Rhythm & Reign: Living as Church on the Margins of Culture & Foretaste of the Kingdom

1. Rhythm & Reign: Living as Church on the Margins of Culture & Foretaste of the Kingdom Gary Nelson and Fred Harrell

2. City Church: Our Story Rev Fred Harrell City Church San Francisco

3. "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill

4. OUR CHALLENGE WAS TWOFOLD

5. To create a gracious environment

6. To create a culture where the good news is being lived out

7. IT IS A COUNTERINTUITIVE WAY OF DOING CHURCH

8. A CHURCH “NOT JUST FOR OURSELVES”

9. A CHURCH THAT TRIES ALWAYS TO REMEMBER WHAT IT’S LIKE NOT TO BELIEVE

10. I BELIEVE WE HAVE SEEN THIS TAKE PLACE DUE TO FOUR MAJOR COMMITMENTS

11. COMMITMENT NUMBER 1 Developing a Mentality of Church as Mission Outpost

12. All is done “before the nations”

13. Cultivating the bringer mentality

14. Comprehensibile

15. Constant Evaluation

16. COMMITMENT NUMBER 2 Embodying the Good News as a Church with Kingdom Priorities

17. The Kingdom of God: God coming to reclaim and restore His creation

18. We Seek the Renewal of All Things and Shalom of All

19. Modeling the Sociological Impossibility of the Church

20. Community: Embodying the Gospel to Each Other

21. COMMITMENT NUMBER 3 Understanding our Context

22. NEW TO CHRISTIANITY

23. COMPETENT

24. VISUAL

25. SUSPICIOUS

26. POLITICIZED

27. ARGUING WITH ME

28. RESPECTS THEIR OWN “AUTHORITIES” NOT MY AUTHORITIES

29. DYING FOR FAMILY AND COMMUNITY, BUT HAVE AN INABILITY TO EXPERIENCE IT

30. HAS A HUNGER FOR A LINK TO THE PAST, AND DOESN’T WANT TO BE BOUND TO GLITZ AND SHALLOWNESS

31. COMMITMENT NUMBER 4 A Pastoral Commitment to Incarnate the Gospel

32. A commitment to intense pastoral involvement

33. You must listen

34. You must get inside their world

35. You must let them into your world

36. You must be a pacesetter

37. You must develop leaders and attenders who are sensitive to the vision and who take into account these contextual commitments

39. Question: Is your church the kind of place that makes people say:

40. “This is where I need to bring my non-Christian friends, this is exactly what they need to hear, and how they need to hear it!”

41. Wait! This isn’t a nurturing model… or is it?

42. Mission breeds discipleship, and is the fuel of Christian growth!

44. “Thursday, March 29. I left London and in the evening expounded to a small company in Basingstoke. Sat. 31. In the evening I reached Bristol and met Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarce reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields,

45. of which he set me an example on Sunday, having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.”

46. “Mon. 2. At four in the afternoon I submitted to ‘be more vile’, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people.” • From Wesley’s published Journal, for March-April 1739 (The Works of John Wesley, vol. 19, Ed. W. R. Ward and R. P. Heitzenrater (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 46).  The ‘be more vile’ quote is from 2 Samuel 6:22.

47. Rooting Our Identity “ When the spine of identity is well established, it is possible to risk relating in depth to those whoa re different from ourselves. When the spine of identity is weak, then everything is a threat.” - James Fowler Weaving the New Creation

48. “In the context of the secularized, post-Christian West our witness will be credible only if it flows from a local, worshiping community. Newbigin suggests that the only hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. ” - David J. Bosch

49. REFLECTION What are you going to take back with you to your local church context?