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New Role Day #1

November 1, 2010 in church planting, Mission, missional, Sending Church with 1 Comment

WOW! I have been the Executive Pastor at LifePoint Church for over eight years. Yet, today I begin a new role that God has been prepping me for all my life.

Today, I am no longer the Executive Pastor of LifePoint Church. My new role is church planter/campus pastor of the soon to be Brussels, Belgium work of LifePoint Church. I am pumped about the new work and being able to launch something out of nothing, but I must admit it is a weird feeling right now. I am sitting in an empty office. It hasn’t always been this way though. It was only last week that everything was emptied out, given away or moved to my temporary apartment. This week I am working each  morning at the church office and in the afternoons closing up our Smyrna home so we can begin the transition to Brussels.

Over the next 2 weeks we are selling what is left of our belongings and driving to Texas to spend a little time with family before we move to Belgium. We are working toward being in Belgium shortly after Thanksgiving with our Texas family. This time in our life is exciting and bittersweet, anxiety filled and  full of anticipation at what God is doing with our family and our church.

Thanks for all your prayers for our family and the transitions that are coming our way.

Upstream Collective and Larry McCrary

October 25, 2010 in church planting, Mission, Sending Church with 1 Comment

The Upstream Collective and Larry McCrary have been vital partners with LifePoint Church to see the launch of the Belgium church planting team successfully planted into the European context. I want to highlight the ministry and let you hear from Larry about missional engagement.

Tell us about your family and your present place of ministry.

I am from Knoxville, Tennessee. My heart is orange though this Fall we are not talking about that much. My wife Susan is the Foreign Language Department head for Black Forest Academy in Germany. She is also a teaches Spanish and works with children with learning difficulties. We have two children. Megan lives in the states where she attends college and our son Parker is a student at BFA. We have lived in Europe (Spain and Germany) since 2001.

How did you begin the Upstream Collective?

A couple of years ago Caleb Crider and I began dreaming about what would it look like to start a network that would focus on helping the church think and act as a missionary. For me it came out of my own church planting experience in the United States. I was a part of 8 church plants in different roles and positions from a team member to the lead pastor. My one “do – over” would be that while I led our churches to be engaged in our community I did not do a very good job of having them engage globally. Missions would be something we would get to someday, when we were larger, more stable, better budget and more bandwidth for ministries we would get involved. This was a mistake and I am so happy to see many new churches are engaging early in the life of their church.

What are the primary goals of Upstream Collective?

The Upstream Collective (UC) is a group dedicated to providing churches and mission networks with ideas, resources and services that help the church think and act as a missionary.

What do we do?

UC helps churches think and act as a missionary by:
1.    Influencing the mission conversation. Key ways UC influences include writing blogs, articles and books; speaking in churches as well as at conferences; providing media resources for churches and mission networks; and drinking a lot of coffee with an assorted host of U.S. and national church planters and leaders as well as missionaries.
2.    Stretching churches’ expectations and vision. Through story-telling, fostering innovative ideation with churches and dreaming together. We see churches moving toward taking ownership of and acting on a call to mission that is often larger than the original big dreams that the church leadership was envisioning.
3.    Facilitating the sending church. Whether its giving the idea, the permission to pursue it, consulting on vision or training in implementation and coaching, UC is holding up a model of churches that are biblically sending and holding the ropes for their sent ones.

What are JetSet tours?

The Jet Set Tour isn’t your typical mission trip. Then again, the people you’ll meet won’t be your typical missionaries. Jet Set Tours are hosted in various cities in Europe and provide a week-long opportunity for you to experience a European culture not only through tourism, but by learning about the people. We will prayerwalk the streets of Barcelona’s Gothic neighborhood. We meet with artists in Rome and talk to Christian businessman about what church is like in Zurich. We ask professors in Madrid about the worldview of the students they teach.

The point of Jet Set Tours isn’t that you come in and present the gospel to the masses. The point is that you first listen, then learn, then live out the gospel as you meet individuals – much as you would if you were to move to Europe yourself.

Jet Set Tours feature a variety of activities to help you catch the vision for the host cities: prayerwalking, orientation to local worldviews, interaction with local believers, introduction to formal and informal ministry already being done and plenty of time to enjoy the attractions, but with the same purpose in mind. Everything during your time overseas with Jet Set is to help you envision how God would have you, your church and individuals from your church participate in His work overseas in a first-person, hands-on way.

How can someone get involved in one of the tours?

We have a few trips coming up this next year. One that you may be interested in that we only have a few spots left is to Prague and Budapest with Michael Frost. You can sign up here.

You have been writing lately about the Sending Church, why is the Sending Church important to you?

We believe Jesus gave the Great Commission to the church. Because of this, the church must remain central to mission strategy throughout the process from deployment through exit. UC helps churches find a way to have an incarnational presence on the field. We love our partnership with Lifepoint and their team to Belgium. It has been fun watching them grow as a team and prepare to be cross cultural workers. We are excited about what God is doing with them as they follow Him. We seeing more churches have an interest in sending their workers as teams from their church to the mission field.

How can someone get involved with the Upstream Collective?

Getting involved is quite easy. You can follow us on our blog. We have a monthly newsletter that comes out that you can subscribe to. We are often speaking all over the country and in Europe so this newsletter keeps you up to date. You can also email me at larry@theupstreamcollective.org if you want to find out how to get involved more personally.

If you would like for us to talk to your church about Upstream and our ministries please write me and we can begin the conversation.

Training Days

October 14, 2010 in Belgium, church planting, Sending Church, Uncategorized with 3 Comments

Earlier this month (Oct.) our Belgium church planting team had a training retreat to help us prepare for launching into Western Europe. The retreat was a two day crash course designed to build our team, cause us to think missionally about church planting in a European context and ready us spiritually for the challenges ahead.

The five families that have committed to move were involved as were our children. In total we had ten adults and ten children walking through age appropriate missions training that was designed to meet our varied needs. There was training for the adults, teen specific training and a learning track offered for our elementary and pre-school aged children.

The Upstream Collective has been our training partner for the past year and half as we have walked this long process of building our team and preparing for life in Brussels. The Collective designed our retreat to meet the specific needs of our team. They have given us valuable training  and support as individuals and as a church. I cannot say enough about this organization and their willingness to walk side by side with us in our journey.

We also had the privilege of partnering with MK2MK for the teen-aged members of our team. This organization offered great facilitators and leaders that really helped our students tremendously. Thanks Joe and Lilly for spending time with our families.

Please continue to pray for each of the families that are getting ready to launch out. We are all at varying places in our fundraising and preparation. We know that God will be glorified in what we are doing.

Sending Day

September 20, 2010 in Belgium, church planting, LifePoint Church, missional, Sending Church with 1 Comment

Yesterday was an incredible day for my family. We had the privilege of being commissioned by our church to go to Belgium and begin the process of planting our lives for the Gospel.

Another family, the Christensen’s, were also commissioned to go and live in Belgium for the Glory of God. We are glad to have others going with us as we live life in community.

We are so thankful for our church and our family who helped to make yesterday a day we will never forget.

To become one of our prayer partners please register here.

To be a part of our sending team please look here and here.

A Global City – Brussels

August 18, 2010 in Belgium, church planting, Influence with 0 Comments

Brussels is listed as #11 on The Global Cities Index 2010.

from the article:

So what makes a Global City? Not size alone, that’s for sure; many of the world’s largest megalopolises, such as Karachi (60), Lagos (59), and Kolkata (63), barely make the list. Instead, the index aims to measure how much sway a city has over what happens beyond its own borders — its influence on and integration with global markets, culture, and innovation. To create this year’s rankings, we analyzed 65 cities with more than 1 million people across every region of the globe, using definitive sources to tally everything from a city’s business activity, human capital, and information exchange to its cultural experience and political engagement. Data ranged from how many Fortune Global 500 company headquarters were in a city to the size of its capital markets and the flow of goods through its airports and ports, as well as factors such as the number of embassies, think tanks, political organizations, and museums. Taken together, a city’s performance on this slate of indicators tells us how worldly — or provincial — it really is.

Interview with Michael Carpenter (pt.2)

August 12, 2010 in church planting, Influence, missional with 0 Comments

Yesterday, I introduced you to Michael Carpenter and Matthew’s Table. Here is the completion of our interview.

What role does Java Joe’s play in your ministry?

Most churches these days have some kind of café. Anywhere from a coffee pot in the fellowship hall to full blown coffee shops. We are not a coffee shop in a church. Our church is a coffee shop and our coffee shop is our church. In effect, Java Joe’s serves as a missional space. Alan Hirsch says that a missional space involves the creation of a third place where Christians and not-yet Christians can interact meaningfully with each other.

Church planting rests in the engagement of people in a meaningful dialogue around Jesus and spirituality in organic ways (i.e., evangelism). Java Joe’s, therefore, is a natural space for people to organically engage in discussions of meaning, spirituality, etc.  In a way, people are allowed to “belong” to our church community by becoming a regular at Java Joe’s before they believe. By “belonging” I am simply referring to giving all people, wherever they are in their life’s journey, the opportunity to find love and community so that they can encounter the transformative power of Jesus and become like him.

What has been the biggest lesson you have learned through the birth of the Matthew’s Table?

First and foremost, SLOW DOWN. We were so eager to get things moving that in a lot of ways we took on too much before we had the structure in place to facilitate discipleship and we ended up loosing some people in the process. We want our structure to be more open source rather than complex and rigid – sort of like a stake supporting a tomato plant. What I mean is, even an organic tomato plant needs the support of a stake or the fruit laying on the ground would rot. Therefore, even this organic expression of a New Testament church needs “stakes.” But, we do not want the structure to be so rigid that we are not creating space for leaders to emerge.

Secondly, church planting is HARD. I think it is easy to get all these delusions of grandeur about planting a new church, but church planting is a constant source of frustration, disappointment, and letdown. Yet at the same time it is the most rewarding thing I have ever pursued in my life.

What are you reading that is challenging you the most?

First is Michael Green’s, Evangelism in the Early Church. In this book, he seeks to appraise some the aspects of evangelism in antiquity in light of recent study. He accomplishes this by looking at evangelism theologically. Without much effort one discovers that most theologians are not concerned with evangelism and most evangelists do not concern themselves with theology. So Green sticks closely to a theological study of evangelism to help the reader understand afresh the gospel the early Christians preached, the methods they employed, the character they displayed, and the extent to which they were prepared to think their message through in light of contemporary thought patterns so that the church today may be recalled to her primary task.

Second, is David Platt’s, Radical. I am currently teaching through this book on Sundays and we are reading it together as a church. Platt’s book messes with our American assumptions about who Jesus is, what he accomplished, what he expects of his followers, and what he has sent us to do.

How did you decide to launch the Protégé Program?

I borrowed the idea from Erwin McManus and Mosaic Church in LA because for us, it wasn’t and couldn’t be about just starting one church that got bigger and bigger- it had to be a church that would plant churches that would continue to plant churches, that would continue to plant churches. And to do that we needed someway to train and send leaders of these churches. The Protégé Program is what fills this need.

We currently have one protégé serving with us – Casey Turner. Casey will be finishing up her degree in Christian Ministries at Belmont and is doing a line of one-on-one study with me on the missional nature of the church. She is currently serving as a barista at Java Joe’s where she is responsible for not only serving coffee, but building redemptive relationships with our customer base. Also, Casey will be engaging students at Cumberland University with the goal of starting a Bible study on campus this fall.

How can people get involved in Matthew’s Table and Java Joe’s?

First and foremost prayer. We need those spiritual warriors who will commit to pray for us daily. Secondly, we could use some committed followers of Jesus who could come in, embrace our vision, and serve as marketplace missionaries in our city. Third, we need financial support. While, the TBC and Nashville Association have been generous in funding our efforts, none of our pastors, including myself, receive a salary and that can make things difficult for us and anyone else who may want to join us. Furthermore, my the house we had been living in has been sold out from under us, so we had to move about 6 weeks ago and start paying rent which always takes some “creative” efforts to make each month. Lastly, a personal request. I am in desperate need of some dental work, but I have no insurance. So if someone reading this is a dentist or knows a dentist who would do some pro bono work it would be greatly appreciated.

Interview with Michael Carpenter of Matthew’s Table (pt.1)

August 11, 2010 in church planting, missional, Sending Church with 1 Comment

I would like to introduce you to Michael Carpenter, the pastor, of Matthew’s Table. The church he pastors is radically different than the other churches in Lebanon, TN., but I will let him explain what that difference looks like in reality. Michael is a leading thinker and practitioner in the area of missional engagement  of the church in its local context and the church today can learn much from what Matthew’s Table is experiencing.

How did you begin Matthew’s Table?

We began dreaming about Matthew’s Table about two years before we ever moved to TN. If one reads through the Gospels, they will find that Jesus spent a lot of time not only teaching, healing, casting out demons etc, but also simply sharing a meal with a group of people. Furthermore, many of his teachings occurred in the context of being gathered around a table. So, what we find in the stories of the Gospels, is how the lordship of Christ is not only revealed in his working or miracles or his casting out of demons, but his Lordship is also revealed in ordinary, everyday places. Nowhere else in the gospels is this more obvious than in how Jesus ate and drank and with whom he did so (ex: Matt 9:9-10).

But to answer your question, Matthew’s Table began very simply with a backyard bar-b-que with friends, neighbors, and relatives. On a June day in 2008, we cast a vision for a church community that is seeking to be a people who live Jesus centered, missional lives. The outcome being a transformational shift in perspective (faith), purpose (hope), and passion (love) evidenced in how we relate to enemies and friends, neighbors and strangers, our families and the world. Many gathered that summer day made the decision to join God’s mission through Matthew’s Table in Lebanon and the world.

What does a typical gathering of Matthew’s Table look like?

Food. Eating together is a central part to our gathering. Meals are a reminder of our common need for God and his faithful provision. The command Jesus gives in regards to worship is to remember him and his sacrifice for us through a meal. When we eat together, we commune around this truth. In doing this, we demonstrate the Gospel to each other week after week. So every time we gather together as a church community we eat and drink in remembrance of Christ – looking back to the cross and forward to his return.

Learning. For us, the Bible is the primary authority that shapes us for how we live as a community in the world. We believe that the story the Bible tells informs every aspect of our lives. Our reading of the text and preaching from the narrative each Sunday is a reflection of this value. Also, we take a very dialogical approach to preaching and teaching. So one can expect a lot of questions, answers, and questioning of answers. This kind of inquiry and reflection requires a patient, intentional process on our part.

Kids everywhere. We have a designated “kid’s korner” but children are included in every aspect of our gathering. Sometimes we have to pause until a baby stops crying or a another tattles on someone for not letting her use a crayon – typical family stuff – but Jesus did say “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” So maybe we have something to learn from them as well. Besides, children are not only God’s gift to parents, but also the church. In other words, we all take a vested interest in each other’s children.

How did you decide on Lebanon, TN for Matthew’s Table?

The short version is that we were given my Grandmother’s house to live in after she passed away in ’08. I grew up in Lebanon, but never thought I would come back here in order to plant our church. Up until the offer on the house came about, we had been praying and seeking to go to a city in the Northeast. However, Lebanon seemed like where God wanted to send us.

In Lebanon there are a lot of churches and most are doing a great job of reaching and serving the people they are reaching and serving. But there are also some pretty big gaps. Even with all the churches, only about 25-30% of the population is showing up to church on any given Sunday.  Furthermore, Wilson County is the fastest growing county in the state with a lot of young families who like the proximity to Nashville, the great school system, and the small town feel of Lebanon.

Which One Are You?

August 4, 2010 in church planting, missional, Sending Church with 6 Comments

What is your preference for the type of church you or your family attends or would attend if they meet with a church gathering?

More Traditional

More Non-Traditional

More Organic/Missional/Incarnational

Remember, all of these are preference based. So, you are not better, more spiritual or more righteous because you prefer one over the other.

Weigh in and let me know.

Anyone, Anywhere Can Help

July 31, 2010 in church planting, Family, Mission with 3 Comments

There is a great organization that my family is affiliated with called His Commission. They are committed to helping missionaries, pastors and church leaders spread the gospel to all nations. His Commission was started by Byron Britain as a way to utilize his business gifting (selling vehicles) for the cause of Christ around the world. He owns Britain Chevrolet in Greenville, TX. I know Mr. Britain and have done business with him and can attest to his integrity and his love for the Lord and the church. Through His Commission Mr. Britain is committed to giving the commission on any vehicle sale to the missionary that recommends people to his business. That means, if you purchase a vehicle from them Mr. Britain will pass along his commission on the sale to the missionary and the sending agency who sent them. This is huge for those who have to raise their support.

With the advent of the web and the popularity of vehicle websites someone can purchase a car from anywhere in the United States and have it delivered to their doorstep. I have observed how people purchase vehicles online with complete confidence they are getting a fair and honest deal. Through His Commission purchasing a vehicle of any make or model is possible, not just a Chevrolet. For those who are skeptical of purchasing a vehicle online Byron will put your fears to rest. You will deal directly with Mr. Britain, the owner of the dealership.

Here is an opportunity for you to be involved in partnering with the Goen’s as we move to Belgium. If you are looking for a new or used vehicle call, email, visit their website or go and see Byron Britain at Britain Chevrolet.  Please tell them that Kyle Goen recommended you purchase with Byron Britain through His Commission and you want the Goen’s to receive the commission.

Thanks Byron for your heart for the Lord and the nations. Thank you friends for helping out from anywhere and everywhere in the United States.

Paul the Missionary

July 28, 2010 in church planting, missional, Sending Church with 0 Comments

I have been reading Paul the Missionary by Eckhard J. Schnabel for the past year. Literally, it has taken me this long to work through the book and try to digest what I am reading. It has been challenging and interesting from a practical standpoint in light of the fact my family is about to move to another country and plant roots. Attempting to learn for the biblical example of the Apostle Paul has been a very rewarding endeavor.

Though I am not quite finished with the book I am wondering what other books have you found beneficial for living a “on purpose” intentional Christ-centered life in front of your neighbors and friends?
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