Tag: Matt Chandler

The Village Church to Spin Off Video Venues into Autonomous Local Churches

Village Church
About an hour ago, The Village Church in Dallas-Fort Worth announced that they plan to spin off five campuses into autonomous churches.


Watch the video description on the church website (the longer sermon about multiplication is on the church’s Youtube page).
The plan includes:

  • Transition our remaining campuses into autonomous churches
  • Plant churches locally with the DFW Church Planting Network
  • Plant churches with Acts 29
  • Increase local and global missions involvement

According to the church, this plan has been part of the wishes of the elders for several years. The church leaders feel that now is the time to implement the plan. From the church website:

A few years ago, the elders shared their conviction that the Lord was leading us to transition our campuses into autonomous churches, beginning with the Denton campus, a conviction that had been developing for several years. There was not a specific timeline in place for the other campuses; instead, we would rely on the Holy Spirit and when it felt right to do so. We feel that the Lord has made the timing clear to us now and we plan to transition all the campuses within the next five years.
Establishing a timeline allows us to share it with the staff and the church at large so that we can all pray and plan together. We also believe that campus rolloffs will lead to better, more contextualized ministry for our campuses and our cities, and we want to get to that reality as soon as is sensible. It also gives an answer to succession, helping us to be proactive rather than reactive about it. And, of course, it is an outworking of our mission statement.

Will The Village Church Enable a Trend?

Mars Hill Church comes to mind as a church which went from one video pastor based church to a group of independent churches. Of course, that move happened because the mega church became unsustainable after the demise of Mark Driscoll’s work there. I have heard that Gateway Church may also move this direction. I hope the next wave of church evolution is away from a centralized mega church and to smaller, more intimate and accountable organizations.

The Village Church Apologized and Karen Hinkley Accepted and Forgave

So says Wartburg Watch.
You’ll remember this story once you start reading. You can get a summary in this prior post. Matt Chandler publicly called for people who had been hurt by TVC’s ideas about church discipline or in other ways to come to the leaders to reconcile.
Current statements from TVC and Karen Hinkley are at WW. Karen Hinkley says it is over for her.
TVC also referred Jordan Root to a specialist. As noted in a prior post, I endorse that move.
Now see Mars Hill executive elders, that wasn’t so hard.  The Petry family and the Meyer family (we could add other names as well) are still waiting on those phone calls and letters from you.  A bunch of your former pastors did a good thing last year.
Your turn.
Are you breathing and reading these words? That means it isn’t too late.

Matt Chandler Expresses Remorse and Asks Forgiveness in Sunday Sermon

ChandlerScreenCapToday, amid the storm of controversy over the church’s handling of Jordan Root and Karen Hinkley, Matt Chandler expressed remorse over the church elders’ general approach to church discipline. I wrote about this matter in a prior post.
Video of the sermon is on the church website and Vimeo below.
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/129371788[/vimeo]
 
 
Chandler spent much of the message talking about handling conflict between believers. He said (at 24 minutes and following) the matter of church discipline is serious because at the final stage of church discipline, when a church releases a member, the church is saying, “We are no longer able to affirm that you are a believer in Christ.”
One of the reasons I don’t like detailed covenant statements for members is that some people disagree over doctrine and if a member doesn’t come into line, the church is put in the position of saying explicitly or by implication, because you don’t agree with us, we can’t affirm you as a believer.
Chandler said that the process of evaluating church discipline began several months ago. As a result, Chandler said the elders decided that they had “failed to fulfill our covenant promises to you as members to lovingly exercise church discipline when necessary” and asked the audience to forgive the elders.
He said there are five specific things which require forgiveness:
Will you forgive us where our counsel turned into control?
Will you forgive us where we failed to recognize the limits and scope of our authority?
Will you forgive us where we allowed our policies and process to blind us to your pain, confusion and fears?
Will you forgive us where we acted transactionally rather than tenderly?
Will you forgive us where we failed to recognize you as the victim and didn’t empathize with your situation?
I’ll bet that was hard for Chandler to do. Now comes the harder work.
If these matters are being taken up with individuals, then I think this is a major step forward. It is hard not to compare to Mars Hill Church’s response to similar concerns, and in that comparison, Chandler’s approach is much better and more to the point.

Matt Chandler: No Fall Out From Decision to Remove Mark Driscoll From Acts 29 Network

Apparently the Acts 29 Network isn’t feeling any ill effects of their decision to remove Mars Hill Church and Mark Driscoll from membership. At least that is what Matt Chandler told an Australian publication last week. The bold print is a question from the Eternity newspaper. Chandler’s response follows.

What impact will this have to the movement, do you think. There will be many for whom Mark Driscoll was a mentor, someone to look up to. What’s the fall out from that?

At this point, we haven’t really had any fall out. I think guys have grieved, they’ve seen Mark as a great influence, they continue to be grateful to God for Mark’s influence in their lives but also could see that some action needed to be taken. And so, they’ve had questions and we’ve tried to answer those as best we could. There hasn’t been a massive fall out.
Go read the rest of what Chandler has to say about A29 and the Driscoll decision.

Matt Chandler on White Privilege

Writing Tuesday on his church blog about the tragic shooting in Ferguson, MO, Matt Chandler validates the concept of white privilege.  The blog post is an expansion of tweets on the subject. According to the Christian Post, he also talked about the matter in his Sunday sermon.
I am glad to see this and intend to discuss white privilege and stereotyping next week here on the blog.