Look Where God is Working

August 20, 2009

The final assessment group meeting consisted of four main parts:

1. a word from Jonathan from Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby
2. deliberation about prototype groups
3. a "10 in 10" list
4. prayer

1. Encouragement
Jonathan Williams encouraged us with a short story from Henry Blackaby's Experiencing God condensed booklet illustrating the fruit that happens when watching for God to work and joining in. You can listen to the account by listening to Mark's sermon at Liveoak on August 23, 2009.

He also correlated the story with these Scriptures:

Romans 3: 10-11

as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none that
understandeth, There is none that seeketh after God;

John 6:44

No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him: and I will raise
him up in the last day.

2. Starting a prototype home group
We agreed that a Home Group Leaders' Home Group should start either September 1 or 2 and Mark would tentatively lead the group.

3. "10 in 10" List
"The top 10 things we can do in the next 10 days to see people saved and join LO" (or the "10 in 10" plan").

We reviewed the initial list that Mark Hagen had assembled and added ideas of our own:

* Mark Hagen's "10 in 10" ideas:

1. Mark H. helps coach Longhorn Life during the first few week of semester.
2. Will L. gets involved with Longhorn Life (especially developing outreach relationships)
3. Hannah & Richard get involved with Longhorn Life
4. First few sermons are seeker friendly.
5. Make improvements & adjustments with Sunday's meeting (more food, take over main sign, SS/nursery/ushers retooled, adjust seating/chairs?
6. Hannah & Richard work with Madison to launch high school outreach at Akins
7. The Vine and other small groups incorporate some of the ideas from HG model for easy assimilation of new people
8. Every member makes a list of unbelievers they know, finds an evangelism partner, meets & prays with partner on weekly basis for month of Sept. 9.

*Other ideas:
Prayer on the porch outreach - door to door prayer request solicitation in Crestview neighborhood
Toastmaster's club
team sports involvement
play groups for stay at home moms
every member makes a list of friends
community service
Violet Crown festival in Crestview neighborhood in May
partnering with other churches
panel discussion/testimony time at liveoak to share stories of people's efforts

In light of the fact that lay leaders and staff already have many responsibilities in the near future, we discussed things people could do that did not require much/any oversight.

We also posed the question: how do we help people take on the idea of a "balanced meal", where we have taken in a lot of meat in the form of Bible study but need to balance it with fruits, vegetables, and grains - fellowship, evangelism, etc... This remained a standing question at the conclusion of the meeting.

4. Prayer
We gave thanks to God for bringing Liveoak through many trials and for this process of assessment and prayed through many aspects of our discussions on Liveoak. We also prayed over Grace Community Church in San Antonio where Jonathan Williams serves as a pastor. He has sacrificed much of his time to help Liveoak even as his church has been undergoing a period of reassessment.

Finally, here are words of thanks:
Thanks be to God for delivering us from our punishment of and preparing us rooms in His mansion instead. He has given us a mission worth dying for here so that we may fully live!

Thanks to Jonathan and Grace Community Church for his help facilitating our assessment! May God richly bless you and Grace Community Church many times over!

Thanks to everyone on the assessment team for sacrificing time with family, traveling long distances, and/or clearing time in the midst of heavy schedules to make these assessment times possible.

Thanks to the members of Liveoak for your prayers and openness to follow God however He leads!

Building a new front door to our church

(home group diagram)

August 13, 2009

For the second of three sessions, we discussed methods of shepherding and evangelism as planned. Mark delivered a sermon the following the Sunday August 16 that summarizes the meeting quite appropriately so I will refer to
it below as the primary update:

Shepherding and Evangelism Model

The Scriptures tell us that God has given us certain gifts, talents so that we focus on those!

1Pet. 4:10 Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. So
too, it’s not unreasonable to think if this is how God works individually, that He also works this way on a church wide scale.

Every church seems to have strengths and weaknesses. What should each church focus on?

What are our LO’s strengths? Over the years we have taken many assessments, evaluations, always the same – relationships!

Since “Relationships” stands out as the #1 strength God has given to LO, therefore it should drive all the structures of our church.

So, the A-Team believes God is leading us to spend much more time & energy in creating & developing our relational community Or, in other words, significantly expanding our Small group system.

Home Groups:
Home is a term that is appealing, it invokes ideas of warmheartedness, closeness, a safe place, friendly to visitors & seekers who are interested in checking out our church.

If we invite somebody to our home it can communicate a greater desire to be their friend than even inviting them to our church.

5-15 members in a Home Group (when the group reaches 10, it should begin planning to reproduce)

Goal: To build up one another in love (Eph. 4:16) by joining together for meals, prayer, worship, Bible study; and also to be the primary catalyst for evangelism in our church. The last part is huge - not events, classes, programs, but through HGs!

Home Groups could be based on geographical location of members, relationships, phase of life, or shared mission (LL).

Most of the shepherding and care of LO members will take place through Home Groups. Thus HGs become a very important meeting in the church, as important as Sundays.

In fact, our web site will promote Home Groups as much as our Sunday meeting and location.

Leadership of Home Groups: Plurality of leadership. (For each HG there would be at least 2 male HG leaders along with a female HG assistant)

HGs are like mini-churches; thus, the leaders are equipped & empowered to be autonomous regarding many decisions. Much of the content and the frequency of meeting etc. will be left to each HG.

HG leaders will attend a monthly equipping time lead by the elders as well as personal discipleship by the elders.

Qualifications: perhaps similar to deacons.

These groups hold potential for eventually being the foundation for future church plants.

Life Groups: (Home Groups will usually contain a few Life Groups):

2-3 members in a Life Group (when you get to 4, you reproduce)

Goal: To be completely accountable with 1 or 2 people in areas of holiness & evangelism.

Frequency of “meeting” most likely will be weekly. They could also just “meet” over the phone or skype.


Next Steps:

1. We need to have much teaching & discussion on the ingredients that make for a successful HG. Many of these ideas will be new, yet most of us
have participated in small groups before (students), so some of these will
be familiar.

But, in the community, these groups will be more diverse than students, b/c we’re dealing w more diverse stages of life than college


There will be challenges, like what to do regarding care of children, especially those with large families.

We will have to work at freeing up our schedules in order to get more time to dev. friendships w unbelievers. Even looking at reducing the time it takes us to fulfill internal ministries in the church so we free up more time for evangelism and relationships.

Many other challenges - So, please tell us your ideas, feelings, concerns - card & blog - [from liveoakassessment09.blogspot.com]

Students - we don’t plan to make hardly any changes this semester & perhaps only slight changes in the future. Stick w your plan

2. We are tentatively planning to begin a HG, in Sept. of only HG leaders. Alpha model for a month or two.

Training, learning, discussing and figuring out together as leaders how to do HG.

3. Sometime in Oct. we will begin starting HG’s for those that would like to join. Exploratory try them for rest of the year, work the bugs out. Beta

4. A full launch by Jan. 2010. Go public!

What to do in the meantime, esp. if not a HG leader?

If you want to have small groups and not a HG leader, have them just for the month of Sept. or just wait until Oct. You could also begin to clear out your schedule, and then begin spending more time developing rel. with unbelievers.


Home Groups
(Response card distributed to everyone in attendance at the church service on August 16)

Ideas, questions, or concerns:

Would you like to be in a Home Group?
Why or why not?

If you would like to be in a Home Group, who would you like your leaders to be?

If you would like to be a Home Group leader, who would you like to co-lead with? We need to look at significantly adjusting some of our deacon ministries so that deacons are freed up to be HG leaders.

If you would like to be in a Life Group, who would you like to be with?

Whew, the first one to contact Kelly if you've read this far gets a prize!

Strengths and Weaknesses

Our Purpose

To plan and carry out an intentional transition within Liveoak from campus ministry orientation to a community orientation that includes campus. Pastors, deacons, and lay ministers will lead these ministries instead of church staff members who must raise ministry support.

Jonathan Williams, Pastor at Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas is here to facilitate us being in God's presence and to rediscover God's leading. Our unified prayer for Liveoak: Philemon 1:6

5 things that have encouraged Jonathan even before the meeting:

1. Leadership of Liveoak: men who love the Word and walk with integrity
2. Mark's emergence from the dark night
3. Mark's experience will be turned around for good to minister to hurting people: we live in a lost, broken culture crying out for relief
4. The LOBC building as a presence in the community
5. Our campus presence still exists

Each member shared why he or she wanted to be on the assessment team. (Members, feel free to share)

Prayer...We come empty handed in salvation, begging, and we still come empty handed and begging now...


Discussion of Strengths, Weaknesses, and Observations

Each church has specific strengths and weaknesses. To be successful, we must focus on our strengths and manage our weaknesses.

Strengths

• Relationships - strong open honest
• godly leaders
• many mature believers w/ depth of relationship with God
• strong sense of theology among members from an intellectual perspective
• music team has great talent and servant heart
• strong women's ministry
• very committed, humble people
• strong marriages
• strong finances - general management, debt management, tithing
• intergenerational fellowshiping exists
  

Weaknesses

• historically no support for students transitioning from campus ministry to community life
• lack of vision
• intellectual theology not found in active practice as a church - ex. community involvement, evangelism
• visitors come once but don't come again
• we don't get people linked into our communities
• too many people are not proactive in introducing themselves to visitors/prospective members
• pursuit of depth on Sundays can result in lack of introductions to visitors/prospective members
• as a church in general we do not know how to foster community beyond college students
• how [many members of the assessment team] know to do ministry was developed in the college setting, and no [age 60+] older outsiders are aroudn to help us grow our community fellowship
• lack of clear measures of success for community
• when community fellowship does not happen like college fellowship, college graduates at liveoak get disenchanted - there is a culture shock when leaving college but staying at liveoak
• many singles of various ages, but no ministry towards singles
• lack of sense of membership, no covenant or classes

Observations

• Focus has changed over time: no evangelism classes
• leadership has changed: 9-10 staffers down to just Mark and Jeff as pastors
• ministry support of liveoak workers has changed - $200K-$250K from outside Liveoak used to fund staff
• we became staff-dependent on driving ministries (top-down) and events and did not learn how to work with volunteers from the church community (bottom-up - for example LOLA, marriage class, missions)
• the number of staff has greatly decreased, we are sending church
• structured intentional shepherding used to exist primarily for campus ministry, ad-hoc shepherding for the rest of the church; shepherding has happened primarily through fellowship we could be more purposeful in shepherding and sharpening each other
• no one at Liveoak has been a Christian for more than 50 years, thus there are no spiritual "anchors" to help working-age community to gain perspective
• people choose churches based on perceived strength of relationship with the pastor
• a major time of church transition occurred during the most difficult part of Mark's life

Team Assignment

Memorize Philemon 1:6 in the version of your choice and pray it with Ephesians 1:17-18 for our church every day

6that the fellowship of your faith may become effective, in the knowledge of every good thing which is in us in Christ Jesus.
Philemon

17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; 18
having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
Ephesians 1

Liveoak Members
Mark and Kristin Hagen, Mark Nodine, Kelly & Ursula Liao, Jeff Kobes, John Rees, Renee Boelsche

Facilitator
Jonathan Williams, a Pastor at Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas

Date

Monday July 20, 2009, 7pm -9ish

Next Time
Discuss models of equipping, evangelism, and shepherding.
Location TBA (Hagen house?) 7pm-9pm