ChurchPlanters.com "Giving You Permission"

Making Disciples in Malawi

I'm fired up!  God has given us a clear vision for my World Care project...We are going to adopt a village in Malawi and put a well and irrigation system in it.  Two weeks ago we took up a huge offering at MLC that has paved the way for this project.  We couldn't do it without the leadership of Shawn Lovejoy and the commitment of the people at MLC to live like Jesus, love like Jesus, and leave what Jesus left behind.  That's right we are going to change the world one village at a time. 

Here is what I'm fired up about...I'm looking for twelve men to go with me to Malawi the first two weeks of September.  I was having breakfast with my good friend and brand new passionate follower of Jesus Don Short the other day.  He told me something that hit home...he said the reason he first went to Malawi was because I was going.  That was six months ago...now Don is leading the way...he wants to spend two months of each year in Malawi...living, loving, and leaving. 

It hit me during this conversation that I can't get complacent about investing my life in men.  I must practice what I preach and write about...so here's the deal...

1) On May 30th Don and I are going to host a men's breakfast at his place...we are going to share the vision for what God wants to do in and through us and invite some of our friends to go to Malawi with us.

2) Through out the summer we are going to meet a number of different times to go over my book Breaking the Discipleship Code, prepare for our upcoming trip, and really connect with one another...it is going to be awesome...

All you have to do to qualify is be a risk taker and willing to be used by God to change the world. 

If you are interested contact me at [email protected].

Go Make Disciples

        Our Bikes Sitting Outside Starbucks

When Jesus said, "Go make disciples" It was for everybody.  If it was for everybody then what he had in mind was something that every follower of Jesus could very easily and naturally do.  Which means we have made it way to complex and complicated.  I believe that we have actually made a religion out of making disciples when Jesus was inviting us into natural relationships where his ways are caught more than taught. 

Here's my challenge for us...go make disciples!  We did it last night.  Four of us guys from my small group went and did life.  We started at Roosters (great wing place) and ended up at Starbucks.  We talked a lot of capitalizing investments and equity ratios on venture capital which I know nothing about. Out of that we talked about giving back...our dreams...and our struggles...now that I understand. 

Before the night began my friend Dan met me at my house on his Harley...I pulled my son's Harley out of my garage and we headed down the road.  I usually ride the Honda VTX, but there are certain occasions when I get on the head turner.  This was it.  This time he let me lead.  It was a first...usually he leads.  Dan has been riding for years and it is new to me.  Dan is discipling me on how to ride since I am fairly new at it.  He keeps telling me that there nothing like saddle time.  He is also the guy who got me into it.  He may have saved my life.  You see how it works.  It's the same for our faith. 

Here's my suggestions...pick up a copy of my book Breaking the Discipleship Code read a chapter every day or two during your quiet time...meet once a week with a friend or two and discuss your biggest take away from your reading...get really honest and real...agree...disagree with the book...who cares...just use it as a spring board for real life...There's seventeen chapters...by the time you get through you should be on your way to a real relationship...real relationship equal real discipleship.   Be careful not to miss it...discipleship  isn't always what you think.   Get a little saddle time.

Rick Warren and Breaking the Discipleship Code

No...Rick didn't write Breaking the Discipleship Code, but he has a signed copy of it. 

Alright...here is how it went down.  I'm at a meeting at the Exponential Conference when I get a phone call from Ed Stetzer.  Ed is sitting with Rick and says "Rick wants you to come up here and sign your book".

I know Rick from about ten years ago when we (rick, ed, and me) were attempting to get a Purpose Driven Church Planting Track in all the SBC Seminaries.  It was during those years that God began speaking to Rick about the PEACE Plan and he redirected his attention to the World.

Anyway when I got to the table Rick has the book open to a heading on purpose...he has signed his name over that heading.  We took a couple of pictures, chat a little about the good old days and I signed his book.

By the way I love Rick Warren...I mean I love what God is doing in and through his life.  Rick is a disciple...he really is.  He can say...follow me as I follow Him. 

Think about it...I signed a copy of my book for the guy who wrote the number one selling book of all times with the exception of the Bible and I serve the God who wrote the number one best seller of all time.  Pretty cool huh!!!  Check out Breaking the Discipleship Code here.

My New Book Has Arrived!

My new book has arrived!  I don't mean arrived.  I mean it is here.  I'm not really sure what arrived means.  When I arrived home on Thursday night from our Green Ramp celebration with my son and it was.  You talk about timing the dedication in the front of the book reads, "This book is dedicated to my son Dave, who recently spent fifteen months in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne.  Welcome home!"

Check it out at amazon here!

Each week we have a "Belong and Become" time in our ministry team meeting at Mountain Lake and I was able to present it to our team and share a little of my heart for each one.

Friday night I will see my daughter Amanda, and will be able to present her with a copy of it with a special note or blessing written in it.

Anyway the book is here and I hope it will be a blessing to you and many others.  Take a moment to check it out and pick up a copy. 

While you read this one...I will begin my work on the next.  I spoke with my publisher two days ago and my marketing person yesterday and they are really fired up about the next one.  I really appreciate everyone who participated in the project.  A special thanks to the guys at B&H, Mountain Lake, Beth Nelson, and my family.

I'll  write a little tomorrow about what God did in me in the process of writing this book so don't miss it....

Transitional to Missional Ministry

Shawn Lovejoy and I just got back from Hawaii where we led a Pastor's Conference.  On Thursday morning I did a talk on Transitioning Your Church to Missional Ministries.  It seemed appropriate since most of these leaders were Pastor's of existing churches and not church planters.  In reality church planting and transitioning churches share a lot in common.  The key difference is crowd control.  In church planting you don't have people so you are really starting with a blank slate, which happens to be my preference.  In transitioning a church you begin with a group of people so you have to work through crowd control issues.  If you are not up to the leadership challenge then you will find the crowd controlling you right out the door on your head. 

At the same time let's face it many of our churches need transitioning.  Matter of fact all of our churches need to stay in a state of transitioning.  Our world is changing and we must constantly adapt in order to impact the world.  In Breaking the Missional Code Ed Stetzer and I talk about the importance of being Biblically faithful, but at the same time culturally relevant.  We live in that tension.  Change is tough. 

The $64,000 question is how do you transition existing churches to missional ministries?  Let me say first of all it is harder then you think.  As I told the guys in Hawaii, I have transition one and half churches.  Half transitions are messy.  If you start you want you want to make sure you can get the job done.  While I don't have time or space in this blog to cover it all let me start the conversation by posting my main communication points of my Hawaii talk and a slide of the model I've began developing .

When transitioning churches to missional ministry there are four key components: 

1. Missional Leader - I believe this is where it begins. You have got to be a missional leader if you are going to lead a missional church.  Here are some of the best practices of of missional leaders...they are healthy leaders, they operate out of a clear calling that comes from God's vision for missional impact, they are committed to resources the mission, they think team, and they rethink discipleship. 

2) Missional Church - While the objective is to transition the church to missional ministry the church body has to be up to the task.  They have to be committed to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, Biblically faithful and culturally relevant, understanding of their context in terms of mission field, and committed to bring down all barriers between lost people and Jesus.  At the end of the day they have to be willing to collectively become the missionary in their community and around the world.

3) Mission Field - All of our churches are sitting right in the middle of a mission field.  Understanding our mission field is a key component in becoming a missional church.  We need to understand that they are spiritual; they like Jesus, but not the church; they have no Christian friends, and they are searching for meaning, purpose, and acceptance.  However it is not enough just to know these things about our community, but more specifically what does this look like for my community. 

4) Missional Disciple - Missional Churches exist in a specific mission field, they are lead by missional leaders, they are made up of a missional body, but they make missional disciples.  That our goal, that's our assignment.  We call it the Great Commission.  We are to "Go make disciples".  Missional Disciples are those who live like Jesus, love like Jesus, and leave what Jesus left behind which is people who live like him and love like him.

Over the next few days and maybe weeks I'm going to post on this subject.  Any thoughts? Aloha!

Breaking the Discipleship Code Video Blurb

Check out the video blurb on Breaking the Discipleship Code here. 

Feed Yourself

Last week I had a lot of fun recording a audio resource on "Feeding Yourself".  Isn't that the objective!  At Mountain Lake one of our 5Gs is "Personal Growth".  While there are a lot of ways and circumstances in which one can grow one of the most essential things we can do is teach people how to feed themselves. 

That is exactly what I did this weekend with my daughter.  She move into her new apartment in a city in another state.  By the way that was hard.  I took a napkin...it always has to be a napkin or its not life changing and I made two columns...on the left was all of the cost she would need to be responsible for over the next two to three years and on the right were the things that Tami and I are helping her with.  I explained to her that our objective was to move everything on the right to the left.  In other words you are making a major and I mean major step in feeding yourself.  Over the next few years you will take even greater steps....and ultimately you can take care of me (just kidding). 

As we did that exercise I thought I wonder how many parents do this with their kids, but at the same time I've never had the first person talk with me about this or any kind of similar chart.  However, when I talked about it in a group the last night one of the ladies spoke up and said she had just done that with her daughter. 

What's my point!  Our goal as parents are to raise up autonomous kids and as spiritual parents our goal is to do the same thing...we are to raise up autonomous spiritual children.  This means teaching them to feed themselves. 

Spiritual Children who sit around and complain and saying things like, "feed me" or "I want more meat" aren't very mature.  Either we as leaders have not done a good job of teaching them to feed themselves or there are other issues like the sin of '"consumerism" or "selfishness".

Every Church Planter needs to have a clear plan for equipping others in the rare art of "feeding yourself".  What's your plan?   

Missional Tension

Last night I was reminded of the missional tension that exist between cultural Christians and Christ followers...I was copied on an audio clip from one of those syndicated radio stations where the host had one of those funny sounding religious voices that are accompanied with preacher who have to much watching cable TV preachers.  The guy passing on the link seem to be filled with a self righteous smug since the radio host was criticizing our church for being about reaching disconnected people.  If I recall what he said it went something like, "Church is for believers"...forget what Jesus said about His house being a "house of prayer for ALL PEOPLE".  I will be honest it hacked me off...cultural Christians who spend their time creating barriers from those who are disconnected and religious sub-cultures need to get over it...Jesus is a friend of sinners. 

If you are a church planter with a passion and vision for lost people...if you are willing to remove every barrier between the lost and Christ with the exception of the cross then get ready to be misunderstood and attacked....after all it was the religious that gave Jesus his greatest challenges.  There is a missional tension that exits between those  focusing their ministry on believers and those that are focusing their ministry on those who are  disconnected from Christ and the church.  The degree in which you are Believer focused you are disconnected hostile....and the degree in which you are disconnected focused you are often believer hostile, at least in a culturally religious context. This is really unfortunately for the church since above all else it is a missional  expression of God nature to love people with an unending love.  AT Mountain Lake Church we feel an intense calling to go all out for people disconnected for Christ and the church...we believe that sacrificing our own safety and especiallly our own preferences is the deepest devotion we can pay to Christ when it comes to our missional expression.  It is not about us...it is all about HIM...and HE is about those who are disconnected from HIM and the church....so for us we will stick with changing the way people think about church...in order that we may ultimately changing the way they think about Christ....to that I give my life and I will gladly pay the prices. 

When The Dust Settles

Some thoughts in the opeing lines of  Chapter 16 Breaking the Unbroken Code from Breaking the Missional Code by me (David Putman) and Ed Stetzer. 

Modernity is out and postmodernity is in!  Well, that is mostly true.  Perhaps it is more accurate to say that we are in transition.  Benjamin Barber put it “The planet is falling percipiently apart and coming together again at the very same moment.”[i]In a NetFax article, dated May 27 1996 described the transition this way; “We are living in the midst of two major shifts in human history. Both are not limited to the United States but are occurring worldwide. One is the shift from the Industrial Age to the Information Age and the other is the shift from the modern world to the postmodern world. Both shifts are `in process' and one reason we are experiencing such dissonance and apparent chaos is that we are in the `in - between times.' The old is not yet fully dead and the new is not yet fully born". [ii] Just a few years ago in How to Reach Secular People,  George Hunter was right when he summed up Dogenes Allen's observations by noting, “This means that the pillars of ‘modern’ western civilization, erected during the Enlightenment, are now crumbling. Allen observes that we are now in a period of culture lag--in which most people in the western world are not yet aware as scientists and philosophers that the Enlightenment is over. But, Allen predicts, ‘when the dust settles,’ we will see that ‘the fields are rip for the harvest’”[iii] Now that the dust is settling there is an incredible opportunity to break the unbroken code.

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Now that the dust is settling!  God is doing some amazing things in North America through His church.  What do you think?  What is your story?  How are you breaking the unbroken code?

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[i] Easum, William, Dancing with Dinosaurs

[ii] NetFax, number 46, May 27 1996

[iii] Hunter, George G. III, How to Reach Secular People (Nashville; Abingdon Press, 1992) page 38.

Making the Missional Shift

Jesus began His public ministry with His baptism and immediately began to preach “Repent of your sins and turn to God for the kingdom of Heaven is near" (Matthew 4:17 NLT).  Jesus invites us to be a part of His kingdom, but at the same time He reminds us that we enter His kingdom through repentance. This repentance is an invitation to have a change of mind or to literally take a 180. For many of us repenting was or is about returning to something, but in reality Jesus invites us to rethink all that we assume we know about Him and religion. Matter of fact His invitation has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with a relationship. This was a hard saying for the religious world in which Jesus lived. Many religious leaders were caught up in the rules and regulations that came with years of adding to the law. Religious traditions dripped heavily all around them.

In many ways we face the same challenge today. The invitation to repent can be very difficult. At first it appears to be a call to return to the way we use to do things, but upon closer examination we recognize that it is an invitation to a place we have never been or at least not for very long. All of us are saved from or out of something when it comes to this invitation. Some of us are saved from sin, while others of us are saved out of sin. They both require repentance. Sometimes it can be harder to be saved from something than out of something. Even Jesus said that those He had forgiven the most (saved out of sin) would love Him the most.

This invitation to repent is a challenge because we all view the gospel through our own lenses of tradition. The idea of rethinking our religion, faith, or relationship can be unsettling. It is so much easier to stay where we are. Thinking and rethinking can be such a draining exercise. For many of us we are in faith communities where conformity is valued. Our communities confuse rethinking with returning. Our faith community assumes that we have it all figured out and have no need to rethink. Return to something maybe, rethink - absolutely not. Expectations for conformity can be high. Often we fail to ask foundational and fundamental questions related to the gospel and kingdom, due to fear of being misunderstood. Rethinking requires thinking. Rethinking is a lifestyle. Rethinking is a journey. It’s not about making assumptions about the Christian faith, but it is about engaging in the gospel for oneself and seeking to understand what it means to follow Jesus in a fresh and relevant way. While many of us have been taught not to question God, this is exactly where we need to begin. Perhaps our prayer needs to be “Father, what does it mean to be a Christ follower? If your invitation for me is to come follow you, show me your way.”

Rethinking is a messy journey. Matter of fact Jesus said that we could not enter His kingdom unless we came like a child. This metaphor serves as a clue to what this journey of rethinking His kingdom might be like. Have you been around children lately? I’ve raised two of my own. Children are natural inquisitive. They are constantly challenging the process. Why? Why? Why? You know what I mean. They have little or not concept of risk or failure. They make incredible messes and they never clean up after themselves. Yet this is the analogy that Jesus choices to use when he talks about how we must enter his kingdom.

If perfection is your goal you are in big trouble. Jesus doesn’t invite us into perfection, but he invites us to adventure. An adventure to rethink and rediscover what life is all about. This rethinking can be messy, but it also can be painful. Change is painful and this journey that Jesus invites us into is all about change. Paul put it this way, “Be not conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. Rethinking leads to a metamorphosis of idea, opinions, philosophies, etc.

An invitation to rethink is an invitation to a journey. It is an adventure. It is a continual process that doesn’t allow us to grow old or stale. It is a journey to a full and abundant life. Just as a journey requires necessary preparation before we embark on it, we too must prepare for this journey. A few years back my ministry required a lot of travel. It was not unusual for me to arrive home only to have to leave the very next day to go somewhere else. Before I could prepare for my new journey I would have to unpack my bags from the previous journey. If I didn’t take time to unpack there was either not going to be enough room for what I needed for my new journey or what I had left in the bag was going to become burdensome to carry and tend to soil my fresh, clean clothes.

The same is true for our faith journey. We have all come from somewhere. We all bring our bags with us. They are often filled with many things that help us navigate our previous journey, but they add little or no value to a new journey. When one recognizes this and begins this journey with an empty and open suitcase, the opportunity for becoming equipped for a new journey is huge. So beginning this journey requires unpacking and repacking. There are a number of things that we need to consider as we repack for this journey...more to come later...david