Drafting the BLUEPRINT

If you were to start a church what would it look like?

Where would you have it? Who would preach? What would they preach about? What kind of music would you have? How often would you do communion? Why? What would you call your church?

And another question, the most important in fact: why did you decide on these things? What were the convictions that made these your decisions?

These are all questions that, over the past few weeks, I have earnestly sought God for the answers. The reality is that there are very strong convictions that have brought my wife and I back to Las Vegas. What I have attempted to do over the past few weeks is flush those out into CORE VALUES. So that in this way, there will be four distinct CORE VALUES that determine everything the church does. They will determine the preaching, the community, the service, the impact, the details, the vision; EVERYTHING.

Over the next few days it is my desire to share here where these CORE VALUES have come from, and how they will shape the church community we are starting. To be specific, these core values will directly affect the church's MISSIOLOGY (how we live out our mission) and ECCLESIOLOGY (how we do church). A quick primer on the two, and some examples regarding the Vegas culture.

MISSIOLOGY: What will shape our mission?
On a large scale, world domination would be nice. But since Jesus is taking care of that when he brings his kingdom, like Paul, we'll just focus on a influential city. When determining what the mission to the city should look like, three questions can help form a basic framework:
- Where is God already working in the city?
Are there blatant forms of mindless or senseless worship? Is there a segment or part of the city that is becoming aware of its sin, and would be open to hearing about Jesus immediately? Are there openings in the nomenclature or media to discuss truth, or even God? Would the city consider itself spiritual, apathetic, or something else? Has God raised up specific persons of peace to help connect you to the culture?
- What about the city can we receive?
What forms of entertainment are generally neutral? Do people eat together? Other examples include: youth sports, recreation activities, art, music, marriage, community service, community awareness.
- What about the city must we reject?
A point must be made here that many times the church instead of just rejecting aspects of the culture has both rejected, separated, and condemned. To be very clear, our community will only reject, and will not separate from or condemn the culture. There is a huge difference between condemning, and calling people to repent. We believe in the latter. Some example of things we reject: We accept marriage, but we reject adultery and divorce. We accept men adoring naked women, as long as they are their wives and not strippers. We accept women making themselves beautiful, we reject low cut shirts and bandannas used as skirts. We accept people being in community, we reject swingers clubs. We accept that owning a home is a good, we reject shady real estate dealings. Our community cannot accept things that God does not accept, and we will trust that God will grant repentance to those in our community as we show them his kindness.

As we ask continually ask ourselves these questions in regards to our community, we have no doubt God will help shape our mission.

ECCLESIOLOGY: What will shape our church?
The long answer to the question would take up hundreds of pages, and by the time by-laws and memoirs are written, it probably will. The short answer is much more simple: Jesus.

The person and work of Jesus Christ will, more than anything, shape our church. Jesus said it best himself: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Jesus here is calling himself Jacob's Ladder. He is saying that it is he that connects people to God. Since the entire point of church is to connect people to God, we might want to take what Jesus said seriously. With this is mind, our church will bring everything back to the person and work of Christ. Our preaching will always be brought back to Jesus. Our worship will always be brought back to Jesus. Our community will always be about Jesus.

Jesus defined his mission of connecting us to God even more narrowly: "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” And how did he accomplish his mission: "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus connects us to God through his atoning sacrifice on the cross. Whereby God's wrath was propitiated, all the filth and guilt of our sin was taken from us and put on Jesus, we were redeemed from our life of sin, we were justified in the sight of God, and all of this so that we could be reconciled to God. Because of this we will not lift up any Jesus other than the one who lived a sinless life, was crucified dead and buried, who rose to reign as King of Kings, and who is coming back to bring the Kingdom he purchased through all his work. A few points of how having this picture of Jesus shapes a church:
- communion is done weekly. This makes the cross central and the focal point  of everything we do.    Also, Jesus said to do this as often as we remember him, and we want to remember him often.
- we preach through the Bible. Since the entire Bible is about Jesus, and as Devin Hudson says, "there is a shadow of the cross over the entire Bible", preaching through books of the Bible should give us a big picture of Jesus.
There are obviously more factors, these two happen to be paramount.

A church plant hangs on it's MISSIOLOGY and ECCLESIOLOGY, and the missiology and ecclesiology depend on a good Christology (a right understanding of the person and work of Jesus). So, all that to be said, my aim is to be a close and learn as much as I can about Jesus, and let the church form from there.

Tomorrow I will discuss how all this plays into coming up with the CHURCH NAME. Which also means I will reveal the name for the church. I know you can't wait.

Matt

Comments

[Jerry]

I firmly believe

Our Christology

determines our missiology

which determines our Ecclesiology

to do it in any other order means an unbalanced church