This is the 3rd and final installment of my notes from last week's church planting class at Fuller Seminary with various leaders from Mosaic.
Octavio Martinez:
I am at a place
where I just don’t care what people think of me unless they’re a non-believer.
I love my Christian
brothers and sisters. But I just don’t care if they are worried that I am
slipping from the faith, not focused enough on soul formation, or praying for
me (or my demise) because I am meeting with a non-believer at a local bar in
Whittier.
The church will
actually become a reflection of you – your DNA, your virus, etc. You cannot ask
people to do something you’re not doing. They are going to watch how you live.
That is their only frame of reference. So you may be able to talk a great game
about being missional, but if you’re not living it, it doesn’t matter.
I am always pliable
to the non-believer. I am always willing to morph to what is needed to reach
them. And I am always available to them.
When you are
choosing who you are going to surround yourself with: They really have to love
Jesus. They really have to love people. And they really have to love you. That
was the best advice I was ever given.
In looking at your
people going to plant a church with you, if they aren’t liked so much by
non-believers that they are invited by them into their world, they just aren’t
that missional. And I don’t know how you’re going to plant a church with them.
There are two kinds
of churches. There are those that manage believers and those that reach those
who are outside of Christ. And the latter is messier.
You always have the
time or money for what you really want to do.
Unless you like people, you can’t do this. You can’t fake it.
