The past 3 days...

Thursday kicked off with the theology behind faith and work.  Katherine Leary Alsdorf talked us through the basic premises of the book she co-wrote with Tim Keller (Every good Endeavor), and also the pillars of Redeemers Center for Faith and Work.  I (Thomas) think the basic theological idea of work being from God, was not new to me.  What struck me was the evangelistic opportunities that our work lives presents!  All people, Christians and non-Christians, struggle with issues like discrimination in the workplace, balance between work and rest, feeling overlooked for that promotion, unfairness, making career decisions.  The way in which we deal with these things as Christians can open up powerful conversations and opportunities for testimony.  To be ready for this we need each other as fellow believers.  Redeemer has faith and work evenings in which they bring Christians from similar industries together to speak through the challenges of work and how to apply the principles of the Gospel to help me work to God's glory and honor in a broken world.  Thursday evening we attended an event for the Finance and Fashion industry with this aim.  It was an experience to see +- 150 mostly young people thinking and praying through this together.

Faith and work.

Just before lunch, Charlie Drew (April Kepner from Grey's Anatomy's dad - for those who would like to know :-)) spoke to us about Ministry and Character.  It was great to hear how God called him at age 50 out of a settled fruitful ministry in a good and growing suburban church to come and plant a church in Manhattan.  He was so open and honest about the personal struggles on the one hand and God's faithfulness on the other.  Truly a man of character. 

The afternoon we traveled to Tribeca in lower Manhattan.  Michael Rudzena from Trinity Grace Church Tribeca (http://tgctribeca.com/), took us for a walk through his neighborhood.  What stood out was the 150 hours of prayer-walking through the neighborhood that he and his team did the year before they planted the church.  He said that the whole vision for the church was born out of prayer.   The testimony of God's provision financially and circumstantially was so encouraging. 

Tribeca

Erna and Jawé went to Rockaway Beach Thursday and had a great time there!

Rockaway Beach

Friday we had a great time with John Thomas on developing leaders.  He made us think through the importance of early leadership development in your church plant; how you need leaders who are Bringers, Gatherers, Envisioners, Implementers; how important it is to keep a balance between leaders who are inward focused (pastoral and building up of the congregations) and outward focused (evangelism, mercy and justice ministries); and finally he helped us identify our own leadership style how to be balanced in our leadership development. 

Friday work-time finished off with a great testimony by Fellpe Assis who replanted a congregation in Miami as well as an encouraging project presentation by the two Jonathans (fellow intensive guys) from the city Toulouse (France).

Then it was off to the Yankee baseball game with Anton and Imke who arrived earlier the afternoon.  What an experience of American culture!  Will not give up Rugby for this game (we even left early because it was a bit boring) but we had a great time and did all the baseball game things we could afford!

Anton and Imke arrived!

Yankees!

Saturday was mostly spent on work.  We visited the local market in the afternoon and had Taco's and Pizza and most of the free tasters from the different food stalls for lunch.  We also went to the waterfront with Imke and Anton late afternoon.    

Now we are sitting in Central Park, finishing this blog.  We are attending 4 Redeemer services with City-to-City where we (as church-planters) will get introduced to the congregations.  More about that in our next blog!

God bless!

Church visits, more intensive sessions and Jersey City.

Sunday was full but such a great experience.   I (Thomas) had the opportunity to visit 3 different church services: Redeemer West-Side (Erna and Jawé went along to this one), River (a Vineyard Church – www.rivernyc.org), and the evening I went to Resurrection (Clinton Hill – www.resurrectionclintonhill.org) a Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn.  It was great to experience these gatherings of God’s people with two major questions in mind: 

·         Is this evangelistic worship? This means, do they focus first and foremost on worshiping God, glorifying Him, and then in such a way that it builds up the believers and at the same time, address the questions, fears, and objections of the unbeliever.  Do believers and unbelievers get challenged by the Gospel to confess and repent, do they also see how the Gospel enables you to confess and repent and live a life of thankfulness to God. 

·         Is this a contextualized ministry?  This question is tied into the previous one.  It asks whether the questions of the people you are ministering to are answered from the Bible, with the gospel, in a language that the people understand.  This goes much further than the spoken word.  You can preach well, in an understandable language, but use illustrations that do not fit your context.  You can sing in a style that just does not speak to the people’s hearts.  It’s not in the “vernacular” to use the terms that they use here.  A contextualized ministry communicate the truth of the Gospel in the vernacular. 

It was good to experience the worship in these three very different settings and ask these questions and speak to some of the leaders and members afterwards to clarify my observations.  I especially enjoyed Resurrection hill!  It might have been the Barbeque afterwards though . . .  What a great evening in Brooklyn!

Resurrection Hill

This concludes our Sunday.  Monday morning we talked through integrative ministry.  How do we

1)      Connect people to God (Worship and evangelism)

2)      Connect people to one another (through community and serving one another)

3)      Connect people to the city (through mercy and justice)

4)      Connect people to the culture (through the integration of faith and work)

A Church will naturally be better at some of these ministry fronts than others.  To be balanced in all of these ministry fronts is the challenge!  This is also why we need each other as fellow churches in a city!  Together we can bring the gospel to the city in the most balanced way.

After Lunch we had a Philosophy of Ministry (POM) Simulation session.  A POM is basically the answer to the questions:  How am I going to bring a balanced ministry of the gospel to my specific context.  In other words, how am I going to connect THESE people to God?  What worship style, what kinds of evangelism and evangelistic events? How am I going to connect THESE people in THESE kinds of circumstances to one another?  And so on!   It was a great exercise.  The importance of taking your context into considerations was impressed on my mind again.

Tuesday started out with powerful prayer time.  Then we talked through cultural engagement.  In a Christian dominated culture, you can to a degree avoid this topic.  But we all know that we are either already in a post Christian culture, or approaching it quickly.  Therefor it is very important to think it through.  The aim of the discussion was to get an overview of how different theological traditions engage with culture.   The premise is that your view of culture is influenced by you view on common grace and whether culture is redeemable or not.  This is simplified greatly, so if you want more, get Center Church (p181-243).  It was good to plot myself and also get a better understanding of where others stand in regards to this.     

We closed the afternoon with a session on writing an action plan.  Once again - very good.  Erna and I had the opportunity to talk through our plans with our small group and it was very encouraging.  Especially when they offered to pray together for us!  

Today (Wednesday) is a reading day!  So we have time off to get our reading up to date and we also want to work on our presentation which is on Tuesday! (Please pray for our presentation – Tuesday 2pm NY time and 8pm SA time.)

The only sad thing from the past few days was that Annelise left. We are grateful that she is already safely home, but miss her already!  She was such a great help!!  Here are some pictures of our last evening with Annelise and also our family outing last night in downtown Jersey City.

Manhattan skyline from Jersey City shore.

Goodbye Annelise!

Sunset from JC.

 

Downtown Jersey City.

Downtown Jersey City.

Idols and some sightseeing...

Eish - we can't believe the 1st week is over! On the one hand it feels like a month with regards to all we are learning, but on the other hand it feels unthinkable that there is only three and a half weeks left!

Yesterday (Friday) we had another good session - this time on Idols. The depth and extent of personal and corporate spiritual renewal depends on our ability to identify and deal with our Idols, both personally but also the Idols of the people we want to reach! If we however think of Idols only as  physical wooden or stone images, we are mistaken. Idols can be anything (even good things and mostly they are) that becomes ultimate things. We need to identify/name our idols, dismantle them through confession and repentance that seeks identity and fulfillment only in Christ! And we need to do this in community, with fellow Christians who knows us well.

We finished our working day by thinking through Theological Vision, a new concept, but important! We're thinking your theological vision is like a magnifying glass. It takes your Gospel Theology and focus it on your specific context in such a way that the ministry practices is relevant to that context! Lot's to think about in this area!   

Today (Saturday) we had the opportunity to meet with Christina Stanton, the Coordinator, Short-Term Missions at Redeemer. She is also a NY city tour guide (http://www.nyctours.org/). We arrived at her apartment building near the World Trade Center and she and her husband treated us to some delicious eats on the roof of the building. (The same building where one of Google's directors live!) She showed us a few landmarks from the roof, and share some stories of 9/11 - they lived close to the Twin Towers at that stage. We started our walking tour by going to Wall Street. We visited the Trinity Church, walked past the place where the Twin Towers stood and then walked all the way to China Town. After China Town we went to Little Italy and she treated us to a wonderful lunch at a restaurant called Puglia (www.pugliaofnyc.com).

Wall Street.

Trinity Church.

Christina's apartment building and highest residential building in NY.

China Town.

Walking tour.

Little Italy.

Lunch at Puglia.

Then we took the subway to Chelsea Market - also a wonderful experience! After that we walked along the High line (a public park built on an historic freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side). To end off the day, we had a drink at a beer garden close to the High line.

Chelsea Market.

The High Line.

Having a drink at the end of the day!

What a fun day!

Tomorrow we plan on going to Redeemer Westside for the morning worship and then a new church plant service the evening...

Adoption and Sonship, City Lab, Annie and Times Square.

Yesterday's session on "Adoption and Sonship" was really special for me (Erna).

I've been a Christian all my life. Still - I struggle so hard with experiencing that I am God's child. Through Jesus' death and resurrection, He adopted me. I am now his daughter.  And He loves me unconditionally. All we really know about a father's love, is the love our earthly fathers have for us (if we are blessed enough to even have a father that is present and loves us!) But our heavenly Father's love is SO MUCH MORE! Unconditional. We cannot do anything that will make Him love us less, and we cannot do anything that will make Him love us more! He delights in us!

Wow - have you ever thought - like really thought - what it means that the Lord delights in us? (2 Sam. 22:20) We took some time thinking about what it means that the Lord delights in us. And because our Father delights in us, we delight in his delight... (You'll probably need to take some time to think about this.)

I think that we don't get it right to efficiently teach this gospel truth in our churches. To help fellow believers really grasp and experience that I am God's child whom He loves SO much! I'm realising that a very important way to do this, is to share our stories and experiences in community.

Just maybe a quick exercise that you can do as often as possible to act out the truth of being God's child:

1. Recognize if your motives for doing something shows that you are a slave (feeling anxiety, pride, hurt feelings) or a Son of God!

2. Identify these motives and repent from it. (E.g. Father, I see how I am doing these things for other people's acceptance or applause. In a sense this lessens the worth of your love for me!)

3. Constantly reinforce motives as a "adopted child of God". (E.g. Father, I do this for you. Your acceptance is all I need. Please let my heart feel what I repent of.)

In the session.

Yesterday afternoon, Thomas went to City Lab (a training event for NY leaders and church planters). Tim Keller gave a talk on Evangelistic Worship. Thomas says it was great!

City Lab.

We got discount tickets for the Broadway Musical, Annie and went to see that last night! It was great! Afterwards we spent some time in Times Square. It is difficult to describe the amazing vibe in Times Square at night... except amazing. :-)

Annie.

Times Square at night.

Contextualising... to know your ministry context.

We were indeed looking forward to discussions on Gospel Theology and Contextualization on Tuesday and it was great!  But it was also challenging.  Take a moment to think about this question:  What is the Gospel?  If you’ve given it some thought, picture yourself in a conversation with someone who is a skeptic but interested.  You have 2 minutes to summarize the core of what you believe the Gospel is.  What will you say?  After giving this some thought, we tackled the following difficult questions: What does it mean to have a Gospel-driven Church?  So, not just a Church that proclaims the Gospel, but a Church who is motivated, inspired, energized by the Gospel of Jesus Christ and who lets this Gospel influence every aspect of its ministry and life?  That’s a big question!  The answer?  That’s what the rest of the 4 weeks are for: To answer this question for ourselves and more importantly, for our own context.

This brings us to the second big topic!  The whole topic of contextualization.  It’s one thing to have a clear Gospel Theology!  It’s another thing to contextualize your ministry of the true Gospel!  The question is: How do I answer the people in my city’s questions about life and the world we live in, from the Bible (with the Gospel), in a language that they understand?  This does not only effect preaching, but it effects everything we do, the way we worship, the way we do small groups, the way we do church and live life in our city as a body of believers.  The only way to contextualize well is to on the one hand, know the Bible well, but on the other hand, know your culture well!  This takes hard work.  Where demographic studies can tell us a lot about what types of  people live in a particular neighborhood, only ethnographic studies can tell you who they are.  Ethnographic studies focuses on people's interior life, their worldview, their hopes, dreams, fears, idols, their life stories!  We realized that we still have some hard work to do in this area.

Wednesday started off with some good prayer time!  We spent some more time on the whole topic of researching your neighbourhood.  Then we went to meet Rich Perez from Chris Crucified Fellowship (http://www.christcrucifiednyc.com) in Inwood, upper New York.  He walked and talked us through his neighbourhood (60% Hispanic) and their church plant journey.  It was so encouraging and inspiring to see this young guy so passionate about Jesus AND about his community.  It’s clear that he knows both Jesus and the people they are trying to reach well.

Rich Perez on the left.

Tomorrow we are thinking through our Adoption into God’s family and knowing that we are his Son’s and daughters and we are also visiting Redeemers research centre called City Labs.  

Erna, Jawé and Annelise spent the afternoon in Central Park Zoo.  As it is 9/11 today, the lights of the Empire State Building are red, white and blue tonight.  We can also see the lights showing where the twin towers used to be from our apartment.

Central Park Zoo.

9/11.