It is one thing to say we want to live out biblical Authentic Christianity. It is another thing to actually do it. This document will show a picture and brief descriptions of the primary strategies New Life is pursuing in order to help Christians experience “sacrificially serving the King with their best friends.”
Pastoral Team
Christ “gave pastors and teachers” to the church “to prepare God’s people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up.” If you do not have God ordained and qualified pastors, you do not have a church. And if you do not have a church, you are out of God’s will. God’s plan for His people was local churches led by gifted pastors and teachers. (Eph 4:11-16; Tit 1:5-9; Rev chs. 2-3; 1 Pet 5:1-3; Acts 20:28; Heb 13:17)
The quality of a church, like anything else, will greatly depend on the quality of its leaders. This is why the biblical qualifications for church leaders are Christ-like character. And because Christ-like character is by far the most important requirement for church pastors, the local church itself is the best place to train and develop them. A piece of paper from a seminary may mean you know Greek and Hebrew, but it does not certify that you have been called, gifted, and equipped to bear the responsibility of teaching, leading, and watching over the souls of God’s people. And a growing number of seminaries don’t even teach sound doctrine. All of which is why we believe God will provide pastors from our own church family, and it is here that they will best be trained in character, skills, and doctrine, and earn the trust of God’s people.
Pastors in the New Testament are always referred to in the plural because they worked in a plurality in the local churches. We believe that this is the most biblical and effective way to shepherd the church. The pastors of New Life are accountable to one another and make decisions together. Major decisions are made through diligent prayer, congregational input, humble and honest discussion, and full consensus among the pastors. When God is leading, we can trust Him to lead the pastors together. The Pastoral Team is to pursue the humility and unity necessary to model “serving the King with your best friends” for the rest of New Life.
Sunday Services
Christians have gathered on Sunday since the beginning of Christianity (cf. Acts 2:42; 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2, Apology to Trypho, ch. 67, Justin Martyr, c. 150 A.D.). They gathered to be taught the Scriptures, preach the Gospel, pray and sing to God, celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and give financially to the work of the church. Thus, these are the emphases of our Sunday morning services.
We do not dilute the message of Scripture in order to attract unbelievers. We don’t believe a sincere seeker will be offended by the truth if it is shared with love. And while we certainly want the Gospel shared for the sake of the lost in our Sunday service, the primary goal of this event is changing the lives of God’s people by teaching the truth.
L.I.F.E. Groups
On a regular basis, small groups of New Life people (15-25) are meeting in homes around our city. While the percentage of people in small groups in the typical American church is 20 percent, at New Life it is about 80 percent.
The makeup of the groups are generally based on similar demographics (e.g. college students, young couples, families with children, families with teens, “empty nesters,” etc.), and meet at various locations and times. They are led by pairs of men who are chosen, trained, and shepherded by the pastors.
A typical meeting follows the agenda of Prayer, Care, Share. This consists of praying for one another and lost friends, planning and discussion opportunities to serve people in and outside of the group, and sharing the Scriptures with one another through various means. The acronym L.I.F.E. reminds us that the purpose of the group is Loving others, Interceding for others, Fellowshipping with one another, and Evangelism. Accordingly, the most important L.I.F.E. Group activities are those that occur outside the regular meeting.
The emphases of fellowship and evangelism can be misunderstood. Biblical fellowship (koinōnia) is sharing your life with others, not just a cup of coffee in the fellowship hall of the church. This is what we hope occurs as friendships form through the group. And our approach to evangelism is to focus on serving and being kind to unbelievers to earn a hearing of the Gospel. In essence, the purpose of our L.I.F.E. Groups is to help us live Authentic Christianity: “sacrificially serving the King with our best friends.”
A significant added bonus about L.I.F.E. Groups is the effect they have on our children. We believe a primary reason that so many young people are leaving the church at their first opportunity is because they have only experienced American Christianity, which for many consists primarily of attending a one hour church meeting with virtual strangers. No one in their church has ever even been in their home. Church for too many youth was never a family of brothers and sisters.
When our children see their parents praying for someone in a living room, and sharing in a small group what God is teaching them, they know Christianity is more than Sunday church. And when we take them with us to serve someone in or outside of our L.I.F.E. Group, they experience “sacrificially serving the King with our best friends.” And we believe they will grow up wanting nothing less.
Any questions regarding L.I.F.E. Groups, including current groups meeting, can be sent to Pastor Ray at ray@newlifecr.com.
Growth Track/Sunday School
New Life wants to be intentional about helping God’s people grow in the knowledge, wisdom, and character of Christ. Therefore, we have developed a set of teachings, programs, and projects that we encourage every member to participate in. The New Life Growth track can be completed in about three years, and our primary delivery tool is Sunday School groups. Topics include Christian doctrine, world view, spiritual disciplines, evangelism, marriage, parenting, and finances. Projects include short term missions trips, and conferences and retreats.
Youth Ministries
The primary place that God intends for us to make disciples of Christ is in our homes. Therefore, when recent surveys claim that over 80 percent of youth are leaving the church at the first opportunity, we know there is something very wrong with Christian families and churches. Several reasons have been suggested why American Christians are failing so badly in passing on their faith to the next generation. We think there are two primary reasons: 1) The negative influence of public schools, and 2) The lack of Authentic Christianity in the lives of parents, and especially dads.
Home Schooling
On the first issue, we must ask why we would expect our children to grow up godly when we immerse them in the ungodly atmosphere of public schools? And the statistics bear this out. In 2002, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Council on Family Life reported that roughly 88 percent of evangelical children are leaving the church shortly after they graduate from high school. This means that only 12% will continue in the church after high school.
In contrast, The National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI at www.nheri.org) claims from their findings that after high school 94 percent of Christian children educated at home keep the faith and 93 percent of home educated children continue to attend church. In other words, 93 out of 100 home schooled kids continue to attend church after high school. But if they go through public school, there is only about 12 out of 100. While home schooling is no guarantee, where would you rather take your chances at succeeding in the most important reason God gave you kids? Their real Father cares a lot more about their spirituality than their education.
And yet even academically, home schooled kids are achievers. The NHERI has demonstrated for years that:
- The home-educated typically score 15-30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests.
- Homeschool students score above average on achievement tests regardless of their parents’ level of formal education or their family’s household income.
- Whether homeschool parents were ever certified teachers is not related to their children’s academic achievement.
These results were confirmed in another study by Dr. Lawrence Rudner which found that children who were taught at home all of their school-aged years had the highest academic achievement. This was especially apparent in the higher grades.
Finally, the silly notion that public schools can better socialize and mature our children than parents can is being debunked in research as well. The NHERI reports,
“The home-educated are doing well, typically above average, on measures of social, emotional, and psychological development. Research measures include peer interaction, self-concept, leadership skills, family cohesion, participation in community service, and self-esteem. “
New Life Community Church is supportive of homeschooling. All four of New Life’s pastors and wives have homeschooled children, and three currently have children being homeschooled. About 20 percent of New Life families have chosen to home-educate their children. Some educate independently, while others utilize homeschool assistance programs provided by the local school districts. In recent years several of our homeschooled children have graduated and gone on to two- and four-year colleges.
While we do not insist on homeschooling, we would encourage Christian parents to “consider home schooling first” as they think about how to educate their children. We will not be legalistic about the matter and understand that certain situations make this option more difficult. Nonetheless, most Christian parents don’t even seriously consider homeschooling and we think this is unfortunate, especially for their children.
AWANA
AWANA (Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed, cf. 2 Tim 2:15) is a well-known and highly respected program that provides children with a foundation in the Gospel, Scripture memorization, encouragement to reach out to friends, and fun and games. In a typical week, AWANA influences the lives of one million children and youth through more than 12,000 churches in America. A recent study conducted by the organization claimed that over 90 percent of those participating for 6-10 years of their youth, were attending church as adults. While there is a great deal of work required to run this program, it is one more thing that New Life is providing to help our parents raise authentic Christians. For more information regarding our AWANA program contact Brenda Jurgensmeier at awana@newlifecr.com.
Dad-led Imprint Youth Group
Nothing can replace parents in the raising of their children. Accordingly, Jonathan Edwards, who raised a bunch of godly kids, wrote “Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church consecrated to Christ, and holy influenced and governed by His rule. And family education and order are some of the chief means of grace. If these fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual. If these are duly maintained, all the means of grace will be likely to prosper and be successful.”
The biggest reason for this is that God created dads to have the single most influence over the beliefs of their children. Accordingly, a rather famous 1994 study found, “If a father does not go to church, no matter how regular the mother is in her religious practice, only one child in 50 becomes a regular church attendee. But if a father attends regularly then regardless of the practice of the mother at least one child in three will become a regular church attendee.” (www.ad2000.com.au/articles)
Unfortunately, Americans are always looking for shortcuts that often don’t work. And in American Christianity, dads have habitually turned the spiritual training of their children over to a “youth minister,” sometimes with undesirable effects. At least one youth minister, Mark Devries, is willing to admit this. He writes in his book, Family-based Youth Ministry, “We can find the primary cause of the current crisis in youth ministry in the ways that our culture and our churches have systematically isolated young people from the very relationships that are most likely to lead them to maturity.”
All of this is why dads lead the youth ministry at New Life. They teach in large and small group teen settings, and participate in youth activities. We want dads to be engaged in these events, because we believe if they simply “drop off” their teens to participate without them, they are missing a great opportunity to fulfill their God-given responsibility for their children, and may even stunt the spiritual growth of their children.
In addition, we want to reach and transform kids outside of our church. Unfortunately, a great deal of youth ministry is expended on merely entertaining kids already in the church. We hope, for example, to put people on staff with a heart to reach kids in the public schools. And we endeavor to do this in spite of the fact that we strongly encourage and support parents to homeschool their own children.
For more information about our Imprint Youth Group contact Mark Moyer at Imprint@newlifecr.com.
Core College Campus Ministry
Even in the best of families, our kids are often not ready to be released into the world to live out Authentic Christianity. Accordingly, one of the most critical mistakes parents make is releasing their children too soon. This is one of several reasons we have developed college ministries to local campuses. At the very time when our kids are perhaps most available and teachable to do ministry and experience Authentic Christianity themselves, we do not want to ship them off somewhere else. We want them here, with us, helping us minister to lost college students.
Nearly 20,000 college students attend classes in Linn County. Despite this opportunity, there is relatively little ministry directed toward them. New Life is serious about changing this. We have started Bible studies at Kirkwood and Mt. Mercy, recruited a part-time staff member to minister to students, and plan to increase all of this as God helps us do so.
For more information about the Core Campus Fellowship visit their website at www.thecorecf.com
Ministry Teams
Any properly functioning team requires people fulfilling their role — the same is true of a church and its members serving in various capacities according to their gifts. New Life has an abundance of core ministry teams that are vital to the Body.
Any questions regarding New Life’s ministries can be sent to Pastor Pete at pete@newlifecr.com.
Barnabas Groups
Barnabas was a key New Testament evangelist and ministry partner of the Apostle Paul. Barnabas means “son of encouragement,” and no doubt he was this very thing to Paul (cf. Acts 4:36; 9:27). In addition, Barnabas was probably significantly older than Paul, being likened to Zeus, the father of the Greek gods, by the pagans in Lystra. Such a biblical figure reflects the purpose of our Barnabas Groups.
The Christian life was never meant to be lived out alone. Life can be hard, and the encouragement of our brothers and sisters can be very helpful. In addition, scripture speaks of the great value of older men and women are mentoring the younger men and women (cf. Titus 2:3-5). This is why many at New Life meet regularly in groups of 3-4 people of the same gender for prayer, Bible study, and encouragement. We think this is a vital means of practical discipleship in our church where truth can be shared in the context of friendship. It is here that we believe we can best follow the biblical instruction to: “Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (Heb 3:13).
Questions about Barnabas Groups, or interest in joining a group, can be directed to Pastor Brian at brian@newlifecr.com.
