Rethinking Denominations

January 5, 2009 | Filed Under ecclesiology, missional | 5 Comments

The past several decades have seen a seemingly endless obsession with trying to discover strategies to help denominations and congregations become more effective or successful. Consistent with the DNA of denominationalism, these strategies are usually defined with respect to carrying out the purpose of the church. To put it simply, in attempting to renew the church, you can’t get there from there. It is essential to probe deeper beyond the mere attempt to reclaim the purposive intent of the church.

The argument I am proposing is that the denominational, organizational church has focused more on matters of polity than on ecclesiology. This ends up making the operational ecclesiology of the denominational church more functional, or instrumental, in character. In contrast, the missional church conversation has reintroduced a discussion about the very nature of the church, its essence.

This conversation no longer understands “being missionary” primarily in functional terms, as something the church does, as is the case for the denominational, organizational church; instead, it understands “being missionary” in terms of something the church is, as something that is related to its nature. This represents a change of kind in the conversation about the church where ecclesiology is, once more, front and center.

Craig Van Gelder in “The Missional Church & Denominations” 

The Missional Leader

December 29, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 5 Comments

Here is a great quote from The Missional Leader.

Today, we give up on congregations that we declare are out of touch with the culture. We run to big, successful places with marquee-name leaders to find out how to be successful. In so doing we are going in exactly the opposite direction from everything we see in the Biblical narratives.

We have forgotten that God’s future often emerges in the most inauspicious places. If we let our imagination be informed by this realization, it will be obvious that we need to lead in ways that are different from those of a CEO, an entrepreneur, a super leader with a wonderful plan for the congregation’s life. Instead, we need leaders with the capacity to cultivate an environment that releases the missional imagination of the people of God.

The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church To Reach A Changing World  by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk (ht)

How can we cultivate such an environment?

I believe we can capture the “missional imagination” by sharing what other faith communities are doing and illustrate what it looks like to connect with people in third places, cultivate rapport with local schools, and build relationships with neighbors. Moreover, we can reflect deeply on biblical images of mission, service and hospitality by spending time on passages such as Genesis 12:2, Isaiah 61:1-3, Matthew 5:43; 10:40; 22:39; 25:35, Luke 10:25-37 and others.

What else would you recommend?

The Need For a Sacred Rhythm

December 29, 2008 | Filed Under missional order | No Comments

This quote speaks to the need to cultivate a sacred rhythm in our lives.

Godly discipline is different to the rules and regulations of bureaucratic organizations. The answer to legalism is not a vacuum, but clarity about our priorities. To live authentically means that I choose my lifestyle, I do not succumb to the lifestyle others foist upon me. It means that I use my time, money and talents according to my deepest convictions.

In the changed circumstances of the third millennium, the person in the street needs a Way. Technology and mobility give us so many choices that our lives, without a framework, become driven by external stimuli and unsifted expectations.

Ray Simpson in A Pilgrim Way: New Celtic monasticism for everyday people, (ht)

The Church Needs To Think Like This

December 24, 2008 | Filed Under missional | No Comments

Read this excellent story by Rick Reilly from ESPN titled There are some games where cheering for the other side feels better than winning. (ht) 

January Missional Network Gathering

December 21, 2008 | Filed Under alan hirsch, books, networks | 1 Comment

The next missional network gathering will be Thursday, January 22nd from 12 noon to 3:00pm. (There will be free food for lunch!)

For at least the first two meetings in 2009 we will be examining ReJesus: A Wild Messiah For A Missional Church, the new book by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch.

In addition to discussing the book during our network times, we will create opportunities on the blog to dialogue on a chapter by chapter basis. You can download the introduction and chapter one here and here. 

Here are a couple of excerpts from the introduction that will provide a bit of the book’s flavor:

What ongoing role does Jesus the Messiah play in shaping the ethos and self-understanding of the movement that originated in him?

How is the Christian religion, if we could legitimately call it that, informed and shaped by the Jesus that we meet in the Gospels?

How do we assess the continuity required between the life and example of Jesus and the subsequent religion called Christianity?

In how many ways do we domesticate the radical Revolutionary in order to sustain our religion and religiosity?

And perhaps most important of all, how can a rediscovery of Jesus renew our discipleship, the Christian community, and the ongoing mission of the church?

And

So this book is dedicated to the recovery of the absolute centrality of the person of Jesus in defining who we are as well as what we do. As hard as it is to truly follow him, we assert that we must constantly return to Jesus to authenticate as well as legitimize ourselves as his people. We have no other Archimedean point by which to set our coordinates or any other touchstone by which we can assess the abiding validity of our faith and to see if we are authentically Christian.

The love of Jesus, and our commitment to live in conformity to him, is in effect an inbuilt spiritual mechanism at the heart of the church’s theology and experience that provides an instrument for our ongoing renewal. It seems to us that a constant, and continual, return to Jesus is absolutely essential for any movement that wishes to call itself by his name.

Kansas City Missional Network

Thursday, January 22nd
12:00 - 3:00pm
Kansas City Association
8745 Ballentine
Overland Park

Lesslie Newbigin and the GOCN

December 17, 2008 | Filed Under lesslie newbigin, missional | 13 Comments

In response to the last post on the history of the missional church conversation, Brian McLaughlin asked a great question regarding differences in the missional conversations that were taking place in the U.S. in the mid 1990s with those that were going on in the U.K. under the influence of Lesslie Newbigin. In other words, if the U.S. version of the Gospel and Our Culture Network was birthed out of the influence of Newbigin, were (or are) there any differences in the missional ecclesiology of the two?

I believe the best place to look to answer this question is a wonderfully insightful doctoral dissertation by Michael W. Goheen titled “As the Father Has Sent Me, I Am Sending You”: J.E. Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology. A pdf file of the nearly 500 page paper can be found here.

Following is an extended excerpt (with a few added links) of chapter ten, The Nature and Relevance of Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology, where Goheen addresses the above question:

The book Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Guder 1998) presents an opportunity to examine the relevance of Newbigin’s ecclesiology in the North American context. The book is clearly indebted to Lesslie Newbigin. The co-ordinator of GOCN/NA and one of the authors of this book, George Hunsberger, wrote his doctoral dissertation on Newbigin (1987).

Newbigin’s thought is also clearly influential in Darrell Guder’s Be My Witnesses (1985). The authors of Missional Church explicitly acknowledge that debt early in the book (Guder 1998:5). Their ecclesiology can be seen as an attempt to take the insights of Newbigin and formulate them in the North American setting. Moreover, this book represents what might be called an “official ecclesiology” of the Gospel and Our Culture Network in North America. It is co-authored by six leaders of that movement.

Three central features characterize the ecclesiology of this book: it stresses the negative legacy of Christendom, it emphasizes the communal witness of the church, and it accents the critical side of the church’s relation to culture. All three of these features are important in Newbigin’s writings. Newbigin believes that Christendom is one of the primary factors that cripples a missionary consciousness in the church. He also emphasizes the communal dimension of mission: “The central reality is neither word nor act, but the total life of a community enabled by the Spirit to live in Christ, sharing his passion and the power of his resurrection.” The importance of a critical stance toward culture is captured by numerous phrases he employs: discriminating nonconformists, radical dissenters, radical critics and misfits with a relationship of conflict, dissenting otherworldliness, and radical discontinuity with its cultural context.

While all three of these ecclesiological features are found within Newbigin’s writing, a comparison between Newbigin and Missional Church reveals differences at each point.

First, Newbigin’s analysis of Christendom is much more ambivalent than that of the authors of Missional Church. The evaluation of the latter is entirely negative while Newbigin sees many positive features in Christendom. He believes that the Christendom settlement was a worthwhile attempt to translate the universal claims of Christ into social and political terms. Through this thousand-year period the gospel permeated many aspects of social, political, moral, personal, and economic life and western culture continues to live on the capital of that period. Undoubtedly it was his missionary experience in a country where the gospel did not have a lengthy history that enabled Newbigin to evaluate the Christendom experiment much more positively.

For the writers of Missional Church Christendom necessarily distorts and even eclipses the church’s mission. Acceptance of power contradicts the posture to which the church is called. For Newbigin Christendom posed many dangers to the church’s mission — dangers that were unfortunately realized. Nevertheless Christendom provided an opportunity for the church to work out the claims of Christ’s Lordship in its mission. He believes that faithfulness to the mission of the church demanded that it not refuse responsibility for the public order. Faithfulness to Jesus who was Lord of history and culture required the church to bring politics under the authority of Christ in spite of the dangers and temptations. Part of the history and legacy of Christendom is what Oliver O’Donovan calls the ‘obedience of the rulers’, the fruit of which remains in the West to the present day (O’Donovan 1996:212-216). Missional Church leans toward an interpretation of Christendom that neglects important emphases in Newbigin’s writing.

More >>

History of Missional Church Conversation

December 12, 2008 | Filed Under dmin project, missional | 3 Comments

As part of my doctorate of ministry project I recently chronicled the history of the “missional church conversation.” In doing so I reviewed and summarized the influences of the International Missionary Council (IMC) conferences, Johannes Blauw, Lesslie Newbigin, the Gospel and Our Culture (GOC) program in the UK, and the eventual emergence of the Gospel and Our Culture Network (GOCN) in the United States.

Furthermore, I created a list of each of the publications to date in The Gospel and Our Culture Series as well as other significant books that have contributed to the conversation in the past decade.

Well this week I was delighted to receive Craig Van Gelder’s latest edition, “The Missional Church & Denominations” which includes (in the introduction) a brief historical summary of the missional conversation that nicely parallels my work. (Although it would have saved me a significant amount of time if Van Gelder’s current work would have been available about four months go!)

Here is an abreviated sampling of Van Gelder’s very helpful historical overview with added links to each of the publications mentioned:

The Influence of Lesslie Newbigin

In returning home to England from the foreign mission field in the 1970s, Newbigin took up the challenge of trying to envision what a fresh encounter of the gospel with late-modern Western culture might look like. He focused on this issue perhaps most sharply in his book Foolishness to the Greeks, where he posed this question: “What would be involved in a missionary encounter between the gospel and this whole way of perceiving, thinking, and living that we call ‘modern Western Culture?”

A movement that tried to address this issue emerged in England in the 1980s and comes to be known as the Gospel and Our Culture (GOC) conversation. While the GOC discussion first surfaced in England, it soon spread to the United States, where it was taken up by a new generation of missiologists who were focusing their attention on addressing the North American context as its own unique mission location.

Newbigin’s missiology was largely shaped by the mission theology that was born within the International Missionary Council (IMC) conferences of the 1950s through the 1970s. This was a Trinitarian understanding of mission, or what is commonly referred to as the missio Dei, the mission of God.

Influenced by the biblical theology movement of the 1930s-1940s, this Trinitarian foundation for mission theology began to take shape at the Willingen Conference of the IMC in 1952 and was later formulated as the missio Dei by Karl Hartenstein. Johannes Blauw then gave it fuller expression in his 1962 book The Missionary Nature of the Church.

Lesslie Newbigin articulated his own expression of this mission theology in The Open Secret  (1978). Central to his understanding of mission is the work of the triune God in calling and sending the church through the Spirit into the world to participate fully in God’s mission within all of creation. This theological formulation understands the church to be the creation of the Spirit: it exists in the world as a “sign” that the redemptive reign of God’s kingdom is present; it serves as a “foretaste” of the eschatological future of the redemptive reign that has already begun; and it serves as an “instrument” under the leadership of the Spirit to bring that redemptive reign to bear on every dimension of life.

The British GOC Programme

The British version of the GOC movement that developed during the 1980s came to be known as a “programme,” and it was shaped largely by the writings of Newbigin during that period: The Other Side of 1984 (1983), Foolishness to the Greeks (1986), and The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989).

The GOC Network in the U.S.

As the British programme began to gain public recognition, a U.S. version of the Gospel and Our Culture conversation also began to emerge. Several consultations sponsored in the mid-1980s by the Overseas Study Mission Center stimulated interest in the question Newbigin had posed in the Warfield Lectures at Princeton in 1984 (later published as Foolishness to the Greeks).

A network began to take shape from these early events in the mid-1980s; by the early 1990s, under the leadership of George Hunsberger, the Gospel and Our Culture Network was publishing a quarterly newsletter and also convening a yearly consultation. By the mid-1990s, the movement in the United States had begun to find its own voice beyond the influence of Newbigin, and the Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company began to publish a series of books under the moniker The Gospel and Our Culture Series. To date the following volumes have been published in this series:

George Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder, eds., The Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America (1996).

Darrel L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (1998).

George Hunsberger, Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin’s Theology of Cultural Plurality (1998).

Craig Van Gelder, ed., Confident Witness — Changing World: Rediscovering the Gospel in North America (1999).

Darrel L. Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church (2000).

James V. Brownson, ed. StormFront: The Good News of God (2003).

Lois Y. Barrett, ed., Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness (2004).

This literature has focused on understanding North America as its own unique mission location and the church as being missional by nature, and it continues to stimulate a very important conversation.

There are a number of other books from several different publishers that have also contributed to this conversation, which include the following:

Craig Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000).

Richard H. Bliese and Craig Van Gelder, eds., The Evangelizing Church: A Luthern Contribution (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005).

Alan J. Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk, The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006).

Patrick Keifert, We Are Here Now: A New Missional Era (Eagle, ID: Allelon Publishing, 2006).

Craig Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church: A Community Led by the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007).

Craig Van Gelder, ed., The Missional Church in Context: Helping Congregations Develop Contextual Ministry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).

Richard W. Rouse and Craig Van Gelder, A Field Guide to the Missional Congregation: A Journey of Transformation (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2008).

———————————–

For additional publications that I believe have added to the missional conversation check out the Reading List link at the top of the page.

20 Church Planter Questions

December 10, 2008 | Filed Under church planting | No Comments

Here is a very good article on characteristics of a church planter by Acts 29 Director, Scott Thomas. In addition to the summarized list of questions below, Scott elaborates on each point with a short, but helpful discussion.

1. Am I a Christian?
2. Am I passionately in love with Jesus?
3. Do I believe His word and does it affect my life deeply?
4. Am I Spirit-filled, Spirit-directed, Spirit-led and Spirit-controlled?
5. Am I qualified as an Elder?
6. Do I love the local church as the expression of a gospel community?
7. Am I a missionary to the city?
8. Do I have a clear vision for this new work?
9. Am I willing to pour myself out in obedience to the vision?
10. Am I healthy? Physically, emotionally, financially, relationally?
11. Am I the kind of leader many people will follow?
12. Can I preach effectively?
13. Can I guard the doctrinal door with Biblical clarity?
14. Can I architect a new work with entrepreneurial skill?
15. Am I called to plant a church at this time and in this place?
16. Have my church leaders commended me for this calling?
17. Am I a hard worker? Am I persevering?
18. Am I adaptable to new people, places and concepts?
19. Can I raise the funds needed for my family’s needs?
20. Am I humble enough to learn from others?

Elephants, Fleas & Church Planting

December 8, 2008 | Filed Under church planting | 2 Comments

“Church planters under 30 whom I’m meeting don’t seem interested in planting churches that will become megachurches. Rather, they want reproducible small churches–which, incidentally, matches what’s happening in the business world.

Leadership guru Warren Bennis’ The Future of Leadership speaks of elephants and fleas: The elephants get all the attention, but the new ideas mostly come from fleas.”

– Eddie Gibbs (ht)

(RED) WIRE & New U2

December 2, 2008 | Filed Under justice, music | No Comments

In conjunction with World AIDS Day (December 1st), MSN celebrated the launch of (RED) WIRE, (RED)’s new digital music magazine designed to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. To learn more about (RED) WIRE go here.

If you are a U2 fan then you must check out yesterday’s (RED) release of their cover of “I Believe in Father Christmas” orignially written by Greg Lake of “Emerson, Lake and Palmer” fame. What is especially interesting about U2’s rendering is a very subtle yet thoughtful change in lyrics. What was originally:

“They sold me a dream of Christmas, They sold me a silent night, They told me a fairy story, Till I believed in the Israelite.” Becomes; “But I believed in the Israelite.”  Enjoy!

(ht: u2sermons)

Prayer and the Kingdom

November 29, 2008 | Filed Under kingdom of God, prayer | No Comments

I have been reading a wonderful little book on prayer by Stanley Grenz that rarely gets much attention, but I think it should. It was first published in 1988 and revised in 2005, the same year Grenz died from a massive brain hemorrhage. Here are a couple of excerpts.

“In short, prayer is a crying to God for help, based on an awareness of dependence on God. It is the cry for the kingdom voiced by persons who realize that only the in-breaking of God’s reign can remedy the challenging situations that we face. E.M. Bounds aptly comments:

Prayer is the language of a man burdened with a sense of need. It is the voice of a beggar, conscious of his poverty, asking of another the things he needs . . . Not to pray is not only to declare that there is nothing needed, but to admit to a non-realization of that need.

Viewed in this light, prayer resembles faith. Like faith, petition is merely opening our empty hand so that we might received God’s provision. But we must take this connection a step further. Prayer not only expresses the dependence connected to faith; it is also a declaration that we do indeed believe that God is both willing and able to act.

This suggest that a significant relationship also exists between God’s action and human faith. The New Testament repeatedly reminds us that God will not act unless human begins believe that God can do so. Or, to state the point in another way, the New Testament declares that faith brings results (e.g. , James 1:6-8; Luke 7:50; Matt. 9:29; 13:58; 17:20; 21:21). And one meaningful expression of faith in God is petitionary prayer. . . .

Because of its connection to the coming of the kingdom, prayer brings results. As we pray, we are able to perceive the presence of the kingdom in all areas of life. As we pray, we become the instruments of the Spirit in opening the situations we face to receive the in-breaking of God’s rule in the present. And through prayer, we move history toward that day when the kingdom will arrive in its fullness and God’s work in the world will reach its final goal.”

– Stanley Grenz, Prayer: The Cry For The Kingdom

Van Gelder on Missional Church

November 22, 2008 | Filed Under dmin project, missional, theology | 5 Comments

Here is a link to a short video (17 minutes) on the Allelon website that I believe is worth the time. The video is an interview conducted by Alan Roxburgh with Craig Van Gelder.

Van Gelder is professor of congregational mission at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is author of “The Essence of the Church,” “The Ministry of the Missional Church,” “The Missional Church in Context” and editor of “Confident Witness — Changing World” and “The Church Between Gospel and Culture.” (All of which are excellent, but the last two are my favorites)

There are a couple of issues raised in this video I think are important to consider. First, I appreciate Van Gelder’s emphasis on the theological foundation of missional church. Like many others in the missional church conversation, Van Gelder sees the necessity to shift the starting point for any discussion on the topic of mission.

Instead of beginning with questions surrounding the mission activities of the church, we must start first with questions concerning the missio Dei, or what is God’s mission in our context. I am reminded of Bosch’s quote that “It is not the church which undertakes mission; it is the missio Dei  which constitutes the church.”

Second, this emphasis on participating with what God is doing raises the crucial issue of discernment. When we start with God’s mission it is imperative that we think well when we observe and ask, “What is God doing in my neighborhood, workplace, or school?” And the follow-up question, “In light of our gifts and resources, how does God want us to participate with Him?”

With this issue of discernment in mind, I want to ask a couple of questions.

As the church, what do we need to do differently to discern where and how God wants us to participate in our communities?

In what ways might your church do things differently in your context?

Spend Yourself In Behalf Of Others

November 22, 2008 | Filed Under justice, prayer | No Comments

These two readings from Celtic Daily Prayer really spoke to me this morning:

“Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for the gracious and compassionate and righteous man. Good will come to him who is generous and lends freely, who conducts his affairs with justice.”
Psalm 112:4-5

“And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” Isaiah 58:10-11

Sacred Rhythm & Missional Living

November 19, 2008 | Filed Under missional order, prayer | No Comments

In a post I did several months ago titled “Missional: More Than a Buzz Word” I shared three theological distinctions that I believe are necessary to bring clarity and explanation to the use of the word “missional.” In addition I discussed five practical issues that I think can help to foster a missional posture in the life of the church.

The first of these practical issues involves an emphasis on spiritual formation. If the church is going to develop the passion, strength, and discernment to live as a sent, Spirit-filled community then there must be a strong focus on spiritual formation. We need learn to see  where God is working in our communities and discern  how He desires for us to participate.  

Part of this discernment process I believe involves developing a “rhythm” that puts us in a place to hear from God regularly. More and more people are recognizing the absolute need of some sort of rhythm of life that is marked by daily moments of prayer, solitude, worship, and study. 

If you have ever struggled with cultivating such a rhythm with your daily activities, let me suggest checking out Missional Order. Over the past few weeks there have been several posts that have encouraged and challenged me in multiple ways. Here are a few of the posts that have recently spoke to me:

Be There
Dance of Prayer
Midday Slowdown
Present to the Present
The Rhythm of Real Life
Do You Hear What God Says?
Solitude, Community, Ministry
A Sacred Rhythm of Continual Conversion

North America as Mission Field

November 17, 2008 | Filed Under books, missional | No Comments

“Today North America needs to be treated as a mission field in the same way that we in the West have approached much of the rest of the world for the past several centuries. Critical to making this shift is to develop the skills and tools necessary to function as missionaries in this context.”

– Craig Van Gelder, Confident Witness – Changing World

Advent Conspiracy

November 12, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 3 Comments

Adventconspiracy.org

Gospel Evangelism

November 6, 2008 | Filed Under books, gospel, missional | No Comments

“There are countless models and handbooks available on church membership recruitment, but there is little to instruct the average American Christian in how to announce the reign of God.”

David Lowes Watson, “Christ All in All: The Recovery of the Gospel for Evangelism in the United States” in The Church Between Gospel & Culture

Great Introduction to Missional Church

November 5, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 2 Comments

JR Woodward over at Dream Awakener has put together an outstanding collection of more than 170 links on a variety of topics surrounding Missional Church. The links include definitions, history, theology, videos, practices and book reviews. I have placed a permanent link on the blogroll titled “missional church primer.”

More Jesus of Suburbia

November 3, 2008 | Filed Under books, way of Jesus | No Comments

Many of us have done a great disservice to Jesus Christ. Not only do we tone him down to tame and soften him, but we also understand his message to be addressed primarily to our needs of comfort, safety, and convenience.

We have been telling people that if they come to Jesus, they will live a safe and comfortable life: “He’ll be your rock and fortress, and he’ll protect you from the dangers around you.” Some even insist that Jesus wants nothing more than to heal you, bless you financially, and make your life carefree.

Jesus does heal, of course, and bless us financially and bring peace. But all of that does not even come close to Scripture’s teaching on what it means to follow Jesus. If you follow Jesus, you follow the most radical man who ever existed. He marches into the world with kindness, peace, and love, and offers people a whole new way of looking at the world and living within it.

His is the most radical message you can preach or live. He turns everything upside down and calls us to do likewise. Jesus is not vitally committed to our comfort and safety; he is committed to the advancing of his kingdom revolution in the hearts of people everywhere.

Mike Erre in “The Jesus of Suburbia: Have We Tamed the Son of God to Fit Our Lifestyle?”

Missional Theology for a Missional Church

October 27, 2008 | Filed Under missional, theology | 1 Comment

The church does not do mission, it is mission. By its very calling and nature, it exists as God’s ’sent’ people (missio = sending). Its worship, its proclamation, its life as a distinctive community, and its concrete demonstration of God’s love in acts of prophetic and sacrificial service are all witness to the good news whose sign and foretaste it is to be.

Such is the consensus of missio Dei  theology — but it is hard to translate into the deeply rooted and long since defined classical patterns of western theology. It is equally difficult to translate into the structures of churches which are still shaped by the mindset of Christendom and which have not come to terms with the paradigm shift that surrounds them.

No area of theological work or churchly practice is untouched by the theological agenda of the Missio Dei. This is demonstrated by the ways in which the study of missiology has evolved in this century. From a rather narrow focus upon the expansion of western Christianity and it implications, the discipline today intrudes into every area of theological discourse.

It is still possible to find seminary courses on “the theology of mission.” But the global paradigm shift requires now that we do “missionary theology.” This is the missional challenge that confronts the biblical scholar, the church historian, the systematic theologian, and the practical theologian.

– Darrell Guder

Barth & the Sent Church

October 24, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 1 Comment

As His community [the church] points beyond itself. At bottom it can never consider its own security, let alone its appearance. As His community it is always free from itself . . . . Its mission is not additional to its being. It is, as it is sent and active in its mission. It builds up itself for the sake of its mission and in relation to it.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1

Church Planting Novice Blog

October 21, 2008 | Filed Under church planting, missional | No Comments

If you are not familiar with Jonathan Dodson’s blog Church Planting Novice then you need to be. Jonathan consistently offers up practical resources for missional church planting as he journeys through the planting of Austin City Life.

Some of my favorite in the past couple of months include:

Where to Office: Church or Home?
Why Evangelism Methods Must Change
Church Planting Manuals Reviewed
Tools For Missional Church
And today’s post: Church Planting Landmines

Sacred Rhythm & Missional Order

October 19, 2008 | Filed Under missional, missional order | No Comments

I shared a few weeks ago that my friends Georges Boujakly, Paul Hill and I had been working on a Missional Order site that we hoped would help foster missional thought and practice through the engagement of three “common commitments” that include “sacred rhythm,” “continuous formation,” and “participation in the Missio Dei.”

Because we beleive the formation piece and the missional piece both flow out of the time we spend with God in some sort of sacred rhythm, we have decided upon a “blog rhythm” that will look like this:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday: “Sacred Rhythm”
Tuesday: “Continuous Formation”
Thursday: “Participation in the Missio Dei”

For this week’s post on the importance of developing a sacred rhythm check out:

Monday: Be There
Wednesday: Present to the Pesent
Friday: Abide then Abound

The Gospel of Risk Management

October 14, 2008 | Filed Under gospel, way of Jesus | 3 Comments

What keeps us from a life of such faith is that we have become very good at assessing and minimizing risk. Our culture is all about risk management. We want to hedge our finances against future market downturns, and we have home insurance, life insurance, car insurance, fire insurance, flood insurance, and earthquake insurance.

Athletes and entertainers can insure parts of their bodies against injury. We sign prenuptial agreements to protect us from the financial ramifications of divorce, and we have health plans to protect us when we are sick.

We practice birth control and watch our blood pressure. We wear seat belts and helmets. I see the need for most of these things, but we have become people who focus on managing and minimizing risk everywhere we see it. We love the illusion of danger but not the real thing. I can ride a roller roaster and feel out of control, while remaining safely buckled into my seat.

We want Jesus to be the same way: all reward, no risk. We don’t give ourselves fully to him because we are afraid he will send us to China or ask us to become poor. We want the illusion of faith, as long as we are safe. But walking with God is not a no-risk proposition; it is one of the most dangerous things you can do. Risk is inherent in the life of faith. Risk and faith cannot be divorced.

Mike Erre in “The Jesus of Suburbia: Have We Tamed the Son of God to Fit Our Lifestyle?”

The Newbigin Triad

October 7, 2008 | Filed Under lesslie newbigin, missional, theology | No Comments

I have found Darrell Guder to be one of the most important voices in the missional conversation. In an excellent essay titled “The Challenges of Evangelization in America: Theological Ambiguities”  Guder emphasizes the fact that mission is the  definitive task of the church.

Furthermore, Guder believes that any attempt to reclaim the missional calling of the church will require serious reflection on a spectrum of theological ambiguities that Christendom has left behind.

For a list of some of these ambiguities check out Kruse Kroncile’s post on the same article. Michael also has a link to download the article.

In one portion of Guder’s article he introduces what has come to be known as “the Newbigin Triad.” Lesslie Newbigin proposed a series of questions that spoke to the need of reclaiming the missionary nature of the western church. These questions were organized around the key emphases of Gospel, Church, and Culture.

Newbigin stated that it was essential that we constantly ask these fundamental questions:

Gospel:

What is the Gospel and how does the Gospel form and confront the church? What has happened to the Gospel in the course of western Christendom? How do we reclaim the fundamentally event character of the Gospel over against more abstract, propositional renderings of it? How do we engage the fundamental translatability of the Gospel?

Church:

What is the church and what is its purpose? How do we reclaim the church’s essential vocation as witness to the gospel, as light, leaven and salt, as Christ’s letter to the world. How does the church after Christendom learn what it means to “lead its life worthy of the calling with which it has been called?”

Culture:

What is the interaction between the church and the cultures in which it is planted? How does the gospel through the church both confront and affirm cultures as ways in which witness becomes concrete. Here again, we are asking about the fundamental translatability of the gospel, recognizing that the Gospel “destigmatizes” every culture by affirming it as a potential bearer of gospel. How does the witness to the gospel become appropriately embodied in diverse cultures, while continuing to confess the one message of the one Triune God?

If you are interested in a few of the books and journal articles by both Newbigin and Guder that I have found helpful check out my missional reading list.

Missiology then Ecclesiology

October 6, 2008 | Filed Under missional | No Comments

Here is an article by Joy Skjegstad from the Alban Institue that serves as a simple reminder that knowledge of the community should define the mission of the local church in a given context. Another way to say it is that good missiology should influence our ecclesiology, not the other way around.

Hurry Isn’t Helpful

October 2, 2008 | Filed Under books, hospitality, prayer | No Comments

My friend Georges Boujakly reminds us from Celtic Daily Prayer that hurry isn’t helpful for anyone.

Hurry is an unpleasant thing in itself, but also very unpleasant for whoever is around it. Some people came into my room and rushed in an rushed out and even when they were there they were not there–they were in the moment ahead or the moment behind. Some people who came in just for a moment were all there, completely in that moment.

Live from day to day, just from day to day. If you do so, you worry less and live more richly. If you let yourself be absorbed completely, if you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly in those moments.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh in Celtic Daily Prayer

Missional Church & John Mayer?

October 1, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 1 Comment

Here is a missional take on Mayer’s “Waiting For The World To Change.”

(ht: Doug Resler)

The Jesus of Suburbia

September 25, 2008 | Filed Under books, church | 9 Comments

In the introduction of “The Jesus of Suburbia” author Mike Erre asks a series of challenging questions relating to modern American Christianity:

We preach Christianity, but do we really preach Christ?

We call people to serve the church, but do we call them to serve the poor?

We teach them to know sound doctrine, but do we teach people to center their whole lives on him?

Do we teach people to have a commitment to the Bible or to a relationship with its author?

Do we as Western Christians reflect Jesus or obscure him?

Can we say that we, his church, teach what he taught, love what (and whom) he loved, and hate what he hated? Are his priorities really ours?

Why is it that: Study after study shows no statistical difference between the behaviors of those inside the church and those outside it?

Why is it that: So many Christians have adopted a “victim mentality” with an attitude of helplessness and have put much of our hope and trust in the political process and court system, implying that God’s work on earth depends upon who sits in the White House?

Why is it: We currently see very little of the power, vitality, and growth today in our hearts and churches that once characterized the explosive movement of God?

Is it because we have substituted human traditions for the teachings of God? Have we made our Jesus the Jesus of Christianity, not the Jesus of the Gospels? We may think we worship the Jesus of Nazareth, but in reality we worship the Jesus of Suburbia.

Mike Erre in “The Jesus of Suburbia: Have We Tamed the Son of God to Fit Our Lifestyle?”

Spiritual Formation as Rhythm

September 15, 2008 | Filed Under spiritual formation | No Comments

The advent of the emerging culture is causing a reformation — perhaps even a revolution — in the church’s understanding of spiritual formation. Instead of a compartmentalized spirituality that focuses on personal choices, we are seeing the growth of a new approach to spiritual formation that emphasizes a rule of life and rhythms of spiritual practices drawing from a vast array of Christian traditions.

Thankfully, there is a widening pool of resources to aid churches, Christians, and spiritual sojourners in the exploration of spiritual practices that support this transformation of orientation. It’s truly exciting to see churches making use of a wide range of historic and experiential spiritual practices, such as labyrinths, body prayers, praying the hours, meditation using the repetition of historical prayers and liturgies like the Jesus Prayer, lectio divina, the integration of art and physical practices into prayer, fasting, the use of contemporary and historical symbols and icons, and the restoration and veneration of the Eucharist and baptism in traditions that once minimized these rites.

The Church in Transition: The Journey of Existing Churches into the Emerging Cultureby Tim Conder

Missional Order

September 10, 2008 | Filed Under missional, spiritual formation | 3 Comments

In the beginning our hope was to create a network to challenge and encourage the church planters that we work with to focus significant and meaningful energy on spiritual formation in their lives and the lives of their core groups.

Over time the network idea evolved into more of an “order” that we believe speaks into the lives of many others beyond our initial focus. We have recognized the desire on the part of many within the existing church, as well as those that have for some reason “checked out” of the church, to rediscover an alternative story to the Christian life.

All of the conversations over the past year have lead us to create a missional order blog that is organized around three common commitments: sacred rhythm, continuous formation, and participation in the Missio Dei. We believe these commitments will assist us toward daily rhythms that push us toward God, aid our sanctification, and empower us participate in God’s kingdom.

While we are just getting the site off the ground this week I hope you will check out the site and give us critical feedback. I also hope you will decide to participate and join the conversation.

Here is a piece from the “Why A Missional Order” page to get you started:

This site exists for two big-picture reasons. On the one hand, we want to counteract some negative trends that are prevalent in society today. Call that our combative side. More important, we think that the missional approach will help us capture the positive dynamics that Jesus wants to be part of every life.

First, the things that we want to fight against:

The consumer lifestyle. We can’t consume our way into godliness, because the gospel is about a focused, stripped-down life, not an accessorized, materialistic life.

Programmatic spirituality. Jesus didn’t give the disciples 12-step or 40-day approaches to God. Instead, he told them to let their entire lives be molded by the Father, daily, for as long as they lived.

Business as usual. When church becomes corporate, and reflects the politics and bottom-line practices of the business world, the heart of the gospel has already been lost, no matter how good the church slogan sounds.

On the positive side, we think that Missional Order can help us:

Take active steps toward renewal. Christianity is always a do-or-die proposition, and that’s especially true today, when so many people are disenchanted with the church. But rather than grow cynical, we can work to recapture the impulses that animate a healthy, Jesus-shaped spirituality.

Live like Jesus together. We’re called to live out our faith in community, reflecting the heart of Jesus, acting as his sent disciples. Mutual encouragement and a sense of direction help us do this, whatever our location or station in life.

Adopt habits and disciplines that will help us create order—a focused spiritual equilibrium—that is imitative of Christ. What if we adjusted the very shape of our days around fellowship with God?

Wondering if this idea of Missional Order can be of any benefit to you?

May God Bless You . . .

September 8, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 1 Comment

Yesterday I filled in for a friend of mine in one of our new church plants and at the conclusion of the gathering time we recited this Franciscan Benediction.

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Missional Meanderings

September 5, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 1 Comment

First is David Dunbar’s latest missional journal article. David shares a great story that clearly illustrates how a missional reading of Scripture encourages a missional perspective of the communities in which we live.

Ed Stetzer begins to summarize a new Bible study series he has written titled Sent: Living the Missional Nature of the Church. So far the study looks very promising!

Over the past couple of weeks I have enjoyed Pat Loughery’s five part series on Incorporating Benedict’s Rule in a Suburban Missional Church.

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI

Doug Resler over at Christ Seeker has added much to the discussion on developing new ways to evaluate ministry effectiveness through a series on Missional Metrics:

Missional Metrics I
Missional Metrics II
Missional Metrics III
Missional Metrics IV
Missional Metrics V
Missional Metrics VI
Missional Metrics VII
Missional Metrics VIII
Missional Metrics IX
Missional Metrics X
Missional Metrics XI
Missional Metrics XII
Missional Metrics XIII
Missional Metrics XIV