Here is another excellent excerpt from chapter 10 of Donald Miller’s “Searching For God Knows What.” The title of chapter 10 is “The Gospel of Jesus: It Never Was a Formula.” Becoming a Christian might look more like falling in love than baking cookies. Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that in [...]
Archive for August, 2007
Searching For God Knows What IV
Posted: 30th August 2007 by Brad Brisco in Books, Gospel, Scripture, Way of Jesus2
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Almighty God, who has given your only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin and also an example of his godly life: Give me grace that I may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit and also daily endeavor myself to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life; through [...]
Searching For God Knows What III
Posted: 27th August 2007 by Brad Brisco in Books, Gospel, ScripturePerhaps the reason Scripture includes so much poetry in and outside the narrative, so many parables and stories, so many visions and emotional letters, is because it is attempting to describe a relational break man tragically experienced with God and a disturbed relational history man has had since then and, furthermore, a relational dynamic man [...]
Old habits are hard to break, and no one is easily weaned from his own opinions; but if you rely on your own reasoning and ability rather than on the virtue of submission to Jesus Christ, you will but seldom and slowly attain wisdom. For God wills that we become perfectly obedient to himself, and [...]
It makes me wonder if, because of this reduced version of the claims of Christ, we believe the gospel is easy to understand, a simple mental exercise, not in the least bit mysterious. And if you think about it, a person has a more difficult time explaining romantic love, for instance, or beauty, or the [...]
What Can We Learn From Calvin & Hobbes
Posted: 23rd August 2007 by Brad Brisco in Church, Culture, GospelI love the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip written by Bill Watterson. I have C&H on my sidebar gadgets, my laptop screen saver, and we have C&H books scattered in what seems ever room of the house. Like many others, I was disappointed when Watterson made the decision in 1995 to retire from cartooning. Well, [...]
Over the next few days I want to share a series of excerpts from Donald Miller’s “Searching For God Knows What.” I want to focus specifically on chapter ten titled “The Gospel of Jesus: It Never Was a Formula.” Miller makes a wonderful and whimsical case for the relational dynamic of the Gospel. Here is [...]
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As a young follower of Jesus, I was taught that Jesus had commanded his disciples to go into the world and make disciples. It is ture. He did. However, I began to notice that while many missionary-driven, transform-the-world types were passionate about making a difference in the world and effecting change in other people’s lives, [...]
“When we enter into solitude to be with God alone, we quickly discover how dependent we are. Without the many distractions of our daily lives, we feel anxious and tense. When nobody speaks to us, calls on us, or needs our help, we start feeling like nobodies. Then we begin wondering whether we are useful, [...]
Missional Leadership
Posted: 17th August 2007 by Brad Brisco in Books, Dmin Project, Leadership, MissionalComments Off
“In addition to holding a clear vision, missional leadership involves facilitating the emergence of novelty by building and nurturing networks of communications; creating a learning culture in which questioning is encouraged and innovation is rewarded; creating a climate of trust and mutual support; and recognizing viable novelty when it emerges, while allowing the freedom to [...]
Living Systems and The Church
Posted: 15th August 2007 by Brad Brisco in Books, Church, Dmin Project, MissionalLately I have been involved in several conversations concerning the lack of interest or desire for change in the local church. Others have noted that their church has become too comfortable. Further, in the midst of this complacency they have noticed that the church has begun to decline in effectiveness towards connecting with those outside [...]
Marketplace and Missional Church
Posted: 13th August 2007 by Brad Brisco in Church, Dmin Project, Missional“Laurie Guy, in an address to a pastors’ conference, spoke of the 80-10-10 formula. Some 10% of people in New Zealand regularly attend a church, a further 10% maintain a loose affiliation, while 80% are effectively outside the influence of local churches. He notes that much of the evangelistic effort of churches is spent on [...]
“In the end there are only two attitudes which Christians can adopt toward the world. One is escape and the other is engagement.” – John Stott
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In light of the previous post on “The Starfish and The Spider” here is a clip from the CBS News about the underground church in China. I think the church is a good example of at least four of the principles of decentralization shared in the book. 1. When attacked, a decentralized organization tends to become even [...]
I recently finished reading “The Starfish and The Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations” by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom. While the book deals primarily with business issues I found the research on decentralized organizations by Brafman and Beckstrom to be very applicable to the church. The title of the book comes from the analogous [...]