Missional Coffee?

I know the word “missional” is everywhere, but I recently read an article in Christianity today that said that even coffee could be missional.  Why not?  Everything else sure seems to be. 

I absolutely love my coffee; addicted to it for sure!  Just a few months ago a family owned and run craft coffee shop went in about a mile from my house, Ragamuffin Coffee Roasters.   They use only the finest coffees and then roast in small batches and hand brew it to perfection!  Just thinking about their coffee gives me a caffeine buzz! Because of Ragamuffin, I now fully understand that what I used to buy at my local Chevron station when I was in college was really just dirty water!  

The owners of this incredible establishment are Christians (wonderful people).  Sean was a former Youth Pastor in a church right around the corner from my home.  Their coffee shop is packed with Christians.   I wonder, does that make Ragamuffin’s coffee “missional”?  I saw one missional coffee company online that called on Christians “to switch to a java with eternal significance”.  Really?

Maybe I have too low an opinion of coffee (although somehow I doubt it).  I am just not convinced that coffee can take on eternal significance.  It can play a part, for sure.  It has a role, but eternal significance might be taking it too far.  

The word “missional” has come to mean a lot of different things to different people.  It’s meaning has become confused and of course there are consequences for this.  Recovering the true meaning of this word is important as I believe it is a word worth keeping (despite the confusion).  

Maybe a proper understanding of the word begins with the fact that God is a missionary God.  After all, it was God who called and formed a people of His own to be a treasured possession and a light to the nations.  It was God who took the initiative to redeem creation by sending His Son, Jesus.  It is the trinitarian God of Scripture that sends the church (you and me) to be an integral part of this redemption process.  Jesus said, “As the Father sent Me, so I am sending you (John 20:21).  Maybe it’s the sending nature of God (the Missio Dei) that can help us recover a true understanding of what it means for the church to be missional.    

Coffee can certainly be sent.  As a matter of fact, I would recommend sending some Ragamuffin Coffee as a gift to your friends and family members; you will be a hero for sure (it’s that good).  The question is: will the sending of the coffee make it missional?  You be the judge!  #dontoverthinkitjustdrinkit  

Robert Douglas - Organizing Pastor - Lightshine Church 

Dunbar's Number

Dunbar’s Number

The community that we live in is definitely a bigger is better type of place.  This seems to apply to our churches as well.  Whenever I talk to someone in the community  about Lightshine (whether they are Christians or not), inevitably the first question I get asked is, “How big is your church?”

It’s okay to ask this question.  I get it.  But maybe the size of the church isn’t the most important thing.  I’ll answer the question so as not to be accused of dodging it.  The answer is two fold.  Answer Part 1 - Size really doesn’t matter.  Answer Part 2 - It is small enough where you can know and be known.

According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, “Dunbar's number” is the suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.

Dunbar’s magic number lies somewhere between 100-250 people (most go with 150).  That said, is it possible that less is really more; that good old Dunbar, whoever he was, was on to something.

I wonder if intentional small church might be coming back (I certainly hope so)?  Small church that values people over programs; small church in which every person knows and is known.  Bigger  isn’t always better.  Small church has a lot to offer that large churches cannot.

Maybe the question is this: What would Lightshine Church do if it someday grew beyond Dunbar’s magic number?  What would we do if we had more than 250 people?

Simple: we would plant another small, missional, start up church because Dunbar is on to something; maybe less is more!  

Fred Flintstone's Footmobile

Fred Flintstone’s Footmobile

Ro Sham Bo

As many of you already know, I have twin seventeen year old daughters (yes, I’m getting old and I certainly don’t need you to remind me).  Two daughters and only one 2002 Honda Accord that we bought from our friend J.R and K.R.  We knew that this was going to be a huge problem and for months we discussed possible solutions to the problem; how will they decide which one will get to drive the car?  

Ro, Sham, Bo.  This is how I solved the majority of my problems growing up (who am I kidding - I still do).  

Even and Odd

We came up with a few totally unacceptable ideas until one day shortly before their 16th birthday my wife said, “Corryn gets to drive on even days and Madison gets to drive on odd days.”  Genius!!!  Every day is either even or odd; it’s black and white, no gray area here!  It was a perfect solution that has served us very well.

Lightshine is the 4th church that I have been on staff with in the last 23 years.  My previous three churches were all wonderful experiences that helped to prepare me for what I am doing now.  

Staff Driven or People Driven?

What I learned in all three of my previous churches was that if anything was going to happen at all, if the church was going to move forward then it would be the church staff that would make it happen.  The staff drove the church.  The staff made stuff happen.  

No wonder these churches had such dynamic and talented people on staff.  Some of the people I worked with were absolutely amazing and extremely hard working!    

When the reality of planting a church came along I began to explore other ideas, other possibilities about who gets to drive.  We too have a very talented and hard working staff, but all of us together only represent 60 hours a week.  We aren’t even financially sustainable yet, so throwing money at the problem to hire a bigger staff wasn’t an option.  

The idea that we landed on is to allow everyone a turn behind the wheel.  At Lightshine, our people remind me of the awesome staffs I used to work with.  They are talented, creative, visionary, and very gifted.  They are also hard working because they care!  They are the ones that are making it happen; it’s the people that are driving the mission of God in and through Lightshine forward. 

This idea isn’t nearly as clean and simple as my wife’s brilliant solution to which daughter would get to drive the car, but it does get people off the sidelines and into the game.  It’s true, there are a lot of bad drivers out there, but at Lightshine we haven’t revoked anybody’s license (yet)!

If the car is gonna go, it’s gonna take a lot of people to push because right now………. 

we can’t even afford the gas!  #FredFlintstone #Footmobile #oneofthecoolestcarsever 

Robert Douglas - Organizing Pastor - Lightshine Church 

Kumbaya

Kumbaya

Anonymity

Some people like to be anonymous at Church, but that’s not easy to do in a small start up.  It’s easy to find anonymity in a mega-church if thats what you want.  You can slip in late and sit in the back, hoping that nobody will see you or maybe leave a little early before all the socializing begins.

Cheers

I’ve heard people describe Lightshine to their friends by saying that’s its like Cheers, where everybody knows your name.  Anonymity is nearly impossible in a small, start up church.  To me, that’s a good enough reason right there to commit to smallness.

Kumbaya

Last Sunday, in worship, we accidentally held hands in a circle for over 5 minutes (don’t ask, its a long story).  This situation felt great for a small, select few, but was downright horrifying for most (including me)!  I’m still recovering and praying that the visiting family that Sunday wasn’t scared away by the Kumbaya circle.  But maybe some uncomfortable hand holding is the small price we pay for community; for truly knowing others and being known by others.  To know and be known is part of what fellowship is all about, right?


At Lightshine if you try to sneak in late, everybody just turns around and audibly says hello to you, even if I’m in the middle of my sermon (and I’m ok with that).   People’s presence is appreciated, it’s valued, its important!  If you leave early, someone might follow you out the door and into the parking lot to see if everything is ok.

The only way to truly remain anonymous is to not show up!    But when one person doesn’t show up, it has an effect on the whole; a piece of the puzzle is missing.  I just had lunch with my friend Kyle, who had missed a few weekly worship gatherings in a row.  I simply told him that every time he missed corporate worship, multiple people asked me where he was.  Kyle was in worship the next Sunday!

Let People Know That You Care

It’s our job collectively to make sure that no one really remains anonymous.  When you notice that someone hasn’t been around for a while, get in touch with them and check in; let them know that you are thinking about them and that they are missed.  The reality of small church is that every single person’s presence makes a tremendous difference.  It’s truly not the same without you!

Hopefully we won’t have to do too much of that long hand holding stuff, but if it happens again because people are caring for one another, then I will just have to deal with it.  After all, maybe that is just a very small price to pay for real community.  Kumbaya.

Robert Douglas - Organizing Pastor - Lightshine Church

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Vision Shaping Part II

Vision Shaping Part II

Starting new churches is not rocket science - it's much more complicated than that.

In the last post, I shared that living into God’s vision and then contextualizing that vision in our own community just might help keep us from becoming a sad statistic.  The fact is that church’s fail at an alarming rate.  I remember the first line of “Starting New Church’s” that I read in preparation for the formation of Lightshine like it was yesterday.  The very first sentences of the introduction scared me to death.  It reads,

“Starting a new church is not rocket science - it’s much more complicated than that.  A new church is the work of the Holy Spirit, which immediately puts this task way beyond our ability to understand”.  

It must be complicated because so many start ups never make it to see their first birthday or even fewer, their second.  We celebrated our second birthday back in October, 2015 with a sense of real joy and admittedly a little relief.  It certainly is even more complicated and beyond my understanding than I ever imagined.  

Vision may not be the only important thing that keeps us afloat, but without it, we know that we are sunk.  Ultimately the vision is God’s but we have some say in what this vision looks like in our context.  Some great visions have come from strong leaders (Martin Luther King’s, “I Have A Dream” speech comes to mind).  But what about the contextual vision of Lightshine?  Where does it come from?

Many of you have heard me say this before but Lightshine Church really wasn’t even my idea.  As much as I might like to take the credit (and Lord knows I could use some), it would be dishonest.  A new church is first the work of the Holy Spirit and I believe this whole heartedly.  Our job is then to take God’s vision and put flesh on it in the Conejo Valley today.  

A Good Listener

One of the things that continues to surprise and impress me is the manner in which Lightshine members and friends have helped to create this vision.  It’s been a collective work of listening to the Holy Spirit, listening to the real needs of our community, and discerning together what a vision for Lightshine might look like.  Many of the most important mission endeavors that we have been a part of in our community did not come from me.

For example; the idea for our partnership with a public school (Walnut Elementary) came from leaders in our local school district while working with one of the founding planting team members, Eric Lindroth.  In fact, most of our missional bridge building efforts to connect with our community have come from our members and friends, not from me.  

Lightshine has been an experiment in what I like to call “shared vision”.  This is part of the excitement of small, missional churches.  We are fairly nimble.  We can move rather quickly (for a church).  We can experiment, even fail sometimes and learn.  The bottom line is that although ultimately it is God’s vision, all of us at Lightshine can contribute to vision shaping.  With prayer, hopefulness, and hustle, this shared vision that we create together is our response to God’s BIG vision, which just might help enable us to see year 4 and beyond; God willing.     

Robert Douglas - Organizing Pastor - Lightshine Church

   

Vision Shaping Part I

Vision Shaping Part I

Success and Desire

Leadership expert John Maxwell says, “Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities.  They vary greatly in their desires to reach their potential.”  In order to reach your potential as an individual or organization you have to have a clear vision of exactly what you want, know why you want it, and also determine when you want it to happen.

What's The Deal About Vision?

But just how important is vision for a start up missional church?  Who shapes the vision for a local church?  

In an often quoted passage from the Bible, Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision the people perish but happy are those who keep the law.”  Normally we only quote the first half of the verse not quite sure what to do with the second.  Evidently vision is important if we don’t want to perish.  

As a start up church, Lightshine is in the infancy phase of the lifecycle of a church, but we also know that we want to be around for the foreseeable future.  I find it fascinating that vision is closely linked with keeping God’s commands.  Maybe God has given us a vision for the world, for the church.  Maybe that vision is contained in Scripture and that our obedience to God’s commands has something to do with it.  

The idea of God’s kingdom, which has come in part in Jesus‘ arrival and will someday be completed upon His return provides plenty of vision.  I like to ask good questions more than I like answering them.  What are the characteristics of this kingdom or reign of God?  What does this kingdom look like?  What will it one day look like when it is complete?  

We get clues all over the Bible, but we don’t get a step by step instruction guide to building the kingdom of God.  Only God can truly build His kingdom, but God does seem to ask for our help in extending it, or offering it to others; pulling back the curtain a bit so that others can see it breaking into our world.

God’s Word may not read like an instruction manual with step by step instructions, but it definitely does not lack in vision.  Quite the contrary it contains the greatest vision ever cast; a loving God who loved so deeply that He gave everything in Jesus who came to offer salvation in living, dying, and rising so that we might have abundant life both now and forever.  God wants the world to know the vision cast in Scripture.

First and foremost it is God’s vision.  But how might this vision take on flesh in a 21st century, small, suburban missional church plant like Lightshine?  In answering questions like this, we help create a vision for Lightshine that tries to be faithful and obedient to what God has commanded.  Happy are those who keep the law.

How do we take God’s amazing vision for the world, the Church, and our community and make it our own?  If we do this well, we just might reach our potential and survive past the infancy stage in the lifecycle of a church.  If John Maxwell is right, then we have the abilities that can make us successful.  The question is, do we have the desire?  I believe that we do.  More on this next time.

Robert Douglas - Organizing Pastor - Lightshine Church