Archive for January, 2009

Top 3 Innovators @ Innovation3 | Catalyst

Posted by Todd Engstrom in austin stone, church, leadership on January 31, 2009

Matt Carter, our Senior Pastor, was named as one of the top 3 innovators at Innovation3 by CatalystSpace. Good stuff!

Top 3 Innovators @ Innovation3

January 30, 2009

The Innovation3 conference was this week and it was cool. Did you go?

There were over 100 speakers, but here are my Top 3 picks for most interesting/innovative (no offense if you’re not on here!).

1) Dave Browning – leads Christ The King. It’s a church that focuses on simplicity and multiplication. They spread around the country and around the world by starting a small group in an area, and grow that group and multiply. Once they have enough small groups in an area, they start gathering together at a “worship center.” They’ve been doing this for almost 10 years, they now have thousands of groups, mainly in the NorthWest and foreign countries = tens of thousands of people saved and being discipled.

2) John Bishop – God’s doing cool things at John Bishop’s church up in Vancouver. 3,000 have been baptized in the last 5 years, I think. And he’s all about people, talking about the unbridled truth, and being real. I love his heart.

3) Matt Carter – Pastor of The Austin Stone. They’ve also grown really quickly and admit that that’s been a problem for them. While they were growing quickly they were struggling to get people assimilated and into community. They got people in groups and were hoping community would result, but they just got ingrown and selfish groups. But they’ve learned that when they give the groups a mission, community comes as a byproduct of the group members being on mission together. Just focusing on community, you get neither mission nor community. But focusing on mission, you get both mission and community – they propose.

via Top 3 Innovators @ Innovation3 | Catalyst.

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Consumerism and the Church

Posted by Todd Engstrom in assimilation, books, church, theology on January 31, 2009

A great quote from David Wells:

Churches which preserve their cognitive identity and distinction from the culture will flourish: those who lose them in the interests of seeking success will disappear.

In our churches we may have made a deal with postmodern consumers but the hard reality is that Christianity cannot be bought. Purchase, in the world of consumption, leads to ownership but in the Church this cannot happen. It is never God who is owned. It is we who are owned in Christ. Christianity is not up for sale. Its price has already been fixed and that price is the complete and ongoing surrender to Christ of those who embrace him by faith. It can only be had on his own terms. It can only be had as a whole. It refuses to offer only selections of its teachings. Furthermore, the Church is not its retailing outlet. Its preachers are not its peddlers and those who are Christian are not its consumers. It cannot legitimately be had as a bargain though the marketplace is full of bargainhunters.

For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s Word…” II Cor 2:17

No, let us think instead of the Church as its voice of proclamation, not its sales agent, its practitioner, not its marketing firm. And in that proclamation there is inevitable cultural confrontation. More precisely, there is the confrontation between Christ, in and through the biblical Word, and the rebellion of the human heart. This is confrontation of those whose face is that of a particular culture but whose heart is that of the fallen world. We cannot forget that.

David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World, pg. 308-309

HT: Reformation Theology

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The Austin Stone on Campus – Review

Posted by Todd Engstrom in austin stone, college ministry on January 31, 2009

Wednesday night we gathered the students of The Austin Stone to worship on campus and cast vision for this coming semester.

I preached on our call as believers to make disciples through Matthew 4:18-22 (we are called to radical obedience to a radical Jesus), Matthew 28:16-20 (we are given the task of making disciples of all nations), and Matthew 24:14 (Christ will return when this task has been completed).

Hopefully we’ll have an audio of it up soon so you can listen.

Aaron Ivey, who led us in worship, has some great thoughts from Wednesday night here.

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