Dr. Michael Haykin of Southern Seminary shares some words on his blog regarding our Christian duty toward one another as we make up a portion of what God intends to be a family.  It highlights an aspect of the Christian life I examine closely in the context of my church and in the context of my relationships.  I see shortfalls, but I also see reasons to rejoice that God has blessed me with friends who are committed to deep, real, sometimes heart-rending levels of intimacy with the people around them.  This is what I want to see; indeed, this is what we should see as Christians in our Christian gatherings.  One might ask what right a local church has in calling itself Christian if the height of their Christian communal experience is nothing more than sharing in a worship service with one hundred or so first names.  Surely there are reasons for this that Dr. Haykin doesn’t address in his post, but I think we would all do well to examine our relationships and the DNA of our local church to determine how much we’ve grown and how much we’ve yet to grow in this area of sanctification. 

If you have a church that is committed to the family in the sense of actually living like a family, rather than simply calling themselves “family-friendly”, then give thanks.  Encourage those on the periphery to pull their chair up to the fellowship table and pass them a cup of wine – or grape juice if you so prefer.  We are one body; acknowledge the imperatives Jesus gave, and live by loving your brothers and sisters; considering others more significant than yourselves.  (Phil. 2:3)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,579979,00.html?test=latestnews

Here’s how.  Take a few missions-minded, Bible-believing, Jesus-honoring Christians from four churches who have a knack for thinking outside of the box – and we hope a strong leading from the Holy Spirit – and you get the beginnings of an idea for a Christ-centered coffee shop whose priorities consist of proclaiming his name to the nations, providing an excellent product and service to the community while establishing a presence in that community that speaks truth, love and fellowship, and giving back to the communities in which its people serve.  In fact, the coffee served by this coffee shop will come directly from places like Indonesia where core team members are already actively engaged in making disciples for Christ.

Coffee With a Cause will be a fully-functioning coffee shop set to open in late September or early October of this year.  This coffee shop will serve as the base of operations for Lakeside Community Church, a church plant of Pillar Church of Dumfries, VA, and will seek to raise funds and awareness for church planting and missions efforts in which it is engaged both locally and globally.

OK – now you have some of the details; perhaps you’ve even visited the sites bookmarked above and discovered more useful information about this unique marketplace ministry opportunity.  How can you get involved?  Well, Coffee With a Cause is an ambitious idea and it has an ambitious goal.  That goal is to open its doors in the fall of this year with zero debt.  The target for this goal is to raise $25,000 to purchase equipment, execute a buildout at the designated business site, purchase permits, etc, all in the hopes that Coffee With a Cause can hit the ground running concentrating on its core priorities I mentioned above.

This is where you come in.  During the month of July, our team has been running a fundraising effort called “The Lakeside 100“.  This is an effort to have 100 families or teams of families partner with us by donating $250 each toward this cause.  To date, we’ve raised about 35% of the funds needed to make this plan a reality.  Our church family, and extended church families, have contributed significantly to this cause and now I’m asking you to support the project as well.  We’d like to achieve our goal by July 31st so you can see we have some work cut out for us – thankfully, the work is not completely on our shoulders and we trust that God will provide in his timing and according to his will.  And right now, you are the key to ensuring the success of this initiative.  Just like God uses us as his mouthpiece in proclaiming the name of Christ throughout the world, he asks of us our time, talent and resources that we might be concerned for his kingdom more than our comfort.  Can you make such a sacrifice?

Lastly, the Coffee With a Cause team asks for your prayers.  We can do nothing apart from God and we seek to remain dedicated to the driving priorities that the team has developed – the most important of which is the proclamation of Christ’s name throughout all the Earth that the phrase “Let the nations be glad!”  be a prayer that is answered by the joy of the good news received by regenerated hearts.

What is the church?  Ask random individuals on the street and you’ll most likely get as many different responses.  Ask the typical church-goer, and I presume the results would not be far different.  How do we answer this question?  Is it a question that can be answered without providing some foundation for the word’s origins, or even taking into account the ways in which the word has been hijacked by groups either claiming or denying the name of Christ?  That last question brings up a good point.  It was Jesus Christ who established the church in this world, so must we not ask “Who is Jesus?”  Mark Driscoll points out in his message, “In order to understand what the church is, we must first ask ‘Who is Jesus?”  This is very, very important.  The church has it’s origins in Christ.  It was the church for which Jesus gave himself, demonstrating his love “that he might sanctify her … so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”  Ephesians 5:25

We can look at a cross-section of American Christianity and see a mix of consumerism and communalism and many things in between.  That consumerism has infiltrated the local church would be an understatement, and churches must at all times fight against the mentality that suggests they are providing some sort of commodity to their members and visitors.  Too often we see individuals and families hopping from church to church, looking for just the right mix of entertainment-driven worship services and homiletic teaching, asking the consumerist question, “What can I get out of this?”  And too often churches are willing to give it to them because it brings people through the doors and surely numbers are important, right?

Falling into the trap of the other extreme, communalism, some churches focus all of their attention inward and care nothing for the world outside, abandoning Christ’s call to preach the good news to all nations and separating themselves from most or all interaction with things secular and investing nothing in the command to love.  This is perhaps the extreme at which the world looks and confidently surmises the church’s lack of relevance, and I would argue they are partly correct in their assessment.  In fact, it would be easy to, as Driscoll did, poke fun at these churches consisting of families each with fifteen children and a school bus for a family vehicle and whose women and daughters adhere strictly to the “bonnets and dresses” dress code and are fluent in Elizabethan English.  But does this reality not also move you to sadness seeing that the body can be so unnecessarily divided because communities (or churches) like this elevate secondary and tertiary things to the level of first importance?

So, what’s the right answer?  What does the local church look like?  What are it’s characteristics without which would make it a speckled, blemished social gathering whose lampstand might need to be removed save for true repentence?  Lastly, how is the church to distinguish between the “biblical principle and the cultural method”?  (Yes, that is a distinction that many people fail to realize.)

Driscoll read a definition of the local church from his book Vintage Church and I think it’s worthy of our close attention:

The local church is a community of regenerated believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord. In obedience to scripture, they organize under qualified leadership, gather regularly for preaching and worship, observe the biblical sacraments of baptism & communion, are unified by the Spirit, are disciplined for holiness, scattered to fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission as missionaries to the world for God’s glory and their joy.

Here are Driscoll’s eight marks as gleaned from this statement:

1. Regenerated membership
2. Qualified leadership (elders and deacons)
3. Gathering for preaching and worship
4. Sacraments rightly administered
5. Unified by the spirit
6. Discipline for holiness
7. Obey the great commandment to love
8. Obey the great commission

I have some notes on each of these items, but I think I’ll leave that portion open for discussion.  What do you think?  Is Driscoll correct in his definition?  Is it complete?  Does it go too far?  Do you think any of them need clarification?

Lastly, here are some questions for us all to consider and I’m interested in hearing your answers.

1. Who is the missionary at the church?  The pastor or the people?  Why?
2. There is a lot of talk right now about relevance.  What responsibilities, if any, does the local church have in pursuing relevance in the context of its culture?  What do you think about the distinction between the biblical principle and the cultural method?

The Advance09 conference was held June 4-6 in Durham, NC.  If you’re interested in finding out more about this event (though it’s over), check it out here.  I would encourage you to check out the conference blog where many of the speaker notes were posted, along with a series of questions all churches should be asking and answering to ensure they measure up to the marks of a healthy church.  In the days ahead, I’m sure the conference organizers will have the video and audio online for you to download or simply watch.  The following is the outline of speakers and their topics for the three days of the conference.

Day 1

• What is the church? [Mark Driscoll]
• Decline and Resurge [Tyler Jones]
• Communicating the Gospel Through Preaching [Bryan Chapell]
• Preaching the Gospel to the De-Churched [Matt Chandler]

Day 2

• Keys to Understanding the Church and Kingdom [Ed Stetzer]
• Planting is for Wimps: Revitalizing a Church Around the Gospel [JD Greear]
• The Ultimate Shepherd [Eric Mason]
• Ministry Idolatry [Mark Driscoll]
• Let the Nations Be Glad, Part 1 [John Piper]

Day 3

• Marks of a Healthy Community of Faith [Danny Akin]
• Let the Nations Be Glad, Part 2 [John Piper]

I hope to present some of my notes here over the course of the next few days and hope you take some time to read some of the blog entries on the conference blog as well as begin pondering some of the questions asked by these speakers.  What is the church?  What does it mean to be missional?  Is my church missional-minded?  Am I seeking my own prestige in the church?  Am I using God as a means to other ends?  In other words, is something other than God your ultimate treasure?  We must not only ask ourselves these questions, but also be willing to realize we may not like our own answers to them and then seek how scripture instructs us to remedy the problems and shortcomings by the power of the Holy Spirit.

6/8/2009 Update – Desiring God has posted the audio from the conference messages to their blog (http://www.desiringgod.org/blog)

The motivations to resurrect my blog, which is what I’m considering this endeavor, are many but not quite important enough to mention here.  Nevertheless, there are far more important things – rather than myself – about which to write.  For instance, I’ve taken the summer term off from school, have many books waiting for me to read, and just attended an awesome church conference in Durham, NC, which of course will provide the content for my first series of posts here.  The conference featured John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Ed Stetzer, and a few other key church leaders who offered some insight about topics including church planting, ministry idolatry, missions, and the centrality of Christ in ministry.  The speakers were engaging, thought-provoking, convicting and encouraging.  I and the four men who attended with me departed with hearts aflame for what God seeks to do through the church as well as forcing us to consider or recognize what that looks like practically within the context of the local body.  I’m excited to share what the speakers presented as well as include some of my thoughts, inhibitions, convictions; and also hope to engage with whomever so chooses here on these wildly enthralling conversations.