The diversity of the body affects not only what we do, but also how we do it. Is that right?
J. In terms of what we are trying to do as a staff the outworking of that diversity is important. What the gospel perspective means for gospel practice in staff is to move from a program orientation more into a person orientation. We can’t individualize everything as well as we’d like because we’re not God but we can have that bias to try and make our teaching and opportunities of our ministries actually fit who is coming rather than set up the program and tell people to fit this pre-existing program. That requires the staff to develop a new set of competencies, recognizing where people are and applying new ways of working together creatively to help them express gospel realities in their lives. That’s one shift we’re making.
D. We will be emphasizing Grace Communities, which is really the idea of growing smaller as we get bigger. Whether that is a small group or a ministry, the concept it that ministry – grace moving outward – expresses itself best through relationship within community.
Why did Session feel the multi-congregational model was the best?
D. It’s driven by several things. At the heart of it, we’re going to think through what it looks like to lead by relationship; multi-congregation is a natural outworking of that thinking. More practical, we’re always been aware of the culture around us and who we’re trying to reach. The typical growth model is not going to reach who we are most called to reach. Also, we have an intention for this not to be about us; that it’s about grace going out and being free. I’ts not about one guy. We’re not going to live forever, how can we pass this on? A lot more is going to happen if we have more people - young pastors - here in our circle.
J. When we saw that model, it was like ‘oh… I know what we can do with this.’ It was one of those moments where I could feel all these things at the same time. It’s what I spent the last four to six years of my life doing. Thinking that fits. When I look back, I can see this is what God was preparing me to do.
There aren’t a lot of churches using this model. Isn’t there some amount of risk?
D. The history here was the church grew bigger and bigger and seeing what effect that had on the church and had on me. Being in the Asheville area so long and picking up on the culture and seeing how anti-corporate they are. I was already pretty snippy about not growing bigger in that sense. I couldn’t articulate it very well. Pragmatically, we don’t know if the multi-congregational model is going to work. Whether or not, the principle is worth pursuing. It’s very risky. There’s a leadership that puts it on the line and we put ourselves there too if it doesn’t work out. It’s not the safe way to do it.
J. For me, the risk is part of the attraction. Risk is no fun and not necessarily Godly. However, all true faith has an element of risk to it. When you identify this is different, this fits what we’re called to, and there’s an element of risk to it, then it smells like God is in it to me. It feels like that’s a piece of it. If there’s no risk, there’s no faith.
D. Personality wise we’re both different. But we are both alike in many ways also. We both get easily bored and we both have a creative bent, kind of an outer edge. We prefer to be on the edge of things rather than doing things that have always been done.
J. We don’t have a single answer. What you typically see in a church, you see these are three things that will happen. We don’t operate so much by lists.
D. We had that assembly line chart as we looked at strategic planning. That was helpful; it helped us eliminate some we’re not going to follow. The first was to do this wisely through David (Key) and Josiah’s leadership initiative. But, that’s not what we’re trying to do. We want people to come here and catch the hope of the gospel. We don’t even want to define it as only happening here in the church. You can serve here; you can be in the community. It’s about those 3 neighbors that live around you. It’s about that homosexual cousin that the family is having trouble with. It’s about the single mom who can barely make ends meet. Moving the Gospel out is about where God has put you and extending the grace that you have been given to others.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
Part 2: GP (squared)
Q: Can you explain what you mean by Gospel Perspective and Gospel Practice?
J. It’s not merely a conceptual thing. Often times these things are seen as doctrinal or conceptual; but the thing that grips us is there’s a person behind this named Jesus who has done everything necessary to make me right with God and to equip me for life, a profitable ministry in expansion of the kingdom here and now. So, everything revolves around the person and work of Jesus Christ expressed, culturally, locally, personally, relationally and all these things. That’s the Gospel Perspective. The conceptual way to say that is Justification and sanctification by faith through grace. The personal way to say it is Jesus. I don’t think you can divorce those things. If you have this mystical relationship with this person of Christ, you might not understand who he is and what he did. If you have the doctrinal idea, it can become a tradition or philosophy in a heartbeat. Even those two things together, they have to engage in present life in context. That’s what attracted me in the first place. There wasn’t a single concept I didn’t have. It’s just that Jesus showed up and the Spirit began to work in my life. That made a difference. That’s when I began to engage faith. Those are the pillars and the centers of Christian life and experience. Those are central; that’s what Paul did, that’s what Jesus did, that’s what the New Testament does.
D. Gospel Perspective. Another way to say that is to talk about a shift in paradigm. It’s not that you pick up all these principles. You look at life through a different lens. You look at life through the Gospel and that changes everything. When I read Scripture it’s different than it was before. Now I see through grace, through the person and work on Jesus Christ. How I read the cleansing of the temple, and how that applies to my life. We keep it very simple. Looking at everything through grace. It changes your perspective and practice in every way. It makes you want to change. It gives you the equipment. You have the spirit. You are not powerless. Out of that realization, all of life comes out as a response of worship.
J. Gospel practice springs out of Gospel Perspective. Part of what the church needs to do is help people understand what the person and work of Christ has to do with every aspect of their lives. It’s not just good news for evangelism, or for church staff. It’s good news for neighbors and life in the community. We want to make that tie individually and practically. Sunday morning we can give examples and state the principles boldly. One of the things we’re saying is how small groups help people get the Gospel perspective and Gospel practice. So that is happening. We’re trying to “push” in those perspectives, so in all of life perspective is performed in the centerpiece of reformed theology. It doesn’t feel like performance. The real reformation happens when the Gospel happens in all of life. Staff is now turned toward that, the preaching is turned toward that and that organized push is part of what we’re able to see being fleshed out better.
D. It’s Gospel Perspective leads to Gospel Practice. What are the Gospel Practices? It’s all the things in the Bible that God calls us to do. So, we want to see people give more generously because they’re filled with the Gospel; we want to see them more merciful; we want to see them moving out in relationships with people; we want to see people get involved in missions; we want to see them studying the Bible, leading them to disciple other people, and all those other areas Scripture talks about.
Q. We often hear that Grace plays one note? What is that note?
D. It’s the good news of the Gospel. You can’t read the New Testament, especially, and not be smacked right in the face with the only ting we’re called to is to preach the Gospel and disciple people in the Gospel. You could go on for hours on that. One of the things God has prepared us for is the practicality and depth of preaching the Gospel. I hear the Gospel being taught by a lot of folks but it’s not very practical. I was taught it in seminary but it wasn’t very accessible as far as translating it now in my own life. It’s not transparent. Part of accessing it is seeing how it’s working in other people’s lives, including the lives of teachers and preachers. We’re both well trained. We’ve gracefully received good training. It was enough; we’ve been blessed with that. Providentially we’ve been put in a place, in a context, in a community, that fans that flame and it’s a blessing. It’s really a sanctification issue: the present tense of the Gospel. What does it mean to live by faith, by grace? Yet, for us, that’s so united to truth and fruit and it keeps it from becoming what it sometimes becomes. It’s that sanctification issue. How does faith lead to holiness? It’s not just living by faith like faith is divorced from how you treat people. It’s a strong link for us.
Q: Yet despite playing that one note over and over again, it’s amazing how diverse in terms of background our body is. Why is that?
D & J. [Laughter]
J. I had lunch with a PCA pastor this week. He said, ‘Why don’t you send some folks over?’ I told him we had 60 people in new members class. Only four had Presbyterian background, not PCA even.
D. I’m amazed how unbelievers come here and continue to come. They’re not even seekers. They don’t know why they’re coming. Some of the new age folks I see coming back again and again. Someone I was with yesterday, I was frightened. So out there! It’s not so much a racial mix, not as much as we’d like, but a political and cultural diversity.
J. Dave and I are both real comfortable with that diversity. That is a strong factor that has made us work together well.
D. It comes from the top; it affects the culture of the church now. I was talking to a gay guy last night who comes here occasionally. He knows what I think about what Scripture says, but he doesn’t feel the judgment here. We get a large number of fundamentalists or conservative or evangelical burnouts, or reactionaries or drop outs. We get a lot of unchurched Christians I would call them. We get churched Christians that are looking from something different and we get some seekers. We get a good smattering of people that never imagined that a church would even want them.
J. I’ll tell you a group. I don’t have any statistics or haven’t asked them, but I’ve noticed this. We have this Saturday night service that’s more liturgical and interestingly enough there’s some people who don’t come anywhere else to any other service. When folks come up, you can tell who’s from a Baptist background, you can tell people who are just trying to figure things out. You have the common cup and the wine. Another group comes up and takes the cup and the wine. Episcopalian, Catholic. Even at the communion time here are people responding and you notice the differences in that celebration.
D. The more personal your relationship becomes with people, you are astonished by the difference. I have a person on one side a Republican , he even wore a flag once and has someone from the Democratic planning party sitting right next to her and they get along. The Gospel gets tested. Some people can’t handle that. People find out we’re not getting onto this or that agenda, people who stay pick up what we who are in leadership are committed to. The one dogged priority is above everything else, is the Gospel.
J. There’s a lot of room to share the Gospel in the Democratic Party and there’s a lot of room to share the Gospel in the Republican Party. So, having people in both those representations and finding the Gospel is a wonderful thing. So the kingdom of God actually affects al parties all peoples rather than one group claiming ownership of kingdom
D. That’s another one of those reformed principles that we’re trying to play out practical. Don’t enculturate Jesus. Every church has a culture, but let’s remember that the Gospel is above and beyond culture.
J. It’s not merely a conceptual thing. Often times these things are seen as doctrinal or conceptual; but the thing that grips us is there’s a person behind this named Jesus who has done everything necessary to make me right with God and to equip me for life, a profitable ministry in expansion of the kingdom here and now. So, everything revolves around the person and work of Jesus Christ expressed, culturally, locally, personally, relationally and all these things. That’s the Gospel Perspective. The conceptual way to say that is Justification and sanctification by faith through grace. The personal way to say it is Jesus. I don’t think you can divorce those things. If you have this mystical relationship with this person of Christ, you might not understand who he is and what he did. If you have the doctrinal idea, it can become a tradition or philosophy in a heartbeat. Even those two things together, they have to engage in present life in context. That’s what attracted me in the first place. There wasn’t a single concept I didn’t have. It’s just that Jesus showed up and the Spirit began to work in my life. That made a difference. That’s when I began to engage faith. Those are the pillars and the centers of Christian life and experience. Those are central; that’s what Paul did, that’s what Jesus did, that’s what the New Testament does.
D. Gospel Perspective. Another way to say that is to talk about a shift in paradigm. It’s not that you pick up all these principles. You look at life through a different lens. You look at life through the Gospel and that changes everything. When I read Scripture it’s different than it was before. Now I see through grace, through the person and work on Jesus Christ. How I read the cleansing of the temple, and how that applies to my life. We keep it very simple. Looking at everything through grace. It changes your perspective and practice in every way. It makes you want to change. It gives you the equipment. You have the spirit. You are not powerless. Out of that realization, all of life comes out as a response of worship.
J. Gospel practice springs out of Gospel Perspective. Part of what the church needs to do is help people understand what the person and work of Christ has to do with every aspect of their lives. It’s not just good news for evangelism, or for church staff. It’s good news for neighbors and life in the community. We want to make that tie individually and practically. Sunday morning we can give examples and state the principles boldly. One of the things we’re saying is how small groups help people get the Gospel perspective and Gospel practice. So that is happening. We’re trying to “push” in those perspectives, so in all of life perspective is performed in the centerpiece of reformed theology. It doesn’t feel like performance. The real reformation happens when the Gospel happens in all of life. Staff is now turned toward that, the preaching is turned toward that and that organized push is part of what we’re able to see being fleshed out better.
D. It’s Gospel Perspective leads to Gospel Practice. What are the Gospel Practices? It’s all the things in the Bible that God calls us to do. So, we want to see people give more generously because they’re filled with the Gospel; we want to see them more merciful; we want to see them moving out in relationships with people; we want to see people get involved in missions; we want to see them studying the Bible, leading them to disciple other people, and all those other areas Scripture talks about.
Q. We often hear that Grace plays one note? What is that note?
D. It’s the good news of the Gospel. You can’t read the New Testament, especially, and not be smacked right in the face with the only ting we’re called to is to preach the Gospel and disciple people in the Gospel. You could go on for hours on that. One of the things God has prepared us for is the practicality and depth of preaching the Gospel. I hear the Gospel being taught by a lot of folks but it’s not very practical. I was taught it in seminary but it wasn’t very accessible as far as translating it now in my own life. It’s not transparent. Part of accessing it is seeing how it’s working in other people’s lives, including the lives of teachers and preachers. We’re both well trained. We’ve gracefully received good training. It was enough; we’ve been blessed with that. Providentially we’ve been put in a place, in a context, in a community, that fans that flame and it’s a blessing. It’s really a sanctification issue: the present tense of the Gospel. What does it mean to live by faith, by grace? Yet, for us, that’s so united to truth and fruit and it keeps it from becoming what it sometimes becomes. It’s that sanctification issue. How does faith lead to holiness? It’s not just living by faith like faith is divorced from how you treat people. It’s a strong link for us.
Q: Yet despite playing that one note over and over again, it’s amazing how diverse in terms of background our body is. Why is that?
D & J. [Laughter]
J. I had lunch with a PCA pastor this week. He said, ‘Why don’t you send some folks over?’ I told him we had 60 people in new members class. Only four had Presbyterian background, not PCA even.
D. I’m amazed how unbelievers come here and continue to come. They’re not even seekers. They don’t know why they’re coming. Some of the new age folks I see coming back again and again. Someone I was with yesterday, I was frightened. So out there! It’s not so much a racial mix, not as much as we’d like, but a political and cultural diversity.
J. Dave and I are both real comfortable with that diversity. That is a strong factor that has made us work together well.
D. It comes from the top; it affects the culture of the church now. I was talking to a gay guy last night who comes here occasionally. He knows what I think about what Scripture says, but he doesn’t feel the judgment here. We get a large number of fundamentalists or conservative or evangelical burnouts, or reactionaries or drop outs. We get a lot of unchurched Christians I would call them. We get churched Christians that are looking from something different and we get some seekers. We get a good smattering of people that never imagined that a church would even want them.
J. I’ll tell you a group. I don’t have any statistics or haven’t asked them, but I’ve noticed this. We have this Saturday night service that’s more liturgical and interestingly enough there’s some people who don’t come anywhere else to any other service. When folks come up, you can tell who’s from a Baptist background, you can tell people who are just trying to figure things out. You have the common cup and the wine. Another group comes up and takes the cup and the wine. Episcopalian, Catholic. Even at the communion time here are people responding and you notice the differences in that celebration.
D. The more personal your relationship becomes with people, you are astonished by the difference. I have a person on one side a Republican , he even wore a flag once and has someone from the Democratic planning party sitting right next to her and they get along. The Gospel gets tested. Some people can’t handle that. People find out we’re not getting onto this or that agenda, people who stay pick up what we who are in leadership are committed to. The one dogged priority is above everything else, is the Gospel.
J. There’s a lot of room to share the Gospel in the Democratic Party and there’s a lot of room to share the Gospel in the Republican Party. So, having people in both those representations and finding the Gospel is a wonderful thing. So the kingdom of God actually affects al parties all peoples rather than one group claiming ownership of kingdom
D. That’s another one of those reformed principles that we’re trying to play out practical. Don’t enculturate Jesus. Every church has a culture, but let’s remember that the Gospel is above and beyond culture.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Part One: Inside Out
On Sunday, March 4, conversation between leadership and the Body will continue at one of our regularly scheduled Congregational Meetings. Since nearly four months have passed since that last time we talked, co-pastors Dave Desforge and Josiah Bancroft thought it might be a good idea to jumpstart the discussion with a Q & A on what’s been happening at Grace as it relates to plans for our future. Much has been going on. Progress has been made on renovation plans and locating office space so that Children’s Ministries can expand. A group of Polk County pioneers is ready to move toward becoming our first new congregation in the Multi-Congregational Model. A good deal of time and effort has been spent on reorganizing staff internally, so that Grace may be better able to move outward. The third service continues to grow, and now averages nearly a hundred people on Saturday night.
We encourage you to post comments and questions by clicking on "comments" at the end of this interview.
During the next three weeks, the Q & A with Dave and Josiah will be posted in three parts:
Part 1: Inside Out - Reorganizing Internally to Move Grace Out
Part 2: GP (squared) - Gospel Practice and Gospel Perspective
Part 3: Grace Communities - Future Possibilities in ‘Growing Smaller’
Part 1
Q: Anything been happening since the last Congregational Meeting?
D & J: [Laughter]
D: A lot. There has been a lot of hard work and a lot of progress.
Q: Let’s discuss staff reorganization first. Session and leadership both feel in order for Grace to push out we need to reorganize internally. Is that right?
J: I’ve struggled with the right word. The word that comes to mind is structural, but we’re not really restructuring. It’s more of a refocusing. We’re implementing ways of getting staff to work as a unified whole toward a shared goal of involving people to help them express their faith outside of church as well as inside of church. The rubric we’re doing that under is Gospel Perspective and Gospel Practice. We’re making real progress in the next steps in small groups and should see good results from that in the Fall. We really want to be focused on small groups – what we are calling the development of Grace Communities. Rather than just pulling in programs from the outside and adding them all, we’re trying to push Grace perspective through all these things. And that effects how we organize the staff.
Q: Those of us on staff have heard a lot of a desire to move Grace out? What do you mean by that?
D: Our desire has always been to see Grace move out. We believe that is the natural movement of Grace – it’s not for the purpose of self-fulfillment, but that it is constantly moving out and touching other lives. We see this kind of overflow principle in Scripture: His comfort comes in that it might flow out, His mercy flows in so it might flow out to others. His grace comes in so it might be passed on to others. It has different looks to it, different aspects, whether it’s missions or leadership or mercy or service within the church or community. Those are all through the Spirit, through the Gospel. We’re finding some other ways to make that clear.
J: Those are the principles. We have always believed those to be true and they have been practiced. But one of the differences you see now is that we are recognizing that our responsibility needs to be intentional. When you talk about extending Grace, we see it is a partnership with others that needs to be coordinated. There’s this organic part of it that we’re trusting and seeing God do around us, despite us, beside us and God has been very gracious to do that. At the same time, we’re learning by faith to take hold of that calling in a more effective, strategic, organized, and effective ways.
D: You’re talking now about the corporate aspect. Individuals have always been and will continue to be encouraged to have Grace work out of their lives. But we’ve always wanted to do that as a body, but we’ve not been very organized or strategic about it. The staff reorganization has been focused on how do we become more about how can we do this together and better than we have before.
J: What we’re doing with the staff is say: we want to intentionally support people individually to move Grace out in creative ways. We’re not saying it’s all corporate, but we are saying we need to do this together as well and call people into that but that’s not exclusive. So these two things are the two tracks: the personal extension of Grace through your life and through your contacts and ministry and folks around you – you know, everyday life stuff. We desire our staff to come alongside people and help them to take the Gospel out personally. At the same time, we desire to organize the corporate expression of moving Grace out, so it’s more effective, intentional, and organized. Our intention is to help people see for moving Grace out and help them identify opportunities to do so, whether that is personally or corporately. A third bit we’ve talked about and have started planning is to help those entrepreneurial types start new stuff and give them support as well. So it’s not just about what we can think up, but it’s about what the Spirit brings, corporately, individually and creatively.
Q: But Grace has talked about this kind of thing before. What’s different this time?
D: I think a lot of folks who attend Grace haven’t fully picked up on what we are about. I think Grace has been very good at pulling, but not doing as well at pushing. Here’s what I mean by that. By pulling, I mean that Grace has been attractive to a lot of people. We have demonstrated to people that Grace is winsome and encouraging and hopeful. At the same time, we haven’t been as effective in pushing people out into the culture to express that to others. Jack Miller, a man who mentored both Josiah and I, used to challenge both of us to push Grace out. He’d take you to the train station in the middle of Philadelphia in a crowd and say, ‘Now Josiah will talk to you about the Gospel and his marriage.’ What he taught us both is that if Grace doesn’t move outward, there is something wrong. And for Grace to move outward, it often requires an intentional push. For us as a Body the beginning of that push really started with bringing Josiah here. Pushing Grace out is very natural and instinctive for him. Now as leaders we have decided that we want to take the risk and push the congregation more. In hopefully graceful ways, we are now determined to start pushing people a little. Up until this point, we really haven’t been in a position to do that. For me personally, it was simply a matter of being overwhelmed and tired and just trying to keep up. Organizationally and providentially, we just weren’t ready.
J: There were a few key gifts and people that were really not in place. We just couldn’t be that effective. Dave and I are both similar about wanting the attractiveness and power of the Gospel in someone’s life should be the propulsion for moving the Gospel out. We are pushing only in the sense that it’s God Spirit that is leading and strengthening people to use their gifts in the ministry. Dave and I share that tough DNA and that’s part of what makes us work together well. I tend to be more organizationally and structurally minded. Dave’s is a different wiring; that brings different strengths. In our relationship, we have learned to function according to our gifts. That has been helpful, but we still both tend to be visionary. A critical piece was still missing. When we hired David Key as Director of Ministries [in July 2006], he brought with him the ability to apply that vision to the organization. We’ve had the vision, but David is the implementer. That’s his gift. We can see God’s providence. The combination of gifts and leadership and people is moving us forward.
Q: You mentioned your working relationship with Dave. How have both of you adapted to the reality of Co-Pastor?
D: It’s been as easy as I hoped and easier than I thought.
J: If I look back at my life, my friendships, my relationships have been centered around work. That’s the way it’s always been in my life. I’m not someone who has this vast life apart from work. So from the start, the relationship between Dave and I through work has been very strong. But what I’ve learned with Dave is how to have a friendship that extends beyond our work. That’s come as a real surprise to me.
D: At the heart of our relationship, there’s this incredible trust so it makes everything else so much easier. We’re trying to find ways of connecting and finding things in common we can do. That trust has been incredibly valuable. For me personally, the sharing of pastoral responsibility has made an enormous difference that I can’t really begin to express. I don’t know how I was doing it or how much longer I could’ve done it.
J: What Barbara and I have done in terms of partnering with Dave and Peggy [Maggie} , diving in with them, is to take some of the load off. We have seen some of that weight come off, so they are able to think in different ways, move in different ways. Rather than just adding a second person, we’ve helped Dave recover. He’s able to more freely use his creative juices again, and he’s more effective now than he was before the partnership. So, it’s not like getting two of the same. – it’s more than just a doubling.
J: We talk about extending grace and moving things out. Dave was recently in Miami and other places. That makes a huge difference that the church doesn’t see. We have trouble telling that story well. Dave spoke to about 100 leaders in Miami about how to apply Grace in a difficult situation. He was working cross culturally with Hispanics. He learned from that but they learned as well. I was able to meet with a local small church pastor. I told him I have a history with working with fatal churches, come along side. Grace is being extended within the Presbytery that won’t show up on anybody’s books, but will show up on Kingdom books. It’s work that is Kingdom-based – it doesn’t show a direct benefit to this corporation, which is what I love. That’s Gospel. It’s giving it away. It’s moving it out. Dave doesn’t have to go to Miami. The congregation extends him that way. It’s grace that we’re able to take that time, build those kind of relationships. In many of these situations, if we’re successful, in three years they won’t be standing around saying we’ve changed things. They’ll say, “God really helped us.” So, this behind the scenes stuff, this Gospel activity, we need to share with our congregation. They need to have enough access to value.
D: The surprising thing, we’re both busier than we were before. Co-pastoring doesn’t mean free time. We’re creating; it’s stimulating. Both of us are doing so much better. Right now, we are handling a couple of real tough discipline cases. With the trust we have in one another, I’m taking one of them and Josiah is taking the other. I can’t tell you how freeing that is. Both cases get more attention and they are handled better. It’s what we’ve always wanted for ourselves and for everyone. Our relationship is energizing.
Posted Next Sunday 2/25: Part Two – GP (squared): Gospel Practice and Gospel Perspective
We encourage you to post comments and questions by clicking on "comments" at the end of this interview.
During the next three weeks, the Q & A with Dave and Josiah will be posted in three parts:
Part 1: Inside Out - Reorganizing Internally to Move Grace Out
Part 2: GP (squared) - Gospel Practice and Gospel Perspective
Part 3: Grace Communities - Future Possibilities in ‘Growing Smaller’
Part 1
Q: Anything been happening since the last Congregational Meeting?
D & J: [Laughter]
D: A lot. There has been a lot of hard work and a lot of progress.
Q: Let’s discuss staff reorganization first. Session and leadership both feel in order for Grace to push out we need to reorganize internally. Is that right?
J: I’ve struggled with the right word. The word that comes to mind is structural, but we’re not really restructuring. It’s more of a refocusing. We’re implementing ways of getting staff to work as a unified whole toward a shared goal of involving people to help them express their faith outside of church as well as inside of church. The rubric we’re doing that under is Gospel Perspective and Gospel Practice. We’re making real progress in the next steps in small groups and should see good results from that in the Fall. We really want to be focused on small groups – what we are calling the development of Grace Communities. Rather than just pulling in programs from the outside and adding them all, we’re trying to push Grace perspective through all these things. And that effects how we organize the staff.
Q: Those of us on staff have heard a lot of a desire to move Grace out? What do you mean by that?
D: Our desire has always been to see Grace move out. We believe that is the natural movement of Grace – it’s not for the purpose of self-fulfillment, but that it is constantly moving out and touching other lives. We see this kind of overflow principle in Scripture: His comfort comes in that it might flow out, His mercy flows in so it might flow out to others. His grace comes in so it might be passed on to others. It has different looks to it, different aspects, whether it’s missions or leadership or mercy or service within the church or community. Those are all through the Spirit, through the Gospel. We’re finding some other ways to make that clear.
J: Those are the principles. We have always believed those to be true and they have been practiced. But one of the differences you see now is that we are recognizing that our responsibility needs to be intentional. When you talk about extending Grace, we see it is a partnership with others that needs to be coordinated. There’s this organic part of it that we’re trusting and seeing God do around us, despite us, beside us and God has been very gracious to do that. At the same time, we’re learning by faith to take hold of that calling in a more effective, strategic, organized, and effective ways.
D: You’re talking now about the corporate aspect. Individuals have always been and will continue to be encouraged to have Grace work out of their lives. But we’ve always wanted to do that as a body, but we’ve not been very organized or strategic about it. The staff reorganization has been focused on how do we become more about how can we do this together and better than we have before.
J: What we’re doing with the staff is say: we want to intentionally support people individually to move Grace out in creative ways. We’re not saying it’s all corporate, but we are saying we need to do this together as well and call people into that but that’s not exclusive. So these two things are the two tracks: the personal extension of Grace through your life and through your contacts and ministry and folks around you – you know, everyday life stuff. We desire our staff to come alongside people and help them to take the Gospel out personally. At the same time, we desire to organize the corporate expression of moving Grace out, so it’s more effective, intentional, and organized. Our intention is to help people see for moving Grace out and help them identify opportunities to do so, whether that is personally or corporately. A third bit we’ve talked about and have started planning is to help those entrepreneurial types start new stuff and give them support as well. So it’s not just about what we can think up, but it’s about what the Spirit brings, corporately, individually and creatively.
Q: But Grace has talked about this kind of thing before. What’s different this time?
D: I think a lot of folks who attend Grace haven’t fully picked up on what we are about. I think Grace has been very good at pulling, but not doing as well at pushing. Here’s what I mean by that. By pulling, I mean that Grace has been attractive to a lot of people. We have demonstrated to people that Grace is winsome and encouraging and hopeful. At the same time, we haven’t been as effective in pushing people out into the culture to express that to others. Jack Miller, a man who mentored both Josiah and I, used to challenge both of us to push Grace out. He’d take you to the train station in the middle of Philadelphia in a crowd and say, ‘Now Josiah will talk to you about the Gospel and his marriage.’ What he taught us both is that if Grace doesn’t move outward, there is something wrong. And for Grace to move outward, it often requires an intentional push. For us as a Body the beginning of that push really started with bringing Josiah here. Pushing Grace out is very natural and instinctive for him. Now as leaders we have decided that we want to take the risk and push the congregation more. In hopefully graceful ways, we are now determined to start pushing people a little. Up until this point, we really haven’t been in a position to do that. For me personally, it was simply a matter of being overwhelmed and tired and just trying to keep up. Organizationally and providentially, we just weren’t ready.
J: There were a few key gifts and people that were really not in place. We just couldn’t be that effective. Dave and I are both similar about wanting the attractiveness and power of the Gospel in someone’s life should be the propulsion for moving the Gospel out. We are pushing only in the sense that it’s God Spirit that is leading and strengthening people to use their gifts in the ministry. Dave and I share that tough DNA and that’s part of what makes us work together well. I tend to be more organizationally and structurally minded. Dave’s is a different wiring; that brings different strengths. In our relationship, we have learned to function according to our gifts. That has been helpful, but we still both tend to be visionary. A critical piece was still missing. When we hired David Key as Director of Ministries [in July 2006], he brought with him the ability to apply that vision to the organization. We’ve had the vision, but David is the implementer. That’s his gift. We can see God’s providence. The combination of gifts and leadership and people is moving us forward.
Q: You mentioned your working relationship with Dave. How have both of you adapted to the reality of Co-Pastor?
D: It’s been as easy as I hoped and easier than I thought.
J: If I look back at my life, my friendships, my relationships have been centered around work. That’s the way it’s always been in my life. I’m not someone who has this vast life apart from work. So from the start, the relationship between Dave and I through work has been very strong. But what I’ve learned with Dave is how to have a friendship that extends beyond our work. That’s come as a real surprise to me.
D: At the heart of our relationship, there’s this incredible trust so it makes everything else so much easier. We’re trying to find ways of connecting and finding things in common we can do. That trust has been incredibly valuable. For me personally, the sharing of pastoral responsibility has made an enormous difference that I can’t really begin to express. I don’t know how I was doing it or how much longer I could’ve done it.
J: What Barbara and I have done in terms of partnering with Dave and Peggy [Maggie} , diving in with them, is to take some of the load off. We have seen some of that weight come off, so they are able to think in different ways, move in different ways. Rather than just adding a second person, we’ve helped Dave recover. He’s able to more freely use his creative juices again, and he’s more effective now than he was before the partnership. So, it’s not like getting two of the same. – it’s more than just a doubling.
J: We talk about extending grace and moving things out. Dave was recently in Miami and other places. That makes a huge difference that the church doesn’t see. We have trouble telling that story well. Dave spoke to about 100 leaders in Miami about how to apply Grace in a difficult situation. He was working cross culturally with Hispanics. He learned from that but they learned as well. I was able to meet with a local small church pastor. I told him I have a history with working with fatal churches, come along side. Grace is being extended within the Presbytery that won’t show up on anybody’s books, but will show up on Kingdom books. It’s work that is Kingdom-based – it doesn’t show a direct benefit to this corporation, which is what I love. That’s Gospel. It’s giving it away. It’s moving it out. Dave doesn’t have to go to Miami. The congregation extends him that way. It’s grace that we’re able to take that time, build those kind of relationships. In many of these situations, if we’re successful, in three years they won’t be standing around saying we’ve changed things. They’ll say, “God really helped us.” So, this behind the scenes stuff, this Gospel activity, we need to share with our congregation. They need to have enough access to value.
D: The surprising thing, we’re both busier than we were before. Co-pastoring doesn’t mean free time. We’re creating; it’s stimulating. Both of us are doing so much better. Right now, we are handling a couple of real tough discipline cases. With the trust we have in one another, I’m taking one of them and Josiah is taking the other. I can’t tell you how freeing that is. Both cases get more attention and they are handled better. It’s what we’ve always wanted for ourselves and for everyone. Our relationship is energizing.
Posted Next Sunday 2/25: Part Two – GP (squared): Gospel Practice and Gospel Perspective
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