I like this definition of the gospel from John Dickson:

“The gospel is the announcement that God has revealed his kingdom and opened it up to sinners through the birth, teaching, miracles, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, who will one day return to overthrow evil and consummate the kingdom for eternity.”

Later in a section titled “Underestimating the Mission” Dickson makes a helpful distinction between proclaiming the gospel and promoting the gospel.

I want to make a distinction throughout this book between the specific activity of proclaiming the gospel and the broader category of promoting the gospel. The former is properly called “evangelism,” a word that derives from the New Testament term evangelizomai, which only ever means “announcing (grand) news.” The wider category of promoting the gospel includes any and every activity that draws others to Christ (including, of course, evangelism). People sometimes use the words “mission,” “out-reach” or “witness” for this larger work, but I prefer the expression “promoting the gospel” (I’m sure I pinched this from someone else but I can’t remember from whom) because it reminds us that at the heart of our mission to the world is the news about Christ, the gospel. In my view, when “mission” becomes disconnected from the gospel, as it sadly does in some church circles, it no longer deserves to be called Christian mission.

– John Dickson in The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission: Promoting the Gospel with More Than Our Lips

The videos below include two segments of a conversation between Alan Roxburgh and Simon Carey Holt. The videos are a companion resource to an excellent workbook written by Roxburgh titled “Moving Back into the Neighborhood.” The MBiN workbook can be downloaded here. As mentioned before, I initially thought the $30 price tag for a 77 page download was a little pricey, however I have discovered the workbook to be worth the investment.

In the videos Holt shares from his book “God Next Door: Spirituality and Mission in the Neighborhood.” His emphasis is that the neighborhood is a place where God is, and it is a place where God calls us to participate with Him. In the first video, Holt shares a tragic story that played a significant role in his journey towards an emphasis on the local context.

In the second clip, Holt speaks to the importance of fighting against the neglect of our neighborhoods. Even though most people live in a series of relational networks that function outside of the neighborhood context, we must recognize that neighborhoods remain an important piece of the fabric of society. While watching the second video, I was reminded of my favorite Eugene Peterson quote: “The way of Jesus is always local and ordinary.”

I am in the process of reading an excellent book by L. Paul Jensen titled Subversive Spirituality: Transforming Mission through the Collapse of Space and Time. I hope to share more in the near future, but for now I want to take a moment and recommend Jensen’s work. Subversive Spirituality is not only a very insightful and profitable read, but I find it to be extremely timely. Among the vast array of voices in the missional church conversation, few are speaking on the importance of spiritual formation, both in informing and empowering our missional activities. Jensen does just that.

The heart of the book is a survey of the practical rhythms of spirituality and mission in (1) the life of Jesus, (2) the early church, (3) the church in recent centuries, and (4) the church today. Jensen highlights the actual spiritual disciplines and the interplay with mission/ministry activities throughout each time period. He provides compelling evidence of the vital relationship between spiritual disciplines and mission practices throughout the history of the church. He then argues that the church today must recapture such spiritual rhythms if it hopes to engage in significant, effective ministry in a Post-Christian culture.

In the introduction Jensen writes:

The book seeks to show a correlation between inward spirituality and outward mission in the historical context of space and time and the current cultural collapse of these. Findings from my cultural, Biblical/theological, historical, and field research will demonstrate this correlation. My thesis is twofold: (1) that empowered inward spirituality — expressed in creating time and space for God through solitary and communal spiritual practices — correlates with transforming outward mission — expressed in word and deed; and (2) that because of the cultural collapse of space and time, postmodern mission requires the church to subvert these temporal-spatial codes by devoting more plentiful space and time to spiritual practices in her structures of mission, church, and leadership development.

Has anyone else read this book? I would love to hear from those who have. Has it changed the way you have thought about mission/ministry? If so, what has changed? I would love to have a dialog around the key elements of the book.

I haven’t posted for several days partly because of the busy past week hosting a mission team from Arkansas that was here in Kansas City assisting with our church planting efforts. I want to publicly thank the team from Lone Rock Baptist Church for the exceptional construction work they did on a couple of our facilities. They not only exhibited outstanding craftsmanship, but each team member presented themselves in a profound Christlike manner. Thank you church!

While I haven’t been posting of late, I have run across several good articles that are worth sharing. Mike Breen shares 10 books that every missional leaders should read. Check it out here, here and here.

Jared Wilson on missions and not settling for the American Dream.

A lot of great thinking on Apostolic Missionaries and the Urban Contexts from J.D. Payne.

A Missional Spirituality for Radical Evangelicals from Charles Ringma.

Ed Stetzer and Involving All of God’s People in All of God’s Mission.

Cultivating a Missional Leadership Culture from Todd Hiestand.

Finally, check out the excellent resource, Moving Back Into the Neighborhood Workbook from Alan Roxburgh. The $29.99 price for this 77 page download is a bit pricey, but Roxburgh provides a very helpful tool for churches who desire to engage their community.

Several weeks ago I received a pre-release copy of a new book called Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola. I am only three chapters into the book, but I wanted to share a couple of excerpts that really spoke to me:

“God is not so much about fixing things that have gone wrong in our lives as finding us in our brokenness and giving us Christ. When Christ is not central and supreme in our lives, everything about life shifts out of orbit and moves out of kilter. So for Christians, our first task is to know Jesus. And out of that knowing, we will come to live Him, adore Him, proclaim Him and manifest Him.”

“So what is your chief occupation in life and ministry? Here’s a hint: Whatever you are occupied with comes out of your mouth. It’s what you talk about most of the time.

For many Christians, their occupation has nothing to do with spiritual things at all. For others who are more inclined to divine matters, their occupation is evangelism. For some, it’s church multiplication that matters most. For others, it’s memorizing the Bible and learning theology. Many Christians, are most occupied with social action, while others are most occupied with leadership and its various principles. Still others are mainly occupied with missions, or praise and worship; the casting out of demons, or healing; miracles, holiness, or the end times; spiritual authority and submission, justice, or politics, etc. The list is endless.

But all of these are “its” — just things. In fact, the Christian family has swung so far from its Lord that most of our preaching and teaching today is an “it” rather than a “Him.”

The result: We focus on “things” — even good and religious things. And the Lord Jesus Christ is pushed off into a corner. (He usually gets inserted somewhere in the message as a side dish, but He’s rarely the main course.)

Yet, the reality is that Christ trumps everything. All Scripture testifies of Him. The Father exalts Him. The Spirit magnifies Him. The angels worship Him. The early church knew Him as her passion, her message, and the unction of her life. Christ was her specialty. He was her Bridegroom and head. She specialized in nothing else.

All told, there’s nothing worth pursuing outside of Christ.

To our minds, there is one reason why a Christian would not be absolutely occupied and consumed with Christ. That person’s eyes have not been opened to see His greatness. The sad truth is that the Jesus who is preached so often today is so shallow, so small, and so uncaptivating that countless believers are enthralled with countless other things.”

You can learn more about the book by going to JesusManifesto.com.

“Within the Christian church, we have tended to define spiritual growth as disengagement from the world rather than engagement with the world. We often measure spiritual growth and formation as an increase in cognitive knowledge about God or religious activities (i.e., greater knowledge of Scripture, a disciplined prayer life, weekly church attendance).

In many contexts, discipleship has been redefined as a weekly meeting at Starbucks with a mentor who helps me grow in understanding God and how my spirituality facilitates my personal development. Many pastors and Christian leaders who disciple new believers don’t include evangelism or service as part of the growth and maturation process.

As a result, our vision of discipleship can look very different from the experiences that Jesus introduced to His disciples. Modern-day disciples of Jesus can confess belief in the right things, but their lives are not congruent with the values and actions of Jesus. And what is more, they don’t see how the living out of those values and realities in mission for them to experience the promises of God.”

– The Kingdom Life: A Practical Theology of Discipleship and Spiritual Formation

When attempting to transition a “traditional” church in a more missional direction I believe one of the topics of discussion must be the importance of “the priesthood of all believers.” If we believe the church is God’s agent sent into the world to participate in what He is already doing, then every member must be developed and deployed as missionaries into the local context. The church is sent, not just collectively, but individually. Therefore, the church needs to be affirming and “commissioning” every member to engage their local mission field.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to hear Deb and Alan Hirsch tell a story of how they “commissioned” the entire congregation of South Melbourne Restoration Community, one Sunday morning. I was glad to discover the story in their latest book, Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship.

At South we took the “priesthood of all believer” (that every person is a minister and needs to be released as such) seriously. This didn’t mean that our community always lived this out, but it was a value we tried to live by (and at times used humor to reinforce). In order to drive this point home, one Sunday morning, as our community arrived for our gathering, we greeted each person at the door and handed them a two-inch-wide strip of white flexible card and a fastener. Many looked puzzled but decided to play along, wondering just what we were up to.

A short time after the service began, Al asked everybody to stand up and fasten the white strip around their necks. He then proceeded to lead the whole church through an ordination ceremony. It wasn’t quite what people were expecting, but that morning each and every person gathered at South was officially ordained into the ministry of Jesus. Once they were all ordained, they could dispose of the symbolic (and very unnecessary) dog collars and just live out their commission.

This past weekend I had the privilege of attending the launch of Forge America in Chicago. It was a great time of networking and hearing how God is moving in various contexts around the world.

It was also fantastic to hear from Deb and Alan Hirsch as they shared the heart of their new book Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship. I am more excited than ever to begin reading the book later this week.

The most challenging time for me, however, was the last session of the day on Saturday. Micheal Frost shared on how the church must “step into” the way of mission as exemplified by Jesus. I was once again reminded of Frost’s prophetic voice, raised up to push back on the safe, consumerist culture of the American church. Now two days later, Frost’s words continue to challenge me deeply.

A portion of Frost’s talk focused on John 20:21, a passage very popular in the missional conversation. However, Frost’s emphasis was not on the ever so familiar second portion of the passage – that we are “sent” by Jesus – but instead his focus was that we are sent “just as” Jesus was sent. And how, or to whom, or better yet, into what was Jesus sent?

Frost contends, Jesus was sent “into the crap of life.” He was sent to the broken, the homeless, the lost, the lepers, the prostitutes, the oppressed, the outcasts. Frost’s point was that the church loves to focus on the second part of John 20:21. We love to talk about how we are sent. We are a sending church. We are a sent people. (If you are not convinced of the sending nature of God and His church you can check out this page!) But as helpful as it is to recognized that we are a called and sent people of God, we do not really “step into the mission of Jesus” if we are not sent into the broken parts of the world, “just as the Father” sent Jesus.

This means, at least in part, that we must moved beyond proximity (which is certainly a start) to a place of “presence.” We must “move into the neighborhood” (Jn 1:14, MSG), not just geographically, but with our hearts. We must embody the Gospel among the people that we have been sent to.

What else does stepping into the way of mission as illustrated by Jesus do for us, and to us? Here is another short video where Frost speaks of how mission is the catalyst for genuine community and worship.

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I attended a half day conference yesterday that dealt with trends that were impacting the American church. It didn’t take long for me to become frustrated with the “list” of trends seeing that it did not include what I believe to be the most crucial “trend” to understand – that being the shift towards a post-Christian culture.

Without a clear understanding that the church in America no longer sits in the dominant seat of culture, the church is totally incapable of making the necessary missiological and ecclesiological changes. Below are two short videos of Michael Frost speaking to the importance of this topic.

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For further study of the post-Christendom shift I still find Stuart Murray’s Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World to be a great resource. For a brief (23 pages) overview of Murray’s work you might also check out this article: christendom-murray.

Churches throughout the Western world find themselves increasingly marginalized from society as they endeavor to relate the good news to people whose assumptions and attitudes have been shaped by modernity and postmodernity. Our post-Christian, neopagan, pluralistic North American context presents crosscultural missionary challenges every bit as daunting as those we would face on any other continent.

Unfortunately most pastors and church leaders have had no missiological training. Consequently they resort to marketing strategies in place of missionary insights in their attempts to reach out to a population that is becoming increasingly distanced from the church.

– Eddie Gibbs in Church Next: Quantum Changes in How We Do Ministry

Over the past couple of years I have been attempting to read through every book from the Gospel and Our Culture Series written or edited by such authors as Darrell Guder, Craig Van Gelder, George Hunsberger, Lois Barrett and others. My two favorites have been the ever popular “Missional Church” and the lesser known “Confident Witness – Changing World.”

In additon to the book in this series I have also tried to find writings by each author that were pre - GOCN. One such book is “Be My Witnesses” by Darrell Guder. In chapter ten, titled “Correcting The Church’s Course” Guder offers an excellent contrast between what the church is and what it should be using the images of the Temple and the Tabernacle. He writes:

With regard to the church’s interpretation of its role in history, I suggest that the church has developed, from early on, a “temple” interpretation of itself, whereas the biblical image of the church is more the “tabernacle” of the Old Covenant. The difference between these two images is profound.

The temple is an unmovable building, a center for religious activity, even a headquarters for a religious elite or massive building housing an organization whose commitment is to its continuation as it is. Temples often are walled compounds, separated from the world without, architecturally symbolizing a chasm between the so-called sacred and the secular. Temples can be places in which religion functions as an arcane discipline, reserved for the initiates. They are built to last forever, to resist change, to maintain their form and activity in as pure a fashion as possible.

Tabernacles, on the other hand, are a unique expression of a people’s faith. The “tent-church” of the Old Covenant was not permanent but moved with the people whenever they followed God’s leading into new territory. The furnishings of the tabernacle, and the acts of worship and community that took place there, constantly focused the people upon their God, his actions on their behalf, his presence in their midst, and his will and direction for their future.

Israel symbolized and celebrated her faith in this tent-church. It carried both the history and the future hope of Israel’s faith within it, and stood as a constant reminder of her identity as God’s chosen people. At the same time, it was designed and equipped to be mobile, responsive to change, and to provide what the people needed spiritually as they continued their pilgrimage from bondage to the promised land. . . .

My contention is that the tabernacle is closer to the New Testament image of the church than is the temple. We have mentioned earlier that Peter refers to the Christian community as the diaspora, the aliens or pilgrims, when describing their situation in the world in his first epistle. The early church clearly had that sense about itself. Its first self-denomination was “the followers of the Way,” which conveys the sense of movement and pilgrimage that we find in Peter and in the tabernacle.

But very early in its history, the church began to adapt itself to the temple mentality. We see this in its architecture, once Christians began to build buildings or adapt other religious buildings to their use. Gradually, the accoutrements of temple worship crept into the church (we really cannot sort out how and when), so that within a few centuries we have altars, priestly orders, and many of the features of the temple-oriented religions that thrived in the Mediterranean world.

As the Christian church became more and more woven into the fabric of society and government in the Western world, its temple self-interpretation expanded and hardened. The church became the central institution in the typical town or village, symbolized still today by the church steeple that dominates the skylines of Europe and America.

The distinction between secular and sacred developed into a system according to which all of social life, even the practices of calendar keeping, was regulated. Rather than being understood as a pilgrim people, following God through history, the church was seen as a great unchangeable and permanent presence in the world, guaranteeing those central and sacred realities that the haphazard course of human history could not affect. In that position, the church exercised great power. But we must regard that power as a threat in many ways to the church’s obedience to its primary calling.

Here are two excellent quotes from John Stott on the nature of God’s mission and how we are sent to join in that mission.

The primal mission is God’s, for it is he who sent his prophets, his Son, his Spirit. Of these missions the mission of the Son is central, for it was the culmination of the ministry of the prophets, and it embraced within itself as its climax the sending of the Spirit. And now the Son sends [us] as he himself was sent.

And,

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

Here is an extended quote from a great book by Linda Bergquist and Allan Karr. I hope to post a review for the book in the next week.

Today’s church has posed itself a serious challenge: to live according to its missional nature rather than simply organize around mission activities. This challenge is something of an antidote to the church’s previous practice of piecing together a theology out of the two “Great Commission” verses found in Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8 rather than from the entire biblical story.

When we miss the big picture — that God is forming a people for Himself and reconciling the world to Himself — it affects our ecclesiology and reduces mission to a program or department of a church. A century ago, the German theologian Martin Kahler said that mission was “the mother of theology” in that the theologizing of the early church was necessitated by its missionary encounters with the world. Over many years, other prophetic voices have tried to call us to a more authentic theology, but we have not always listened. In 1969, missiologist Heinrich Kastin wrote: “Mission was, in the early stages, more than a mere function; it was a fundamental expression of the life of the church. The beginnings of a missionary theology are therefore also the beginnings of Christian theology as such.”

As you design, refine, or re-align, these questions about the role of mission will be some of your most important decisions. Do you believe that missions are something that the church does, or that mission is something that the church intrinsically is? Your answer to this question either limits or releases people. It helps define whether the church seeks the lost, or whether we expect the lost to seek the church. Which will it be?

– Church Turned Inside Out: A Guide For Designers, Refiners, And Re-Aligners by Linda Bergquist and Allan Karr

Following is a short video (produced and edited by Bill Kinnon) that recently “resurfaced” on the internet. It is an interview between Alan Roxburgh and 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,” “The Missional Church and Denominations,” 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 missional church to 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. Or to use David Bosch’s famous quote, “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 discern how He is working. We must 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?”

Craig Van Gelder & Alan Roxburgh – What is Missional Church? from Allelon on Vimeo.

Here are four quotes, two on prayer and two on confession, that really spoke to me this past week.

In order to find a person who prays, you have to look for clues: charitableness, good temper, patience, a fair ability to handle stress, resonance, openness to others. What happens to people who pray is that their inward life gradually takes over from their outward life. That is not to say that they are any less active. They may be competent lawyers, doctors, businessmen. But their hearts lie int he inner life and they are moved by that. — Emilie Griffin from Clinging

In Abraham Heschel’s A Passion for Truth, he writes, ‘He who thinks that he has finished is finished.’ How true! Those who think that they have arrived have lost their way. Those who think they have reached their goal, have missed it. Those who think they are saints, are demons. An important part of the spiritual life is to keep longing, waiting, hoping, expecting. In the long run, some voluntary penance becomes necessary to help us remember that we are not yet fulfilled. A good criticism, a frustrating day, an empty stomach, or tired eyes might help to reawaken our expectation and deepen our prayer: Come, Lord Jeses, come. — Henri Nouwen from The Genesse Diary

“Confess your faults one to another” (James 5:16) He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, not withstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break through to fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everyone must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners! — Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Life Together

Confession is so difficult a Discipline for us partly because we view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We come to feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin. We could not bear to reveal our failures and shortcomings to others. We imagine that we are the only ones who have not stepped onto the high road to heaven. . . . But if we know that the people of God are first a fellowship of sinners we are freed to hear the unconditional call of God’s love and to confess our need openly before our brothers and sisters. We know that we are not alone in our sin. The fear and pride which cling to us like barnacles cling to others also. In acts of mutual confession we release the power that heals. Our humanity is no longer denied but transformed. — Richard Foster from Celebration of Discipline

Most of you that follow this blog are familiar with The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch. It is certainly one of the most significant books in the present missional conversation. If you are not familiar with the book you can read a series of post I did here. I would also highly recommend the more recent The Forgotten Ways Handbook, which I wrote about briefly here.

To move the conversation beyond the written word, and to hear directly from Hirsch himself, check out the training videos created by Lance Ford at Shapevine. The training involves eight sessions, or “podules,” that include an introduction, a session on chaos theory, and a session on each of the six mDNA elements described in The Forgotten Ways. The eight session training is priced at $39.95, however Shapevine is currently running a special which includes the same online training in a DVD format. In other words, you can get instant access to the online training while having the DVDs shipped in the next couple of weeks.

For those of you in the Kansas City area, keep a watch out for the development of some local learning cohort groups as we work through this excellent training together.