Learning from the Church in Asia

Flying somewhere between Seoul and Bangkok, I began counting the number of international ministry trips I've done in my lifetime to pass the hours -  a bit like counting sheep to fall asleep. I started flying internationally in 1990 and worked it out to be around 100 trips by 2023, not  including the many times I've driven across international borders. This is not a flex. It's a confession. While I love the nations, international travel has lost its novelty for me. My body is not designed for it. My soul does not long for it. Long haul flights in particular, make me feel every year of my age. I can no longer shrug off jet lag like I used to. It hovers around like an unwanted visitor who has overstayed their welcome.  

So, why do I still do it? 

Very simply,  I do it because I believe embodied visits impart something to churches that videos, zoom calls and books do not. The Apostle Paul, in his inestimably great letter to the church in Rome, wrote that he longed to be present with them so that he might impart some spiritual gift to them to make them strong, that they might be mutually encouraged by each others faith. 

I do believe that in some way Rynelle and I impart something to churches when we travel. I also know for sure that we always gain some mutual encouragement from being with them. Having just returned from our 10 day trip to Asia where we spent time with our dear friends at One Light Church in Thailand and Redemption Hill Church in Singapore, though my body is tired, my heart is full. Despite my travel complaints above, both visits were a real joy, re-kindling treasured friendships and strengthening gospel partnerships. So,  I waned to share some of the encouragement I have received from being with them. 

Of course, Asia is not monolithic. It is vast and wonderfully diverse. Thailand and Singapore themselves are vastly different from one another, both culturally and economically. But collectively they have something to say to us, so I am reflecting on the gift of the Asian Church broadly to us as the American Church broadly. 

What does it have to teach us? 

A Minority Faith is a Robust Faith

First, it teaches us that a minority faith is a robust faith. Thailand is just over 1% Christian, while Christianity has slightly more influence in Singapore at 11%, but in both nations, Christians are a vast minority. Bhuddist monks are so revered in Thailand that they have special seating for them in airports and Bhuddism is by far the majority religion at 94%. The spread of religions is more even in Singapore, with Bhudddism at 31%,  Islam at 15% and Taoism at 8%, while 20% of the population identify as having no religion. Overall though, the religious rights of Christians in Asia are fragile to non-existent. Churches live at the mercy of watchful and mostly suspicious government authorities who fear that their growth may disrupt the religious and cultural status quo. People who become Christians are often viewed as betraying their families, their faith and their culture, so there is a significant cost to following Jesus. Yet, this minority faith reality serves to forge an astonishing common bond among Christians. 

While the debate rages on about whether America is or should be a Christian nation, there is no debate for me as to the quality of Christian that is forged in a minority faith context. It is simply a more robust faith because there are no social benefits to becoming a Christian, so believers count the cost of following Jesus in more sobering ways than do Christians in the U.S.  Does this mean that we should wish that Christianity becomes a minority in the USA in order that it should flourish? Certainly not.  But neither should we fear the fact that we are living in an increasingly secular post-Christian reality. It creates more robust Christians, while a majority Christian nation tends to create more nominal Christians. 

An Embattled Gospel is a Treasured Gospel

While Christians live lives that are embattled by hostility to the gospel in Asia, there is a treasuring of the gospel that is marvelous. I spoke to a man in the Singapore church who was from Malaysia, which is a strict Muslim country. He personally knew of people that had been  imprisoned or killed for trying to convert Muslims in his home country. He was sensing a call to leave the relative comfort of Singapore and return to Malaysia, but was wrestling with the danger of the call. As he talked you could see that despite real fear,  the love of Christ was compelling him. 

 If you compare the last words of Bhudda to the last words of Jesus you will understand why Christians from primarily Bhuddist nations treasure the gospel. On his death bed, Bhudda's last words to the monks around him were, "Monks, work hard to earn your salvation!" In contrast, Jesus last words to those who surrounded him at the cross were, "It is finished!" 

Christ finished the work of redeeming humanity from slavery to sin, paying our debt in full with his own life to set us free. While grace calls us to worshipful effort in serving God, it is opposed to earning of our salvation. Asian Christians treasure the grace of God in Jesus that has freed them from slavishly having to earn merit with God. There is a palpable relief and joy because of the gospel. Make no mistake, they are generally sacrificial and highly disciplined. But they treasure the gospel. You can hear it in their voices as they sing. You can see it in their faces as they speak. You can hear it in their earnest prayers. An embattled gospel is a treasured gospel.

A Communal Christian is a Healthier Christian 

The communal nature of Christianity in Asia is compelling. The idea of being a Christian who is not part of a church, just doesn't make any sense to a Christian here. For a start, culture is far more collectivist, less individualistic. But also, following Jesus without the encouragement of other Christians and godly leaders is just too hard.  We should take our cue from them. A Christian walking alone is a Christian in walking in danger.  One Light Church in Thailand builds community by feeding their whole congregation a simple lunch after their morning service. Nobody rushes off to their favorite restaurant. It's more important to be together. RHC in Singapore is a bigger and busier church with 5 different congregations so there is no after-church lunch, but still, people linger after each service in their rented hotel ballroom, chatting at length and praying for one another. Both churches have facilities that are solid but minimal - no high end coffee shops or playgrounds to get people to stay around. (I am for both of these, by the way!)  And yet, there is a profound priority on an unhurried gathering that weaves a strong communal fabric within the church. While both churches do Christian counseling and community groups it seems as though much of the disciple making and counseling is happening organically and relationally, rather than programmatically and professionally. This makes for a more healthy Christian.

A High Carb Diet is the Best Kind of Diet!

Not really. But seriously! Lots of walking, 5 small meals a day, lots of carbs, and very few overweight people. What are we missing? 

You may think I am idealizing Asian Christianity. Make no mistake, there are many qualities of Christianity here in the USA that have resourced the Church in Asia. Our music, our books, our seminaries,  our innovation and our generosity have fueled the mission of Christ in Asia in remarkable ways. But let's not fall into thinking that the resourcing is a one way street. Far from it. The Church in Asia has so much to teach us, and in the years to come I believe the American churches that are humble enough to learn from our brothers and sisters there will be noticeably stronger than those that don't.

 I'm forever thankful to God for Asia and particularly, the Church in Asia. 

Broken for Blessing: Embracing the Pain of Subtraction for the Joy of Multiplication

Illustration by Kip Henderson

“Jesus took the loaves and fish, gave thanks for them, broke them and distributed them to the crowd.” John 6:11

When I read the story of the feeding of the 5,000, I still see it in vivid flannel graph images stuck up on a room divider in our Sunday school classroom. I can smell the salt and flour in the play dough and hear my teacher ask, “What would you say if Jesus asked for your lunch?”

Anyone who knows me knows I am great at meal bartering. As a kid, I was always looking to swap my cheese and chutney sandwiches for something better from one of my schoolmates. Not much has changed. I still try to barter when I go out to eat with my wife, because what she orders always seems better than mine. Needless to say, this miracle spoke to me back in that Sunday school class on a visceral level.

This was more than swapping a sandwich or dinner plate. In John 6, Jesus has compassion on the hun- gry crowd and asks His disciples, “‘Where are we to buy bread, so these people may eat?’ He said this to test them, for He Himself knew what He would do.”5 Andrew, one of the disciples, finds a boy with five loaves and two fish and Jesus seems to think this lunch will do the trick. So, the little boy with the five loaves and two fish is asked to hand over his whole lunch. John writes that Jesus took the loaves and fish, gave thanks for them, broke them and distributed them to the crowd. The food was multiplied so that all 5,000 men, as well as women and children, ate their fill (the whole crowd was likely closer to 20,000). What a stunning catering miracle! Jesus was a homeless man who provided a meal for a multitude with a little boy’s lunch.

But I have some questions about the story. First, was the lunch given willingly or taken? There are no details of the exchange, simply, that Jesus took the loaves as well as the fish.6 I have to give Jesus and the disciples the benefit of the doubt here because they don’t seem like playground bullies. Still, I imagine the little boy must have been a bit reluctant to part with his lunch, don’t you? Another question. Why a boy? Why someone who had no easy way of replacing the re- sources he gave up? That seems unfair. But my biggest question is, why did Jesus need all five loaves and two fish for His multiplying miracle? If He was powerful enough to multiply loaves and fish for 20,000 people, why couldn’t He just have done it out of one loaf and one fish, leaving the boy with the rest?

That’s the rub for me in this passage. For some rea- son, Jesus requires the boy to hand over his whole lunch. He seems okay to leave him, for a moment, with nothing to eat himself so that others can be fed. That moment must have felt like a lifetime on an emp- ty stomach. Jesus seems comfortable invading the boy’s margins in uncomfortable ways. This was not just a sandwich barter. This was a sandwich takeover for the sake of others. The miracle was made possible because the boy was willing for his whole lunch to be broken for the blessing of the crowd.

This is the very heart of what it is to be used by Jesus for the sake of others, isn’t it? We say, “Jesus, use me to bring Your life to others.” And He does. Yet very soon after we come back to Him saying, “Jesus, I feel used! I feel empty!” He takes all we have; blesses it, breaks it, and multiplies it to bless others. There is no bless- ing of the crowds without the breaking of our loaves. Many people want to be part of the blessing, but few want to take part in the taking and the breaking.

This is the story behind our multiplying story. It is the story of every small or medium-sized multiply- ing church. We have never felt that we’ve had enough resources to feed the crowds but we’ve wanted to be involved in Jesus’ feeding miracle. We know that ulti- mately Jesus, not our churches, is the Bread of Life. And yet we believe that planting churches is the most effective distribution system to get the Bread of Life to hungry people. So we’ve said, “Lord, we are putting our bread in Your hands, even though it’s not that much. Take it, break it and multiply it for the sake of others.” It has been stunning to see many hungry souls fed with the Bread of Life because of this.

I must warn you, though, that this is a dangerous vision. We recently walked with a Southern California church of around 100 adults who felt called to plant a church into Washington, approximately 2,000 miles away. They sent twenty of their best people includ- ing two prominent leadership couples. The send- ing church didn’t just drop to eighty. They quickly dropped to sixty adults because some who were left behind felt like the church just wasn’t the same as it once was! A year later the church had shrunk by a fur- ther twenty people and the lead pastor resigned, feel- ing distraught by the decline of a church that had felt so healthy just a year prior. Eighteen months into the new church plant it had grown steadily, seeing people coming to faith, new leaders installed and disciples being made. It has now reached around eighty adults. But the sending church, tragically, has closed.

The truth is that there can be no multiplication without subtraction, and multiplication feels like subtraction for quite some time before Jesus restores the margins of our resources. The gap between subtraction and restoration can threaten the life of a sending church. I don’t know about you, but I like resource margins. Yet multiplication means Jesus invades those margins of finances, leaders, volunteers and energy. We find ourselves feeling empty and used in the process, even

though there is joy in seeing people nourished with the Bread of Life in a new place. We feel the pain of subtraction amidst the joy of multiplication.

There is great testing of faith in the “feeding 5,000” miracle, both the disciples’ faith and that of the boy. Being a multiplying church will test your faith to its limits, too. Is Jesus able to feed the multitudes with the little we have in our hands? Will He just take what we have to bless others and leave us empty-handed indefinitely?

When Jesus requires something of us that seems un- reasonable, it is a test both of our faith and our pain threshold. C.S. Lewis wrote about this when his wife was suffering from cancer. “We are not necessarily doubting God will do the best for us; we are wonder- ing how painful the best will turn out to be.”7

John’s insight into his best friend in this miracle is stunning in verse 6. “He said this to test them, for He Himself knew what He would do.” In other words, when Jesus’ multiplying miracle tests our faith because it seems so mysterious, we must learn to give Him the benefit of the doubt. He knows what He is doing, even if we don’t understand it.

While Jesus seems to require everything the boy has, He uses it to feed the multitudes. “He Himself knew what He would do.”8 While the boy must have felt the pain of subtraction, the disciples are able to gather up twelve baskets full of leftover fragments. The crowds didn’t get just enough—after they gorged themselves on the fish and bread, there were twelve baskets of leftover fragments. The phrase leftover fragments im- plies both abundance and change. When we surrender our resources to Jesus to be broken and multiplied we can be sure He will restore them abundantly, but we are also surrendering the form in which they are restored to us. He restores fragments. Multiplication brings with it a new normal. Our lives will never be the same.

Jesus has never restored our comfortable, self-serving vision of the church to us. We are permanently ruined with a new vision of brokenness for the sake of blessing. For some people, this way of doing church is too unsettling. They have left Southlands to look for a church with a less disruptive vision. But Jesus has restored and continues to restore baskets full of fragments—finances, properties, investors, leaders, servants and friends, though not necessarily in the same form as they were given.

In summary, I want to suggest three ways of think- ing that can catalyze a movement of medium-sized multiplying churches:

A willingness to let Jesus invade our margins

Southlands began multiplying under my watch in 2012 when we had around 500 adults and 100 kids in average attendance. We sent three pastors, nine- ty adults and fifteen kids down the road to start our first multisite community. It was a shock to the sys- tem to send just under twenty percent of our church to a neighboring city; so much so that after a month I asked one of the three pastors to come back! Four years later though, by God’s grace, we’ve multiplied four times. One of those was an autonomous church plant into Thailand. The other two were multisite communities into neighboring cities. It’s been incred- ibly costly because every time we’ve multiplied we’ve had to yield our margins of leadership, people, fi- nances and ministry. And in a medium-sized church, they are margins you can ill afford. It can leave you breathless, but to see Jesus’ life in these new gospel communities is breathtakingly beautiful. We feel that we’ve been an integral part of Jesus’ multiplying miracle of the five fish and two loaves. We’ve had to put the loaves and fish we have into His hands to be bro- ken, and He’s blessed that. It’s then that subtraction begins to turn into multiplication. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus used every bit of that little boy’s lunch for His multiplication miracle? He could have left the boy with a loaf or a fish, but He used it all. Of course, it’s easier for large churches to multiply without invading their margins too much, but apparently, that’s not the only way Jesus works.

When we surrender our resources to Jesus to be broken and multiplied we can be sure He will restore them abundantly, but we are also surrendering the form in which they are restored to us.

The call to be a multiplying church is a costly one whether you are small, medium or large, but it will help your church to avoid self-preservation and self-promotion, as well as passivity.

Ultimately, the call to be a multiplying church will involve you in the faith adventure of seeing your resources multiplied for the sake of others’ blessing.

Jesus knows what He is doing.

So what are you going to say when He asks you for your lunch?

Ordinary Churches can do Extraordinary Things

While Broken for Blessing is in the final stages of layout and editing before official release this summer, I thought it may be helpful to drip feed a few chapter excerpts to give a sense of the themes and direction of the book. It will be published by Advance Publishers and will be available for purchase on Amazon and Kindle by the end of July. 

INTRODUCTION: ORDINARY CHURCES CAN DO EXTRAORDINARY THINGS

In some ways, Southlands is just an ordinary church. Planted in the late 1960s in Southern California, her roots sprang up from the fertile soil of the Jesus People Movement. Thousands of young people, many of them hippies, were being saved and baptized down at Pirate’s Cove in Newport Beach through the ministry of Chuck Smith and Lonny Frisbee. They strummed guitars around camp fires with bare feet and long hair. They were captivated by the love of Jesus and their love spread like a beautiful epidemic. But theirs was a restless faith. They longed for a less buttoned up expression of church. Some of them became preachers and started churches up and down the West Coast in search of a more relaxed faith. Southlands began as one of those California Jesus People churches. 

Like many of those churches, Southlands has had a few different names and gathered in a few different places. She’s had four lead pastors over five decades. She’s also navigated her seasons, much like any other church. There’ve been springs of expansion and renewal. She’s limped through falls of decline, schism and the deaths of key leaders. Sometimes she’s endured winters of pruning and consolidation, where the only fruit on her tree seemed to be tenacity. At other times she’s thrived in summers of favor and refreshing, basking in the warmth of God’s presence. Jesus has been faithful to this church in all her seasons, much like any other church. 

Southlands has been a medium-sized church for most of her 50 years. Nobody boasts about owning a mid-sized Sedan, do they? Medium sounds well, ordinary. When it comes to church these days, it seems you either go for broke and build a mega-church, or you deconstruct and go small, meeting in your home. I’m not trying to assess the merits and demerits of church size, but rather to say, Southlands is neither really large or small. I suppose, if we counted our congregations together and the pastors bribed their kids with donuts to stay for the second service to swell the count, we’d just about qualify as a large church. I’m not against large at all, but being large has never really been our main aim. We’re a church made up of small to medium sized congregations. I suppose that’s also quite ordinary. 

In other ways though, Southlands is no ordinary church. The fingerprint of God has marked her in extraordinary ways, not the least of which is the mark of multiplication. This book tells the story of that peculiar mark. While Southlands was still a medium-sized church she started multiplying through planting churches, and by God’s grace, she hasn’t stopped since. As far as I can tell, the call for Southlands to be a multiplying church began in the late 80s, when church growth by addition was all the rage. Multiplication was simply not in the vocabulary of the average small or medium-sized church leader back then. Some day if you got big you might consider it, but certainly not before.

Against this backdrop, Jesse Mason, the lead pastor of the church at the time, had a vivid vision during a time of prayer of a map of the Southland with multiple points of light spreading from one point. The Southland is the colloquial term for Southern California, a region comprising 10 counties with a total population of just under 23 million people.  Jesse sensed God say to him, “I will multiply points of light from this church across the Southland.” Jesse had very little strategy to support his vision, but he was a man of great faith and so he held fast to it. In 1992 Jesse met Dudley Daniel, the founder of a church planting movement  that began in South Africa. After numerous visits to the church, Dudley introduced Jesse to Chris Wienand, an influential South African church planter who later moved with his family to Los Angeles for what would become a church handover in 1996. So convinced was Chris of the vision God had given to Jesse, that he re-named the church Southlands and began to prepare her for her new normal. 

Chris had a few compelling mantras, one of which was, “God is more interested in our sending capacity than our seating capacity.” It was more than just a mantra. To demonstrate his vision, he converted the church sanctuary into a basketball gym, removing all the pews and stained-glass windows. He wanted a set-up-tear-down-church-on-the-move that would train folk to be ready to go into school halls and cafeterias and community centers to plant new churches. And they did. Under Chris’s watch, Southlands began training leaders and planting churches. Extraordinarily, in 14 years the church multiplied 12 times. Chris had an unusual grace to train leaders and send them out. I once heard him say, “I see this church as a greenhouse of plants to be sent out. I want to empty the greenhouse every five years.” He didn’t quite empty out the greenhouse, but he came pretty close. The church probably got smaller under his watch, but it grew through multiplication. Southlands certainly did multiply points of light in the Southland, but teams were also sent to plant churches in Northern California, Texas, North Carolina, Washington State, and Brazil. Leaders were sent to transition and pastor two churches in Australia, too. 

It’s remarkable what God did through a church that never grew large. Chris would often speak of the Moravians,  who decided that they would never grow above 500 adults but would rather keep sending missionaries to preach the gospel all over the world, some even selling themselves into slavery to reach slave colonies. While the repeated sending took its toll on the church in many ways, the call to uncomfortable going left an indelible mark on the soul of Southlands. That mark endures to this day. I was grateful to catch the last three years of that season as my wife and I came to join the leadership team in 2007.

When I was asked to lead the team of elders in 2010, I made it clear that I didn’t have quite the same multiplying grace as Chris had. I wasn’t sure I wanted a greenhouse, and if I did, I certainly didn’t want it to be emptied every five years! The church I inherited was in serious financial debt and had shrunk to less than 400 adults. Our leadership team was faithful but depleted. We had recently moved to a beautiful facility in a new city and we wanted to know how to make disciples of Jesus in our own zip code. Perhaps this sporting analogy will explain my philosophy as a new leader. Our church was like a team that had won many away games but was not winning many home games. I wanted to start winning home games. So, we pushed pause on multiplication for three years as we gave ourselves to winning at home. By God’s kindness we grew and began to find pastoral and financial health. We started seeing people come to Christ. We started serving our new city. 

Still, the nagging call to multiplication remained. Of course, we’d have to find a new way and a new pace. But God coaxed us with kindness back to our calling, and Southlands has multiplied four times in the past five years with three new multi-site communities in three counties, as well as a church plant in Thailand. All told, that’s 16 plants in 21 years, which again, is fairly unusual.

I’m so wary of the numbers game. Behind numbers are people whose lives were completely disrupted because they responded to the vision to multiply. Not all of those churches have survived and that has brought heartache and soul searching. Many have flourished, however, and that has brought great joy. Others have held steady, navigating through massive opposition with guts and grace. All have persevered against great odds. They’re all heroes to me. I only use numbers to illustrate the point that this book is not mere theory. I don’t consider myself an expert at multiplication. But I suppose I’m not a rookie either. The four church contexts in which my wife and I have led the last 23 years have all been multiplying churches. Churches planting churches is all we’ve really ever known. So, let’s just say it’s in our blood. 

Why write a book about church planting when there are so many good ones already out there? Ed Stetzer, President of Lifeway Research, estimated that only 5 percent of multiplying churches in the West are under 1,000 people in attendance.  For obvious reasons, the vision to be a multiplying church is generally a large church phenomenon, because it’s such a resource-rich vision. I’m so thankful for large churches that multiply. I was part of the leadership team of a large church that regularly invested in multiplication. I now lead what would qualify as a large church and I believe that this book will carry helpful lessons for them too. 

Our fixation with large though, means that churches that are small and medium generally have a vision for addition rather than multiplication, because if we’re honest, multiplication feels too much like subtraction. In the West especially, where the megachurch looms large, it’s easy for small or medium sized churches to think, "Maybe one day when I grow up and have lots of resources I'll think of multiplying, but for now I must grow by addition." That's why churches in the 5th percentile—those that are not large but that still have a multiplying vision—are un-common, like unicorns. But for multiple reasons, I don't think they should be. In fact, despite the resource challenges, I believe medium-sized churches are better suited to multiplying than large or small churches. 

Of course, I realize that an American metric of church size, in which a church of 1000 people in attendance may qualify as large, is not reflective of the rest of the world. How can we possibly arrive at a universal definition of a medium-sized church for the sake of this book? For instance, we work with churches in Nepal that are multiplying very rapidly. A church of 120 people in attendance would qualify as a medium-sized church in Nepal, and the average size of a Nepalese church when it multiplies is approximately 100 people. In South Africa, where we lived and led churches until 2007, there are very few mega churches, and a church that had 5-600 people in attendance would qualify as large. Tim Keller’s article on Leadership and Church Size Dynamics  gives a more globally relevant definition of medium-sized churches as having 200-450 people in attendance. For the sake of global applicability, I would cut an even broader swathe around Keller’s definition, and suggest that a church with between 120 and 700 people in attendance could qualify as medium-sized. Gauging ‘medium size’ is not an exact science, but you probably know it intuitively if you fit broadly into that category. The point is, the medium-sized church has massive un-tapped potential for multiplication.

So, why are medium-sized churches better suited to multiplication than small or large-sized churches? 

First, because they are more in touch with the realities of small churches than large churches. They haven’t forgotten the all hands-on-deck reality that planting requires. They don’t expect everything to be laid on for them. Second, because they have slightly bigger resource margins than small churches and are less likely to die through multiplying. When medium-sized churches multiply, the whole church feels the pain of sending, but not normally in a way that kills it. And that’s healthy.

Essentially, I'm calling for these unicorns to become more ordinary. I am hoping this book catalyzes a movement of medium-sized multiplying churches, even as it encourages small and large churches in their own multiplication efforts. Don’t wait until you’re large before you start multiplying. Families don’t have to be large before they multiply. They just need to be healthy. So, wait until you’re healthy and get going by God’s grace. It’s how Jesus designed His church to grow and it’s how He intended His Great Commission to be fulfilled. 

There is no ordinary church in Jesus’ eyes. He wants to do extraordinary things with us all as we place what He has given us back in his hands to be broken and multiplied for His glory. 

                    

Southlands 2018 Annual Report and 2019 Vision

Dear Southlanders, 

This past Sunday night we had our annual members' meeting, which was honestly one of the highlights of our 11 years at Southlands thus far. I wanted to communicate in writing to the congregation at large about our annual financial report and also about  what I spoke to our members regarding our vision. There are some significant changes on the horizon and I wanted to fill you in on these against the backdrop of the gracious provision and growth God has given to our church. Of course, something of the tone and tenor of the night will be lost  from microphone to page, but I do feel that you will benefit from reading the essence of what I communicated if you were not there. If you were there, you may also find it helpful to be able to reflect on what you heard.

A Call to Multiplying Faith

Hebrews 11: 8-12 "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. And so did Isaac and Jacob who inherited the promise. Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations whose architect and builder was God. It was by faith that even Sarah was able to bear a child, though she was barren and too old. She believed that God would keep his promise. And so, a whole nation came from this one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable sand on the seashore. ”

It is remarkable to see God's generous provision to this church and it is against the backdrop of this provision that I want to cast an expanded vision. I want to invite us to do two things at this time.  First, I want to invite us to look up like Abraham, and see the stars of heaven. We are part of the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham. We are those descendants, those stars! But God has also promised stars to us. I want us to catch something of God's expansive promise to us as Abraham's children. Second, I want us to be willing to take a step toward risk in the light of this expansive promise to us, because faith has an ongoing appetite for risk.

Terry Virgo unpacked the above passage as follows: “When Abraham was called he obeyed by going out from his secure home to receive an inheritance, though he did not know where he was going. There were no well-worn paths ahead of him and he was the father of all who believed. It seems that static familiarity can constitute danger for the Christian pilgrim. A well-worn track can easily become a rut. God wants us stable in doctrine but mobile in practice." 

God wants us stable in doctrine, even stable in our disciplines, but mobile in practice. Thank you all for your amazing stability in doctrine and in the disciplines of fellowship, serving and giving. You are like ballast in the the boat of this church. Your faithful sacrifice keeps us buoyant and upright. We could not do this without you. But here we see a call, not just to stability, but to mobility. Faith does not have an aversion to risky mobility. It refuses to settle. Faith knows the difference between being established and becoming establishment. Abraham and his sons continued to live in tents. These last 5 years have required much risk but it has been greatly rewarded by God. It is easy to lose our appetite for it. But God is calling us to pull up the tent pegs, embrace uncertainty and set off on pilgrimage again, particularly around our vision to be a multiplying church.

A Vision to Multiply Points of Light in the Southland

25 years ago God spoke to Jesse Mason about a vision to multiply points of light in the Southlands*. Some of you who are still here remember when Jesse began to cast this vision around 2002. This conviction precipitated a call to Chris Wienand to help the church to raise up leaders and send them out. In 1996 Chris and Meryl Wienand moved to Christian Chapel of Walnut to take the helm of leadership. Largely because of Jesse's vision, Chris named the church Southlands Church. The church multiplied 12 times in 14 years under Chris’s watch which is remarkable. In 2010 when we were called to lead the church,  we pushed pause in multiplication to give ourselves to strengthening pastoral, missional and financial health in the church. My mantra was, "We need to win both home games and away games." This remains my conviction to this day.  

In 2012, just before Jesse passed away, he sent me a brief email. “Dear Alan, Ever since the Lord spoke to me about the church multiplying points of light in the Southland, it was like all hell broke loose against us. The church has been in battle ever since. But this morning I woke early and was impressed upon by the Lord to write to you and tell you, 'From this day on it will be easier.'” 

This email was a catalyst for us to return to a multiplying call. It has certainly not been easy. In fact it has been costly for us all.  But God’s grace has been so clearly  upon us as we multiplied 4 times in 4 years. The last year has been about strengthening what has been planted and finding a sustainable rhythm of multiplying from health.  Part of our strengthening season has been an expansion of this vision. What would it look like to multiply points of light all over the Southland where not all the multiplication can come from us? We have begun to expand our vision to include strengthening of existing lights as we develop strategic partnerships with like-minded, like-hearted churches.

A Gospel Constellation in the Southland 

I was watching a documentary on Marfa, Texas this past week, where the sky is so clear that at night you don’t just see the stars. You see a whole constellation of stars and planets of differing size and proximity and brightness. I believe God wants to multiply a gospel constellation through us in the Southland – an array of lights that are inter-connected.

If Southlands multi-site congregations represent one kind of light in the constellation, I want us to expand our vision to see two other kinds of light in our constellation. One might be called Advance Lights, which refer to our partnership with the other Advance churches in our region  and Kingdom Lights, which refers to our strategic partnership with other churches that are not part of Advance not Southlands, particularly churches in the Manna forum.

Let me repeat the array of lights in the constellation. 

Southlands-Lights – Continuing to plant and strengthen Southlands multi-site congregations

Advance-Lights –  Planting and strengthening Advance partner churches in our region

Kingdom-Lights – Strengthening Churches beyond our network with whom we have a kingdom alliance, especially Manna churches.

This is not about ownership. This is about partnership for the sake of a bigger, brighter constellation, to see darkness pushed back and the light of Christ shining brighter in this beautiful and broken region that we call the Southland. It takes a region-wide church to win a region-wide war. The largeness of the vision requires a loosening of partnership on some levels for greater reach.  We are so serious about an expanded vision of multiplication, that we are making some significant changes as we move forwards.

 Key Changes on the Horizon

A. Empowered Local Eldership Teams 

A new administration for Southlands-lights with four eldership teams led by a Directional Team and served by a Central Services Team. This will enable congregations to give their primary focus to their local pastoral care and mission while still remaining vitally connected  to the whole. 

B. Manna Church Investment  Since last year, this has been the biggest change in our multiplication journey. We are now working with 20 churches across the Southland, investing in their mercy and justice initiatives and training their leaders. Some of these churches may become Advance-Lights or even Southlands-Lights in the future, but this is not the motive for our investment.

C. West Coast Advance Hub There are currently 5 advance partner churches in our region with 2 expressing a desire to step into partnership and multiple churches looking in.

D. Sending the Santiago’s to DC to join Monument Church and for Erik to take up a role as Executive Director of Advance Global

Erik and Celeste have been with us for 11 years. For 8 of those years, Erik has served and led in the role of Executive Pastor. He has been fundamental in building the infrastructure of Southlands. He will now take what he has learned and invested and bring it to our Advance Global story. Celeste has been dynamic in worship leading, in design and in our anti-human trafficking initiatives. They have both brought energy and excellence to Alpha, to our creative events and to our gatherings in preaching and worship leading. They will lend these gifts to the establishing of Monument Church and the growth of Advance as  movement. There remains a revolving door in our church – of gospel goodbyes and gospel hellos. This is sad, but this is normal, healthy New Testament Christianity.

E. Commissioning Southlands Fullerton as an autonomous Advance partner church in September

Nick and Karin have served Southlands since 2002 with exemplary sacrifice, conviction and care. Their congregation has grown in stature, and Nick has also grown in capacity and conviction as a leader. He is, as it were, a leader who needs to sit at the head of his own table, and we believe that he and his team will flourish with a more full expression of autonomy. It will also benefit Advance to have another small to medium sized autonomous church, as the churches we are working with are all small. We will continue to work closely together as friends and partners in Advance. This is a year-long process, which h was decided in October and which will launch in September. It is gradual, gracious and celebrated. If we only think in terms of Southlands-lights we will see it as a loss. If we think in terms of Advance-lights, we may lament the loss at one level but we will see it as a kingdom win. 

These are all significant and costly changes, but imagine what the next ten years could look like as we join Jesus on his mission to the Southland?  We are not fixing a specific number that we are targeting, but for a moment try and imagine 3 Southlands congregations,  plus 7 Advance partner churches,  plus 20 Manna churches. That is already 30 lights in the Southland with whom we share a close partnership.  At this rate and by God's grace, we could be in meaningful partnership with another 100  gospel lights in our region over the  next ten years. Can we look up and see a gospel constellation forming in the Southland by God's grace? 

Our Next Steps

Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”We don’t see the whole staircase but we want to callus all to take some next steps in our multiplying future.

a. Let's pray for Fullerton as they prepare and plan for their launch. 

b. Let's embrace our identity as a multiplying church. This is us. It is costly, but it is vital and it is Biblical. Even if you are passionate about specific ministries like Camp Agape or Rancho Hermosa or prison ministry or children’s ministry or youth or worship, let's approach them from the unique angle of being a multiplying church. God’s grace is on us in a unique way in this regard.  

c. Let's continue to give and train and pray towards multiplication.

Pre-emptive answers to possible Questions

a. How do we ensure that this vision for a Gospel Constellation in the Southland does not diminish pastoral health in the church, particularly with the time it will demand from Alan? 

The multiplying of the team of elders into four congregational elder teams means that the majority of our elders' time and energy will be spent shepherding their local flocks.We are intent on holding the healthy tension between mission and pastoral care. At Brea we have purposefully added extra pastoral staff in Kirk Randolph returning full-time and JD Senkbile being employed full-time to ensure pastoral care and discipleship go from strength to strength amidst a vision for multiplication. Together with Joel Baker and Ryan Macdonald and 6 other market place elders and wives at Brea and approximately 40 deacons, we have never been better furnished with pastoral care than we are now. While Alan and Rynelle still carry a significant pastoral burden at Brea, their primary role is to care for and develop the large group of leaders God has entrusted to at Brea and the other Southlands congregations. 

b. If Southlands Fullerton is becoming autonomous, what does that mean for the other Southlands congregations in the future?

While we celebrate what God is doing in the commissioning of Southlands Fullerton as an autonomous church, we do not want to assume that this move sets a precedent for all Southlands congregations in the future. While we acknowledge that autonomy for other congregations is possible in the future, we do not see it as inevitable. In the mean time, the remaining three congregations are committed to working closely together for the next three years, with the possibility of other Southlands congregations being added during that time. At the three year mark, we will re-assess the effectiveness of our gospel partnership again with the help of external wisdom in the Advance network to see if our administration needs to loosen further or continue as is. This is a journey of committed faithfulness in the midst of  uncertainty.

2018 Annual Report 
Here is a link to our membership stats, income and expenditure.
2018 Annual Financial and Member Report

I do hope this extensive unpacking of our next steps has been helpful to you. We thank God for the vital part you play in our church. God has given us an expansive promise and gracious provision for that promise. Let's be those who inherit it through faith and patience together. 

with gratitude in Christ for you,

Alan

*The Southland is the colloquial term for Southern California(SoCal), a region comprising 10 counties with a total population of just under 23 million people.  

Planting Tumbleweed: Becoming a Multiplying Church in a Transient Culture

I was 18 when I first came to California. It was 1990. Mullets, bomber jackets, parachute pants and MC Hammer were in. I was part of a touring party of musicians and actors who performed around the theme of racial  reconciliation. It was the year Nelson Mandela was released from prison. South Africa was trying hard to shed its Apartheid past and we felt that we had a story to tell the world. We performed in schools and colleges and churches in five states around the USA. One of those states was California. 

On a day off between tour dates our hosts took us to Muir Woods outside San Francisco to walk amongst the giant Redwoods. I’m not sure whether it was the majesty of the trees or the Michael W. Smith song, “Place in this World,” playing on my new Sony Walkman, but God met me on that day in those Redwoods. I came back to our bus convinced He had called me to live and preach the gospel in California. I had no clue what that meant at the time. We hadn’t stayed in San Francisco or visited LA yet. In fact, the only place we’d stayed was Fresno, of all places. We hadn’t done the tourist thing in Hollywood, Disney, Napa or Malibu. But I was so convinced by the call that when I returned from our five-state tour I told my new girlfriend that if we got married she’d have to get her passport in order, because we were going to live in California one day. It’s hard to explain, but in strange ways my call felt as much to California as it did to the USA.

It was 17 years and many visits later before my family and I moved in to 542 North Hale Avenue, in Fullerton, California on December 30th, 2007. God was faithful to His call. Thankfully, my girlfriend back then did get her passport and has been my wife of 25 years. We honestly love California’s beauty, diversity, climate and influence in the world. We feel privileged to live here.  

But nothing could have prepared us for what I call Californian transience. At best, it expresses itself in a refusal to settle for status quo. It is always exploring new ideas, new trends, new tastes, new sounds, new sights and new technology. It is relentless in its quest for innovation. At worst, California transience resists commitment, idolizes individual freedom and is notoriously flaky at keeping promises. It simply refuses to be pinned down.

John Steinbeck, a California native who grew up in Salinas, described Californian transience this way: “When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch… Nothing has worked… When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from here seems broad and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going.”  

I have found no description of California transience more poignant than Steinbeck’s. The urge to be someplace else. An incurable virus of restlessness. Of course, the urge to be someplace else is amplified by astronomical housing prices, questionable taxes and crazy traffic. While many love the liberal morality, others are deeply troubled by what it means to raise children in a culture where the pursuit of uninhibited autonomy is idolized only after the pursuit of celebrity. Even with all its beauty, prosperity and warm weather, Californians often resent living in California. They often feel drawn to cheaper, quieter, more traditional places, where the moral fabric has not yet unraveled. Add to these factors a divorce rate that is close to 70 percent and you have a culture that appears to be coming apart at the seams.

 Californian transience makes building community an extremely taxing pursuit. Honestly, leading a church in California can be like planting tumbleweed. The moment you think someone is putting roots down, they just roll on down the road to a new job, a new town, a new church or just a new adventure. The temptation can be to cling feverishly to every single person who is rooted and committed because they’re such a rare breed. Sending your best can feel like you’re intentionally trying to kill your church! It’s hard enough to build a connected community, so why would anyone want to break it up through multiplication? I suppose it is because Jesus is building His church, and His building ways are not ours. But there are times when I still have my doubts.

One of the ways I see transience at work in multiplication is when people decide to leave at the same time as a church is sending. It never fails to surprise me that as you send a team out, gearing up to fill the gaps they leave, folk who felt left behind come and tell you that they also feel like God is moving them on to another church. It seems to happen every single time. At the same time as some are sent, others just went!  On one level, I can empathize. It’s unsettling having to say goodbye to your friends and some of your favorite leaders. But the truth is, when people just up and leave after others are sent, it impedes the health and momentum of the sending church. It’s clumsy and painful, like death by a thousand paper cuts. And it seems completely normal in a state where Christians change churches on average once every three years. 

Thankfully though, the California spirit is not simply about restlessness for the next new place. It’s also about restlessness for the next new thing, which can be channeled towards multiplication, with some wisdom. Californians are pioneers by design, hard-wired to cross frontiers through innovation. Whether it be Walt Disney, Aimee Semple McPherson, Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, California has produced incredible innovators and entrepreneurs who defied the status quo with their vision of a new world. For them and countless others, change is a constant and progress a relentless pursuit. This is a magnificent cultural trait. Some would say I live in the most innovative and influential place in the world.

This frontier spirit can be a remarkable benefit for a multiplying church. Some of our members have been part of three different church plants on two continents. Each time they have served the church and the city where they were planted with humility and sacrifice. They have found ways to earn a living through starting new businesses. They’ve paid their own way to be part of these new communities. They’ve lived in different homes, learned new languages and eaten strange foods. They’ve learned new social customs in order to befriend new neighbors. They’ve transferred ministry skills to new cultures. I think this is what it means to come to grips with the California spirit and harness it for the gospel’s sake. Chances are, people from more conservative states would not be as willing to innovate and embark on new adventures in the same way. It’s why I love where I live and lead. 

You may live and lead in California like me. Or you may not live here, but you may be lamenting your own tumbleweed culture. Whatever the case, I urge you to keep fighting for a covenant community with sacred rhythms and deep roots. I also plead with you to allow the tumbleweed to keep rolling on down the road at times, to be planted in another city or town for God’s glory.

What is impossible with man is possible with God. 

(Excerpt from "Broken for Blessing: the underrated potential of the medium-sized multiplying church")

An Ordinary Unicorn: The Call for Medium-Size Multiplying Churches

The clever people say that only 5% of multi-site churches are under 1000 people in size.*  For obvious reasons, the vision to be a multiplying church (multi-siting and/or church planting) is generally a large church phenomena because it is such a resource rich vision. Generally, churches under 1000 in size have a vision for addition rather than multiplication, because multiplication feels like subtraction of their already limited resources. In the West, where the mega church looms large, it's easy for small or medium size churches to think, "Maybe one day when I'm big and have lots of margins  I'll think of multiplying, but for now I must grow by addition." That's why churches in the 5th percentile; those under 1000 in size that have a multiplying vision, are a bit like unicorns. But for multiple reasons, I don't think they should be so rare. In fact, despite the resource challenges, I believe medium size churches are better suited to multiplying than mega churches and I believe that figure of 5% will grow much higher in the future. Essentially, I'm calling for these unicorns to become more ordinary, but for that to happen we'll have to change the way we think.  

So, I want to suggest three ways of thinking that can catalyze a movement of medium size multiplying churches.

1. A willingness to let Jesus invade our margins. 

Southlands began multiplying under my watch in 2012 when we were around 500 adults and 100 kids in average attendance. We sent 3 pastors, 90 adults and 15 kids down the road to start our first multi-site community. It was a shock to the system to send just under 20% of our church to a neighboring city; so much so that after a month I asked one of the three pastors to come back! Four years later though, by God's grace, we've multiplied 4 times. One of those was an autonomous church plant into Thailand. The other two were multi-site communities into neighboring cities. It's been incredibly costly because every time we've multiplied we've had to yield our margins of leadership, people, finances and ministry. And in a medium-sized church, they are margins we can ill afford. It can leave you breathless. But to see Jesus' life in these new gospel communities is breathtakingly beautiful. We feel that we've been an integral part of Jesus' multiplying miracle of the 5 fish and 2 loaves. We've had to put the loaves and fish we have into His hands to be broken, but He's blessed that. It's then that subtraction begins to turn into multiplication. Isn't it interesting that Jesus used every bit of that little boy's lunch for his multiplication miracle? He could have left him with a loaf or a fish, but he used it all. Of course, it's easier for large churches to multiply without invading their margins too much, but apparently that's not the only way Jesus works.

2. A motive for mission not expansion

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't fun to be growing and to have a footprint in four cities, not to mention a  church plant in a virtually unreached nation. But the kick we get out of expansion isn't worth the price, in all honesty. There are cheaper ways to build your brand if that's what you're trying to do. The thing that keeps us multiplying is a nail-hard conviction that the most Christ-like way to really reach people with the gospel is to go and dwell among them. The 50 or so cities in the region of the Southland are distinct and proud of it, so we believe planting smaller, more incarnate communities that feel more like their city is a better way to do mission than expecting them all to flock to one big vanilla-flavored church center. Having a multiplying dream means dying to a mega church dream, which requires eating a slice of humble pie with a side of obscurity. 

3.  A new definition of health  

While gospel mission is the main motive for multiplication, a serious side benefit is that people are less likely to fall between the cracks of church life. I've led in small, medium and large church contexts, and personally I prefer large. But I've found in churches that grow beyond 600 adults, it becomes more difficult to keep people feeling vitally connected and needed. They start to feel like the whole thing will keep running irrespective of their attending, serving, giving or praying. And when you feel less vital it's easy to act less vital, and so the vital signs of church health can easily decrease.  Because multiplication keeps invading the margins of leaders, givers, servers and prayers in a church, you are seldom at risk of people feeling comfortable. The down-side is that folk can begin to resent the constant calls for people to 'step up to the plate'  because we've just sent another crew out, but the up-side is that everyone feels vital to the mission, whether they go or stay. And that's healthy. 

The world needs many more healthy churches and I'm thankful for many large churches that use their resources to multiply them. But I'm calling for medium-size churches to stop dreaming about growing up to be mega-churches one day, and to begin dreaming about becoming multiplying churches now. The medium-size multiplying church doesn't have to be a unicorn. If we change our way of thinking, it can become something gloriously ordinary.  

*http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2014/march/starting-staffing-and-supporting-multisite-church.html

The Always Previous God: Stories of the God who goes before.

At Advent we treasure the breath-taking idea that God the Son willingly came to dwell with us as a man. Jesus is the only person in history who ever chose to be born. Ponder that. How would you choose to be born if you had the choice? I would choose to be born into wealth, status and peace, wouldn't you? Jesus chose to be born into poverty, scandal and danger. He was sent as the son of a suspect teenage mom and a blue-collar carpenter dad.  His family fled to Egypt as refugees to escape a murdering king. That's how God chose to be born. He chose to identify with every person who ever lived in poverty, scandal or danger. 

I've been thinking about Jesus' final words to his disciples though. "As the Father sent me, so I am sending you." (John 21) In that sense, His incarnation is both a gift and a stone in my shoe. I may not have been born into poverty, scandal or danger, but following Jesus means He will send me to people in difficult places to bring hope. You too. But He is the God who has gone before us, so we can take courage. As Tozer so beautifully put it, "Jesus is the always previous God." 

Of course, there are times when we have to take it on good faith that He is always previous,  but then there are those times when we glimpse that He has gone before us with such dazzling attention to detail that we gasp with awe at the fact that our future is really His present.  I want to tell you about 3 stories of our always previous God during the past season of our church. 

In the Summer of 2015 we were preparing to launch Southlands Whittier but couldn't find a venue for our Sunday gatherings due to start in the Fall. Kevin Meisch, Whittier's community leader had been pounding the pavement with no joy whatsoever.  Mandy Randolph, one of our elder's wives came to me at a leader's meeting and asked, "Does the road name Leffingwell mean anything to you?" I knew that there was a road called Leffingwell in Whittier, but called Kevin over to hear what Mandy was saying.

She proceeded, "I had a dream where I was driving through Whittier past all these auto-body shops and heard a voice in the dream say  'Set up shop left of Leffingwell.' Is there any venue that comes to mind left of Leffingwell?"  Kevin replied, "I know exactly what venue you're talking about. It's Parnell Park Community Center, and I passed it yesterday thinking it might be a good one." 

Kevin went to the community center the next day, booked their amazing space for a year with a massive discount, and it's served as a remarkable and strategic venue ever since.  God went before us and spoke to us in advance about what was to come. We've indeed set up shop left of Leffingwell! 

In April of 2016 we cast vision to Southlands for a Jubilee Campaign, aimed at removing all our remaining debt and building a war chest for church planting. The response from the congregation was remarkable and we were able to raise enough to pay off all our debt and save enough money for our next church plant. The only thing was that we didn't know where that church would be. On the same day that we were tallying up the pledges and money that had come in after our Jubilee Giving Day I got a call from my friend Scott Weatherill, who was pastoring a church in the Inland Empire. He'd been leading the church for 15 years but said that he felt like his tenure was over. He asked me if we would consider adopting the church as a community of Southlands. One of the reasons he felt like his time was up was that he was struggling to get his people to volunteer at the local food bank in their city and felt like they needed a fresh sense of mission to their city. I'll spare you the details, but took the request back to our elders. As we began to pray and talk about this possibility, I was reminded of a prophetic word that I'd received in February, some 3 months before the call. 
It was from Nick Fox, a friend with a strong prophetic gift who was living in Northern Ireland at the time. This is what he wrote on February 9th, 2016. 

"Hey Alan,

Great to hear from you. Funny that you replied as I was thinking I'd reach out to you.
Last night I had a dream that I was at Southlands and I remember absolutely nothing of it! But it did remind me to pray for you guys today.As I was praying I felt like the Lord was speaking so I took a few notes to send on. As you know I'm learning so test all of it!

One area I felt the Father really highlight to me is finances. I felt like there is a repositioning of resources coming(or maybe has), the sense I had was that there was almost a season where things will feel tight not because of lack but because of how much is on. I felt like the Father is saying that there is a new season of financial favor coming, for some reason April felt like the timeline on that. It seemed as though it'll start off in an unlikely manner but that it'll breed generosity in the greater Southlands Brea community.

I also sensed that the Father might begin speaking to someone on your team about the Inland Empire. I felt that there is a great grace for you guys there, surprisingly to me it might be the Rancho Cucamonga area where I grew up. I think there might be a unique partnership opening there, maybe possibly around a food bank(not completely sure on that)."

Financial favor in April? Partnership with a church with a food bank in the Inland Empire?   Needless to say, God was getting our attention and we began seriously considering the partnership which is now well on its way to becoming Southlands Chino.

Of course, these glimpses don't mean we just rush head long without planning. Wisdom and timing are vital. But again, the accuracy is uncanny, and God has got our attention. Yet again, we've glimpsed the always previous God. 

As the Father sent Jesus, so He sends us. 
But we can take courage. Jesus is the God who goes before.