When the Missional Church Gathers

May 13, 2008 | Filed Under church, missional | 7 Comments

The purpose of the formation of these communities, initiated by Jesus with his disciples and continued by the apostles, was not to create enclaves of the pure and the righteous who lived in legalistically defined isolation from their polluted environments. These communities were to demonstrate before the world the nature of the love and healing that God had made real for all in Christ in the way that they lived and related.

Their work, beginning with how they earned their bread, to how their families lived, to the character of their called communities, to their interactions with their neighbors, was defined as their witness. It seems to me to be clear that the necessary outcome of the basic assumptions and insights of the current missional church discussion must be a strong focus upon the work of witness, which means, I believe, that the lay apostolate merits our full attention. As we see more and more evidence of the “end of Christendom,” especially in our public and cultural life, the issues of ministry in daily life become more urgent.

The constant question of the earnest Christian in the workplace is, “How shall we then witness?” The answers are by no means easy. To assume that North American society is still, in its core, Christian, is both dangerous and illusory. But the response is not to retreat to “fortress ecclesia.” Rather, it is to take the fundamentally missional character of the gathered church so seriously that we begin to ask, “How shall we prepare one another for our work as witness when we are gathered for worship, nurture, and fellowship?”

Darrell Guder from “Worthy Living: Work and Witness from the Perspective of Missional Church Theology” in Word & World, Fall 2005

The Church Does What It Is

March 27, 2008 | Filed Under church, ecclesiology | 1 Comment

The church is missionary by nature, created by the Spirit to participate fully in the redemptive reign of God. The very existence of the church in the world creates a missionary condition. All that the church does in living its life and in carrying out its ministry is missionary by intent.

The church is missionary by nature because God through the Spirit calls, creates, and commissions the church to communicate to the world that the redemptive reign of God has broken into human history.

Because the church is the creation of the Spirit, its ministry is a work of the Spirit. The church’s ministry flows naturally out of its nature. This means that the church does what it is. . . . It is helpful to summarize the key elements of the church’s nature that have a direct bearing on the church’s ministry.

1. The nature of the church is defined by the mission of God in the world.

2. The nature of the church is the result of the redemptive work of Christ.

3. The nature of the church is holistic in relating redemption to all of life.

4. The church exists as a social community that is both spiritual & human.

5. The church exists as a full demonstration of a new humanity.

The attributes of the church’s nature determine the church’s ministry.

– The Essence of the Church by Craig Van Gelder

The Church Between Gospel & Culture

March 1, 2008 | Filed Under books, church, missional | 2 Comments

One of the most helpful books from the reading list in the previous post has been “The Church Between Gospel & Culture” edited by George Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder. The book is a collection of twenty essays organized into four major categories, which include: “Focusing the Mission Question,” “Assessing Our Culture,” “Discerning the Gospel,” and “Defining the Church.” Authors include James Brownson, Inagrace Dietterich, Douglas John Hall, Alan Roxburgh, Wilbert Shenk, Paul Hiebert and several others.

In the essay titled “Up From the Grassroots: The Church in Transition”written by E. Dixon Junkin, the author argues that the church must once again recapture a sort of “church from below” mentality whereby communities of faith are easily birthed and are doing life rooted in a local context. While reading the following excerpt I was reminded of Neil Cole’s comment that we need to “raise the bar for what it means to be a disciple and lower the bar for what it means to be the church.” Junkin writes:

Instead of continuing to expend such energy trying to make outworn patterns of institutional life serve us, it seems appropriate to devote more attention to the task of creating new forms of common life that may, over time, allow a new consensus to emerge.

And it seems probably that the relearning of the meaning of Christian faith and life is most likely to occur in communities that are small enough to permit all their members to participate fully in the process of reflection, decision, and action.

One could probably describe such communities in many ways . . . let us imagine thousands of communities whose members in an intentional, disciplined fashion do the following six things:

1. Pray together.
2. Share their joys and struggles.
3. Study the context in which they find themselves.
4. Listen for God’s voice speaking through Scripture.
5. Seek to discern the obedience to which they are being called.
6. Engage in common ministry.

The Times They Are A-Changin’

February 18, 2008 | Filed Under church, culture | No Comments

The latest Barna Update illustrates the shift of the spiritual landscape in the United States. Barna reports that for the first time the majority of adults believe there are biblically legitimate alternatives to conventional church when it comes to experiencing and expressing their faith.

Here is the heart of the article:

For decades, American Christians, who comprise more than four of every five adults, assumed they had one legitimate way to practice their faith: through involvement in a conventional church. But new research shows that this mind set is no longer prevalent in the U.S. The latest Barna study shows that a majority of adults now believe that there are various biblically legitimate alternatives to participation in a conventional church.

Each of six alternatives was deemed by a most adults to be “a complete and biblically valid way for someone who does NOT participate in the services or activities of a conventional church to experience and express their faith in God.” Those alternatives include engaging in faith activities at home, with one’s family (considered acceptable by 89% of adults); being active in a house church (75%); watching a religious television program (69%); listening to a religious radio broadcast (68%); attending a special ministry event, such as a concert or community service activity (68%); and participating in a marketplace ministry (54%).

Smaller proportions of the public consider other alternatives to be complete and biblically valid ways of experiencing and expressing their faith in God. Those include interacting with a faith-oriented website (45%) and participating in live events via the Internet (42%).

Activity Outside the Conventional Church

The Barna study also found that tens of millions of people are experiencing and expressing their faith in God independent of any connection to a conventional church. In the past month, 55% of adults had attended a conventional church service. During that same month, 28% of all adults who did not attend a conventional church activity did, however, participate in an alternative means of experiencing and expressing their faith in God.

Looking at some of the newer and more controversial methods of spiritual engagement, the survey found that 4% had participated in a house church or simple church; 9% had been involved in a ministry that met in the marketplace; and 12% had engaged in spiritual activity on the Internet.

Get Involved In What God Is Doing

February 2, 2008 | Filed Under church, culture | No Comments

Two years ago today Bono spoke with a prophetic voice at the National Prayer Breakfast in D.C. To watch the video or read the text of his remarks go here. Following is one of many statements that spoke to me:

A number of years ago, I met a wise man who changed my life. In countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord’s blessing. I was saying, “Look, I have a new song, would you look out for it. I have a family, I’m going away on tour, please look after them. I have this crazy idea, could I have a blessing on it?”

And this wise man asked me to stop. He said, “Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing — because it’s already blessed. Well, let’s get involved in what God is doing. God, as I say, is always with the poor. That’s what God is doing. That’s what He’s calling us to do.

Ministry in 2018

January 8, 2008 | Filed Under church, culture | 1 Comment

Alan Nelson, executive editor of Rev! Magazine and author of Me to We offers an interesting article in the latest issue of Rev! titled “Ministry in 2018: 12 Trends Affecting You Now.”

The list is developed by synthesizing research from dozens of studies over the past five years. Trends that are discussed include: Hospice Care for Denominations, Outreach Through Service, Morphing of House Churches, Spiritual Tipping Point Away From America, and Fewer Mega-Campuses Built (But More Mega-Ministries).

While the discussion on each of the trends is interesting and worth reading, I found the responses (and in some cases push back) from others like Alan Hirsch, Dan Kimball and especially Sally Morgenthaler most helpful. Find the expanded online version, including the additional responses here.

Mission As The Mother of The Church

January 3, 2008 | Filed Under church, missional | No Comments

Mission is not only the “mother of theology,” as Martin Kahler said at the turn of the twentieth century and as David Bosch has more recently reminded us. Mission might also be called the “mother of the church,” the great task believers have been given that binds them together, provides them with nourishment, focuses their energies, heals their sinfulness and provides them with challenge and vision.

- Constants in Context by Stephen B. Bevans and Roger Schroeder

Conversation with Rob Bell

December 26, 2007 | Filed Under church, culture | 1 Comment

There is a very interesting conversation over at Read the Spirit between David Crumm and Rob Bell at the beginning of Bell’s “The God’s Aren’t Angry” tour. You can find the complete interview here, but here is a bit of the dialogue:

DAVID: You’re known as a master of new media -– that’s the way people think of your work with the downloadable sermons and Nooma films and your church’s unusual Web site. But you don’t use a lot of that on stage. Not at Mars Hill and not in these tours. What you do on stage is very basic. Why?

ROB: We have to be extremely cautious. We shape our tools and they shape us. I’m completely open to whatever new technologies present themselves, but we also must be aware of what these new things are. They’re tools and they shape our messages.

Some of these tools are so powerful that they will gather lots of people. But filling a room with thousands of people who watch a performance –- that’s not church. Church involves feeding the poor, talking somebody out of killing themselves, helping someone pay their grocery bills when they can’t afford to do it. That’s church.

The Christmas Theme of Weakness

December 20, 2007 | Filed Under church, way of Jesus | 1 Comment

Darryl Dash shares a provocative post on the Christmas theme of weakness. Here is a portion:

Jesus consistently taught about laying aside our rights, becoming weak like children, and rejoicing when we were under-appreciated. He identified with those who were outcasts and powerless. He taught that the tiniest of seeds becomes the haven of birds. His entire ministry was predicated upon God’s strength showing up in weakness. Yet I find myself consistently impressed with the strong. I do not naturally like the way of weakness.

I praise God for large and strong churches, but I worry that we often think that God needs powerful churches and important people to do his work. Scripture shows us that some of the most powerful and influential people in redemption’s history squandered their influence, while God has used humble nobodies to change the world.

On Christmas, as we think of the God who laid aside his strength, it’s important to remind ourselves of the strength of weakness. Perhaps God is most at work today in people and churches that will never be written up in books, and will never make the conference circuit. God’s strength still shows up most powerfully in weakness.

Temple Church vs. Tabernacle Church

November 19, 2007 | Filed Under church, ecclesiology, missional | No Comments

Over the past year I have been attempting to read through each 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. Thus far my favorites have been “Missional Church” and “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. More>>

Tim Keller and The Growth of Christianity

November 19, 2007 | Filed Under church, church planting | No Comments

“Isn’t evangelical Christianity growing—at least in North America? Look at all the megachurches spouting up! But we must remember that the new situation Lloyd-Jones was describing has spread in stages. It was in Europe before North America. It was in cities before it was in the rest of the society. In the United States it has strengthened in the Northeast and the West Coast first. In many places, especially in the South and Midwest, there is still a residue of more conservative society where people maintain traditional values.

Many of these people are therefore still reachable with the fairly superficial, older evangelism programs of the past. And if we are honest, we should admit that many churches are growing large without any evangelism at all. If a church can present unusually good preaching and family ministries and programming, it can easily attract the remaining traditional people and siphon off Christians from all the other churches in a thirty-mile radius. This is easier now than ever because people are very mobile, less tied into their local communities, and less loyal to institutions that don’t meet their immediate needs. But despite the growth of megachurches through these dynamics, there is no evidence that the number of churchgoers in the United States is significantly increasing.”

Tim Keller, The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World
(HT: Sets ‘n’ Service)

Moving From What Is To What Must Be

November 16, 2007 | Filed Under church, missional | 1 Comment

“What seems clear is that we have both a profound consciousness of the utter futility of life without God, and at the same time an altogether new hunger and thirst for spiritual reality. What is equally clear is that the old order of the established and organized church, relying on its structures and traditions instead of the renewing of the Spirit of God, will not do. The formularies and creeds of the church, devoid of spiritual life, will never satisfy those who in their own different ways are searching for the living God.

If, however, the church is able to rediscover its identity, as originally given by God in the Scriptures and made alive and relevant by the Spirit of God for every generation, we could be in the most exciting and exhilarating time in the history of the church that has ever been.

Humanly speaking, everything depends on our ability to catch a new vision of the church as it ought to be, on our willingness to change where necessary, and above all on our determination to keep our lives continually open to spiritual renewal.”

- David Watson in I Believe in the Church

(image ht: jonathanbrink)

Hurray! Church Got Sued & Lost

October 31, 2007 | Filed Under church, culture | 2 Comments

I never thought I would celebrate the day that a church got sued and lost! But yeah to this one!

Has Willow Got It Wrong?

October 22, 2007 | Filed Under church, spiritual formation | 2 Comments

One of the things I have always admired about Willow Creek Community Church is their willingness to question what they are doing and admit when something isn’t “working.” If you haven’t already heard about the Reveal Study I would recommend (when you have an extra 13 minutes) watching this short video by Greg Hawkins, Executive Pastor at Willow as he talks about what they have been learning recently.

I think their findings speak to a variety of issues, including: what is at the core of spiritual transformation, the topic of “revolutionaries” as describe by Barna, and the implications for living a “church-centered life” rather than a “Christ-centered life.” I also think it has a few things to say about the need for a “missional order,” a topic that has gain a lot of traction of late.

The Barna Group Update

September 25, 2007 | Filed Under church, culture | 5 Comments

If you have any doubt about the waning influence of the church in America read Barna’s latest update here. A new study conducted by the Barna Group among 16 to 29 year olds shows that a new generation is more skeptical of and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago.

I find many of Barna’s findings to be reminiscent of Kimball’s latest book “They Like Jesus But Not The Church.” What this generation is skeptical of is not the way of Jesus, but the “way” of judgmental, hypocritical Christians. I appreciated one of the final paragraphs in the Barna update:

Some Christians fear the changing reputation of Christianity and it certainly represents an uncomfortable future. Yet, rather than being defensive or dismissive, we should learn from critics, especially those young Christians who are expressing consternation about the state of faith in America. Jesus told us to expect hostility and negative reactions. That is certainly nothing new.

But the issue is what we do with it. Is it a chance to defend yourself and demand your rights? Or is it an opportunity to show people grace and truth? Common ground is becoming more difficult to find between Christians and those outside the faith. When the Apostle Paul advises believers to “live wisely among those who are not Christians” and to “let your conversation be gracious and effective,” (Colossians 4:5-6, NLT) he could be writing no better advice to committed Christians in America.

Rethinking Worship Evangelism?

September 21, 2007 | Filed Under church, ecclesiology, missional | No Comments

There is probably a good chance you have already seen this article from Sally Morgenthaler, author of Worship Evangelism. Morgenthaler’s article was first published in Rev! Magazine but recently was offered on the Allelon website as well as this month’s Next Wave ezine.

I used a portion of Worship Evangelism as part of the curriculum for a course on Worship from 1999 to 2003. I appreciated her emphasis on challenging seeker targeted churches to rethink performance based “worship” to that in which seekers would sense and experience the presence of God. Morgenthaler challenged church leaders to consider the evangelistic potential of authentic worship.

However, today Morgenthaler has become increasingly uncomfortable with the “worship-driven subculture.” She has become convinced that the focus on culturally relevant, authentic worship has been at the expense of understanding and living the Christian faith with a missional perspective.

I would recommend reading the entire article on one of the sites linked above, but here is a sample of Morgenthaler’s struggle: More>>

Hit the Bullseye

September 7, 2007 | Filed Under books, church, leadership | 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 | Filed Under church, kingdom of God, missional | 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.

What Can We Learn From Calvin & Hobbes

August 23, 2007 | Filed Under church, culture, gospel | 2 Comments

I 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, I was delighted to discover a wonderful essay by Fred Sanders titled “What You Can Learn from Calvin and Hobbes about the Message and the Medium” over at The Scriptorium Daily. Sanders discusses lessons learned from Watterson and how those lessons should be applied to the way the church communicates the Gospel of Jesus. (HT: Tim Challies)

Living Systems and The Church

August 15, 2007 | Filed Under books, church, dmin project, missional | 2 Comments

Lately 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 the church as well as disciplining those within the body.

Last night I was revisiting some thoughts from “The Forgotten Ways.” In chapter eight Hirsch quotes from “Surfing the Edge of Chaos” by Richard Pascale and “Unfreezing Moves” by William Easum in the midst of a discussion on learning from systems theory for the health of living organizations. Living systems theory says that:

Equilibrium is a precursor to death. “When a living system is in a state of equilibrium, it is less responsive to changes occurring around it. This places it at maximum risk.” (Pascale) This correlates to the situation in the organizational lifecycle when organizations tend to over regulate, lose dynamism, inhabit unresponsive structures, and degenerate in terms of output. In this state, they are in effect moving toward equilibrium. When the Christendom mode of church fails to respond to outside stimuli by disengaging from the liminal experience and becomes purely self-referential, then you can be sure it is on its way out.

In other words, it has lost its missional focus, which should drive it outside its own boundaries. In so many churches the mission of the church has actually become the maintenance of the institution itself. This was never Jesus’ intention. Our goal in organizing as a people is not to set up, preserve, and maximize an institution over its life cycle, but to extend God’s mission to the world. Our primary aim is not to perpetuate the church as an institution, but to follow Jesus into his mission in the world. “Christianity is concerned with the unfolding of the Kingdom of God in this world, not the longevity of organizations.” (Easum)

When we keep the mission in mind, the organic ideas about Christianity and church life will flow quite easily. When we have the institution of the church in mind, machine-like approaches are bound to follow, because its innate mechanism of responsiveness (mission) is effectively taken out of the equation. Mission is, and must be, the organizing principle of the church.

Marketplace and Missional Church

August 13, 2007 | Filed Under church, dmin project, missional | 1 Comment

“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 the 10% with loose affiliation while we are largely out of touch with the 80%. The most obvious place where the committed 10% encounter the 80% is in the workplace. This observation is missional in the sense that it involves movement outwards from the gathered centre because those beyond the church mailing list rarely have an interest in coming to where we gather.”

- “Marketplace and Missional Church” from Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought & Practice by Derek Christensen

John Stott on Cultural Engagement

August 12, 2007 | Filed Under church, culture | 2 Comments

“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

The Starfish & The Church in China

August 9, 2007 | Filed Under books, church | No Comments

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 more decentralized.

2. An open system doesn’t have central intelligence; the intelligence is spread throughout the system.

3. Open systems can easily mutate.

4. The decentralized organization sneaks up on you.

HT: journeys in between)

The Starfish & The Spider

August 7, 2007 | Filed Under books, church | 4 Comments

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 use of the starfish and the spider. A spider has eight legs coming out of a central body. It has a tiny head and eight eyes. If you cut off the spider’s head, it dies. It may survive without a leg or two or even stand to lose a couple of eyes, but it certainly can’t live without its head.

On the other hand, while a starfish may appear to be similar to the central body and multiple legs of the spider, it is really quite different. The starfish doesn’t have a head. Its central body isn’t even in charge. In fact, the major organs are replicated throughout each and every arm. If you cut the starfish in half, the animal won’t die and pretty soon you’ll have two starfish. More>>

Nurturing a Third Way for Congregations

August 1, 2007 | Filed Under church, leadership | No Comments

Here is an excellent article from The Alban Institute titled “Changing the Conversation: Nurturing a Third Way for Congregations.” The article, written by Anthony Robinson, first appeared in Congregations magazine and last week was included in Scot McKnight’s weekly meanderings over at Jesus Creed. For a flavor of where Robinson is going in the article here is the opening paragraph:

For congregations—particularly congregations of the mainline Protestant tradition—the way forward has everything to do with changing the conversation. Is a third way possible—a way beyond the polarized alternatives of either liberal or conservative, left or right, red or blue, traditional or contemporary, praise or classical? If it is possible, is a third way merely a compromise between extremes, a muddle in the middle, or is it a vital center and a new framing of the conversation?

Change or Die?

July 26, 2007 | Filed Under church, church planting | 6 Comments

When discussing church planting issues the question of revitalizing existing churches will often be raised. In fact just this week I had a guy ask if I knew of any “dead or dying” churches in our network that were open to making changes to be more “externally focused” and “evangelistic.” I shared with him that in most cases there are good reasons why a church is dead or dying and often it is simply because the church has no real desire to change. The church may say they want to change and experience spiritual and numeric growth, but their actions and behaviors prove otherwise.

Well today David Wayne linked to an interesting article discussing research on our resistance to change in a 2005 issue of Fast Company magazine. The article was reference by Ed Stetzer in a conversation that he, Drew Goodmanson, and David had over lunch at the GCA North America Church Planting Seminar. More>>

The Mission Shaped Church Interview

July 16, 2007 | Filed Under church, ecclesiology, missional | No Comments

Alan Roxburgh interviews Rev. Graham Cray, a bishop in the Anglican Church in the UK and the chair of the working group who published the “Mission Shaped Church” report which is available for download at Fresh Expressions. Bishop Cray talks about what is happening in the UK around fresh expressions of church and how they are trying to connect with the “de-churched.” He also discusses how a sense of collaboration is developing as older churches are learning and working together with newer churches. The interview is only 11 minutes long and can be viewed here.

I Long For A Church That …

June 22, 2007 | Filed Under church, ecclesiology, missional | 1 Comment

Back in February of 2005 Brother Maynard from Subversive Influence shared an excellent post titled “To Clarify This Journey.” It was republished a month later at emergingchurch.info. In the post Brother Maynard shares nine characteristics that he longs for in the life of a faith community. How deeply do these points resonate with you? What would you add to his list? More>>

Gordon Cosby

June 2, 2007 | Filed Under church, spiritual formation | 1 Comment

“If men and women today began by the thousands experiencing the depths of Jesus Christ in a transforming way, there would simply be no place for their expression of experience to fit into the present-day straitjackets of Christianity. Protestant or Catholic, neither one is structured to contain a mass of devoted people who long for spiritual depth. We are structured towards infancy.”

Gordon Cosby, The Church of the Saviour

Missional Meanderings

May 22, 2007 | Filed Under church, ecclesiology, leadership, meanderings, missional | No Comments

Here is an excellent article on the importance of teaching theology from a missional perspective by Dr. John Franke, Professor of Theology at Biblical Seminary. The article focuses on the implications of understanding Christian theology as a discipline that should assist the church in it’s missional vocation.

Drew Goodmanson presents a couple of outstanding posts on developing a “triperspectival ecclesiology.” The first post is here. Second post is here. A follow up post on missional leadership is here. Be sure to examine the diagrams with each post. How do you see these diagrams assisting the formation of your community? How do they help you communicate?

I found the possibilities of this event very interesting in light of several conversations we have been having about the need for some sort of missional order.

Does individualism pervert the gospel? Getting the Gospel right by Scot McKnight.

In small group ministry as well as house/organic expressions of church people inevitably ask “what to do with the kids?”

Finally, here is a nice resource of seminary courses from Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. There are nearly a thousand free resources available for download in mp3 or pdf files.

Are You Jonah?

May 9, 2007 | Filed Under books, church | 1 Comment

I have been reading Dan Kimball’s new book “They Like Jesus But Not The Church.” I have found several insights from the book to be helpful. One section I found funny (in a sad kind of way) is titled “The Transformation From Excited Missionary Into Citizen Of The Bubble.” In this section of the book Kimball shares his observation concerning what happens to many believers as they “mature” in their Christian walk. More>>

Missional & Emerging

April 19, 2007 | Filed Under church, missional | No Comments

Here is an interesting conversation on the Allelon Netcast between Fuller Associate Professor Ryan Bolger and Alan Roxburgh. Bolger talks about the emerging church in light of the missional conversation - citing the research done by he and fellow Fuller Professor Eddie Gibbs in their book Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures. He also describes a bit of his own journey in the missional/emerging conversation and how he teaches missional church issues in the classroom.

Missional and the SBC

February 20, 2007 | Filed Under church, ecclesiology, missional | No Comments

Dr. Ed Stetzer, Missiologist and Research Team Director at the North American Mission Board gave a presentation at the Baptist Identity Conference last week titled “Toward a Missional Convention.” Here is the pdf file of the paper that he presented and a link to the audio.

Stetzer tells it like it is in Southern Baptist life, I just hope people will really listen to what he has to say. Here is just a taste of what he shared:

We can no longer continue trying to reach North America with “one-size fits all” methods and an inward denominational focus. The shift toward a missional SBC will consequently necessitate a change from the way many churches are doing ministry.

Baptist have a choice - we can argue about whether we’ll use the noun “missionary” or the adjective “missional,” - or we can recognize that a lost world needs us to stop arguing about nomenclature and obey Christ’s commands. Simply put, it does not matter what you call it, it matters that you do it. And we are not doing it.

Furthermore, many young leaders, who have been alienated and marginalized, are not pining away hoping that the SBC will welcome them back. Many of them have moved on to networks and other partnerships where they can get on mission instead of getting into an argument. The result of this phenomenon has become the “elephant in the room” for Southern Baptists.

There is a reason so many churches are forming networks - they are doing so because they do not see ours as their best investment of time and energy. If our seminaries do not teach cultural engagement, our agencies primarily espouses strategies from a past era, and our associations reject anything that does not look like a tent revival, it will be little surprise that our young leaders consider us out of touch.

The Crusades & The Kingdom of God

February 15, 2007 | Filed Under church, gospel, kingdom of God, way of Jesus | 3 Comments

Over the past several years I have had the wonderful opportunity to teach a course on the History of Christianity at a small college in Wichita. Just this last Saturday we dealt with “The Christian Middle Ages” which covers the time period from 590-1517. I was once again forced to struggle with the atrocities of this time period in the life of the church: the deep corruption within the church, the power grab between pope and emperor, and between pope and pope, the inquisition, and especially abhorrent the seven crusades. While in the past I usually tried to understand the misguided motivation behind the crusades by focusing on the corruption and power struggles that occurred as a result of the melding together of church and state, this time I reflected more on the misunderstanding that they (and we) sometimes have concerning the Kingdom of God.

There is no doubt that the reign, or Kingdom, of God was the central theme of Jesus’ preaching but this theme has been absent from the missionary message of the church for a very long time. There have been, and continue to be, many distortions and dilutions of this theme. The most obvious, and applicable to the problems of the Middle Ages, was the idea that Christianized Western civilization from Constantine onward was, in fact, God’s Kingdom on earth. Therefore, to “extend” or “expand” the Kingdom by what ever means, made perfect sense to many. If the Kingdom is about physical, geographical reign then by all means “expand the borders.”

But has not that distortion of the Kingdom been replaced by more recent versions? Do we not sometimes understand the reign of God as a particular program of social or economic justice, which we are to “build” as God’s agents? But instead are we not called to “enter” and “receive” the Kingdom of God? (Those are the verbs that are used by Jesus when speaking about the Kingdom; never does He use “expand” or “build.”) We are called to enter into what God is doing in the world. We are called to participate in His activities. We are called to participate in God’s mission of setting things right in a broken, sinful world, and to restore it to what God has always intended for the world.