Acts 29

I am sitting at the Daily Grind in Troy (this nineteenth century city that Martin Scorcese loves) with Womer and Taylor.  Taylor (first name Phil) drove today, and despite being subjected to his psychotic rants whenever the car fails, I’m glad for the ride.  Taylor’s been out of seminary just long enough to know where his real gifts are, and he is faithfully moving forward.  Phil is into details – engineering figures on building materials, left-brain stuff, reads Architectural Record for fun.  Yep.  Fun. He is God’s hand-picked counterpart for me – the right-brained, easily distracted, visionary/dreamer.   Womer (first name Scott) is talking with the Episcopal priest of the neighborhood, who is talking about the color scheme of advent candles.  There’s this priest in full clerical garb talking with Scott, shaved head, earrings, blue jeans.  Scott’s happily done being the stereotypical housepainter/musician with a past stint in the Nashville music industry.  His musical and worship leading abilities are great, but it wasn’t these gifts that impressed me most about him; it was the likeness of Christ I saw in him.

So what are we doing here?  Where are we going?   In some senses we know.  We are part of that group of people who have experienced life and church in our times in North America and have felt the shivering disconnect that exists.  The church seems to be in a time warp. This is no surprise. The disconnects happen with more rapidity than ever before.  After all, time is moving faster.  Culture, the habits that people acquire based on shared experiences, used to be deeply defined and would last for hundreds of years.  In twenty-first century America, we produce a culture that survives only for a short time after its pilot is aired.  The reality is, we become bored quickly.  We race from Version 1.0’s to 9.0’s.  There are always patches, fixes, and, of course, new map packs for Halo 2 to be downloaded.  It is the nature of the constancy of communication. The ability to communicate constantly has also given us the ability to network with others who are like-minded, who have similar visions and goals.

But we, the church, are a people who have tasted of the eternal things.  We know there is something that exists that is lasting, that continues like a baseline behind the scenes.  On it rests all things. We want to be partakers of the principles of eternity. How do we partake of eternal things while being fully ensconced in the present, changing, information-overloaded culture? 

In this new world of rapid change, information, and network, we must shift and move forward.  We must be quick to adapt to the tools of our age in order to succeed in it, in order to minister the gospel in this time and place in history effectively.  We don’t, however, shift from the truth.  That truth is theological truth.  I have heard people confuse a variation in missiology with a variation in theology.  What I am describing is not a variation in theology at all.  Theology is a fixed reflection of God.  Missiology, however,  is upgradeable.  Those who have served cross-culturally probably understand that well.   They could not just speak a theologically correct gospel message in English to a non-English speaking audience.  They could not live with the consumptive abilities of an American in an impoverished nation and expect to reach people. There were cultural adaptations to be made.
 
There needs to be a connection between the way we live and the people we live among.  Our lives need to connect with theirs.  We need to be truth tellers and truth seekers, while following the cultural queues of our day, as long as we are not adopting its sin in so doing.  This is the power of incarnation.  This is what Jesus did.  He lived out the truth and taught the truth to real people where they were, in a way that they understood.   What is necessary then is incarnation; instant access points that are reflected in the Body of Christ.

NewLife Network is the agency through which Phil Taylor and I began experimenting on how to create incarnational, networked church plants in the Northeast.  Through that process, we connected with Acts 29.  By the time Phil and I, along with the A29 crew, were done running our first boot camp last May in Albany, we found that we had real deep bonds with these A29 guys. Phil and I also realized how well we worked together.  We continue to work throughout the Northeast, assisting denominations, church planters, church movements, and organizations to see that The Kingdom grows in the Northeast.
 
About a year prior to the boot camp, I met Scott Womer at Grace Fellowship, the church my family and I have been attending for the last three and a half years. For some reason, I felt a connection to Scott and felt that God was telling me to go talk to this guy.  Eventually I listened to God and after the service I walked up to Scott rather awkwardly and told him I thought God wanted us to meet.  His jaw kind of dropped and he said, “You know, God’s been telling me to meet with you but I’ve been sort of putting it off because it seemed a little weird”.  I knew I had a friend.  We traveled around the country looking for hope and chasing rumors of what was going on in connecting people with the gospel.  We talked over endless cups of coffee about what church could look like.

 We wanted to see what God would develop organically through us so we started doing retreats, youth conferences, worship events, whatever gig we could get to learn how we worked together serving others.  We also began sharing ministries.  Scott had been leading Catacombs, a ministry to youth based on ancient worship. He brought me in to do some experiential teaching, tying together worship, art, and the spoken word in creative ways that allowed the group to actively participate and respond.

That’s some of the back story that brings us to today.  Phil is our soon-to-be executive pastor, Scott is our worship arts pastor, and I am the teaching pastor.  Terra is now a loosely affiliated group of somewhere between 100 and 200 people.  The numbers are always hard to pin down at this stage. (Can I get an amen?). It’s a mixed group - some artists or art appreciators, some musicians, some who feel like they just don’t fit the typical  “church mold”  but want to know who God is, and some Christians who want to correct the bunker mentality, the self-marginalizing Christian ghetto. They don’t want to be the Evangelical Amish, identified by an odd and separatist culture.

We are ready to meet in the same sanctuary where Catacombs meets.  We are discovering what it means to mix this ever moving culture with eternal truth.  We are discovering what forms those functions will take.  We want to be living pieces of theology; not statements of theology.  We want to be missionaries as well as mystics. 

Eternal truth is pushing us in the back as we edge nearer and nearer the next move in what has been a two year process of imagination and preparation.  Now we ask for your prayers.  We need brothers and sisters praying for this work of God.  We need people who will be connected to us, encourage us, support us. It is a time of discovery, terra nova, fresh ground.  [www.terranovachurch.org]