501’s Back!
Just want to send a shout out to you 501′ers that were there last night for Refinery. So great to see you guys after a long break!
Its been a great month or so for me thinking and praying about where we’ve come and where we are going. I’m so excited for what is ahead.
Over the break I read a book by Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons From an Emerging Missional Church. Great book about his perspectives and theology of ministry refined by experience bringing Jesus to the broken city of Seattle through the founding and growth of Mars Hill Church. He’s got some thoughts that I think are right on concerning the position of Jesus’ Church in current and emerging culture and how we as the church ought to engage, serve, and love our cities for Jesus’ glory and our joy.
One of the pull quotes from that book that struck me in the context of the great things God has been doing in the birth of 501 was this from page 32 where he is asking churches to consider the question, “Will your church have a mission of community or be a COMMUNITY OF MISSION?” Driscoll says that while community is a great thing to aspire to if that is the ultimate goal it will be found to be an insufficient one. Instead, he says, members of a healthy, obedient, and Spirit led body of Christ
…see their church community as existing solely for God’s mission, and they accept that the only way to have a healthy community is to pursue God’s mission of reaching lost people because community is an EFFECT of mission but not an EFFECTIVE mission.
I know 501 is still a new little baby community of faith, that many of us are just getting to know one another as well as getting to know Jesus and yet as we mature I am excited for this next phase of our growth. Young as we are I think it is time to consider how part of our growth might be outward to seek and invite others in to this community of faith that is knit together through the Life we have in Jesus.
So good to see you all again, so good to be moving forward again, so good to have before us the mission that will bring us together!
It’s 501…Get Outta the Way
Well, this Thursday, August 27th is 501’s official “kickoff” with the first Refinery. It has been a summer plus some of seeing the ministry of 501 develop. We’ve met, theorized, researched, interviewed, postulated, and most of all prayed in search of direction for this new avenue of ministry our elders and leadership have felt led to pursue. Through it all there have been some concrete steps that have taken shape, but before those are laid out I think we would be well served to consider a passage of scripture that embodies the heart of 501’s leadership for the formation of this ministry and also serves as a guide for how we shall proceed from here.
Ephesians 4:11-16 11And he [Jesus] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,13until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,14so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.15Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,16from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
In this passage we see the essential desire of this ministry endeavor for those that participate in 501: growing into “…the stature of the fullness of Christ.” The way we reach this desired outcome is also described, full stature in Christ means we “grow up” into becoming part of Jesus’ Body, the Church. His Body, when things are going right, is what builds itself up as the Holy Spirit moves. A lot of effort and worry can be expended in formulating the “perfect” plan and program to make sure people and a ministry grow into the right form of maturity, function, and faith in Christ, while scripture declares that it is actually the congregation of worshipers of Christ itself that generates growth, unity, maturity as the Holy Spirit guides and empowers individual believers as they pursue Christ and participate in that community.
As a ministry this fall it is 501’s plan to provide not iron clad structure for growth, but contexts within which community can be formed, holiness pursued, love experienced, and Jesus’ Church displayed in all her glory. If we take this passage in Ephesians at face value it will be the power, attraction, and direction of this gathering of God’s people that will organically generate the ideas, missions, programs, and passion that will move Jesus’ kingdom forward as He leads, changes, and fills us all. With the initiation of this gathering on Thursday we anticipate the need for flexibility, energy, and responsiveness to God’s moving in and through His people as we receive a ministry in Little Rock and beyond. As we sit on the precipice of ministry “launch” there is by necessity a great deal of the unknown to 501 in this first ministry year. That said, it is important to describe and define the contexts which will be created in the coming months for fellowship, worship, learning, and living. Below are the three venues 501 as a ministry is committed to providing in the coming months:
Events
Defined as any time we gather as a larger 501 ministry. Refinery, on alternating Thursday nights (check the calendar), will be the most consistent event through this first ministry year and is a time to get together to establish and deepen friendships (community), engage us as worshipers, and change, awe, and equip us through study of God’s revelation in His word. We’re also planning on having a lot of fun. Fun will also be the main order of gratuitous gatherings such as Disc Day, Mike High’s Beast Feast, and FBC Plasma Car Grand Nationals (coming in February….wait for it). Though these will be the most top down programed things 501 does no one is a consumer. These times only have power if we are participants…in all of it: the relationships, the worship, the fun, and the receptiveness to the Truth of God’s word.
Small(er) Groups
Because being a healthy member of Christ’s Body goes far beyond attendance to commitment or covenant to one another, this context of community is the true core of the health of 501 as a ministry. As an individual participant in 501 this context is also the most frightening as it requires great giving and receiving of trust, grace, and commitment in knowing each other and being really known.
Launching on October 1st and alternating Thursdays after that (check the calendar), The Blob is 501’s vehicle for us to help encourage the growth of these deep authentic relationships among smaller groups of friends that birth true Christ-centered community. Structured around the sharing of life and the study of God’s Word, The Blob is both a place for those deep relationships to be fostered over time AND a “portal” for those that want to connect to this kind of community for the first time. So don’t freak out if you’re afraid you won’t belong. Connection, life giving relationship, can be a challenging process we are ALL engaged in and 501 is committed to on this night especially.
In addition to The Blob we anticipate small(er) group context of community to be generated from US as a body of believers organically. We anticipate connecting with each other across regional, employment, and friend groups etc. over our individual interests and personalities through the connection of participation of 501. Look for those connections to be leveraged by the tools at hand: Facebook, Twitter, or this uber snazy blog for example. Which leads me to…………
Mobile Community
We thought about calling this context “virtual community” but refrained for a couple reasons: 1) Calling anything “virtual” makes a person over 50 think it does not actually exist (and all those guys are our bosses). 2) Even though our generations maintain over 3X’s the number of friendships via phone, text, Facebook and other social networking tools as compared to older generations, we are less satisfied in relationship and more lonely than our elders by some 40 percentage points (says George Barna).
We want our 501 Facebook group, Twitter account, and Fellowship501.com especially to provide great connection to each other, to the heart of Christ, and to great resources that teach God’s Word. But if those connections are not pulled from the bloggosphere into the coffee shops of Little Rock, and into our living rooms, our satisfaction and the power of real community seems to be lost. We want this site to be alive as you can see and participate in the shaping of this ministry, be given resources to pursue Christ and interact with others over that pursuit, and engage with people as a community as they are transparent enough to share on the World Wide Web the joy and struggle of living life with Jesus as King.
We are looking forward to seeing what this thing becomes and it is you that will make it what it is. Please interact, let us know what you think, and PARTICIPATE as it is what we were made to do as we seek the “…stature of the fullness of Christ.”
Here we go!