An A29 church has created a free study guide to go along with the Re:Lit book Total Church, by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis. The well-designed 32-page study guide is available for free PDF download here. We’ve talked with Steve Timmis, and he’s excited about this free resource.

The study guide was designed by Veritas Community Church in Columbus, Ohio.

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, the authors of Total Church, founded The Crowded House church-planting initiative in the UK and direct the Porterbrook Network. Steve Timmis is also Director of Acts 29 for Western Europe.

More Total Church Content

• View video and audio from the Total Church Training at Mars Hill.
• Read the Total Church blog series.
• Get Total Church in the Re:Lit library.

Rain City Hymnal

The first offering from Re:Sound is the Rain City Hymnal. Listen online and get the record from the Re:Sound website. Find out more.

The Total Church Training took place on March 9, 2009 at Mars Hill's Ballard campus.

The Total Church Training took place on March 9, 2009 at Mars Hill's Ballard campus.

The Total Church Training took place on March 9, 2009 at Mars Hill's Ballard campus.

Steve Timmis, author of Total Church (with Tim Chester) and new director of Acts 29 in Western Europe, gave a three-part lecture at Mars Hill this winter. I have found Steve's insights on community incredibly beneficial to groups that I've led.

Please send these videos to the community group leaders at your church, they will benefit greatly.

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Steve Timmis and Tim Chester wrote a series of blogs for the Resurgence based on Total Church. On Sunday we will post a series page so you can read through all the Total Church entries in one place.

Total Church:

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis make the case for reinforcing and strengthening churches with particular emphasis on the gospel and community. Find out more.

The Total Church Training took place on March 9, 2009 at Mars Hill's Ballard campus.

The Total Church Training took place on March 9, 2009 at Mars Hill's Ballard campus.

The Total Church Training took place on March 9, 2009 at Mars Hill's Ballard campus.

I was speaking at a church planting conference. It was an open session—lots of Q&A. The next morning I was sharing a cab to the train station with one of the participants. “I noticed last night,” he said, “we kept asking ‘do’ questions and you kept giving ‘be’ answers.” “How do you do evangelism?” “We try to be a community that is intentional about the gospel.” That sort of thing. “Was it frustrating for you?” It was, but only now did I realize why.

A ‘Be’ Church

Of course churches do things. There isn’t really a choice between being and doing. But we can get hung up on our programs, on activity, on meetings. We need to be creating a culture, a way of being Christian community, that liberates people so they can adapt on the fly to missional opportunities.

A ‘Bespoke’ Church

This might just be a British thing, but if you get a suit made up specially for you we call it “bespoke.” The opposite is “off-the-peg,” when you just walk in the shop, take something off the peg in your size and you have your suit. But if you have the money and the inclination you can go to a bespoke tailor not a mile from my house and get a suit made just for you. Made for you. A perfect fit. Just right.

Many people are looking for off-the-peg models of church. They want to take whatever is the latest trend or the successful formula and drop it into their context. But we need to be creating “bespoke churches”—churches that are tailored to their members and their missional contexts.

How Do You Do It?

Or people want training programs, manuals, handbooks. People often ask, “How do you train people?” I have as many answers as I have people. It’s about life-on-life training that is tailored to each person.

So let’s talk about theology, values, principles. I might even tell you how we put them into practice to stimulate your imagination. But please don’t just copy what I do.

Total Church:

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis make the case for reinforcing and strengthening churches with particular emphasis on the gospel and community. Find out more.

How can we create communities of grace? Let me suggest seven ideas:

1. Make the connections

We need to teach, speak, sing, and pray grace. But we also need to make connections for people. We can believe in justification by faith for the final day, but doubt justification by faith for the next day. On a Monday morning in the workplace we are still trying to prove ourselves, to find identity in our achievements.

2. Welcome the mess

Welcome messy people. Don’t suppress conflict. Don’t hide problems.

3. Stop pretending

Don’t hide your own problems. You’ll need to exercise some discretion: let everyone know you struggle and let some people know what you struggle with.

4. Stop performing

Don’t put on a show. Don’t push people to perform, to produce results, to get it right all the time. Give people permission to fail. We’ve realized, for example, that polished Bible studies and articulate prayers disenfranchise semi-literate people.

5. Eat and drink with broken people

Jesus eats and drinks with sinners. It’s a powerful expression of community. We think we’re enacting grace if we run projects for the poor, but we’re only halfway there. We still act from a position of superiority, proclaiming that we are able and they are unable. The dynamic is totally different when we eat together. We meet as equals, share together, affirm one another, enjoy one another.

6. Give people time to change

How long did it take for you to become perfectly like Jesus? Of course, you’re still changing. There seem to be some sins we’re prepared to work on over a lifetime, but others where we demand instant change. Why is this? The answer, of course, is that we want people to be respectable. We don’t want a messy community.

7. Focus on the heart

All too often we focus on the behaviors we would like someone to stop or start. But Jesus says our behavior comes from the heart (Mark 7:20-23). Our focus needs to be on the heart. Our job is help people find joy in Christ.

Vintage Church:

In this book, Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears discuss the essentials of what it means to be a biblical church. Find out more.