“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

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.”

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.

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.

“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.

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

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.

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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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