Buzzard Blog

Where to Office?

Church Planting Novice posts some good insights and questions: Where to Office: Church or Home?

Dwell Conference Text Message Update #3

The latest text message update from my friend Toby, from Darrin Patrick's session at Dwell:

"Be fishers of men, not hunters of men."

"This is an investment. This is a sacrifice...Sacrificial investment. What non-Christians need to see is that we are like them, but they also need to see is that we are like them, but they also need to see that we are not like them. This comes as you are hanging out with them...People need to see the gospel at work in your life."

"The gospel erodes our self-righteousness. The gospel empowers our evangelism."

Dwell Conference

The Dwell Conference is underway in New York City. My buddy Toby is there and is sending me updates via text message. So far the update is:

"Sweet conference! Wish you could be here."

Richard Florida, Who's Your City?

I found Richard Florida's new book, Who's Your City?, a fascinating, thought-provoking read. I have my questions about aspects of Florida's research, but his thesis is compelling. The book is built around three key ideas:

1. Despite all the hype over globalization and the 'flat world,' place is actually more important to the global economy than ever before.

2. Places are growing more diverse and specialized--from their economic makeup and job market to the quality of life they provide and the kinds of people that live in them.

3. We live in a highly mobile society, giving most of us more say over where we live.

Florida argues that though people have historically given a great deal of thought to life's who and what questions (who should I marry? what should I do with my life?) and largely ignored the where question (where should Iive?), today's economy is making the where question more important than ever before. Indeed, "For the first time ever, a huge number of us have the freedom and economic means to choose our place."

Building off his earlier work (ie., The Rise of the Creative Class), Florida makes the case that today's economy is driven by three key factors: talent, innovation, and creativity--factors that "are not distributed evenly across the global economy."

These factors are clustering together in urban areas (today, more than half of the world's population lives in urban areas), or in what Florida calls mega-regions:

Cities have always been the natural economic units of the world. But over the past several decades, what we once thought of as cities, with central cores surrounded by rural villages and later by suburbs, have grown into mega-regions composed of two or more city-regions, such as the Boston-New York-Washington corridor. Mega-regions are more than just a bigger version of a city. In the way that a city is composed of separate neighborhoods, and like a metropolitan region is a new, natural economic unit that results from city-regions growing upward, becoming denser, and growing outward and into one another.

According to Florida, the world economy takes shape around a couple dozen mega-regions. The core of the American economy is "made up of roughly a dozen mega-regions...," most notably the Bos-Wash, Nor-Cal, and So-Cal mega-regions.

Florida argues that the clustering of certain types of jobs and certain types of people in various mega-regions is creating more clearly defined personalities for cities, hence the title of the book.

Five broad personality types are, according to Florida's research, beginning to typify various mega-regions:

It's these creative clustering, economic, personality factors of mega-regions/cities that Florida presents as rationale for taking a second look at the where question.

• Selfishly, I was pleased to see that the San Francisco Bay Area ranked at the top of most every one of Florida's rankings (most innovative region, best city for various life-stages, etc.).

• Sadly, as Florida briefly notes in his book, the economic factors at work in America's mega-regions are increasing the gap between the very rich and the very poor.

• Strategically, I think Florida's research is helpful to the Christian community, especially to church planters and church planting organizations wanting to plant churches in regions where the gospel can be leveraged for catalytic impact.

For more information about Richard Florida and his book, go to Who's Your City? To check out Richard Florida's interesting blog, go here. And, if you're thinking about moving, you'd benefit from consulting Florida's "Best Cities" chart:

Leaders Need Four Relationships

While I certainly don't agree with everything about the Vineyard movement (ie. egalitarianism), I've been enjoying my free subscription to Cutting Edge, the Vineyard's quarterly church planting magazine (click the link to set up your own free subscription).

From the current, winter issue, I appreciated this quote from Bert Waggoner, National Director of the Vineyard:

Leaders need four relationships. They need relationships with the unchurched or unbelievers, with people who are following them, with peers, and with a mentor--a person they are following.

Text and Context Conference: Bonus Acts 29 Session, Mark Driscoll

The first of several bonus, Acts 29 sessions here at the conference is presently being taught by Mark Driscoll, THE OX: Qualifications of a Church Planter. The message title is taken from 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul's words to Timothy the church planter: "For the Scripture says, 'You shall not muzzle an ox when it trends out the grain...'"

This message is an exposition of the qualifications of an elder/pastor/church planter from 1 Timothy 3, laced with stories of Driscoll's mistakes and successes as a church planter and teaching on what the Acts 29 church planting network is about.

I'm not blogging this session. You can go here to listen to the audio of this same message delivered by Driscoll in Dallas a few years ago. Or, even better, the audio I'm listening to right now will be posted here, probably within a few days.

Dwell Conference

Speaking of conferences...

The upcoming Dwell conference looks excellent. Here are the details I received in an email from Redeemer Church Planting Center:

Please join us in New York City, April 29 - 30th

Speaker Topics:

Mark Driscoll - Dwelling in the Text & Dwelling through the Text
Tim Keller - TBD (2 sessions)
Ed Stetzer - Dwelling in the Kingdom & Dwelling in the Mission
CJ Mahaney - Dwelling in the Cross
Darrin Patrick - Dwelling with non-Christians

Conference will also include panel discussion, worship and breakout sessions.

Register at www.dwellconference.com
Space is limited.

Any questions please contact Melanie Penn at Redeemer: 212-808-4460 ext. 137.

Paul's Church Planting Practice

How the apostle Paul established new churches:

PHASE #1: He proclaimed the gospel (Acts 14:19-21; 16:6-10; Rom. 15:17-19)

PHASE #2: He gathered the Christians together into community, strengthening them in their faith and appointing elders in every church to oversee the community (Acts 14:21-23; Titus 1:5)

PHASE #3: He continued the process of establishing the churches, both by letter and by visits, training key men to assist him in the establishing process (Acts 16:1-5; Phil. 2:19-30; Rom. 1:8-15; 16:25-27; 2 Cor. 1:12-2:13; 7:5-12; 1 Thess. 2:17-3:10)

PHASE #4: He used the churches as a base for taking the gospel to new frontiers, encouraging the churches to participate with him in the furtherance of the gospel (Phil. 1:3-7, 27-30; 4:10-20)

PHASE #5: He charged the key men he had trained to assist him in fully establishing the churches to find faithful men that they could train to carry on this task for the next generation (2 Tim 2:2)

-B.I.L.D. Ministries

B.I.L.D. International

If you're not familiar with B.I.L.D. International, a church-based education organization, check out their website. Be sure to check out the resources page. Some intriguing stuff here.

Steve Childers, Church Reproduction

"Life is meant by God to reproduce life. Just as having children is meant by God to be a natural, normal part of marriage, so starting new churches should also be seen as a natural, normal part of a church's ministry.

To omit the goal of multiplying churches out of a strategy fulfilling the Great Commission is to cut out the very heart for God's redemptive strategy for reaching the world for Christ. Local churches are meant by God to be his primary instrument through which lost people are won to Christ, built and established in their faith and then equipped and sent to reach others."
-Steve Childers

William C. Tinsley, Church Planting

"To remove the strategy of church planting from the New Testament would in effect remove all Scripture beyond the Gospels. The disciples and apostles mad church planting their strategy to penetrate first century society. The design of Christ's strategy soon became very clear. His strategy was to plant churches...to establish communities of believers...throughout all the nations of the world. The Apostles saw the expansion of new churches in the world as the pivotal cog through which the life transforming power of God would be transferred to the world."
-William C. Tinsley

Church Planting & Alligator Wrestling

"To ask for a pattern for church planting is like asking for a pattern for wrestling an alligator. The critter is so slippery and dangerous that the best advice is, 'Don't get killed!'" --Elmer Towns

Acts 29 Resources

I'm a very big fan of Acts 29 Church Planting Network. Last month Acts 29 hosted a church planting boot camp in Seattle and if you click here you can download all the audio from the conference for free. There's some great stuff to listen to here. If I were you, I'd especially be sure to listen to the main session messages by Darrin Patrick (on preaching) and Mark Driscoll (on several topics), and the workshop session by Tim Smith (on worship & culture).

Mark Driscoll with Ed Stetzer

The most recent episode in the National New Church Conference/Exponential podcast features Ed Stetzer's interview with Mark Driscoll. There's a lot of great nuggets in this interview for pastors and church planters. You'll also notice a marked increase in the humility/maturity demostrated by Driscoll. Go here to download the mp3 (scroll down).

National New Church Conference Podcast

I just came across the National New Church Conference podcast. It looks pretty good. If you're looking for a new podcast to subscribe to, one that deals with the importance of planting new churches, this is worth checking out.