Fundamental Functions of the Online Church (Part 3 of 6)

Yesterday, I explained that the first part of UpReach is Worship, but I also told you we would look at UpReach 1.5 today. I hear your voice already. What is UpReach 1.5?

UpReach 1.5 is a function of the church that spans both UpReach and InReach, so in a sense it is InReach 1.5 too, but that distinction will get confusing later in this series. Trust me on this. UpReach 1.5 is the way to go with it. You can thank me after you read Part 6 of this series.

Upreach 1.5 - Discipleship
UpReach 1.5 is the Fundamental Function of the Church that spans both UpReach and InReach and it's what is commonly known as Discipleship. This is a pretty "churchy" term, but the basic idea is that one of the Fundamental Functions of the church is to take a person who is already a believer in Jesus Christ and help them to form a closer relationship with Him. Primarily biblical teaching is where this happens, but it happens in community with other believers as well.

Too often our churches have been good at "getting people saved" and not so good at "making disciples." Salvation is the first step, of course, but we must never forget it is the first step of a long and exciting journey.

I think the online church has the opportunity to do discipleship pretty well. We function within a community of people sharing ideas on blogs, interacting with each other in social networks, and twittering their lives to each other almost constantly. The online church needs to strategically use these powerful tools to encourage people to have a closer relationship with Jesus Christ. That sentence is true for any church that seeks to engage people living in the 21st century whether it's an online church or not.

What do you think? Can the online church perform the function of discipleship? How does your church use technology like this to encourage discipleship?

Fundamental Functions of the Online Church (Part 2 of 6)

Last time I talked about the purposes of the church: UpReach, InReach, and OutReach.

Now we're going to dig a little into each of those to find the Fundamental Functions of the church. I'm using this as a test to see if the online churh can fulfill the fundamental functions. (Hint: I think they can.)

UpReach 1 - Worship
In the simplest terms this deals with worship. Please note: this is not restricted to worship services, music, or any other limited notion that may exist. The disciples worship Jesus in a boat (Mat. 14:33) and I seriously doubt they broke out the worship band to do it. It's much more a matter of the heart.

Tomorrow we'll look at UpReach 1.5. If you're not sure what that would be, come check it out!

Can the online church fulfill the fundamental function of worship? I've already tipped my hand, but I would love to hear your thoughts!

Fundamental Functions of the Online Church (Part 1 of 6)

Before we can adequately discuss the Fundamental Functions of the Online Church, we must understand what the purpose of the Online Church is if it is to function as a legitimate church.

Wayne Grudem, in his book Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, (a 1296 page introduction!), identifies three primary purposes of the church.

Ministry to God: Worship - The church is to be involved in worship of the living God. DO NOT be tempted to limit this to simply the "worship service" or "worship music." Worship should extend deep within us and be expressed in a variety of ways.

Ministry to Believers: Nurture - The church is to protect, encourage, build up, strengthen and instruct the believer to grow in his or her relationship to Christ.

Ministry to the World: Evangelism/Mercy - The church has a responsibility to share the gospel with the lost, and bring hope to a fallen world through serving the lost, the least, and the lonely. (I stole that from somewhere, so please forgive my plagiarism.)

The cliché, but easy way to remember these is with the terms, UpReach, InReach, and OutReach. Before you look to the online church to see if it fulfills these purposes, hold your own church up against this list and see where the holes are.

CONFESSION TIME
I pastor a Bible church and we tend to be very good at doing InReach, interested in OutReach (especially if we can give money to it rather than do it ourselves), and the UpReach is there but not always very visible.

Over the next few days, I will explain how the Fundamental Functions of the Church fit into these purposes dealing specifically with issues related to online churches.

Sunday's Coming!

We're getting ready for Easter at Ennis Bible Church, and as we join together with our family and Christians around the world celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Our worship series is called "MyStory" where we have a number of people sharing their stories of how they came to trust in Jesus Christ. I'm looking forward to sharing a video that we're putting together introducing some of the people from our church.

I pray that each of your churches have a great celebration and that many place their faith in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God this weekend!

WEC Conference Update

I'm about a day behind on reporting my adventures at WEC this week at DTS. Here are some notes from yesterday.

The session I attended was entitled Connecting the Local church to the Global Community, and it was led by a representative from CAM International, Voltaire Cacal.

Some of the key points from this presentation were:

Action Steps for the Local Church to Connect with the Global Community

1. Examine current missionary and outreach programs.
2. Before taking on new missionaries/projects, find out if there is someone already involved with that people group.
3. If you church "adopts a people group," find agencies that work with them (rather than on your own) and utilize the resources in your local church to support that people group through the agency.
4. Build upon existing work
5. Work with mission agencies
6. Send short-term trips through agencies or established missionaries*
7. Consider local implications of strategic partnerships (other local churches and ministries)

There was a great diagram about how this would look. My feeble attempt to illustrate it is shown below. Yes, I do know how to use Photoshop. No, it's not installed on this computer. So here it is in all its MS Paint goodness.

The basic idea is that a youth ministry should fit in with the other ministries working with People Group A. So, a mission agency that primarily focuses on, say, church plantning, should work strategically with the other ministries already working with that group so the church plants fit in with the other established ministries.

*Voltaire noted that some overt evangelism (street preaching, tract distribution, etc.) can be harmful to established missionary work going on especially in "closed" countries. Working with established agencies would help alleviate this concern.

What are some ways your churches coordinate with other local ministries? What are some ways you connect your local body with global community of missions?

I would love to get your thoughts on these ideas, so please leave a comment! After that, be sure to check out Voltaire's blog, too!

WEC Conference

Yesterday I attended a seminar with Dan Branda with Association of Baptists for World Evangelization (ABWE) entitled One Punk Under God: A Discussion of Contextualization. The main thrust of the seminar focused on a Sundance Film, One Punk Under God, featuring Jay Bakker (son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker). Jay has a church called "Revolution Church" that meets in a bar and ministers to the punk scene in Boston.

One interesting quote from the video was "For some groups we're too Christian. For others we're not Christian enough."

Some of the questions raised were:

• Is it a problem that they meet in a bar?
• Is it a problem that the the bar is open while they're meeting? (In one scene Jay reminds those in attendance to tip their waitresses.)
• Is there a line to be drawn as far as contextualization to the culture is concerned?

The rest of the story, according to the film, is that Jay also happens to be a "gay-affirming pastor." The second portion of the seminar focused on Jay's struggle of whether or not he believes homosexuality is a sin. How far does contextualization go here?

Dan led the discussion well and it was a packed room! (I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure the fire marshall wasn't there because I'm pretty sure some codes were violated!) Some quotes from Dan:

"There is a healthy tension between theological truths and reaching the least of these."
"There is a real need to think through why we do what we do."

World Evangelization Conference at DTS (quick update)

I will be blogging from the World Evangelization Conference at DTS all this week. I attended two great sessions which I will tell you about later tonight.

But I wanted to quickly update you on some cool happenings at the conference.

A few years ago my wife, Amy, and I spent some time will Craig and Denise Williams in Mexico City. This morning I was speaking with, a representative with CAM International, and mentioned our stay with the Williams. He said, "Craig is here at the conference!" So I got to see Craig and catch up with him on how things are going in Mexico City. I also want to say, "Hi!" to some new friends, Sharifa, Dawn, and Voltaire, who did a great presentation of CAM's work in Spain.

I'll post my notes from the sessions I attended this evening, but all I have to say so far is "Wow! This is going to be a great week!"

Also: If any of you are going to be at the conference, let me know and we'll try to meet up.