City Reaching - Sam Williams

City Reaching –Sam Williams

Using a common language and point of departure for city reaching will help us to collaborate.

Engaging the Church in the community: Download Powerpoint Presentation

Notes from discussion:

The community can’t be healthy without the Church.
The church is the soul of the city as the soul is to the body.

The church can’t be healthy apart from service to the community

The Gospel is best spread by contact. By engaging in the community, we can build relationships, and relationships are the context for natural evangelism.

Sam:

Acts 2:42-47 42 And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 And everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. 44 And all those who had believed were together, and had all things in common; 45 and they began selling their property and possessions, and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need. 46 And day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, 47 praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.

They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. Every church should have prayer, fellowship, bread etc. But we never say the church should sell their possessions and give to the poor. All the people gave them favor because they were blessing the poor. They were caring for people, finding favor, and the Lord added to their number.

Wayne Gretzky said: move where the puck will be, not where it is. The city is where the needs will be and where the openness and the people will be.

DA Story: The pastors invited the District Attorney to the Boulder Pastors Prayer Breakfast. The DA said that she is creating the next generation of criminals by putting juveniles in jail because she had no funding.

The pastors prayed for this. She called back about faith based mentoring programs. They arranged a meeting and decided to do this in Boulder. This is remarkable given the spiritual climate of Boulder. A non-Christian district attorney chose to add a faith based mentoring program in Boulder. When people ask, the mentors say they are doing this to share the love of Christ.

The DA called months later and asked to come back to the prayer breakfast because all of her prayer requests had been answered. She asked for a husband. She said there are so few healthy men in there 40’s that it was very difficult to find a suitable husband. She is married now.

One of the pastors missed the meeting and asked the DA to lunch. The DA was emotionally distracted. Her daughter had left 5 years earlier. She was on drugs and they gave her tough love and sent here away. The DA wanted to know where here daughter was.

This pastor and his wife had the same thing happen and they asked to pray for her. The next day, her daughter called. The daughter said she had been off drugs for a year, had become a Christian. She said I wanted to call you for months but yesterday it just felt like it was ok to call. The DA said it was because they prayed for it to happen.

Servants can go anywhere. If you want to control you have to fight your way in. If you want to serve, you get invited in.

The ultimate motive is to win people to Christ (Paul and Agrippa). The ulterior motive is to bless the needs of the city. People of faith working with people of good will.

The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark. Christianity grew because Christians acted counter intuitively to the crises of their times. In plagues the church did not flee the city. They stayed and did not fear death. During the time of plague just to give food and water would raise the survival rate to 80%. Christians helped each other and those non-Christians they knew.

Those who lived outside the city were called pagans. The most common form of infanticide was exposure, especially girls. Christians would scour the streets to find these children and raise them as Christians.

Tsunami is another tragedy. The way the church acts will be how they are remembered.

A learning community has to be reflective: what am I seeing, hearing, learning.

Close in prayer.

Axel: Tent makers in Islamic countries are an application of the servant model of city ministry. The ultimate motive is the gospel but the ulterior motive is service.

Eric: Christian Factory Workers in China say that they are pasturing a church of 5000, they just don’t know it yet. They bring medical care and service to people and they naturally ask to know why. The Gospel shouts when it is delivered through love. Missiology flows from our Ecclesiology.

Dan: The supernatural event provokes questions. When you pray for people you are giving God the opportunity to move and prompt the questions. Prayer is as worthy a deed as good works for promoting openness to the gospel.

Jerry: God is doing something unique in every place and every person’s heart. What we want is a model to implement. What God wants is for me to trust him and he will give the next step.

Dan: If Good works is the bridge over which he gospel can travel, the gospel then transforms communities and then others will see.

Eric: Had lunch with CCC leader in Latin America. He prayed when he came on staff that God would lead 30% of the country to Christ. Now they have 37% Christians and the country is in worse shape than ever. They shared the gospel 3 times with every person in the country in the eighties. But they did not transform the city and the community. Their Christian community is self-focused and not helping their neighbor.

Sam: Almost all discipleship is focused on the individual and not on the community. If discipleship does not include transforming the community, it leads to growing churches but not transformed communities.

Daniel: Our idea of disciple includes discipling others. If I’m a disciple I must take responsibility for others. There have been many center points for community transformation: prayer, compassion etc.

Jan: Could we say that we are part of a transformational service, including reaching people with salvation, including serving people as God would have them serve. Beijing is different than Oslo. A courtroom is not necessarily a court of justice. It is a court of law. Some laws should be changed in order to achieve justice.

Pray for lunch.