David Pierce at CheckList today!

Well, as antecipated, David Pierce blog tour happens today here, please find below some prior questions I have sent him, feel free to post more questions to him at comments, remember though that New Zeland hour is the opposite time now

Luis Fernando - As you have been here in Brazil, even recently at Tribal Generation, what kind of idea you have of the overall church here and some efforts to build a relevant witness to our generation?

David Pierce - First of all, I want thank you for having me on your blog, Luis. It would be great to see you when I am in Sao Paulo next October.

From my limited experience in Brazil, I have the impression that there are a lot of great churches reaching into the emergent generation. In fact, I think Brazil is a leader in that area in many ways.

It was great for me to be at Tribal Generation (along with Sandro Baggio and Aaron) and to see all the different ministries that are happening in Brazil and South America.

Luis Fernando - With this kind of itinerant ministry around the world, I imagine you might go to places you will never have the opportunity to return again, how can you assure the fruit of your witness are having the proper follow up on evangelism or discipleship?

David Pierce - It’s my desire that everyone we reach as a result of our evangelistic efforts are equipped to become mature enduring mature members of the Body of Christ. That is why we are extremely committed to working with local churches and ministry partners to ensure that new believers receive proper follow up and ongoing discipleship. When necessary, we work to develop new churches because it is common for us to ministry in areas where they are very few or no churches at all.

However, I disagree with the idea out there that unless you can ensure that direct follow up will occur, that you shouldn’t proclaim Jesus. All day long, people are constantly hearing lies, through the media, newspapers or where ever they go. So if I have the opportunity to proclaim the truth, I not only should, I have the responsibility to do so.

For example, one day I was listening to the radio, and a well-known Christian band was being interviewed on a popular station. This band had achieved considerable success in the secular music scene. The interviewer asked the singer of the band where he got his inspiration. It was as though he was setting him up to talk about his faith in God. The singer in the band responded by saying, “I know some people would say we’re a Christian band, but we’re not.” Then he said he got his inspiration from different social issues and life experiences. And as he spoke, it was as if I heard a voice saying, “If you deny me before men, I will deny you before my father in heaven” (Matthew 10:33).

Luis Fernando - When training other people to build similar ministries around the world, what factors do you have in mind to pass them that will be important to nurture in their home places?

David Pierce - Over the years, I have learned many principles (often the hard way!) about how to effectively reach the emergent youth culture, but I think one of the most important principles is the idea that you can not be impressed with the “scene” God is calling you to.

The “scene” devastates people. Jesus wasn’t afraid to confront human culture, because he knew how often it was sick and destructive. He healed on the Sabbath, he talked to a Samaritan woman in a public place, he invited tax collectors to join him, he ate with immoral people, he offended Jews by not following their laws, he said that he did not belong to the world’s system but came to bring another Kingdom, and he told his followers that they did not belong to this world. Jesus spoke in the languages of the cultures he was trying to reach, but he did not identify with cultural stupidity, confusion, pride, selfishness, injustice, or immorality. Jesus ate with people, loved them, healed them, fed them, used their symbols to communicate who God is, but he didn’t refrain from telling them the truth.

So don’t think you have to compromise with the scene. Be like Jesus, and confront it. This is why I refuse to say, for example, that I am a Christian punk, even though I have spent years in the middle of punk culture. How unbelievable is it to link Jesus with anything like that—a man-made scene that destroys people? I am a follower of Jesus, not a Christian punk. NO LONGER MUSIC has also played in some of the most famous gothic clubs in South America, but that hasn’t made me a Christian goth. I am a follower of Jesus, and that is all. I influence the scene, not vice versa. You need to get out of the scene. Jesus is the one you need to follow.
It seems that sometimes we think that being part of the scene makes us radical. But that just buys into the idea that the scene is more powerful than Jesus. Jesus is the true radical.

At Steiger, our vision is to train, equip and release people around the world to reach out to secular youth culture in urban areas and to raise up evangelistic artists who would impact the trend setters in the fields of art and media with the message of the Cross.

We have a 3-month school in New Zealand every year to give training for those interested in reaching the emergent youth and in our last school we had seven people from Brazil. We also have an Association of Evangelistic Artists that is intended to challenge and equip artists and musicians to boldly take the gospel message outside of the church.

Check out our website – www.steiger.org – for more information about Steiger or check out - http://timetoact.steiger.org - for more information about No Longer Music.

I would like to post here a question posted by TallSkinnyKiwi where you can know better what happens at No Longer Music Presentation:

Andrew Jones - How do you describe No Longer Music?

David Pierce - In our show, we start the concert with a lot of craziness that has no real point to it; there are just a lot of bizarre things happening on stage, along with video projections, fire and other special effects. For example, during one song, our base player is strung up by his feet and plays a song upside down.

We do this to develop a relationship with the audience; it shows them that we don’t take ourselves too seriously and gives them a chance to dance and go crazy.

But in the second half, it gets serious. We start the second section by portraying a girl being raped behind a shadowbox in order to convey a sense of the world’s injustice. We use such an intense symbol, because the reality is that people are raped by the world. We do not do anything obscene, but the portrayal of what happens is still very strong, because we want to show people what the world really is like. After that, I pick the girl up and carry her forward, toward the audience. The audience does not know yet that I represent Jesus in the concert. Then I start saying, “I can’t protect you when you’re not by my side… I can’t keep you safe… Don’t hate your life!”

The whole point of this section is to show how passionate God is and how upset he is about our pain and suffering. The concert goes on to show how I die for the girl. Many people still do not realize what is going on, perhaps because I have not used the words “God” or “Jesus,” even forty minutes into the show. We had the crazy part in the beginning, and then it slowly turned into a serious story, but not one time have we said anything blatantly Christian. The reason is that we gear the show toward secular people, so I need to explain to them who Jesus is before I start using Christian words. If I say, “God” or “Jesus” at the beginning of the concert, they will say to themselves, “Oh, I know what this is all about, and I’m not interested.”

Typical Christian words will turn people away immediately, because they have a false idea of Jesus in their head, and the Jesus they reject, you would reject also. As our show progresses and I am killed on stage in place of this girl, I end up covered in stage blood and am put in a clear coffin. Then two people blow fire over the coffin, and, amidst a lot of smoke and light effects, I come up out of it. A lot of people in the audience finally start to get it at this point. Up until then, most just think that it is a crazy concert. But now, the different aspects of the second half start to come together in their minds.

So finally, it clicks in people’s minds that we are talking about Jesus. That is when they start to react. People frequently get really worked up in the audience, especially when I come out of the coffin, because that is typically when God’s power shows up. He comes in such a real way that people feel it. They often say that they feel something like energy, light, heat, electricity, or a life force, because they do not know how else to describe the Holy Spirit.

By this point, the show has lasted almost an hour, and I still haven’t said, “God” or “Jesus.” And I still don’t. Instead, I walk over to the girl and say, “You don’t have to listen to lies anymore.” Then I say it again, “You don’t have to listen to lies anymore! I died in your place. We can be together again.” We embrace, and I say, “You can find your life again.” Then I turn to the audience and tell them, too, “You can find your life again!”

I say, “The world wants to put you in a cage like a rat. Like a rat on a wheel. I don’t want to live in a rat cage. I don’t want to die in a rat cage. I’m so sick of the rat cage. Sick of the rat cage lies. Sick of the rat cage jokes. It’s time to change the road you’re on. It’s time to meet the ultimate life force.”

I don’t use religious words. I don’t even say, “God.” I say, “It’s time to meet the ultimate life force—the one who loved us all along, the one who breaks all the chains. And his name is Jesus.” We have just done an hour show, and the last word I say is, “Jesus.” Because of the way we design the show, many people are thinking, I’m not supposed to like Jesus, but I like him, and I don’t know what to do. I see the truth in this message, and I’m touched, but I’m supposed to be against Jesus. It is confusing and powerful, because people finally get a true picture of who Jesus really is. And thousands of people have come to Jesus at our concerts, because they have seen a true picture of God.

If you want to see a video of what I’m talking about, you can watch this video.

Luís Fernando - David, I am extremely honored to receive you at my blog here, surely I am looking forward to meet you personally here in October. The very nature of your answers show how you are commited to mission and this makes me learn a lot with you. I am posting part of our interview in my Portuguese blog, and I will transfer comments from there to here.

Tag - David Pierce; Steiger; No Longer Music

Great conversations with Spencer Burke in São Paulo!

As shared in last post, we had great moments when we received the visitation of Spencer Burke here in São Paulo. It all started with an interview we made with him on March and after, we started to talk about a possibility of doing Soularize here in São Paulo, so we received him from May 15th until 18th when he could take good pictures, and have a good idea of the emergent conversation in Brazil, also we could foster great conversations with friends and could promote a gathering last Saturday on Projeto 242.

If you would like to know how it was, we have streamed mostly of the Saturday gathering and we have them recorded, our session was both in English and in Portuguese, so you might listen and see what happened on video:

Morning Sessions

Afternoon Sessions

Also, we have it recorded on Renovatio Cafe's Podcast:

Morning Session

Afternoon Session

I hope this might help to open brazilian doors for more conversation with great guys abroad we have been known and read in this emergent world.

Renovatio café - Now you can read it!

As promised, we opened last week a section of English articles for you friends abroad! We have opened it with two objectives in mind:

To let you know what is going here, we will have brazilian bloggers posting in English to let you know our context, how we found the books we have read, it is, the think I try to do here

To let friends participate in our efforts in Brazil posting their messages to encourage our work on brazilian emerging church

We have already an Article from Gustavo K-fe about Brazilian context of the emerging church. You can visit at this link http://www.renovatiocafe.com/index.php/English/, or visiting Renovatio Cafe and choosing "English Content" menu, RSSs files for English Content are also available.

Renovatio Cafe

I am so glad to break this long silence to share a very good news! We have just launched Renovatio Cafe website!
We had long ago planned to launch a site to gather the emergent community here in Brazil, to inspirate emergent brazilians to create good national content and to promote emergent gatherings in our country.
We have lots of blogs talking about emergent and missional churches, discussing about their delusion on modern church, but unfortunately, we have so rare emergent communities here! I believe this site could be a good tool to empower people to plant new communities here.
Until then, we will gather people to write brazilan content, but we will also work to translate good contents available abroad, also, we are working to have some good talks with emergent leaders abroad as a matter to inspirate others leaders here, if you are interest to help us in those matters we would appreciate a lot!
For a while, most of our articles are portuguese written, we have also some files available in English though, further, we plan to have also English content available to our friends abroad, I think it would be awsome to let you know what's going on here!
I count on your prayers!

*A revolução já começou - Revolution has already begun!

An Image worth more...

I have found on Emerging Grace blog, some posters that I have been found in some emerging church blogs due to their missional church definitions. Messages are very rich and gets richer when besides so interesting pictures like those were taken, the one that I think reflect my moment now is stated below:

The Shape of things to come (resuming)

I had to go to my doughter musical presentation and, I was wondering that, though my last post was very long, it was incomplete yet. I took so long to identify our reality by the church described by Hirsch and Frost, but I didn't discussed anything on their solutions. The kind of things we had a lot these days, people talking fast about what is wrong with the church without working for their renewal.
The opportunities of planting churches with encarnatonal, messianic and apostolic approach would not be so far here, we are not so formal in our relationships, but the dualistic culture is very deep in people hearts yet. Our poverty give us plenty of opportunities to engage, though, our approach to social matters is very opportunistic in most of efforts, the act of promoting social justice for a matter of love itself is a thing that we are to learn.
I liked very much the figure the authors used about a centered set church, against a bondered set church: it is exciting to imagine a church that relationships are not ruled by memberships or culture. Though churches always have a set of relationships that links some folks to them, the idea that these folks will be also church just when they baptise are to be beated. I also liked the explanation of how some churches promote a centered set, presenting very bold non negotiable truths and presenting other doctrines in a way that people theirself would be able to choose by studying the Bible, I liked the idea of teaching people how to build their truth on Bible. I told this to a pastor friend of mine and he admitted how many non negotiable doctrines he had as setting very tigh bondered church to his fellowers.
I have got a live example of an apostolic leadership since I have know Kairos LA, they also promote leadership as presented by authors with Apostles, Pastors, Prophets, Teachers and Evangelists. In Brazil, our churches are also ruled by Pastors and Teachers. Our Evangelists are resumed to missionary people. We have plenty of prophets also, even more in a country when you live beside such poverty, we have many people daring to preach to serve them; unfortunately, as their voice were silented years ago, their emergence in church made many of them auto sufficient and many times their action is at service to left side political parties agenda, and, with the lack of an apostle leadership, they will remain discoursing against poverty with no actions. The word of apostleship have been related to an apostleship ministry promoted by some neo-pentecostals church, it has been used to give a few, a very high hierarchy at church, because of this, we have to use this word with caution. Indeed we lack a lot apostleship as an entrepreuneur that would plant more churches and set real goals to this planting.
Might God help us to be bold in action to see real examples like those here in Brazil.

Tag - brazilian church; emerging church; the shape of things to come; Alan Hirsch; Michael Frost

The Shape of things to come

This is my 2nd post I should have posted earlier, but I had not. I finished "The Shape of things to come" reading in January and published a detailed revision in my Brazilian Blog (it took 4 posts to publish an overall idea of the book and a revision of the writers purposes of an Incarnational, Missianic and Apostolic church). I think it would be useless to have such a detailed approach of this book here, once this book was well accepted in international emerging church community and you will find better reviews like mine in blogosphere. Though, I would like to share what those ideas means in our brazilian field.
The importance of this book besides, Emerging Church, is that it paves a good way of what our churches should seek when emerge. After reading both, I think Emerging Church as a very good report of how churches have been emerged in US an UK while, this book describe the basis below Emerging Churches practices.
Actually I am starting Michael Frost's "Exiles" reading, after read all Alan Hirsch's "The Forgotten Ways". It is clear to note that all three book's ideas are constructed on a thesis that while the Christendom mode of society is shadowing, our mode of church is shadowing by the same way, thus we need a new kind of church out of the dominance box that started when Constantine declared Christianism as the official religion of all Rome. I think that is important to have clear that church has not started from these ideas on, I had already saw some early brazilian criticism to Emerging Church that they considered Christian Church as lost from Constantine until now, off course based on misread emerging church books and purposes.
I think that the Christendom mode detailed by Hircsh and Frost applies very much to evangelical church in Brazil, it has been very Attrational, reflected, for instance, by use of media with preching all day in christian Radio and TVs as a way to invite people to attend services and being blessed, all strategies you see is related to have people coming to the church bounds to be part of them; our church has been very dualistic, when they build a kind of paralell christian world where the label "gospel" tells what would be good for christian people to use and has been also very hierachic when the first thing that all churches do, is to establish who owns the power and a very well career plan of how to get it. With our evangelical growth we started to have a kind or post-evangelical people frustrated by evangelical church promises not fullfilled.
We have a great challenge to break this kind of religion culture, though people are very free to express their spirituality here, their have been more exposed to express that through spiritualism. They have been exposed nightly to those ideas on TV Soap Operas besides post modernism ideas. But when they go search for spirituality out of spiritualism and budhism they will appeal to a church closed to Catholic culture (a church even more attrational, dualistic and hierarchic), where most of people got the idea of religion when growing up. Yes, they will remain frustrated as long as they find another way of doing church.
Hirsch and Frost ideas are indeed great solutions to our day, church as it is now will remain just beside our culture, we will need just good people dare enough to have this kind of thinking outside the box and starting making difference. The fact is that we have seen lots of discussions about emerging churches in Brazil, but we have not seen any practical idea because we have seen only discussions. We need concrete examples of emerging communities to foster other examples, so far we have few ones and not enough to establish a good idea of what an emerging church should be in Brazil.
I think this book should be a good source to give us a way to begin.

Tag - brazilian church; emerging church; the shape of things to come; Alan Hirsch; Michael Frost

Emerging Sampa

As I told on my 2006 restrospectives, we started to gather some people interested in emerging churches and in readings of Brian McLaren, Erwin McManus, Donald Miller etc. After some meetings we decided that we should spread this conversation in order to not let people interested in those matters thinking they are alone in our country, as some people we found recently.
So we are planning a conversation next March 31st at Projeto 242, the first emerging church I know here in São Paulo. We stated a theme as "Does we need a new kind of church?", and we are spreading the message. I hope to reach more people with this event. So far it has been so good to join so good people interested in Kingdom.
Also, we started a discussion of "The Secret Message of Jesus Christ" from Brian McLaren, which was translated to portuguese, our people are so excited on join this conversation, buying books and write.

Tag - Emerging Church