April 22nd, 2008  9:47 pm 

The other element of our lives in New York will be our intention to church plant. Some of you are thinking, “Church plant?! What in the world?!” I know, I know. A lot of you reading this are familiar with this language, and a lot of you are not. For those that are not as familiar, we will do our best to communicate what that looks like….in the very near future.  We have been working on another post to help clarify the nuts and bolts of our intentions to church plant, but we’re not finished and ready to publish it yet.  But we are aiming to have it out soon.  We will let you know when it is up.  For now, here’s a taste…A phrase came up early on as Jessica and I talked about what it might look like to church plant.  The phrase also embodied what we believe is our essential call as Christians.  The phrase is simply “Be disciples, make disciples.”  It involves a being aspect and a doing aspect.  We found that the Bible is full of these two aspects.  Here are two examples.  Jesus talks about abiding in the vine (himself) in John 15.  This abiding is a great picture of what it is to be a disciple.  Then in Matthew 28:18-20 he commands his disciples (us) to… 

“And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’” (emphasis added)

…which is a command of what we are to do as disciples.  One of the most refreshing things we have found in our walks as Believers is that we both have grown in our love for God and in our commitment to obey his commands within a passionate community of people that are seeking the same thing, something typically called a “church.”  How novel, huh?  And as we have sought to conform our hearts and lives to these two aspects, being and doing, the idea and desire to church plant has risen in our hearts.  Okay, that’s my “teaser.”  I know I left you hanging, but there is more to come.  In the meantime, if you want to know more now I encourage you to look around at this website.  Our thoughts and ideas about this are not some wacky new thing we’ve conjured up ourselves. 

Bridgeway Church is passionate about this very thing too.  Take a look at the “who we are” and “what we do” pages and be sure to look at the subsections.  They give a great depiction of where we are coming from.  And I highly recommend downloading the podcasts of previous sermons.  Just go to the homepage and click the podcast link to get the last 10 sermons or so.  And lastly, there’s a great site that has tons of resources and helpful information on this stuff.  It’s http://www.3dministries.com/.  Hope that helps and ties you over until we can say more.

Blessings,

Andy