Rhythm & Reign: Living as
Church on the Margins of Culture
& Foretaste of the Kingdom
Gary Nelson and Fred Harrell
City Church: Our Story
Rev Fred Harrell
City Church San Francisco
"Success consists of
going from failure to failure
without loss of enthusiasm."
Winston Churchill
OUR
CHALLENGE
WAS TWOFOLD
To create a gracious
environment
To create a culture where the
good news is being lived out
IT IS A COUNTERINTUITIVE
WAY OF DOING CHURCH
A CHURCH
“NOT JUST FOR OURSELVES”
A CHURCH THAT TRIES ALWAYS
TO REMEMBER WHAT IT’S
LIKE NOT TO BELIEVE
I BELIEVE WE HAVE SEEN THIS
TAKE PLACE DUE TO
FOUR MAJOR COMMITMENTS
COMMITMENT NUMBER 1
Developing a Mentality of Church
as Mission Outpost
All is done “before the nations”
Cultivating the bringer mentality
Comprehensibile
Constant Evaluation
COMMITMENT NUMBER 2
Embodying the Good News as a
Church with Kingdom Priorities
The Kingdom of God:
God coming to reclaim
and restore His creation
We Seek the Renewal
of All Things and
Shalom of All
Modeling the Sociological
Impossibility of the Church
Community:
Embodying the Gospel
to Each Other
COMMITMENT NUMBER 3
Understanding our Context
NEW TO CHRISTIANITY
COMPETENT
VISUAL
SUSPICIOUS
POLITICIZED
ARGUING WITH ME
RESPECTS THEIR OWN
“AUTHORITIES”
NOT MY AUTHORITIES
DYING FOR FAMILY AND
COMMUNITY, BUT HAVE AN
INABILITY TO EXPERIENCE IT
HAS A HUNGER FOR A LINK TO
THE PAST, AND DOESN’T WANT
TO BE BOUND TO GLITZ AND
SHALLOWNESS
COMMITMENT NUMBER 4
A Pastoral Commitment to
Incarnate the Gospel
A commitment to intense pastoral
involvement
You must listen
You must get inside their world
You must let them into your
world
You must be a pacesetter
You must develop leaders and
attenders who are sensitive to
the vision and who take into
account these contextual
commitments
Question:
Is your church the kind of place
that makes people say:
“This is where I need to bring my
non-Christian friends,
this is exactly what they need to
hear, and how they need to hear
it!”
Wait! This isn’t a nurturing
model…
or is it?
Mission breeds discipleship, and
is the fuel of Christian growth!
• “Thursday, March 29. I left London
and in the evening expounded to a
small company in Basingstoke.
Sat. 31. In the evening I reached
Bristol and met Mr. Whitefield
there. I could scarce reconcile
myself at first to this strange way
of preaching in the fields,
of which he set me an example on
Sunday, having been all my life (till
very lately) so tenacious of every
point relating to decency and order
that I should have thought the
saving of souls almost a sin if it had
not been done in a church.”
• “Mon. 2. At four in the afternoon I
submitted to ‘be more vile’, and
proclaimed in the highways the glad
tidings of salvation, speaking from a little
eminence in a ground adjoining to the city,
to about three thousand people.”
• From Wesley’s published Journal, for March-April 1739
(The Works of John Wesley, vol. 19, Ed. W. R. Ward and R.
P. Heitzenrater (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 46). The ‘be
more vile’ quote is from 2 Samuel 6:22.
Rooting Our Identity
“ When the spine of identity is well
established, it is possible to risk relating
in depth to those whoa re different from
ourselves. When the spine of identity is
weak, then everything is a threat.”
- James Fowler Weaving the New Creation
“In the context of the secularized, postChristian West our witness will be credible
only if it flows from a local, worshiping
community. Newbigin suggests that the
only hermeneutic of the gospel is a
congregation of men and women who
believe it and live by it. ”
David J. Bosch
REFLECTION
What are you going to take back with
you to your local church context?