Campaign Document
Formation at North Mountain
INTRODUCTION
“Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” -Apostle Paul
Every faithful church has the same goal. We want to be like Jesus. The “what” of church is not all that confusing. It is the “how” that we seem to over-complicate, over-assume, and often neglect as we build churches and ministry.
We are trying to form people into the image of Jesus. We want people to “be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did.”1
The problem is that this does not happen immediately (upon conversion) or naturally (without effort). The world, the devil, and our own selves are working against work towards being formed by Jesus, like Jesus, and for Jesus.
“You may have Jesus in your heart but you have your grandpa in your bones.” -Pete Scazzero
Therefore, we need to practice it with intentionality and discipline. We need practice and reps in formation - being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus, and doing what Jesus did.
As a church, you need to think about this from three views:
• God
• The Church
• The Disciple
This paper aims to look at the middle view: the church. What does the church do to form people into maturity in Christ? How does a church have a vision, a plan, and the resources to create a church environment where God is pleased with the work being done and the disciples in the church are being matured?
Our hope is simple…
“That we present everyone mature in Christ.”
CAMPAIGN DEFINITION
What is a campaign?
A campaign is focused action towards a particular goal.
Think about political campaigns or marketing campaigns or school campaigns or social campaigns.
“Hope” - Barak Obama’s presidential campaign
“Just say NO.” - America’s campaign combatting drug use in youth.
“Play 60.” - The NFL’s campaign trying to make physical activity a regular part of each kid’s day.
Obama wanted the American people to dream with him. Political and school leaders wanted to give the youth of America a chance to avoid drugs early on.
The NFL wanted to use it’s significant influence not just to entertain but to help kids with a healthy lifestyle.
Our campaigns will be similar. We want to move our people closer to Jesus - not just in word but in practice.
So we will have formation campaigns.
A formation campaign is a focused action towards a particular goal.
The action is the intentional church focus, collaboration across ministries, and use of churchwide resources to see people learn how to follow Jesus in practice.
WIN STATEMENT:
to create a formation environment
that forms a rule of life in our people (over 2 years)
Campaign Vision
Why Campaigns?
Our primary goal is that people would be formed more into the image of Jesus through embracing his love in truth and in response growing in love for God and others.
We want to marinate in these practices
• A good burger, steak, carnitas… taste best when they have taken time to marinate in good seasoning. It takes preparation, patience, and time for the meat to soak in all the flavors. Our hope is not that we would run campaigns to give our church more things to do; rather, these would be tools for us to partner with Jesus and transform who we are. But this takes time.
• Campaigns give us the opportunity to build rhythms that allow for the slow work of the Spirit in our soul and our being. This does not allow us just to have time to get information out or even for our church community to know all the right ‘lingo’, but it gives the time for these practices to sit with us long enough for us to see a true impact on our relationship with God, with others, and with ourselves.
We want these to be normal in our community
• It is so special watching a baby slowly learn all new things. Watching a 1-year-old walk for the first time is so fun as they go from scooting their feet, to taking consecutive steps, to walking, to running. And then one day, it all becomes normal for them. There is no extra thought and effort put in for walking anymore because they have grown used to it.
• We will be introducing practices, ideas, and concepts that our church may not be used to. Some of these practices even go against the grain of many of our current lives, beliefs, and habits. In some ways, our church will be taking the first steps with some of these practices. Campaigns make these practices the water that we swim in, making it something that will be normal for our church. Our hope is that through regular discussion, hard-to-avoid aspects of church life for all, and easy-to-access resources we can normalize these movements towards Christ.
We want to be patient with God’s work in our church community
• We are in the slow church business. We want to do the Lord’s work the Lord’s way. And often that is through “a long obedience in the same direction”. We want to take our time and constantly remind ourselves that the goal is deep intimacy with our God. Campaigns force us towards patience and naturally create barriers that do not allow us to rush the process.
Campaign Implementation
How do compaigns work?
Sundays
We want our weekly gathering to reflect the season of our church. As we go through practices we will implement aspects of our Sunday gathering, like our benedictions, prayer times, and environment, to help inform and guide people in our practices. Some of these implementations will be active (intentional prayers or announcements) while others will be passive (benediction or environment).
First Wednesdays - “All of Life Nights”
During the first two months of each season, we will have two first Wednesday events that will serve to intentionally equip our church through the specific practice that we are in. During these weeks we will ask RCs to not meet in order to open the door for all our church to join. This will be the time of educational/informational training of our church so that people can know the what, why, and how of all the practices.
Redemption Communities
Transformation in our lives does not happen alone, but it happens in community. If First Wednesdays serve as the informational training ground, then RCs serve as the practical/ tangible training ground for our people. A new aspect of our RCs will be an intentional time to plan, prepare, discuss, and improve our practices. These will be resourced in the RC discussion guides and training.
Resources
Our primary goal is that people would be formed more into the image of Jesus through embracing his love in truth and in response growing in love for God and others. This will be done primarily through practice and tangible alterations in the lives of our people. Because of this, we will limit the amount of “educational training” and focus mostly on the practices being done in the lives of people. With that being said, we know some people will want to dive deeper into what the practices are and for this, we will provide resources to our church to read, watch, and listen to in order to further educate themselves.
Ministries
The ministries in our church have an active role to play in this process. The biggest role that will be played is simple alterations to reflect the heart of the season that we are in. For example, when we are focused on Scripture as a church, the ministries should ask the question of how they can reflect that same focus. The same goes for simplicity, fasting, community, or whatever season we are in.
Communication
Our communication team will work to make sure that whatever season we are in is obvious. Through Social media, our newsletter, and our environment, we want the people in our church to have easy access to what we are doing.
Key Leaders
For all the key leaders at the church, we will ask that they lead the vision. We ask that all key leaders are the first to implement these practices through learning and practice to display the vision and lead the way for our church.
Campaign Implementers
Who does the work of campaigns?
Pastors
The Pastors will primarily be leading vision through teaching, equipping, and resourcing the leaders and people of our church. Whether that is on a Sunday morning, a First Wednesday, a leader training, or a resource page, the Pastors will focus on vision casting, teaching, and equipping.
Redemption Community Leaders
The RC leaders will focus on leading their community in the application of these practices. The RC leaders will lead the curation, discussion, and accountability of these practices. This does not mean that RC leaders will need to be masters of these; rather, they need to simply be willing to lead the way of applying it to their own lives and helping their community do the same.
Ministry Leaders
Depending on the ministry, all ministry leaders will have some type of implementation. If someone leads a ministry we want them to simply include these things in their environment. For example, during the Sabbath Practice, Titus2Moms can help give guidance for how moms can practice the sabbath in their season of life, men's ministry can have a discussion in Bible Study on what gives them rest from work, and young professionals can talk about how this applies to the early years of establishing a career.
Our Church
All of this campaign will be done in Unity within our church. Our church has a desire to love God and love others and for this to be done well it will take our church loving, leading, and helping each other through this. The biggest implementation will be all the leaders helping the language and conversation of these things become so normal that our church naturally + lovingly talks about and practices these things together.
Campaign Rhythm
When do campaigns happen?
Church life can be broken down into three seasons.
Fall - August thru December
Spring - January thru May
Summer - June + July
Note - There is some discrepancy in this with different groups. College students usually start in September and finish in early May or April. Snowbirds tend to leave in the late Spring and return closer to October. But in general, this is the flow of life, energy, and people in our church.
Campaigns will happen in Fall and Spring Semesters.
They will last 5 months.
Summer will be a “sabbath” from our campaign energy.
FALL 2023 - sabbath + vocation
SPRING 2024 - scripture + simplicity
SUMMER 2024 - TBD
FALL 2024 - hospitality + community
SPRING 2025 - fasting + generosity
SUMMER 2025 - TBD
FALL 2025 - sabbath + vocation
SPRING 2026 - scripture + simplicity
SUMMER 2026 - TBD
FALL 2026 - hospitality + community
SPRING 2027 - fasting + generosity
SUMMER 2027 - TBD
Campaign Content
What formation content will campaigns focus on?
Pastors
The Pastors will do the heavy lifting of reading, listening, and watching resourcing themselves to not only implement these things into their own lives but also to weed through content to get down to the necessities. As said before, we want content to be limited and practice to be amplified.
Leaders
Leaders of our church will receive curated resources that will be deeper than what our entire church will go through so that they are equipped with the resources to lead and are not overwhelmed by too much content. This will include selected readings, sermons, podcasts, etc.
Church
The people in our church will receive content in a few different ways.
1. Through teaching and vision casting
• Sunday Mornings // First Wednesdays
2. Through RC leaders and the leaders of Ministries
3. Through the Resource Page of our Website
4. Through General Communication
• Blogs + Articles
• Newsletter
• Social Media