Christ Community Church Vision & Values - Bryan Brown

Vision

We live to enjoy and declare the wonders of God’s grace in Christ for the good of Brisbane, Australia, and the world.

We purpose to do this by

· Worshipping God in all aspects of life

· Experiencing the benefits of the gospel through an authentic community of believers and seekers

· Giving ourselves to Brisbane in service and ministry

· Building servant-leaders for the church throughout the world

Values to which we are committed

We value the gospel as the foundation for our relationship with God and people.

The gospel not only leads us to Christ but also carries us on with Him. This good news tells us that we are eternally loved and accepted by God through faith in Christ; therefore, we are able to love and accept others. The cross destroyed the barriers that held people at bay with God and each other. Our church desires to be a safe home where the love of God is demonstrated to one another.

We value wholeheartedness in corporate and private worship.

The gospel leads us to personally know God in deep and meaningful ways. God is primarily concerned with the condition of our hearts as we worship Him. Our pursuit of God is to mirror His passionate pursuit of us.

We value a lifestyle of prayer.

The gospel has made God accessible through prayer. The strength of our ministry is dependant upon God and will parallel the strength of our prayer life. We will be a people whose passion is to rest in the intimate embrace of our Father through prayer.

We value teaching that is Christ-centred and culturally appropriate.

The gospel gives us relevant and redemptive truths to teach. The person and work of Jesus is a powerful message for the Christian and the seeker, so grace will be our constant theme. We will teach the Bible with confidence that God will continually renew us through His Word as we respond in faith and obedience.

We value a life-on-life ministry model.

The gospel moves us to serve as representatives of Christ. Jesus left for us a model of ministry for the extension of His kingdom. This model was multiplying in purpose and personal, intentional, and equipping in nature. We desire our church to be characterised by a commitment to life-on-life discipleship.

We value a privilege mentality.

The gospel reminds us of our sinful condition and of God’s saving grace. Life is to be lived with the knowledge of God’s sovereignty in all things. This leads us to live life with gratitude regardless of circumstance because God is devoted to our good.

We value a decentralised ministry philosophy.

The gospel grants us the privilege of ministry. Recognising each member’s unique contribution to the body of Christ, we will equip people and encourage the use of their individual gifts for the corporate good. We desire to see all members labouring together.

We value growing leadership and ministries from within.

The gospel enables us to trust the Lord to raise up leadership and ministry opportunities. Leadership and ministries are most effective when they are developed from within. The continuation of our vision will only be as successful as our commitment to this value.

We value being kingdom focused.

The gospel draws us to affirm all work done for the kingdom of God. It calls us away from self-interest in our relationship with other Christian churches or ministries. We desire that the bounds of our fellowship not be determined by peripheral convictions but by the central truths of the gospel.

We value strategic risk taking.

The gospel empowers us to be uncomfortable. We are to be boldly stepping out in faith, aggressively using our gifts and resources to advance the gospel in Brisbane. The gospel empowers us to shake off our complacency and to expectantly attempt great things that only the power of God can accomplish.

Proposal For Discipleship - Bryan Brown

Christ Community Church

We live to enjoy and declare the wonders of God’s grace in Christ for the good of Brisbane, Australia, and the world.

We purpose to do this by
• Worshipping God in all aspects of life
• Experiencing the benefits of the gospel through an authentic community of believers and seekers
• Giving ourselves to Brisbane in service and ministry
• Building servant-leaders for the church throughout the world

We value a life-on-life ministry model.
The gospel moves us to serve as representatives of Christ. Jesus left for us a model of ministry for the extension of His kingdom. This model was multiplying in purpose and personal, intentional, and equipping in nature. We desire our church to be characterised by a commitment to life-on-life discipleship.

“An effective ministry plan consists of a clearly defined purpose, vision, and mission that is supported by a biblically sound and culturally relevant philosophy of ministry. … The overall plan is supported with action plans that define goals, specific action steps, timelines, and resources required to accomplish the vision and mission. Implementation of the plan is measured to determine what’s working well and what’s not.”

Functions that are needed internally to ensure an effective ministry plan:
1. Leadership Development*
2. Teaching and preaching of God’s Word
3. Life-on-life discipleship*
4. Evangelism*
5. Assimilation of new people*
6. Caring for God’s people

* Need to have a clear, effective, and reproducable plan

“Discipling others is a process by which a person with a life worth emulating commits himself for an extended amount of time to a few individuals who have been won to Chirst, the purpose being to aid and guide their growth to maturity and to reproduce themselves in a third spiritual generation” – Hadidian

Proposal

A 3-year training plan for making disciples very similar to The Journey by Randy Pope which includes leadership training and development, life-on-life group dynamics, missional outreach, and periodic training events for key issues. Attached is an outline of The Journey which I am proposing that we adopt and adapt to meet the needs above of Christ Community.

“Programs” – to have or not to have…that is the question.

Negatives
o Programs tend to be passive – preparation is dependent upon one
o Programs tend to focus on information and knowledge
o Low accountability
o Loss of mission
o “One size fits all” – Lack of personalization

Positives – (with the right leaders – it is always dependent upon leadership!)
o Provides structure and direction
o Cohesive for entire church
o A measure of quality control
o Provides a base from which to personalize
o Lets Leaders focus more on people, not just material

Questions / Concerns:

How does this effect current minsitry within Community Team structure?

What purposes does this fulfil that are not already being addressed?

What is the time commitment of those involved?

How do we start? With whom do we start? Where do the leaders come from?

march madness

It's that time of year again... when we all get to whine and complain about missing the best sporting event around. I've already got two strategies I plan to employ to at least see some of the games: Slingbox and iTunes. I did the iTunes thing last year and I really enjoyed it but it's not the same as seeing the games live.

I hope that we could have full participation this year from all the different areas (not Stateside). We especially need to get everyone involved so that the SA guys won't have as good of a chance to go for 3 in a row (Congratulations AC and Liz, I hope y'all have hung on to the winner's shirt so that you can mail it to me in Brazil after I win).

Fill out your bracket and sign-up for our group today!

CO Australia

There is a lot to catch up with. I am committed to our vision to build laborers on the campus, yet I also know that we need healthy churches to best launch them into an unbelieving world – and that is what I am burdened by.

We began meeting in August of 2003 to plan out our church plant. I have attached a couple of helpful documents we have worked on since then. We primarily used Tim Keller's materials on church planting. David has taken the lead from the beginning and has done a fantastic job – he is stretched to the max, but operating in many of his strengths. 16 of us were on the initial planning team (mostly campus staff and a few grads)

We launched the church plant in March of 2004.

Today we are 3 years into the plant and still wresting with a lot of issues – most of them are the right ones to wrestle with. One of the things we are doing is trying to best structure things for discipleship / ministry to take place in the context of the church – 70% of church right now is composed of ministry grads.

This is the definition of a “disciple” that we are working off of – trying to bring Matt28 into our world and define it… “A follower of Jesus Christ who is established in the faith and in basics of the Christian living, equipped for personal ministry in the church and to the unbelieving world, and purposefully engaged in the mission and ministry of Christ Community Church” – This is the goal that we lay before everyone in our church – a brief, but visionary target that we want everyone to embrace and move toward.

We have chosen to focus on a 4-fold ministry focus as a church - campus, business, community, and internationals. The campus is of course University Impact (CO in Australia). We are trying to encourage all grads to pick to focus their ministry on either community or business – whichever seem most natural for them. We have also just brought over Tony and Tracy Boyd to begin developing our ministry to Internationals living in Brisbane. We are only 1 year into this “4-Fold Focus”.

Community Teams – in 2006 we had 7 teams – met on weeknights in homes with 12-20 attending. We were burning CT leaders out with the responsibility of shepherding this many people. Burn out in the sense of needing a break, but still walking with God. Thankfully.

We are now restructuring for greater impact and less responsibility on a few people. In 2007 we are working from a toned down Perimeter Model. Basically there are 2 “Community Teams” – one on Wed night and one on Thursday. There are about 40-50 in each. Within the CTs, there are 15-16 Ministry Teams. There are probably around 18 prepped leaders each night(some are doubling up in expectation of dividing as we grow). Members were asked to sign up and then assigned to a Community Team and Ministry Team.

Format –
7-7:20 – Tea and Coffee
7:20-7:45 – Large Group Teaching / Stimulus – David takes Wednesdays and I take Thursdays (Teaching through the Attributes of God)
7:45-8 – Feedback, Large group questions or discussion
8-9 – divide into single-sex Ministry Teams – these have a 3 fold agenda to discuss : Personal Walk with God, Prayer, and Personal Ministry. Each week one of the 3 is emphasized for 80% of this time – in a 3 week period you would seek to cover these thoroughly in each other’s lives.

We are just now doing this. We have gotten good feedback. It gives David, Bruce, and me great contact with most members of the church – and gives more direct leadership to everyone. Many of our grads are more than ready to lead 2-3, but leading 10-15 was maxing them out.

Our hope is to see people develop and progress in the target of being a disciple of Jesus within our church (see definition). I am sure this is enough info for now. Keller's materials are good, Popes book is very helpful and Perimeter’s website has given us tons of thoughts and direction. Please give us feedback and any encouragement as well! We need it.

Our staff team pray for you guys this morning. They are very excited to see how the ministry is progressing up there. It is a privilege to partner with you. Feel free to copy and paste this to a blog so others can give us feedback or ask questions. Is there a blog for dummies that I could read??

bb - Brian Brown

a structure for growth

Simple question: how can we structure the graduate/singles ministry to provide room for healthy growth? Right now we are divided into 2 groups (down from 4) with 15-20 in each group. It's manageable for Brian and I to lead right now but there's not much room for future outreach nor addition of future grads. The momentum is high due to the development of relationships but as it grows it's becoming more difficult to manage schedules and to go deeper in conversation. I'll just leave that question out there for a while before putting up what thoughts I've had.

Thoughts on Transitioning Graduates

I was thinking that it might be a good time to take down some thoughts on difficulties we’ve encountered in transitioning graduates from the campus to the “real world.” I would love to hear your thoughts on any of these & also any ways you’ve found to overcome these. Here we go:
Difficulties encountered in transitioning graduates:
- First difficulty encountered is upon the staff person who is discipling the person. Usually, this person is being equipped to Evangelize or Establish & then they graduate. The staff person is faced with the reality of making the decision to:
Bring the disciple on staff as an intern
Follow the disciple off the campus & help them grow – Thus distracting the staff from having his laser focused on the campus.
Transition the disciple from “his disciple” to “another person’s disciple who is focusing on graduates”
Trust God to complete the laborer completion process.

The second difficulty encountered is by the disciple – He realizes that much of the movement he’s been a part of is focused on the campus. He also realizes that he goes from being a leader in a movement to just another face at work & a beginner level employee at that.
The third difficulty is creating community within the body – For instance, on campus A & B were C’s disciple. D & E were F’s disciple. Etc, etc. and then after they graduate, they now find themselves in this new “graduates group” we’ve created and A, B, D & E aren’t really in community & actually find out that there was quite a bit of competition among them while they were on campus. Therefore, community is trying to be built on a pretty shaky foundation.
Another difficult faced by the disciple is Character Issues that really show when the pressure gets turned on after graduation. Weaknesses really show through that weren’t near as visible when they were on campus involved in the movement where life was much “easier” in many senses.
Finally, after taking the time to write all these thoughts down, it’s really easy to see that these disciples need not be overlooked or “thrown out to the wolves” in a sense. These need to be thought for/cared for/shepherded and lead. They need love & they need to be involved in a Leadership Environment that consists of:
Life on life; B. Stretching; C. Supernatural Dependence; D. Truth Spoken in Love; E. Experience and Explanation; F. Others Intensity; & G. Focus on the Lost.

Would love to know your thoughts on this. I know I’m making a lot of assumptions in writing this but feel like those who are reading this will be assuming much if not all I’m assuming in posting this. Brian Firpo

Dowdy thoughts on grads

Top objectives for the past month: reconnect with the graduates after the holiday season, build some momentum among them while the students are away at the project, think ahead and do some initial planning about our philosophy for this ministry.

Highlights: I was encouraged about their desire to connect with one another and the plans they made over the break to be together. We had some clear thoughts about the LPV, which gives me hope that those thoughts will flow out into the grad ministry. Reconnecting with Michael Hart (pictured in green shirt, he was on staff here in 2002 and has been attending Covenant Theological Seminary).

Lowlights: I felt like some of the graduates attended the project out of a lack of vision and I felt like some of their participation in the project revealed just how behind we are in receiving them and helping them grow in this phase.

Things learned/observed: So far it seems like the natural tendency of the grads is to think more for their fellowship/social needs and not their more holistic needs nor the needs of others. They also tend to try and re-create what they've experienced in the past in the ministry. Their experience so far has defined what is "good" and they continue to look for that.

Top objectives for the next month: We need to think more about our general ministry philosophy for the graduates, align the ministry with the church's cycle for the year, and receive well those coming from the project, connecting with what God has been doing in them on the project.