SPEAKER_00: So about five times a week, I get asked this question.
SPEAKER_00: I'm wondering if you all get asked this question too.
SPEAKER_00: And it's, how's your church going?
SPEAKER_00: How's the church going?
SPEAKER_00: How's citizens going?
SPEAKER_00: What's up, Samur?
SPEAKER_00: Good to see you.
SPEAKER_00: Um, how's citizens going?
SPEAKER_00: And have you guys got that question?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: And is it kind of interesting to know how to respond to that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh it well, what do I say?
SPEAKER_00: Good.
SPEAKER_00: What what is it that you want to know?
SPEAKER_00: And what I've been saying recently, in in really a genuine way, like no SAS, just authentically.
SPEAKER_00: I just say, well, I guess it depends what we're measuring, right?
SPEAKER_00: It depends what metrics we're using.
SPEAKER_00: And then I just kind of leave it there.
SPEAKER_00: Leave the awkward silence.
SPEAKER_00: And then no, it's not as awkward in the moment, trust me.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and so then I kind of leave wait for the follow-up question.
SPEAKER_00: And what do you think the first or the most popular follow-up specific question is?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Well, are people showing up on Sundays?
SPEAKER_00: How many people are coming?
SPEAKER_00: Like, have you have you grown?
SPEAKER_00: You blown out the back doors of Camus Elementary.
SPEAKER_00: Um, cool.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the first the first kind of gut metric is how many people go to your church?
SPEAKER_00: How many people show up on Sundays, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then what's what's the second most popular question?
unknown: Money.
SPEAKER_00: Money.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: How's your finances?
SPEAKER_00: Are you like you making it?
SPEAKER_00: Do you need to go get a job at Great Harvest?
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, that kind of thing, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So these metrics, and and I think these are these are genuine people who genuinely care about our church, and so do we, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, but the kind of the question, how is citizens going?
SPEAKER_00: The assumption is that the metrics are butts and bucks, or noses and nickels, or people and pennies.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you could think of anything else.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you can't.
SPEAKER_00: But uh the we'll go with PG 13, butts and bucks.
SPEAKER_00: And um, it is interesting dudes and dollars.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're not just doing dudes.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: All right, this is gonna sound horrible on the on the podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Some of the best in-person sermons sound the worst on the podcast, which is why you're here.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So one of the, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: One of the kind of mantras that gets thrown around in a lot of leadership books is this what gets measured gets done.
SPEAKER_00: What gets measured gets done.
SPEAKER_00: What you count is going to be what you end up striving for and kind of defining your success.
SPEAKER_00: So I coach uh coach the Camus and uh Edgewood kindergarten boys soccer team this year with my son on it.
SPEAKER_00: We're practicing right down here.
SPEAKER_00: And if you ever watch kindergarten soccer, it is just a mob of players that move in an orb around the ball.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully the ball pops out somehow, and the fastest kid just goes and scores, and that's how every play goes.
SPEAKER_00: It takes about eight minutes just to get the ball back in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm watching this happen in our practice scrimmage, and I'm just come on, guys, you should pass, you should pass.
SPEAKER_00: And then the fastest kid gets the ball and goes and scores.
SPEAKER_00: Logan.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so what I did, like just impromptu in the middle of practice, I said, All right, guys, a goal is worth one point, but a pass to your teammate is worth three points.
SPEAKER_00: And you wouldn't believe how quickly they tried to start passing to each other.
SPEAKER_00: It's because suddenly we're counting passes, right?
SPEAKER_00: Passes matter, not just goals.
SPEAKER_00: And so if we're only measuring butts and bucks on Sunday, that's gonna lead to a particular way of thinking about what our church is or how we operate.
SPEAKER_00: Um, many of us are downstream from the church growth movement.
SPEAKER_00: We've been a part of large, wealthy churches.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the average church size in the US is anywhere from 75 to 90 or so.
SPEAKER_00: So that just kind of calibrates our size.
SPEAKER_00: And the church growth movement birthed things like the mega church, seeker-friendly or seeker-sensitive church models, multiple churches, multiple sites, live stream, like simulcasts, like you're on the North Campus, and the pastor is like streamed over there.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and using kind of business and marketing world influences, we kind of believe that if we build it, they will they will come.
SPEAKER_00: Bigger is better.
SPEAKER_00: How can we get more people here on Sundays?
SPEAKER_00: And hopefully they end up, you know, tithing a little bit or something so we can continue the operations needed for this big organization.
SPEAKER_00: And so internally, the metrics is how can we get people to walk in the door and how can we get them to stay?
SPEAKER_00: And eventually, how can we get them to give money?
SPEAKER_00: And if that's our goal, that's our strategy, then that's gonna lend itself to well, we hope our Sunday service is like smooth and not clunky and not awkward.
SPEAKER_00: We hope they sign the connection card.
SPEAKER_00: There's all this strategy around getting people in the door and hoping that they stay.
SPEAKER_00: And so for us, I want to ask that question today.
SPEAKER_00: What metrics are we using?
SPEAKER_00: How should we think about that question?
SPEAKER_00: How are citizens doing?
SPEAKER_00: Um, you don't need to be sassy or maybe go through this whole sermon with the person that asked.
SPEAKER_00: They do genuinely just care.
SPEAKER_00: But for us, um, if what gets measured gets done, then what are we measuring if we want to get that done?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, to talk about this, I want to draw from a text in Mark where Jesus calls his first disciples, and I want to carry kind of a master illustration the whole way through.
SPEAKER_00: And it's this picture up here.
SPEAKER_00: It's moving from viewing church as a cruise ship to viewing church as a rowboat.
SPEAKER_00: And John, I was gonna use some illustrations from your life, but John is one of those people who does that.
SPEAKER_00: Lats of steel, man.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read this text.
SPEAKER_00: Uh well, Janae read the text.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus walks beside the Sea of Galilee, he sees these fishermen, young fishermen, he says, Come, he says, follow me.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I will help you to fish for people.
SPEAKER_00: I want to draw three principles of measuring the metrics of a missional church from this text.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is the account of the beginning of Jesus' ministry.
SPEAKER_00: He presents himself as a rabbi or as a teacher.
SPEAKER_00: He's like the other teachers of his day.
SPEAKER_00: He gathers apprentices, and it's an honor to become an apprentice of a rabbi.
SPEAKER_00: They would take the yoke of their rabbi, which means to internalize and embody his teaching.
SPEAKER_00: And for Jesus is the Sermon on the Mount and a collection of his parables.
SPEAKER_00: So what this means is like you're you have a place in the discipleship core of this rabbi.
SPEAKER_00: You have a seat with a name on it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you're not just floating around, it's your very specific group of people for a specific rabbi.
SPEAKER_00: You've made a commitment to this operation, and there's a responsibility or a weight to it.
SPEAKER_00: Like all of your eggs are now in the basket of this rabbi.
SPEAKER_00: So to carry the illustration, it's like joining a rowing team.
SPEAKER_00: Like you made the team, your boat has so many seats, one of those seats is your seat, one of those sets of oars is your set of oars, you are on this rowboat team.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't show up for practice, that seat is actually empty, right?
SPEAKER_00: No one else fills it, no one else rows on your behalf.
SPEAKER_00: John, if you didn't show up for your, what do you call them, tournaments?
SPEAKER_00: Races.
SPEAKER_00: Regatta.
SPEAKER_00: Sounds like a dance.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are dance.
SPEAKER_00: You're dancing with the water in the boat, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: You don't show up for the regatta, like people know, people feel it, and your team is going to feel it.
SPEAKER_00: There's a burden, there's like a weight on your back, a sense of responsibility for the movement of this boat.
SPEAKER_00: And like that, there's a sense of ownership for an apprentice who follows the way of Jesus, and for us who are here to plant a missional church community.
SPEAKER_00: It's like you have a seat with your name on it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, when you think about being part of citizens, there's this sense that you are responsible for its forward movement.
SPEAKER_00: That if if you're not um part of the movement of the team, of the training or the practice or the thing, then your seat is actually empty.
SPEAKER_00: No one else is rowing on your behalf.
SPEAKER_00: The way I like to illustrate this is if um if you have kids and you've packed on vacation with kids, you know what that's like, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um you're thinking through like, I need diapers, I need this, I need that, I need this, I need other clothes, I need to get the Airbnb booked, and like the weight of planning the vacation is on you, and you're all that is just kind of internalized in you, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And what are your kids doing?
SPEAKER_00: They're just yeah.
SPEAKER_00: At best, it's like, can you put your love in the car and maybe bring your shoes?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they can do a few tasks, but they're not feeling the sense of the weight of this trip is on my shoulders, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so that is the invitation of our church model, is that you we would all feel like the parent in that situation.
SPEAKER_00: We would feel responsible, like there's a burden on us to move the project of citizens forward.
SPEAKER_00: And what you think I'm about to say next is come on, guys, like you bet you do better at this.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm not saying that.
SPEAKER_00: What I'm here to say is well done.
SPEAKER_00: Like, good job.
SPEAKER_00: Look at look at our church community.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we've been around for 16 months.
SPEAKER_00: I think this is our 33rd Sunday, like official Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we're a little baby church, and you have pulled so much weight.
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know each other, you're in the Discord, you're on events.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the other day, uh my daughter Dylan had like this crazy allergy eye stuff, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: We text Courtney because she's a nurse.
SPEAKER_00: She shows up like 30 minutes later with a little care package on our front porch.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, we're all in, okay?
SPEAKER_00: I know you guys are all in.
SPEAKER_00: And so thank you.
SPEAKER_00: I want to say thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Like you are viewing church this way like a rowboat.
SPEAKER_00: Well done.
SPEAKER_00: As we talk about this kind of initial commitment, there's a few movements I want to work through, and they're up on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: The first is moving from thinking about church like a staff ministry to an everyone ministry.
SPEAKER_00: It's not I show up and receive what the paid staff produced for me to consume, but you are part of the ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone is rowing on the boat.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you're not just, I hope this cruise ship has good food today.
SPEAKER_00: We're also moving from thinking about the church from Sundays to seven days a week.
SPEAKER_00: This this operation, this movement is a continuous organic community in living in our town throughout the week.
SPEAKER_00: Church is not just a Sunday thing, it's the whole week.
SPEAKER_00: And then we're moving from attending to being.
SPEAKER_00: Um The church is not a service that we go to, um, but it's an it's an initiative that we belong to.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd love us to kind of rid ourselves of the language of what what church do you go to, or I'm going to church.
SPEAKER_00: Um, to me, that sounds like saying, what family do you go to?
SPEAKER_00: Well, don't go to I don't go to a family, I am part of a family.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what that's what I want it to feel like.
SPEAKER_00: I don't go to a church, I am part of a church.
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a sense of um ownership and responsibility that you can you can really only fully be part, I think, of one family.
SPEAKER_00: There's one rowboat with your seat.
SPEAKER_00: Um, just to illustrate this, I've so I've worked at multiple churches.
SPEAKER_00: So if I talk about a church of past experience, it doesn't mean you know the church I'm talking about, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Um there was a church that I was working at at one point, and um there was an announcement about uh a potluck after the service or whatever, and the staff person went up and said, Hey everyone, bring bring a side dish.
SPEAKER_00: The church is providing the main course, you all bring a side dish.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You can you can hear that in the language.
SPEAKER_00: The church is providing the main course, you all bring a side dish.
SPEAKER_00: And what it means is the church budget, the church staff, something, yeah, the institution.
SPEAKER_00: But I think that language kind of creeps into how we think about church.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the church isn't not you, you are it, you are the community, have ownership.
SPEAKER_00: So I wonder, all right, if just roll with me, if this is our goal, like buy-in, ownership, and someone's like, How is citizens going?
SPEAKER_00: This is our target, ownership and buy-in, like how do we measure that?
SPEAKER_00: You know, what metrics are we using to decide?
SPEAKER_00: Well, are we actually doing that?
SPEAKER_00: I think that would be a great, a great place, the first place to go when we think about that question.
SPEAKER_00: How is citizens doing?
SPEAKER_00: Do our people feel like there's a sense of ownership for the movement and forward motion of the church?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we could measure the percent of people in leadership roles or hours spent praying for the church vision, or percent of people like in the know, which I think our Discord has really helped.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you're you're tired of your phone buzzing for the Discord.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to just encourage you that you have done this.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you've you have taken responsibility for this church plan.
SPEAKER_00: It is a very difficult thing, and so thank you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm really proud of you guys.
SPEAKER_00: Let's keep doing this.
SPEAKER_00: All right, second metric.
SPEAKER_00: Not just is there a sense of I am following Jesus, or like I'm coming to Jesus, I have a seat on the rowboat, I'm taking ownership of this church, but Jesus also says, follow me.
SPEAKER_00: So this is point number two.
SPEAKER_00: Um, in the Greek, there's really just one word.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a word for come and a word for follow, but when there's the me there, it's implied.
SPEAKER_00: There's both like an initial push and then there's also kind of a constant following.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh this was the educational and transformational strategy of the day, which was following a rabbi.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this before.
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't just learn information about what the rabbi was saying, but you would actually follow the rabbi around.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just a classroom, it's continuous laboratory, you know, it's the lab.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the goal of the disciples to become like their rabbi.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this kind of um sense of training, sense of putting in the work to become like this rabbi.
SPEAKER_00: Think about it like joining the Marines or committing to a PhD or signing up for a tough mutter with your friends.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you've made this commitment, but you know it's going to take work.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to take training and probably some pain and some suffering, right?
SPEAKER_00: You have signed up to grow and to be stretched and to be formed into the image of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of us think of Jesus like a convenient side dish, you know, to the course of our lives, or sprinkles on the top, or a filler when we're when we have time or space.
SPEAKER_00: Um, or like church is just one thing to add to the smorgasborg of life.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but our matrix for following the way of Jesus is our nine nine discipleship practices.
SPEAKER_00: So these are Christ-centered disciplines that create a trellis, that create space for God to work in us and grow and form us.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they're training exercises and rhythms and habits that when they're repeated, they actually transform us from the outside in and the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: But like anything that you practice, there's like that awkward, clumsy first go.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it takes a while for something to become a habit and a rhythm in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and this is actually the goal of what we're doing here, not to just start a church.
SPEAKER_00: The goal of citizens isn't to be a church, but is to make disciples.
SPEAKER_00: That's the goal.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so if we're gonna move from a cruise cruise ship thinking to roboat thinking, what does that look like for this idea of following Jesus and and submitting ourselves to training?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the first movement is that we would move from can thinking that we consume programs to we actually are training together.
SPEAKER_00: So um the the the it's not I hope the sermon is good, or I hope the music is good, or I hope the youth group is awesome, or I hope the coffee is great.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be nice, Chris.
SPEAKER_00: Um but we are you're actually signing up to grow.
SPEAKER_00: It's like going to the gym.
SPEAKER_00: Like the the point is training and growth and practice.
SPEAKER_00: It's not hoping that the cruise ship provides for you programs and things that you like.
SPEAKER_00: The point is that you would be uncomfortable at some point or most of the time.
SPEAKER_00: Which is the second thing.
SPEAKER_00: We're moving from easy to challenging.
SPEAKER_00: This is a really weird thing to plant a missional community in a city that already has a bunch of churches.
SPEAKER_00: Um, all of you could have said no to this.
SPEAKER_00: Like at any point, you could just go, and there would be a much easier church experience for you somewhere in our city.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you have chosen the challenging route.
SPEAKER_00: And lastly, this is a movement from spiritual things to our to our whole life.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so those in a missional church community, it's not just about fitting Jesus into our lives, but it's about rearranging our whole lives around the pattern and the ways of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: One day of rest, six days of cultivation, and then our nine practices are just layered into the places we work, live, and play, layered into our career paths, our family life, the decisions about how we spend our time and money.
SPEAKER_00: It's a reorientation, it's a rebuild around the life of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So, how do we measure this?
SPEAKER_00: Like what metrics are we using when we talk about following the way of Jesus and training?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we have our we have our nine practices, which the reason that I chose practices over values is because practices can be measured.
SPEAKER_00: Values are really difficult to measure, but practices, well, did you practice it?
SPEAKER_00: It's a simple question.
SPEAKER_00: So I wonder if when we think how is citizens doing, how how's your church going?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, are we bought in?
SPEAKER_00: Are we committed?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00: Well, are we practicing Sabbath?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe a metrics metric would be what percent of what percentage of our people are regularly practicing Sabbath?
SPEAKER_00: Or in our practice of hospitality, it's what if we counted the number of meals shared with strangers and outsiders?
SPEAKER_00: Or in wisdom, what if we tracked the verses we memorized this month?
SPEAKER_00: Like what would our statistic be last month?
SPEAKER_00: Zero?
SPEAKER_00: Probably.
SPEAKER_00: Or justice.
SPEAKER_00: I think of really fun justice ones all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Um number of foster kid diapers changed in the month, uh, number of hours spent immersed with the marginalized in a retirement home or with low-income families or homeless youth.
SPEAKER_00: And and what if instead of thinking, how is your church doing?
SPEAKER_00: Well, a bunch of people are here and we can hire a youth pastor now.
SPEAKER_00: What if these were the statistics that we threw up and measured?
SPEAKER_00: How many of us practiced Sabbath this week?
SPEAKER_00: How many hours did we spend with those on the fringes?
SPEAKER_00: How many verses did we memorize?
SPEAKER_00: How many car seats did we install and uninstall to move foster kids through Respite or something like that?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, these are we can actually count these numbers.
SPEAKER_00: And I think if that was how we're thinking about our metrics, if that's what we're measuring, then that's what's gonna get done.
SPEAKER_00: So next week, surprise metric test.
SPEAKER_00: Just kidding.
SPEAKER_00: How many diapers did you change?
SPEAKER_00: All right, and so point number one, come follow, come.
SPEAKER_00: You have a seat on the rowboat, take ownership.
SPEAKER_00: Point number two, follow me.
SPEAKER_00: You have an oar to to wield, weld, wield, you have training to do, which are our nine practices.
SPEAKER_00: And number three, I will make you fishers of people, Jesus says, come follow me.
SPEAKER_00: I will make you fishers of people.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus plays off their current vocation as fishermen.
SPEAKER_00: Um if you're a fisherman in the first century, ancient Near East, you go about your day with the sole goal of catching fish.
SPEAKER_00: Like this is your job.
SPEAKER_00: It's what your whole life revolves.
SPEAKER_00: You buy and maintain boats and nets.
SPEAKER_00: You study the lake to know where the fish are.
SPEAKER_00: You know where to anchor to catch the most fish.
SPEAKER_00: You catch them and you haul them.
SPEAKER_00: You wake up early.
SPEAKER_00: You stay up late.
SPEAKER_00: You weather the storm.
SPEAKER_00: Your hands look like fishermen's hands.
SPEAKER_00: Your armpits smell like fishermen's armpits.
SPEAKER_00: Your whole life is arranged around the goal and the purpose of fishing for fish, catching fish.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus says, all right, you understand that.
SPEAKER_00: You understand how to orient your life around a particular purpose and goal.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of doing that for fish, you're going to be doing that for people.
SPEAKER_00: You will go about your day with the sole goal of catching people.
SPEAKER_00: You buy and maintain the resources to do this.
SPEAKER_00: You study the lay of the city and of the culture.
SPEAKER_00: You know where your people of peace are.
SPEAKER_00: You serve and love and witness.
SPEAKER_00: You wake up early and stay up late and you weather the difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: Your hands look like Fisher People hands.
SPEAKER_00: You smell like Fisher People would.
SPEAKER_00: Your whole life is arranged around the goal and the purpose of fishing for people.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the heart of the missional church.
SPEAKER_00: Like a rowing team, there is a goal, there is a finish line, there is a direction and a purpose, and we're all working together for that purpose, which is the reconciliation of all things centered on fishing for people.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the heartbeat of what it means to be a missional church.
SPEAKER_00: It's that God Himself is on a mission restoring all things.
SPEAKER_00: And the missionary God sends His Son, who sends His Spirit, who sends us.
SPEAKER_00: And we are a sent people aimed at continuing the mission of God.
SPEAKER_00: A cruise ship has no end point.
SPEAKER_00: It just comes back to where it started.
SPEAKER_00: And the passengers are just along for a nice ride.
SPEAKER_00: But a rowboat is fixated on the finish line, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, have you had any photo finishes, John?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: No, because you just you just whoop up.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Best in the nation.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: But it exists.
SPEAKER_00: The rowboat exists for a purpose greater than itself.
SPEAKER_00: There's a bigger cause, a bigger direction.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just go in a circle and come back.
SPEAKER_00: It's doing something.
SPEAKER_00: There's a purpose to it.
SPEAKER_00: So if we're going to be people who fish for people, people who are a mission, missional church, not just any type of church, but specifically a missional church, then there's a few movements we need to track.
SPEAKER_00: The first is we need to move from thinking about missions as mission trips to viewing ourselves as everyday missionaries.
SPEAKER_00: Many of us have thought about mission missionaries as people who do short-term trips, like go build some houses in Tijuana, or you know, go to a third world or an unreached people group, and like we'll give you money, like rest in peace.
SPEAKER_00: You know, good luck out there.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you are on the rowboat that's called citizens, you are an everyday missionary at the grocery store, at your kids' basketball games, at your workplace, in your cul-de-sac, in your hobby groups, uh, you bear this responsibility for six days a week.
SPEAKER_00: I think except when you're Sabbathing, but that's an interesting, we can talk about that later.
SPEAKER_00: So you are a missionary in Eugene, sent by God to catch people.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: You're on the citizen's rowboat, no excuses.
SPEAKER_00: You can do it.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we're moving from Christian bubbles to porous communities.
SPEAKER_00: The mission of God is to restore what's broken, uh, reconcile what's torn apart, and to save the lost.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so if you are a partner with God on this mission, it will require you to live within broken parts and rub shoulders with lost people.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that we can do this if 80 to 90 percent of our social lives are with other Christians.
SPEAKER_00: Especially in the same socioeconomic world.
SPEAKER_00: The church is incredible.
SPEAKER_00: We have friends who support us and love us, and community is one of our practices.
SPEAKER_00: But Christian community is like a gravitational vortex, it will keep pulling you in.
SPEAKER_00: And I think in our day and age, it is so, so easy to spend 90 to 100% of our social lives with other Christians of a similar socio and socioeconomic status.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that if our goal is to fish for people, they're not just gonna like jump into our house.
SPEAKER_00: They're not just jumping into our boat.
SPEAKER_00: The point is that we would be out amongst our community.
SPEAKER_00: I think that if we're going to be a missional church, we need to pop our Christian bubbles and get out, whether that's your work or your school or sports or your neighbors or hobby groups.
SPEAKER_00: Um, two families that I think are doing this really well are the Rals and the Watkins.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn, talk to them.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, we're moving from attractional to incarnational.
SPEAKER_00: Many church models have employed a strategy to attract outsiders or unbelievers on Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: And I think this model solved results.
SPEAKER_00: We have connection cards and discipleship.
SPEAKER_00: You move from 101 to 201 to 301 and training programs, and how can we get people to come into the building?
SPEAKER_00: I think people met and found Jesus that way.
SPEAKER_00: And I think it was a way that church found a way to function in uh maybe a Christian, more Christianized culture, a modernist environment.
SPEAKER_00: However, I think I wonder if that model often just created more Christian consumers of the religious goods and services of the megachurch.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if our neighbors are walking into churches in the front door anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I think most Eugene Aites in the post-Christian world, they don't really care that we're here in this cool elementary school talking about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There are going to be steps of relationship and trust and knowledge before someone walks into this door.
SPEAKER_00: This might actually be their last step.
SPEAKER_00: So if we're sitting here hoping that we are going to attract people and we live in 80 to 90 percent Christian bubbles and we're going to like grow numerically, I just don't see that happening.
SPEAKER_00: I think we have work to do.
SPEAKER_00: So I wonder how can we how can we measure this?
SPEAKER_00: The first way is I want to begin to work towards employing missional communities.
SPEAKER_00: Missional communities are two or three people who enter into a social public social space solely with the point of immersing in the lives of our neighbors and making friends and meeting new people.
SPEAKER_00: One metric to count is how many new people of our city did you meet this week?
SPEAKER_00: How many new names did you learn?
SPEAKER_00: Um there are there's whole missional church plant strategies around this.
SPEAKER_00: It could look something like this for us.
SPEAKER_00: The runners in our church, we actually, instead of running by ourselves and marking it on Strava so it counts, we join the Run Hub, Run Club, and we just meet other runners and run together and make friends.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of you, two or three, join ceramics classes at Clay Space with the sole point of just immersing in our community.
SPEAKER_00: You consistently do the same workout class at the YMCA, you go serve at the Eugene Mission, you pick the same park, the same time, the same day of the week, every day, and you just meet parents and kids, bring some freezy pops and some coffee and a creepy white van.
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm just kidding.
SPEAKER_00: Um so we could measure this.
SPEAKER_00: How many, how many missional communities do we have going?
SPEAKER_00: What percentage of our people are in missional communities?
SPEAKER_00: How many hours per month are our missional communities immersed in our neighborhoods?
SPEAKER_00: We these are metrics that we could use to answer the question how is citizens going?
SPEAKER_00: If we say, well, citizens is going great because we've had 200 more people, we have three full-time staff, our budget went up to$400,000, we're doing great, and then we have zero people in missional communities.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care about those other statistics if we're not doing some of these things.
SPEAKER_00: Second, as we're out in our community, we're going to find people that seem to be receptive and open possibly to thinking about the way of Jesus or curious about our faith.
SPEAKER_00: These are called people of peace.
SPEAKER_00: And as we immerse in our neighborhoods and hobby groups, we make friends and we find one or two or three people out of the 50 that seem to be, that God seems to be moving in and working in and are curious.
SPEAKER_00: I think you can just tell if you've ever met someone, you're like, I think, I think you're more likely to somehow follow Jesus someday than like these other 10 people.
SPEAKER_00: If you kind of get that sense, this is a person of peace.
SPEAKER_00: We could measure how many hours a week we spend praying for our people of peace.
SPEAKER_00: We could measure how many meals we shared each month with our people of peace.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then finally, we can we can inquire.
SPEAKER_00: So those people who are curious for Christ-centered conversations, we can share the good news of Jesus and have baptisms or people who trust in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So this is these are our metrics.
SPEAKER_00: How is citizens doing?
SPEAKER_00: Are we owning the mission?
SPEAKER_00: Are we training through practices?
SPEAKER_00: Are we living missionally in our community?
SPEAKER_00: If we're hoping that people walk in the door and we get more butts and bucks, I don't think that is a great strategy.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I want to just address something.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you may be feeling like everything I just said is adding more to do to your life.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm already busy, I'm tired, I have a lot.
SPEAKER_00: You want me to do all these other things to be this missional church?
SPEAKER_00: Like, do the people in a rowboat get a break?
SPEAKER_00: Like, we just sweating for Jesus this whole time.
SPEAKER_00: The dangers of church planners is we're often like Enneagram ones and we're just like doers and we just never stop.
SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a statistic out there that has that has freaked me out, and it's typically by year three of a church plant of this nature, everyone on the original core team is no longer part of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so if you were with us in the first two or three, four months of our existence in our core team phase, statistically speaking, you won't be with citizens three years in.
SPEAKER_00: Um there's a number of reasons for that, but the number one reason is burnout.
SPEAKER_00: It's because this small group of people got on the rowboat and they're trying to do all this stuff and they do all these things, and suddenly we realize we don't, we're not rowing at a sustainable pace.
SPEAKER_00: Twenty percent of the people are doing 80% of the work.
SPEAKER_00: There's another time in the Gospels where Jesus uses this word come, it's the same Greek word.
SPEAKER_00: It's familiar to you, it's in Matthew 11.
SPEAKER_00: He says, This come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_00: Take my yoke upon you, upon you, and learn from me, for I'm gentle and humble in heart, you will find rest for your souls.
SPEAKER_00: For my yoke is easy, my burden is light.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this tension that somehow following Jesus will cost you your life, but it will also give you abundant life.
SPEAKER_00: We are not human doings, we are human beings.
SPEAKER_00: We are not God.
SPEAKER_00: This is his mission.
SPEAKER_00: God's mission is not dependent on your burnout.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So, oh yeah, it's been up there.
SPEAKER_00: Look, are you so my question to you is where do you feel like within your citizens' commitment, you're you are on this scale?
SPEAKER_00: And if you are over there on the burnout side, you're hearing the sermon, and you're just thinking, man, how am I gonna keep growing with all these new things to do?
SPEAKER_00: I invite you to not just come and follow Jesus, but to come and receive his rest.
SPEAKER_00: And then also want to ask you if you feel like you're on the other side of this.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sorry, actually, really quick.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I'm going long.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, guys.
SPEAKER_00: If you're on the burnout side, here's what I would ask.
SPEAKER_00: First, are you doing a weekly Sabbath?
SPEAKER_00: Because if you're not, you should.
SPEAKER_00: Second, and are you are you burned out from missional living, or because you've said yes to too many social things, you've signed your kids up for too many sports, you've planned too many vacations, you've purchased too many things to take care of.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to invite you the church is not just a mission, it's also the church.
SPEAKER_00: It's a place to come and rest and receive and fill your tank.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we are not just a mission, we are a missional church.
SPEAKER_00: The hardest part, just talking to you, like real talk, the absolute hardest part about this church plant for me has been this knowing how hard to push, knowing how much to ask of you all, knowing how hard to challenge you to grow and train.
SPEAKER_00: And um, if you look at the history of my ministry life, the danger that I have as a leader is to always push too hard, is to always try to do too many things.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you have felt like your pastor is just here to use you for the mission, then I'm like abundantly sorry.
SPEAKER_00: You can find rest in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And if you ever feel like I'm driving this rowboat too fast, like I'm the guy on the front doing this, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Um, just like smack me.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, kick me off and say we're pausing this rowboat and we're just gonna eat some like nachos or something, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't need us to burn out for his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, if you find yourself over here on the benchwarming side of things, I think that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: It's a different way of thinking about church, it's a challenging model, you should count the cost.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I wonder what is it about this model that that causes you hesitation?
SPEAKER_00: I think you should sit with Jesus on that.
SPEAKER_00: And then I want to throw something out to you.
SPEAKER_00: What if um what if you are the reinforcement that the people who are burning out need to continue the mission of our church?
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'll close with this.
SPEAKER_00: It's a concept by Dallas Willard, it's called the cost of non-discipleship.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about Bonhoeffer's cost of discipleship, that following Jesus will cost you your life, and we can learn a lot from Bonhoeffer's life.
SPEAKER_00: And Willard has an interesting take.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, every way you do life is costly.
SPEAKER_00: And living a way that isn't following the way of Jesus has its own costs.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's not like I'm either gonna follow Jesus and count the cost, or I'm gonna go cruise on the cruise ship.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the cruise ship is a myth.
SPEAKER_00: But this is what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: We are a missional church plant in Eugene.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this model requires your buy in and commitment.
SPEAKER_00: We are here to grow and train, and we are here to fish for people.