A video of me, Scott Thomas and Steve Timmis answering questions in a session from the Dwell Conference in London.

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Total church is a way of thinking about church and mission in the 21st century which sees the local Christian community as integral to Christian living and Christian mission. The Christian life is ‘total church’ - our identity is communal.

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Create a community centered on the gospel, equipped to do the work of the ministry.
Make your community a community of church planters.
See what it means to be the church on mission through ordinary life with gospel intentionality.
Dialog with missional church leaders from across the world.
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Main Sessions

Day One
1. A community-centred gospel (Steve)
The gospel is not simply the story of God saving me, but the story of God saving a new community and renewing creation.

2. A gospel-centred community (Steve)
Church is not an institution or a building, but a community of people united by the gospel sharing their lives together.

Day Two
3. Rethinking attractional church (Tim)
Sometimes missional and attractional are portrayed as opposite choices. Sometimes NT missiology is portrayed as centrifugal in contrast to a centripetal OT missiology. But biblical mission is always attractional and centripetal. What changes in the NT is the centre! We attract people to gospel community and litter gospel communities across the world.

4. Remodelling attractional church (Steve)
Attractional church is not about getting people to come to meetings, but sharing lives and introducing people to the Christian community (the rope model). Mission through ordinary life with gospel intentionality.

Day Three
5. Making disciples for missional church (Tim)
Every Christian is a church planter. We need people with missional DNA living lives shaped by the cross and resurrection.

6. Making disciples in missional church (Tim)
Pastoring one another with the gospel in community. Pastoring one another in ordinary life with gospel intentionality.

Breakout Sessions
Break-out Sessions will be led by church planters/practitioners from The Crowded House, Kaleo Church, Soma Community & Providence Community. Sessions will be added but will include:

Beyond Total Church – Sowing the Seeds of a Movement
Moving from Traditional to Missional - “What do I do next?”
Engaging the Domains of Society - From Business to Media and Beyond
Communicating in a Post-Christian Culture
Evangelising the Urban Poor
New ways of funding a plant & planter in a missional movement.

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In my last post I shared some of the ways in which my Father is being gracious to me by exposing my self-righteousness through my speech. I wanted to give another quote from the Sonship lesson I referred to. I realize that most will read this and at first pass brush it off. Let me assure you, when the holiness of God becomes real to you there is very little chance you’ll escape a more robust and profound understanding of your sin and desperate need of a savior. The reason the sins of our tongue don’t shock us into heart-felt repentance is because we have yet to really comprehend the perfect, majestic, and weighty reality of God’s glory. Not only this, His love and grace, though precious and not separate from His other attributes, are grossly misunderstood and therefore diminished significantly.

Even more important is coming to grips with the truth that just as His holiness shows us our sin, our sin is not primarily a breaking of detached and abstract laws, but a violation of a relationship between us and our Father. More can and certainly should be said about how to describe sin without slipping into simplistic one-liner proof texts, but at the end of all arguments, God established His law to reveal to us His nature and character and to show us the kind of relationship He calls us to when He binds Himself to us in covenant. Therefore, the law is never to be observed as frustrating rules that keep us from being happy, but a stipulation of how this marriage is to be lived out between us. On the one hand the law yells out “Obey me in every part,” and at the same time the Spirit of the law whispers to us “You will never perfectly keep me to the degree and quality I deserve.” Why? Because the degree and quality of the law flows from the person of God- His character, His nature, His attributes, and not just from some inanimate tablet on stone. His perfect nature and His holy attributes are the standard and connection to the law. The law reveals Him, teaches us about Him, and calls us to relate to Him with consistency to His character, not ours.

Ok, why the diatribe on the law? Because without understanding that I’m not simply breaking rules, but loving something more than Him, I’ll never have a heart that can take what the law teaches me. Here is the quote:

Jeremiah 2:13 says, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” This is an excellent description of our lives when we misuse our tongues. When we gossip, complain, defend ourselves, boast, and criticize others, we forsake Christ who is the spring of living water and we start to dig our own wells. What drives all these sins is a heart that rejects Christ’s righteousness and seeks to build its own. What drives my tongue is my desire to be right. What drives my boasting and critical spirit is a heart that has turned from God. Jesus’ righteousness is not enough, and so I will use my tongue to get my worth, value, life, and righteousness.

This leads us to ask:

What is your heart looking for when you misuse your tongue? Try to discern what is happening when you sin so that you know more accurately why you’re doing what you’re doing. Don’t brush it off by saying things like “Well, I sin because I’m a sinner…enough said.” That is a cheap way out of the responsibility we have to take every thought captive and it never leads to true change.

In what way are you trying to make yourself right through your speech?

What do you feel when you’re actually sinning with your tongue? Out of control? Proud? Shame? Guilt? Pleasure? Or, like me, do you simply feel that what you say is right and proves your rightness?

What is it about the human heart that desperately needs to be made right? What does this teach us about God and human nature?

I’ve been reading a book by Jerry Bridges called Respectable Sins which has reminded me just how often I sin with my tongue. Gossip, subtle forms of slander, backbiting, criticizing, complaining, defending, boasting, exaggerating, and blame shifting are ways in which the Scripture shows me how desperately I need Jesus.

Grace and I have simultaneously been working through World Harvest’s Sonship Course with Stu Batstone. We were given an assignment two weeks ago that has been both terrifying and incredibly helpful to draw out our self-righteous tendencies. We were asked to take a two-week period to work as diligently as we can to avoid the sins of our tongue I mentioned above. Needless to say, I lasted about one hour before I criticized the driving someone who pulled out too close to me without even thinking about it. I immediately noticed and slapped myself on the hand and said “bad Christian, you should know better.” It’s weird, I don’t have to struggle with the temptation to rob a bank, or to murder someone, or even to commit adultery, but these particular sins have proven to be incredibly ingrained and horrifically common in my speech.

I naturally have a sarcastic shtick that finds humor in irony and the ability to see the opposite of something. I gravitate towards comedians that are able to sarcastically dismiss something I find annoying. I even use sarcasm as a cheap way of dealing with problems when I’m just too lazy to get to the heart of the issue and work it out. Sarcasm, for me, has become a way in which I deal with problems when I’m unwilling to ask good gospel questions. And worse yet, sarcasm doesn’t even have to be verbalized, because I’ve been working so very hard to keep such comments in, and the sad truth is that my heart is ridiculously cynical and sarcastic. But why? Why are these “sins of the tongue” so difficult to overcome when the bigger sins are not as problematic? Because I’m a Pharisee and bigger sins are major no-no’s that I realize would kill any hope of being seen as righteous (which of course is another way of saying I wouldn’t feel righteous if I committed those sins). Sins of the tongue, on the other hand, are not on most of our radar when it comes to seeing how much progress we’re making in our sanctification. At least, not the sins that I mentioned. We make a big deal out of cursing and open slander, but we find a variety of ways to cut, condemn, criticize, and gossip. This is what makes them so pernicious and so incredibly pervasive, they are not looked at by me as all that sinful or grievous. Yet such sinful speech can be just as harmful to others as outright slaps in the face, perhaps worse since at least a slap stings on the outside but sinful speech bruises the heart.

Needless to say, this exercise had me asking some pretty powerful questions about my need to sin in this way, or at least the need to succumb to the power of these sins.

Here are a few snippits out of the lesson that I’d like to share with you.

The tongue assignment helps to show us personally that we do need the gospel every day. It also demonstrates how quick we are to justify ourselves and how much we like to look good and be right. It shows how quickly we will hurt others for our own righteousness. Our tongues reflect a far deeper reality. They show us something far bigger lies beneath. “For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil out of the evil stored up in him” (Matt. 12:34b-35). The tongue is a minute extension of the heart, so it reveals what we believe and to whom we are committed.

Our tongues also show us how spiritually proud and self-righteous we are. For example, my critical tongue often reveals a heart that is sadly out of touch with how much I have received grace, love and forgiveness. I know this because it is not loving things that are overflowing through my tongue, but instead a spirit of being better and knowing better than others. I am right and they are wrong, and I need to point it out so everyone is clear about it. I complain because I know that I am right and everyone else is wrong. Likewise, my instinctive defensiveness and the inability to apologize sincerely and quickly demonstrates that I am not really trusting Christ to be my reputation and righteousness. I must uphold my good record of performance before others. I need people to know that I am better than they think (when in fact I can safely say I am actually worse than they think). These and other failures prove how easily I slip away from living out of the gospel. Lesson #2 from Sonship

Needless to say, this is a glorious reminder of how I need God’s grace on a moment by moment basis. I need to continually bring the gospel to bare upon my speech. This is where community has to be central to working out the Gospel. I simply don’t trust my own heart to recognize when my tongue is showing a lack of rest in Christ’s righteousness. I encourage you to take a week out and try not to commit the sins of the tongue I’ve mentioned above. I’d like to hear what you found as you challenged yourself. Ask your spouse or close friend to help you with the assignment by letting you know when your tongue shows your heart straying from the gospel.

Happy hunting!

I was reading through Ed Clowney’s wonderful work from the Contours of Christian Theology called simply The Church and wanted to share a few thoughts from the late Dr. Clowney that I thought helpful to orient our identity and praxis missionwards.

The Church as Gatherers

God accomplishes his saving mission by sending his Son into the world. Jesus is the great Missionary, sent by the Father. As Lord, Jesus comes to gather his people, and to form his disciples as a company of gatherers. God had promised to deliver his sheep from false shepherds. He promised to shepherd them himself, and to gather them from where they had been scattered (Ezk. 34:12). God promised, too, that his servant David would be prince among them in the day of his deliverance (Ezk 34:24). Jesus announced that he was the true Shepherd, come to gather those the Father had given him, including the ‘other’ sheep that were not from the fold of Israel (Jn. 10:11-30). His sheep would also hear his voice and recognize him, the Son of David who is also David’s Lord. He is the Shepherd who will be struck down (Mt. 26:31; Zc. 13:7), the Good shepherd who gives life for the sheep (Jn. 10:11)…Jesus came to gather, and to call gatherers, disciples who would gather with him, seeking the poor and helpless from city streets and country roads. Jesus said, ‘He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters’ (Mt. 12:30; Lk. 11:23). Mission is not an optional activity for Christ’s disciples. If they are not gatherers, they are scatterers. Some suppose that a church may feature worship and nurture, leaving gathering as a minor role. More often, Christians shrink from affirming such position, but implement it in practice. Mission is reduced to a few offerings, the visit of several exhausted missionaries on fund-raising junkets, and the labours of an ignored missions committee. Such a church is actively involved in scattering, for the congregation that ignores mission will atrophy and soon find itself shattered by internal dissension. It will inevitably begin to lose its own young people, disillusioned by hearing the gospel trumpet sounded every Sunday for those who never march.

What is true of a congregation is true also of a Christian home. If a family fails to seek to gather friends and neighbours to Christ in hospitality and quiet witness, the children of the family will be scattered. We fail to bring up children in the nurture of the Lord if we fail to in to involve them in our efforts to gather others to their Saviour.

Jesus calls his disciples to bring a harvest as field-workers, and to draw in nets as fisherman (Mt. 9:37-38; Lk. 5:1-11). These are heartening images. Th labour in fields where the harvest is ripe: others have planted-and, indeed, he himself is the Sower-and they harvest his field. He is the Lord of the Harvest. Prayer is the key to the mission of the church, for he will answer prayer by sending his labourers into his harvest. He is the Lord of the Sea; their nets gather the fish he has summoned. Jesus did not call his fisherman as they cleaned and mended their nets after fruitless hours of fishing; only when his command had filled their nets to the bursting point did he make them fishers of men.

Christ’s commission to make disciples forms the climax of Mathew’s Gospel. But the Great Commission at the end of this Gospel (Mt. 28:18-20) must not be isolated from the Great Constitution in the heart of the Gospel (Mt. 16:17-19). The words with which Jesus responded to Peter’s confession show what it means to make disciples. Missionary churches may feature the Great Commission, and give little attention to the Great Constitution. The Church of Rome, on the other hand, has given more emphasis to Christ’s words to Peter; those words, not the Great Commission, are inscribed around the entablature under the dome of St. Peter’s.

Mission expresses the purpose for which Christ came into the world, and the purpose for which he sends us into the world. His purpose is the purpose of the Father. We are called to mission, not only as disciples of Christ, but as children of the Father. Jesus teaches that the law of the Father’s kingdom is love that is compassionate. The righteousness of the kingdom must exceed that of the Pharisees (Mt. 5:20). We are not to be more punctilious in legalistic observances, but we are to express the heart of the law in burning love to the Father, imitating his love of grace toward guilty and undeserving enemies (Mt. 5:44-48). Such love does not ask what it must do as a minimum, but rejoices in doing unrequired good. The compassion of the Samaritan does not ask, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ Rather, it displays the free love of a neighbour, reflecting the compassionate love of God (Lk. 10:24-37). We are to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful. Ed Clowney, The Church, pp. 159-161.

I was thinking about the REM song today and reflecting on these last few months of ministry at Kaleo. Here’s the lyrics I keep repeating again and again as a kind of victorious anthem of gospel change taking place.

Life is bigger
It’s bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no I’ve said too much
I set it up

That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh no I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

I find these words fascinating, not because our dear boy Mr. Stipe is giving us some profound lesson in theology, nor do I think he’s headed the other way in this song by declaring himself an atheist. I think these words speak to a loss of faith that he had in something or someone that he had placed his hope in.

For me, these words speak pointedly to what I’ve sensed over the last couple of years and what I’m growing more and more aware of each day. God is at work in my life and in my soul as he continues to extract me from my religious tendencies. I sense God has graciously given me some needful, sanctifying afflictions this last year as a way of illuminating my conscience to the sad truth that ministry can be the most spurios lover. An idol so subtle and so powerful it can act as the very basis and foundation of our identity, hope, and can ascend to our “religion.”

The great difficulty in church planting, ministry, and the desire to proclaim and teach the Gospel is that we can turn it into a way in which we attempt to save ourselves. It becomes our hope, our identity, our daydreams, our love, and it is where we spend ourselves analyzing and pondering when we have spare moments. In other words, the act of ministering Jesus to people can actually keep us from being ministered to by Jesus. I know this is remedial as the Martha and Mary story comes to mind. But the sad, sad admission is that the closer we get to Jesus the more we’re forced to recognize and loose our religion, and that means, for me, to loose the hope placed in the false messiah of ministerial success. He bids us to come and follow Him with no other hope than His summons and grace are sufficient for us. Yet in the heat of ministry we can easily slip into a need for ministry to sustain us to the loss of our need for Christ.

I don’t know why I thought I should share this. It’s really nothing new or terribly profound. Yet I find myself walking with a limp, tender around recent wounds, but rejoicing that my Father loves me so very much that He refuses to let me keep my affections divided. He loves me so much that He is willing to wound my heart by painful strokes so that I’ll come to rely more and more on His only provision for sanity of heart.

What a good and gracious God we have!

“Set your affection on the things above, not on the things on the earth.” Colossians 3:2

How solemn and full meaning are these words! To set the affections on the heavenly things is to realize the ardent desire of the apostle: that he might “know him and the power of his resurrection” (Phil. 3:10). Oh, there is a mighty, elevating power in the resurrection of Christ! It is the great lever of a child of God, lifting him above the earth, heavenward. To know that he is closely and inseparably one with the risen Head of the church is to be the subject of continuous, quickening influence, which in spirit raises him from the dust and darkness and pollutions…Nothing will more sanctify and elevate our hearts than to have them brought under the power of Christ’s resurrection. Following Him by faith, from the dust of the earth to the glory of heaven, the affections will ascend with their beloved. Where He is, the heart’s most precious treasure, there it will be also. And oh, to have the heart with Christ in heaven, what an unspeakable mercy!

But the sweetest, the most powerful attraction of heaven, let us never forget, is, that Jesus is there. What would heaven be, were He absent? Could we, at this moment, rush into the fond embrace of the dearest and most glorified ones, and meet not the “Chief among ten thousand,” the altogether lovely One, who on earth was more precious to our hearts than life itself? Oh, how soon would its glory fade from our eye, and its music pall upon our ear! It would cease to be heaven without Christ. Even on earth His presence and His smile constitute the first dawning of a better world. He who lives most in the enjoyment of this-and oh, how much more may be enjoyed than we have the faintest conception of-has most of the element of heaven in his soul.

Aim, then, to cultivate heavenly affections, by a life of high communion with God. -Octavius Winslow

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Brothers, I can speak with all sincerity and without fear of recrimination that the only, ONLY thing that will chase away our need for the approval and applause of others, or the need to see the seats filled to capacity every week and growing, so that our joy is tied to such things, is having our affections set and settled upon Jesus. Is He enough for you if no one shows up? Does He stay enough for you when then do? Is His beauty enough in and of itself to keep our hearts steady during times of trial and difficulty? Or do you, like me, sometimes use Jesus as currency to buy the idol of man’s approval?

May God grow our affections and delight in His Son, by the power of His Spirit as the Gospel penetrates those dark, unspeakable corners we’ve kept hidden (or so we think) from Him.

“No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” John 1:18

…But God has revealed Himself. He has stooped down, and in the person of His incarnate Son has embodied the spirituality of His being, with all its divine and glorious attributes.

All that we clearly, savingly know of God is just the measure of our aquaintance with this truth. Jesus brings God near. “You are near, O Lord” (Ps. 119:51). Oh, how near! “They shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us” (Matt. 1:23). The most stupendous, glorious truth which a created mind ever grasped is involved in this wondrous declaration, “Emmanuel, God with us.” With what glory does it invest the Bible! What a foundation does it lay for faith! What substance does it impart to salvation! And what a good hope does it place before the believing soul! God is with us in Christ, with us in the character of a reconciled Father, with us every step of our journey to heaven, with us to guide in perplexity, soothe in sorrow, comfort in bereavement, rescue in danger, shield in temptation, provide in want, support in death, and safely conduct to glory. My soul, fall prostrate in the dust before the majesty of this amazing, precious truth; adore the wisdom that has revealed it, and admire the grace that makes it thine!

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What an amazing God that stoops low in humility to dwell with His creature. What hope we have that His presence wasn’t limited to His incarnation, but that His promise to send the Spirit, the very Spirit of Christ, means that we are ever before, ever behind, and ever beside the very presence of Christ in our midst and in our heart. He has not left us alone as orphans but has given us not just His power, not just His promise, but Himself. How amazing it is that we are to then minister the presence of Christ as the priests of God, knowing that our High Priest not only interceedes on our behalf before the Father, but involves and invests His very presence so that the best we can give, the best we can hope for is realized; the presence of Jesus.

As planters and pastors, my prayer is that the weight and glory of the presence of Christ, revealed in the Gospel of grace by the power of the Spirit and the will of the Father, is heavier than the thick ice of shame and doubt, fear and cowardice, impatience and expectation that layer by layer seems to thicken with every sin we commit and every sin committed against us. May God’s glory in His presence break through what a better program, and slicker campaign, a funnier sermon, or a more organized family ministry can only promise but never deliver.

Father help us not be pornographers of the church where we fantasize about what is unrealistic and also never attained or experienced. Yet let us have this hope that if Christ is present in our midst, we have want we need and what the heart of the church desperately longs for. Him and Him alone is our hope.