Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth
Today is about getting our sense of direction right.
It is never good to drift through life. It is good to have a clear sense of purpose and direction. The times in my life that I have found most difficult have been when I haven’t been sure what I was meant to be doing. Living without a sense of direction isn’t relaxing – its stressful! It also leads to unhealthy introspection and listlessness and boredom. It is why people struggle so much when they are unemployed – we have been created to do stuff!
So today is about setting the direction for this church, but this will not be pain free. It is not pain free because it will mean change, and change is always uncomfortable. But if we want to step into all that God has for us we need to be willing to be made uncomfortable for His sake.
The church we mustn’t be and the church we must be (courtesy of Mark Driscoll)
1. Church as bomb shelter
There are all sorts of nasty things that go on in the world and it is natural to want to avoid these nasty things. Very often churches become bomb shelters against the unpleasantness of the world. In these kind of churches the wider culture is seen as threatening, as dark and dangerous, as something not to be interacted with where at all possible.
The positive thing about churches like this is that they can have a strong sense of community, because everyone knows everyone – it really is like a large extended family. But the weaknesses far outweigh the strengths. Churches that go this way tend to be small numerically. They tend to end up with very controlling leadership. They tend to be legalistic and hypocritical. They are not at all missional.
This is not the kind of church we should be.
2. Church as mirror
Rather than resisting the surrounding culture these churches simply reflect the culture. This is how liberal churches go. These churches do not seek to redeem the culture but instead bless the things that God doesn’t. These churches are morally weak and have no prophetic voice into society.
This is not the kind of church we should be.
3. Church as parasite
These churches use and enjoy the facilities of their towns but don’t give much back… except noise, parking problems and criticism.
This is not the kind of church we should be.
4. City within the City
This is Jesus language. We should be a bible-believing, Jesus-loving, mission-focused, people loving church.
We need to live differently from the culture around us, but not in a way that is hostile to the culture around us.
We need to be missionaries to our town.
Mission isn’t something we pay someone else to do, it is what each of us is called to do. Mission is about living in a culture and seeking to transform that culture. It is about being part of a culture while being distinct from that culture. It means that we don’t hide ourselves away, or simply blur with the culture, or merely use the culture, but that we offer our culture a better way to live.
The church is an ark – but the point of the ark is not the ark! The point of the ark is that it was God’s rescue vehicle. It was his means of saving life and then repopulating the earth. As a church on a mission we need to see ourselves in this light. We contain life – the life of Jesus – and we are meant to transform the world around us. Life is meant to spill out of us.
We need to be a church characterised by adventure, purity and compassion.
How are we going to get there?
1. Developing Strong Programmes and Plans
Small Groups
We want to relaunch our small group system and this will take time. We are planning to have a new system in place for September ’09.
Youth Work
Aaron & Tash Lacey will be taking on responsibility for our youth work from October. We want to see many young people caught up in Jesus’ mission.
Alpha
We want to really go to town on Alpha this autumn! The Lighthouse is booked for our taster evening on October 2nd and we want you to invite lots of people!
Membership
We are introducing a new church membership system built around the five biblical values of Grace, Growth, Group, Generosity & Gifts. The Finding Your Place course will run on the last Tuesday of each month (except in December & August) and we would like everyone to do it!
Prayer
Prayer is vital. Please get these prayer meeting dates in your diary: September 9th, 10th & 11th; October 15th; November 12th; December 10th; January 6th, 7th & 8th; February 11th; March 11th; April 21st, 22nd & 23rd; May 13th; June 17th (all at 7.30pm)
2. Setting Some Goals
These are some of the things we would like to see an increase in over the next year:
More weddings & babies
Healthy churches are full of the sound of new life. This means we should be seeing people come to faith in Jesus, but it also means physical new life. Healthy churches have lots of people in the 20s falling in love, getting married and having babies – we want more of this amongst us.
More salvation & baptisms
Healthy churches are full of the sound of spiritual newborns as well! If we are not regularly seeing people come to faith and getting baptised then something is seriously wrong.
More leaders developing
Everything that happens in church depends upon leaders making it happen. We need more people to step into leadership so we can make more things happen!
More training (WordPlus, Foundations, Impact, etc.)
We need to be people of the Word and the Spirit. The different training courses we have access to can play a big role in helping us get to grips with the word and be exposed to the Spirits power.
More money released for the mission
Pretty much everything we do costs! It’s a very simple equation: The more money we have, the more mission we can do.
3. Changing Our Name
This church has been serving Jesus in this area for over 80 years. We need to honour the past here, and thank God for our history, but I would also like us to start seeing the church as a church plant, with all the excitement, commitment, risk-taking and flexibility that comes with that.
And one of the things that will most clearly help us see that this is a new day for the church is giving the church a new name.
In terms of the queues that formed when I first came here, there was a little queue of people saying, “We need to change the name!” And on the two occasions that Guy Miller has been here (on the day when I was brought into eldership and on the Sunday when he came to preach) he said, “You will have a new name.”
I agreed with both the queue and with Guy, but I didn’t think it would be one of the things we would be changing for quite a few years. It didn’t feel like a high priority.
However… When John Lanferman was with us in July he spent a lot of time talking with different people in the church and then reflecting on what he had observed. John is a very wise and experienced leader, with a strong apostolic and prophetic gift, and I have learned to listen to him. The week after he had been with us, at the Brighton Conference, John came up to me and said, “I’ve been thinking about your church – you need to re-plant it; you need to give it a new name.”
My reaction was, “Thanks, and no thanks!” but there were other things that were happening that week, especially through the preaching of Mark Driscoll that started a conviction in me that we should change the name much sooner than I had anticipated.
The thing was that even before moving down here I had been thinking and praying about the church and part of this had been thinking about names, and I had registered a domain name with the name I wanted, thinking I could just keep it parked there for a few years until we were ready to change name.
The thing that really then convicted me – and the other elders – that we should change the name was the prophetic word brought over us by Keith Hazel at a meeting in Bournemouth. I wasn’t there to hear the word, but some of you were, and I got hold of a recording of it, which I played here at the end of July. Part of Keith’s prophecy included a sentence that included the name I thought we should be called.
Here it is:
I believe God recommissions you to be a mighty army in the community. God wants you to touch Poole by the power of the Holy Spirit and be a Gateway into the Kingdom of God.
Gateway, that was the name. That was the domain name I had registered on the 4th December last year.
So why Gateway? This is a gateway town – it is a gateway to the South West of England; it is a gateway to the continent. And we are meant to be a gateway church – a means for people to pass into the kingdom of God. This church is meant to reach a greater area than just Alder Road or Upper Parkstone. When I preached here on November 11th, I made it very clear that if you invited me to come and be your pastor I was coming for the Borough and the conurbation, not just a small parish. I believe the prophetic word to us is that we are to be a Gateway for this whole area, and our name needs to reflect that. And this isn’t a new thing; its not only since I cam here. It fits with things that have been spoken over this church for many years.
So this week, lets gather together to pray, to seek his blessing upon all that we are doing and want to be doing. Lets pray that we might truly be a people together on a mission. And lets pray that we would be a gateway to the kingdom for many, many people in our town.
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