Don’t Worry about YOUR Legacy

Part of our focus at The Vine will be a constant emphasis on God’s mission for us, the church.   In order for us to know what we are to do as a church we have to know what it is that we are called to based on God’s story.  His story is what gives our personal stories meaning, focus, and passion. In short, we are on HIS mission together.  The quote below helps give focus to this emphasis at The Vine.

God wants us to join him in his work of renewing peoples, places, and things. He wants Christians to renew their cultures to the honor and glory of God. God wants those he’s redeemed to work at transforming this broken world and all its broken structures—families, churches, governments, businesses—in a way that reflects an answer to the Lord’s Prayer: “Your king- dom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). We’re to fill every aspect of the earth with the knowledge of God, our creator and redeemer. We’ve been redeemed by God to become agents of renewal.

In redeeming us, God doesn’t simply rescue us from our sin; he also rescues us to do something—to develop the world around us to the glory of God. Therefore, when God saves us, we no longer have to settle for creating our own transitory meaning. How many of us spend our lives manufacturing our own reasons to live? Maybe it’s raising our kids well so they’ll turn out okay, and if they do, we’ll think our life was worthwhile. There’s so much talk about the need to leave a legacy. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I don’t like it. My life is not about leaving a legacy that makes people remember Tullian Tchividjian. God’s mission for me and for all of us is so much bigger than that, which is liberating, because it means we don’t have to try to manufacture our own passing legacy.

When God saves us, he gives us a new reason to live that’s so much more significant than our fleeting legacies. We become part of an infinitely larger story than our personal history, larger even than the story of our family and nation. We no longer have to work for our own causes; instead we get to work for God’s universal cause. That’s a mission worth getting on board with!

God’s mission and the direction it’s going are so much bigger than our misconceptions. His mission is the one thing we can give our life to that will never be lacking in fulfillment and will never end.

- Tullian Tchividjian, Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels 152, 153

Tribal Mindset vs. Missional Mindset

These two mindsets involve fundamentally different values. The highest value of a community with a tribal mindset is self-preservation. A tribal community exists solely for itself, and those within it keep asking, “How can we protect ourselves from those who are different from us?” A tribal mindset is marked by an unbalanced patriotism. It typically elevates personal and cultural preferences to absolute principles: If everybody were more like us, this world would be a better place.

But in a missional-minded community, the highest value isn’t self-preservation but self-sacrifice. A missional community exists not primarily for itself but for others. It’s a community willing to be inconvenienced and discomforted, willing to expend itself for others on God’s behalf.

A tribal mindset is antithetical to the gospel. The gospel demands that we be missional, because the gospel is the story of God sacrificing himself for his enemies. Both these approaches are robustly present in Jonah’s story. Jonah represents the best of a tribal mindset, the absolute best. He’s like the trophy-boy for tribalism. And God—ever-gracious, ever-pursuing, ever-compassionate—carries the trophy for mission-mindedness.

Jonah runs from his enemies; God runs toward his enemies. Jonah serves himself; God serves the world.

- Tullian Tchividjian, Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels, 134,135

An Interview Concerning The Vine

I (Zach) was recently interviewed by two different bloggers in reference to The Vine.   I’ll reprint it here but be sure to follow the great blogs of James Grant and Greg Breazeale.

I’m 34 years old, been married to Kim for 12 years and we have four children, Taylor (7), Autumn (5), Emery (3), and Mya (20 months). We currently are living in Albuquerque until we move to Madison in early June to plant The Vine. I graduated from Covenant Theological Seminary in 2009 with a Masters in Theological Studies. I have worked in three different larger churches in the last 13 years. Doing smaller church will be something that will be new to us, but we’re looking forward to it’s unique challenges and blessings.

After Scott Sterner and I decided that we wanted to go for it, Madison seemed to be the logical choice for a church in the Midwest. There is huge need there, it’s close to family, and it’s a GREAT city.

My wife is a rock star. She is more full of faith and adventurous than I am. She has always been consistently supportive of my leading us into crazy endeavors. She was very affirming of it at the initial stages and this has continued throughout the planning process. We both feel that life goes by too fast and God’s call is too huge to play it safe and not take risks for the Kingdom.

I’ll be the one who leads the musical side of things, but we have other guys who can serve in this way as well. There are three of us that are planting together. We all plan to share the preaching and various other roles. I am looking forward to preaching more and have experienced more of that in my ministry in recent days. I’ll also be charged with our leadership development program at The Vine. We seek to be a church planting church and anyone who knows anything about church planting knows that leadership development is one of the main things a church like this needs to focus on.

1. Choose the city

2. Get Acts29 affiliation established

3. Raise a ton of money (we started last October and still have a decent amount to go)

4. Lots of meetings with the three of us via Skype

These are the main things we have been doing before we actually get on the ground in Madison in June/July.

Acts29 is phenomenal. They provide outstanding relationships and training to help new church planters be successful. They have a 98% success rate for those who pass their assessment process and we feel very excited to align ourselves with them. We greatly value their emphasis on theology, missional living, and reproduction of churches through church planting.

Networking like crazy. Initially, we desire to spread the word about The Vine on a grassroots level through relationships. I’ll buy coffee or lunch for anyone who is willing to sit down and talk with me about what God is up to in Madison or how a church could serve the city of Madison. We will start meeting in my basement right off the bat and then once we out grow that (God-willing) we will move into some sort of rented space. Based on the response we have received thus far it sounds like it might not take long to be out of our basement. We hold these plans loosely and will respond as best we can to whatever God brings to us.

Our Vision for ministry reads as follows:

Gospel:
The Gospel is the good news that through Christ the power of God’s kingdom has entered history to renew the whole world. This renewing work of Jesus is what saves us from our sin and transforms us into people who live like him. The Vine is a church where the Gospel is not merely a message for people who don’t know Jesus, but also a message for believers that shapes every facet of the church.

At The Vine, our value for Gospel-centered ministry will drive us to preach, teach, and sing about the grace of God that can save those who don’t yet believe and empower believers to live in obedience. This Gospel-centered vision will also express itself as we conclude our weekly community services celebrating the Lord’s Table, remembering Christ’s body that was broken and blood that was shed, proclaiming the Lord’s death until the day of his return.

Community:
The Gospel is not just a message to be believed, but a power to be experienced. The gospel shapes a new community as those who were formerly God’s enemies are reconciled to Him and adopted into his family. The Vine is not a place, but a people – a community that is continually being reformed, renewed, and reproduced by the transforming power of the gospel.

At The Vine, our value for community will drive us to be a simple church that resists complicated program-driven ministry models. Because of this, our community will be expressed in primarily two forms, the community worship service and City Groups. Our City Groups will be smaller communities that live out Gospel, Community, and Mission together. City Groups are where the church is the church to one another and the city.

Mission:
The Gospel doesn’t merely call us into a relationship with Christ and one another, it also sends us out into the world on mission. The Vine is a church that seeks to both embody and proclaim the Gospel winsomely in the city of Madison. The embodiment of the Gospel will be expressed in our love for the city as we seek to meet its various needs. The proclamation of the Gospel will be expressed through our intentional relationships with people who don’t know Jesus. We will seek to love them and share Christ with them right where they are in our own network of relationships.

At The Vine, our value for mission will drive us to develop future leaders for the purpose of releasing them to become tomorrow’s ministers, missionaries, and church planters. Our vision is not only to build one church, but to build a movement of the Gospel expressing itself in the reduplication of both disciples and churches both locally and around the world.

I certainly hope to continue my blogging. It is a great resource for me to document many different things that I think are significant and provides a context for continued learning and theological/cultural reflection.

Nate (our pastor of teaching and outreach) needs to sell his house and all three of us still are working hard to finish our fundraising.  We also would love prayer for gathering the right people who are passionate about our vision for church. Pray that they would be sold out for God, the Gospel, and his mission.

Don’t Keep People At Arms Length

Dave Dorr:

Another way that we keep God at a distance is to hold people at arms length.  And this keeping people at arms length is a behavior that is constantly reinforced culturally.

We feel that it is not spiritual to experience God in a community.  For us the essence of spirituality is private religious experience.  To have our spiritual experience weighed by a community of people seems to limit our freedom and calls into question our authenticity.

This is seen when we utter the words “organized religion.”  It sounds about as appealing, and maybe even as sinister as “organized crime.”  If religion is organized, then, to us Americans, it seems like something is taken away from a relationship with God, not added.

But God will not have it this way.  His people are his way of speaking to us, his way of touching us.  What else does it mean when God says that we are his body?  If we are his body then, through people, God will make his will known to us.

And that is why keeping people at a distance, and not being part of an “organized” community, is so devastating to someone who wants to draw near to God.  Because the true God dwells amongst his people, with all our problems, foibles, and sins.  By dwelling among his people he hides from the arrogant, but draws near to those who have godly community.

Brief Update

Here’s a quick update for those of you in the Madison area following us via this page. As expected, our communication has been a bit thin lately as Zach, Nate, and I are working with our wives and families to wrap up details before relocation. This is a VERY busy time and we would appreciate your prayers as we work through all the details related to support raising, selling homes, developing details for the plant, etc.

Regarding our plans this summer, things are not exactly in concrete, but we are planning on hosting several BBQ’s in the month of July. It is our goal to have you all meet the team of guys leading this plant as you investigate how and if you will be involved in The Vine Church.

Toward the end of July and in August we are hoping to have weekly home gatherings (on Sunday morning) where we can spend some time worshiping the Lord, breaking bread, and learning more about the mission and vision of The Vine Church. We are hesitant to give more specifics at this point, but do assure you that we are very excited to hit the ground running in Madison. We are looking forward to meeting you and, by God’s grace, joining arms with you to see His kingdom advance in both Madison and around the world!

A Community of Confession

Missional Strategy

Psalm 1 – A Sermon

I (Zach) got the chance to preach on Psalm 1 recently to a group of college students at the church where I currently work. You might want to check it out.

The Vine in Madison this Summer

For those of you in the Madison area interested in learning more about this new church plant, we will be launching our initial gathering on Sunday morning, July 25th with weekly gatherings to follow. The location is yet to be determined, but it is likely we’ll be hosting these initial gatherings in one of the pastor’s homes in the Madison area. We’ll spend the first 7 weeks going over the mission and vision of The Vine Church as well as spending time worshiping the Lord through song, breaking bread, and getting to know one another. If you are interested in joining us for these early days of the plant, please don’t hesitate to give us a shout and let us know you are out there. In the near future we’ll be developing a more regular method by which to pass on updates, so your email information will be valuable in that endeavor. You can send your information to: info@thevinemadison.org. We are excited about joining together with you for the dream of spreading God’s glory by expanding His kingdom both in Madison and around the world.

Vitamin Z in the Top 100

Our own Zach Nielsen is #81 in the top 100 Christian blogs. If you aren’t following him yet, you better get him in your reader.

Scott