“As ministers our greatest temptation is toward too many words. They weaken our faith and make us lukewarm. But silence is a sacred discipline, a guard of the Holy Spirit.” – Henri Nouwen Do you talk too much?
Archive for July, 2008
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“Many love Christ as long as they encounter no hardship; many praise and bless him as long as they receive some comfort from him. But if Jesus hides himself and leaves them for a while, they either start complaining or become dejected. Those, on the contrary, who love him for his own sake and not [...]
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Here are several very good articles to add to your reading this week. Drew Goodmanson’s “Shared Values of Missional Church Communities.” Scot McKnight’s first four installments on the wonderful “Mission of God” by Christopher Wright: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. Tom Davis and “Why Christians S**k.” If you are not familiar with [...]
Hunsberger & Missional Faithfulness
Posted: 24th July 2008 by Brad Brisco in Church, Culture, Lesslie Newbigin, MissionalComments Off
All the clearest voices tell us that the corpus Christianum, the Constantinian arrangement, and the world of Christendom that guided our thinking about ourselves for 1500 years, is not coming back. Our habit of telling our Christian story always as a success story, the habit so ingrained in us by even these later years in [...]
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The contemporary church desperately needs a self-understanding that will embolden and empower us for ministry in this changing world. In spite of the enormous gap between what the church is and what it is called to be, we have no alternative but to continue to cling to a belief in the church’s identity like that [...]
On Saturday, August 23rd we will sponsor a one day Church Planting seminar at Parkway Baptist Church in Kansas City, Kansas. The seminar will be led by Joel Comiskey (Ph.D. Fuller Seminary). Joel is an internationally recognized cell church consultant, church planter and author of more than twenty books, including his latest due out this [...]
The doctrine of the church which we have found in John seems to me to call for some revisions of our conventional ecclesiology. The time-honored notae ecclesiae, the marks of the church, are preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments. Says Calvin: “Wherever we find the word of God purely preached and [...]
Praying with Saint Benedict
Posted: 12th July 2008 by Brad Brisco in Hospitality, PrayerTags: Prayer
O Lord, I place myself in Your hands and dedicate myself to You. I pledge myself to do Your will in all things: To love the Lord God with all my heart, all my soul, all my strength. Not to kill, not to steal, not to covet, not to bear false witness, to honor all [...]
I finally listened to the Alan Hirsch’s podcast on Out of Ur. The audio is well worth the 12 minutes it takes to listen to. Hirsch responds — similarly to his post as part of last month’s missional synchronized blog — to the need for clarity on the use of the word “missional.” Two thoughts [...]
Recently I have listened to several people raise concerns over the tension between cultivating a missional direction for their lives and the need to gather as a congregation for worship and spiritual nourishment. This is one of the reasons I stated in my article on Missional: More Than a Buzz Word that we must begin with [...]
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Another culprit (to experiencing silence) is our tendency to talk too much. Our worship is voluminous with words. We fill our worship with talk (The Lord is in his temple, let the earth keep silent). Not only when we worship, but in every way. Gagarin said too much when he returned from space. The Russian [...]
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In response to last week’s synchronized blog dealing with the word “missional” I wrote a post in which I tried to deal with both the theological distinctions that I believe should be included when defining the word, as well as five practical issues that are necessary to consider when attempting to foster a missional mindset. The [...]