{"id":6398,"date":"2018-10-10T07:00:59","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.brethren.org\/?p=6398"},"modified":"2018-10-10T07:00:59","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T12:00:59","slug":"ebrethren-10-10-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/2018\/10\/10\/ebrethren-10-10-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Decoding your community"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Christina Singh (center) talks with Laura Leighton-Harris (left) and Kevin Kessler (right) at the New and Renew Church Planting Conference.
Photo by Doug Veal<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Christina Singh, pastor of Freeport (Ill.) Church of the Brethren and member of the <\/em>Mission and Ministry Board<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

When I first heard about the Church Planting Conference of our denomination, it did not sound like something that would interest me. But two words in its tagline caught my attention: Revitalize and Grow! Fixated on these words, I decided to attend.<\/p>\n

For two years, I have gone into the community around our church to spread God\u2019s word but have found little success. There is so much potential and so many unchurched people around us, so I have felt the burden to approach them and introduce them to Christ. Going to the New and Renew Church Planting Conference<\/a>, I was determined to get the most out of the experience and to learn information relevant to my community, to the church in a small town where God has placed me.<\/p>\n

The workshop that helped me most was \u201cDecoding your Community\u201d by Ryan Braught, who planted the Veritas Community Church in 2009 in Lancaster, Pa. This two-part workshop moved me into action and gave me insight and tools as to how we, as a church, can successfully do God\u2019s work in our community.<\/p>\n

The first session of this workshop taught us how to understand the culture of where God has placed or called us. We learned that a culture is defined by language, artifacts, narratives, rituals, institutions, and ethics. Ryan then shared practices that help decode a community. One of them was \u201cwalk, observe, and pray with your eyes.\u201d To demonstrate this practice, he read from Acts 17:16-34, which can be summarized by verses 22 and 23:<\/p>\n

\u201cPaul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: \u2018People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. <\/strong>So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship\u2014and this is what I am going to proclaim to you\u2019\u201d (NIV, emphasis added).<\/p>\n

Inspired by scripture and putting our learning from the first session to good use, in the second session we actually went out and practiced how to decode the community and bring people to Christ. When we walk around our communities, we need to ask, \u201cwhat objects of worship are found in this community? Or what does the community \u2018worship\u2019?\u201d It could be anything! We just have to be willing to talk with people and invite them to worship Jesus Christ rather than worship an \u201cunknown god.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the New and Renew Conference, I shared what I learned with members of our church board and commission team. Now we have a great vision and plan for our church to serve the community, revitalize, and grow. Together we will work to carry out the great commission.<\/p>\n

Find video recordings and find photos from the 2018 New and Renew Church Planting Conference at <\/em>www.brethren.org\/churchplanting<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

(Read this issue of eBrethren<\/a>.)\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Christina Singh, pastor of Freeport (Ill.) Church of the Brethren and member of the Mission and Ministry Board When I first heard about the Church Planting Conference of our denomination, it did not sound like something that would interest me. But two words in its tagline caught my attention: Revitalize and Grow! Fixated on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[233,234,329,357,801],"class_list":["post-6398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ebrethren","category-general","tag-church-planting","tag-church-planting-conference","tag-discipleship-ministries","tag-ebrethren","tag-new-and-renew"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}