Church Planting is for Girls – Write Now Counts Forever

My Journey into A Missional Life

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My journey with living on Mission began the summer of 1983. I was watching T.V. with the other kids at the house of my brother in law’s best friend, Keith Green. I knew Keith as the crazy Jesus Freak friend of my sister who’d come over, bang on our piano and make me laugh. I also knew Keith and my older brothers and sisters had all been addicted to the drugs that was wreaking havoc on my family. Yet now, none of them could talk of anything else but Christ as their Savior. They talked nonstop abut their brokenness and how God was healing them. I coveted what they had. It was more than a belief, it was a testimony. They seemed to know what life was all about. At nine, my mission was still figuring out how to win at the Rubik’s Cube while stuffing a whole pack of Hubba Bubba in my mouth. But that day, sitting in Keith’s living room, I overheard him say something to my sister that stuck with me for the rest of my life. He leaned over to her, his blue eyes staring down at me and said, “Is your sister saved?”

My sister Alyson smiled at me and said, “Yes, she is.”

I looked at her and then pretended like I was still watching Tom and Jerry with all the other kids, but I could feel my ears going hot. I was so excited that my sister had called me a Christian. Of course I loved God, but was I really adult enough to be a Christian? I kept listening.

“I can tell she loves the Lord.” Keith said. “She’s going to be a Godly woman.”

And that was it. Those words spoken casually, yet prophetically in conversation, struck a chord in me. When I arrived back at school that September and my teacher asked me to write about what I wanted to be when I grew up I said, “A Missionary and a Veterinarian. I want to help people and animals.” At nine I didn’t know much about the exact qualifications I needed to possess to become a “godly women”, but one thing my sister and her hippie friends showed me was; a godly woman lives for those in trouble and anyone, even a nine year old, could become one and have a mission. In fact, there was no other way to live as a Christian.

That first step as a nine year old, was only the beginning of a life long battle to live the call to “Go into all the world”. Everything in all heaven and earth tries to prevent us from living missional as Christians. I believe the enemy of our soul actually finds greater satisfaction in seeing our God given gifts disabled, then listening to the Atheist’s boastful speech. Yet everything in all heaven and earth is also at our disposal for the battle. “I do not leave you as orphans,”says our Leader in John 14:18. Every weapon the enemy uses against us to disable our missional call, has a counter weapon.

For the next thirty-five years, that nine year old “godly-woman-to-be,” that “hopeful-missionary”, would face every possible tool the enemy could muster up to drive her from the mission at hand. The mission to lead the weary to a Refuge and the broken to a Strong Tower wasn’t going to be had until she herself clutched that Refuge and stood under that Strong Tower.

The Battle:

At age 12, drug addiction would end my parents’ marriage and cause my family to become homeless, begging for money from relatives.
At 15 I’d be sexually assaulted while walking home from school.
At 29 I’d face the paralyzing pain of infertility.
At 40 I’d face my first bout with cancer

With every attack of the enemy against our call to mission as believers, comes a counter attack from God equipping our souls. God’s desire is that we’d move beyond simply going on mission to truly loving those we are called to give to. In the words of Amy Carmichael, “You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.” I know it was in the trials that my missional life took root in the Love of God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 declares, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

Everyone of those blows by the enemy, made me more effective on mission than before.

Here are some missional edges born from those battles:

At age 12 I learned compassion for those addicted to and broken by substance abuse. Homelessness became a matter of the soul rather than an absence of a building and set me up for living 12 years in a foreign country, planting and replanting my life among the unchurched.
At 15 I found the well worn path of Christ toward forgiving my enemy, something God was going to ask me to do for a lifetime in Ministry and Mission.
At 29 and while facing infertility, our first Church plant was born. “A church for those who don’t go to church” we called it. It was here I learned what true missional living was about. I had to minister amidst my pain and not hide it. Living a missional life means inviting others into our most vulnerable places and loving there. Right there. Even amongst the blubbering.
At 35 my infertility lead to the greatest blessing of all, a house full of kids! Without the childless mom, there is no one to embrace the motherless child through adoption.
At 40 cancer gave me the gift of a few more days living a Missional life by slowing me down long enough to listen to the unchurched around me. It gave me time for those outside the church as they came into my home to care for me!

Mission is waiting for us amidst our trials, our fears and our insecurity. In the (very awesome) book Reaching The Unreached, Peyton Jones writes, “Unless you’re scared, you’re not on mission.” Being scared is what happens when we step out. It’s the first step. Being humbled by our compassionate God toward a world crushed under sin, is where our effectiveness takes root. And until we fight through those battles set up just for us, I don’t believe we have the compassion that is needed for a life lived on mission. In fact, our mission, like a dessert rose, will often blossom out of our most wounded places.

The challenge to the Christian, especially a Christian who has been in the church for a number of years is, we may feel unable to reach a world who seems to be speaking a different language. We know the church is often labeled by the unchurched as, unapproachable in our Holy, do-gooder robes. We often watch helplessly as the unreached withdraw from us, uninterested in being our mission. Here is where the lie lives. We are still in as much need of a Savior as they are. In fact, there is a much smaller chasm between the church and the unchurched than the enemy would have us believe. We are just as desperate. Sometimes we are just barely clinging to shattered pieces of our hope and Faith. When we stick around an unbelieving world long enough, we begin to see that all those areas we’re asking God to heal in us, are the very spots He is going to minister through us. Yet we need to be brave enough to not “Other” those we call our mission. We are called to be open and honest about our own trails and our own areas of much needed sanctification. Unfortunately, the Lyrics from the band Frightened Rabbit, sums up the attitude of many unbeliever’s toward us:

“While you read to me from the riot act way on high, high

Clutching a crisp New Testament breathing fire, fire.

Will you save me the fake benevolence, I don’t have time, I’m,

Just too far gone for a-tellin’, lost my pride, I don’t mind,

being lonely,

So leave me alone.

Aw, you’r acting all holy,

Me, I’m just full of holes”

This young man had an encounter with a Christian that left him feeling judged. He didn’t feel loved and he most certainly was not related to. In the end, this talented young Scotsman took his own life. His story has been haunting me lately. What if my sister and her friends had never really paid attention to my nine year old soul? Or what if they merely lectured me? What if they had simply wrote me off as too young, or not ready to receive yet?

I know the exact times in my life where I would have walked past a man like the song writer and judged him, “othered” him and labeled him as unapproachable. And I know the times in my life where I would have stopped and listened to his hurt. It would have been the times I was going through my own ache of soul and being shown tremendous love, grace and compassion from God.

Let me sum it up this way. There can be no mission outside of us, if there is no mission happening within us. Don’t despise your trials and temptations believers and think you can’t be used amidst the storm. It’s part of your witness. It’s part of your testimony and it’s where mere giving for the gospel’s sake, transforms into loving with gospel strength. As the church, “We are His workmanship, created for good works in Christ.” (Eph. 2:10) Our trials chisel our beliefs into a testimony. That testimony is the heart of our missional life.

Everything I Needed To Know About Church Planting, I Learned In Underoos.

Song of the Month: “Time To be Awesome” Zoe Saldana

Everything I needed to know about church planting I learned in my Underoos. Ok, so maybe not everything, but a lot.

It’s the beginning of 2018. I’m on my second month of being forty-five years old and I’m realizing that who I am, is really so connected to who I was as a silly, little, eight year old girl, running around in my….wait for it… not superwoman…but Incredible Hulk Underroos. Yes, I was a freaky little blond girl who loved her some Incredible Hulk. Still do as a matter of fact and I’m not ashamed to admit it…anymore.

It wasn’t the comic that first drew me in, but the highly emotive opening seen of the made for T.V. show. There was our Bill Bixby, sadly sauntering around a long, lonely bend in the road with his tiny (for now), thumb sticking out. So sad, so hopeless, so misunderstood!

We are who we are. We are who God made us to be. Sure over the years, we take hopeful steps closer to heaven, learning a bit along the way about forgiveness, love, and grace. But our essence, the Soul that was born into this world, is one specially designed freakazoid that God sent like an astroid into His wold. Boom! And you created your pothole.

One question I get asked a lot by young women heading into the ministry is, “How do you…do it?” Whatever the IT is that they are seeking to do. How do you be a pastor’s wife, church planter, pastor, preacher, evangelist, teacher, worship leader, lead children’s ministry, juggle it all with kids, stand up against the scrutiny of others, put up with gossip, betrayals, etc.? And how do you do it all while dealing with your own issues? Real life, everyday, human issues like depression, infertility, un-forgiveness, trials with grown children, death of loved ones, cancer, financial crisis, and so on.

Many (all?) church planters don’t feel they have what it takes. And to be frank, they don’t. I didn’t. Don’t. I just have what I have. The raw material that God gave me, much like Bill Bixby. But gosh darn it, once the Hulk came around, Bill had what it took to knock the bad guy to the moon and back!

I’ll never forget the day I learned through a very important issue of The Making of the Incredible Hulk, that Lou Ferrigno was deaf. The Incredible Hulk! MY Incredible Hulk, was Deaf! The magazine showed in detail the hours of makeup Lou had to endure to become the Hulk ( Lots of makeup tips there girls:). It mentioned the struggles he faced as a deaf kid and all the Incredible Hulk had to overcome to become so incredible to me.

Anyone who knows great literature, knows every hero must have a flaw. In fact, their flaw is a part of their story, without it there would be no story. Without the Hulk, there would be no sad BIll Bixby to tune into every week. Will he overcome? Will he ever find love? If he can keep going, so can I! And on come those powerful Underoos.

So it is with us. Could it be that our very brokeness, or the thing we see as such a flaw in ourselves, or our biggest heart ache, is the thing God wants to use in us? Perhaps the very dent our butt makes in the earth, is where the rain will fill to water someone else’s garden? Give us humility as His Church? Bring restoration for someone who feels hopeless? I mean he did choose to put the equivalent of the Incredible Hulk in jars clay right? Last time I checked 2 Corith. 4:7, I’m sure it said God put the treasure of his Holy Spirit (ie. Incredible Hulk) in jars of clay (us).

So next time you hear the lie in your ear that you just can’t do it, or no one wants to see your dirty Underoos, remember He chose you as you. Flaws and all. People can’t relate to “Perfect” pastors, leaders, ministry workers. Its not real, nor is it even right to set ourselves up to crash all over their pedestals. “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God?” (Mark 10:8) So why pretend? Why play act? Whew! Pressure off, Underoos on! Let’s go.

Define Underoos someone asks? …It’s what American kids wore in the early 80’s to feel invincible!

If we had only had Shakespeare Underoos! How right this world would be.

(First Posted on Church Planting Is For Girls 2014)

Create a Missional Lifestyle With This One Step

Lord I can’t do any more!

I doubt I’m the only church planter who has ever prayed these words. But I might be the only one who said it with her pants inside out, baby throw up in her hair, while frantically searching for the Bible study she lost. In my defense, I had a four year old, a special needs newborn, a young church plant, lots of church meetings, a part time teaching job, and a full calendar of to-dos to rush into every morning. Plus, I was trying to live the missional lifestyle. The problem was, my missional lifestyle was swallowed up in my business. After a few too many frazzled months of trying to do it all, a dear friend mentioned the word margin to me.

Margin = The one step program for the missional lifestyle. That word margin worked on me like a spiritual caffeine drip. There was only one reason Isaiah was able to say, “Here I am, send me to the Lord.” He had margin. He was available. He wasn’t bogged down in church meetings and heavy laden with a to-do list the size of Goliath. I believe when we come to a point where we shout, “Lord, I can’t do anymore!” He shouts back, “Good! Now let me show you what I’ll do with your availability.”

If someone had told me I wasn’t being available to God at this point in my life, I think I might have crumpled up on the floor like an old worn out rag. I was trying to be so available on so many levels that I had forgotten how to simply be a girl, living with a boy. I’d forgotten how to enjoy my family and I hadn’t even tried to be a part of my community where there were beautiful friendships waiting to blossom. I was out the door so early each morning I hardly had time to say, “hi” to my neighbors. I came home in the afternoons to feed the family and head back out to do ministry. I had very little room left over in my life to be relational, let alone missional. But there is no mission without relation. I had to create margin. So these were my first three baby steps toward missional margin:

First, I stopped doing any ministry I wasn’t gifted at. If you’re a pastor’s wife you know what I’m talking about. I had my thumb in too many pies.

Second, I cut back my work hours and trusted God to provide the shortfall…and He did.

Third, I cut back the Dr. appointments and therapies I had to go to for my daughter with special needs. She needed the break too. I traded the mommy guilt for designated fun days each week where we had nothing on our schedule. Nothing. Including guilt for doing nothing.

Creating margin in my life meant I had time to be available for a life lived among those who may never enter my church building. It also caused us as a leadership to rethink the amount of meetings we had each week. Soon we decided to cut back on the amount of church meetings we asked people to attend. We began telling people to pick just one meeting mid-week. We started encouraging our leaders to not fill their week up with work and church. Trying to have a missional lifestyle while spending most of our time in the church is like trying to have an earthly marriage while living in outer-space. We can’t expect to understand a world we are too busy to talk to or a neighborhood we are consistently absent from. We need Missional Margin.

Soon after I began creating margin in my life, a woman approached me in my front yard. She was a neighbor I’d see while rushing to my car each morning. But today I was home and actually sitting in my front yard. Approaching me, she asked if I was a Christian. I said yes. She said she wasn’t, but that her mom had told her she needed to seek a spiritual person for some help. And then she proceeded to pour out her heart to me. At the end of our conversation she asked me if I could pray for her, her husband and her kids. I had done nothing but sit there and listen. I had been available to her.

This is what is so beautiful about the missional lifestyle. It isn’t another thing to check off our list. The missional life is a life willing to be still long enough to make real lasting relationships with people who may never come to church with you, vote like you, or think like you. Yet silly you, sitting in your yard like a stone in the road, may be the stepping stone that helps someone see the face of God. The missional life is the spiritual art of walking this earth as Christ did, available for those outside. Margin. I’m sure we can all raise our hands for this one! “Here I am, send me Lord.”

How about you? Where are you aching for some Missional Margin in your life?

Ministry Misconceptions

“I’m doubting God’s love.”

I looked her straight in the eyes as I said it. Someone should have warned her not to ask me how I was doing. By the look on her face, I knew she’d have been more impressed with me if I had thrown a bucket of ice, cold, jello on her…but I just didn’t have the energy to hide my feelings. I was at the painful end of seven years of infertility. I was raw. I was real. And I scared her.

Did she think I was a carnal sinner? Maybe. But so was she and the sooner she realized it, the better for every future human she encountered.

Her curt rebuke to me of, “You can’t say that! You’re a pastor’s wife!” turned out to be the inspiration of my next woman’s retreat.

“Well, I’m still a human.” I said. “We all at one time or another will feel this way. Just because I’m in the ministry, doesn’t mean I’m emotionless.”

But then, because I started feeling guilty, I went on to tip my Pastor’s Wife hat to her and give her the Spiritual Leader lecture she longed for. I quoted Job and David in the Psalms, to assure her my pain was indeed Biblical and she walked away smiling and nodding a little too enthusiastically.

Was my honesty right as a leader? I believe so and this is why. We have forgotten how to suffer together as the Church and I believe it’s coming from the top down. If we pretend that pain and heart ache and doubt are not a part of the Perseverance of the Saints, then our congregations will too. And then, when they can no longer pretend, they will walk away feeling like failed Christians.

Our God chose to come to earth and feel suffering. Christ shouted for all the world to hear, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). That scripture has plagued me most of my Christian life. I’d say it with a whisper and look around to make sure no unstudied listener could misinterpret the “real” meaning of those words from the cross. The real meaning? The real meaning is that all good things do not come to us without a fight. Our God fought. Heb. 2:8 says, “Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” He suffered in every way we have and he did not hide it from those he ministered to. Remember, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) in front of all those he was ministering to.

The amount of healing that came to the women in our church when I did our “Unbroken” conference and used scripture to prove our right to mourn together, made my very present suffering all the more bearable. It strengthened all of our faith, including mine. And it made our joy together complete when I brought home my daughter Liberty Grace, born and Adopted on Christmas night 2008!

Maybe, just maybe, my words came back to that woman I spoke to many years ago. I hope they will minister to her when her own back begins to breaking under the weight of a faltering faith. And maybe, just maybe, she will remember the rogue missionary girl who came home off the field on furlough and confessed, “I’m doubting God’s love”, but still kept fighting. Is still fighting. The good, very good, best of fights.

What about you? Have you given into any Ministry Misconceptions? Ways in which you were told you shouldn’t feel or be as a church leader?

The Beginning of Bravery

This article was first published at:

https://www.namb.net/flourish-blog/the-starting-point-of-bravery

Please vist for more encouraging articles for women in Leadership.

I sat in my elven sized, silver Toyota Yaris, crying. My family was miles away on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and I was alone with my husband of fifteen months. But that’s not why I was crying. Not this time anyway.

I sat in the parking lot of the first supermarket to come to Port Talbot Wales, holding a packet of Naan bread. It was NOT like tortillas. I don’t care what the grocery girl said. I took another bite. It wasn’t even close. How long would it be before I’d see another Mexican, let alone taste a great taco? I hiccuped my way back to my little cottage, reminding myself to stay to the left side of the narrow road, and wondered why I was so weak? I’d prepare since the age of nine for this moment. To be a great missionary. To plant churches in places others didn’t want to go. I’d read Amy Carmichael, quoted Jim Elliot, and had countless journal entrees dedicated to the writings of C.T. Studd. But tortillas? This was going to be my breaking point?

No, this was my beginning point. But I hadn’t realized it yet. This was the beginning of a twelve year journey into the heart of what bravery really meant as a church planter. Tortillas were just my flat training ground.

Sometimes in church planting, it feels like we lose our bravery through a thousand little paper cuts. And we sit and cry. It might happen the third time we get lost going to our kids’ school, or after walking around in crunchy clothes all day because we have no tumble dryer. Whatever brings us there, we all must come to our breaking point. The place where our journey toward bravery truly begins. We are called to be brave for a purpose, and as strange as it may seem, that purpose isn’t to look good in a memoir! In fact, it can be down right embarrassing when it comes to the final straw that breaks us. Looking good in a memoir wasn’t the point anyways, for the Christian is called to live an anti-memoir. That’s because it was never our story to promote. It is His. Perhaps it isn’t until we taste hunger, that we can preach satisfaction; or until we admit we’re lame, Jesus is able to say, “Get up, take your matt, and walk.” And it wasn’t until I was sitting alone and afraid, far from everything I saw as familiar, that I took my first step toward being brave.

We often look at our circumstances to confirm to us whether or not we are on the right mission. And when the figures don’t line up, our knees begin to knock. Perhaps it’s not the lack of tortillas that has brought us to our knees this time, but the number of new converts to our church, the health of our kids, or the betrayal of friends. But one look at Paul’s missionary journey route, or shall I say detour route, and circumstances are revealed to be a fickle barometer. Paul’s bravery as a church planter couldn’t be dependent on outward appearances or even inward peace. “I asked the Lord three times about this, that it would depart from me (that nasty thorn). But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:8).

Dressed in their Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtle outfits, my kids hit harder when wrapped up in their lightweight toys. But our Father loves us too much to let us play with plastic and think we’ve arrived. Not until the spiritual sparring begins, do we realize there are gaps in our armor. Every once in awhile the plastic breast plate of righteousness needs to take a good hit and crack, just so we can see where we are weak, and surrender to the One who makes us brave. Our weakness. His power. The beginning point of our bravery starts when we step out despite the thorn wedged into our side.

Before my tortilla experience, I’d have considered myself pretty brave. After all, I’d left everything and traveled half way around the world to take the gospel to the streets. I knew how to plan, organize people, and make things happen. I had no thorn. Or so I thought.

Many Church plants fail within the first three years. Often it’s because we think weakness, small numbers, or trials mean we have somehow misheard the command to go. We haven’t. We’ve been called to go. We simply need to be ok with the fact that ship wrecks, thorns, and snake bites, lay ahead. If you’re out of your depth, scared, and feeling weak, you’re doing it right. Your weakness, fear, and confusion are proof of your boldness as you move forward in the little things as well as the big.

What about you? Have you felt that a tortilla could break you? What was the beginning of your bravery in church planting?

Biblical reference: 2 Corinth. 12: 8, John 6 :25-27
Andrea Jones writes for New Breed Ministry. A ministry dedicated to supporting Church planters across the globe. You can find more of her articles on line in Church Planter Magazine as well as her Blog spot: writenowcountsforever.com
Poem: Hast Thou no scar? Amy Carmichael

If Church Planting is For Girls, Where are all the Women?

This Blog post is not an apologetic for woman in Leadership, but rather is written for those who are already Biblically comfortable with Women as Leaders and who are seeking ways in which they can encourage women in Church Leadership.

Where are all the Women Leaders?

I’ve heard this question more than once at church planting conferences and meetings lately. Recently, a fellow woman leader asked me to write down a few thoughts on how women could be encouraged in Leadership within the Evangelical church. I had way more than a few thoughts…But here are just a few to start us off with.

It’s hard for me to believe that in the year 2017, where women are major contributors in Corporate America, and running for President of this country, that we are still having this discussion. There is an obvious issue with a lack of female leadership in many (Not all) of our churches and church plants. I don’t think this fact is necessarily due to sexism still being alive an well in the Evangelical community, but I do believe many church communities are still being held captive by some old church culture traditions. Whatever you may think the reason is for the lack of female leadership on your leadership team, or at your church planting functions, here are a couple of ways that might encourage the gifted women among you to step up and out.

What are some ways male leaders can intentionally develop the gifting of women in the church?

I think every leader would be served by visiting the women’s ministry in their church for a month. In visiting a women’s ministry they will see there has developed within modern Evangelicalism, a church within the church. It is a church where women are leading, being used, and using their gifts freely. In many churches, all those beautiful gifts are laying dormant on a Sunday morning or in the main functioning of church life. The first step in developing a culture that uses the gifts of women in the church, is to notice where the church is lacking female leadership and/or gifts. Romans 12: 6-8, 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, 1Peter 4:11, all list for us the gifts we should be seeing in our churches regardless of gender or ethnicity.

So how do we encourage our women to show up?

A woman walking into a number of churches across America could easily feel like she is walking into a congregation run by and for men. From the announcements, to communion, to ushers, much of the service can often be lacking in female presence let alone gifts. To a woman who feels the call of God to serve, this might be a silent cue to move on and look to use her gifts in another church, the mission field, Bible college or even Corporate America. If a leader finds that they are lacking women leaders in their church, it might be time to start actively seeking women to carry out some part of the Sunday morning service and thereby foster an environment where women feel more free to step up and out in their gifts.

How can church planters practically invest in the women who have become key female leaders?

In the case of church plants, much like the mission field, women are often freed up to use their gifts due to a desperate need for leaders. In our New Breed Church plants, we build a church from the unchurched with only a core team. We also follow a church structure which allows for multiple leaders to lead and use their gifts regardless of gender. Our core team is a mix of men and women, old and young, as well as culturally reflective of the community we are trying to church plant in. For example, when we were ministering in Wales U.K., we picked mainly Welsh males and females as our main core team, not American or English. Our female leaders are all included in our leadership meetings. We encourage and welcome female input in all aspects of church life and ministry. In every ministry the church runs, there is a need for both male and female leaders as the congregation is both male and female. This is the balance God created from the beginning of time. If we notice a women gifted in teaching or preaching, we may give her an opportunity to share her testimony, then to lead a small group, and then a Sunday morning service, just as we would a young man. If we notice a woman gifted in worship, then we encourage her to use that gift in small groups as well as Sunday mornings. If we notice a woman especially burdened for the poor in our community, we encourage her to lead others in the church on this mission. In all our training, we make sure we are discipling both men and women into leadership and offer child care for couples with kids.

One of our key female leaders in our second church plant was a sixty year old Welsh woman. This woman would never have set herself up as a leader. Yet we saw a special shepherd gifting in her, especially with the unchurched young families. Because we recognized this gifting in her, she was included in our Leadership team. One leadership meeting the leadership was leaning toward moving the church to a facility that would be ideal for outreach. The decision was almost made, until this Shepherdess raised her voice of wisdom. She brought up the fact that the new facility had no place close to the parents for the children to play safely. With tears in her eyes she spoke of her fear of not seeing any of those new “still seeking” families again. She told us that most of these parents had never gone to Sunday School themselves and so already felt uneasy about sending their kids to be with strangers. Being able to see their kids any time during the service meant a lot to them and the facility the leaders were looking at wouldn’t allow for that. She encouraged us to look at things from another perspective. A very female perspective. If we had not had her input and shepherd heart in that meeting, we could have made a very poor choice for the life of that church.

This is just one small example of how a gender balanced leadership team can lead to a well rounded, God glorifying church. “God created them, male and female, and blessed them” (Gen. 5:2). Let’s go Bless.

What to do next?

5 Steps Up For Women In Your Church Plant

1. Include women in your morning service. i.e.: Worship, testimony, communion, usher, passing offering, communion.

2. Include women in all Leadership meetings, and key Leadership roles.

3. Provide childcare for all Leadership meetings! Include this in the Church budget.

4. Give women opportunity to lead in small groups.

5. Restructure your church leadership to be a gift driven team model

(see Fist Leadership, Peytonjones.ninja) rather than a hierarchy model.

Resources for your gender inclusive team Leadership:

Evangelicals and Gender Equality- Lynne Hybels
Willow Creek Community Church Elders’ Statement on Women and Men in ministry
Fist Leadership, Peytonjones.ninja

Willow Creek Community Church Elders’ Statement on Women and Men in Ministry

We believe the Bible teaches that men and women were created by God and equally bear His image (Gen. 1:27). God’s intention was for them to share oneness and community (Gen. 2:23-24), even as the godhead experiences oneness within the Trinity. Each had a direct relationship with God and they shared jointly the responsibilities of rearing children and having dominion over the created order (Gen. 1:26-28). However, human oneness was shattered by the Fall. The struggle for power and the desire to “rule over” another is part of the result of human sin. Genesis 3:16 is a prediction of the effects of the Fall rather than a prescription of God’s ideal order.

However, God has acted in Christ to redeem the human race, and to offer to all people the opportunity to be part of the New Community, His church. It is God’s intention for His children to experience the oneness that exists between the Father and the Son (John 17:11, 20-23). This means that old divisions and hierarchies between genders and races are not to be tolerated in the church, where all are “one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).

In formation of the church at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out on women and men alike, as had been predicted long before the coming of Christ (Joel 2:28, Acts 2:18). In the New Testament, women as well as men exercise prophetic and priestly functions (Acts 2:17-18, 1 Cor 11:4-5, I Peter 2:9-10). Further, the Spirit bestows gifts on all members of the New Community sovereignly, without giving anyone preferential treatment based on gender (Acts 2:1-21, I Cor 12:7,11). Every believer is to offer her or his gifts for the benefit of the Body of Christ (Rom 12:4-8, I Peter 4:10-11). To prevent believers from exercising their spiritual gifts is to quench the work of the Spirit.

In all attempts to understand and put into practice appropriate relationship between genders in the body of Christ, our sole authority is the will of God as expressed in Scripture. A few isolated scriptural texts appear to restrict the full ministry freedom of women. The interpretation of those passages must take into account their relation to the broader teaching of Scripture and their specific contexts. We believe that, when the Bible is interpreted comprehensively, it teaches the full equality of men and women in status, giftedness, and opportunity for ministry.

Therefore, in our attempts to live together as a biblically functioning community, we are committed to the following values:

To provide opportunity for ministry based on giftedness and character, without regard to gender.

To pursue the kind of purity and loyalty in relationships between genders that led New Testament writers to describe them in terms of family: “brother and sisters.”

To use sensitivity in language that reflect the honor and value God desires for maleness and femaleness and to encourage the use of translations of Scripture that accurately portray God’s will that His church be an inclusive community.

To be intentional where appropriate in overcoming sexist elements of our culture and to offer encouragement to women in areas where their giftedness has been traditionally discouraged.

To teach and model these values to members of our community, to the church, and to the world at large.

A Perspective From the Trees

Some people enjoying looking at the wood while avoiding the forest. I suppose it’s the same kind of characters who still find the old adage, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” both humorous and wise. How the vision of a soapy baby sliding over a window ledge followed by bath water, ever got absorbed into our wise English sayings, is beyond me.

It’s funny because who would be so idiotic to forget to take a baby out of the bath before chucking the water? But wise because you know some poor, overly stressed soul, must have once done it for the saying to have been born. I suppose it’s just a clever and slightly kinder way to say, “Don’t be stupid, stupid.”

“Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” someone snarked at me today. Really? I wanted to snark back. Can’t you find some twenty-first century wisdom for me to hang onto lady? If I got rid of my baby with the bathwater this evening, that’d mean she’d have to swirl round and round the base of the tub, like a cartoon character, until she was swallowed down the drain along with the last bit of bath water…so no. No I won’t. It’s physically impossible. Thanks for the advice though.

…And so we persist to cary on with old traditions, even when they no longer translate. Why? Cause we like the heart of the message. Sometimes in life it is nice to see things for what they no longer are, but what we have traditionally explained them to be. Just as it’s sometimes nice to look at the branches of the tree from the tree. Resting in it, on it, among it.

Life is about perspective. I’ve been told I’m a wood-looker. An old saying sayer. I like to crawl right up close to things, especially religious things or political things and try to find a new perspective I’ve somehow missed. Maybe I’ve missed it because I love my traditions. Maybe I’ve missed it because of my own sociological or emotional blind spots. Logically I know we all have these. So I look. I climb right on up into the tree of thought and shave off a small piece of bark and prob.

Right now I’m doing this to the Christian church in America. Really this means I’m examining me and my place in it. Because I am part of it. But I feel as small as Zacchaeus, and as desperate to see Jesus. How is it that we can be surrounded by Christ followers, yet still not see Him?

I was out of the Christian church seen in America for about twelve years and now I’m back. Maybe it’s still culture shock, but I feel very lost as a believer in America. I don’t get it. I am part of it. But I don’t understand what we think we are or what our mission is. Or what our message is. I’ve been a part of the American Christian movement now for five years. It seems we are really, really, good at trading Christians from our churches. And really, really, good at making fun of ourselves for our perceived weaknesses. But I’m not sure if we know who we are anymore. In the words of the Spice Girls, “What do we want? Really really want?”

So I did what I do and I went hunting for perspective. I pretended for a week I was no longer a Christian. I lost my faith. I knew very little of Jesus and even less about the Bible. And I tried to start over from scratch.

I decided to:

Listen to our talk radio, music, and adds
Look at our social media
Observe what Christians talked about the most. Learn their favorite movies and topics.

What did I find?

1. Talk radio, music, and adds I was told how to get out of debt by the Christian radio, and also how I could boost my evangelical witness by injecting botox into my frown lines and how to transfer my IRA into and IRA equivalent.

I was informed how to think about Zionists, vote Republican, which people groups to stand against and who to be afraid of and how America was pretty much going to hell in a hand bag cause it was no longer run by Evangelical Republicans…like it use to be…

2. In Social Media

There was self help, religious group promotion, promotion of sales items, books, magazines, personalities, not as many Charities as I had thought I’d see. A lot of church groups, but virtually no free Christian material being promoted.

3. Christians top topics

The irritating qualities of those close to them, food intolerances, money, politics, weight loss, weight gain, health issues, debt, the end of the world.

Media favorites : Apocalypse, reality shows, talent shows, food shows.

Then I listened to the non religious.

The non-Christian talk radio, music, adds
Looked at social media
Observed what they talked about most.

It wasn’t too different. Less Republicanism and Zionists, but the same passion for politics, food, diets, debt, and “reality” shows. Same promotion of books and selling of material on social media. A few more good works groups promoting green living and charities.

What do we want? Do we really really want as a Church in America?

It seems we want to be thin, free from interpersonal responsibilities and conflicts, financial security, and more “me time”.

So what did I do with my Christianity after this week of research?

Well I definitely didn’t Throw the baby out with the bath water, but I did try to make a conscious effort to not be sucked into the American Christian culture vortex. I chose not to be political on Facebook, but to be more intentional in the spiritual encouragement I was offering, AND feeding myself with. I opted for less “reality” tv and more reality….and I thought. I’m still thinking.

What do I want? What do I really really want?

To understand Christ’s heart for this world more. That’s it. He Loved it so much that He gave up EVERYTHING for it. And I’m suppose to be following His lead.

Anything that does not lead me in that direction is a waste of my “me time”.

Everything I Learned About Church Planting, I Learned from Silly Putty. ( And other 1980’s toys)

Yes. You heard me right. Silly Putty.

Remember it?

If not, I’ll loan you my six year old for a bit and you’ll quickly find it in every surrounding crevice and crack..including your beard if you have one…I don’t at the moment, but my husband does…

PLUS = Fun For Kids

I had actually forgotten how enjoyable that little red egg was to open. The kids on the package alone made me smile like I was six, and want to give into all my 1980’s urges.

Everything I Learned about Church Planting, I Learned Through Adoption

Song of the month: U2- Invisible

So this is number two in my Everything series for church planters. Which kinda shows you I have a slightly skewed view of EVERYTHING right? From time to time I’ll compare church planting to something I’ve learned in my life. And at the moment I’m having the said epiphany, it will truly be my everything moment…till the next one. Call it church planting relativism…or just call it fun.

As a mother of two adopted girls who are 100% part of my body and soul, engraved into the fabric of who I am, and who I’m becoming; I know what it is to press forward in life toward something that most other humans will never experience. Perhaps, if we are honest, even what many would find un-palatable.

Sold! To the Lady with the Big Belly!

SOLD! To the Lady with the big belly!

Song of the week: Oceans-Hillsong

Doesn’t that cake look yummy?

I love cake walks and auctions for delicious looking desserts. I can hear the gavel now…Sold! To the lady with the big belly...Fortunately so far, no auctioneer has actually said that to me. But if one did, I don’t think it would detour my fast train toward sweets. I love desserts. Real food? Ehh not so much… When they took my appendix out earlier this year I was sure they had finally finished off my appetite for anything other than cookies, cakes and European Chocolate (yes there’s a difference, American Choc. tastes like Ex-lax in comparison). I honesty couldn’t stomach anything but desserts.

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