Great Article on Being Missional by Tim Chester

http://www.vergenetwork.org/2011/10/04/tim-chester-10-simple-ways-to-be-missional/

The King that We Serve

Isaiah 11:2-5

English Standard Version (ESV)

²And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
³And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide disputes by what his ears hear,
⁴but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
⁵Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,
and faithfulness the belt of his loins.

1 Timothy 2:3-6 (NIV)

³ This is good, and pleases God our Savior, ⁴ who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. ⁵ For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ⁶ who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time.

I am encouraged that God wants those close to me that don't know Jesus to know Him. We can pray with confidence.

Upcoming events...

Monday, August 22nd 7:00pm Sort/pack the backpacks at Bend City Church

Saturday, August 27th 11:00am-1:00pm Backpack Hand Out at Arbor Trace

Saturday, September 10th Brewers Game with tailgating for the MEN. Meet at Bend City Church at 3:00pm. $22 dollars for ticket and food.  Andy Christophersen will provide the food.  Game is at 6:10pm.

Sunday, September 11th Baby Dedication during service.

Sunday, September 11th City/Church wide 9/11 Memorial 4:00-5:00pm at West Bend High School auditorium.

Saturday, September 17th 1:00-5:00pm Scrap Booking Outreach at Bend City Church. See Lisa Austin with questions. Please bring friends.

Sunday, September 18th  Baptism after church at Yahr Park. Bring your own lunch.


Sunday, September 18th 6:30-8:30pm Calling ALL Women please join us for a Night of Encouragement.

Ministry Training

In my last post "Timeline of an Outreach", I'd mentioned one of the areas we wanted to focus on was training of those in the church. Here is a portion of the post:

"As we came into 2011, we wanted to push forward as a church in 2 particular areas. The first area was "to equip the saints for work of ministry" (Eph 4:12) which is essentially training already committed members of the church to minister more effectively to build up the body of Christ. This goal is obviously focused toward training within the community of the church."

For the past 5 weeks, we have been trying to do just that by meeting on Tuesday nights from 7-9pm for ministry training. There are many different forms a ministry training could take, so I wanted to give a picture of what we are doing and why.

The key verse for the structure of the training comes from 1 Timothy 4:16 (NIV)

Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.

Paul points out 2 basic areas of focus for being a person that is able to save both oneself and the others around them: what you believe and how you live. Both are important.

We've taken this verse to give direction on how to focus our efforts on Tuesdays. The first half of a Tuesday night consists of diving into the bible on a doctrinal issue of the gospel. The second half of a Tuesday night consists of looking at a life issue and how we can live according to the will of God. Many times we've tried to have corresponding life issues that relate to the doctrine being studied.

The overall message we've been looking at on the doctrine side has been the different aspects of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Essentially, what Christ accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection for those that believe. The life side of the night then flows from the knowledge that Christ is with us and for us 100% and we can and should live for him and his kingdom.

The topics for the weeks are:

Doctrine / Life

Sinfulness of Man / Usefulness of the Word

Christ's Sufficiency / Repentance and Confession

Christ's Forgiveness / Forgiving Others

Justification and Righteousness / Serving and Giving

New Creatures in Christ / Being Set Apart from the World

True and False Converts / Evangelism

Sanctification / Working Hard for God's Glory

Security and Apostasy / Life of Faith

Faith and Works / Purity

Fear of the Lord / Exercising Freedom and Restraint

Humility

The ministry training is not geared toward a specific area of ministry such as small group leader, personal evangelism, or kids ministry, but is intended to give believers a greater knowledge of God and thus, love for God. Love for God that would drive us respond to Him in obedience. Love for God that would compel us to the area of ministry God has called us to. It is our hope that from this training and others to follow, God's people would be more equipped to do His work for His glory.

Both are essential

Luke 18:2

New King James Version (NKJV)

² [Jesus was] saying: “There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man.

In this passage Jesus is setting up the parable of the persistent widow by giving us a snap shot of the judge.  You probably remember the story.  This widow comes before a judge asking for justice; the judge refuses to grant it to her; the widow persists; the judge gives in not because of any of his goodness but because of her relentlessness.

Years ago as I read this parable it was this verse that jumped off the page at me.  Jesus is trying to describe a judge that lacks righteousness.  He is painting a picture of the widow's nemeses.  Jesus wants us to understand what this woman was up against.  And so, he attributes two negative characteristics to this unrighteous judge.  Number one, he didn't fear God.  Number two, he didn't regard man.

This quickly became a prayer of mine.  I have often prayed that I would fear God and regard man.  Both of these are essential.  God is the only one that we should fear and when you truly fear Him it will free you up to regard and care for others.  If you fear man you can never truly regard others.  You will only fear what each person thinks.  This will be a snare to you.

Proverbs 29:25

English Standard Version (ESV)

^25(A) The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe.

The Timeline of An Outreach

This summer we have some outreach events planned for reaching out to a particular area in West Bend. The area we are targeting is the Arbor Trace Apartments off of Decorah Rd. in between Main St and the high school. I wanted to fill everyone in as to how we came to choose this location and how we came to decide what we will be doing there.

As we came into 2011, we wanted to push forward as a church in 2 particular areas. The first area was "to equip the saints for work of ministry" (Eph 4:12) which is essentially training already committed members of the church to minister more effectively to build up the body of Christ. This goal is obviously focused toward training within the community of the church.

The second area was to reach out to West Bend with the love of Christ that we have received and now are commanded to give to others. The point of this blog post is to explain how we started as the non specific goal of reaching out to the city and came to the specific direction of outreach at Arbor Trace. (A second blog post will follow as to the equipping of saints)

In January, Scott and I and other leaders from Bend City prayed and fasted asking for direction as to how we could practically be "the light of the world" to our home city. Then in February, we asked the church to pray and fast every Wednesday throughout the month asking God this same question. How could we be used by God to reach out to West Bend as a church community?

From this prayer and fasting a number of individuals within the church had ideas as to how we could reach out and where. As we waited, talk through ideas, kicked around possibilities, it became apparent that God was leading us together as a church body to reach out to the area of Arbor Trace. The leading consisted of relationships in the area, a sense of caring for the individuals there, and a growing desire to minister the love of Christ to that specific apartment complex. We believe God answered the where.

From there, 3 separate people from the church came with 3 separate ideas of how we could reach out to Arbor Trace and begin to develop relationships there. From these ideas, more prayer and discussion, a plan has been laid for the months of July and August for the outreach.

The first outreach is taking place Monday, July 18th through Wednesday, July 20th and will consist of a Backyard Bible Club (BYBC) from 9:00am to 11:30am each day. We have rented a 20'x40' tent, hung up a large banner at the apartments, and are going to be handing out flyers 2 times before the 18th. As the day is growing closer, excitement is building as we are looking forward to what God is going to do in the kid's lives there.

Before the tent is taken down, on Saturday, July 23rd we will be having a free pancake breakfast that will include pancakes, sausage, and other good stuff. Our hope and goal is that these two outreaches will help us to develop relationships with new people that we may not meet in our day to day lives.

Finally, we are following up these 2 events by doing a backpack program for the kids at Arbor Trace. Any school age child that would like to get a backpack and back-to-school supplies for the fall school season will be able to sign up at the BYBC or pancake breakfast. On Saturday, August 27th, we will come back to Arbor Trace to deliver the backpacks.

Needless to say, these outreaches are going to take A LOT of work by A LOT of people to happen. We are excited as we feel God has lead us to do this and that by his strength we will get it done. Please pray for God's favor in this work and ask God if and how you could be involved in it. More updates to come-

Shane