Ten-by-Twenty

This morning in Worship Pastor Jerry Mitchell briefly mentioned a future goal of Crossroads … ten new church development initiatives by the year 2020 - that is “10 x 20″. You will hear more about this in the Fall, but we are creating a flexible plan to accomplish this large and challenging goal through local and foreign projects. While these may be new churches, church leadership training centers, support for a new church leader, or something slightly different, the one thing that they will have in common is that they will effectively and strategically expand the ministry of local churches.

10 x 20 is the outworking of our commitment to mission (one of our five key words). And mission is really the overflow of our worship affecting our personal relationships, local ministry partnerships, and our global endeavors. In other words, as a worshiping community we expect that we’ll be bringing the good news in a variety of ways to the world that begins at our doorstep. We trust that 10 x 20 will be a result of the effective outworking of connecting, equipping, and serving within our fellowship.

The Page

I picked this quote up from another executive pastor blog: “You will never be on the same page unless you have an actual page.” That is something that Jerry and our ministry staff are intentionally working towards … getting our ministry philosophy, strategy and commitments in an agreed upon document that becomes the page we all want to be on. It would certainly be much easier and faster if we were starting from scratch but then where would the challenge be?  

Look for Pastor Jerry to share some of our “page” over the next few weeks.

Mission

Along with worshipping, connecting, equipping, serving we expect our membership to engage in the mission of the gospel.  Fulfilling the great commission is the logical outcome of Building a Community. 

First, it is our desire that each Christian live as a missionary right where they are - that is, we all will live redemptive lives and share redemptive words to effectively bring the good news to those around us. The mission field of the church begins are out own front door.   

Second, as a community of believers we want to do our part to bring redemptive change to greater Seattle as well - especially the Eastside areas.  To that end  we will develop the missional impact of CBC locally by seeking to create intentional structures to bring the gospel to those in our local community. We will also engage in partnerships with a select strategic ministries in the community at large for the sake of the Gospel. 

Finally, Crossroads continues to be committed to world missions.  We will always seek to strategically partner with those committed to bringing the truth to countries and peoples where the gospel is not yet established. 

We are building a community … to change the world. 

How are you participating in God’s mission to the world that begins in Eastgate?

 

Serve

“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies-in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Peter 4:10-11, ESV)

The fourth of the five words related to our strategic plan at CBC is Serve. We seek to have every member serve one another in ways appropriate to their own spiritual maturity. In fact, we desire that Crossroads would be known as a “church with 800 ministers” as we live out Ephesians 4:12 where leaders strive “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,” (ESV). Each member should be serving each other and carrying out the ministry of the church, which is the natural outworking the pastors’ work of equipping. “Minister” is just another name for a servant, not merely a title for someone compensated by the church (more on that later). In other words every believer in the church is needed to carry out the work of salvation, discipleship, and formation.

We minister to one another through the use of our spiritual gifts (see Romans 12:3-8 & 1 Corinthians 12 for lists) summed up in 1 Peter 4:10-11 as either speaking or serving. The end result of such serving is that God is glorified as the members fulfill their God-given responsibility and move others to deeper relationship with Christ.

As with other concepts, there is far more to serving than we can write here. At CBC there are numerous opportunities to use our gifts from simply caring for one another to teaching in various contexts.

Whom are you influencing towards Christ-likeness inside and outside the church through your service?

 

 

Equip

“Equipping” has always been a key element of Crossroads’ ministries. In fact, it is in the biblical job description for pastors given in Ephesians 4:11-14. Pastors are called to

 “…equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (ESV)

Multiple very long posts could be written about equipping and training, but simply stated, we develop ministries and programs at Crossroads with the desire that men, women, children, and students be maturing in three areas, which taken together reflect “sound doctrine” at work in their lives:

• Character - life and values marked by proven qualities of biblical maturity.
• Content - understanding the Bible and doctrine in ever-deepening fullness.
• Competence - skill in biblical living, service, and mission.

We desire to equip every believer so that they are growing in biblical, godly maturity. Each one should be skillfull in living - able to serve Christ in their families, their church, their communities. We do it through preaching, teaching, mentoring, discipleship, and sometimes, just creatively hanging out with one another.

We seek to equip every member seeking the greatest spiritual maturity for each by teaching sound doctrine and provoking obedience.

n  How are you continuing to be equipped for ministry and spiritually formed in your faith?

Connect

Jerry Mitchell writes that it is his intent that at CBC “we will connect every member in vital community as we assemble together in large and small group settings”. 

At the most basic that means:  

• We want everyone to be connected to Christ. People need salvation!
• We want people to be connected to Crossroads Bible Church. Membership is important to us.
• We want every member to be connected to one another to such a degree that they can meaningfully practice the “one anothers” of the New Testament.

 Connection is also foundational to equipping, serving, and our mission. We have several ministries that facilitate connecting at Crossroads, and we are committed to developing effective and meaningful places to connect.

n  Where are you connecting with other believers in vital relationship?

 

Jerry on Our Vision

Pastor Jerry Mitchell has a brief, basic, overview of our vision and strategy which he’s posted on our church home page:

We believe that the church is the pillar and ground of truth for this age. It exists for the glory of God to fulfill Jesus Christ’s great commission to make disciples throughout the world. The Elders and Pastors of Crossroads Bible Church have adopted “Building a Community to Change the World,” as our simple vision statement to capture our distinctive strategy to achieve our part in the great commission.

We will focus our energy in four areas of the Christian life to achieve mature discipleship in the lives of believers who fellowship with Crossroads Bible Church. We will Connect every member in vital community as we assemble together in large and small group settings. We will Equip every member through the preaching and teaching of sound doctrine which leads to an ever-maturing obedience. We will train every member to Serve one another in ways appropriate to their own spiritual maturity. Finally, we expect every member to engage in some way in the Mission of the gospel both locally and globally.

These concepts are vital to our strategy and philosophy of ministry which I’ve begun (slowly) unpacking on this blog. One of our highest priorities for the next few years is to revitalize ministry programs so that every member of CBC will be encouraged, and have opportunity for, connecting, equipping, serving, and doing the mission as an outworking of our worship.

I’m excited about what is coming together. It means a bit more re-structuring for our staff (we’ve already done some to accomodate growth), adding some additional staff, and a lot of communication to come.

 

Worship at CBC - A Few Thoughts

Worship is a significant priority for believers. In fact, it is the ultimate priority. It is one of our five key values, and the consideration of this concept alone could (and has) resulted in lengthy books and blog posts. Knowing that most online readers will choke after much more than a screen or two of text, I’d like to briefly highlight some thoughts about “worship” in the context of Crossroads’ ministry. Over the life of this blog, we’ll attempt to periodically expand on these.

We seek to regularly focus the entire church on God his works by considering who God is and what He has done. We come together as a broad community to engage together in bringing God glory in praise, prayer, communion, baptism and expository preaching of the Scriptures. We submit ourselves to God and honor Him by our presence. To that end we have made several commitments that may be distinct from some other churches.

We hold that, rather than targeting a certain demographic in worship, we should understand worship as the broadest common point of equipping, connection, service and mission for the entire church - young or old. To that end we embrace and encourage a blended style of music that might be meaningful across generations, and we hold that the Word of God preached will work in the hearts of all through the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit. We also hold that it is vital that we all endeavor to be worshipping together regularly as an entire community.

• We desire that all believers from Junior High age up, regularly attend and participate worship services. We encourage parents to model and encourage this commitment with their adolescents. (of course, some parents choose to train their younger children in the practice and presence of worship as well). We do have youth ministries, fellowship groups, home groups, men’s groups, women’s groups and other ministries that are more accessible for different demographics.
• We hold that the careful, verse-by-verse exposition of Scripture is the best approach to preaching to unwrap the whole counsel of God for the entire family of God.
• We also believe that the worship services of the church are primarily for believers who should, out of the overflow of that worship, live as redemptive agents in the world. We also believe that unapologetic worship and teaching of the Scriptures will impact those who do not yet believe.

Five Words

My last two posts were about staffing at Crossroads. One of the key considerations we have as we go about the process is how each position and potential leader fits into our strategy and philosophy of ministry. Every church has a vision even if it isn’t clear or well communicated. The leadership at CBC has been working over the past year to redevelop our vision and strategic plan. Senior Pastor Jerry Mitchell will be talking more about this over the next few months, but we have already begun to arrange our staff around that vision and hire new staff with it in mind.

Worship. Connect. Equip. Serve. Mission. Those five words are at the core of what we want to do. We want every program, every staff member, and every member to be engaged in these important concepts.