To recap...Ian Green challenged us at CpS - ChurchplantingSchool how we have a Kingdom mindset as opposed to a church centric mindset. Excellent stuff. I believe a Kingdom mindset is the way of Jesus.
Please understand this comes from a passion for the local church. Make no mistake, Jesus is building His Church and coming back for His church, He loves His church so much He died for it. I love the church, I am involved and passionate about His church. Yet Kingdom is what Jesus speaks most about. The Kingdom is mentioned over 80 times and He talked about the Church twice. Jesus talked about giving us the keys of the Kingdom. What keys has God given you for your community? If your church disappeared this week, would people in your city or community miss or notice?
My desire is that the yeast of the Kingdom is planted in the dough of society. We want to bleed Kingdom, Monday to Friday! (Ian Green).
Didn't Jesus pray, "Your Kingdom come, on earth as it is in Heaven". That's not future only is for NOW!
So lets look at being Kingdom centric which also breeds and breaths a mission and multiplication culture. (I am drawing on notes from Ian Green, Tom Wolf & Carol Davis - International Urban Institute).
For the sake of clarity I have categorized them into the
-PART 1. Beginnings of a church plant. (Which by the way continues throughout the lifetime of a church). -PART 2. Leadership and Finances. We talked about this last time.-Now for PART 3. Structure.
Structure
Church Centric
- Needs of the Church
- Clergy Centered/driven/dependent
- Body of Christ only
- Bound by facilities
- Sunday only church
- Plant this church only. One tree only
- Make a disciple
- A well for the congregation. I'm blessed
Kingdom (Mission - Multiplication) Centric.
- Needs of the Community
- Gifted (lay) leaders centered/driven/dependent
- Army of God...also
- Unlimited. Beyond facilities
- 7 day a week church
- Plant pregnant. Plant church planting churches. Forests
- Disciple nations
- A tree of life to transform a community / city.
There are powerful things to discuss here. Some of these values maybe should be in The Beginning phase and of course remain and permeate through the life of the church.
