RenewalFromTheRoots.com

A Request for Your Attendance and Help at, and Support for:

A New Way Out Leadership Conference with Dick B.!

July 18, 2009

Hope by the Sea, San Juan Capistrano, California

(pre- and post-Conference meetings, July 13-19, at the Fairmont Newport Beach Hotel)

Please Join Us and “Be a Part of Something Great—to the Glory of GOD!”

The News

My son Ken and I will be staying at the Fairmont Newport Beach Hotel in Newport Beach, California, and we will be available for personal meetings with Christian leaders and workers in the recovery arena by appointment during the week of July 13-19, 2009. Please contact me in advance by email (DickB@DickB.com) or by telephone [(808) 874-4876] if you would like to make an appointment for a “working chat.”

Through the courtesy of Bobby Nicholl and Celebrate a New Life at Hope by the Sea in San Juan Capistrano, California, we will be holding “A New Way Out Leadership Conference with Dick B.!” from 10:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. on Saturday, July 18, 2009, in a 200-seat auditorium in the Medical Professional Building at Hope by the Sea, 27412 Calle Arroyo, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675. As was the case with “A Nationwide Recovery Conference with Dick B.” held at the Mariners Church in Irvine, California, in May, we will have food and beverages available for purchase on-site during the lunch break.

Within the next few days, we will be publishing the Conference agenda, along with further details of the pre- and post-Conference opportunities and meeting appointments, via Dick B.’s “FYI Messages” and on the new web site for the “International Christian Recovery Coalition” (www.ChristianRecoveryCoalition.com). Meanwhile, we can report that the Interim Chairperson, Interim Vice Co-Chairpersons, Executive Director, and the Advisory Council of the “International Christian Recovery Coalition” are in place. (We expect to have the details posted on the Coalition web site within the next day or two.) In addition, we have nearly completed a substantial Conference Program document, which also includes Plans and Proposals for the “International Christian Recovery Coalition.”

We are happy to report: (1) Charles P. Mau of Manhattan Beach has donated $600.00 to defray some of the Conference expenses. (2) Bob Noonan has made available a two-hour, in-studio, video taping session on Thursday, July 16, in which Dick B. will be presenting for production as DVD’s:

Specific details concerning the roles that God, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Bible played in the astonishing, documented, 75% and 93% early A.A. success rates (in Akron and Cleveland, respectively) among “seemingly-hopeless,” “medically-incurable,” “real” alcoholics who found or rediscovered God and thoroughly followed the original Akron A.A. program developed by Bill W. and Dr. Bob during the summer of 1935; and

An extended discussion of how the amazingly-successful program and techniques employed in early A.A.–especially in Akron and Cleveland during the mid-to-late 1930’s–may be utilized today to enhance substantially the effectiveness of Christian leaders and workers in the recovery arena–whether they be recovery pastors, pastoral counselors, alcohol and drug counselors, treatment center staff, and/or other kinds of Christian educators, trainers, leaders, and workers.

(3) On behalf of Celebrate a New Life at Hope by the Sea, Bobby Nicholl has arranged for one free night of our stay at the Fairmont Newport Beach Hotel; has arranged to have our Conference Program, Plans and Proposals document booklet printed free; and has made available the free use of the Hope by the Sea Medical-Professional Building auditorium for the Saturday, July 18, Conference. (4) Vivian Eisenecher of San Diego has again volunteered to arrange for food and beverages. (You potential volunteers please take note: she needs more help. If you would be blessed to help, please contact Dick B. by email or telephone for details.)

Our Needs Relating to the Conference and How You Can Help

“A New Way Out Leadership Conference with Dick B.!” Please join us at “A New Way Out Leadership Conference with Dick B.!” from 10:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. on Saturday, July 18, 2009, at Hope by the Sea in San Juan Capistrano, California. There is no charge for registration at this Conference.

To register for this free Conference, please send to Dick B. by email, telephone or regular mail by July 2, 2009: your name, group or organization (if any), mailing address, telephone number, email address, and web site URL address (if any).

Pre- and post-Conference appointments with Dick B. Please contact me (Dick B.) by email (DickB@DickB.com) or by telephone [(808) 874-4876], or my son Ken on his cell phone [(808) 276-4945] if you cannot reach me, in order to arrange a pre- or post-Conference meeting with me at the Fairmont Newport Beach Hotel for yourself (and your small group of associates, if any).

“International Christian Recovery Coalition.” Please send me via email (DickB@DickB.com) your name and/or the name of your group or organization–along with your city, state or province, and country–if you would like to be considered for participation in the free-of-charge “International Christian Recovery Coalition.” (More details about the Coalition will be available shortly on the Coalition’s new web site: www.ChristianRecoveryCoalition.com.)

Please consider becoming a Major Sponsor of “A New Way Out Leadership Conference with Dick B.!” If you or your group or organization would be blessed to support this Conference and its objectives by donating $500.00 or more to help defray our Conference-related, out-of-pocket, organizational, travel, food, lodging, and incidental expenses, we would be glad to:

Give you or your group or organization a featured listing in the Conference Program booklet (which will really be more like a book); and Post your banner and/or brief description of your godly efforts in the recovery arena on our web sites which will provide Conference details.

Please contact Dick B. by email (DickB@DickB.com) or telephone [(808) 874-4876], or my son Ken by telephone [(808) 276-4945], for details.

Please consider being a Conference Exhibitor at “A New Way Out Leadership Conference with Dick B.!” If you or your group or organization would be blessed to support this Conference and its objectives by donating $50.00 or more to help defray our Conference-related, out-of-pocket, organizational, travel, food, lodging, and incidental expenses, we would be glad to arrange for you a convenient way to exhibit at the Conference your godly materials focused on your Christian-oriented efforts in the recovery arena. Please contact Dick B. by email (DickB@DickB.com) or telephone [(808) 874-4876], or my son Ken by telephone [(808) 276-4945], for details.

If you cannot attend and/or would otherwise like to support this Conference. For a donation of $25.00 or more to help defray our Conference-related, out-of-pocket, organizational, travel, food, lodging, and incidental expenses, we would be glad to send you by email, in an attached file in Microsoft Word 2003 format, the 50-plus-page Conference booklet for the July 2009 Conference, and “A New Way Out Guidebook” by Dick B. and Ken B. from the May 2009 Conference (if you don’t already have it or need another copy). And we would be glad to list you and/or your organization in the Conference Program booklet as an “Endorser” of this Conference, if you would like.

Please send to us (by U.S. Postal Service, UPS, FedEx, etc.) your godly materials (brochures, DVD’s, etc.) reflecting your Christian-oriented efforts in the recovery arena so that we may discuss your materials at the pre- and post-Conference meetings, and at the Conference proper on July 18. Please make sure they arrive at the Fairmont Newport Beach Hotel by no later than Friday, July 10, and please address your envelope or package as follows:

Richard G. Burns, Guest–Hold for Arrival

Fairmont Newport Beach Hotel

4500 MacArthur Blvd.

Newport Beach, California 92660

Please volunteer to help Vivian Eisenecher and her team with the food and beverage dispensation on Saturday, July 18, at the Conference in San Juan Capistrano. Please contact Dick B. by email (DickB@DickB.com) or telephone [(808) 874-4876], or my son Ken by telephone [(808) 276-4945], for details.

Where and How to Donate and Help

To make donations relating to “A New Way Out Leadership Conference with Dick B.!”, please provide to me (Dick B.) by email (DickB@DickB.com), telephone [(808) 874-4876], or by regular mail, the details of your donation; and:

Use the “Donate” PayPal button on in the center column on the front page of my main website (www.DickB.com–a PayPal account is not required); Phone my son Ken at (808) 276-4945, give him the details of your donation, along with your credit card # and expiration date; or Send your check or money order, payable to “Dick B.” in U.S. dollars drawn on a U.S. bank, by U.S. Postal Service (or UPS or FedEx, etc.) to: Dick B., PO Box 837, Kihei, HI 96753-0837

God Bless, Dick B.

Email: DickB@DickB.com

The work of the Holy Spirit defies human expectations with constant surprise. The work of the Holy Spirit in the Federated Church in Millbury, Massachusetts is one of those gems of God’s glory easily missed. My first trip to this UCC/Methodist congregation in the center of an aging Mill city forgotten by time, reinforced every image of the tired historic church. Finding it inauspiciously wedged without property on the Main Street between commercial buildings, I parked next to the overflowing dumpsters in the back, and walked up the alley to find two doors. “Ring for WIC” one said, so I went for the other down into a dark hall to the pastor’s office where a modest leadership team in worn, overstuffed furniture and folding chairs was in prayer.

As we met, Pastor Cliff shared how he had once been very engaged with the work of denominational renewal, but now for the last 18 years, he had simply served this people faithfully with the love of Christ and the truth of the Bible. There was a room full of used clothes for those in need, a food pantry, the smell of AA meetings lingering in the lower hall, and a nursery school. We spoke of the annual short term God’s Builder mission trips he loved and the center city block party. The setting seemed so familiar I have to honestly confess I was not expecting the power of the Holy Spirit in such a disguise.

My first inkling of unusual Holy Spirit activity came when I walked in to lead the all church retreat at the UCC Conference Center in Framingham. There I found an amazingly diverse group from pony tailed men in their twenties, to sharp, mission focused women who could have been their grandmothers. Three generations in various styles meshed with unusual ease, mixing fluidly to form small groups for response and prayer. Praying came naturally. A passion for Jesus Christ was palpable. As I listened, I heard a common refrain. Each of these people had in some way found themselves on the edge of life and had been drawn by a sincere and unpretentious acceptance into a transformational experience of God’s love and power.

“People here really accepted and cared for my kids, and my kids convinced me to come and I’ve been here ever since,” one said. Another said, “They laid hands on me and I was healed, I mean healed of mental and physical illness. God met me here. This is my place.” Another observed, “A lot of people here seem to have been here once before, like when we were kids or something and we came back when our lives were a mess.” The very effective leader of the Alpha ministry came to the church because she needed the food pantry. As we worked through the VISION ONE Institute on discipleship it became clear that they knew where they had been when God found them, and who still lived in that place. They were hungry to know how to be the disciple makers Jesus wanted them to be.

Some weeks later I met with the core leadership team on a weeknight. What struck me was that they were not a committee by another name. In fact each person in the room had their own ministry team in the church. Inadvertently, humbly, in the course of conversation you learned that they were aware of their call and gift and each had a deep commitment to what God had given them to do. They owned their call and the people they worked with were precious to them.

When I stepped out into the hall to leave them to their business and prayer, music drew me upstairs to the sanctuary. There a band was rehearsing worship. Actually they were engaging in worship. This was no ordinary church praise team. You could tell almost immediately that the guitar licks and vocal style had been learned in secular venues. Their “O For a Thousand Tongues” had a real original hard rock edge even as their passion for Christ came across with power. They worked together seamlessly without the usual dynamics of rehearsals. They were listening to each other. Their vocal harmonization was moving. They were really good!

Finally I went back downstairs just in time for the final amen of the leadership team’s prayer. “Why didn’t you tell me about this group?” I asked. “They are truly amazing!”. “I’m glad they are doing well up there”, Pastor Cliff responded quietly, “That’s our backup band, and they’re on this Sunday.” “What else don’t I know?” I asked incredulously, but Pastor Cliff only smiled his sparkling eye smile while the team chuckled. As I pulled out of the alley , I noticed the group of young teens freely skateboarding up and down the wide stairway from the church door to the street in the warm spring night. Somehow I knew and they knew, they were allowed.

What’s next? Millbury Federated has unusual street cred in their city. They have relationships that web the community. They have a pastor who is trusted. With a growing awareness of the power the Holy Spirit has given them to make disciples more intentionally, and an awakened understanding of their gifts and opportunities, what will happen next? What is the Holy Spirit about to do that none of us expect?

(by David Runnion-Bareford)

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Vineville Presbyterian Church

On Sunday, May 17th, the historic Vineville Presbyterian Church of Macon Georgia, worshiped for the last time in its old life. A congregation which had declined from 600 to less than 60 made the bold and Biblical decision to die to live. The desire of the aging white congregation to reach its now primarily African American neighborhood with the gospel of Jesus Christ prevailed over the instinct to survive. Now in cooperation with a ministry called Campus Clubs, the facility will be rebirthed as Strong Tower Fellowship at Vineville. Campus Clubs is an after school focused ministry whose mission is, “loving kids into the Kingdom, equipping them to live for Christ, and developing positive urban leadership within their communities. We believe that a relationship with God through His Son is vital for the whole child.”

Campus Clubs Kids (Campus Club Kids)

Founder and director of Campus Clubs, Tony Lowden will work with Vineville’s former Associate Pastor in the formation of the new neighborhood focused ministry. The conviction to care for the youth and children of Macon was intensified by a 13 day epidemic of violence last year which claimed the lives of 12 young victims. Click here for information on Campus Clubs US.

Among secular headlines heralding the demise of the church and internal Christian survey’s indicating that church decline has spread from the mainline denominations to the evangelical milieu, why do we believe in the future of the historic churches in North America? Why do we believe that it is these ‘mainline’ historic Congregational, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopal/Anglican, Lutheran, Christian, Reformed and Brethren congregations are a key to God’s future work in our time? Why for instance do we believe that it is the historic church, which will lead the way in such post Christian regions as New England?

Some of our hope is rooted in the revelation of God’s word and the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Some is based on observable assets. The Bible reveals that God is historic in every dimension of his work. The hope for his people in the Old Testament is rooted in their memory of his provision and revelation in times before they were born. In Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of literally hundreds of specific prophecies from Psalms, Isaiah, and the other prophets that unfolded visually several hundred years after they were given. In Daniel we learn that God has empires and epic historic eras designed into his great unfolding purpose. In the opening chapters of Revelation we learn that specific churches have distinctive character, strengths and weaknesses with historic significance. We live in the promise to the church at Philippi, “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus”, and the affirmation that “God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable.”

Even while many of us as renewalists confront the most bleak evidence of decline and apostasy, we are also keenly aware that the Holy Spirit is at work in the historic church. In the very liberal United Church of Christ, for instance we have yet to find a congregation that does not have some small remnant of praying believers. Among the 100 largest and most influential congregations in North America, a large percentage are historic churches. Movements such as the Anglican Awakening are emerging from the historic setting. The growing spiritual authority and missionary movement from the church of the global south is penetrating the spiritual resistance of the west through the historic churches to whom they are related. It is no mistake that the ALPHA movement emerged from a Victorian Anglican Church called Holy Trinity Brompton.

At the corner of Main St. in villages, towns and cities across No. America, the historic church offers these opportunities.

Ø We own buildings and other facilities, often strategically located, and sometimes endowed.

Ø We have natural relationships and connections throughout the people groups in our setting, often with significant historic credibility, that offer tremendous possibilities to make disciples.

Ø Historic churches that have been the home of elected officials, youth programs, and social services for generations are more difficult to marginalize, demonize and exclude from community life.

Ø Historic churches can survive in circumstances that will close more recently planted congregations.

Ø There is DNA in the original call, covenants, and mission of the historic church that provides a blueprint for a dynamic, spirit filled future.

So whether God is calling you to pray your church to life with a small remaining remnant, or to respond to his call to ministry, or to bring renewed life to a church willing to seek God’s purpose, or to replant a new church from the roots of the old, we invite you to join with us in a great adventure of the Holy Spirit. Renewal from the roots is a call to God’s future forged from the past in order that he might “do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations,” (Ephesians 3:20,21)

Power Beyond Powerlessness

The Cross Outside the Wall

The Passion for Glory

Here are 2 recent sermons by Rev. David Runnion-Bareford…

Adoption

Reconciliation

Is your church unique? Of course it is… by Biblical definition.

The sovereign Lord who gives gifts to His children according to His own will has made your church unique!

How?

Your church is unique in it’s history. On your darker days, you may only consider your churches history in terms of “ghosts in the closet”. But your churches unique history may just point in the direction of God’s calling upon you today because “the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). Living in the power of your church’s calling demands you understand your church’s history.

Your church is also unique in its geography. It goes without saying that a church in the Arctic circle is not likely to have surfing parties as a form of fellowship just as a church near the equator won’t likely have fun with snowball fights! Geography and your church’s response to it is part of your uniqueness.

Your church is unique in its spiritual giftedness. The Holy Spirit pours out divine empowerment for service as He wills. Your church has its own unique mix of such gifts that determine how the Lord would have your serve.

Likewise, your church is unique in it’s particular circumstances. Call them “Demographics” or “Census track statistics” or whatever you will they are today’s snapshot of conditions on the ground that reflect the environment of your ministry.

And sadly, your church and mine is subject to a unique complex of “besetting sins”… those favorite rebellions and sinful preoccupations that distract from following Jesus Christ. Often these are entrenched to say the least.

Saying your you have a unique church is one thing. Finding what that means for faithful ministry is another thing entirely.

Theologically the word for that uniqueness is “vocation” or “calling”. That unique and particular calling for your church is discerned through the general will of God outlined in Holy Scripture and then refined in light of the providential circumstances mentioned already that point you in the unique direction God has for you as His people!

Want to know more about what makes your church unique and how that empowers you to reach the “unreached people groups” all around you?

Here’s how to get started (it’s even free!):

Sign up for our free electronic newsletter at this link.

A new window will open. Please be sure to check the box that says “Renewal From The Roots” to join the correct email list!

Everything we do here at “Renewal From The Roots” is about helping your church find it’s UNIQUE gifting and calling from God.  It’s a God driven process… not more “cookie cutter”,”one size fits all” programming.

Rev. David Bryant and ProclaimHope.com are making available in time for the April 12th celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord (Easter) an adapted version of the worship materials from Paradise08 at no cost to local churches. You may download the material directly from their site.

“CHRISTFest is a celebration gathering of God’s people to awaken them to more of the supremacy of God’s Son, to call them to adore Him as the King He is, and to inspire them to arise to proclaim Him anew
to one another and to this generation.”

CHRISTFest offers a ninety (90) minute version, full of the Paradise DNA (though not officially linked to it in any way). CHRISTFest consists of twelve stand-alone segments, like chapters in a book. Step by step, it unfolds the reign of God’s Son – His majesty, ministry, triumphs and the destiny of His Kingdom. One might call it a biography of the King of the Universe, from eternity past to eternity future

Renewed Churches seeking ways to reach out to their community are turning to Christian Release Time as a way to do so. Christian Release Time is a time tested and legally sanctioned way for Christians to minister to public school students.

This video by an experienced participant in Christian Release Time programs tells more, Mr. Paul Humber.

Lifeway Research has released the results of their latest studies on the receptivity of people to invitations to come to church.

The charts below illustrate the relative receptivity of people to receive information about the church.

Interestingly internet communications did not rate well!

Small churches who feel disadvantaged in terms of finances can still exploit the form of communication with the best results – personal invitations!

The second chart illustrates how “timing” affects receptivity.

The research was conducted in advance of a national evangelistic emphasis for Southern Baptists. More can be read here at Ed Stetzer’s blog.