Thanks mate - I know you could do it!

Guess I’ll hafta listen to the mp3s when they are available.

Michael

in the mean time you might be interested in listening to this talk that Steve gave at an Acts 29 boot camp last year on gospel centred church planting

thanks for your good thoughts Shane - sorry i couldn’t get back to you sooner about it, i’ve been mainly offline (but on holidays!)

and Stephen, thanks for sharing the details of you guys operate, i found that very interesting.

well, i suppose my principled thinking would lead me to believe that (one of) the good reason(s?) to license those who head through the 8 year process would be to have a level of confidence in life and doctrine.  now in saying that though, should the keen learner who sat under 8+ years of teaching and pastoring (and mentoring?) and who had spent good time privately learning - should he be disqualified beacuse he didn’t go through certain processes? well, i suppose in principle no.  after all, he’s been biblically taught for X amount of years and has had his life examined too!

so i suppose the presupposition is that we aren’t aiming for big church, but small churches (30-40 in the TC model).  so here’s the million-dollar question: if the structures are there to support the church, then our doctrine of church should drive the structures. and if our understanding of NT church leads us to believe that good church life should only be lived out in smaller sizes, then shouldn’t we need to alter the structures?

and i’d probably answer that question, ‘not necessarily, no’.  i’m not sure that the 30-40 is absolutely necessary.  that’s where my principled thinking kicks in.  is this rough figure prescribed by the NT for church life? sure, it’s desirable for community life.  but why that figure? is it possible to up the figure to something like 80-100 people and maintain good community life? i’m not trying to dowplay the importance of community life (My time, albeit quite short, at L’abri taught me great things about community life), but what size range can we work with in our current structures?

i suppose the final question is - what’s a good size church for the NT idea of local church, and then how does that drive our structures? and my answer would lean towards the small size, but probably not as small as what TC suggests…

Question: “...if the structures are there to support the church, then our doctrine of church should drive the structures. and if our understanding of NT church leads us to believe that good church life should only be lived out in smaller sizes, then shouldn’t we need to alter the structures? “

Answer: Yes, the support structures need constant reviewing & modification becaus the churches are diverse & changing. The basic structures can work generally, but need fine tuning for each different church context. This takes time & energy, which needs to be factored in by all concerned.

Question: “i’m not sure that the 30-40 is absolutely necessary.  that’s where my principled thinking kicks in.  is this rough figure prescribed by the NT for church life? sure, it’s desirable for community life.  but why that figure? is it possible to up the figure to something like 80-100 people and maintain good community life? i’m not trying to dowplay the importance of community life (My time, albeit quite short, at L’abri taught me great things about community life), but what size range can we work with in our current structures? “

Answer: My understanding of the NT affirms a gathering as small as two (Matt 18) or as large as thousands & growing (Acts 2). I don’t see a NT size restriction- upper or lower. However, It’s strategically hard to finance full time missioners when there are insufficient people to support them. It’s hard to be a tent-maker. Strategically it’s hard to cover all the people groups in our missionfield when the church is numerically small. I’d rather have a larger mission minded church membership than the Matt 9 frustrations. I know that larger sizes have their own problems, but if it means reaching more people with the gospel, I can live with that. Larger size total network membership- deployed in small, connected networks- is what we’re aiming for in Surfers Church. That way we can have a good talent pool, & still do good missional community.

There’s a lot in those questions, & a lot more to be said…

Is there anything actually innovative with Total Church?

Is there anything actually innovative with Total Church?

Are looking looking for innovation Dannii?
to be honest, I’d be concerned if there was innovation. 

what I think makes for a helpful contribution to our thinkning is its emphasis on word centred reformed thinking and living, a questioning of the status quo in relationship to corporate living and identity, and an affirmation of gospel intentionality for every member as missionary.

having just spent a few days with one of the authors, it was really encouraging to see the way he applies the radical gospel into every aspect of gospel living.

have a read, its refreshing and challenging

I was referring more to the structure of church, which people seem to be making a fuss over, but doesn’t actually seem like anything new to me at all.

Hi Dannil. My answer to your first question, “Is there anything actually innovative with Total Church” is a fairly uncomplicated No! As the model of church advocated in TC is intentionally structure lite, if the fuss is over the stucture of church as you suggest, I’m not sure what the fuss is either! Steve

Welcome to the forums Steve, hope you enjoy interacting here.

There are no new ideas under the sun. But I like that you’ve taken the whole community idea that the emergents are big on, and reframed it in a way that is helpful and palatable for more Reformed types. The idea that evangelism should normatively be done in community is, I think, an important one.

Hi Steve

glad to see you are on the forum

one of the questions Anglicans have is to do with your modified presbyterian style of government

could you clarify what it is
and how you function in overseeing the model

in addtion - what is your thinking on size of church, how much is it a prinicipled decision and how pragmatic can we be about it?

Thanks for the welcome Craig!
The Crowded House is now comprised of 4 networks, so I’ll describe the style of government within the TCH network (215) I’m involved in as simply as I can.
I use the term modified presbyterianism because it gives people a handle. The elders of the congregations meet together twice a month for discussion, direction and decisions relating to the network. We discuss issues within each congregation and get wisdom from each other. We share resources and pool ideas. But it happens at a relational rather than a structural level. No one elder has a right to intervene in the life of each congregation, but we do have the responsibility to address issues if we are aware of anything.  I have no formal role of overseer, but am an elder among the elders, as is the case in the congregation I am part of. We don’t buy into the idea of primus inter pares, but seek to defer to one another appropriately.
As for your final question Shane, I think I would put it this way: my thinking on size is principled (small); my thinking on numbers is pragmatic (15? 25? 40?).  The principle of one anothering is so vital to being the people of God that we should always default to small and simple to facilitate it. However, the prevailing culture in evangelicalism is large and complex.
The question is how these small gospel communities relate to one another: can they be part of a larger structure? I think the answer is that you work from where you are and with what you’ve got, but that the principle of creating and scattering these communities of light into the nooks of crannies of our cities is vital.

is it fair to say that you think the primary expression of gosple community and one anotherness should be small, but there is a place for the larger gathering of the gatheirngs?

it seems to me that most churches work in the opposite direction - big meeting is primary and small meeting is bonus and optional ?

I would have no problem with that as a model. In fact, that pretty much describes how we do things at the moment! The key issue is viewing those smaller expressions of church as the primary community. When that is consistently demonstrated by the leadership and the church culture, then it seems to be there is real freedom in however and whenever we meet beyond that. We really do have to grapple with how we do justice to what the Bible teaches about discipleship and mission, and I think traditionally, evangelicals have been lazy about that.