5 Reflections on Verge Conference, & Links
Last week I attended the Verge Conference in Austin, TX. It was organized by the Austin Stone Community Church, and hosted by Hill Country Bible Church-Northwest. It featured a stellar lineup, including Alan Hirsch, Francis Chan, Neil Cole, Dave Gibbons, Matt Carter, Ed Stetzer, David Garrison, David Watson, Jeff Vanderstelt & Caesar Kalinowski, George Patterson and others.
I need to continue processing all that God was doing there, but for the sake of brevity in this post, I’ve abbreviated my lessons to 5.
1) Something happened there.
It’s easy to be cynical about conferences. I noticed some Twitter buzz before the conference, indicating “here we go, how many conferences do we really need?” I’m sure we don’t need as many as we do, but this was the first of its kind. And something was definitely happening. Hirsch called us “The Fellowship of the Freaks,” those who have been thinking about missional communities for some time, but lacked kindred spirits to share that with.
This conference was NOT self-righteous, self-congratulatory, faddish, or hip. We were called back to Jesus, again and again. We were called to the Bible as our guide. We were called to dependence on the Spirit.
The tone was humble, yet zealously burning to reach the lost.
God was glorified.
Our shared, centered-set identity in Christ, combined with fleshing out of what mission looks like in our Gospel-centered communities, led to the prevailing sense that this event could be a landmark, a turning point, a sea change moment in the North American church. I sure hope so.
2. Ecclesiology will very likely be THE issue in the American church going forward.
Take away the extreme fringes (high church/ultra traditional church on one end, syncretistic non-church on the other), and what you have is a growing center of people increasingly committed to taking the orthodox Gospel of Jesus to an ever-changing, post-Christian context.
The old Stetzerian emerging matrix of Relevants, Reconstructionists, and Revisionists still holds–and the conversation is increasingly being led by the middle group, that is, those who hold to orthodox doctrine, but are struggling to work out helpful ways of structuring church to do reach our context.
It was striking to see megachurch pastors like Francis Chan sharing the stage with micro/organic church leaders like Neil Cole. A great deal of alignment, even if differences in philosophy of ministry.
Megachurch, microchurch, organic church, house church, multisite church, parachurch, dying church–the lines are blurring and it all seems up for grabs. Much of this conversation will be fruitful as the church recontextualizes for a post-Christian west, but its also fraught with potential for remaking mistakes we’ve made in the past.
Some of the stuff I heard at Verge concerned me, like Dave Ferguson describing how he “ordained” 2000 of his church attenders for ministry. Now, I believe in every-member ministry and the priesthood of all believers, but we don’t need to relativize the biblical offices of elder (or deacon) in order to commission our people. This is the kind of conversation we’ll need to get used to having, and as Jonathan Dodson tweeted at one point, we probably didn’t have enough theological reflection, explanation, or underpinnings for statements like Ferguson’s.
3. Mission is Harder and Easier Than I Think
I was fortunate enough to sit in on a pre-conference session with about 40 people, facilitated by Alan Hirsch and Leadership Network. One of the things I took away is that I make mission too big, too hard, too intimidating for those I work with. The Hill Country-UT folks make it simple for their students. They ask, “What would be a win for you this week?” and they challenge their missional community students to 1) Engage (get to know the students they seek to reach); 2) Express (let people know where you’re coming from, initiate some spiritual conversations) and 3) Explore (take people deeper, moving to Gospel conversations). Pick 2-3 people, and focus on moving farther in one of those areas on a weekly basis. See? Simple!
But of course its also harder to do that, and to equip others to do that. The best model of this was described for us by the guys of Soma Communities in Tacoma, WA. Pay attention to these guys (above): Jeff Vanderstelt and Caesar Kalinowski (who generously let me pepper him with questions for about 20 minutes) are the real deal. I’ve been absorbing their stuff for months and implementing some of it here at PSU/in State College. Living everyday life with Gospel intentionality. Simple is not the same as easy.
A good summary of their talk is available from Missional Church Center.
4. If you care about college ministry, pay attention to Austin, TX.
It was the opportunity to soak up what’s going on at the University of Texas that persuaded me to pull the trigger on this conference, and I wasn’t disappointed.
I got to meet Todd Engstrom, Logan Gentry, Tyler David, and others from the Austin Stone Church, which is reaching UT with a network of missional communities. Great people and a great church. I love how they rip on each other in a very fraternal kind of way.
Hill Country Bible Church-UT A campus church in the Hill Country Association, I got to meet Denny Henderson, Heather Lods, and others from an awesome church doing a great job of reaching UT through missional communities
Campus Renewal–I met Justin Christopher and Raul from Campus Renewal, who have also had a great vision for saturating UT with missional communities. Seeing how these different ministries have worked hard together was inspiring for what I–and others–are hoping to see happen at PSU.
Collectively, “Renovate UT”–a partnership of about a dozen ministries/churches, and spearheaded by the 3 I just mentioned–have moved the number of professing & engaged Christians at UT from 6% to 11% in 5 years! That is huge! (At PSU, our number is 2.5%–we’d be thrilled with 6%!).
We organized (okay, Heather Lods organized) an unofficial Campus minister breakout that led to some good conversations. We also talked about convening again to continue working out what missional campus ministry can look like. This also felt like a potential sea-change moment for campus ministry to me.
5. Francis Chan is the real deal.
Read a summary of his first talk here. I had never heard him live before, and wasn’t that familiar with him. God used Francis to humble and inspire us. The guy just screams authenticity. Good communicator. Disarming humor. But more than that, utter humility, literally brought us to our knees. 2500 people loved Jesus more because Francis helped us to see Christ more clearly.
I could say much more, but I’ll turn to the accounts of others to round this out:
Christian Post had an interesting, more straight-news coverage of the event. The quotes by Jeff Vanderstelt (who I had the privilege of meeting) of Soma Communities are particularly helpful.
Jeff Vanderstelt lamented how many churches are serving “almost like containers” and holding people in rather than sending them out to spread the Gospel. “It’s almost as if we’re extracting people from the world instead of equipping them and sending them into the world,” he said Friday.
The job of pastors, teachers and apostles is to “equip the saints for works of ministry, not to do the ministry for the saints,” said Vanderstelt, a pastor at Soma Communities, a multi-expression church planting church.
“If you don’t structure your church in such a way that the saints are doing the ministry and you’re equipping the saints for ministry, what you’ll convince your people of is that they pay you to do ministry for them and they receive it all from you,” he warned…
“How do you know if somebody’s faithful? You have to see them live it out,” the Tacoma, Wash., church planter pointed out. “The only way to disciple is life on life in the midst of everyday life.”
“Let’s not put on a bunch of events or programs that extract people from life but rather, let’s equip people to live normal ordinary life with significant Gospel intentionality,” he said. “It’s a very different way to do church as far as I’m concerned because it says ‘now your life counts.’ Instead of us pulling you out of your life we’re just equipping you for life with one another.”
So much of the conference was about pursuing mission in community. So I would be remiss to give you only my thoughts. Here are some other great posts that I’ve culled from the blogosphere.
Kent Shaffer, who I had the privilege of meeting, (founder of churchrelevance.com) had the best summaries of the main sessions here.
Helpful thoughts, cautions, and repenting here, here, here, and here.
Jon McIntosh (who I also got to meet) gives his reflections on Francis Chan, Community, and whether we should still have large group gatherings.
Neil Cole (who I also got to meet) elaborates on his “Go Small to Go Big” point, which he made at Verge.
Benson Hines (old buddy) has some great follow-up questions for campus ministry in light of Verge. (This will likely be a separate post for me).
Jonathan Dodson (who I also met) gives us 10 tips for missional community leaders, and asked if movement was happening at Verge.
All things Verge can be found here. Thanks to my friend DJ Chuang and the gang for compiling things there!
Hey Steve,
I’d love to talk with you and hear more about this experience. Having very little background, I have two initial questions:
1) Is high church really an “extreme fringe” of ecclesiology? Perhaps among the attendees of Verge, but certainly not within the Body of Christ around the world.
2) I followed some links to find out more, and I am glad you mentioned Heather as organizer of the campus minister conversation, but… Is this an entire movement within the church that lacks female voices? How missional can a movement be if it eliminates such a large segment of the church population? I am a fan of men, and of men in leadership, but where are other voices? Are non-mainstream culture voices at the table? I am coming to believe that race is not the only marker of majority or minority culture–so where are marginalized voices in this movement?
Does it matter? Can Verge on its own be a full picture of the Kingdom? Were you attempting to do that anyway? I’m not convinced of any of it yet. Just thinking about your reflections.
Hope to talk with you more about this–thanks for opening the larger world of ministry to me.
-KTT
Again, I didn’t know anything about verge before reading your blog, so thanks for sharing about the exciting things that are happening in this movement. I hope we’ll get a chance to talk sometime about
KTT–Thanks for your thoughts. Is Verge a movement? I don’t know. It may aspire to be, but for now it was a conference, designed to be a catalytic event to bring together existing movements and churches and individuals. It wasn’t claiming to be a cross-section of Christianity.
As to your questions, 1) It depends what you mean by “high church.” Roman Catholics in the global south often employ a very exuberant, culturally contextualized and appropriate worship style alongside and embedded in their liturgy. So is that high church or not? Here’s what I had in mind with my admittedly ambiguous phrase about “high church” being on the extreme fringe: i wasn’t talking about worship styles and liturgy, per se, but the degree to which that preference becomes ultimate, as in an issue worth dividing over. Elevating secondary issues to the top tier. Take for example those from within my own tradition who insist on VERY particular ways of going about the sacraments, such that I–let alone you, or a Baptist–would be considered disobedient and very possibly non-Christian. On the other end, the non-church “churches” could be represented by guys like Doug Pagitt. The book “Deep Church” by Jim Belcher (who will be at Jubilee) is helpful in this regard.
What made Verge special was that our commitment to Gospel and Mission brought us together, with a willingness to at listen, if not fully agree with the different ecclesiological views being represented.
2) Your concern about women–there were certainly women present, and contributing. You’re right, they weren’t on the main stage. Does that mean women are being suppressed somehow? I don’t think so. They aimed to get the leading missional thinkers, and they basically did.
When you’re talking about the North American church, which is upwards of 60% female, I find it hard to agree that they are the “marginalized” ones. In fact, I think it’s ironic for any college educated white North American to talk about marginalization, because we are among the most privileged 1% in the world. But I’m a complementarian, and that’s likely why we’re seeing things differently here.
oh man, you know I am new to commenting on blogs when I wrote a paragraph and lot it at the bottom of my previous comment. ah well, the problem with revisions. I wasn’t trying for a postscript, oh well
I can see how when I wrote my comments I didn’t clarify the difference I see between women and marginalized people.
I was asking about the place of women in this ongoing missional conversation. This is something I hear about but don’t really know about, so I am trying to learn.
The conversation about non-majority voices is a different one. For example, while Francis Chan is ethnically a minority, my reading of his work has not reflected a perspective that is particularly outside of the evangelical mainstream. Again the privileged one percent.
Help me understand, Steve. Is the missional conversation about reaching that same 1%?
KTT–ok, i understand you were talking about two distinct categories there. As far as women’s contributions, they are there, but they are frankly not the key contributors. The seminal work “The Missional Church,” edited by Darrel Guder, included contributions from two women. But I’m not aware of any women who have written books like Alan Hirsch’s Forgotten Ways or Ed Stetzer’s books or Neil Cole’s books. I’m sure that many of the people at the conference were not complementarians, but really the issue didn’t come up, from what I could see.
As to your second question, “is the missional movement only seeking to reach the 1%”–emphatically NOT. I wish you could have heard David Garrison, David Watson, and George Patterson. They were speaking with extensive global experience and connection. We heard about exploding church movements from all around the world. Hundreds of thousands of churches being planted. A sizable portion of main-stage time and breakout sessions was devoted to helping US learn from THEM, our brothers and sisters in China, Africa, and elsewhere. We also heard quite a bit about efforts to help Haiti, and a huge push for adoption, led by–get this–the (musical) worship band, led by Aaron Ivey! When was the last time you heard the worship leader give substantive content to a conference? It was great.
What I sensed was that this was a group fully aware of our privileged status, yet also aware of 1)how this hinders our mission, (Chan told us we’re like the Church of Laodicea–we don’t think we need anything) and 2) how we need to be good stewards of what we do have.
Thanks, Steve.
That sounds really exciting, and I’ll look forward to hearing how what you learned there will bear fruit in the work at PSU!
See you at Jubilee!
Steve,
Great to meet you at Verge. Loved your observations. Look forward to talking more with you about college ministry and life.
Steve, you are ahead of me on compiling and sharing your “learnings.” I am still processing Verge content too. Thanks for your excellent summaries and the passion expressed in your writing. until the nations worship Him…
Milfred–thanks for stopping by, and for all the content you’ve posted as well! It will be a long time before I’ve really processed Verge–still pages of notes waiting to be studied. Keep up what you’re doing. Question–does any of your missional church work focus on reaching college students? That’s a passion of mine.