Simple Church

I am reading the book, "Simple Church", and by the way Dave, I have purchased my own copy, so will be bringing your back this Sunday. I am ready for the second part, and I feel that it would be helpful for us, if we would have like a book review discussion, as there are questions at the end of each chapter, and I would like to hear the answers others may have. I think from what I am learning from the book, that we are already a simple church, but we need some tweaking here and there. Great Book.

Revisiting Our Simple Strategy

Over the past months I've been kind of quiet on the "strategy front" for SummitView. With all of the challenges and transitions of the past year I've just felt the need to hit pause and spend some extended time reviewing, reflecting and renewing. I recently finished a book that came highly recommended from another pastor. The beauty of this book is that it's not another new method, not some cutting edge technology, not a complex new system being suggested to implement in our church. In fact, it was just the opposite. The name of the book pretty much says it all - "Simple Church".

The conclusion and main point of the book is that the most effective churches are basically "simple" churches. They have a simple and clear strategy for accomplishing their mission -- it's easy to visualize and easy to understand. Here's how the authors define it:

A simple church is a congregation designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth. The leadership and the church are clear about the process (clarity) and are committed to executing it. The process flows logically (movement) and is implemented in each area of the church (alignment). The church abandons everything that is not in the process (focus).

What struck me most is that the idea they champion (as a result of overwhelming evidence from their extensive studies) is an idea we have in place already at SummitView --- REACH, CONNECT, BUILD. That's our mission. That's been our strategy.

So here are some questions for us:

• What do we need to do so we can better EXECUTE that simple plan?


• Are we looking at numbers of people across the process or just "nickels and noses" on Sunday morning?


• Given that the hardest part of the simple strategy is movement between steps, what can we do to help people transition from one step to the next? Are the "next steps" clear?


• How does our simple strategy translate to Bedrock? to Student Ministry? --- so that the entire church is aligned?

eBible Study Hosea 1:10 - 2:1

I have found that MBI is running a study on Hosea duing this month, so I am going to borrow from it to help us out.
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:26

On Christmas Day 1989, Leonard Bernstein conducted a concert in Berlin to celebrate the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. In tribute to the spirit of unity, Bernstein assembled an orchestra and chorus that included members from East and West Germany, the Soviet Union, France, and the United States. They performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with lyrics modified to suit the occasion: “Ode to Joy” was changed to “Ode to Freedom.”

Hosea pointed ahead to a similar celebration of unity that had much grander importance. Using a slight change to the names of his children (2:1), Hosea was predicting the restoration of Israel and Judah under the reign of Messiah! The tone of these two verses contrasts sharply with the beginning of the chapter. Hosea transitioned from recording God's judgment against Israel's infidelity to promising that their descendants would be called “sons of the living God” (v. 10). The phrase “sons of God” or “children of God” is extremely rare in the Old Testament. It is used primarily to describe angels (e.g., Job 1:6). The only other Old Testament reference to humans as God's children comes in Deuteronomy 14:1 when Moses explained the importance of remaining pure. How fascinating that God would reserve such a title for a people so unfaithful!

Hosea also alluded to God's promises to Abraham of both a large number of descendants and their control of the land (Gen. 22:17). Those promises were made immediately following Abraham's dramatic display of faith in his willingness to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. God was reminding His people of an age-old promise that could not be undone. It was as if Hosea was reading to Israel the vows that Abraham had originally exchanged with God.
After looking back at God's promise, Hosea cast his eyes forward to the fulfillment of that promise, including the prediction of a leader who would bring Israel back under one throne. Because of God's rich mercy, the land and the people would be redeemed!

Do You Hear What I Hear?

This past Sunday in our Summertime Stories series we took a look at Jesus’ Parable of the Sower – with the main idea being that God does speak to those that are willing and ready to listen. And the various soils in the story represent the various “levels of readiness” people have to what God is saying.

That's one thing when you're considering God's next step for your own life. But I'm wondering what you think about how God leads a church family like SummitView. What are the implications for us to consider as leaders about our collective receptivity to God’s leading? Now I’m going to make an assumption that all of us as leaders WANT to hear from God – we WANT to be the “good soil” and be receptive to God’s leading. Afterall, the role of church leadership is such a daunting task I can’t see how anyone in their right mind would want to do it any other way! But with the Biblical model of a plurality of leadership, how do we make that work in community?

So here's a question for us to consider -- Since last time I checked God didn’t have a blogspot for us to read precisely what he wants to say to SummitView, how do we as leaders responsibly translate what we hear or believe God wants to say to our specific church family? Assuming that God's desire is for us to pull in the same direction, what kinds of things can we do to better serve as cohesive conduits of God's message, calling, leading of SummitView?

Leaders are Learners

A dangerous pitfall any leader faces is reaching a point where we think we've completely "arrived" in our leadership development, and so we stop seeking to learn. The same can be said for Christians who may feel like they've heard it all before -- they know the Bible stories, they've heard tons of sermons preached, they've sat it countless Bible studies. What more could they possibly learn?

Now on one level I do share the sentiment of those that say that most Christians are educated well beyond their level of obedience and could probably do with less Bible study and more Bible-in-action. However, the truth of the matter is that the best and most effective leaders are life-long learners.

It really doesn't matter if the learning is formal or informal, individually or in a group, out of a book or from an online blog. The point, once again, is that leaders are learners. And I would add that I think Christian leaders should be on the forefront of learning and discovering more and better ways to live our lives (and help lead others to live their lives) to reflect the image of Christ.

And so begins our experimental journey as SummitView leaders here on this blog -- to live our core value of "continuous growth", helping one another take the next step!