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Training Everyday Missionaries and Disciple-Making Disciples with Irvine Presbyterian Church" (2016)

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Training Everyday Missionaries and Disciple-Making Disciples with Irvine Presbyterian Church View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Digital Commons @ Fuller (Fuller Theological Seminary) Fuller Theological Seminary Digital Commons @ Fuller Doctor of Ministry Projects School of Theology 3-1-2016 Training Everyday Missionaries and Disciple- Making Disciples with Irvine Presbyterian Church Gabriel C. Fung Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fuller.edu/dmin Part of the Missions and World Christianity Commons Recommended Citation Fung, Gabriel C., "Training Everyday Missionaries and Disciple-Making Disciples with Irvine Presbyterian Church" (2016). Doctor of Ministry Projects. 232. https://digitalcommons.fuller.edu/dmin/232 This Project is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Theology at Digital Commons @ Fuller. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctor of Ministry Projects by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Fuller. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Please HONOR the copyright of these documents by not retransmitting or making any additional copies in any form (Except for private personal use). We appreciate your respectful cooperation. ___________________________ Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN) P.O. Box 30183 Portland, Oregon 97294 USA Website: www.tren.com E-mail: [email protected] Phone# 1-800-334-8736 ___________________________ ATTENTION CATALOGING LIBRARIANS TREN ID# Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) MARC Record # Digital Object Identification DOI # TRAINING EVERYDAY MISSIONARIES AND DISCIPLE-MAKING DISCIPLES WITH IRVINE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH A MINISTRY FOCUS PAPER SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF MINISTRY BY GABRIEL C. FUNG MARCH 2016 ABSTRACT Training Everyday Missionaries and Disciple-making Disciples with Irvine Presbyterian Church Gabriel C. Fung Doctor of Ministry School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary 2016 The purpose of this doctoral project was to implement a pilot missional community as one way of helping Irvine Presbyterian Church live out their mission, “to make disciples who make disciples.” It proposed helping congregants shift their understanding from church as a place to church as a people by training and equipping them to be everyday missionaries and disciple-making disciples within the vehicle of a missional community, which can be described as an extended family following Jesus on mission together. To test this thesis, a pilot missional community was launched in March 2014 and is currently ongoing with around thirty participants. Through an exploration of Scripture, this project identified God as the original missional community. Accordingly, God’s people are called to join him on his mission in the world: Jesus’ disciples are missionary disciples and the Church is the Spirit-led and empowered sent people of God. This project further argued that discipleship and mission are to be practiced in community. It examined the New Testament oikos/household churches as a biblical basis for missional communities, and considered some sociological insights and missiological applications in proposing the adaptation and implementation of a pilot missional community within the Irvine church. Testing of this thesis is ongoing and an initial assessment is planned for mid- 2016. However, the full results of this project will not be evident for several years given the investment of time and relational energy needed to practice discipleship and mission in community, particularly in light of the challenges posed by the individualism and busyness so common to life in suburban Southern California. Nevertheless, initial progress has been encouraging, and this project commends to the Irvine church as well as the larger Church in their respective contexts the further adaptation and implementation of missional communities in their efforts to make disciples. Content Reader: Gareth Icenogle, DMin Words: 299 To my parents, Ronald and Amy Fung ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to God for the many people he has used to encourage and spur me on over the course of my doctoral studies and in the writing of this doctoral project. David Chang, Wayne Leung, and Al Lum have been a longtime community of support for me, and were some of the first to hear my thoughts and ideas and to give feedback and encouragement. Thank you for all our Saturday morning breakfasts together over the years. My colleagues in our pastoral covenant group—Mike Conan, John Furman, Chris Grange, Rob Langworthy, Duncan McColl, Gary Watkins, Jim Wilson, and Wayland Wong—walked with me when God led me through an extended season of transition, a time in which my focus on discipleship and disciple-making came to be clarified and honed. Thank you for your friendship and for your examples of faithfulness in ministry. Scott Bullock has been a brother and friend in our shared ministry with Irvine Presbyterian Church (IPC) and continues to be an encourager and advocate of the ideas and practices presented in this project. Don Barkley, Dorothy Bregozzo, and Aaron Schweizer were instrumental in leading some of IPC’s organizational and cultural change which subsequently allowed for this project to be applied and implemented. Bud Thoreen was invaluable in recounting IPC’s history, and Linda Maestas was a great help with the congregational research. To all of you and the other IPC elders, congregants, and staff, thank you for your ongoing commitment to make disciples who make disciples. The members of our pilot missional community—Burk and Cindy Beadle, Joe and Jenessa Eelkema, Sam Niu and Ying Li, Paul and Diane Park, Chris and Lindsay Pettit, Doug and Barbara Robison, Carlo and Rachel Van Niekerk, Steve and Vikki Vosbigian, and all the children—have been active learners and participants. Thank you for the privilege of following Jesus on mission and sharing life together. My parents, Ronald and Amy Fung, have been an unwavering source of support, as have my brothers, Clem and Justin. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. Saving the best for last, my wife, Maribeth, has cheered me on at every step and often gave of herself sacrificially so I could have the time and space to read, study, think, and write. And while our children, Matthew and Amy, are still a bit too young to understand what their dad has been working on, in their unique ways they have injected joy and laughter into what has sometimes been a slow and challenging writing process. Thank you for all your love, sacrifice, patience, and prayers. I am so grateful we get to love God and follow Jesus as a family. God has blessed me richly with each of you. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv PART ONE: MINISTRY CONTEXT INTRODUCTION 2 Chapter 1. MINISTRY AND COMMUNITY CONTEXT OF IRVINE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 8 PART TWO: THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION Chapter 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 26 Chapter 3. A THEOLOGY OF MISSIONAL COMMUNITIES 42 PART THREE: STRATEGY Chapter 4. MINISTRY OUTCOMES 65 Chapter 5. IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION 84 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 96 APPENDICES 100 BIBLIOGRAPHY 103 v PART ONE MINISTRY CONTEXT INTRODUCTION If you make disciples, you always get the church. But if you make a church, you rarely get disciples. —Mike Breen and Steve Cockram1 I remember reading these words in the opening pages of Breen and Cockram’s book, Building a Discipling Culture. It was March 2012. Just two months earlier, my wife, Maribeth, our two young children, and I had said goodbye to our church. The congregation had encouraged and nurtured me in pastoral ministry over the course of my twelve-and-a-half years with them, and my family and I had built significant friendships and relationships with people in the church. But God was moving us on: Maribeth and I sensed him leading us into something new—we did not know exactly what, only that it was time to go. So with tears, joy, and gratitude, we celebrated with the congregation and said a bittersweet goodbye. At the time, I was a year into the Doctor of Ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary and I dove headlong into my studies. I had thought initially I would focus on something related to preaching and leadership but soon sensed God leading me to focus instead on discipleship and disciple-making. A key part of clarifying my focus was this statement by Breen and Cockram. When I first read it, instinctively I knew they were right. And yet at the same time I felt a deep uneasiness within. I knew the Great Commission. I knew Jesus’ mandate for his disciples to go and make other disciples. My former church had as their stated 1 Mike Breen and Steve Cockram, Building a Discipling Culture: How to Release a Missional Movement by Discipling People Like Jesus Did, 2nd ed. (Pawleys Island, SC: 3 Dimension Ministries, 2011), Kindle Electronic Version: Loc. 100-101. 2 mission: “To help every person become a fully committed follower of Jesus Christ.”2 I had spent more than a decade trying to live into that with them. But I also knew the challenge of staying focused on the disciple-making task. I knew how often and easily it gets obscured in the everyday busyness of people’s lives, in the various activities and programs of a church, in the way congregants and leaders often evaluate ministry opportunities and effectiveness, in the responsibilities and expectations that come with being a pastor. And as I reflected on my own life and the season of ministry I had just completed—amidst all the preaching, teaching, worship leading, pastoral visits, staff and leadership meetings—I asked and wondered to myself, “Did I actually make disciples? Had I helped them know Jesus more intimately, trust Jesus more fully, follow Jesus more faithfully? And could they now help others do the same? How fruitful and effective had I really been in making disciples?” Since that day, Breen and Cockram’s words have become an anchor of sorts for me in terms of what God has called me to be and do in pastoral ministry: amidst all the work and responsibilities that come with helping to lead a church, my calling is to make disciples.
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