Pax Christi

Information Stream for a Church Plant in SE Portland 

Summary of Sunday Jan 3 gathering

After a warm up time where each person present shared one highlight from the Christmas holiday and one hope for the new year, Mitch led us into some worship together. Dan then shared from Hebrews 10:19-25, reflecting on the “call to persevere” and develop a gathering of Jesus’ followers known for their love and care and responsibility for one another. We then moved into a discussion about this key question:  Why are we church planting in SE Portland? Here are the results of that opening conversation:

  People shared personal motivations, which to a great extent had to do with a desire to a) create opportunities for nonChristian friends and neighbors to have a communal, non-churchy, interface with the gospel; and, b) to grow a church that can be freeing and prophetic to existing Christian friends and churches that our core team has connections with. Dan noted that there seem to be few churches in Portland making any significant dent in reaching nonXtn Portland (most churches are made up of Christians who have transferred from another church or disgruntled Christians returning to church). Some shared that church planting has been on their heart for a long time (e.g. the Omans), and so it’s natural to want to join a team doing this. All seemed to express a common desire to see a church emerge that expresses a heart for the SE.  

  In addition to the above reasons, I (Dan) suggest these other practical and strategic reasons that suggest church planting in the SE in 2010 is good and right to do:

  Strategic/practical reasons:
·     Allows us to create a living laboratory for embedding missional DNA, particularly in new disciples, but also in Christians who’ve never been discipled as missionaries.
·     There is a need for more diversity in local churches, theologically, empowering women, etc.
·     A new church allows us to develop a shared leadership ethos, while experimenting with CA’s ideas on missional-incarnational church planting.
·     We now have a team on the ground who is in sync with CA and that can tie into CA’s bigger picture, community and a wider apostolic movement.

  The big question is how strongly do we sense that Jesus is inviting us to do this in the SE at this time? His invitation is the most important reason to church plant together. May we find greater and greater confirmation in His leadership toward forming a new church.

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Interesting Cping site

Hey folks, you might find this site useful for stimulating ideas on church planting: http://churchplantingnovice.wordpress.com/tools-for-missional-church.  Austin has many things in common with Portland, so maybe there’s some gleanings from that angle too.

See you this Sunday at Omans at 3:30 pm. We’ll share a bit from our lives, hear about making the most out of the Posterous site, and celebrate Communion together.

Dan

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Convo CA PDX team 12-16-09

Hi folks,


Here’s some important conversations and scheduling material we’ve been having about proceeding forward with our church plant team in the new year. Note: Our next time together to re-orient and connect for the new year is Sunday, Jan 3rd at Oman’s from 3:30 – 5:30 pm.

Communal
Connecting during the holidays (and ongoing) - please go to the http://paxchristi.posterous.com site, and start following conversations and providing your voice where you want to pipe in or get clarification, etc. We will be uploading resources and keeping a running log on general minutes of our strategic planning times held Wed mornings at Bar Carlo. Thanks BD for finding and setting up this resource.

Formational/discipling
Weekly rhythm of formational community together – starting Sunday, Jan 10 at Oman’s house, 3:30 – 5:30 pm. We will be processing Paul’s letter to the Philippians, since it has many themes relevant to the forming of our identity, values and vision. We won’t be constrained to that letter, but will use it as a touchstone for a season of conversations. Of course, as issues arise that demand our attention, we will be flexible on what we talk about together on any given Sunday.

Triads – we want to encourage groups of three coming together for sharpening, prayer, sharing, etc. Dan will provide some guidelines on how people might get the most out of these one-hour a week micro-community groups.

Missional
Neighborhood missioning – we agreed to try to inhabit Bar Carlo as a regular 3rd Place. Besides our Christmas parties and spontaneous gathering, we decided not to try to schedule any group missional projects together until Jan 3rd. In the new year we’ve talked of doing a “listening to the neighborhood” exercise together in Foster Powell, perhaps on a Saturday or Sunday. Our target area, by the way, seems to be more and more focused on the area south of Powell. We need to explore a handful of missional initiatives for our little forming community to be involved in, so that we’re not too dispersed and no one (as a general principle) works alone on a missional initiative.

Other key info/dates
We are looking at the prospect of a retreat together on Feb 5-7, perhaps down in Pedee with Mitch and Amber. Ryan and Laura Ho are hoping to join us then too. Dan has invited Mike and Brenda Zook to come in mid Jan or mid Feb to meet our team. The Zooks live in Chicago but are natives of Portland and want to return here. Mike is a potential team leader that we’ve come into contact with through our CA network. Rob Fairbanks and Dan are putting together a training series using Hirsch’s The Forgotten Ways, which will replace the Axiom training some of us were planning to do.

 

Hello World

I'm writing a test post for this.  If it works, this will be an avenue for the church plant's web presence and information stream.BD