Steve Addison's Blog, page 23

267-Develop Leaders for the Long Haul

Learn to develop movement leaders for the long haul from someone who does it.

From the glory of the upper room to the streets

Pentecost: Jen Norton

The Spirit came upon a united praying people at Pentecost. The presence of God filled the room and every person in it. A mighty wind, tongues of fire, the praises of God lifted high. Like Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration they must have thought, Lord let’s camp here! Let’s soak this up (Lk 9:33).

Yet the Spirit who came in power propelled them out of the room into the streets where they proclaimed the gospel to the city. That move, from the glory of the upper room, onto the streets was the first step in the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Walking out of the upper room was costly for it will also fulfil another prophecy of Jesus, you will be rejected because of me (Lk 21:17).

Later in Acts we do have an all-night time of prayer and worship, soaking in the presence of God. It’s Paul and Silas, they’ve just been beaten and thrown into a Phillipian jail. Their feet are in stocks, they haven’t eaten and other prisoners are listening in. A jailer and his household are about to get saved (Acts 16:25)

Our mission is not to camp in the upper room but to take the upper room to every dark corner of the world. We go with the presence of the risen Lord, the power of his Spirit and his word of salvation.

266-Growing Leaders Along the Refugee Hwy

I talk to Will Burnham about how he grows leaders from the harvest.

4-Fields Discovery: Acts

 

I’m continuing the journey through Acts. I’m experimenting with some adjustments to the 4-Fields Discovery worksheet for the book I’m writing.

I’ve changed What are you learning about the Spirit? to What are you learning about God—Father Son and Holy Spirit?

I’ve changed What are you learning about persecution? to What are you learning about obstacles and opposition?

To fit in with the language of Acts I’ve changed What are you learning about a NoPlaceLeft vision (Rom 15:23)? to What are you learning about the word going to the ends of the earth? (Acts 1:8)?

We use the discovery worksheet in training and cover Acts 13-21. My lesson from working through Acts is there is gold in the other chapters.

Happy to hear what you think in the comments below.

The Weird World of Acts

   My next book will be on Acts as a biblical foundation for movements of disciples and churches. Here’s why…

When we open the book of Acts we enter an unfamiliar world.

We enter a world in which God is actively involved in fulfilling his ancient promises and pursuing his purposes. The Father brings salvation through his Son, the good news spreads from place to place in the power of the Spirit. Despite the troubles that the messengers face, the word keeps advancing and communities of disciples begin springing up everywhere.

For many of us, especially in the western world, that is not our experience and deep down we’re not sure if it’s even possible. We’re stuck and many of us have settled for something less than God intended.

Some have lost confidence in the gospel or abandoned it altogether. Some have thrown themselves into the culture wars and politics thinking they can transform this world without being corrupted by it. Some find comfort in cynicism. Others have retreated into the safety of disengagement from the world’s brokenness and rebellion. It’s hard to stay in the fight when you’ve lost all hope of making a difference.

This is the gap between the reality of our experience and the picture Luke paints of the early Jesus movement out of Jerusalem.

In a speech in 1963, John F Kennedy said, “Our problems are manmade—therefore, they can be solved by man.” The truth is the opposite: “Our problems are manmade—therefore, they *cannot* be solved by man.” That’s what God is trying to tell us through the book of Acts. Left to ourselves, what we have now is as good as it gets.

Despair is a virtue if it drives us to the sufficiency of God.

When I was young there were a few hundred known believers in the Hindu kingdom of Nepal. Now there are over one million. Iran fell to the Islamic revolution in 1979 and now there are one million believers in that nation. A decade ago researcher Justin Long thought there were around 100 multiplying movements of disciples and churches around the world. By 2017 he’d documented 600 movements. By 2020 he was tracking 1,369 movements globally. That’s 1% of the world’s population. At least 77 million disciples in 4.8 million churches. There are movements of multiplication in China, in India, in the nations of Subsaharan Africa, and in Latin America. Why are they the exception in the west?

Who do you think is more aligned with what we see in the book of Acts—the church of the privileged western world, or the rest?

We have created the problem. We cannot solve it.

That’s why God inspired Luke to write the book of Acts—it’s the way back to what he intended. It’s the way forward to play our part in his plan. Are you desperate? Acts was written for desperate people.

[I’ll be using the blog to think out loud about Acts. Let me know what think in the comments below or on the movements Facebook page. ]

265-Down on the Mexican border

Earlier in 2021 Oggie Martin and Will Smith were down on the Mexico border sharing the gospel, making disciples, planting churches, growing leaders. Pheaney of the On the Road podcast caught up with them to find out what happened.

More on Oggie’s work with Latinos.

How God disrupts us

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A paradigm is a way of seeing the world. Paradigms help us understand reality which is complex. We need maps to find our way around the world.

Paradigms are helpful, but imperfect. Sometimes they distort reality rather than explain it. That’s when a paradigm shift is required.

In the battle over the inclusion of the Gentiles we have a case study of a paradigm shift in the disciples’ understanding of their mission. The issue was, should Gentiles have to become observant Jews to be included in God’s people? You can read doubt it in Acts 10-11 and 15.

Who started it?

The key player in the process was Peter, Jesus’ leading apostle. His credentials are impressive: chosen and trained by Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, an apostolic witness to the truth of the gospel, commissioned to take the gospel to every people group.

If anyone could initiate this breakthrough in God’s mission to the world it would be Peter. Yet while Peter played an important role in helping others recognise what God was doing, he was not the initiator. Peter was reluctantly led by God to Cornelius’ house before he finally understood what God was doing.

Others like Stephen, Philip and the unnamed disciples who took the gospel to Antioch, prepared the way. The breakthroughs in the renewal and advance of movements occur on the fringes than at the centre of power. Peter and the apostles had to catch up and get behind what God was doing on the edges.

From the beginning to the end this paradigm shift was a work of God.

Peter was right to be away from Jerusalem, out strengthening and extending the churches, pushing further and further away from the centre into predominantly Gentile territory. God could speak to him there because he was already outside of his comfort zone attending to the core missionary task.

Word, Spirit and Mission

The disciples knew that Jesus had risen from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit to empower their witness. They expected God to intervene to block, redirect, renew and correct their pursuit of the mission. They looked for evidence of his activity. They adjusted as they went.

This was not done in a vacuum. They filtered their experiences through the lens of God’s Word. The Scriptures confirmed and shed light on their understanding of the Spirit’s work. For Spirit is the source of inspiration for the Scriptures. When the Spirit fell at Pentecost, Peter turned to the Scriptures to explain what was happening. When the breakthrough came at Cornelius’ house, Peter relied on the teaching of Jesus to rightly interpret what God was doing (Acts 10:42-43). From his experience of the Spirit was shedding new light on the teaching he had already received from Jesus. At the Jerusalem council the matter was settled on the basis of three overlapping authorities: (1) the clear leading of the Holy Spirit in the field with multiple confirmations; (2) the words of the Prophets recorded in Scripture; (3) evidence of progress in the core missionary task — proclaiming the gospel, making disciples and multiplying churches to the glory of God (Acts 15:7-18).

They expected the risen Lord to continue to lead the way through his Holy Spirit. They interpreted their experience through the eyes of Scripture to confirm what God was doing. Jesus could have left the disciples with a detailed constitution, organisation chart, and strategic plan. Instead he spent his last forty days on earth with them, teaching them to understand God’s purposes from Genesis to Malachi. Then he promised them the Spirit. He built a foundation for them to interpret the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit as they pursued the mission. They had to wrestle with the issues that arose knowing that God would be shaping them through the process.

This could never have taken place if the movement had had been centrally governed, funded and coordinated. The organising principle was to release authority and responsibility to those who were obedient to the Word, dependent on the Holy Spirit and engaged in the core missionary task of multiplying disciples and churches.

Obey first, consensus later

In the ongoing renewal of the movement, there is a dynamic at work. First God will disrupt his people in order to get them back on track or to the next destination. The breakthroughs don’t start with thought leaders, creatives, or even practitioners. God is the author of this story. He shakes Peter’s world and gets him to the house of Cornelius. He provides multiple convincing proofs through the Spirit and the Word of what he is doing.

Movement pioneers such as Peter need to obey first and worry about what Jerusalem will think later. Peter took a risk but he had decided on one thing, “who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?” (Acts 11:17). Like Jesus, Peter didn’t wait for a consensus before he acted. God provoked the conflict that would follow.

The matter was settled at the Council of Jerusalem, but it had taken over ten years to be resolved. (The visit to Cornelius’ house was around AD 37. The Council of Jerusalem was AD 48). Meanwhile, Peter didn’t wait for consensus before he acted. Paul and Barnabas didn’t wait either. When the Spirit spoke to them at Antioch they obeyed (Acts 13:1-4). By the time of the Council, they had already planted churches among the Gentiles who now welcomed the news of their formal acceptance.

Those given a voice at the Council, Peter, Paul and Barnabas, could tell story after story of how the Gentiles were turning to Christ and becoming disciples in churches that were reaching their cities and regions. They were listened to, not the critics or armchair experts. Once it was clear what God had done, James summed up and confirmed this work of the Word and the Spirit. The shift was complete, the change was locked in.

The vote of the Council had caught up to what God had already done. The Word continued on its way from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.

264-NoPlaceLeft South Asia

George Robinson talks to Nathan Shank about the 4-Fields strategy and what it will take to get to NoPlaceLeft in South Asia.

George trains movement pioneers at SEBTS.

Related: How one Seminary is Adapting to Train Movement Pioneers.

Jesus, the kingdom and the movement

Christ Calling the Apostles James and John - Edward Armitage 1869

Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. Mark 1:14-17

What’s the relationship between the kingdom of God and the movement Jesus started?

According to RT France, in Mark’s Gospel the kingdom of God comes as a mustard seed through the gathering of a group of ordinary people in an unnoticed corner of rural Galilee. Jesus is launching a movement that will carry his cause to the ends of the earth, yet it goes unnoticed, for now.

The calling of the first disciples comes right at the beginning of Jesus’ mission. The story that has been announced as the good news of Jesus Christ is the story of Jesus’ movement. From Galilee until Gethsemane Jesus is constantly accompanied by his disciples, and their training and development is one of the main focuses of the story. They may disappoint and fail him, but they are crucial to the achievement of his mission, for it is through this flawed and broken group of people that God’s kingship will be established. The Gospels track their development as disciples, their successes and failures. Why? So that we can build our discipleship on their example.

From the start, the key elements of their discipleship are a relationship with Jesus who they follow and engagement in his mission, learning to fish for people.

What the movement of God looks like

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I’m working my way through the book of Acts. Here’s what I’m learning with a lot of help from Eckhard Schnabel .

Paul’s final journey to Jerusalem (Acts 20-21:1-16) was planned so that Paul and his team could visit five churches along the way, some were started by Paul (Troas, Ephesus) some by others (Tyre, Ptolemais, Caesarea). Luke’s account shows how the churches share the same characteristics as the church in Jerusalem (Acts 2:42-47). They too were devoted to the Word, the breaking of bread, prayer and worship, fellowship, sharing of possessions, They too faced opposition yet God was adding to their number.

In depicting these communities of disciples Luke is reminding us what the mission of God looks like.

He tells us how long Paul spent with each community: three months in Greece, seven days in Troas, seven days in Tyre, one day in Ptolemais, several days in Caesarea. Some of the disciples are mentioned by name. Luke is showing us that the outcome of God’s mission is people learning to love and obey the Lord Jesus together. This takes precedence over plans, programs, strategies, and structures.

This is what the movement of God looks like—disciples and churches from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. Every place, every people group.