Capstone Church

Community – comes from the words “Common Unity”

Capstone focus’s will be on two types of community:
1. PERSONAL COMMUNITY
2. CAPSTONE COMMUNITY 

Personal Community:

Our personal community is the area or group of people where we live. We have responsibilities for taking care of our specific community.  The personal community of our lives is a big picture of building relationships and service.  Capstone will also have an active part in this community and empowering
you to change our community for the benefit of the Kingdom.

Capstone Community:

 The Capstone Community is a group of individuals with like minds meeting together to draw closer to Christ and better each other and the local community.

Personal But Never Private:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.     Hebrews 12:1

Capstone is not about individual accomplishment, but the JOURNEY TOGETHER

“Only Jesus saves, and only Jesus keeps – but he puts us in community to grow and develop, not in isolation. In other words, there is a reason why he created the church… We were born into
the community of the kingdom and the local church is the seed bedthat we live in together.”      
   Bob Roberts from Transformation

It has been an exciting first month at Capstone Discovery.  We went through 16 boxes of donuts, 3 gallons of milks, gave out over 30 Capstone Discovery notebooks, 3 pounds of coffee, and 50 pens.  We saw over 60 people come in and hear the vision for Capstone Church.  Four weeks ago the vision of Capstone was limited in its scope, now it has been planted in the hearts of many in our community.  Over the next three months we will continue to water this God size vision to prepare for our Launch in 2009.

God is Good!

Outreach is NOT a program at Capstone.  We want it to be a wayof life.  We want to introduce more people to Jesus!  We believe that happens not with a program, but through intentional living.  We want to begin with a form of intentional relationships that everyone can be a part of. 

What is a Relational Network?

Relational Network - It is a group of people that you regularly come in contact with. 

Why relational networking - because this is what we see Jesus model.  Jesus connected with the people He was trying to reach inone of four ways in each Gospel account:

• He came upon them in the course of doing something (i.e. thewoman at the well in Samaria)
• He initiated contact with them, (Zacchaeus) 
• People brought others to Him (i.e.: the little children / the paralytic lower from the roof Mark 2)
• People initiated contact with Him. (i.e.: young rich ruler)

Problems with Relational Networks and church people:

1.  We like to COMPARTMENTALIZE Jesus.

2.  We think the church EXISTS FOR US, not the world.

Can you think of some Christian sub cultures we have created?

Bob Roberts from: Transformation
“What did it look like when God blessed a nation? He impacted their natural infrastructures such as economics, health, education, social services, and so on. How did He accomplish this? Instead of creating
a competing infrastructure of religion, he created transformed people who laid across the existing infrastructures through their jobs, home life, and daily traffic patterns.  Faith was not an infrastructure in itself, but these transformed people of faith touched every existing infrastructure for the purpose of transforming the culture from the inside out.  Today we have turned Christianity into its own
infrastructure – something against the existing culture in largely fruitless efforts.  It was never meant to be this way. 

Isaiah 55:5
Behold, you will call a nation you do not know. And a nation which knows you not will run to you because of the Lord your God, even the Holy One of Israel; For He has glorified you. (NIV)

A nation (a group of people) who doesn’t know God will be drawn to Him. The word “know” used here is used throughout the Old Testament as to have sexual intercourse - to know intimately.  We see that Israel will not only come in contact with other nations who are far from God, but that will be attracted to Him because He has glorified them as a nation.  They were to become intimate (get into their lives) with the pagan nations that surround Israel.  

Can we say that we as Christ followers are willing to be intimate with the lost in our community?

Luke 15:1
“Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

In Luke 15 we see that a nation (the lost) who didn’t know the Father where drawn to Jesus.  Why?  Because God has gloried Christ and us to be attractive to those who do not know Christ.  We see this throughout the gospels, the lost wanting to hangout with Jesus.

So the question is are we attractive to those outside the church?

Capstone Leadership is a part of a Church Planters Training Network called the Cypress Project.  One of the facilitators Chris Ruppe made this statement that has left us pondering.  Based on the scripture verses above:

“If we aren’t attractive to the lost, are we really living a Christ filled life?”

One of goals/mission at Capstone is not to be just another church or even “attractional” church, but to be filled with transformed, ATTRACTIVE Christ followers.  We really believe that the unchurched of our community should not be turned off by church, but drawn in because God has glorified us so that those who don’t know Him…will!  

Who is the most attractive Christ follower you know?  Are the unchurched in your community attracted to you and your Jesus?  

Here is another take on the same discussion from Jay Harwick who is a part of the Cypress Project as well.

The first month of capstone discovery is halfway over.  God continues to send people who are interested in a new church that wants to not only introduce people to Christ, but also change a city.  This past week we cracked the 50 mark at Capstone.  Each week we continue to allow for more discussion among the group.  This week we discussed as a group about being an attractive Christian and our relational networks.

This week we discussed our relationships with others.  Often as Christians we surround ourselves with people like us – other Christians.  One study shows that once we’ve been a Christian for two years we no longer have contact with the unchurched.  We discussed how we must be intentional in the relationships we have with the unchurched.  For many this is a foreign idea, we were always told to only hang out with good church people.  In Jesus’ model we see him not only spending time with good people, but also reaching out to the those who were far from His father.  Who will we meet this week that is far from God? 

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”   Luke 17:20-21

 “Kingdom” mentioned: 121 times in the gospels – The word “Church” mentioned : 2 times. 

Jesus manifested the Kingdom as He:

¨     ANNOUNCED the kingdom with his WORDS

¨     DEMANSTRATED the kingdom with his DEEDS

¨     EMBODIED the kingdom with his LIFE

¨     PRAYED for the coming of the kingdom from his HEART

¨     STRUGGLED against opposition to the kingdom in FAITH

¨     FORMED a kingdom community with INTENTIONALITY

Glenn Smith in his article, Church Planting and the Kingdom of God

“If we don’t understand this concept of kingdom, we will mistakenly think that we have to BUILD the kingdom, or that we have to CREATE the kingdom, or that we have to EXPAND the kingdom.
None of these is true!

The New Testament never uses words like ‘build’, ‘extend’, or ‘expand’ when talking about the kingdom! The New Testament employs words like ‘receive’, ‘enter’, ‘inherit’, and ‘lay hold of,’ when talking about the kingdom! The kingdom of God is not something we create or even promote. It is something we seek, we receive,we lay hold of, and we enter!

Trying to build A KINGDOM does not glorify THE KINGDOM.

Jesus praying for his disciples and future followers (us):
“I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”                        John 17:23

“I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought…. Is Christ divided?”                           1 Corinthians 1:10,13

Collaboration as Christ followers won’t happen until we begin seeing THE CHURCH not just as individual churches but THE KINGDOM it self. 

A monument is a statue, building or other structure erected to commemorate a famous person or event.

A movement is a group of people working together to advance their shared ideas.

If we had to place the church of America into a category: MONUMENT or MOVEMENT, which would you choose?  Why?

 Movement Mindset:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.      2 Corinthians 5:17-20

¨     We must have a sense of URGENCY.

¨     We must live an AMBASSADORS LIFE.

¨     We must have an AIRPORT MENTALITY.

¨     We can’t be ISLANDS of separate churches.

¨     Our faith and actions must be depend through the CREATOR

Capstone Discovery took our second step of hopefully many this week with our second weekly meeting at the Fountain Inn Activities Center with those interested in Capstone Church.  After last week’s surprising crowd (46) we didn’t know how many might come back for this Sunday.  Our prayer this week would be that two more people who weren’t at CD last week be here for this Sunday. We did have new people - 5 adults. Needless to say we where excited that people who came last week had the vision to invite some new folks.  There was a great feel about this week as people hung around and began having natural community. Great Stuff!

This week we continued the Rethinking the Church discussion with our main topic being - Counter Cultural. The culture of the Western Church (the American Church) has been set and established for many years.  We looked at a few phrases to challenge that Western Thinking: Monument vs Movement / A Kingdom vs. The Kingdom / and Nature of the Church.  Check back throughout this week to catch up with our notes from Capstone Discovery.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”                            Acts 1:8  

Strategy is defined as a plan of action for a major aim.  We can ask all kinds of questions but unless we have a plan to get where we need to be, the rethinking is useless. 

Capstone Value:      Authentic    .
Capstone’s strategy to reaching our community and building disciples will revolve around authentic environments. Capstone is a place where we can come as we are and be real.  We believe that
authentic environments are key to seeing change happen around us.

We will have three areas where we believe our strategy will make the greatest impact for the Kingdom of God. 

1. Local Church

2. Relationships with others

3. Community

“… benchmarks should be established to determine whether the mission of reaching lost people and turning them into fully devoted followers of Christ is being accomplished.”  RTC pg 33

“All the believers were UNITED in heart and mind. And they felt that what they owned was not their own, so they shared everythingthey had.”     Acts 4:32

The success of the local church must be understood by the entire body of believers.  The number one hindrance of a healthy productive church body is separate parts having different agendas of how they define success. 

Capstone Value:     Impact    .
Capstone will measure its success by the impact that we have on others and our community.  We want those who are a part of Capstone to be different than before they came.  We also want to impact this community by what Christ is doing at Capstone.

Capstone Wins:

1. Creating welcoming environments for the lost

2. Building Capstone Disciples

3. Impacting our Community