Ryan Sim

Exponential 2012 – These are the People in Your Neighbourhood (Guest Post by Kristin)

Kristin / May 17, 2012 / No comments

This past April I had the joy of attending Exponential, an American church planting conference, alongside Ryan. I say it was a joy for many reasons; three days together – just the adults, warm Florida weather, great vacation before heading back to work, and of course hearing from some of the legends of church planting. I decided that if I was going to invest 3 days at this conference I needed to jump in with both feet, and look for workshops that would teach and challenge me. One such workshop did just that. Ryan asked me if I would write about it and be his first guest blogger!

The workshop title was “The Good Hood: Major on the Majors by Loving Your Neighbours”. The description grabbed me right away; challenging us as the church that if we can only be good at one thing, it better be the most important thing to God. Brian Mavis, Externally Focused Director of Life Bridge Christian Church in Colorado, proposed that would be to live the Great Commandment in everyday ways, in our own neighbourhoods.

As Ryan and I prepare to move into a new neighbourhood, to plant a church for busy commuting families in the suburbs of Toronto, this workshop sounded like the perfect topic for me. While Ryan seems to have a plan all mapped out, I haven’t had the same exposure to church planting literature and theory, so I was eager to be schooled. While I was expecting to sit through a 45 minute to an hour lecture/sermon on why being a good neighbor is consistent with Jesus’ teaching, what I got was a humiliating exercise with a simple take away message.

Brian had us make a tic-tac-toe board on a sheet of paper. In the center we wrote our own name. The eight surrounding boxes were for each of our closest eight neighbours. He had us write their names. OK no problem, I can do that, there’s Paul and Mary beside us; Chris and Jennifer two doors down; Alex and…..um, shoot, what’s her name behind us; the old lady between us; and well you can see where this was going! I managed to fill in at least one name in five boxes. Not bad, I thought, Toronto is a busy city…we live on a busy street…We just don’t have anything in common with our neighbours…the excuses started to formulate in my head. Then we were asked to add in each box something about our neighbours; something we learned from them personally, something that was part of their life story. Um, OK, I know Paul goes to Czechoslovakia every summer, and that Mary likes to cook; Chris works at a University, and Alex likes to have loud parties. Yikes…that wasn’t too good, I thought, as I started to hide my paper under my arm so that the lady beside me didn’t see how badly I was doing at this exercise. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, Brian asked us to add our neighbours’ hopes and dreams in each box! Hopes and dreams, oh man, I have barely talked to these people let alone get personal enough for them to share with me their hopes and dreams! I was officially ashamed.

The “Sheet of Shame” was the name of this exercise, and boy did it work! While the majority of the room was unable to write any hopes or dreams for their neighbours, they didn’t fare any better than me. While that was shamefully redeeming, the point didn’t even need to be spoken. GET TO KNOW YOUR NEIGHBOURS! What kind of blessings could we bring to the people living next door to us, if we just knew what they needed.

Brian offered a pattern to follow as we go out into our communities and start to make a change in small and significant ways.

1) OBEY: God has commanded us to go and share the Good News. Now more than ever, our communities are filled with people who have little to no church experience, and who have never heard of Jesus. The change starts with a willingness, a conviction, to share life with those closest to us.

2) PRAY: Don’t talk to your neighbours about God before you have talked to God about your neighbours.

3) PLAY: Be active and visible in your community. Talk to your neighbours, don’t just wave from across the street as you drive into your garage. Use your kids. Invite people over for dinner.

4) STAY: Invest in your community, if this is where God has called you. Plan to stay in your house for sometime. Stay at home on the weekends, instead of rushing to get out of town. Never go to Home Depot – ask around, every neighbourhood has that guy with a garage loaded with tools. Sometimes this means staying around Sunday mornings, to understand what other do, and find a different time to worship.

5) SAY: When the time is right and the opportunity presents itself, share the good news of Jesus Christ.

I left this workshop energized and excited to meet up with Ryan again and share what I had learned. While some may say this sounds contrived, I like to think of this as a renewal of social norms. Nowadays, Facebook, Twitter and social media tends to take the forefront in our social interactions with others, and while they have their place, they are no substitute for face to face community. I am ready, for our move and new community; and ready to be the best neighbour my neighbours have ever had!

I hope you’ll learn the same, if you try the Sheet of Shame. How did you fare?

Photo Credit: Rachel via Compfight

Exponential – Michael Frost

Ryan / May 14, 2012 / No comments

At Exponential 2011, Michael Frost was by far the highlight for me, and this year was no different! Coming from Australia, Frost’s context has some obvious parallels to post-Christendom Canada. It’s entertaining to listen as Frost describes the missional context I know and love, and to watch the shocked faces of his American audience. He speaks to them, and us, prophetically.

I heard Frost at a special event hosted at the House of Blues by the Newthing network, but he spoke again at the conference’s last main session. Both were, to be honest, a cathartic experience, as he simply told the stories of Jesus. He is a gripping, engaging storyteller.

At the evening Newthing event, he spoke about how Christianity in America has really been reduced to clichés – “Jesus died for your sins.” The statement is true, but meaningless or tuned out by those who’ve heard the same line over and over again, and there is a wealth of material in scripture that we should use. He encouraged us to retell the stories of Jesus – and so he told the story of Jesus encountering a Samaritan woman at a well in a way that inspired and challenged.

A Coracle

At his main session, he shared the story of celtic monks by contrasting their cloistered life in a cell, and their being sent out as missionaries in tiny boats called coracles. There were aspects of their ministry that were both gathered and scattered, inward and outward, discipline and action, sifted and sent. He noted that this way of life is found through a few scripture passages, but I particularly saw it expressed in 1 Peter and James 1:27. I thought this image of the cell and coracle was a great framework for thinking about the connection between discipleship and mission.

Category: Church Planting Theory / Tags: discipline, evangelism, monasticism

Exponential – Change Management in Churches with Auxano

Ryan / May 10, 2012 / One comment

I also attended a workshop by Auxano, a church consulting firm who love diagrams!

The workshop was described as:

God has a better future for you and your ministry. But for too long church leaders have cooked with one recipe of success that can be labeled, “more of the same, the same way.” Unfortunately, fewer people are interested in “church as usual.” And now, with ever increasing cultural changes from social media and technology to post-Christian values and the economy, the church must be ready to adapt and innovate. But how do you rethink your basic recipe of ministry? How do begin to discover stunningly new possibilities for your church? In Four Paths to the Future, will provide a foundational perspective to guide every other conversation about church strategy and vision.

They presented a lot of change management ideas. For example, in the above image, they drew a matrix of desired results, and models used. In my case, I long to see new disciples made (a new thing) in a new way (a new model). That means we are creating – not to be confused with infusing a new mission into an existing model, maximizing an existing model and mission, or adapting an existing mission to fit in a new model.

They spoke at length about the danger of measuring results using the same measure as our input – an “input result only” system. If we put our efforts into increasing attendance, even with success, that will be our result – increased attendance. But in churchland, that is never meant to be and end to itself! Our impact is meant to be world-changing, life-changing as people learn to follow Jesus! That means we need to reconsider input – how do we invest our time, money, people, etc. to support that output, rather than spinning our wheels focusing on secondary matters? They said the challenge, of course, is that input results are easy to measure, pay the rent, and provide easy validation, even though they are not our goal.

Finally, they suggested that three models exist for change in church today. More is more is the first, and the best example is Willow Creek’s attempt to be seeker-sensitive in the last few decades. The theory was that by having the best of everything at a church service, people would move from to “churchspace” from the rest of “lifespace”.

The second says “Less is more” and the best example is Thom Rainer’s book, Simple Church. The idea here is that if the church can simplify its structures and programs, it can make space for intentional outreach into the community that connects those outside churchspace with those inside.

The third model says “To be is more” and is the emerging missional model. In this model, the boundaries between churchspace and lifespace are porous, as the gospel is take into every part of life. This is, of course, the model I favour

Having studied engineering, and being a system kind of thinker, this material appeals to me – and everyone loves a good diagram!

We were invited to draw a system diagram like the ones above, for our own church. I know with reconnect, I once drew this one:

The idea was that a relationship with God, through Christ and his action on the cross alone, was at the center – it was the point. Our church had three ways of interaction with three communities – missional communities for serving needs based around food and nature for those with absolutely no church connection, our Sunday night community for community building, basic discipleship and worship with those having a past church connection looking to try again, and small groups for discipleship of our members who want to go deep. We could envision the path people might follow toward a vital relationship with God through these different circles.

I’m still working out what I’d draw for Redeemer Church. What would your church’s diagram look like? Why?

Category: Church Planting Theory / Tags: change, church planting, mission, Planning, structures, vision

Exponential – Alan Hirsch

Ryan / May 7, 2012 / No comments

At Exponential 2012, I attended a small workshop with Alan Hirsch, described as the following:

CREATING MISSIONAL CENTERS
From An Institution To A Movement
Alan will explore the four areas of theology and practice that hold the keys to the revitalization and growth of the church in our times. This will explain why Christology, Discipleship, Mission, and Organization are critical focal points for recalibration and development.

A few key points he made:

At this point, the Western church does not need reformation, but refounding.
He suggested reformation can be accomplished by speaking the love language of your organization, but refounding means we need to go back to the founder and love language of Christianity
He quoted David Kinnaman (who wrote an important study of young Americans, unChristian and now You Lost Me.) saying he was told, “These people [Christians] don’t remind us of their founder”
Movements are discipleship obsessed
An apostolic movement = multiplication church planting + mission of everyone, everywhere

As usual, Alan brought theological depth to the missional conversation with real integrity.

I am still mulling over the formula he concluded with – that an apostolic movement requires both a structure of multiplication church planting, and commitment to the mission of all believers. He suggested that church planters often focus on the first, and not the second.

What do you think – do we tend to value one over the other? Neither? Both?

Photo Credit: depone via Compfight

Category: Random Thoughts / Tags: discipleship, missional, movement, theology

Exponential – Hugh Halter and Matt Smay

Ryan / April 26, 2012 / One comment

The Exponential Conference is over for another year and I have decided to spread out my blog posts and keep them short, rather than trying to pack thee full days of solid content into a post or two.

I wanted to start with a workshop called Gathered & Scattered with Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, of Adullam Communities in Denver. They wrote the Tangible Kingdom Primer that we used in forming the reconnect launch team.

These guys are part of a form of church that is both gathered and scattered, rather than the default, gathered mode of most western churches. It’s true – most people, church attenders or not hear about church planting and ask me when and where our first service will be, and when the building goes up! We have generally forgotten the scattered, sent, serving mode of church exists at all, outside of occasional forays in outreach or overseas missions.

Adullum is instead built around a network of communities – groups sometimes smaller, sometimes larger than conventional small groups, but with a broader focus than care. They have intentionally defined what aspects of their church are scattered: Evangelism, Teaching, Shepherding and Crisis Intervention. They centralize, or gather on Sundays for Children’s ministries, some funding of ministries, but more importantly Vision, Communion (the Lord’s Supper) and the pastors do some “brokering” of pastoral care between groups.

Some memorable thoughts and ideas:

When you invite someone to church, who makes the cross-cultural shift? The invited person needs to come sing for 20 minutes…who in our culture sings for 20 minutes?
the modal (gathered) and sodal (scattered) modes require different gift mixes from the APEST list in Eph. 4. Sodal needs pastors and teachers. Modal is prophet, evangelist. And the Apostle tends to bridge both.
It is really hard to make disciples on Sundays
We are not against attractional, but it will not extend the kingdom anymore
We tell the gospel every Sunday at communion
worried about how to maintain doctrinal purity? That is the story of the New Testament!
They started as a “stealth church”. After writing their book, transfer growth started showing up, and they shifted from spending 90% of their time discipling new Christians, to 50% consumed by integrating Christians. So they stopped weekly worship, and the transfer growth only interested in a new worship experience (about 60 people) disappeared.

Needless to say, I was interested to hear about a model like this that is working, since it is very close to what I have in mind for Ajax, since so many are commuters on the go, scattered, and I long to see church form in a similar way.

Category: Church Planting Practice /

Exponential Conference 2012

Ryan / April 24, 2012 / No comments

I will be blogging about the Exponential Conference again this year. It’s my third year, and I can trace several aspects of reconnect and the new Ajax church plant, Redeemer Church, to things I learned or people I met at Exponential.

The conference has a free live Simulcast if you want to see the main sessions, or check this space to read my take on the talks and workshops.

Category: Church Planting Theory /

All Systems Go!

Ryan / April 22, 2012 / One comment

It has been some time since I’ve blogged, and with good reason! I have been busy wrapping up at St. Paul’s, and a great vision for this church plant has been forming. We’ve also been immersed in the world of real estate, finalizing our plans to move to Ajax. I’m excited to tell you all about it in the days and months to come. Things are about to really get moving – first with the Exponential Conference, and then with developing this vision into reality.

But first, as you are probably aware, my time leading entrepreneurial ministries at St. Paul’s, Bloor Street is rapidly drawing to a close! My last Sunday is in just a few days. It has been an amazing three years, leading hundreds of people through the Christianity 101 course, starting a new church community called reconnect, being part of a great ministry team at a great church, and all sorts of other exciting events. I know I have grown as a follower of Jesus here, and helped others do the same. Thank you for your support and friendship!

I’m now working to plant a new church in Ajax, Ontario that will be called Redeemer Church. Kristin, Elliot and I will move to Ajax this summer.

Ajax is a bedroom community largely made up of busy, commuting families. In order to reach those who’ve never had any church connection, or have not in many years, we’re going to be developing Redeem the Commute, a mobile app and web site that delivers quality educational content on life, relationships and family, along with Christian basics and daily discipleship content. Our dream is that people will engage with this content, form small groups in their homes, offices, trains and buses, and develop into a church “on the move”.

I’d love to keep in touch! Please support us by:

Subscribing to this, my personal church planting blog
Praying for and encouraging us as we send out updates

And please support the church plant by subscribing to our online media, even while they are under development. It always helps to have a critical mass:

Signing up for our Email List
Subscribing to Redeem the Commute’s web site (under development, launching this fall)
Liking Redeemer Ajax and Redeem the Commute on Facebook (under development)
Asking any friends in Ajax to do the same, and introduce us by email.

Thank you!

Category: Random Thoughts / Tags: church planting, plans, update