Community;

4) The foundation for local mission in our cities;

5) The avenue where new leaders are developed, and;

6) The primary arena where the shepherding and care of others takes place.

Moses instructed Israel to teach God’s law by precept and example in smaller contexts; and Jesus adopted this approach in the training of his followers. Paul, the other apostles and the early church followed suit. And we want to follow this same pattern as we purpose to be and make disciples of Jesus in the 21st century.

Our hope is, each of us at West Hills will get invested in a community group, for the purpose of being and making disciples.

In 2009 the leadership at West Hills felt led of the Lord to move in the direction of seeing small groups become a central part of of West Hills church culture, in the sense that we would launch groups with a specific focus, with a desire to see these groups become the primary expression of the church through the week (and the operative words here are primary, not only; and through the week, not Sunday. We have no intention of replacing corporate worship, nor canceling everything except small groups). In other words, we want to see small groups of a certain type (missional community groups) become:

1) The essential expression of the church

2) The context for making disciples

3) The primary point of assimilation for new people connecting with WH

4) The foundation for local mission

5) The arena where leaders are developed

6) The primary arena where the shepherding and care of others takes place.

And after many months, we feel the foundation has been laid in that we have 17 groups meeting, with a goal of seeing these groups multiply.

This is a very good start. But as every house builder knows, the foundation for the house is only the beginning, for if after laying a foundation nothing else happens, the house will never be fully built. So now that a foundation has been laid, we want to build on it, by equipping group leaders (those who are already leading or who aspire to lead) in order to multiply groups year to year.

As word of this direction has spread, people naturally have questions as to what, exactly, missional community groups are and how these groups fit into the spread of the gospel. To this end I want to define what a missional community group is as well as identify the elements of this type group here. Then, in future blog posts, I want to explain the biblical foundations for missional communities as well as how they fit into the vision of discipleship and church planting.

Missional Community Groups Defined

Many people ask, ‘What exactly is a missional community group?’ To this question I might respond, “A MCG is simply a small family of missionary servants who are being and making disciples”. That’s a simple and short definition-but, what does it mean? Here’s a longer definition of MCG’s:

“A missional community group is a small group/family of Jesus disciples who are founded on and defined by the gospel and formed around Jesus Mission while living in community together.”

These are the type groups we desire to see developed; and it is this type group we want to see multiply as we move into the future-groups which are characterized by three key elements.

The Elements of Missional Community Groups :

A MCG is defined by three elements:

First, an MCG is a small group/family of Jesus disciples-aka missionary servants- who are gospel centered. In other words, the people in these groups are growing in their understanding of how the gospel shapes and applies to all of life while loving and serving one another in the Lord. The centrality of the gospel in the life of these communities is of vital importance because the gospel of Jesus Christ is the foundation from which Jesus followers live life and relate to one another and the world.

Second, MCG’s gather together around Christ’s mission. They are mission motivated~and His mission is for people to be and to make disciples (Mt. 28: 18-20). What this means is, MCG’s have a clearly identified context (specific neighborhoods, one’s work place, one’s school or a specific sub group in the community) where they seek to make disciples. This element is also vital to grasp, because before he returned to the Father Jesus sent his followers on a specific mission in the world, and this mission has come down to all his followers in the 21st century. And the mission was to be and make disciples of Jesus.

Third, the people in a MCG believe and apply the gospel and make disciples of others while doing life together-meaning they are community focused. As Jesus followers live in community with one another, they sharpen, challenge and pray for one another and growth to maturity takes place; and those not yet following Jesus are enabled to see the gospel community loving and serving one another in Jesus name. And this becomes a powerful tool, used of the Lord to bring people to Christ.

These are the essential elements of missional community groups. But what do these groups look like? How are MCG’s structured?

A Word About Form:

The exact form of each of these groups will vary, in that some of the groups will be made up of couples, or singles or even made up of married couples and single people together while others may be gender specific-men or women serving together; and group participants may vary in age range as well. Also, the context where each group makes disciples will also vary. But for any group to be a missional community these three elements-gospel, mission and community-should be present and recognizable in/through the group.

NOTE: The topic for my next blog post will focus on the biblical foundations for missional community groups; and how these groups fit in with God’s plan of redemption in the world.

For those addicted to mediocrity~trapped in the comforts of easy, western Christianity while longing for something more, you’ll find it convicting in a ‘wake up sleeper~arise from the dead and Christ will shine on you’ sort of way.

Either way, may the site inspire us to write our last letter, and live radically for the Lord we serve.