DWELL Missional Church of Burlington, Vermont - A Vermont Church Seeking to be missional in all areas of life.

100% Organic Community

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Posted By: Zach Hoag

 

Teaching week after week is an interesting experience. Don't get me wrong - I love it, and I am so grateful that you guys allow me to do it and that you appreciate the gift that I believe God's given to me (just as he's given many gifts to all of you). But it's interesting because as I prepare each week I'm simply confounded by how much (USDA organic) meat there is in each passage, under each topic.

And it's honestly so hard not to write out 5 page outlines and teach 3 hour messages.

This past week we talked over our third core value, Organic in Community, but there was some catch-up to do from the week before - 20 minutes of it, to be exact - about spiritual gifts and the Dwell expression. (You can grab the podcast here.) Backtracking, we took another look at continuationism and why we believe that all of the spiritual gifts continue to be in effect. We laid down a few groundrules about prophecy and tongues at Dwell gatherings (e.g., for prophecy, don't yell or say "thus saith the Lord", and wait your turn during "everybody time"; for tongues, feel free to pray quietly while you worship, or privately in daily life, but don't pray in tongues loudly during gatherings, for others to hear, because peeps may think you're crazy [see 1 Cor. 14]).

But of course recapping and backtracking cuts down the time for the topic at hand, so I wanted to do a bit of dwellblog follow-up on our third value and flesh out a few ways that we see Dwell as a 100% organic community. The following ingredients are drawn from the definition of "organic" that we arrived at Sunday night: life gives birth to life.

Organic Ingredient #1: Spiritual life originates in the gospel work of the Spirit
This is essentially the meaning of the parable of the sower in Lu. 8:4-15 (or "the parable of the organic farmer", as we called it Sunday). At Dwell we recognize that only when  the good news of Jesus' death and resurrection goes forth (Ro. 10:14 f.), and the seed of the gospel word is planted, will new spiritual life happen in an individual heart. The gospel is the message that Jesus' death has paid for all our sin and brokenness, and that Jesus' resurrection has vindicated and justified us before the Judge, so that we now are completely reconciled with the Father. Through this message and because of what Jesus has accomplished, the Spirit works resurrection and transformation in our hearts so that we are born again. We have faith from the heart in Jesus, and a totally restored relationship with God - which means new spiritual life now, and hope of eternal life to come.

So at Dwell we intend to b a church that is fixated on the gospel message, which is the power of God unto salvation.

Organic Ingredient #2: Spiritual life flows through relationships
Jesus' words in Lu. 8 regarding his parents (vv. 16-21) are like a window into his master plan. As he is bringing good news to poor and broken people, he is literally creating a new family, a new community, something that will later be called the church.

And the way he is doing this is exceptionally clear at the very beginning of chapter 8:

"Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means" (vv. 1-3).

The gospel work of the Spirit has a context, and that context is relationship. On our Values page, we say that "relationship is the true context for faith"; and we believe that over and against church programs or evangelistic endeavors, relationship is the way that non-Christians receive the gospel and enter the Christian community, and the way that Christians live out the gospel in Christian community. The whole life-giving and life-flowing process can be summed up under one word: discipleship. Discipleship happens when one life engages another life in the pursuit of following Jesus, and the gospel work of the Spirit starts going down.

Discipleship and relationship are almost one and the same for us; and they are the viral and multiplying context for the gospel work of the Spirit. And it is unto this that we have been called: deep community and deep relationships with other believers, that flow out into missional relationships with non-believers.

Organic Ingredient #3: Spiritual life makes and multiplies communities
While we did not see an example of this in our text, per se, it is present there implicitly. Post-resurrection and post-Pentecost people who had been radicalized by the Spirit of Jesus would begin gathering in communities so that the spiritual life would continue to flow. As theologian Scot McKnight says, the formation of a new society of people where there is inclusion and love and justice is God's very plan for establishing his rule and his counter-culture kingdom in the earth. This is the end result of what he calls a "robust gospel."

But we cannot be small-minded here. This plan of God for building his kingdom is not small - it is massive. And as relationship-obsessed communities (like Dwell) emerge in the name of Jesus, their missional DNA ought to drive them towards multiplying - planting new missional churches in new places - until the life of the Spirit of Jesus through the gospel reaches every person and fills the whole earth.

At Dwell, we have this DNA, and we want to see that organic life of Christ multiplying and spreading from the individual to the relational/communal to the multi-communal levels.

100% organic. That's how we roll.

It's VT, after all.

 

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