City Impact Roundtable
Session I
Sunday, October 5, 2003
Stephen Jenks of Eagles Wings led a time of praise and worship. 7 ethnic representatives from New York City prayed: A Native American, Chinese, Hispanic, Trinidadian, Filipino, African American and Anglo American invited God’s presence and power among us.
Mac Pier of Concerts of Prayer, Greater New York welcomed the 150 people gathered for this opening session. He talked of the international church in New York City, the most international city in the world. On weekdays, midtown Manhattan has 250,000 people workers per sq mile, one of the densest on earth. Most of us remember where we were on 9-11. Living in New York during those days, we learned a number of things, i.e. that eternity is immediate. We learned something the terrorists knew – the importance of New York City. Augustine said the City of God is invisible and eternal. The city of Rome can burn but not the City of God.
Mac expressed his appreciation of Mission America and the City Impact Roundtable. He said we are learning a new ecclesiology in our day. God sees two groups – those who know Jesus and those who don’t. We are rediscovering the way God looks at the church in the city. Someone said you can determine the financial health of a country by ratio of P.C.s to population. The Church is only as healthy as it is connected in that city.
As we gather today, what is at stake? 8000 will die today with AIDS. Pastors are more likely to be fired than an NFL coach. Celebrate with us what God is doing here in New York and in your city. Mac invited all to a reception at 5:30 p.m.
Glenn Barth shared why he came to New York in a 2-minute (pseudo) video interview with Jay Leno. In the video, Glenn said CIR is his code word, and he is out to transform the cities of America for Christ, wanting to get the word out about uniting Christians for God.
Glenn welcomed all to the City Impact Roundtable, introducing Jarvis and Phil Miglioratti as facilitators for the City Impact Roundtable (CIR). This CIR is a little different, a few hours during a whole conference about city reaching. Glenn shared about early city movement in Pittsburg, PA. Leaders drew a circle of 100-mile circumference around the city, and stated their vision to make Pittsburgh as famous for God as for steel, getting youth involved in outreach. Glenn came to Christ through one of those youth workers who discipled him and communicated the vision of reaching communities.
Jarvis Ward shared the focus of City/Community Ministries: Uniting Christians for holistic evangelism and revival and the Mission: To identify, connect, resource and empower transformational leaders who prayerfully facilitate the unity of the church for holistic evangelism, revival and spiritual awakening. Mission America City/Community Ministries is working to identify transformational leaders in every city in America. There are 2600 cities with a population of 10,000 or more. We have identified about 2000 leaders in over 700 of those cities.
It is our desire to connect leaders, including monthly conference calls. From time to time we offer cutting edge resources, opportunities to contextualize holistic effective evangelism. Cities are making strategies fit their cities, integrating ideas that work to strengthen their city work. City Impact Roundtables provide opportunities for peer-to-peer learning and education. This past year10 regional CIRs were held. We are praying for each other, working together, supporting each other.
One resource has been provided today: The International Bible Society has given each of you a gift book and cover sheet. There will be a number of free resources at these meeting. We put them in your hands for you to decide if they are appropriate for your city.
City/Community Ministries desires to provide more scholarships to help get more people involved in city work. We want to see
Strategic Partnership Development
Leaders Convene
Strategic Ministries
Holistic Evangelism
Christian Emergency network is looking for reporters and those who will mobilize assistance at time of national emergency
Jarvis mentioned the Mission America City/Community Ministries website: www.cityreaching.com where reports from the NLF will be posted in coming days. He announced the internet cafe opportunity provided by faithHighway on the third floor in exhibit area during the NLF.
Why are we coming together? To see the whole church taking whole gospel to the whole nation and to the world.
Phil Miglioratti reviewed regional CIRs held this past year, and welcomed invitations to hold a regional CIR in other cities in 2004. The format is:
Brief, focus-presentations from Christian leadership prompting
Roundtable prayer and discussions followed by
Consensus on collaborative
Purpose: Peer to peer learning
CIR and NLF overview:
The NLF is a giant CIR experience composed of
Town Hall meeting
Morning and evening plenary sessions
Learning tracks
Tuesday at 3:30 we will reconvene as the CIR and ask:
Where did you find gospel in the city? – come with questions
Track report
Roundtable debrief
Group feedback
Roundtable: take-aways, action steps, hopes and dreams, prayer
Reports – turn in diskettes of CDs with notes and photos
Phil encouraged table groups to pray together , appoint a scribe , review the schedule, and discuss city team strategy.
What a take-aways do we hope for?
What are the questions we need answered here to help us with our movement back home?
Groups met at tables, primarily in groups from their cities
FEEDBACK: What is your take-away question?
1. Joe Walsh, Sacramento: What are the transferable concepts we can take back to our city, and how can we implement it?
2. Frank Meyer, NYC: There are 21 prayer groups in Albany, but how do we get the inner city churches involved? How can I learn about everything that is going on in NYC? Is there a web site that summarizes it?
Phil responded that we hope to get reports from all the tracks to post at www.
3. Cedar Rapids, IA: We have a large youth movement, and are concerned that it doesn’t go from a one-time WOW event to something that dissipates.
We need a long-term strategy to conserve results in our city.
4. Forrest Turpen: I come from a multi city group, and am interested in how to connect and get a handle on unity with all the churches in a mega city, i.e. the concept that churches come around schools in their city.
5. Mark Ammerman: I am looking to understand the city/suburban issue, how to cross those lines and bring the body together. How do we go back and promote a kingdom mindset rather than my church?
4. Ingrid Blackman, NYC: I work with children and youth How do we get to the parents so they can bring up these children?
5. Jason, Greater Chicago: How does unforgiveness and lack of repentance from various racial groups hurt city reaching?
6. Conrad Sauer: NYC Our table had 8 opinions on take away, but the main one is: what will it take to see revival and transformation in the U.S. and what is holding it back?
7. Darrel McCray, Miami: How does a church remain relevant in the community as the community changes around it?
As the session ended, Phil announced that Adam Shields has put most of CIR information from previous sessions, including reports and articles from working groups, on a CD which is available from him for $3.
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NLF Attendees participated in their choice of tracks between these two sessions of the CIR.
Track I
Track II
City Impact Roundtable, Part II
Tuesday, October 7, 2003
Jarvis requested participation in the compassion survey at the Internet Café on the bulletin board.
Many of you are involved in the Lighthouse Movement. There are copies of Al VanderGriend’s book “Love to Pray” available.
A short video was shown, “the forecast for your city” with weatherman Glenn Barth, who predicted “a warm front of revival coming across the nation to New York. Look for the rain of God’s spirit across the nation, and the light of the Son increasing in the Midwest. This week begins with a spiritual soaking, moving to “white as snow” with King Jesus.”
Phil mentioned that regional City Impact Roundtables can be held in cities across the nation, and welcomed invitations from cities to create the action steps.
Adam Shields produced a CD for Working Group Research and Reports, which is available for $3.
Research reports and photos from NLF would be welcome. Email them to info@cityreaching.com. If you took notes on another track, please send them to us to post on the web site.
Where did you find the gospel in the city?
When someone answered your question? On the subway? During a Track session? While in Prayer? When a Speaker said …?
Responses:
- Lunch with a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a believer, who has been given a room during the Roman Exhibit to show anything he likes of how Christianity fits with the history.
- A waitress who said “Jesus Loves You” to me in Spanish.
- A young lady on the subway, a man with a bag of sandwiches telling others where to find help, and taking donations
- Seeing a church where preaching went forth and drug dealers found Christ, the power of God obvious
- At the Times Square Church where the gospel was powerfully proclaimed, God’s presence so real even in an overflow room.
- Brooklyn Tabernacle Church, 12 to 2:30, I’ll never be the same
The group took 30 seconds of prayer with a partner.
Report from Track 19
Partnerships/Coalitions
Two facilitators, Phill Butler and Tom White, shared about building city coalitions. Our vision is to unite Christians in cities for holistic evangelism.
Tom White: We finished in a flurry; I was inspired being with these people.
1. All we are about has to be rooted in humility, authentic brokenness of life that enables us to find trust in relationships and build true friendships.
2. Servanthood is a bridge to salvation; we must maintain a balance between saving the lost and saving the least.
3. There is a deep longing for breakthrough – an opening of the heavens, revival that has not yet happened. But there is rejoicing that God IS working, things are happening, moving forward—The Lord is clearly at work. We need to listen to and follow the Lord’s initiative. The phrase was “hurry up and wait.” We need to renounce our American activism, the tendency to do something in the absence of clear direction from God.
4. We need balance in our understanding of leadership. Doug Small brought a linear, strategic model of leadership. Copi Valdiviez brought the “spaghetti bowl” approach-- non-linear, unpredictable, based on allowing life and leadership to rise in the city without organizing it from the top down. Frankly, these are in tension. Some of us are wired linear, wanting structure and predictability. Others are wired differently.
5. This was dynamic. There must be tethering of pastoral leadership, but allowing believers in the marketplace a place in leadership. Top down from the church is past. About half of this group (of city reachers) has been called out of the marketplace.
6. We heard a story from Milwaukee, a miracle that brought the Body of Christ into the baseball stadium for a marvelous event.
Challenges:
1. We must make sure the stakeholders are at the table. Broaden the table.
2. There is on-going tension between linear and non-linear leadership. It was fun, but a job to try to control “wild horses” in the room. I come away with a great sense of optimism.
Level II Phill Butler
We were trying to apply principles to city leadership that have developed around the world. We looked at the basic issue of how evangelism occurs in the city. Because the city is so complex, we need city teams. Then we looked at 14 key principles which come back again and again. Building a city coalition is a process. The quickest way to kill it is to call a meeting. City coalitions are a process of exploration, formation, and finally operation. A great deal of relationship building, trust, and exploration needs to happen for success. The second way to kill a coalition is to try to do too much too soon. We went on and looked at motivation, why people don’t get engaged in partnership. Issues raised were egos, turf, theological differences, need for redemptive relationships, with the underlying theme that we are not meeting just to meet and pray, but because we want Jesus to move in our cities.
Phill asked Dennis Fuqua to comment: “It is a wonderful thing to see people with a God given desire seek better ways of doing things, spill some things on them, and see it click. It’s kind of a birthing thing, fresh stories. One of my take-aways is Phill’s illustration: any skyscraper over 20 stories tall – you don’t see anything above ground level until the first 70% has been done. It takes years of planning, development, behind the scenes work. Our work of vision, relationship building will take time, but it’s worth it.
A pastor commented: I discovered that I was a target in the room. Pastors may be obstacles in what God wants to accomplish. I have a lot to learn about city reaching. I didn’t know someone like Phill existed in the world. What I’m taking away is that God will raise up His people to work in Cleveland.
In groups of four, share your list of:
• God ideas
a. Kathy Branzell, now Ft. Collins, CO The gospel vs. religion. The gospel is for the saved every day. We don’t have to earn it daily. We need to tap into the power and energy of the gospel rather than seeking it in events and activities.
b. Frank DuPree, Newark NJ When God started the city reaching movement, he took two very different individuals: Paul, the goal oriented, and Barnabus, the relational guy. They divided over differences, but Paul came to see John Mark’s value. In cities today, we need to find a Barnabus or a Paul, be yoked together with others.
c. Mark Ammerman, Lancaster, PA: We came as a group of 9 wanting to have a better understanding mentality. That is the take home for us.
d. Claire Zinler, Mpls. Collaborations are so often an attempt to get people together to get work done. Task is not the place to start. Prayer is. If we sit awhile, we get on God’s agenda. We need the spiritual and the mechanical. Only one guy walked on water.
e. Ed Cordero, Miami: New Yorkers say we love NY. We love Miami and want to solidify the city. There is need for holistic ministry, church planting, and jobs partnership.
f. Steve Hawthorne, TX It’s too late in history for buy-ins and getting on boards, methodology that will fix us. Outsiders come in as if “to fix us.” Sustaining relationships is coupled with ever-clearing vision of what God wants to do that only He can do. We need to see it and do it, walking together.
g. Mr. Hernandez, Bronx NY: You all are an answer to a prayer of ours, that God would work in NYC and export it to others. We were in the marketplace track. It doesn’t have to happen in church, evangelism happens in the marketplace. You want to see me succeed? That attracts interest. The prayer track emphasized holiness, dying to self, allowing His power to flow through me. Third, discipling new believers: Sometimes people confess their sin over and over, in reality confessing an action. What is needed is to confess a heart condition, asking God to change the heart to free it from sin cycle. Last, there is a cry in the Father’s heart to allow Him to do this. If we believe, God can do it through us.
h. Eric Walker, Kensington MD: Level One track was such a confirmation for me. One thing I learned was an illustration from Africa. The slowest lion knows he needs to overcome the slowest gazelle to survive, and the slowest gazelle knows it must be faster than the slowest lion. We must be up and moving. How do you get on a moving train? Be moving in the same speed and direction. I believe that train is the Holy Spirit. We need to be listening and moving with the Spirit.
i. Michael Coleman: Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, Iowa. There are all kinds of methods and ideas. We have to find the one that is God-driven where we are in the kingdom, whether it’s Alpha, Festival, crusades, etc. If the Holy Spirit is driving it, it will be successful.
j. Benjamin Anyacho, missionary from Nigeria living in Austin TX: Balance. In a prayer track, there is sacrifice, those who give money and time, and those who have the fire. What is important to God is the sweet savor. In this new age, if we stand alone, we dry up. No one individual can carry the weight of what God wants to do in our city.
Jarvis asked participants to go to the web bulletin board at the internet cafe: Go to NLF experience and write in your response so others can see it.
The group was asked to appoint a table scribe and discuss: What will it take for you or your team to have a long-term transformational impact on your city?
- List action steps
- When will your team meet again
- When will you invite leaders to come together?
- Share your dream/vision for your city
Jarvis shared books available:
Tom White – "Citywide Prayer Movements”
Al VanderGriend “Love to Pray”
Richard Dalton’s book.
The session ended with table discussions.
