Connect with Point Community Church

With everyone cracking into gear at work in this new year I thought it would be a good time to share what the majority of my time will be made up of this year (and for a few years to come) and how you can connect with the work.

This year Jacques Erasmus (the lead-planter) and myself (co-planter) are hoping, God-willing, to plant and establish Point Community Church in the Sea Point and Green Point areas of Cape Town. At the end of this month our first three gospel communities (we shamelessly plagiarised that name from the Crowded House guys) will hopefully be up and running. So in order to get connected with us or stay up to date with how we’re doing check out our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter.

Top 8 for 2008: Everything

Who was I kidding? There’s no way I’m going to find the time to write a series of ‘top 8 for 2008′ posts between now and the end of the year so instead I’ll simply cram them all into one post. So here you have it, my top 8 for 2008 of everything!

Top 8 things I did or experienced in 2008:

1. Got married! (October)
2. Got engaged! (March)
3. Started planning and implementing a church plant (All year – but especially last three months)
4. Heard Piper, Driscoll, Chandler and Mahaney at the Resurgence Conference at Mars Hill in Seattle, spent time at the Journey Church in St Louis and met a whole lot of great peeps from Acts 29, and others, in the States (February)
5. Was taught Deuteronomy by Gary Millar – the best Old Testament teacher I’ve been taught by to date (September)
6. Road up Sani Pass – my first real 4×4 experience behind the wheel (October)
7. Decided to stay in Cape Town long term – gotta love this city (March)
8. Had my thinking about the gospel deepened and enriched ten times over by Tim Keller through numerous mp3s, articles and the odd blog comment (throughout the year)

Top 8 Blogs I followed in 2008 (See my 2007 list here):

1. Church Planting Novice – Jonathan Dodson. A newcomer to the list, this blog has been perfect for where I’m at in my thinking at the moment. So much wisdom and insight from a guy on the ground.
2. Between Two Worlds – Justin Taylor. Last year’s number 1 drops down one place – but still a great blog.
3. Tim Chester. Up from last year’s number 7 spot. Tim’s writing never stops enlightening, challenging and encouraging all at the same time.
4. John Scheepers. Give it up for the Saffa bloggers! John is a friend of mine who writes a great blog and brings a welcome voice to the South African Christian blogsphere.
5. Drew Goodmanson. Down from #2 – sorry Drew. Drew doesn’t post very often, but when he does its almost always worthwhile.
6. Justin Moffat. Another newcomer to the list. Justin writes an informative and challenging blog with an Anglican slant – I’ve enjoyed it a lot this year.
7. Michael Jensen. Michael drops down from last years 3rd but still turns out great post after great post. Plus he sent me a copy of his new book which I’ll be reviewing here shortly.
8. Jason Allen. Jason was one of the first people I became ‘blog friends’ with when I started blogging. I’ve always enjoyed his blog and the sanity he brings to some current trends that rage through the church blogging world.

Top 8 Books for 2008 (books I read this year – most of them are older than 2008 – please note that the books are a little one-sided topically because most of my reading this year revolved around my dissertation):

1. Total Church – Steve Timmis and Tim Chester. Ok so I first read it in 2007 but I’ve read it several times this year because of my dissertation and I still think its the most important book I’ve ever read on ecclesiology.
2. The Reason for God – Tim Keller. The first apologetics book that I feel comfortable giving to my friends.
3. Planting Missional Churches – Ed Stetzer. Great book with practical insight. Really helpful for where I’m at.
4. The Forgotten Ways – Alan Hirsch. Really good yet at times frustrating. I’m on the same page as Hirsch with a number of things – I guess I’m just a bit more conservative on one or two others.
5. Breaking the Missional Code – Ed Stetzer and David Putman. Another great help on all things missional.
6. On the Incarnation – Athanasius. I delved into a bit of church history this year and thoroughly enjoyed this one.
7. The King of God’s Kingdom – David Seccombe. Dr Seccombe (Doc) was my New Testament lecturer this year and so I got a chance to have a crack at his book. It’s a great overview of Christ in the gospels.
8. Jesus and the Victory of God – NT Wright. Vintage Wright – I don’t agree with him at every point but this is an important book.

Top 8 places I visited in 2008

1. Seattle, Washington, USA
2. St Louis, Missouri, USA
3. Castleburn, Drakensburg, KZN
4. Sani Pass, Lesotho
5. Lost City, Sun City, North West Province
6. Franschoek, Western Cape
7. Betty’s Bay, Western Cape
8. Durban, KZN (my old stomping ground)

That’s my year in a nutshell. It’s been the year with the biggest changes in my life to date. Not only did I get married but we decided to stay in Cape Town and plant churches here rather than in Durban. Things have come a long way in the last 12 months – here’s to an equally exciting 2009.

Merry Christmas all – have a great one!

Church Planting Foundations Conference

Here’s a line up of the speakers for the Cape Town leg of Acts 29‘s Church Planting Foundations Conference (2-4 Feb 2009):

Mike Gunn:
Mike Gunn is the pastor of Harambee Church in Renton, Washington. Mike helped plant Mars Hill Church in Seattle and now currently serves as the director of Church Planting Internationally for the Acts 29 Network.

Dave Fandey:
Dave Fandey is the pastor of a growing new church called, The Fields, which he planted in 2003. Dave wears many hats as he sits on the international board for Acts 29 as well serves as an adjunct lecturer at Biola University teaching New Testament and Leadership.

Al Barth:
Al Barth oversees and encourages church planting and church planting movements in Europe and Africa on behalf of Redeemer Presbyterian’s Church Planting Center. Al is a seasoned church planter with a particular passion for church planting movements in the major cities of the world.

JD Senkbile:
JD Senkbile has recently moved to Cape Town to oversee the Acts 29 Network in Africa. Before moving to Cape Town JD was involved with justice and mercy ministry at an Acts 29 affiliated church in Omaha, Nebraska.

Sam Groves:
Sam Groves is the pastor of Church on the Ridge in Pietermaritzburg, a young growing church which he planted with two other couples just over three years ago. He has a passion for church planting and cultivating communities of gospel-centered disciples.

Siegfired Ngubane:
Siegfried Ngubane serves both as a lecturer at George Whitefield College and as pastor of Mandela Park Community Church. In the past few years Siegfried has overseen a number of church planting initiatives in township areas in and around Cape Town.

Dave West:
Dave West is the senior pastor of Melville Union Church in Johannesburg which he and his wife planted. The church is heavily involved both in ministries to students as well as ministries to street children and HIV/Aids orphans.

Send me an email (stephenjmurray@yahoo.com) if you’re interested in attending.

Commencement Letter

Today I received my commencement/placement letter for 2009 officially accepting me to serve as a curate (that’s Anglican speak for apprentice minister) under the supervision of St Stephen’s Bible Church. So looks like I’m finally the real deal – well almost. For those of you confused who thought I was going to be involved in a church plant next year, don’t worry – I still am – St Stephen’s is just one of our sending churches and the church that Robin and I currently serve with.

Church Planting and a Messiah Complex

The pre-planting and planning phase of a church plant can almost be an incubator in the mind for an idolatrous messiah complex. Spending too much time playing over the future of what a plant might look like 5 years down the line can really begin to make you think that you’re going to save the world – or at least your suburb. It’s actually a deadly time, as I’m discovering, where visions of grandeur can build tons of little corrosive idols that can whip the carpet out from under the church plant. Maybe a little prayer is needed:

Dear Lord,

I can’t save the world – Jesus already did that. Please help me to put him up in the bright lights and not myself.

Amen.

Lessons from ‘Failing’ in Church Planting

Mike Edwards has a superb post full of lessons he’s learned in his experience of attempting to plant a church and ultimately never seeing it come to fruition. (HT – Michael Foster)

Total Church Conference Audio

I know this is half a month late, but given recent developments you can forgive me for my tardiness:

Drew Goodmanson has posted all the audio from the Total Church Conference that took place in San Diego earlier this year. Go and listen.

Where we’re Planting

Some of you from the other side of the Atlantic have asked me where exactly we’re doing our church plant next year. Well here are some pics of the areas of Green Point and Sea Point which are the two suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa in which we’ll be starting the work. They’re both on the Atlantic seaboard of Cape Town, right next to the central business district – in fact Green Point kind of just fades into the CBD.

Here’s a shot of both suburbs – Sea Point is the larger suburb on the right and Green Point is central – the CBD is in the background around the corner of Signal Hill which is the middle of pic. Table Mountain is in the background and the new soccer staduim and the fields around it (which are presently being transformed into sports complexes and other things) is in the foreground, the Waterfront is bottom left:

Here’s a close up of Green Point where you can see the construction underway (they’re quite a bit further ahead now) and Signal Hill in the background – Lion’s Head is the little peak behind Signal Hill which is above Sea Point (far right). The CBD is just out of picture to the left:

Here’s a shot of Sea Point from somewhere up on Lion’s Head. Sea Point is the most densely populated suburb in Cape Town along with the Townships:

And of course there’s also the world famous V & A Waterfront, one of our top tourist destinations, that lies at the base of Green Point – you can see the edge of the CBD on the left:

So that’s where we’re planting – possibly the most cosmopolitan and diverse area in Cape Town and maybe even South Africa. We will have our work cut out for us. Pray for us, or maybe if you’re able to, join us.

Ditching Worldly Notions of Church

“The church is always tempted towards a church of glory, whether that takes the form of grand buildings, political influence, global structures, charismatic personalities or mega-churches. But an approach to the church consistent with the gospel of Christ crucified and discipleship shaped by that gospel is an ecclesiology of the cross. That means power in weakness, wisdom in folly, and glory in shame. It means we must put our confidence in Christ’s little flock and the sovereign rule of God. It means we must put our energies into the church of the cross even if that means obscurity.

The problem is that ‘power made perfect in weakness’ is so counter-intuitive and counter-cultural that we do not believe it. We believe that God will use the powerful and important and impressive. But he does not. We need a radical change of perspective. We need to ditch our worldly notions of success. We need to ditch our modernistic preoccupation with numbers and size. We need to turn our notions of success upside down so that we align them with God’s kingdom perspective.” (Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church, p.194-5)

As I stand on the precipice of church planting and church leadership I’m overwhelmed by the need I have for God to come and do some serious reconstructive surgery in my heart so that I will lead his church with a theology of the cross and not a theology of my own glory.

The Myth of Pre-Constantine?

I guess this is kind of an open forum so I’ll throw out some thoughts and maybe we can all have a nice stimulating chat. Here’s the rub…

I’m still wading through material for my dissertation on missional church planting and today going back over Alan Hirsch’s book, The Forgotten Ways, I was struck by how much the missional crew hinge on the pre/post Constantine distinction. Now I think it is a major issue in the history of the church and it is foundational to the way that the church of Christendom panned out over the following centuries up until the enlightenment. What I’m not thoroughly convinced on yet is exactly what the pre-constantine church looked like. Missional gurus tend to paint this era as being highly organic, non-institutionalized, simple or small church meetings, anti-building, no top-heavy leadership and on the fringe of society in general. Sounds fairly similar to the emerging church paradigm doesn’t it – hence the obvious excitement for missional practitioners over these historical insights.

My question: Is that an accurate historical portrayal of the pre-constantine era? I guess I’m a little concerned that we become reductionistic about church before Constantine because it fits with our missional agenda and so we pick up on some distincitves from the era and gloss over others. Have I picked up all the organic/simple/non-institutional/fringe/decentralized distinctives in my reading from that era? Yes I have, but its also been a lot more messy than that at times. And so I wonder, just wonder, if we should perhaps refrain from making the pre-constantine era such a fundamental hinge to the contemporary argument and turn our focus rather to the biblical exegesis of missional life and practice? I don’t want to devalue the lessons of history at all but or the brilliant insights of missional gurus like Alan Hirsch, but coming from a reformed, evangelical missional perspective, I would like to see them rooted more within the context of biblical exegesis. What do you think (history buffs and all)?

Acts29 Church Planting Conference: Cape Town

If you have a Facebook account then you can sign up to attend the Acts29 Church Planting Conference happening in Cape Town from the 2nd to the 4th of February 2009.I’m sure there will be a more official sign up shortly but start by signing up on Facebook.

Church Plant Diary #2 – Prayer

Our first port of call in this plant has been to pray. Now this might sound obvious but its super easy to leave out. Like most Christians I really struggle with disciplined prayer – I have my good weeks and I have my bad weeks. But in reality I’m kidding myself about the entire venture if I’m not going to regularly get down on my knees and plead with God that he would be pleased to plant a church in Cape Town.

Jacques, my co-planter, got us all together just over two weeks ago for our first corporate prayer meeting. There were only 9 of us but it was the most exciting time we’ve had together around this plant so far. We’ve now committed to getting this group of people, and others who’d like to join, to pray corporately twice a month from now until January when both Jacques and I will start full-time on the plant. If you’d like to pray with us then here are some of the things you can pray for:

• Jacques and his wife Lindy are heading over to Redeemer Church Planting Center next month for a 6 week training intensive – pray that this would be an amazingly fruitful time for them.

• We’ve had a number of people mention interest in the plant to us – pray that God would start to firm up this interest so that they’ll commit full-time to the plant next year.

• Robin and I don’t currently live in the same suburb that we’re planning to plant in – pray that until we can find accommodation in Green Point or Sea Point we would make time just to explore and hang out in the area more, meeting people.

• Pray for Holy Trinity, Gardens and St Stephen’s, Claremont, our two sending churches that God would use this church plant to mature and grow their congregations in godliness and gospel-centered thinking and living.

• Most of all pray that God would, through this plant, seek to glorify himself as his Son is proclaimed in Cape Town transforming the lives of broken and lost people.

Church Plant Diary #1

Since the cat is out the bag I thought I’d start slowly blogging through the church planting experience I’m about to embark upon. This gives you a way to keep up to date with what we’re doing and a forum to give some critical feedback. To be honest the more I think about church planting the more I realize that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Sure I’ve read some books and talked to some peeps – but let’s be honest Cape Town City presents a conundrum of challenges and opportunities in its radical diversity and its going to need serious prayer and real hard work to see something start emerging here.

To date God has been very good to us in laying the groundwork in so many different ways through the people he’s brought into our lives and the way everything, so far, has just effortlessly fallen into place. My guess is that its probably not always going to be that way and we’ll need to have a long term view of the work we’re doing to keep going. So welcome to my church plant diary and feel free to make comments along the way as a group of us take on the city of Cape Town with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Three Blogs Worth Reading

In the past few months I’ve added some blogs to my sidebar without mentioning them in a post. Maybe you’re getting tired of the same set of blogs in you feed reader, well here are three more that I’ve begun following over the last few months:

Church Planting Novice: This is the blog of Jonathan Dodoson, a church planter in Austin, Texas and part of the Acts29 Network.

For What it’s Worth: The blog of Mike Kendall a pastor in the UK

Arieljvan.com: The blog of AJ Vanderhorst an urban church planter in Kansas City (I can never tell if Kansas City is in Kansas or Missouri or both?)

Go have a read…

Letting the Cat out the Bag…

I can finally tell everyone the news!!!

Some of you will be aware of this news already, some of you won’t, but today it all became official and so now I can post about it on my blog. We are joining and helping to head up a church plant in Cape Town City! As many of you know I’ve been completing my post-graduate studies at George Whitefield College this year with a view to going out to be involved in some sort of church planting ministry in the future. Initially Robin and I thought we were going to head back to Durban and be involved in some work there, but since January this year I’ve been in conversation with some people from our denomination about a church plant in the Sea Point and Greenpoint suburbs of Cape Town. Altough we’ve been fairly certain for the last 3 months that it was going to happen we had to wait for denominational approval. Well today we got it. Robin and I attended a selction conference where prospective ordinands are placed in various ministries throughout the country and there we met with some of the bishops of CESA and lecturers from GWC. They gave us the great news that they’re all keen on the idea of the plant and are happy with our involvement in it from January 2009 onwards! So we’re extremely excited about what God is going to do in this city through us.

I’ll be joining with a friend by the name of Jacques Erasmus to plant this church. Jacques has been working in the area with a ministry called Straatwerk (Street Work) for the last few years ministering to homeless folk, prostitutes, the homosexual community,  refugees and the night-clubbing crowd. He’s an amazingly gifted gospel worker with a huge heart for the unconverted – especially the marginalized in society. Together, with a small core team, we’re going to be launching an all out offensive on Cape Town come January. Please hold us up in prayer as we attempt this. Pray that God would be pleased to grow his church in these difficult places.

I’ll be updating you with news as we go along and give you more details to the plant as we flesh it out. Peace.

Acts29 Boot Camps in South Africa 2009

To all the budding church planters, and others interested, this is just an early warning call to let you know that Acts29 will be holding two Boot Camps in South Africa in January and February 2009. The first Boot Camp will be in Johannesburg 29th to 31st January before moving to Cape Town from the 2nd to the 4th February. I’ll keep you posted and provide more information regarding the venues as I get it. Please pass this news on to anyone who you think might benefit from finding out more about Acts29 and what they do.

20 Questions for Church Planters

Adrian Warnock has the low down on Scott Thomas’ recent talk at the DWELL Conference in London. Scott’s a cool guy heavily involved with Acts29 – I got to meet him briefly in February when I was at Mars Hill. In this particular talk Scott lists 20 Questions prospective church plant leaders should ask of themselves – they’re well worth a read.

Air Guitar, Theology and Church Planting

At the moment I’m busy studying some material for a practical theology seminar that starts on Monday morning and runs for the week. As soon as I finish that I’ve got a paper about Luther’s theology of ‘church’ to get cracking on. In between all of this I’m filling up on books about missional church, urban ministry and church planting as I prepare to put pen to paper on my dissertation. Along with all the theological studies I’m dreaming about church planting and next years plant (I’ll give you more details when I’m able to). In many ways it feels like playing air guitar – you think you’re a hard-core rocker but if you stood in front of a mirror and saw yourself you’d feel pretty stupid. For me its the difference between theologizing, studying and talking about the gospel and missional church and actually simply doing it. I’m tired of the talking – I want to breathe in the gospel deeply and get on with it.

Small Groups, Small Groups, Small Groups

In my last post I mentioned that Jason was posting on rethinking  small groups – well he also pointed me to a four part series entitled, ‘Church Planting that Starts with Small Groups‘ by AJ Vanderhorst. Check them out: Intro, Part I, Part II, Part III & Part IV. I’m not sure but there might be more parts to come so keep checking his blog.

Link Thursday

I’m kind of on break at the moment – although I’ve still got work to do (plus some of the details of a wedding to organise) – it’s kind of weird taking a break with work hanging over you. Well, whilst I rest, and the rest of you slave at your work, here are some links worth following up and having a read when you get a second:

Tim Chester has some audio online on the subject of ‘Re-thinking the Church‘.

I saw this a while ago and I forgot to mention it, but Jeff Vanderstelt, one of the founding elders of Soma Communities in Tacoma has started his very own blog on all things missional.

Jason Allen has been posting thoughts on rethinking small groups: Part I – Methodology, Part II, Part III – Strategy and Part IV – Leadership. (Jason I can’t find Part II #4-6?)

And finally, Adrian Reynolds thinks that there are tell-tale signs that suggest that what is going on in Florida with Todd Bentley at the moment might not be from God – I think I’m pretty much in agreement with him. (HT – Dave).