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Archives For November 30, 1999

Worth the Risk

Charles Kiser —  December 15, 2008 — 11 Comments

Yesterday was a wonderful day in the life of the Storyline Community. Our first worship gathering went off without a snag.

Worship Gathering

No explosions. No violence. No earthquakes. No fainting. It was great.

Thanks to all of you who have supported us in prayer as we prepared. I’m so proud of my team. All of us worked together with God to do something greater than ourselves.

We talked yesterday about the story of Zechariah and Mary (Luke 1:5-56). One doubted God’s promises; the other trusted. One decided it wasn’t worth the risk; the other decided it was.

Contemplative Stations

Contemplative Stations

For all the challenge of planting a church, I’m sitting here this afternoon thinking: It’s worth the risk. God is worth the risk.

And of all the amazing ways to bring our gathering to conclusion – one of our Storyline people decided that yesterday was the day for him to declare that God is worth the risk of faith.

Sergio Sanchez doesn’t have much in terms of a spiritual/religious background. He grew up in Spain where most of the people he knew were atheists or agnostic. One of his parents is nominally Catholic; the other non-religious.

Sergio Sanchez

Sergio Sanchez

He’s always sensed that God was there. Sergio came to the US this past summer to teach Spanish in the Dallas Independent School District. We connected to him through a mutual friend and he began to explore the story of God more deeply.

Yesterday, Sergio made God’s story his own story and was baptized into Christ.

Sergio wore and old shirt that he used to wear for good luck and then threw it in the trash after he was baptized as a way of symbolizing that the new creation is here: the old has gone, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17).

What’s great is that Sergio’s parents were visiting from Spain and were able to see it. The don’t speak a lick of English, so our first baptism ceremony was bilingual. Sergio’s girlfriend, Kara, translated for us and did a marvelous job.

The Water Was Cold

The Water Was Cold

baptism

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Rejoice with us for the ways God is alive in the Storyline Community!

In Baptism, Church Planting, Worship Gathering
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Worship Gathering this Weekend!

Charles Kiser —  December 11, 2008 — 4 Comments

Worship Gathering

What we’ve been working toward for the last couple months is coming to fruition this weekend with the first monthly worship gathering of the Storyline Community.

Thanks to all of you who prayed that we’d find a venue to meet in — we did, and the doors opened for it in providential ways. Why did I doubt?

This is a new beginning for Storyline, though perhaps not in the same way the first worship gathering is for many new churches.

For many church plants, the launch of the worship gathering is a sort of grand opening — the birthday of the church.

When asked when they launched the new church, most church planters respond by mentioning the date of the grand opening worship gathering.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with that.

But Storyline’s worship gathering plays a different role. In the Storyline Community, the worship gathering demonstrates that we’ve succeeded in developing a network of house churches that now need a gathering in which they can come together for mutual support and celebration.

The launch of our worship gathering is not the launch of Storyline as much as it is an outgrowth of our house church network.

In fact, Storyline actually launched on May 4 when we started the first house church gathering. We launched again in the middle of October with the start of the second house church gathering.

And hopefully we’ll launch many more times in the future…one day sending teams of people who will go elsewhere to begin similar networks.

Rejoice with us as this community of house churches comes to life further through the advent of the first worship gathering. It is in a small way God’s own advent in Uptown (though he’s been here all along, of course).

On February 8th, we plan to host an “Open House” worship gathering where we’ll invite all our friends, partners in mission and the Uptown community to get a glimpse of what God is doing in the Storyline Community. The venue for the occasion will be one of Uptown’s coolest…we’ll keep you in suspense.

Everyone is invited.

We hope in that gathering to say thanks to our friends and supporters and also to pledge to our community friends that we are here to serve the cause of justice and mercy in our city. If Uptown Dallas is not a better place for Storyline having been here, then we are failing in God’s purposes for us.

Please pray for us as we continue to arrange the details for the weekend. We want more than anything for it to inspire people to trust God more deeply in their lives.

You can read more about our gathering at www.storylinecommunity.com/upcoming-worship-gathering.

In Church Planting, House Churches, Prayer, Worship Gathering
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God’s Surprises

Charles Kiser —  October 23, 2008 — Leave a comment

I’ve been reflecting in the last couple weeks about God’s surprises for Storyline since we’ve started—situations where things have taken shape, by God’s Spirit, differently than we expected.

Example #1

We expected that we’d be facilitating a weekly worship gathering starting in September 2008. We realized that such a timeline would allow us only four months before the worship gathering began to nurture a community of house churches—which to us are the foundation and heartbeat of the Storyline Community.

Gailyn Van Rheenen, one of our mentors and leader of Mission Alive, asked us why we were in such a hurry to start a weekly gathering. We weren’t sure why. So we shifted our expectations and planned for a weekly worship gathering in February 2009.

We began to wonder if a weekly worship gathering at any point in the early life of Storyline would distract and drain our resources away from what we saw to be most important (house church ministry). So now we’re expecting to launch a monthly, rather than weekly, worship gathering in December 2008.

Who knows, the day may come when we move to bi-weekly or weekly community worship gatherings. For now, we’ve sensed it will be better to “build out” incrementally than to front-load a bunch of programming we might later have to deprogram.

I believe it was God who surprised us with these developments.

Example #2

We expected that Storyline’s house church gatherings would consist almost exclusively of young adult professional types. We also expected that Storyline would be a community that cared about justice—loving the poor, caring for the marginalized, helping the helpless.

And then we started befriending and serving the poor. Many of our young professional friends began inviting their poor neighbors to our house church gatherings.

At first I was uncomfortable with this. Would it scare other Uptown young professionals away from Storyline to encounter our poor friends in our gatherings?

Larry James, a prophet who leads Central Dallas Ministries, said, “You should read James.” So we read James, especially the second chapter, and were reminded that it’s a sin to show favoritism to the rich and neglect the poor.

My instincts were wrong. So we’ve taken on a posture of full embrace toward all who desire to be a part of our community.

God surprised us by who he drew into our gatherings.

The Takeaway

God will undoubtedly continue to surprise us—hopefully whether we cooperate or not. We can only seek to be attentive to his leading.

I’m reminded of one of the Proverbs: “In their hearts human beings plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps” (16:9).

We have a very limited view of what paths we’ll actually take. We plan the best we can—and we trust that God, who is infinitely creative in the way he oversees the unfolding of our lives, will establish our steps.

Earl Creps says there are at least three theories on how to plant churches: 1) the big bang theory—start a big gathering and draw the community; 2) the evolution theory—grow relationally at the grassroots level; and 3) the intelligent design theory—whether big bang or evolution, God is the one orchestrating the process.

I like that. Regardless of the model, I want God to be Storyline’s designer.

In Adaptability, Church Planting, Leadership
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Sending vs. Multiplying

Charles Kiser —  October 6, 2008 — 6 Comments

We experienced our first house church sending ceremony last night. It was wonderful. Thanks to all of you who are praying for Storyline in this significant transition.

The basic movement of our gathering was: 1) celebrate God’s work in the first house church; 2) reflect on the way God calls the church to be a sending body; and 3) pray and anoint leaders to go and start a new house church.

The foundational text for our gathering was Acts 12:25–13:3:

When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark. Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

In the same way Jesus sent out his disciples, in the same way the early church followed God’s leading to send teams out in mission, we sought to send some out. Our house church commissioned Julie and I and the Cones to start a new house church.

The sending of the Twelve by Duccio di Buoninsegna

The Sending of the Twelve by Duccio di Buoninsegna (14th Century)

The approach we took was decidedly different than the traditional small group multiplication model where the group splits in half and goes in two different directions.

Our model—influenced by the insights of Jared Looney, Kent Smith and John White at the Abilene Summit just a couple weeks ago—looks more like the traditional church planting model: a church sends out a team of church planters to plant a new church.

Such an approach preserves the fabric of community in the sending house church and sends those who are called by God to go.

I have not had stellar experiences with the multiplication approach in the few times I’ve tried it. People are resistant and even resentful when they’re asked to abandon relationships they had come to cherish.

John White mentioned that in his experiences, after the third or fourth round of multiplication, participants refused to invite new people to their gatherings because they were so exhausted by constantly investing themselves in new people (only to be dragged away from them later).

The sending approach seems like a much healthier alternative and was affirmed by coaches, mentors and Storyline participants. Many of our Storyline people told us in one way or another: “I feel good about this.”

That kind of feedback is important. Sending shouldn’t be ominous, painful or scary. It should be inspiring, exciting and invigorating—because it is!

I think it is significant, too, the way this experience points to our value for adaptability. We were expecting up until just a couple weeks ago that we would be facilitating a multiplication ceremony and not a sending ceremony.

But after listening to Looney, Smith and White in Abilene (all of whom are experimenting in mission in ways similar to us) — the one class I attended while I was there, by the way — I began to sense God was leading us to do something different. So we processed, discerned and adjusted accordingly. God has his ways of getting our attention.

So, starting next Sunday, the Kisers and the Cones will begin to gather with new friends in hopes that God will bring another church to life in the midst of them.

God has done it before. He will do it again…

In Church Planting, House Churches, Mission, Reproduction
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Be Fruitful and Multiply

Charles Kiser —  September 15, 2008 — 9 Comments

Starting a new church is certainly full of challenge and struggle. In the words of Earl Creps: “Church planting is the art of surviving disappointment.” I’ve lived that statement on more than one occasion.

At the same time, new churches also provide times of intense joy and excitement. Just as we marveled when Ryan was born, so we find ourselves marveling at the way God is bringing Storyline to life.

Most recently we’ve been excited to anticipate and plan for our first house church multiplication. It’s been our dream from the beginning that Storyline would develop into a network of house churches: the first house church would start another, those would start others, and those would start others and so on.

Healthy things reproduce. Healthy plants bear seed that produce new plants. Healthy animals give birth to new animals. Healthy humans conceive new children. It’s the same in the kingdom of God – healthy disciples help to make new disciples and healthy churches start new churches.

Our first house church gathering has started to gain some traction in our community. New relationships have been formed. Unchurched and dechurched friends have started participating in the life of our church. New leaders are stepping up to the plate. This little community is already embodying in significant ways our values for dependence on God, mission, life change and genuine relationships.

So within the next few weeks we’ll branch out and start the second house church. We’ll have a special gathering where we reminisce about how God has been at work, commission the next generation of house church leaders and discern which house church God is calling each person to join in the future.

We’re also excited that later this fall we’ll start a monthly worship gathering that will draw our house churches together for times of worship, storytelling and vision casting. Larger worship gatherings will help to create a sense of synergy among house churches by helping them see that they are part of something bigger than themselves. These gatherings will also give us an opportunity for broader exposure in the surrounding communities of Uptown, Downtown and Oak Lawn.

We do not, however, envision that these larger worship gatherings will occur more than monthly, at least in the early stages of the church’s life. This is a strategic decision because to us the majority of church life and mission takes place in the context of smaller communities of faith. We don’t want our limited people resources to be wrapped up in planning for weekly worship gatherings such that we neglect to put most of our energies into developing house church life and mission.

Rejoice with us for the way God is at work in our midst. Pray for us as we seek to do the hard but rewarding work of multiplying.

In Church Planting, House Churches, Mission, Reproduction, Storyline
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