Rhythm & Reign: Living as Church on the Margins of Culture & Foretaste of the Kingdom Gary Nelson and Fred Harrell

City Church: Our Story Rev Fred Harrell City Church San Francisco

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill

OUR CHALLENGE WAS TWOFOLD

To create a gracious environment

To create a culture where the good news is being lived out

IT IS A COUNTERINTUITIVE WAY OF DOING CHURCH

A CHURCH “NOT JUST FOR OURSELVES”

A CHURCH THAT TRIES ALWAYS TO REMEMBER WHAT IT’S LIKE NOT TO BELIEVE

I BELIEVE WE HAVE SEEN THIS TAKE PLACE DUE TO FOUR MAJOR COMMITMENTS

COMMITMENT NUMBER 1 Developing a Mentality of Church as Mission Outpost

All is done “before the nations”

Cultivating the bringer mentality

Comprehensibile

Constant Evaluation

COMMITMENT NUMBER 2 Embodying the Good News as a Church with Kingdom Priorities

The Kingdom of God: God coming to reclaim and restore His creation

We Seek the Renewal of All Things and Shalom of All

Modeling the Sociological Impossibility of the Church

Community: Embodying the Gospel to Each Other

COMMITMENT NUMBER 3 Understanding our Context

NEW TO CHRISTIANITY

COMPETENT

VISUAL

SUSPICIOUS

POLITICIZED

ARGUING WITH ME

RESPECTS THEIR OWN “AUTHORITIES” NOT MY AUTHORITIES

DYING FOR FAMILY AND COMMUNITY, BUT HAVE AN INABILITY TO EXPERIENCE IT

HAS A HUNGER FOR A LINK TO THE PAST, AND DOESN’T WANT TO BE BOUND TO GLITZ AND SHALLOWNESS

COMMITMENT NUMBER 4 A Pastoral Commitment to Incarnate the Gospel

A commitment to intense pastoral involvement

You must listen

You must get inside their world

You must let them into your world

You must be a pacesetter

You must develop leaders and attenders who are sensitive to the vision and who take into account these contextual commitments

Question: Is your church the kind of place that makes people say:

“This is where I need to bring my non- Christian friends, this is exactly what they need to hear, and how they need to hear it!”

Wait! This isn’t a nurturing model… or is it?

Mission breeds discipleship, and is the fuel of Christian growth!

“Thursday, March 29. I left London and in the evening expounded to a small company in Basingstoke. Sat. 31. In the evening I reached Bristol and met Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarce reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields,

of which he set me an example on Sunday, having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.”

“Mon. 2. At four in the afternoon I submitted to ‘be more vile’, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people.” From Wesley’s published Journal, for March-April 1739 (The Works of John Wesley, vol. 19, Ed. W. R. Ward and R. P. Heitzenrater (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 46). The ‘be more vile’ quote is from 2 Samuel 6:22.

Rooting Our Identity “ When the spine of identity is well established, it is possible to risk relating in depth to those whoa re different from ourselves. When the spine of identity is weak, then everything is a threat.” - James Fowler Weaving the New Creation

“In the context of the secularized, post- Christian West our witness will be credible only if it flows from a local, worshiping community. Newbigin suggests that the only hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. ” - David J. Bosch

REFLECTION What are you going to take back with you to your local church context?