Starting Churches

Kingdom Agenda

Kingdom Agenda

Kingdom Agenda – ­­­­­ December 2010

-Jeffrey Christopherson

“Jesus said, 'What is the Kingdom of God like? How can I illustrate it? It is like a tiny mustard seed that a man planted in a garden'..." Luke 13:18-19 (NLT)

 This month I would like to share with you a true story that illustrates the struggle many churches experience when we set out on the great adventure of God’s Kingdom agenda.

 Let me tell you the story of Dan……a pastor of a church that had a reputation of being a ‘mover and shaker’ in the local evangelical landscape. Unfortunately some bad decisions and a successive parade of short-term pastorates had left this congregation a shell of its former glory.

 Dan was called as senior pastor with the hopes of ‘righting the ship’ and bringing back the glory years. The pastor search committee and the congregation never really listened to the message and heartbeat of their pastoral candidate.  They knew that they needed to snag an impressive leader and that Dan was their dream come true.

 Dan began to prepare God’s people for the mission that he had promised in earlier interviews. Skillfully crafted sermons were delivered Sunday after Sunday on themes familiar to this audience - familiar, yet somehow strangely unfamiliar and uncomfortably different as well. 

 Dan, the ‘dream come true’ pastor soon became a nightmare to those who cherished the good old days. Dan insisted with the conviction of an evangelist and the focus of a missionary that their church should take spiritual responsibility for every man, woman and child in their immediate community to have an opportunity to see, hear, taste, and smell the Good News of Jesus Christ. Who could argue with that? As an evangelical sentiment, almost nobody; as an executable objective, there were plenty.

 The church was once again growing, but their growth did not entirely resemble their community or touch any of the substantial social needs that encircled them. Dan began to talk with his leadership about starting new congregations that would speak the heart language of the community. Their church building was more than adequate to house numerous congregations simultaneously. To the ‘bean counters’, he positioned it as a stewardship issue. To the ‘missions people’, it was world missions in our backyard. To the ‘evangelism people’, it was saturation sowing at its finest. There was something for everyone here. Or was there?

At first, it seemed that Dan had struck upon a winning idea. But many questions from significant stakeholders had yet to be answered. Questions like, “Who is going to pay for this endeavor (is this going to cost us more)? Won’t this spread you too thin, (will we have to serve more)? How will we afford the upkeep (won’t these people wreck our building)? And then finally, the question behind all the other questions, “How will all of this help us grow our church?”

Dan had a decision to make. God had placed deep inside his spirit a passion for the lost multitudes around him.  Everyday he saw the sadness, hopelessness, and desperation of those with whom his church had no credibility. Even though he was ‘encouraged’ to stop talking about this stuff, he felt like it was a question of obedience to God or to man.

Dan, with a deeply saddened heart, tendered his resignation to the elders. In good conscience, he could not continue to be the under-shepherd of a flock that was essentially unconcerned with the mission of the Good Shepherd. It wasn’t a question of pride; it was a question of allegiance. 

As is always in cases like this, nobody is happy. How could the elders explain Dan’s departure? He was too mission-minded? He was too evangelistic? He was too concerned about the lost? There was some back room scrambling to come up with a ‘win-win’ counter-offer. Dan was presented with a proposal and a request. The proposal was, “we propose that you don’t leave.” The request was, “give us more time to sit with the idea of being missional.” Dan prayed through this and prescribed the conditions of his continued leadership, which included initiating a first church plant in their community after twelve months of congregational preparation.

One year later Dan called me and asked, “Would you be interested in having a conversation about starting a new church?” Another year’s preparation had not adequately prepared the church to look outside its walls.

Today Dan is up to his ears in Kingdom activity. He planted a church-planting church in his community that cancels worship services once a month to engage their community in all kinds of Kingdom initiatives and holds sports camp aimed at the working poor. This year they had over 1000 children involved in sports and learning the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Dan is busy catalyzing new church plants throughout Toronto. This year alone he has been instrumental in starting several new congregations and has a faith goal of seeing 250 new plants started in the Toronto area by the year 2020.

What can we learn about Kingdom expansion from Dan? Whenever you bump into Christ followers like Dan (you will find them by looking in the places where you would expect to see Jesus) you find a leader who has managed to flesh out both the theory and practice of Scripture. They do not thrive on heady academic argumentation divorced from any real life application, nor do they run roughshod over clear biblical instruction in order to achieve dubious ends. The Kingdom expanding leader lives with the unshakable conviction that the improbable ways of God are the only paths to accomplish the eternal purposes of God. It is the Christian life living out the full intention and expression of both Ephesians 2:8-10 and James 2:14-19: A life of both orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

May the churches of the CNBC boldly practice the Kingdom agenda.