S2E8: Reaching the City Together

Show Notes

Stephan Pues, Kelly Seely, and Jason Lim, collaborators at the Center for Church Planting in Frankfurt, Germany, tell how they started working together for gospel renewal in Frankfurt and offer a helpful tool for assessing the level of partnership in your city.

What is How to Reach the West Again?

Christianity is declining in the West. How will the church respond?

Redeemer City to City's "How to Reach the West Again" podcast takes the insights of author and pastor Timothy Keller's book of the same name—and explores them in greater detail with a host of guest ministry leaders.

Join us as we examine ourselves, our culture, and Scripture to work toward a new missionary encounter with Western culture that will make the gospel both attractive and credible to a new generation.

Brandon O’Brien: This is How to Reach the West Again, a podcast that aims to inspire and empower a fresh missionary encounter with Western culture. I’m your host, Brandon O’Brien.

This year we’re narrowing our focus to cities—what are they? What does the Bible say about them? How do we plant churches there? What does it mean to love them? What unique challenges and opportunities does city ministry present?

In this episode, we hear a brief explanation from Tim Keller about why it takes city-wide, collaborative, transdenominational church planting and renewal networks to reach a city.

After that, we hear testimonials from three practitioners who participate in just such a city-wide collaborative network in Frankfurt, Germany, hosted and recorded by our friends at the Center for Church Planting in Frankfurt.

But first, Tim Keller.

Tim Keller: Now, lastly, I don't believe a city can be reached strictly by one church or even a big church or even a church planning network. I would like to talk to you just for one minute or two on what a city reaching movement really is. To me, a city reaching movement is when the body of Christ is growing faster than the population of the city. So when the number of Christians is going from 1% to 3% to 5% to 10% of the population over 10 or 20 years, now you've got a movement. You don't just have a few churches planting churches. You've got a movement.

Well, what creates a movement? Number one, what creates a movement is five or six church planting movements in different denominations or traditions. I know I'm going to sound facetious here. I'm a Presbyterian and I like being a Presbyterian. I enjoy my Presbyterian heritage and my Presbyterian distinctives. For reasons that escape me, not every person in New York City who wants to become a Christian wants to be a Presbyterian. I'm still doing the research on it. I haven't found out the reasons for it. I do know that Pentecostals and Anglicans and Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians tend to reach different kinds of people. And in different sorts of if I'm caring about increasing my tribe and not really caring about reaching the whole city for Christ, then all that matters is I plant Presbyterian churches. But it's my job if I love the city to make sure that church planning movements are going on, not only in my own denomination, but to help them get going in the other ones.

We need 4, 5, 6, 7 church planning movements going on. That means if you have 10 churches and five of them are planning another church every five years and half of them are planning a church every five years, you've got a movement. And unless there's 5, 6, 7, or eight of those kinds of vital church planning movements going on, you do not have even a chance for a citywide gospel movement.

But then around those churches, you need several things. You need a network of prayer in which the churches are coming together to pray. You need evangelistic specialists that are reaching especially campus college students and youth. Number three, you need all kinds of justice and mercy initiatives where Christians are coming together outside the churches, coming together to combat this or that, this problem, this social issue, helping people in this needy neighborhood and so forth. And then you also need to get all the people together in the city in their vocational fields. The artists need to get together who are Christians. The journalists need to get together who are Christians, the media people, the business people across. You can call these things specialist ministry networks.

Prayer, evangelism, justice, and mercy. Then you'd also need faith work initiative ministries. You also need institutions that help Christians stay in the city. In New York City, the Jews have done a wonderful job of creating institutions, community centers, schools, all sorts of things that keep families, Jewish families, in the city, living in the city long term so they can have the jobs, so they can have the jobs in publishing, in the media, in publishing, in business, and so forth.

But most of all, and lastly, you have to have the leaders of these various networks and the leaders of these various churches regularly meeting together, not turf conscious, kingdom minded instead of tribally minded, to say, "What does our city need?" And for a city reaching gospel movement, there has to be that inner core of five or six church planning movements. The outer core of these ministry networks, which are rooted in the church. The churches help the ministries. The ministries bring people into the church. The churches support the ministries.

And when that happens, you can start to see what I think is possible, which right now is not happening I don't think in any other center city in the world, where is the gospel believing, Bible believing Christians are growing so much faster in the core of the center city that a greater and greater percentage of the city is becoming Christian. That will have a huge impact on the culture. It will have a huge impact on the city. And I think that is an overview. That's a quick overview of what I think we have to do in order to reach cities today. Thank you.

Stefan Pues: Hello and welcome to the How to Reach the West Again podcast of Redeemer City to City. My name is Stefan Pues from Frankfurt. We're recording in Frankfurt and this is episode number eight called "Reaching the City Together".

So the topic today is collaboration. How can we work together for the kingdom in the city for church planting, for all the issues that we're having as a vision here.

And I have two guests with me Jason Lim and Kelly Seely, both friends and partners here with me in Frankfurt. And yeah, welcome both of you. Maybe you say a few words of introduction to yourself.

Jason Lim: Thanks for having me, Stefan. My name is like you said, Jason Lim or Jason Lim or Jason, I don't know whatever you want to do with my name. I'm half South Korean, half German. I grew up in Thailand, so I feel right at home in this beautiful multicultural city in Frankfurt. I've been here seven years now. Planted a church and still lead that church. But I'm also now the focus city leader for greater year mission here in Frankfurt.

Stefan Pues: Well welcome, Jason—and Kelly?

Kelly Seely: Yeah, so I came here to Germany in 2014, originally from the United States. Married, my wife is from Taiwan originally. And yeah, we've been here doing church planting since then.

Actually once with Stefan, when we first arrived and now at the southern part of Frankfurt. And yeah, we love the same thing that Jason said about the city, that it's multicultural, that it's got its own character here that we really love.

Stefan Pues: Good to have both of you here. I'm also a church planter. I work for City to City in Europe and also for the Center for Church Planting.

Kelly Seely: So at the table here, you have several organizations represented several church plants, several denominations, several cultural backgrounds.

And that pretty much represents our city and our vision for the city. That it's a multicultural collaborative approach to how we can see a movement of the gospel in our city. And we do believe that church planting in that is key.

So at the beginning, I want to ask each of you to say maybe two things that you love about Frankfurt. Why is this the best city in the world?

Jason Lim: That's a good question. One thing I think I already mentioned, I love the fact that it's very diverse. We have 54% of the population in Frankfurt that's either is a foreign passport holder or has an immigrant background.

So I love that part of the city with all its diversity. I think the other thing I like about the city is it's the only one in Germany with a proper skyline.

Stefan Pues: That's true. Kelly, how about you?

Kelly Seely: So the people love the city, people who live here love this city.. So it doesn't mean that everything's perfect here or it doesn't mean that everyone's arrived or people don't have lots of struggles or that the effect of the sin hasn't taken its hold, but there's...

Sometimes I enjoy coming from this positive aspect into ministry instead of coming from a negative one.

Jason Lim: What would you say, Stefan?

Stefan Pues: Well, one more of my facts and that's heading towards our topic. I actually really do enjoy and love that there's actually a good group of friends in the city trying to do ministry together. I think that's unique or it's at least, not that often.

God somehow has given and built over the last couple of years, a real good group of good leaders, of interesting people, very diverse but also very united in the gospel and in the vision for the city.

And I think what we're experiencing here, and we're going to talk about and tell about it a little bit more, is actually an amazing collaboration of people who want to plant churches, make disciples, spread the gospel to a couple of 100,000 people who have never heard the gospel. And that's honestly joyful. That's one of the things that I love about the most of my city, that this is really working well and it's growing.

So I think in other cities, that's sometimes hard to build. It took a while to build here as well, but it is actually there now and it's joyful.

Jason Lim: That's true.

Stefan: And it's spreading. So I love that vibe of collaboration. I think Frankfurt is a collaboration city in general.

So even other businesses or nonprofits or creative things are, it's not a city where you fight too much against each other, but you do things quickly together.

There is competition sometimes, it's not a healthy mode for the kingdom, but it is a city where a lot of things really run well together, even in how the city is built and whatever.

Stefan Pues: Our topic is how we can work together in the city. How can reach the city together. So the word that's often used is collaboration.

And I do want to at the beginning, focus for a few moments on, why is collaboration actually important? Why should we seek collaboration? And is it just beneficial? Is it something we have to do? Or is it just the hip, it's cool name thing, because a lot of books are written about it? What does our recent experiences here, what is the conviction behind it?

Kelly Seely: Well, it wasn't a cool thing when we're thinking about it at all. I think it was when you come into a new place, you have your hand to the plow and you're in the field and you're working and maybe it's at one church plant that you're in and all of your energy is just being thrown into this ministry, this church plant that trying to reach a neighborhood.

And so, you're already are collaborating in some ways. I mean hopefully you're collaborating with some people in the neighborhood, but also with maybe a team of other believers. So it's not like we're against collaboration, but we can be very shortsighted with our collaboration. Like, "Ah, I'm already collaborating. I know three other believers that are working with me."

And I think, having the experience of having planted a church, you could call it a holy discontentment because you can't just be...when you're in it, you're all excited about it and wow, look what happened. And then, through that process you get kind of discontent because you're like, "Well wow, we just planted one church and everybody I meet on the street still doesn't know Jesus or no really much about anything about him."

So I think that drives you to, well even if you did that every year, planted a church like that, that'd be amazing. But even if you did, there'll just be this wide sea of people out there that still hadn't heard. So that drives us to, who are other people that we can lock arms with to do that together. Because you realize that you can't... That God's not going to use you to do it by yourself.

Stefan Pues: Yeah. So the challenge is too big to actually even think that on my own I could even come close to reaching it. Right?

Kelly Seely: Yeah.

Jason Lim: It would be, like a good friend of ours, David Schwartz would say, "It's kind of arrogant to think you can do it by yourself." With one church or one organization to think...

If I don't collaborate in the sense maybe, and not intentionally, but I might be saying, I actually don't need other people, I don't need the others. I can do it on my own, which is just not true.

On the other side, I think sometimes it can be a danger of I collaborate because it's beneficial. We can create synergisms, but then it's less about the other people, it's more about me again. It's like collaboration in a sense like, "How can I get other people to join what I want to do?" But that's not collaboration. I think collaboration is, in a sense also, a spiritual discipline and it humbles you in situations where you do have to maybe

Put your idea up, take your idea off the table and be like, all right, it doesn't seem like this is what other people are thinking either. And listen to others and actually believe that the spirit also works through other people. I mean, I know that's crazy to think.

Kelly Seely: That's a radical thought.

Jason Lim: That the Holy Spirit also works through others. But I think that that idea of humbling yourself and then trusting that God is using others to also do work and then being open to the Lord guiding in that way, I think, yeah, it's not always easy. I think we can have a very romantic idea of collaboration and that might be nice as long as everyone thinks what is important, what you think is important. But then you'll notice when you work with other people, that's not necessarily the case.

And then what do you do? You can either be like, all right, you know what? It was nice while it lasted. You know? Let's just spread out again. But then to fight, to like, No, let's keep together. Let's either discuss this, let's really wrestle with this and come to a joint sort of strategy and vision.

Kelly Seely: And I think one of the things, like the collaboration actually leads us towards gospel advance. Because if we're just kind of cooperating with the church here or there, we can get really sidetracked. It's just really kind of a one off thing that we do together,But true collaboration, getting over, you talked about the strategy, having a strategy that we're working towards together. It does cause us to really say, okay, there are some things they do different in that guy's church and that guy's church or that person's church, in the church that I'm in. If I'm going to collaborate, where can I collaborate? If I've only got certain amount of energy to put in this, what do I want to put my energy into? And it kind of, like prayer is one of those things, by the way. But it cuts out some of the maybe lesser important things to collaboration that can sometimes sidetrack us from real collaboration.

And so gospel, the gospel in it's advance is going to be always one of those most important things that it keeps bubbling to the top. Because many of us can agree on that one thing that we want to see.

Jason Lim: So what you're saying is collaboration sort of pushes the sort of central things into the center and pushes the things that don't necessarily maybe need to be at the center more to the outside because... Is that what you're saying?

Kelly Seely: Yeah. Because the thing is, you've mentioned earlier, Okay, I'm done collaborating now. Why do people say stuff like that? Because they have a pet project. They have a pet thing that's not the central thing that they really care about.

Jason Lim: Right. So it helps prioritize.

Stefan Pues: Yeah. I think that the two things mentioned here, that why collaboration is good and helpful and important. I think they need to be seen as a combination of things. On the one side, it's more effective. So if I have the vision, the goal, the dream, to see a movement to the gospel in the city of Frankfurt, which is basically driven by the burning desire or the problem that we see together is that hundred thousands of people, millions of people live in the city who have never heard the gospel and who don't know somebody who would know somebody who would know somebody who would know the gospel. So it's that far out.

And no one of us, that's the one side, from one collaborations driven, no one, if you're really honest, will ever reach or change that significantly alone. We need to join, because it's more effective. We will reach more if we do it together. So it's kind of acknowledging the truth that myself, even if I have a lot of money and maybe can plant a significant amount of churches, will not really accomplish the vision and vision I have. So I need to join with others. And that's the one side, that's the effective side.

But I think what Jason mentioned as well is it's not just effective. And I think if we think collaboration only from the effectiveness, we're result driven and we're motivated by the goal of it. And I think that's not totally wrong, but I think we need to root that collaboration much deeper in our identity. And that is the gospel. So I think collaboration is also a gospel posture. So let's say even if collaboration were not more effective, I think we still have to be people who collaborate because of the gospel.

Stefan Pues: I think the posture of the church is to collaborate. So we're building one kingdom together in the city. And that's why I like what Kelly says.

So building one kingdom together is not choosing a side issue that the church should do and collaborate on that. But on the central vision issue, we're not collaborating. I think we must collaborate on the core issues as one kingdom.

So sometimes we have this behavior of building all these little gardens or this little kingdoms in the city in every denomination organization or whoever does that. And we're reporting to our friends and outside people how great we are. But we should actually build one garden or one kingdom together. So there is something in the gospel that drives us or almost commands us to do that.

Jason Lim: Yeah, because I think whether it's effective or not can also become very subjective. How do you decide and if you only have your own agenda and by your own agenda you're like, this is not effective, then you might... If that's the only criteria by which.

Stefan Pues: Right. Then it might in short term be less effective even, because you invest in relationships that do not directly produce something.

Jason Lim: Yeah. Absolutely. Right. 100%. Have you ever felt that, like in our collaboration here in Frankfurt, that there was a costly side to it? Because you go, we've had this, you and me got together thinking about, okay, how could we do this? Everyone brings the ideas to the table. And then not all ideas are going to be implemented, even if you believe this is the best thing that'll ever come up.

Kelly Seely: And we all have to be okay to sacrifice.

Stefan Pues: Yeah. I mean, it also is a beautiful part because you really make friends on the way, but you have to invest in relationships, which is not painful, but it is definitely an effort and you have to really do that. Doesn't come to you, but you have to make it. That's a key thing in collaboration. It is organic. It doesn't happen through projects or systems or structures. It happens through relationships and friendships. And I think put it in Simon Sinek words, who says, "You always start with why." I think the why question is the identity and the vision part and then how you do things or what you do. So the collaboration that we do in the kingdom of God should not only be about what we want, but about why we actually are here. And I think when we think about why we're here, what is our purpose or what is actually the identity behind the purpose, then we need to start with the gospel and not just with the outcome, the numbers of people being reached or whatever.

And that is... Holding these two things real together. You shouldn't play them against each other. But I think collaboration, why we do it is because it is effective, but also because it's who we are. I mean, if there's one group in the world that should really be expert in collaboration, it should be the church of Jesus. Because that's him. I mean, we have a triune God who's not an individual but who's three in one perfect collaboration. I mean, they were different or they are different in who they are in their person, but they're united and they really perfectly collaborate in some sense.

So if you want to look at the perfect example of collaboration, look at the Trinity and then how that played out into the story of Jesus and the gospel and how they actually had different jobs in that. But they totally had the same vision, the same idea, and they corroborated. They never worked against each other, never competed or everybody just did their own jobs in their own departments, but they did it together and collaborated to the saving and redemption of the world. And I think that is the identity of the church where we're coming from and what we're spreading. So it is more effective, but it's also our identity and spiritual.

Well, guys, let's from this, why is this important? Go through our story part. So Frankfurt, I think in the last two years, even probably longer than that, has I think a great story to tell about this. So there's not just theoretically that's where we live. We just sit right now in the meeting room of what we call the CoLab. It's an office space, it's a collaborative space. We even call it CoLab. So it stands for collaboration. Let's talk a little bit about how that happened and why collaboration is basically the heart of that.

Jason Lim: I can tell you more about the future than I can about the past. But yeah, I think it was birthed in parts of individual conversations. I know you, Stefan, and my predecessor, Rich Bonham, also had conversations about it. It was a huge thing in his heart too, that he wanted to see churches work more closely together. I know his wife actually was regularly praying for more unity in the city and for churches to work more closely together.

And then there was almost different leaders at the same time got placed on their heart the need. When I think about Bonham's and some other people that it really had a heart ... start for we really need to work more closely together. And then, some of those pre-existing relationships got together. Then we had a first conversation and then some regular meetings where we're like, "How can we build on this relationship that already existed in some sense, and then in some sense, it still had to grow, but how can we actually not just hang out and have a nice time together, but how can we work more closely together and get our ministries more intertwined into a joint vision and strategy for the city?"

Stefan Pues: I remember it started at Hero's burger place... not where it started, but that was significant point. I do remember that I had several conversations before that and then invited some key people from you and from Frankfurt who were involved in church planting to it. I think having good meals and food together is key in collaboration without big agendas, but just getting to know each other and dreaming and focusing on the vision. And then, what happened after having a burger in the last two years?

Kelly Seely: I would just say that we really learned through the process. So it wasn't like, "We have this amazing plan. We've got it all figured out. Now we just set it on the table." Because I think in our minds, that's the way it works or how it always works in my mind.

And then, even from that meeting though, it was like we had the people in mind who we thought were going to be those people. Most of them were, but even with the people that we thought were going to be a part of that, a couple weren't for different reasons. Then even after that, it was like, "Now we're going to meet monthly. We're going to work on this together."

I think you, Stefan and I, we had more of the like, "All right, here's our topics and here's what we're going to do in every town. Bam! At the end, we're going to have this amazing document." That's how we were thinking.

Then, when we got in the room with everybody else, they were like, "I don't even know that guy, so I don't know. All of us knew somebody, but it felt forced a little bit.

So, from the group we tried to listen and people said, "Hey, one, we take a little bit longer than we planned? And two, can we do some things to get to know one other better? Because we see the need for that and we want to collaborate." That desire was already there. I think if somebody doesn't already want to collaborate you can't make them. They have to have come with that. But during that time, I think listening to the group really helped that and saying, "We're a group we're doing this together." It's not just like Stephan, you just didn't lead the whole thing, but you really intentionally said, "Okay, well you have a different idea for an example. Well, you lead it." Because you knew that the heart was the same.

So that was our next steps for over 10 months or about that we met. It really came to two key things. One was what people in city to city and others called theological vision. That was important for us.

Stefan Pues: Which we built together because it was not presented by one of us to everybody else had to accept it, but it was actually really something after the long process we built together.

Kelly Seely: We probably all would've had ours that looked similar, but it would've been different. The fact that we came together and into that together was really, really significant as well. I think it gave us not freedom, but almost comfort, a little bit of. "Oh, okay. I know what I'm getting myself into and I know I'm committing to, and if I'm going to be bringing people from my church or other church planners or something, then I know what the goal is." That was really helpful, I think, for all the leaders too to know, "Hey, where do we want this? Where do we feel like God is leading this to go?"

And then, the second document that was helpful was just saying, "When we're talking about churches, what's something that we can agree on?" Because that's oftentimes where the collaboration stops. "What's something that we can agree on that we do want to see?" Instead of just saying, "Oh, we're all different and it's going to look different," that was really helpful. I think even in maybe when you go back to a circle that maybe has a little bit more tight view of, or maybe a less collaborative nature, they didn't really want to collaborate maybe, but you show them that and it's like, "Okay, I can see us being a part of that," so that was key.

Jason Lim: I think the three things that I think of when I think what helped the process was, one, Stefan, you brought it into the conversation for us to be vulnerable with one another, to share real struggles. There was some really personal things shared about struggles, about what people are going through.

There's some shared experience of like, "Let's bring this before the Lord together. It wasn't just a working group that is working on a project together and then after we're done, we all go home separately. No. We were sharing real things that we're struggling with right now.

The second thing, we got some outside help. I think that was inspiring to just get some outside coaching of people come in for certain sessions and just guide us through some questions. Sometimes an outside voice is more helpful rather than having an insight person that has to stand in this weird role of coaching. It brings us all more into one side because then the coach is coaching all of us and none of us that's like, "But I'm going to lead us all through this," so I think that helps collaboration.

And then, the third thing you mentioned already. Meals were just so important for us to go out regularly and just-

Kelly Seely: Go all together or individual?

Jason Lim: Not always together, but maybe just two of us or three of us have meals, just hang out and have fellowship.

Stefan Pues: Well, for me, or maybe for Kelly and me, or the three of us who tried to be intentional about the development of this whole process, I think it was very important to keep two things together. One was the heavy emphasis on relationships, so it's very organic, but then still have it something that is intentionally going somewhere.

So if you're only organic, you have great fellowship, but it's not going anywhere. Normally, especially key leaders are not interested in stuff like that: just meet, talk, have nice time, but it doesn't have a purpose. So there probably won't come back after the second or the third time. Or if you only intentional, so you only have an agenda and something to go through, but you don't invest in relationships, then you will probably lose the interest of people too because they're coming and they're not valued; they're not included. That kind of thing. I think these two things in the process of starting a collaborative network in a city are very important. They're also important to keep it alive to be intentional about both. What is our purpose and what is the organic relationships?

Jason Lim: I remember sitting at a cafe/restaurant a different city in Europe with one of the key leaders there. The biggest struggle that they had with collaboration in the city was pastors just didn't have time. It was so hard to get people together or even have time with people because everyone was so-so busy. Because like you said, if they don't have time to meet or they just have time to meet once... I don't know... every two month and there's no relationships that are formed by that. So I think what's really something we can learn from people like David Schultze is the head of the Evangelical Alliance here in Frankfurt. He said, "You guys got to give me this amount of time every week to invest into the city movement and for me to have time to hang out with people." Even in our CoLab space here he comes once a week and intentionally uses this as his office. he has this other office he could use. But then, also, you wonder why those pastors are so busy and maybe they're not-

Kelly Seely: It has to do with desire.

Jason Lim: It does. It has to do with priority and being like, "Maybe I need to delegate some of the things in my church life to other leaders so that this actually becomes... I can't wait until I have time left over exactly to be like, 'I'm sitting here this afternoon. I don't know what I should do. Maybe I can hang out with..."

Kelly Seely: Maybe call somebody to start collaboration.

Stefan Pues: Time issues are always priorities, always in your life. You say, "I don't have time," it always means I don't have priority. And then, that means, well, how can we change it into a priority for somebody and make it relevant?

Well, one thing I found along the line and with the help of other leaders put it into words is the idea of the five Cs, which how we call it and I think gave us a helpful matrix to either assess and process collaborational relationships. The five Cs are... and they describe from bottom up the stages of relationship in the city... so competition is the first one. Second is coexisting, then communication, communicate, cooperate and collaborate. So that's a tool that became very helpful for us.

I think it describes, basically the five realities of the relationships in city. I often found that somehow the church has adopted the marketplace principle, which the marketplace understands as a positive idea of competition. So if you're a car dealer or a cell phone shop, we always believe, well, more competition is actually healthy for the market. Somehow the church, especially in the Western world, adopted that idea that competition's helpful.

Honestly, church planting has been done in a competitive way a lot. So either between the church plants or between the church plants and the existing churches, the normal culture is competition. It's cheap stealing. It's taking away resources. That's a moat that is poisoning for collaboration, and I think even poisoning for the gospel in the city. So it's not at all what Jesus wanted to see when he talked about unity.

Jason Lim: I think people are honest about that, but then the solution goes up the seas, but it never goes up far enough.

Stefan Pues: Yeah, you're right. Co-existing is a nice way of competition, so it's just I leave you alone. It's a little bit more peaceful; it's not really good. It actually begins to become interesting at the communication level where you really begin to talk about, and that's where the issue of priority and time becomes part of it. You need to take time to just have a coffee with a pastor: the church down the street or in your neighborhood. You just need to do that. So communication needs effort and time and I think that's where things begin to be interesting.

And then, cooperation, which is often misunderstood as collaboration. Cooperation is that you help each other, and that's good. You're a church planner; you need maybe a sound system for your event? Well, I give mine to you. That's helpful, but that's not collaboration. It is cooperation. We help each other on projects, on whatever task you have. Collaboration really is where you begin to join each other. So you begin to say, "Well, I'm committed to do this together with you even though you're different and secondary issues of our theology. I'm willing to invest into what God calls you to do. To do what you do because I collaborate with you.” So you're doing things together. You're not just helping each other with your own things, but you're doing it together. I think that collaboration, these five can be used as assessment or even as process tools. I think it became helpful for us here in Frankfurt to define these things.

Jason Lim: I think they're really helpful because they're simple, and anyone listening can just sit down with the five Cs and just think, 'All right, where are we and how do we get to the next stage?' They're very practical steps you can take.

What I usually do is I paint it as a... It's not a very urban, maybe it is, I don't know, it's not a very urban picture, but gardens. There's a lot of garden wars in Germany with neighboring gardens.

Stefan Pues: That's a very German thing, to have your own little garden outside the city.

Jason Lim: Some people even here have a little garden, and then if you have a townhouse it's like a row. Then competition is like, “Oh...your apple tree's growing into my garden,” or “You're stealing fruit from my tree.” “But it grew into my garden.” Things like that. That's competition. Then coexistent is, there's a huge hedge. I know there's someone on the other side. I don't know who he is or what. I hear them sometimes, maybe. I think they have kids. I'm not sure. And then communication is you start talking over the fence.

Jason Lim: It's like, “Oh, hey, Mr. Bill. Mr. Whatever, how are the kids?” And you're having conversations. And then cooperation is, there's a little garden door and then sometimes the kids come over and they can play, and sometimes we go there. And then collaboration for me is When I mow the lawn, I don't even know which lawn I'm mowing. I'm like, I don't even care. It's our garden, it's our space. You're trying to create this together. I think that visualizes it a little bit for people. So, yeah, encourage the listeners to just go through that and figure out where you are there.

Kelly: Yeah. That's good. You mentioned at some point having the right people and I think, in a initial group of who are we going to start collaborating with, because you have to start somewhere. And I think what for us was helpful was, you could just say who are the people that I'm already friends with who would help me. That's maybe easy in some ways, but within you kind of lose some influence. You could also go on the other side of that and say, “I'm going to find the most handsome, the most popular, the person with the most Instagram likes or whatever, followers.” And you could also go on that side and just look for popularity, which we also didn't do. I think what we really were looking for like, “Hey, who are people?” first of all. Whether they're a little bit different than us or not, who are also already leading other people. And so they're at least collaborating on in their own circles somehow. So we are all collaborating kind of in smaller circles and seeing how we could bring those rings together.

Stefan Pues: Yeah, I think in the whole thing, one maybe last thing for me is that you have to have a concept of how diversity is actually benefit for what you want to do. And I do think that even the theological diversity that God allowed to be happening over the last couple of hundred years is actually benefit. So I think it's often understood as a problem inside church because you're different, you take on baptism or you take on spiritual gift or whatever is different than mine is a problem.

Well, it is a challenge definitely, but I do think that the diversity in churches is actually a big benefit for us in Frankfurt, because we need to reach so many different people in the city. No one denomination or style or whatever of worship, of maybe even theology, I'm not talking about the core issues, but more secondary issues would ever reach everyone. Even if there were the most successful church planting movement ever seen. No one will ever reach a whole diversity. We need the diversity in the church that God has given and I think that's where we start celebrate the diversity. We don't celebrate diversity in the key issues. And I think that that is my last maybe point we do before we close is there's something in the core. It's very simple. It's basically the gospel. It's an agreement on the core things. And not just theologically, we don't just write it down, but we make it the number one issue we talk about and we make it the one driving principle for everything.

Let's maybe at the very end, one last statement from each one of you. how was this gospel, which I do know you all value more than anything else in your life. How did it become in this whole process, the key thing for our collaboration in Frankfurt? Why is gospel so key?

Kelly Seely: Paul said it pretty clearly for us. Our faith rises and falls on the truth of the gospel and what we mean by that. It's not only a principle that we live by, but it's also that the key center of who we are. So it's our complete identity that we are in Christ. And so, yeah I think even as Paul has said, that can Christ be divided and the answer's 'No'. So if we are really in Christ and that's used all throughout the Bible, these two little words, that's another way to talk about the effect of the gospel and this good news from Jesus, this reality that it has in our lives. And the reality is that there was a dividing wall and there's no longer a dividing wall. And so I think discipleship, for instance, is just really a process of coming into a new reality based upon the message of the gospel.

The gospel brought in the collaboration actually, because it said, 'Hey, you're no longer divided. You're one, you're in me, you're my children, you're my family. You're one kingdom, you're one nation.' And we're just still trying to figure out the reality of that. So it's already true, but we're just the little sheep trying to figure out where we are. And so we are just kind of work that out. And so I feel like this is almost like a work to of sanctification because the reality that we are collaborators in a sense and because of the gospel, we're just trying to figure out how that looks.

Jason Lim: Yeah, I think less people hear the gospel, but if we don't collaborate also there's a second way in which the gospel is less witnessed because what kind of witness is that to our city? If the message that we are carrying to them doesn't cause us to join hands with people that are maybe different in some ways, but we still agree on that. It's just a bad witness to the city. And then I can understand why people wouldn't want to listen to us, because what we're saying with our mouth and what we're living with our lives just don't align in that sense.

So I think it becomes a gospel issue in two senses. In both ways the witness of the gospel is in question. Are more people hearing the gospel? But is it also embodied throughout the city in a better way?

Stefan Pues: Yeah, for me it is definitely. This amazing text from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together I think is the English, where he says well, the community of believers, the gospel community is not something we built but is an existing truth and we need to live it out. And I do think that the beauty of collaboration is really shown when you see in the process that the gospel really becomes not just something I use out there to see, to accomplish my task, but it's actually something that comes alive and helps me in the process. So I need the brother to speak the gospel to me because the gospel is an external thing that needs to come into me and it is experienced on the way together in collaboration. I think I need collaboration to experience the gospel myself in my heart more. And also it has an effect on you guys and the city out there. But that kind of collaboration in the city is really blessing to myself as well. Not just the effect of it, but already the process of it.

Well, that is almost the end of our unit today. Thanks a lot and thank you for your time and we're from Frankfurt and it was great to talk to you today about what God has done here and what some principles and experiences were. if you're interested in figuring more about that, Google Frankfurt Center for Church Planting. it was a pleasure for us to be the host today and many greetings from Frankfurt. And let's seek gospel collaboration for movements of the gospel in the cities of the world. Amen. Bye-bye.

Brandon O’Brien: Special thanks to our friends at the Center for Church Planting in Frankfurt. I encourage you to take a few minutes to assess the climate of Christian partnership in your city using the 5 C’s Kelley, Stephan, and Jason described: competition, coexistence, conversation, cooperation, collaboration.

And be sure to join us next week for the final episode of season 2 of How to Reach the West Again. We’ll be back where we started—in London—talking with Neil Powell, director of the London Project, about his past experience in a city-wide church planting network and his hope for the future.

How to Reach the West Again is a production of Redeemer City to City. This episode was produced, written and hosted by Stephan Pues and Brandon O’Brien.

Our associate producer is Braeden Gregg.

Today’s interview was recorded by: Tim Keller’s talk “How Do You Reach Cities?” was recorded by the Lausanne Movement in 2010 and was used with permission. You find the video at lausanne.org.

RCTC is a non-profit organization co-founded by Tim Keller and supported by generous people like you. If you’ve enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform, leave a review, and consider making a gift to support the work at www.redeemercitytocity.com/give.