The Vegas Missional Outpost

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

Preaching Jesus

Tomorrow I will preach on my favorite Bible verse 2 Corinthians 5:21. For me, this has been the hardest sermon to ever prepare for. See, I had the coin drop in regards to preaching the gospel this past week. I heard two different gospel presentations within 2 days of each other, and had the, "Oh, wow. I GET IT!!!" Tim Keller says we don't really get the gospel when we get saved, and we only perpetually grow in our understanding of it. Every athelete gets this. The marathon trainer who can't seem to get past 8 miles, then one day is able to do 13, and never looks back. The hitter who is having a hard time figuring out the difference between a two-seam and four-seam fastball, and then one day in a Ted Williams way, sees the difference, and never looks back. Or like my wife, who is now at a level of decorating that she would have never thought possible, yet she stills laughs at pictures of our first apartment (we had a construction themed bathroom!). Well, I had a moment like that this week while hearing the two gospel presentations.

The first presentation was a simple, and excellent exegesis of Romans 6:23. It went over the wages of sin, and the gift of eternal life. It was written out and plain to see, arrows were drawn connecting sin to death and life to God. No one could walk out of that meeting without a clear understanding of what the gospel was. This education on the gospel was great, and I nodded my head many times. I was glad that many young Christians, and non-Christians were there to hear that.

The second presentation was audio, was far from simple. It was long and drawn out, and carried many facets. One struck me like a 2x4. The pastor started in to my favorite Bible verse about Jesus becoming sin on the cross in our place. I have loved this verse for so long because it is the essence of the cross, and reminds me of the lengths Jesus went to to save me. The night I heard this presentation I was saved again. To explain it in the simplest way possible, the pastor made sin personal. Not just personal to me in a Bible thumping, finger pointing, guilt inducing way. Instead he was sitting there Bible thumping, finger pointing, guilt inducing my sin: onto Jesus.

Am I being clear? In this gospel presentation, all my sin was named by the pastor (he tried to name as many in the audience as he could gather), and was thrown not at me, but at Jesus. This made me not only aware of how personal my sin is and how guilty I am, but it made me aware of how my sin personally affects God. It made me aware of how my sin personally affected Jesus on the cross. I walked around in a daze that night. Actually, Vicky and I were visiting her cousin at the club PURE at Cesar's Palace that night. There were girls dressed pretty scandalously that night, and my wife repeatedly asked me if I was doing okay with that. Honestly, I couldn't get my mind off the fact that Jesus became a pervert to God in my place. That Jesus became an arrogant jerk who is mean to his wife, in my place.

He did this so that I might become, in him, the righteousness of God. So that I could be clean, and right with God. The implications of this have left the gospel much more that a theory that floats above my head all day. For a while now I have understood that the gospel needs to be central to my daily life. Now, when temptation comes I am reminded of Christ's willingness to become my sin, and become guilty in my place. It is God's kindness that leads us to repentance. And at the end of the day, this gospel realization makes God's love much more personal to me. "Christ died for me" now produces emotion in me when I hear it. "God so loved the world" makes me more emotional and responsive than ever before.

This has made sermon preparation much harder becuase one doesn't just wake up and run 13 miles easily. In reality, I have been much more aware of my sin, and the battle of my flesh has seemed much more real in the past few weeks. I am only 25, and I want to preach like men who have walked with Jesus for 20-30 years. Men who have walked the darkside of their depravity, have learned to repent, and who are personally close to Jesus as a result. These men can preach Jesus personally becuase of the road they have walked. I have prepared my sermon this week in the midst of learning the gospel deeper, and deeper. I don't have 20 years of scars, I only have 7. Nevertheless, Jesus still became the sinner I am on the cross, and the tomb has been empty for 2000 years.

My prayer is that I would be able to preach the gospel tomorrow in a way that makes sin personal to my hearers. So that Jesus death on a cross in their place becomes more personal. So that God's love towards them becomes immensely personal. After all, Rick Warren says we are meant to be best friends with God. That's pretty personal.

Matt

Jack is Back

Season 6 of 24 promos have started running. Jack Bauer continues his role of Christ-likeness by having to sacrifice himself for his people (the United States). Check out the trailer.

If you think I'm crazy for calling Jack Bauer Christ-like, check out what Mark Driscoll has to say about it:

Is Jack Bauer a Type of Christ?

Blessings,

Matt

Jesus is the Answer

Being back in Vegas my wife and I have had the opportunity to catch up with many friends. We have been burdened by how many have chosen to stop walking with Jesus. Now I want to make a distinction when I say walk away from Jesus. I do have some friends who have walked away from a church environment due to many different reasons. Some have walked away becuase they have been forced out by a pastor with an agenda. Some have simply found the church culture here irrelevant to their life. A small group of my friends have regulated themselves to meeting every Thursday (aside from some weeks when they cancel church due to a table that needs sanding) to talk about Jesus and drink beer. They call it: Beer Church. Now the big travesty here is that beer made in St. Louis is often the beer of choice. Choice of church name aside, I am more concerned with my friends who have looked at a irrelevant church culture as an excuse to not love Jesus.

"Christians are supposed to be loving. These people aren't loving, and they have the Holy Spirit!" This came out of the pious mouth of a good buddy of mine as we watched Monday Night Football the other night.  My friend uses the excuse of Christians "suppossedly" not loving him as a reason for him to not love Jesus anymore. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but if people sin against me, I am still a sinner. Right? And if people don't love me, I am still loved by God. Right? And God showed his love for me that while I was a sinner, that deserves to spend eternity away from him in hellfire, Christ died for me so that I could spend eternity with him in heaven. Right? So unless people not loving me produces a tomb with Jesus' decayed body, how does Christians not loving me justify my not loving Jesus?

You can get the sense of how I feel about my friend's decision. It deeply saddens me that many of my friends have simply waited for the first thing to go wrong in their life as an excuse to opt out of following Jesus. But, as I talked with my buddy I was deeply saddened by something else. My response to his many comments was simply this:

"Have you prayed for these people? Does it grieve you when people don't love you, becuase you realize that they haven't been touched by the love of God? Do you pray that God would reveal his love to them by the Holy Spirit that lives inside of them? Sure you get mad, people not being loving sucks. But has it made you sad? Due you love the world around you so much, that you realize that when people don't love it has a negative impact on the world? Or are you simply pissed that they have wronged you, and desire some sort of retribution? Have you been so deeply touched by the fact that while you were a sinner that Jesus died for you? Has this humbled you to realize that every bit of good about you is due to God's grace?"

My friend told me he was going to be firing these questions at me all night. Yet after being confronted with the gospel truth of the matter, he didn't ask me a single question the rest of the night. After being confronted with his lack of humility, and reception of the gospel for that matter, he couldn't muster the self-righteousness to put God in the dock anymore. After being confronted with the convicting, loving, and end-all mesage of the gospel as the answer and reason for his problem, he couldn't think of any more problems.

This makes me sad again becuase I wonder how much the gospel has been used as the central point of everything when my friend entered church. I wonder what his preacher said when talking about not sleeping with his girlfreind, or not getting drunk, or how to love. I wonder if his preacher made his and others sin the number one problem, and Jesus life and work on the cross the answer? I wonder if he even had ears to hear it.

The thing is that many people will come up with many reasons not to love Jesus. Even with as many reasons as you can find, YOU ARE STILL A SINNER, and as much as you may ignore it, JESUS DIED FOR SINNERS. So here's my plan for Vegas: keep telling people that they are sinners and this is their biggest problem in life. This is what hurts their relationships, their life, and keeps them from the best relationship of all: God. And keep telling people that Jesus died to destroy sin, and that this is the solution to their biggest problem. Through Jesus they get restored relationships, eternal life, and a relationship with God. that no matter what happens in life this is a truth they can hold as an anchor. When the world is against them, they can eb comforted that no one can separate them from the love of God in Jesus Christ. I'm hoping this catches on.

Matt

On Mission - Just Like Jesus

Let's talk about the Incarnation for a minute.

You know, the incarnation of Jesus Christ. The event in human history when God left heaven, was born to a virgin in a town where every loves Toby Keith and Skoal, lived for roughly thirty-three sinless (and righteous for that matter) years, to seek and save the lost. Let's talk about that.

Here in Jesus, whose mission was "to seek and save the lost" we have our prototype for incarnational mission work. We have the ultimate example of someone leaving a comfortable place for a tough place in order to see the gospel change a culture. Only in this case that someone is God, that comfortable place is where he dwells in sinless harmony of the Trinity, that tough place is our world (filled with ghastly people like liberals and right wingers), and that culture is the entire world. Really if our idea for incarnational ministry is founded in anything other than the person and work of Jesus Christ, it is at best incomplete, and at worst incredibly damaging for the sake of the gospel.

We can talk up and down about how Jesus did incarnational ministry. How he lived in an industrial town, so he swung a hammer for a few years. How he used common examples for the kingdom of God. Things such as seeds, plows, sand, vineyards, and so forth. How he ate and hung out with the marginalized and poor. How he taught in the religious institutions. How he used public speaking, small group, and one on one forms of teaching. How he chose to live in a specific culture (Jewish), and practice that cultures traditions (but never in a legalistic way), so that he could save a group of people in that community. In all of this Jesus is our great example of incarnational ministry.

There is a great aspect of Jesus' incarnational ministry that is often overlooked. A part that is so foundational, that if missed or marginalized, one's attempt to be incarnational to a specific culture with the gospel will fall short. Theologians have rightly asserted that Jesus was our example of what it means to be spirit-filled in sharing the gospel and interacting with the culture. What is often neglected when referring to how Jesus did incarnational ministry is his motive. What was his motive for seeking and saving the lost? What motivated Jesus to leave the fellowship of the Trinity, come to earth to seek and save a people who didn't want anything to do with him in the first place? If Jesus is our example in how we do ministry, and for being empowered for ministry, then he must also be our example in what motivates us to do ministry!

So what is the motive? The answer comes to us in the Gospel of John,

"My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work."

Quite simply, Jesus was sent by God to do a specific work. Accomplishing this was the food of Jesus. This was not simply a motive, but it was what he hungered for. The only thing that could satisfy Jesus is accomplishing what God has sent him to do. For those of us who seek to do incarnational ministry just like Jesus, this has serious implications:

1. Like Jesus, you must be called of by God.
Ministry is not a profession. Recently a pastor friend of mine laid out for me a great ten year plan for me to plant a church. He talked about me getting my feet wet in ministry, paying my dues, and working my way up the corporate church ladder. I have another friend who is getting his seminary degree so that he will have the most career options in the pastorate. Now don't get me wrong, paying your dues, and a good Bible education are absolutely vital for the man who wants to be incarnational like Jesus. Yet they are nothing more than extra pieces of flair on the 35 year old TGIFRIDAY'S worker, if God has not called you. Before jumping into ministry, like Jesus, you must have a clear sense of calling from God (usually a specific call to a specific place). If not, then what is your motive? What is your food?

2. Like Jesus, you must lift up the Scriptures
"My teaching is not mine, but is his who sent me." You must be a Bible guy who elevates the Scriptures. It is God's word that changes people. More than best practices, more than lofty speech, more than feel-good self-improvement talks, it is the word of God that changes people. Everyone wants to have the next cool theology. Be the next Andy Stanley, the next John Eldredge, or Mark Driscoll. How about just being a Bible guy. It was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for you. If you spend more time learning new ways to be incarnational, to be a good leader, or to do church in your culture, then you will ultimately fail in all of those areas. If you aren't, like Jesus, a Bible guy, then you are not going  to truly be incarnational, or effective.

3. Like Jesus, you must love the glory of God above all else
"The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood." When it comes down to the nitty gritty, the glory of God must be the chief motivating factor in all you do. This will ultimately be what motivates you to be a Bible guy. This will be what allows you to be close enough to Jesus to hear his call on your life. Those who know they are called by God have piles of verses that confirm that calling, and they are humbled by them. Their motivating factor is the glory of God, because they know that when it is, then God will use them to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you truly want to be incarnational, like Jesus, and the glory of God is not your bedrock of factors, then unlike Jesus, you will fail to be incarnational and save people.

Jesus is our great example of how to enter a culture and influence it with the gospel. My prayer is that for myself, and for you, that we would be motivated by the same things Jesus was motivated by.

Blessings,
Matt