missio

Man, was this a great luncheon! It started off with lunch, duh, and some great conversation. I was at a table with some of the most extraordinary leaders around: a group of elders (Jason, Tadd, and Travis) from Crosscurrent Church (link) in VA Beach, J.D. Greear (link) from the Summit in Durham, Mike and Kurt (link) from Missio Dei in Asheville, NC, and Sean Cordell in Raleigh with Treasuring Christ Church (link). Our conversation was great, and I learned a lot about ministry in general from this group of leaders. Tyler Jones then got up and talked a bit about what we are called to. Here’s the quick bullet notes:

• Planting is hard.
• Now is always simpler.
• Why are we here? The Lord has called us.
• Where there is no discipline, there is only wrath. Take your discipline like a man.
• Remember your calling.
• What are we called to in general?
  • All the world. Tyler lists a good number of the verses in the Bible that talk about Jesus dying for all men, and the entire world. It’s not universalism: it’s to whom we are called. We aren’t called to 1% of our population. We’re called to 100% of our population.
  • Calling inherently affects our vision, which is the actualization of your calling
• Vision leads to systems, which should reflect our calling. When thinking about our leadership system, we need to ask questions:
  • What is our leadership structure?
  • Why have we chosen that model?
  • Is it working?
  • Is it allowing us to reach all 100% of our population?
  • Can we justify it Biblically?
  • How are we keeping leaders accountable?
• At this point, we talk at our table about the questions, and it was interesting to hear how the guys around the table had their leadership structured, and what kinds of problems they had with it, and what they may could do to fix it.
• When we reconvened, we talked more about structure.
• Don’t structure to allow the laypeople to be consumers of what the structure produces.
• There is a 3rd office besides elder and deacon that gets left off: Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:1-4). It’s already taken by Jesus, but it gets left off of org charts all the time.
• Everyone in the church should strive to be an elder or deacon.
• Here, Nate takes over (he’s the elder of deacons at V21) and talks about Vintage’s structure, and how they do deacons.
• Deacons are doers of ministry, weightier than volunteers, and managers of others.
• When should deacons be established?In order to manage the growth of the church or if they are called to be a deacon.
• Requirements for Deaconship at Vintage 21
  • 1 Timothy 3 (given)
  • Follower of Christ (given)
  • Owner (vintage 21 thing - they are in covenant community with v21)
  • Tested (given)
  • Interviewed by Nate (given, basically a formality)
  • Installed (formality)
• Deacons at V21 are termless, and can leave by disqualification, moving away, backing out (shouldn’t happen), or if they are immature/selfish.
• The purpose of having deacons is to enable, equip, encourage, provide accountability and efficiency to the church.
• But we have to remember: as the church grows, sin grows.

We then broke, and that was the end of the luncheon. I was asked by Tyler to stay and sit in on the regional development meeting of Acts 29, and kind of hang out. It was a great time of thinking about the future of the Southeast region in Acts29.

If you’re a church planter in VA, NC, SC, GA, AL, MS, AK, or TN, and you’re not involved with Acts 29, my only question is this: why not? The network is looking for gospel centered churches in key cities and places throughout the Southeast. If this is you, please feel free to contact Acts29 about it, and also feel free to email me any questions.

I’ll be praying for the DC area’s development; where are you praying for?

If you’re in the Southeast, here’s some cities to be praying for:

• Richmond, VA
• Blacksburg, VA
• Lynchburg, VA
• Winston-Salem, NC
• High Point, NC
• Greensboro, NC
• Charleston, SC
• Florence, SC
• Clemson, SC
• Atlanta, GA
• Savannah, GA
• Birmingham, AL
• Montgomery, AL
• Mobile, AL
• Biloxi, MS
• Oxford, MS
• Little Rock, AK
• Springfield, AK
• Memphis, TN
• Nashville, TN
• Knoxville, TN

Man, that was a long post.