David George Montalvo | Communicate Christ

Reggie McNeal Speaks At Grace Community Church

 

Doug Clark, pastor of GCC, met Reggie through the Leadership Network. Through that connection, he asked Reggie to come to Tyler to speak to local pastors and Grace staff about how to best do church.

This post consists of main points culled during his GCC staff lunch talk...

During this session I learned more about the passion driving the vision of Grace than I have in over 20 months of service...

Pew Stats

• 16% of all Americans are non affiliated or do not identify with any church or religion
• 19.6% of all American men are non affiliated
• 25% of all Americans under age 30 are non affiliated

Are we in a post Christian culture or pre Christian culture? Reggie likes to think of America in a pre Christian culture primed to be ministered to. There are many people even in our local culture that are pre Christian. They are not influenced by religion and since most churches aim toward serving Christian's there will be a larger percentage of non affiliates in our local culture.

This is a great opportunity for effective missional ministry.

Shift #1

How do we then start a discussion of expanding bandwidth of velcro where non affiliated peoples can stick to God?

Most people have been conditioned to look at church as a vendor of religious goods and services. Ministries are like a pez dispensers. But we should be more incarnational in our ministry approach. Missional.

Energies should refocus because our scorecard of measuring success is screwed up... the way we measure church as a success is errant.

1. internal focused church vs external focused church
   
   - instead of program driven churches we should produce missional Christians who see themselves as the church
   - the missional mindset is we are the church wherever we are (Doug's been saying this for quite some time now)
   
   - an internal focused church is an attractional model (ex: hire a good looking eloquent pastor to draw more people to the church). For example imagine a church with increasing people attending while simultaneously more people in the communities surrounding the church are growing poor yet there is no correlation between the two. that's wrong isn't it. shouldn't our efforts as church be more incarnational...
2. church as the destination vs church as the connector
   
   - the church is not the destination but rather the connector.
   - being church centric is not new testament. church is not the stopping place. the destination is the kingdom...
3. attractional vs incarnation
   

Blood:Water Mission Covered In Tyler Paper

A little more than 30 days ago, Fred Smith pulled me aside after a meeting organized by Doug Clark, Senior Pastor of Grace Community Church and Joe Canal, Pastor of Tyler Christian Fellowship. The meeting was held to discuss the possibility of hosting a bicycle team dedicated to raising funds for clean water projects on another continent.

Fred asked me if I wanted to take the lead in organizing this event. I wasn't sure who Fred was, or is, even now, but this event feel into my value set and I couldn't say anything but yes, "Yes, Fred, I'd love to do good."

I've been shocked that God would use someone like me to make a difference; a washed up has been who has failed in life in so many ways. But God has qualified me, His blood was redeemed me, and I am available for His service;  ready, willing, and able.

Here's a write up in the Tyler Paper that took place Saturday, 4 days after the event. The article is humbling. Take a peak...

Blood:Water Mission Sparks Movement In East Texas

   

     

Singer Sara Groves performs to a capacity crowd of the blood:water mission, Ride:Well Bicycle Tour on Tuesday at Bergfeld Park. The tour’s 15 riders, en route to Washington, D.C., from Los Angeles, made an unscheduled stop in Tyler and raised $86,200. The mission, started by the band Jars of Clay in 2002, seeks to create a grassroots movement to provide clean water and blood supply to African communities.

 

By PATRICK BUTLER
Religion Editor

It was an intangible “something” permeating the blood:water mission at Bergfeld Park on Tuesday night, attendees said. But describing that “something,” using words such as “historic,” “unprecedented” or even “miracle” became inadequate to them.

Cannibal Eats Girlfriend

Just a few hours ago, I got a haircut at SUPERCUTS in the Green Acres Shopping Center. The stylist and I started talking and while chatting, I couldn’t help but notice the receptionist reading today’s Tyler paper.

The heading, which I read while eating breakfast, was utterly shocking! 

So when I saw it again, I couldn’t help but remark; “Hey, did you hear about the Cannibal who ate his girlfriend?” Immediately, we had a little circle of stylists and shop patrons chiming in on the talk of the town, a young man who had murdered his 21 yr old girlfriend, then cut her up and started eating her.

Here’s an excerpt from TylerPaper.com. 

Smith said investigators found Shearer’s body with chunks of flesh cut out, one ear boiling in a pot of water on the stove and a plate of human flesh with a fork on the kitchen table in the brick home at 423 Princess Place  in Tyler.

That’s insane, I thought, possibly even demonic. How else could you explain forgoing both the passion of love between two people and more importantly the value of life in order to commit an incredibly wicked murder?

Then my stylist piped up and let us know that she went to school with McCuin, the killer, who graduated from John Tyler, one of two large high schools in our town. She knew him to be a fun and good natured guy in high school; he was the life of the party.

But then he got into drugs.

Later came an addiction that led to the loss of both his network of friends and eventually, obviously, his lack of reason. So much so that he could boil parts of a girl with whom he shared a bed. Such a base crime testifies to many wrongs leading to this improbable eventuality. 

Do doubt, he was jacked up!

Whitehouse, where the murder took place, is a suburb of Tyler, and I use to live there. In fact, as a teen, I lived in the same apartment complex where the beautiful 21yr old Jana Shearer lived until a few days ago.

The apartment complex is a magnet for many families burdened by dysfunction as well as poverty. There you will find many broken homes ravaged by drunkenness, drug abuse, and worse, godlessness. In an environment like that, there is little hope.

And now, a mother is left hopeless. Shearer's mother once had hoped for the safe return of the daughter she shared an apartment with. Now only grief and despair wait to grip her as she picks up many memories left behind. 

At home after the haircut, as my wife Jenny and I discussed the ghastly murder again, she noted, “This really disturbed you.”

I thought about it for a second and then said, “Yes, it did.”

But why? 

I think it’s because of the rumor also going around Tyler that McCuin believes "God told him to do it."

To me, a dedicated Jesus-follower, that claim sounds utterly nonsensical. This man clearly did not hear the voice of Jesus, whose nature and character tell us He values love for our neighbor. This man heard another voice. This man listened to another “god” whom he eventually obeyed.

And here’s the kicker, before I worshiped Jesus, I too was loyal to other gods. Maybe not vain drug-induced imaginations whispering murder, but gods nevertheless, that led me to follow after sins of the flesh and deny the one true God, Jesus.

In a very real way, all who obey the voice of other gods have something in common with McCuin.

May God help us all, believers and unbelievers alike, to know and practice true love. May God help us to know true unshakable hope and to share hope with the hopeless, including Shearer's killer. May God help the families of those involved.

If ever they needed the God of peace, it's now.