Engaging in Mission through Life Groups

Tim Keller

The Bible’s purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible’s purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome . . . religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.

As we come to understand and respond to God's grace in the gospel we are overwhelmed with a desire to obey the commands of Him who has sent us into the world. Remember in John 20:21 Jesus says, "As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you." We have been sent into the world on mission for the sake of the gospel. We are commanded to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to everyone that God has placed in our lives.

re:Generātion is therefore not designed as a Sunday night gathering for Christians to get together and hang out, but is made up of Life Groups on mission for the sake of the gospel who all gather together weekly to worship God.

In order to keep you posted as to what groups have formed, and what groups are doing we will have a weekly Community post to keep you up to speed. Each week there will also be a Life Group Bio posted so if you are without a group you can read a description of groups already formed.

This week's Life Group Bio comes from James Calkins who has started a group that will begin by reaching out to a local Children's Hospital. Here's what James had to say . . .

Our life group is intended to focus on different "cultural" groups. We will be spending time partnering with a Children's Hospital, going to elderly homes, working with prison fellowship, and helping refugees that live in and around our neighborhoods. As we are spending time with a cultural group the number one goal is to bring the gospel to people through word and deed. Also, as we serve these different cultural groups we want to raise up Life Group leaders in order to have individual Life Groups targeting each of the four areas I have identified. The main point is to reach a lost and dying world with the good news of Jesus Christ, and then raise up new leaders and groups that will continue serving that cultural group.

I am excited to see what God will do through James's Life Group as they seek to reach out to a local Children's Hospital. If you are interested in joining this group they meet at 6pm every Sunday night at New Life church before re:Generātion's Sunday gathering. Come check it out.

If you have questions about how to get plugged in please feel free to contact me at johnmckaysmail@gmail.com

The Simplicity of Mission

Grant’s talk last night was great . . . or so I hear. Although I wasn’t able to be there in person, I did get to spend some time with him Saturday night listening to the preparation process and I’m excited to check-out the recording once it’s up on Facebook.

What struck me the most was the refreshing simplicity with which he talked about being on mission for Jesus.

Question: How do we do mission?

Answer: We do mission by being witnesses of “these things”— the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s Messiah—through the power of the Holy Spirit (Lk. 24:44-48).

Practically speaking, this means three things:

1. We need to pray . . . for the Holy Spirit to use us.
2. We need to be present . . . in the places where God has sent us.
3. We need to be compassionate . . . especially when it hurts us.

There’s no deep, dark secret to effective mission. All it takes is pray, presence and compassion. Of course saying “all it takes” may be a bit deceptive. What it really takes is God—without whom the whole process would be impossible. But then again, the mission is his anyway, our job is to simply get in on what He’s already doing.

Core Value: Mission

This Sunday night we’re going to be looking at another one of re:Generātion’s core values: mission. Working out of Luke 24:44-53, we’ll examine the what, how, and why of mission all with an eye to answering the fundamental question: “How do I live missionally (that is, for the sake of the Gospel) in every area of my life?” Here are a few quotes to get you thinking:

Ed Stetzer

Being Missional means actually doing mission right where you are. Missional means adopting the posture of a missionary, learning and adapting to the culture around you while remaining biblically sound.

Tim Keller

Ultimately, we are simply following our Savior’s lead as He gave us the ultimate example of being missional when He came from heaven to be a missionary here on earth—talk about contextualization!

Mark Driscoll

It is imperative that Christians be like Jesus, by living freely within the culture as missionaries who are as faithful to the Father and his gospel as Jesus was in his own time and place.

N. T. Wright

The church is called to do the work of Christ, to be the means of his action in and for the world. . . . Mission, in its widest as well as its more focused senses, is what the church is there for. God intends to put the world to rights; he has dramatically launched this project through Jesus. Those who belong to Jesus are called, here and now, in the power of the Spirit, to be agents of that putting-to-rights purpose.

—Grant B.

Simplified Missional Living

(from The Resurgence by Jonathan Dobson)

Eat with Non-Christians

We all eat three meals a day. Why not make a habit of sharing one of those meals with a non-Christian or with a family of non-Christians? Go to lunch with a co-worker, not by yourself. Invite the neighbors over for family dinner. If it’s too much work to cook a big dinner, just order pizza and put the focus on conversation. When you go out for a meal, invite a non-Christian friend. Or take your family to family-style restaurants where you can sit at the table with strangers and strike up conversations. Have cookouts and invite Christians and non-Christians. Flee the Christian subculture.

Walk, Don’t Drive

If you live in a walkable area, make a practice of getting out and walking around your neighborhood, apartment complex, or campus. Instead of driving to the mailbox or convenience store, walk to get mail or groceries. Be deliberate in your walk. Say hello to people you don’t know. Strike up conversations. Attract attention by walking the dog, carrying along a 6-pack to share, bringing the kids. Make friends. Get out of your house! Last night I spent an hour outside gardening with my family. We had good conversations with about four of our neighbors. Take interest in your neighbors. Ask questions. Engage. Pray as you go. Save some gas, the planet, and some people.

Be a Regular

Instead of hopping all over the city for gas, groceries, haircuts, eating out, and coffee, go to the same places at the same times. Get to know the staff. Smile. Ask questions. Be a regular. I have friends at coffee shops all over the city. My friends at Starbucks donate a ton of leftover pastries to our church 2-3 times a week. We use them for church gatherings and occasionally give them to the homeless. Build relationships. Be a regular.

Hobby with Non-Christians

Pick a hobby that you can share. Get out and do something you enjoy with others. Try city league sports or local rowing and cycling teams. Share your hobby by teaching lessons, such as sewing, piano, knitting, or tennis lessons. Be prayerful. Be intentional. Be winsome. Have fun. Be yourself.

Talk to Your Co-workers

How hard is that? Take your breaks with intentionality. Go out with your team or task force after work. Show interest in your co-workers. Pick four and pray for them. Form moms’ groups in your neighborhood and don’t make them exclusively non-Christian. Schedule play dates with the neighbors’ kids. Work on mission.

Volunteer with Non-Profits

Find a non-profit in your part of the city and take a Saturday a month to serve your city. Bring your neighbors, your friends, or your small group. Spend time with your church serving your city. Once a month. You can do it!

Participate in City [Local] Events

Instead of playing XBox, watching TV, or surfing the net, participate in city events. Go to fundraisers, festivals, cleanups, summer shows, and concerts. Participate missionally. Strike up conversation. Study the culture. Reflect on what you see and hear. Pray for the city. Love the city. Participate with the city.

Serve Your Neighbors

Help a neighbor by weeding, mowing, building a cabinet, or fixing a car. Stop by the neighborhood association or apartment office and ask if there is anything you can do to help improve things. Ask your local Police and Fire Stations if there is anything you can do to help them. Get creative. Just serve!

Prayer and Fasting (3) - Missional Fasting & Application(s)

As a means of missional engagement, fasting moves us, in humble but bold dependence, to expect from God great things in the advancement of his kingdom. Matthew 6:17-18 puts it like this, “When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Of course, the question that immediately pops up is: “What sort of ‘reward’ is Jesus talking about?” Using the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13, John Piper offers the following answer:

[T]he reward we are to seek from the Father in fasting is not first or mainly the gifts of God, but God himself. . . . It begins with three main longings that we are to hope for from God. First, that God’s name be hallowed or revered; second, that God’s kingdom come; and third, that his will be done on earth the way it’s done in heaven. That is the first and primary reward Jesus tells us to seek in our praying and our fasting. . . . The supremacy of God in all things is the great reward we long for in fasting. His supremacy in our own affections and in all our life-choices. His supremacy in the purity of the church. His supremacy in the salvation of the lost. His supremacy in the establishing of righteousness and justice. And his supremacy for the joy of all peoples in the evangelization of the world (78-79).

This means that fasting (again, in conjunction with prayer, worship and God’s Word) is a means of passionately laying hold of God as the Great Giver and Rewarder of those “ask, seek and knock.”

Application(s)

1. As you fast, stay aware of how your mind, body and heart are responding to your want for food. Do you find it harder to handle stress, to control your temper, to relax at the end of the day or to simply enjoy life? How has food (or whatever it is you’re fasting from) subtly replaced God as your heart’s hope and trust?
2. Allow the physical hunger and discomfort of fasting drive you to God. Use your basic need for food as a way of reconnection to your even more basic need for God. Go to God often and be quick to admit your need of Him in all areas of your life: physical, emotional and spiritual.
3. While fasting, ask God to move in both general and specific ways. Generally, you can use the following two prayers to help shape your time with God. Specifically, take time to pray for the lost people in your life and make sure to mention their particular needs: physical, emotional and spiritual.

Prayer and Fasting (2) - Transformational Fasting

As a means of personal transformation, fasting does two things: (1) it exposes our functional saviors (that is, our “idols” or false gods) and (2) it reorients our heart's true desire toward the one, true and living God as the only Being worthy of our love, trust and worship. John Piper, in the book A Hunger for God, writes about this two-fold nature of fasting:

The issue is not food per se. The issue is anything and everything that is, or can be, a substitute for God. . . . [W]e easily deceive ourselves that we love God unless our love is frequently put to the test, and we must show our preferences not merely with words but with sacrifice. . . . [Fasting] forces us to ask repeatedly: do I really hunger for God? Do I miss him? Do I long for him? Or have I begun to be content with his gifts? Christian fasting is a test to see what desires control us (18-19).

One of the reasons for fasting is to know what is in us . . . . In fasting it will come out. You will see it. And you will have to deal with it or quickly smother it again. When midmorning comes and you want food so badly that the thought of lunch becomes as sweet as a summer vacation, then suddenly you realize, “Oh, I forgot, I made a commitment. I can’t have that pleasure. I’m fasting for lunch too.” Then what are you going to do with all the unhappiness inside? Formerly, you blocked it out with the hope of a tasty lunch. The hope of food gave you the good feelings to balance out the bad feelings. But now the balance is off. You must find another way to deal with it (20).

In a similar vein, Richard Foster, in The Celebration of Discipline, records:

More than any other discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. . . . If pride controls us, it will be revealed almost immediately. David said, “I humbled my soul with fasting” [Psalm 35:13]. Anger, bitterness, jealousy, strife, fear—if they are within us, they will surface during fasting. At first, we will rationalize that our anger is due to our hunger. And then, we know that we are angry because the spirit of anger is within us. We can rejoice in this knowledge because we know that healing is available through the power of Christ.

In other words, fasting tunes us in to what’s really motivating our hearts, what’s really driving our desires. Fasting alerts us (through physical, self-imposed deficiency) as to where in actuality we are looking to find comfort, joy, security and satisfaction. On the other hand, by forcing us to leave behind our false saviors, we are simultaneously invited (in conjunction with prayer, worship and God’s Word) to develop a fresh taste for God’s sufficiency as He comes to us in Christ.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the second reason to fast: missional fasting.

Prayer and Fasting (1) - Why Fast?

In preparation for the launch of re:Generātion’s Wednesday afternoon on-campus Life Group at Clackamas Community College, the members of the CCC Life Group are going to spend the next two Wednesdays committing themselves (amidst the business of everyday life) to prayer and fasting. In line with that aim, I’d like to first invite the other members of re:Generātion’s launch team to join with us in this venture. Second, in order to guide this process, over the next few days, I’ll be devoting some blog-time to examining what fasting is and what role it ought to play in our life and mission.

The pattern of frontloading a new ministry endeavor with prayer and fasting is well established and reaches all the way back to Jesus himself who, prior to the start of his public ministry, fasted in the wilderness of Judea for forty days and forty nights (Matt. 4:1-2). This same pattern was also carried on by his disciples in the book of Acts as the gospel began to spread (Acts 13:3). While most Christians are familiar with the practice of fasting—which we’ll define as the voluntary act of abstaining from food or other substances for a set period of time—very few of us really understand what fasting is about. Though the question, “Why fast?” is simple, it’s often a hard one to answer.

There are, in essence, two basic reasons why, as followers of Christ, we should fast: the first is transformational and the second is missional. (There is also, of course, a third, even more basic reason: namely that Scripture, and in particular, Jesus himself, tells us to. For our purposes, however, we’ll simply concentrate on the first two, which, in actuality, inform and shape the rationale behind the third.)

Tomorrow we’ll look at the first purpose of fasting: transformation.

Praying for Gospel Centrality

The following prayer was one we put together for last month’s 5(hundred) Hours of Prayer to prepare for the launch of re:Generātion. I’ve been using it my devotions almost daily. It captures well the heart of what our aim in this, and all, ministry should be.

Gracious Father, make re:Generātion a gospel-centered community committed to conveying and communicating the centrality of Christ to the gospel and the gospel to all of life.

Guard and guide the hearts of both its members and its leaders for we are all prone to follows other gods—idols of our own making and design.

Grieve us, I pray, in those times when we forsake you, with a profound and godly sorrow and lead us in authentic lives marked by true repentance (2 Cor. 7:9).

Cause us to turn away,
From seeking our own good,
From exalting our own names,
From loving our own lives,
From playing our own gods,
From saving our own souls.

Be gracious, O Lord, according to your loving-kindness; according to the greatness of your compassion blot out our transgressions. Wash us thoroughly from their iniquity, and cleanse them from their sin!

Create within us clean hearts and renew right and steadfast spirits within us (Ps. 51:1-2, 10).

Make us righteous by your grace as a gift received by faith. Do not allow us to trust in our own works but in you, the God who justifies the ungodly through the redemption that is in Christ (Rom. 4:5).

Root us deeply, Father, in the reality that having been baptized into Christ we have been baptized into His death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through your own powerful glory, we too might walk in newness of life.

Unite us to your Son that sharing in His death we might also share in His life-giving resurrection.

Through the cross, dispel the power of sin and set us free from its slavery.

As Christ himself died to sin and now lives His life to you, so too teach us to consider ourselves in all our parts dead to sin but alive to you in union with your Son.

May sin, therefore, have no dominion over us, for we are no longer under the law, but under the reign of grace (Rom. 6:1-14).

And finally, Father, having experienced your gracious, gospel love, may we love in return.

Make us agents of your grace, sent out in the name of Christ to seek and save the lost.

What is re:Generātion?

Vision

New Life re:Generātion exists to engage young adults in gospel-centered community focused on worship, mission and leadership development.

What is re:Generātion?

Starting February 28th, re:Generātion will take shape around a weekly, Sunday-night gathering from 6:00-9:00pm made up of three, interlocking elements.

First: missionally-focused Life Groups. From 6:00-6:45pm, the church will be open and available as a meeting place for various small groups each of which will be organized around reaching a specific people-group with the gospel (i.e., recovering addicts, a particular neighborhood, CCC students, young, single-mothers, etc.).

Second: Word and Worship. From 7:00-8:45pm, there will be a time of public teaching and corporate worship aimed (in both style and content) toward communicating and applying the gospel to a 20-something audience. Because worship is a response to revelation, this “service” will be intentionally frontloaded with gospel-Word so that the last half or so can be spent in gospel-Worship.

Third: a prayer ministry. After the time of teaching, while most people will still be in worship, the Fireside Room will be open for prayer to those wanting to respond to the message or who came that night with special needs. A team of trained volunteers (led by Kevin Dickey and Crystal Carlson) will provide a welcoming and guiding presence in the prayer room in service to those who reach-out.

Who is re:Generātion for?

re:Generātion is aimed at:

1. Reaching unchurched, young adults with the gospel.
2. Training and equipping young adults at New Life Church for life and ministry.
3. Training and equipping young adults from other churches for life and ministry in their local context (i.e., in their home-church).