When the Missional Church Gathers
May 13, 2008 | Filed Under missional, church | 6 Comments
The purpose of the formation of these communities, initiated by Jesus with his disciples and continued by the apostles, was not to create enclaves of the pure and the righteous who lived in legalistically defined isolation from their polluted environments. These communities were to demonstrate before the world the nature of the love and healing that God had made real for all in Christ in the way that they lived and related.
Their work, beginning with how they earned their bread, to how their families lived, to the character of their called communities, to their interactions with their neighbors, was defined as their witness. It seems to me to be clear that the necessary outcome of the basic assumptions and insights of the current missional church discussion must be a strong focus upon the work of witness, which means, I believe, that the lay apostolate merits our full attention. As we see more and more evidence of the “end of Christendom,” especially in our public and cultural life, the issues of ministry in daily life become more urgent.
The constant question of the earnest Christian in the workplace is, “How shall we then witness?” The answers are by no means easy. To assume that North American society is still, in its core, Christian, is both dangerous and illusory. But the response is not to retreat to “fortress ecclesia.” Rather, it is to take the fundamentally missional character of the gathered church so seriously that we begin to ask, “How shall we prepare one another for our work as witness when we are gathered for worship, nurture, and fellowship?”
Darrell Guder from “Worthy Living: Work and Witness from the Perspective of Missional Church Theology” in Word & World, Fall 2005
Cultural Distance
May 11, 2008 | Filed Under missional, books | 2 Comments
Alan Hirsch, in The Forgotten Ways, shares a concept called “cultural distance.” It can be applied to missions and church in the sense that certain people and groups are really close to the gospel and others are very far away.
That is, some share much of what evangelical Christians hold dear, so all you need to do is provide a church in the middle of the suburb that provides safe child care, school tutoring, ice cream socials, divorce and alcohol recovery, and basic moral training, and you’ll probably see some growth in the church. Whereas people who don’t share the same biblical values will completely uninterested in our homogenized church expressions.
Cultural distance explains why there is room for some churches to stay the same, but also why most churches will need to make radical adjustments. It all depends on who you are called to reach. If your calling is to influence those with the most similarly held values, then you can keep providing the same thing. But if you want to influence the massively growing percentage of people who are much further from the gospel, you’ll have to provide, model, and invite people into an inclusive community that welcomes people with alternative values.
Halter and Smay in The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community
Missional Video Clips
May 7, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 3 Comments
Here are two short video clips worth checking out. The first is from Alan Roxburgh and Allelon from the Euro Church Conference in Lisbon last month. The clip is about 10 minutes long and deals primarily with questions concerning church, mission and the gospel in the European context. In my opinion the best part of the clip is the last couple of minutes as Roxburgh discusses the need to consider the “long journey” rather than short-term solutions.
The second a very short (2 minutes) clip of Scot McKnight at Willow’s Shift Conference as he shares how Jesus was “other oriented” and that we in turn need to see ourselves as “the presence of Jesus in this world.”
For a handful of other clips discussing missional issues click on the video tap at the top of this page.
Missional Bible Study Questions
May 1, 2008 | Filed Under missional, scripture | No Comments
In light of yesterday’s post on “Hearing the Bible Missionally” here is another good link from Tyndale University College and Seminary where they present five key questions (taken from the work of the GOCN) that will assist those studying the Bible to shift to a missionally-oriented approach to a specific text.
For more on this topic you might also be interested in Michael Barram’s article titled “Located Questions For a Missional Hermeneutics.”
Hearing the Bible Missionally
April 30, 2008 | Filed Under missional, scripture | No Comments
Dallas Willard has said that our churches are full of converts who do not intend to become disciples. Another way to put it would be this: Our churches are full of people who are there to receive the benefits of grace without knowing that they are receiving such blessings “in order to be a blessing.”
In such congregations, mission tends to be one of many programs done by the community, rather than to define the very purpose and character of the community. Mission sermons are preached now and again in order to mobilize action or resources for a particular outreach. People know that mission is a theme of the Bible, and they expect to hear about it now and again. But discipling is rarely focused on mission. It is primarily understood, where it is talked about, as a process of personal spiritual growth. . . .
Where missional renewal is happening, different kinds of questions are brought to the Bible. Congregations are open to being challenged, to looking hard at their deeply ingrained attitudes and expectations.
The missional approach asks: How does God’s Word call, shape, transform, and send me . . . and us?Coupled with this openness is the awareness that biblical formation must mean change, and often conversion. Christian communities may discover that their discipling will require repentance and that their way of being church will have to change.
– Darrell Guder in Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness
Alan Hirsch Interview
April 28, 2008 | Filed Under missional, alan hirsch | 4 Comments
This is a short interview with Alan Hirsch during last week’s Exponential Conference in Orlando. When asked about church planting in America as compared to planting efforts in the UK or his own Australian context he states that church planting in the United States is ”too bonded to the church growth movement.” He goes on to say that the church in the West has not yet adequately considered the missionary nature of the church.
In other words we in the West are too centered on how to get our individual churches to grow, primarily through attractional means, rather than seriously considering how to think as a cross-cultural missionary focused on reaching those who have no interest in attending our church functions. Let me know what you think about Hirsch’s comments.
If you are not familiar with Alan Hirsch be sure to check out “The Shaping of Things to Come” and “The Forgotten Ways.” Also if you haven’t read TFW I have blogged through the majority of the book here.
And You Welcomed Me
April 23, 2008 | Filed Under missional, hospitality | 2 Comments
Over the past couple of months I have been reading several books on the topic of biblical hosptiality. I am convinced that if the church is going to cultivate a missional ecclesiology we must understand the neccessity of biblical hospitality and embrace its practices.
The books that have informed my own understanding of biblical hospitality so far have included Radical Hospitality: Benedict’s Way of Love by Homan & Pratt, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine Pohl, I Was a Stranger by Arthur Sutherland and New Testament Hospitality: Partnership with Strangers as Promise and Mission by John Koeing. The most recent has been And You Welcomed Me by Amy Oden.
What makes Oden’s book unique is that she presents a wide collection of early Christian texts that speak to the centrality of hospitality and its practices in the life of the early church. The range of excerpts come from letters, diary accounts, sermons, travelogues, and community records and rules.
In the beginning of the book Oden shares the common theme that runs through each of the ancient texts:
If hospitality is welcoming the stranger, this begs the question: who is the stranger? In this collection of early Christian texts, descriptions of hospitality and its constituents cover quite a scope. Early Christians talk about hospitality to the sick and injured, to the widow and orphan, to the sojourner and the stranger, to the aged, to the slave and imprisioned, to the poor and hungry.
At times it seems there is no class of people not included within the scope of hospitality. Perhaps that is as it should be, for there are many ways to construe otherness, in terms of health, economic class, family relations, nationality, or social status.
If we look closely at the specific categories of people who warrant hospitality in these texts, we will see that they have one thing in common: they are all vulnerable populations. They exist on the margins, both socially and economically. They can easily be ignored and seldom bring status or financial gain to those who reach out to them.
Oden concludes the book with a beautiful and important word on hospitality as a means of grace. She writes:
For me, the central insight is that hospitality is a means of grace. It is an avenue, path, or opening to God’s grace in the world in which we both receive grace and pass it on to others. Means of grace are often very simple acts: eating together, praying together, listening to God’s word, or simply being together in fellowship.
Such concrete experiences become doors that open to the grace that infuses the universe. Hospitality is a way of life infused with grace, a participation in the grace of God all around us, not a set of particular actions or behaviors. Hospitality is more a matter of becoming attuned to grace, and participating in its movement, than it is trying to create a particular atmosphere or situation.
Put this way, hospitality can start to sound ethereal and vague. For hospitality is indeed less than discreet deeds and more of an orientation embedded in the Christian life, a way of being in the world that entails acts of welcome and sustenance, yet is more than those particular acts.
This way of being includes mercy, justice, and recognition. All of these characteristics speak of communities and individuals with a mature spiritual awareness of God’s grace and presence. It may be that the best way to cultivate hospitality is to cultivate a deep awareness of God’s grace and the means that open to it. Only out of that awareness and gratitude can hospitality be genuinely practiced.
The Tangible Kingdom
April 22, 2008 | Filed Under missional, kingdom of God | 1 Comment
Leadership Network’s featured resource this month is the new book by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay titled “The Tangible Kingdom.” I hope to begin to read the book this week and offer a review soon. In the meantime here is a short interview that Leadership Network did with the authors. You should also check out both Hugh’s and Matt’s blogs for more discussion on missional living.
Kingdom Evangelism
April 17, 2008 | Filed Under missional, kingdom of God | 2 Comments
Here is a link to an excellent paper titled “The Missional Church and Missional Living” presented by Howard Snyder to the faculty at Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto.
While the entire 15 pages are well worth reading, I found the last four pages (12-15) to be especially profitable. Snyder present a holistic approach to evangelism that is not limited to “conversion evangelism” but instead involves the comprehensive nature of the Kingdom.
The Changing Face of World Missions
April 14, 2008 | Filed Under books, missiology | No Comments
I recently began reading “The Changing Face of World Missions” by Michael Pocock, Gailyn Van Rheenen and Douglas McConnell. The book focuses on the dramatic changes that have taken place both in global society and in the church and the implications those changes have on how the church does missions. In chapter three, titled “Religionquake: From World Religions to Multiple Spiritualities” Van Rheenen writes the following about the church’s relationship with other world religions:
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, theologians in the Western world sought to prove Christianity, to enshrine it as the queen of the sciences, or at least to give a rational foundation for believing God and the Christian way of life. In the new climate of the twenty-first century the most significant theological issue is the relationship between Christianity and the other world religions.
Later in the chapter he offers three very different ways Christians approach adherents of other world religions.
Reconciliation is based on the idea that truth is found equally in all world religions. Reconcilers employ inter-religious dialogue to arrive at common understandings of at least some truth.
Confrontation is based on the idea that non-Christian religions are demonic, estranged from God, contortions of ultimate reality as formed by God. Confrontational ministry is thus defined as a type of spiritual warfare. Confrontational methods may range from gentle admonishment and exhortation to prophetic denouncement.
Incarnation is based on the idea that God enables divinity to embody humanity. Christians, like Jesus, are God’s incarnation, God’s temples, tabernacling in human flesh (John 1:14; Phil. 2:3-8). Christians, spiritually transformed into the image of God, carry out God’s ministry in God’s way. Incarnationalists relate to seekers from other world religions personally and empathetically (as Jesus taught Nicodemus). Sometimes, however, they declare God’s social concerns by shaking up the status quo and “cleaning out the temple.” The end result of incarnation is a non-Christian world is always some form of crucifixion.
What do you believe are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Where do you find yourself when approaching other religions?
More Biblical Hospitality
April 10, 2008 | Filed Under hospitality | 1 Comment
“We always treat guests as angels — just in case.”
– Brother Jeremiah
“Hospitality begins at the gate, in the doorway, on the bridges between public and private space. Finding and creating threshold places is important for contemporary expressions of hospitality.”
– Christine D. Pohl
“If there is room in the heart, there is room in the house.”
– Danish Proverb
“If you have a hospitable disposition, you own the entire treasure chest of hospitality, even if you possess only a single coin. But if you are a hater of humanity and a hater of strangers, even if you are vested with every material possession, the house for you is cramped by the presence of guests.” — Chrysostom
“Fear is a thief. It will steal our peace of mind and that’s a lot to lose. But it also hijacks relationships, keeping us sealed up in our plastic world with a fragile sense of security.
Being a people who fear the stranger, we have drained the life juices out of hospitality. The hospitality we explore here is not the same kind you will learn about from Martha Stewart. Benedictine hospitality is not about sipping tea and making bland talk with people who live next door or work with you. Hospitality is a lively, courageous, and convivial way of living that challenges our compulsion either to turn away or to turn inward and disconnect ourselves from others.”
– Homan and Pratt in Radical Hospitality
Recognizing Jesus in Every Stranger
April 8, 2008 | Filed Under hospitality | No Comments
Matthew 25:31-46, a crucial text in the history and practice of Christian hospitality, is startling in its implications for recognition and misrecognition. To some of the gathered crowd Jesus will say; “Come . . . inherit the kingdom prepared for you . . . for I was hungry and you gave me food . . . thirsty and you gave me drink . . . a stranger and you welcomed me.”
To others, Jesus will say, “I was hungry and you gave me no food . . . a stranger and you did not welcome me.” Both groups will respond similarly — Lord, when did we see YOU and respond that way? The connection between particular needy persons and Jesus comes as a total surprise.
– Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine D. Pohl
More Making Room: Recovering Hospitality
April 6, 2008 | Filed Under missional, hospitality | 2 Comments
Hospitality should be understood as a way of life rather than as a task or strategy. It is easy to slip into viewing hospitality as a strategy for reaching migrants and refugees, or for that matter, for reaching postmodern youth or homeless people. But such an approach misunderstands the basic orientation of hospitality. Hospitality is not a means to an end; it is a way of life infused by the gospel.
– Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine D. Pohl
Missional as a Humble Renewal Movement
April 3, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 1 Comment
In David Dunbar’s latest issue of Missional Journal he speaks of the Missional Church as a much needed renewal movement; but one that should be characterized by humility and charity. This was a good reminder for me!
This may help you understand part of what attracted me to the missional church. It too is a renewal movement. I see it as a moving of God’s Spirit within the Western church at a very critical time in its history. We find ourselves (most Christians probably agree on this) in a time of decline. Churches in the West are in trouble: internal dissensions, the failure and discouragement of leadership, loss of our youth, widespread negative perceptions of Christians by outsiders, and the death of many congregations. Just the kind of dry-bones situation where the breath of the Spirit often begins to blow. . . .
When missional leaders point out current problems in the church, they often appear to have an arrogant disregard for what God has already done–as if the Holy Spirit has been totally absent for the last century and nothing of eternal significance has really been accomplished! Good people thus feel attacked and undervalued, their contributions unwelcome and unneeded.
I suspect most renewal movements, whether by intention or misunderstanding, have conveyed such messages. To those who have felt attacked, I apologize. The point is not to discredit the sincere and often productive endeavors of the past, but to ask, “How can we be faithful to the gospel in the new cultural situation of the 21st century?” Of course any attempt to answer this question involves evaluation of our current situation and some level of critique of the current state of the church.
Read the rest of the article here.
Biblical Hospitality
April 1, 2008 | Filed Under hospitality | 1 Comment
“Hospitality is a way of life fundamental to Christian identity. Its mysteries, riches, and difficulties are revealed most fully as it is practiced.” — Christine Pohl
“The opposite of cruelty is not simply freedom from the cruel relationship, it is hospitality.” — Philip Hallie
“Hospitality means inviting the stranger into our private space, whether that be the space of our own home or the space of our personal awareness and concern. And when we do so, some important transformations occur. Our private space is suddenly enlarged; no longer tight and cramped and restricted, but open and expansive and free.” — Parker Palmer
“Those who receive you receive me, and those who receive me receive the One who sent me.” — Matthew 10:40
“When hostility is converted into hospitality then fearful strangers . . . become guests revealing to their hosts the promise they are carrying with them. Then, in fact, the distinction between host and guest proves to be artificial and evaporates in the recognition of the new found unity.” — Henri Nouwen
Praying with Ignatius of Loyola
March 31, 2008 | Filed Under prayer | No Comments
Dear Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as you deserve; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labour and not to seek reward, save that of knowing that I do your will.
– Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)
The Church Does What It Is
March 27, 2008 | Filed Under ecclesiology, church | 1 Comment
The church is missionary by nature, created by the Spirit to participate fully in the redemptive reign of God. The very existence of the church in the world creates a missionary condition. All that the church does in living its life and in carrying out its ministry is missionary by intent.
The church is missionary by nature because God through the Spirit calls, creates, and commissions the church to communicate to the world that the redemptive reign of God has broken into human history.
Because the church is the creation of the Spirit, its ministry is a work of the Spirit. The church’s ministry flows naturally out of its nature. This means that the church does what it is. . . . It is helpful to summarize the key elements of the church’s nature that have a direct bearing on the church’s ministry.
1. The nature of the church is defined by the mission of God in the world.
2. The nature of the church is the result of the redemptive work of Christ.
3. The nature of the church is holistic in relating redemption to all of life.
4. The church exists as a social community that is both spiritual & human.
5. The church exists as a full demonstration of a new humanity.
The attributes of the church’s nature determine the church’s ministry.
– The Essence of the Church by Craig Van Gelder
More Radical Hospitality
March 25, 2008 | Filed Under hospitality | No Comments
Listening is always involved in hospitality. The most gracious attempts we can muster are meaningless if we do not actually hear the stranger. Listening is the core meaning of hospitality. It is something we can give anyone and everyone, including ourselves. It takes only a few minutes to really listen.
A young man who worked all during his high school years bagging groceries said that the vast majority of people who went through his line never looked at him when he asked, “Paper or plastic?” He said people did not meet his eyes, smile at him, or acknowledge him in any way.
What a tiny thing. Look up; look into the eyes of the young person and smile.
The former bag-boy said, “My mother asked me one day why I always hung around her, talking, after work. I didn’t know why until Mom and I talked about how I feel at work. I feel like I’m not quite human.”
This is what happens to the one who feels as if no one ever listens. Most of us cannot imagine such an existence, but there are homes and places where people are not heard. Children are often not listened to; they are viewed as objects to be maintained rather than real human beings.
Hospitality is a way to counter the thousands of times another human being has felt less than human because others didn’t listen. Listening is the power of hospitality; it is what makes hospitality the life-giving thing it is.
– Radical Hospitality: Benedict’s Way of Love by Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt
He Has Sent Me
March 23, 2008 | Filed Under scripture | 1 Comment
One of the passages to consider when highlighting the missionary/sending nature of God in the Old Testament is Isaiah 61. In the Hebrew, the phrase “he has sent me“ is the main verb controlling each of the redemptive deeds that follow. Unlike most English translations, the CEV and NEB have arranged the words to emphasize this fact.
The Spirit of the LORD God has taken control of me! The LORD has chosen and sent me
to tell the oppressed the good news,
to heal the brokenhearted,
to announce freedom for prisoners and captives.This is the year when the LORD God will show kindness to us and punish our enemies. The LORD has sent me to comfort those who mourn, especially in Jerusalem.
He sent me
to give them flowers in place of their sorrow,
to give olive oil in place of tears,
(to give) joyous praise in place of broken hearts.– Isaiah 61:1-3 (Contemporary English Version)
Missional Distinctives
March 18, 2008 | Filed Under missional, alan hirsch | No Comments
Here are the links to two good articles on missional distinctives. The first is the latest entry from David Dunbar’s Missional Journal. This issue is titled “A New Imagination for the Church.”
The second is an article from Christianity Today’s Building Small Groups website by Alan Hirsch. In this article titled “Small Groups and the Mission of God”Hirsch discusses the missional capacity of individual disciples and small group communities.
Making Room: Recovering Hospitality
March 14, 2008 | Filed Under hospitality | 1 Comment
Hospitality is not optional for Christians, nor is it limited to those who are specially gifted for it. It is, instead, a necessary practice in the community of faith. . . . Several aspects of early Christian life combined to make hospitality central to Christian practice.
First, shared meals were a significant setting for struggling with cultural boundaries in the early church, especially in working through the incorporation of Gentiles into the early communities. At meals together, tensions surfaced between rich and poor believers; meals provided the context for instructions on equal recognition and respect. Hospitality practices in the Christian community were to portray a clear message — that of equality, transformed relations, and a common life.
Second, the gospel initially spread through the ministry of believers who traveled widely and depended on the hospitality of others. Hospitality to those first missionaries and the reception of their message were very closely connected. . . . Hospitality was the practice within which early Christians met the needs of traveling missionaries and leaders, religious exiles, and the local poor.
Third, the early church regularly met for worship in the households of believers. In such a location, hospitality was a natural and necessary practice. It helped foster family-like ties among believers and provided a setting in which to shape and to reinforce a new identity.
For the early church, then, hospitality both participated in and anticipated God’s hospitality. Christians offered hospitality in grateful response to God’s generosity and as an expression of welcome to Christ “who for your sake was a stranger.” For them, hospitality was connected to the promises of God and to the presence of Christ. It condensed attention to spiritual, social, and physical dimensions of life into one potent practice which was fitting conduct within the household of God.
- Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine D. Pohl
Radical Hospitality
March 11, 2008 | Filed Under books, hospitality | 3 Comments
Hospitality, rather than being something you achieve, is something you enter. It is an adventure that takes you where you never dreamed of going. It is not something you do, as much as it is someone you become. You try and you fail. You try again. You make room for one person at a time, you give one chance at a time, and each of these choices of the heart stretches your ability to receive others. This is how we grow more hospitable — by welcoming one person when the opportunity is given to you.
- Radical Hospitality: Benedict’s Way of Love by Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt
Praying With The Missio Dei Breviary
March 8, 2008 | Filed Under missional, prayer | 1 Comment
Matthew 5:43-48
You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Closing Prayer
Lord, help us to love our enemies in both words and deeds. Help us to embody your loving, forgiving presence in our neighborhood—especially among those who resist the Gospel, especially to those who hate your name.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
God Who Sends
March 5, 2008 | Filed Under missional, books | 1 Comment
In preparation for a message that I will be sharing this weekend on the missionary nature of God I read again the book “God Who Sends” by Francis M. DuBose. The book is a wonderful survey of the sending passages found throughout scripture. DuBose provides a wealth of insight towards the use of sending as the necessary and best approach to understanding the concept of mission.
I first read the book a year ago and at that time provided a short summary of DuBose’s survey. Here are each of the previous posts:
Being Sent and the Pentateuch
Being Sent and the Historical Books
Being Sent and the Prophets
Being Sent and the Gospels
Being Sent in Acts & the Epistles
The Church Between Gospel & Culture
March 1, 2008 | Filed Under missional, books, church | 1 Comment
One of the most helpful books from the reading list in the previous post has been “The Church Between Gospel & Culture” edited by George Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder. The book is a collection of twenty essays organized into four major categories, which include: “Focusing the Mission Question,” “Assessing Our Culture,” “Discerning the Gospel,” and “Defining the Church.” Authors include James Brownson, Inagrace Dietterich, Douglas John Hall, Alan Roxburgh, Wilbert Shenk, Paul Hiebert and several others.
In the essay titled “Up From the Grassroots: The Church in Transition”written by E. Dixon Junkin, the author argues that the church must once again recapture a sort of “church from below” mentality whereby communities of faith are easily birthed and are doing life rooted in a local context. While reading the following excerpt I was reminded of Neil Cole’s comment that we need to “raise the bar for what it means to be a disciple and lower the bar for what it means to be the church.” Junkin writes:
Instead of continuing to expend such energy trying to make outworn patterns of institutional life serve us, it seems appropriate to devote more attention to the task of creating new forms of common life that may, over time, allow a new consensus to emerge.
And it seems probably that the relearning of the meaning of Christian faith and life is most likely to occur in communities that are small enough to permit all their members to participate fully in the process of reflection, decision, and action.
One could probably describe such communities in many ways . . . let us imagine thousands of communities whose members in an intentional, disciplined fashion do the following six things:
1. Pray together.
2. Share their joys and struggles.
3. Study the context in which they find themselves.
4. Listen for God’s voice speaking through Scripture.
5. Seek to discern the obedience to which they are being called.
6. Engage in common ministry.
Missional Reading List
February 27, 2008 | Filed Under missional, books | 2 Comments
Over the past eighteen months I have read (or I am currently in the process of reading) each of the following books and journal articles. I thought I would provide them here, in alphabetical order, as a missional reading list. If you know of other writings that might be added to the list please let me know.
In the next couple of days I hope to share from this list the ten most helpful thus far in my studies.
Anderson, Paul N. “The Having-Sent-Me Father: Aspects of Agency, Encounter, and Irony in the Johannine Father-Son Relationship.”
Semeia 85, no. 1 (1999): 33-57.
Banks, Robert and Julia Bank. The Church Comes Home: Regrouping the People of God for Community and Mission.
Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1997.
Barrett, Lois Y. Storm Front: The Good News of God.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
Barrett, Lois Y. Treasures in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.
Blauw, Johannes. The Missionary Nature of the Church: A Survey of the Biblical Theology of Mission.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962.
Bliese, Richard. “The Mission Matrix: Mapping Out the Complexities of a Missional Ecclesiology.”
Word & World 26, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 237-248.
Bosch, David J. “Evangelism: Theological Currents & Cross-currents Today,”
International Bulletin of Missionary Research 11, no. 3 (July 1987): 99.
Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission.
Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991.
Bosch, David J. Believing in the Future: Toward a Missiology of Western Culture.
Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1995.
Christensen, Derek. “Marketplace and Missional Church.”
Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought & Practice 13, no. 1 (February 2005): 13-18.
Cole, Neil. Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.
Dubose, Francis. God Who Sends: A Fresh Quest for Biblical Mission.
Nashville: Broadman, 1983.
Engelsviken, Tormod. “Missio Dei: The Understanding and Misunderstanding of a Theological Concept in European Churches.”
International Review of Mission 92, no. 367 (October 2003): 481-497
Ferreira, Johan. Johannine Ecclesiology.
Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998.
Fjeld, Roger W. “A Set-Apart and a Sending-Out Community.”
Currents in Theology and Mission 16, no. 5 (Oct. 1989): 337-340.
Frost, Michael and Alan Hirsch. The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church.
Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2003.
Frost, Michael. Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture.
Hendrickson, 2006.
Glasser, Arthur F. and Charles Van Engen. Announcing the Kingdom: The Story of God’s Mission in the Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003.
Goheen, Michael W. “The Missional Church: Ecclesiological Discussion in the Gospel and Our Culture Network in North America.”
Missiology 30, no. 4 (October 2002): 479-490.
Goheen, Michael W. “As the Father Has Sent Me, I Am Sending You: Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology.”
International Review of Mission 91, no. 362 (July 2002): 354.
Guder, Darrell L. Be My Witnesses: The Church’s Mission, Message, and Messengers.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985.
Guder, Darrell L. “Incarnation and the Church’s Evangelistic Mission,”
International Review of Missions 83, no. 330 (July 1994): 417-28.
Guder, Darrell L. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.
More >>
Mission in the New Testament
February 25, 2008 | Filed Under missional, scripture | 1 Comment
In preparation for writing the biblical rationale chapter for my dmin project I have been reading several good works that focus on the biblical theology of mission. So far I have discovered the two most helpful to be “Salvation to the Ends of the Earth” by Andreas Kostenberger & Peter T. O’Brien and “Mission in the New Testament” by William Larkin and Joel Williams.
Here is an excerpt from the Larkin text which emphasizes that Jesus was not only the one sent by the Father, but after the resurrection he assumed the role of sender:
Martin Hengel has called Jesus “the primal missionary.” In so doing he places his finger on a key aspect of Jesus’ self- understanding. The record of Jesus’ teaching found in the synoptic gospels reflects the fact that he had a clear understanding of his own mission. He taught that he was sent by the Father with the task of seeking and saving the lost and that — although he envisioned a future worldwide mission — his own mission was focused on the nation of Israel. Jesus’ teaching on mission, however, encompassed more than his own task. It inclued the task entrusted to his disciples.
Prior to the resurrection, the disciples’ mission was identical to and an extension of Jesus’ mission. The resurrection, however, brought a significant change both to Jesus’ role in mission and to the disciples’ actual mission. As the risen Christ, he assumed the role of sender, who sent the disciples with the task of bearing witness to the forgiveness of sins that was now available in him. Their mission was now to be to “all the nations,” and that universal mission was to be carried out by obedient disciples who would continue their mission until Jesus returns.
- John Harvey, “Mission in Jesus’ Teaching” in Mission in the New Testament, William Larkin
May God Bless You With Foolishness
February 21, 2008 | Filed Under missional, justice | 3 Comments
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 pain, rejection, hunger and war so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world so that you can do what others claim cannot be done to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
- A Franciscan Benediction
Mission in John’s Gospel
February 20, 2008 | Filed Under missional, books | No Comments
The crucial form in which the Great Commission has been handed down to us (though it is the most neglected because it is the most costly) is the Johannine. Jesus had anticipated it in his prayer in the upper room which he said to the Father: “As thou didst send me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18).
Now, probably in the same upper room but after his death and resurrection, he turned his prayer-statement into a commission and said: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (John 20:21).
In both of these statements Jesus did more than draw a vague parallel between his mission and ours. Deliberately and precisely he made his mission the model of ours, saying “as the Father sent me, so I send you.” Therefore our understanding of the church’s mission must be deduced from our understanding of the Son’s.
- John R.W. Stott in Christian Mission in the Modern World
The Times They Are A-Changin’
February 18, 2008 | Filed Under culture, church | No Comments
The latest Barna Update illustrates the shift of the spiritual landscape in the United States. Barna reports that for the first time the majority of adults believe there are biblically legitimate alternatives to conventional church when it comes to experiencing and expressing their faith.
Here is the heart of the article:
For decades, American Christians, who comprise more than four of every five adults, assumed they had one legitimate way to practice their faith: through involvement in a conventional church. But new research shows that this mind set is no longer prevalent in the U.S. The latest Barna study shows that a majority of adults now believe that there are various biblically legitimate alternatives to participation in a conventional church.
Each of six alternatives was deemed by a most adults to be “a complete and biblically valid way for someone who does NOT participate in the services or activities of a conventional church to experience and express their faith in God.” Those alternatives include engaging in faith activities at home, with one’s family (considered acceptable by 89% of adults); being active in a house church (75%); watching a religious television program (69%); listening to a religious radio broadcast (68%); attending a special ministry event, such as a concert or community service activity (68%); and participating in a marketplace ministry (54%).
Smaller proportions of the public consider other alternatives to be complete and biblically valid ways of experiencing and expressing their faith in God. Those include interacting with a faith-oriented website (45%) and participating in live events via the Internet (42%).
Activity Outside the Conventional Church
The Barna study also found that tens of millions of people are experiencing and expressing their faith in God independent of any connection to a conventional church. In the past month, 55% of adults had attended a conventional church service. During that same month, 28% of all adults who did not attend a conventional church activity did, however, participate in an alternative means of experiencing and expressing their faith in God.
Looking at some of the newer and more controversial methods of spiritual engagement, the survey found that 4% had participated in a house church or simple church; 9% had been involved in a ministry that met in the marketplace; and 12% had engaged in spiritual activity on the Internet.
More Praying With The Missio Dei Breviary
February 17, 2008 | Filed Under prayer, missiology | No Comments
The past couple of weeks I have been utilizing The Missio Dei Breviary as my daily prayer guide. I have thoroughly enjoyed this simple yet substantial collection of prayers and Gospel readings.
My favorite aspect of the Breviary is the missional emphasis woven through each of the morning and evening collections. Click here to learn more. Here is a sample from Week 3: Sunday Evening:
The Jesus Manifesto
With Jesus, we proclaim:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
Father, anoint us with your Spirit. As you sent your Son, your Son has sent us; may we embody the presence of your Son in the world, and in our neighborhood. Empower us to live and proclaim your good news in our neighborhood, and in the world.
Praying With The Missio Dei Breviary
February 15, 2008 | Filed Under missional, prayer | No Comments
Sovereign God, everything we have belongs to you. May we use what we have to bless others and woo people into the Kingdom, rather than for our own comfort and ease. Bless us so that we may bless others. If we do not bless others, take our resources from us and give them to those who will bless others.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
- Closing Prayer from Week 2: Friday Morning, The Missio Dei Breviary
Social Location of the Western Church
February 14, 2008 | Filed Under books, alan roxburgh | No Comments
“The fourth and twentieth centuries form bookends marking transition points in the history of the church. Just as the fourth century adoption of Christianity by Constantine forced the church to struggle with its self-understanding as the new center of culture, twentieth century Christians must now struggle to understand the meaning of their social location in a decentered world.”
- Alan Roxburgh in The Missionary Congregation: Leadership and Liminality
The Benefits of an Incarnational Witness
February 12, 2008 | Filed Under books, incarnational | 1 Comment
“The case for an incarnational approach to missional witness is based, on the one hand, on the character of the biblical record; that is, the way in which the church’s missionary vocation is shaped by the earthly ministry of Jesus. The emphasis upon the necessary congruence of witness is rooted in God’s way of revealing himself supremely and finally in the incarnation of Jesus. The comprehensiveness of the biblical understanding of witness calls for an incarnational interpretation.
On the other hand, this approach helps us deal with some serious problems in our particular Western context. We see in both our mission history and our current evangelistic practices so much that is contrary to the incarnational character of the gospel. We see a gospel of peace proclaimed in divisive, judgmental ways. We see a Gospel of love conveyed manipulatively, insensitively, condescendingly. We see a gospel of healing obscured by distortions that hurt people and evoke resentment.
Thus we arrive at the concept of incarnational witness as one way of expounding the character of our missionary vocation. In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God revealed himself as the One who is with and for his creation.
Now, as the Risen Lord sends his Spirit to empower the church, we are called to become God’s people present in the world, with and for the world, like St. John pointing always to Christ. The most incarnational dimension of our witness is defined by the cross itself, as we experience with Jesus that bearing his cross transforms our suffering into witness.
Incarnational witness is, therefore, a way of describing Christian vocation in terms of Jesus Christ as the messenger, the message, and the model for all who follow after him. To speak of the incarnation missionally is to link who Jesus was, what Jesus did, and how he did it, in one great event that defines all that it means to be Christian.”
- Darrell Guder in The Incarnation and The Church’s Witness
More Guder & Incarnational Mission
February 11, 2008 | Filed Under books, incarnational | No Comments
The word mission is the Latinized version of the central theme of John’s Gospel: sending. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). As the Father sends the Son, as the Father and the Sonsend the Spirit, so the triune God sends the church to carry out its mandate of witness.
When we use the term incarnation, then, we are referring to the specific and historical event in which God’s mission reaches its central point and its fullest disclosure. We are also emphasizing the fundamental character of movement and purpose that God’s action reveals: “into the flesh” testifies to the fact that God is active and sending within human history.
The God of both testaments engages the history of his creation, speaks in such a way that his voice can be heard, and calls people not only to respond to his voice but to become part of his mission. In sending Jesus as the Christ, God draws all of salvation history together, as witnessed to the Old Testament, and simultaneously opens it up for proclamation to the entire world.
- Darrell Guder in The Incarnation and The Church’s Witness