Monthly archive: September, 2007

Where Did We Miss the Person?

September 14, 2007, by Brad Brisco No comments yet

Last night I was revisiting Leonard Sweet’s Out of the Question . . . Into the Mystery which I read a couple of years ago. Here are a couple of good quotes from chapter one which is titled “Where Did We Miss the Person and Get the Point Instead?”

Over a two-thousand-year period, but especially in the last two hundred years, we have jerked and tugged the Christian faith out of its original soil, its life-giving source, which is an honest relationship with God through Jesus the Christ. After uprooting the faith, we have entombed it in a declaration of adherence to a set of beliefs. The shift has left us with casual doctrinal assent that exists independent of a changed life. We have made the Cross into a crossword puzzle, spending our time diagramming byzantine theories of atonement. How did the beauty of Jesus’ atoning work get isolated from the wonder of restoring an authentic relationship between God and humanity?

And

The church may clutch Jesus to its side, but it no longer clutches Jesus to its insides. For the Jews, the unique place where God encountered humans was the temple and (before that) the tent or tabernacle. For Jesus, the unique place where God encounters humans is the human heart. But the church has embalmed Jesus in rules, codes, canonicities, and traditions that have everything to do with the church’s saving itself and nothing to do with the church’s saving the world.

And

Western Christianity is largely belief based and church focused. It is concerned with landing on the right theology and doctrine and making sure everyone else toes the line. The Jesus trimtab, in contrast, is relationship based and world focused. It is concerned not so much with what you believe as with whom you are following. It is less invested in maintaining and growing an institution and more invested in Jesus’ passion for saving the world.

Spiritual Transformation – Key #6

September 13, 2007, by Brad Brisco 3 comments

Georges Boujakly continues his series on the key principles to spiritual transformation. These eight “keys” include the following:

1. Spiritual transformation is an inside job.
2. Spiritual transformation requires deliberate effort.
3. Spiritual transformation has a specific goal.
4. The goal of spiritual transformation is conformity to Jesus Christ.
5. The progress of spiritual transformation is always slow.
6. Spiritual transformation is the “business” of the church.
7. Spiritual transformation is not a luxury for the spiritually elite.
8. Spiritual Transformation is plural.

Today Georges elaborates on #6:

Spiritual formation is the business of the church

Dallas Willard has challenged the church to come up with a comprehensive process and curriculum that would take seriously the mandate Christ gave when he said in Matthew 28: “train them to do everything I have told you to do.”

Whatever training Jesus did with his disciples, he was entrusting to them (and to us) to pass on the training to do everything; ad infinitum!

One way to see this command is to understand Jesus’ words this way:

“You have one main business in the church; duplicate all I did with you. You heard me teach and you saw me practice many things. Some you won’t remember, but the Holy Spirit will remind you.”

The church should have one occupation, one profession, one process: That of the formation of the Spirit of Christ in his disciples. If that is not the business of the church whatever could it be? Willard, however chides the church for not taking this “everything I have taught you” most seriously. I agree, don’t you? Read more →

The Sky is Falling

September 10, 2007, by Brad Brisco No comments yet

This morning as I was reflecting on just how different the church would look if it was really shaped in terms of the missio dei, I ran across these words from Alan Roxburgh:

“Throughout Western societies, and most especially in North America, there has occurred a fundamental shift in the understanding and practice of the Christian story. It is no longer about God and what God is about in the world; it is about how God serves and meets human needs and desires. It is about how the individual self can find its own purposes and fulfillment.

More specifically, our churches have become spiritual food courts for the personal, private, inner needs of expressive individuals. The result is a debased, compromised, derivative form of Christianity that is not the gospel of the Bible at all. The biblical narrative is about God’s mission in, through, and for the sake of the world and how God has called human beings to be part of God’s reaching out to that world for God’s purpose of saving it in love. The focus of attention should be what God wants to accomplish and how we can be part of God’s mission, not how God helps us accomplish our own agendas.”

- Alan Roxburgh in The Sky is Falling

Hit the Bullseye

September 7, 2007, by Brad Brisco 1 comment

I spent the majority of this week with a group of denominational leaders discussing various issues dealing with congregational health and the need for rethinking denominations and judicatories to be better equipped to coach and resource churches. The bulk of our discussion centered around the book “Hit the Bullseye: How Denominations Can Aim the Congregation at the Mission Field” by Paul Borden.

While my expectations of the book were not very high initially, the more I read the more I appreciated Borden’s candor in regards to the ineffectiveness of much of what takes place in denominational life. Here are a couple of samples of what I mean:

The problem with denominations is that they want to shape the mission around their polity, rather than shape the polity around the mission. The latter view is the spirit of all the founding fathers and mothers of every denomination, while the former is the sorry state of every denomination today. The lack of mission urgency in North America means that denominational leaders think they still have time to develop modest, incremental strategic plans to tinker with polity, and time afterwards to then go about mission. The truth is just the opposite. The eternal destinies of individuals do not allow such laxness.

And:

Our current polity systems usually enfranchise those people who are the least able to lead while tying the hands of the most creative and able leaders. This statement assumes that the most able leaders are still around after any brief exposure to how religious bodies function. Our polities allow the managers, administrators, and politicians who understand complex bureaucratic systems to become the leaders in congregational, judicatory, and denominational life. In the meantime these systems weed out those with entrepreneurial and leadership skills. These people for the most part leave and create their own ministries or shadow organizations that go around the bureaucracies created by our polities.

Borden argues that there is far more time and effort spent on keeping the institution going than on focusing resources on the local congregation as the major unit of mission. Deep, paradigmatic change is needed if there is to be hope, and such change must be systemic not incremental.

However I am afraid that the vast majority of those in denominational life have been fitted with one of these: (HT: geez)

You Might Be Missional If

September 5, 2007, by Brad Brisco 1 comment

Larry Chouiard provides a bit of humor (and a lot of truth) over at Spiritual Conversations with a post titled “You Might Have Missional Tendencies If:”

1. You talk more about the Kingdom of God than you do your local church.

2. You are more in awe of the radical Jesus than you are the charisma of your pastor/preacher.

3. You feel a greater sense of community in the parking lot than in the pews.

4. You’ve oftened muttered leaving a ‘church service’, “there’s got to be more to it than this”.

5. You’ve often wondered why the church couldn’t meet in the park or Starbucks once in a while.

6. You’ve cringed at the coldness and indifference of church people when someone shows up at our ‘church service’ that looks and smells different.

7. You’ve wondered why Christians only hang-out with Christians when Jesus seemingly never missed an opportunity to party with the riff-raff.

8. You’ve wondered what God does the other six days of the week.

9. You’ve had the urge to spill your guts to the next artificial inquiry, “I’m fine, how are you?”.

10. You’ve had the compelling urge to join the preacher at the podium to present an alternative perspective.

11. You’ve wanted to fall to your knees while everyone stood for another happy-clappy song.

12. You’ve wanted to close a ‘service’ by shouting from your pew, “NOW WHAT?”

13. You sometimes find more spiritual depth and authenticity in the lives of those who do not go to church.

A Holistic Gospel

September 2, 2007, by Brad Brisco No comments yet

For some time now I have enjoyed JR Woodward’s blog dream awakener. Over the past few weeks I have been following a series of posts that he has been doing on developing a holistic Gospel.

Woodward argues that to try to separate personal from social salvation is to argue against the law, the prophets, Jesus, and the Apostle Paul. I would like to hear your thoughts on his perspective. Here are the links to the first ~~ten~~ twelve posts:

A Holistic Gospel – Part I
A Holistic Gospel – Part II
A Holistic Gospel – Part III
A Holistic Gospel – Part IV
A Holistic Gospel – Part V
A Holistic Gospel – Part VI
A Holistic Gospel – Part VII
A Holistic Gospel – Part VIII
A Holistic Gospel – Part IX
A Holistic Gospel – Part X
A Holistic Gospel – Part XI
A Holistic Gospel – Part XII