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.

“More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems.

My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans, not to organize people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress. But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but truly love them.”

– Henri Nouwen

If you are interested in effectively influencing others to take action on issues of social action, then I would highly recommend “Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps For A Better World” by Mae Elise Cannon. I am not familiar with any other resource of this kind. Cannon provides a comprehensive guide to the topic of social justice that is not only rooted in Scripture, but is replete with tangible ways to pursue justice through the local church.

The handbook is divided into two main parts. Part one, which includes five chapters, titled “Foundations of Social Justice,” is meant to provide a biblical and theological framework for justice, and addresses how individuals and churches can get involved.

Chapter one, “God’s Heart for Justice,” is a broad view of the theological foundation for social justice. Chapter two focuses on definitions and questions about social justice. Chapter three, provides a history of Christian social justice in the United States. Chapter four addresses the process people must embark on to allow their hearts to be opened and broken toward those who are most affected by injustice and oppression. And chapter five focuses on the roles individuals, church, community and government can play in advocating social justice.

While each of the chapters are excellent, my favorite is chapter four. In it Cannon shares a very helpful process of moving people from apathy to advocacy, that I believe has broad implications for ministry. She writes:

Though social justice cannot be simplified to a step-by-step program, I have identified nine components to be consistently helpful in the movement from apathy to advocacy: prayer, awareness, lament, repentance, partnership and community, sacrifice, advocacy, evangelism, and celebration. Sometimes these elements happen in a linear progression, sometimes they happen simultaneously, and at other times they are cyclical. In any case, they are part of the ongoing process of personal transformation and spiritual growth toward Christlikeness.

Part two, “Social Justice Issues,” is arranged alphabetically and includes more than eighty justice “topics.” This section of the book is designed to be both a reference guide and a reflective tool. Cannon has included multiple ministry profiles, spiritual reflection and awareness exercises, and simple (not easy) action steps. Lastly, the book includes a wonderful set of appendixes, that include organizations, books and movies that deal with a variety of justice issues.

I appreciate the words of Gilbert Bilezikian as he sums up his recommendation of this resource: “The moment you open Social Justice Handbook, it will vibrate in your hands with the heart-passion that inspired its making, a passion generated by him who described his life-mission as bringing good news to the poor, release to captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed and the time of God’s grace.”

For additional insight on Cannon’s view of social justice see this brief, yet helpful interview by Jamie Arpin-Ricci.

For several months now I have been meaning to highlight two fantastic tools for missional living. I have purchased more than twenty copies of each of these “handbooks” to give to those I know are on the journey of developing misisonal churches.

The first is The Tangible Kingdom Primer written by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay. The primer was written with two specific purposes in mind. First, to be a spiritual formation tool to prepare the hearts of people for mission. It is written in such a way that participants can simply be a group of friends who commit to journey through an eight week spiritual formation exercise together. Second, the primer is to be a field guide for starting mission activity together. In other words, it is also a great fit for those who are already inclined to jump in on practices that can engage and impact a local context.

The workbook is divided into seven days of experiences each week. The weekly rhythm looks like this: Day one involves the exploration of the missional/incarnational concept; Day two presents scripture for meditation on the highlighted topic or issue; Day three pushes for a bit of change in the way you think/act; Day four is about putting thoughts into action; Day five pushes the activity towards a faith community for encouragement and discernment; Day six involves ”calibration” whereby the theme of the week is examined from a different angle; Day seven is a day of rest or sabbath.

The second resource is The Forgotten Ways Handbook by Alan Hirsch and Darryn Altclass. The book is a practical oriented companion to Hirsch’s excellent 2007 book The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church.  By the way, if you are not familiar with The Forgotten Ways, I blogged through much of the book here.

The handbook moves beyond the theological foundation laid in the original The Forgotten Ways, to a place of practice that very few resources provide. This extremely practical handbook includes helpful tools including summary sections encapsulating the ideas contained in each chapter of the original book, suggested habits and practices to help readers embed missional principles, and adult learning-based techniques and examples from other churches that enable readers to process and assimilate the ideas in a group context.

If you are planting a misisonal community or attempting to transition an existing church in a more missional direction I would highly recommend both of these resources. By the way, both Halter and Hirsch will be speaking at Verge in February.

Because of a major glitch involved in the 2.9 WordPress upgrade, the blog has been down for the past couple of weeks. But because of the great help from the guys at iThemes I am finally back up. So to get caught up a bit here are several links I have been hoarding:

Len Hjalmarson adds a bit to an excellent post by David Fitch on Instilling Missional Habits.

Len again with Dallas Willard on Incarnation.

Ortberg shares a great illustration of the incarnation.

How Religious is Your State?

Spiritual Warfare and Gospel Movements.

A good reminder from Dan Kimball to start with prayer in 2010 and to see church buildings as mission outposts.

Churches and Social Media from Drew Goodmanson.

Is There an Organic Church Movement?

Update: Andrew Jones and How to Spot a Church Movement.

Here are two additional sessions from last month’s missional church conference. In these two sessions Eric Swanson speaks to the topic of community transformation. The final 30 minutes of session one includes the audio of an animated short film titled The Man Who Planted Trees. The film is the story of a solitary sheperd who patiently plants and nurtures a forest of thousands of trees, which single-handedly transforms his desert surroundings into a thriving oasis. The film sparked a very good discussion around the topics of focus, forbearance, and investing for the long-term. You can purchase the film and read multiple reviews here.

Why focus on the city? In the United States, more than half of the population now lives in just forty cities of a million or more people. In the past twenty-five years Las Vegas exploded with 250-percent population growth, while Houston grew by 140 percent. Cities are magnets pulling the hopeful across any barrier, and they endure any hardship. They are twenty-four-hour-a-day catch basins for the vulnerable. But some cities are losing population as old industries die. We are in the beginning phases of the most massive migration, both in and out of cities, the world has ever known. And it is ramping up.

Why focus on the city? Today’s cities, even more than nation-states, influence economic systems, political alliances and social movements. This makes cities a strategic investment: what influences the city influences the world. The city needs a growing cadre of young leaders – both college and graduate students as well as those already in the marketplace – who will link their skills, their privileges and their sense of well-being to the well-being of the city. In today’s globalized world, to shape the city is to shape the way people experience life itself.

Why focus on the city? While for some the city is the normal context of faith development, part and parcel of what it means to follow Jesus and the stage where the drama of life before God has unfolded, for many others the city represents a huge question mark. Is it a place where faith can thrive? Is it a place of blessing, or evidence of a curse? Is the city a spiritually fertile place where a person can sustain a vibrant relationship with God? For many whose faith was nurtured in the womb of a gated suburban community or in the calm rhythms of small town America, there’s a lot of doubt about the answer.

While books on ministry in cities, on community organizing, on urban evangelism or simply on how to serve people in cities abound, there are very few resources that view the city as a place to grow your faith and discover a meaningful life, as a place that transforms you or as a place where your own transformation can have an effect.

- Randy White in Encounter God in the City: Onramps to Personal and Community Transformation

History of Missional Church – Part I
History of Missional Church – Part II
History of Missional Church – Part III

Other Notable Authors and Contributors

There are a number of other authors who have contributed significantly to the missional church conversation in the past decade. Two of the more notable voices have been that of Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost. Their first collaborative effort was The Shaping of Things to Come [1] published in 2003. In that book, the authors built upon the twelve indicators first offered by the GOCN by adding three additional overarching principles that provides perhaps the best direction for what it means for a church to be missional. The additional principles include the following:

1. The missional church is incarnational, not attractional, in its ecclesiology. By incarnational we mean it does not create sanctified spaces into which unbelievers must come to encounter the gospel. Rather, the missional church disassembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society in order to be Christ to those who don’t yet know him.

2. The missional church is messianic, not dualistic, in its spirituality. That is, it adopts the worldview of Jesus the Messiah, rather than that of the Greco-Roman empire. Instead of seeing the world as divided between the sacred (religious) and profane (nonreligious), like Christ it sees the world and God’s place in it as more holistic and integrated.

3. The missional church adopts an apostolic, rather than a hierarchical, mode of leadership. By apostolic we mean a mode of leadership that recognizes the fivefold model detailed by Paul in Ephesians 6. It abandons the triangular hierarchies of the traditional church and embraces a biblical, flat-leadership community that unleashes the gifts of evangelism, apostleship, and prophecy, as well as the currently popular pastoral and teaching gifts. [2]

Hirsch and Frost believe the missional “genius” of a church can only be unleashed when there are foundational changes made to the church’s very DNA, and that means addressing fundamental issues like ecclesiology, spirituality, and leadership. It means there must be a complete shift away from a Christendom way of thinking, which, as mentioned above, has been attractional, dualistic, and hierarchical. [3]

Several other books that have added much to the missional church conversation in the past decade are included in the following abridged annotated bibliography:

Craig Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000).

In The Essence of the Church, Van Gelder shares his concerns for many churches taking a functional approach to ecclesiology. He then moves to articulate a missional ecclesiology, which he places in the context of God’s purposes within creation and his eschatological intention. According to Van Gelder, the church is the redemptive reign of God implemented in a fallen world. Furthermore, it is the Spirit which carries out the redemptive purposes of God through the church as the Spirit empowers it for ministry. After describing the church from a redemptive, Trinitarian theological perspective, Van Gelder reserves the second half of the book to give practical advice about what the church is, what the church does, and how the church should organize to best live out its missionary nature.

Milfred Minatrea. Shaped by God’s Heart: The Passion and Practices of Missional Churches (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004).

In Shaped by God’s Heart, Minatrea offers a good introduction to the missional church conversation. The book is organized in three sections. Part one is titled, “The Church in a New and Changing World.” In this portion of the book Minatrea discusses the difference between being “mission-minded” and “missional.” In part two, “The Nine Essential Practices of Missional Churches,” he presents the core of the book as he shares nine practices that he has observed in studying missional churches. Part three is titled “Structures and Strategies for Becoming Missional.” In this last section Minatrea shares strategies for church leaders who desire to move their churches towards becoming more missional. Additionally, each chapter includes helpful reflection and application questions to be used in group studies.

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006).

In The Forgotten Ways, Frost and Hirsch describe the current form of church in two simple ways. A missional church is one that goes to where people are to engage them on their own cultural turf while an attractional model expects people to leave where they are and come join the church culture. They contend that the attractional, institutional church that in large part is the creation of the church growth movement, has created a spectator Christianity that is largely irrelevant at reaching 85 percent of the culture. However the book is much more than a simple attack on the attractional church or the church growth movement. Building upon theological reflection and missiological principles, the authors develops a sound missional theology for the church. The Forgotten Ways will certainly remain one of the most significant contributions to effective missional engagement.

Alan J. Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk, The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006).

In The Missional Leader, Roxburgh and Romanuk draw upon many years of experience as consultants to church leaders across the United States and Canada. They offer a realistic approach to leaders who are struggling with what it means to be a missional church in a local context. The authors caution against adopting business models and church growth techniques. Instead they continually emphasize the importance of recognizing that the church is a spiritual entity that is lead and empowered by the Spirit. The goal of spiritual leadership therefore is to discern where and how the Spirit of God is working in the context of the local church.

Ed Stetzer and David Putman, Breaking the Missional Code (Nashville: B&H, 2006).

Breaking the Misisonal Code is one of the most practical introductions to the missional conversation. The book is built upon the premise that the church is a community created by God to be sent as a missionary into a local context. To do so effectively means that the church must break the “missional code” of their context. Each church must function as a missionary people exegeting their culture in order to better present the Gospel.  Throughout the book Stetzer and Putman provide numerous examples of churches that exhibit missional qualities. They also offer multiple definitions to bring clarity to missional terminology. For any church leader who desires to better understand the basics of missional practice Breaking the Missional Code would be a great place to begin.

Patrick Keifert, We Are Here Now: A New Missional Era (Eagle, ID: Allelon Publishing, 2006).

In We Are Here Now, Keifert offers a framework for deep change in churches and leadership teams that are striving towards missional engagement. Similar to other books on the missional church, Keifert agrees that as a result of vast cultural changes the church is in desperate need of recapturing its missionary nature. However what sets We Are Here Now apart is that Keifert lays out a long-range plan of spiritual discernment and transformation for a local congregation. Keifert maintains that when it comes to serious missional commitment, there are no quick fixes and real change is shaped by Scripture, the Holy Spirit, and attention to each other.

Craig Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church: A Community Led by the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007).

Van Gelder writes that the premise of The Ministry of the Missional Church is to encourage churches to recognize the ministry of the Spirit in the midst of constant congregational change. He believes that God’s intent is often to use change either directly or indirectly to move a congregation in new directions of meaningful ministry under the leading of the Spirit. Furthermore, Van Gelder desires for congregations to understand that the Spirit-led ministry of the church flows out of the Spirit-created nature of the church. In other words, being precedes doing. Or to put it another way, the nature of the church establishes the foundation for understanding the purpose of the church and its ministry and determines their direction and scope. Van Gelder does an excellent job of showing that when a church begins with its nature, or essence as a Spirit-created community, growth and development are the natural outcome.

Craig Van Gelder, ed., The Missional Church in Context: Helping Congregations Develop Contextual Ministry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).

The Missional Church in Context is a collection of eight outstanding papers presented at a consultation held at Luther Seminary in December of 2005. The premise of the consultation, and exemplified by the book title, is that every context should be seen as a missional context, and every congregation as a missional congregation that is responsible to participate in God’s mission in that context. The book does not promote a method or model of ministry but encourages various congregational expressions to enter a discernment process, with the Spirit, to identify the theological foundations and insights in order to develop the capacity for ministry engagement. Again as indicative of the title, context does matter. Collectively the contributors state that the church needs to develop a “formation triad” that includes congregational formation (the shaping of a concrete Christian community), spiritual formation (corporate and personal attention to initiatives of God) and missional formation (local church’s identity and agency in its encounter with the immediate context). This text represents another important voice speaking on the significance of context in the formation of the local church.

Hugh Halter and Matt Smay. The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).

The Tangible Kingdom is a guide to the planting of missional communities written by two missional practitioners and church planters. One of the strengths of the book is the use of stories to illustrate the power of incarnational community. They show what it looks like to leave the safe “bubble” of much of modern evangelicalism and ventured out into the lives of those around us. Further it provides helpful direction on combating consumerism, living out our mission in the context of an entire community, and what it means to practice biblical hospitality.

Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways Handbook: A Practical Guide for Developing Missional Churches (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009).

The Forgotten Ways Handbook is a follow up to the 2006 publication by the same name. However, the handbook moves beyond the theological foundation built in the original The Forgotten Ways to a place of practice that very little resources provide. This extremely practical handbook includes many helpful tools including summary sections encapsulating the ideas contained in each chapter of the original book, suggested habits and practices to help readers embed missional principles, and adult learning-based techniques and examples from other churches that enable readers to process and assimilate the ideas in a group context.

Reggie McNeal, Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009).

The most significant contribution that Missional Renaissance makes to the missional church conversation is McNeal’s attempt to establish a new way of measuring success in the church in the United States. For years the measure of faithfulness and vitality in the church has been in terms of growth in attendance, finances and facilities. However to assist the church in making a shift in a missional direction, McNeal argues that the church must begin to measure success by using a new scorecard. He asks, What would happen if we measured vitality in terms of growth in the area of people, service, prayer and outreach?

2. Ibid.,12.

3. Ibid.

Today I had the privilege to participate in a conference led by David Fitch. The combination of being a member of academia along with being a church planter gives Fitch an excellent perspective on doing ministry in a Post-Christendom context. One of the many helpful discussions today revolved around the importance of both presence and proximity in the ministry of the missional church. The discussion reminded me of this quote from Nouwen:

More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems. My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans, not to organize people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress. But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but truly love them.

-  Henri Nouwen

“The case for an incarnational approach to missional witness is based, on the one hand, on the character of the biblical record; that is, the way in which the church’s missionary vocation is shaped by the earthly ministry of Jesus. The emphasis upon the necessary congruence of witness is rooted in God’s way of revealing himself supremely and finally in the incarnation of Jesus. The comprehensiveness of the biblical understanding of witness calls for an incarnational interpretation.

On the other hand, this approach helps us deal with some serious problems in our particular Western context. We see in both our mission history and our current evangelistic practices so much that is contrary to the incarnational character of the gospel. We see a gospel of peace proclaimed in divisive, judgmental ways. We see a Gospel of love conveyed manipulatively, insensitively, condescendingly. We see a gospel of healing obscured by distortions that hurt people and evoke resentment.

Thus we arrive at the concept of incarnational witness as one way of expounding the character of our missionary vocation. In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God revealed himself as the One who is with and for his creation.

Now, as the Risen Lord sends his Spirit to empower the church, we are called to become God’s people present in the world, with and for the world, like St. John pointing always to Christ. The most incarnational dimension of our witness is defined by the cross itself, as we experience with Jesus that bearing his cross transforms our suffering into witness.

Incarnational witness is, therefore, a way of describing Christian vocation in terms of Jesus Christ as the messenger, the message, and the model for all who follow after him. To speak of the incarnation missionally is to link who Jesus was, what Jesus did, and how he did it, in one great event that defines all that it means to be Christian.”

- Darrell Guder in The Incarnation and The Church’s Witness

The word mission is the Latinized version of the central theme of John’s Gospel: sending. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). As the Father sends the Son, as the Father and the Sonsend the Spirit, so the triune God sends the church to carry out its mandate of witness.

When we use the term incarnation, then, we are referring to the specific and historical event in which God’s mission reaches its central point and its fullest disclosure. We are also emphasizing the fundamental character of movement and purpose that God’s action reveals: “into the flesh” testifies to the fact that God is active and sending within human history.

The God of both testaments engages the history of his creation, speaks in such a way that his voice can be heard, and calls people not only to respond to his voice but to become part of his mission. In sending Jesus as the Christ, God draws all of salvation history together, as witnessed to the Old Testament, and simultaneously opens it up for proclamation to the entire world.

- Darrell Guder in The Incarnation and The Church’s Witness

A few months ago a Professor at a local seminary shared with me that he was uncomfortable with my use of the phrase “incarnational mission.” He believed the phrase was not very useful, moreover, in his opinion its use minimized the significance of the incarnation event.

Following is an excerpt from an excellent  little book (60 pages) by Darrell Guder titled “The Incarnation and The Church’s Witness” where Guder speaks directly to the meaning of “incarnational mission” as well as the “risk” involved in such language.

“By incarnational mission I mean the understanding and practice of Christian witness that is rooted in and shaped by the life, ministry, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The critical question that motivates this study is this: Can and should the unique event of the incarnation of Jesus that constitutes and defines the message and mission of the church have concrete significance for the way in which the church communicates that message and carries out the mission?

Understanding mission incarnationally . . . could prove to be a remarkably integrative way to approach the church’s missionary vocation. It could counter the typically Western reduction of mission to one of the many programs of the church. It could recast that mission as the definitive calling of the church. It could seek to read the biblical record in its own terms and to address serious problems in Western mission that have surfaced in this century.

Thus, the language of incarnational mission could be both constructive with regard to the biblical and theological understanding of message, and polemical with regard to the context and history of mission, especially in the Western tradition.

Just as any theological concept is susceptible to distortion, there are ways of misconstruing the linkage of Christian mission with the incarnation. It is possible to dilute the uniqueness and centrality of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ when his incarnation becomes a model for Christian behavior. A primary ethical or moralistic interpretation of the life of Jesus, such as was characteristic of nineteenth-century liberal theology, often downplays or dilutes the event-character of the gospel.

But it is that event character, the historical ‘happenedness’ of Jesus’ life, that both enables and defines Christian witness. As we seek to explore the missional significance of the incarnation, we need to resist every temptation to dilute the centrality of the incarnation event. The risk represented by the concept of incarnational mission is worth taking, I think, especially as we are challenged to develop a viable mission theology for the Western world, which by common consent is now a very challenging mission field.”

Incarnation is one of the distinctive words in the Christian vocabulary to summarize the gospel event of Jesus Christ. Although the word is not found in the Bible, it is based on John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

With this statement, the evangelist created a powerful picture of God moving into the flesh. The thrust of this imagery is missional. It emphasizes that God is active and decisive, that God has taken the initiative in the healing of broken and sinful creation. The scriptures, as Spirit-empowered testimony, witness to God’s missionary action, beginning with Abraham and reaching the climax in the incarnation of Jesus, the Son.

God the Father has sent Jesus the Son as the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, whose life, death, and resurrection are the epitome and turning point of God’s mission to redeem humanity and the world. The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit to call and to empower the church to carry out its witness to this gracious good news.

- Darrell Guder in The Incarnation and The Church’s Witness

John Santic at Toward Hope published an excellent post earlier this year titled “10 Tips For Living The Incarnation.” I would highly recommend reading the entire article, but here are three of John’s 10 tips:

Attentive Listening: The art of listening is becoming increasingly important for what it means to live incarnationally. Appropriate listening is grounded in a robust understanding of Pneumatology that believes, in addition to the oft overemphasized personal experience, that the Holy Spirit is active, working, leading, and inviting the church into mission. Our ideas and plans can often override the still small voice that gently invites us into unexpected and new adventures.

Peter’s encounter with Cornelius in the book of Acts is a good story to identify with for the importance of listening to live incarnationally. As the Spirit promises to lead us into all truth, we trust that God will reveal the injustice and oppression in our midst so that we can respond appropriately.

Formative Practices: Living in a rhythm that includes formative spiritual practices is vital to remain intimately connected to God. This is the Contemplative way. Seeking union with God and to see God in all things allows for greater freedom to reflect the image of God to others, understand His good an pleasing will, and it gives us a greater awareness of reality. Walking in closeness through disciplined practices of prayer, listening, scripture reading, Examen, discipleship, and fasting prepares the us for works of service that are pleasing to God and shapes us into a Gospel storied people.

Proximity: As Jesus localized himself in the incarnation, so too must the church localize in order to reflect most vividly the image of God. Without local relationships, the fullness of community seems somewhat lacking. People are transported everywhere through vehicles, the telephone, and the internet in convenient and practical ways. But at what cost?

In the midst of the connectedness we have through technology, there is still a great longing for local relationship and the gift of presence. Being proximate with our relationships is vital if we are to express a full embodiment of what Biblical community is. So go for walks. Build relationships. Let people see you and know you are there.

Here is a link to the latest podcast of the Roxburgh Journal interview with Pete Akins titled “Engaging Neighborhoods Where We Live.”

Roxburgh highlights a creative lay church planting movement taking place in the towns and villages in the UK. I would highly recommend taking 30 minutes to listen and be encouraged by what God is doing through the lives of His servants there. As Roxburgh states on his blog when reflecting on the interview: “I was struck by the power of what God is about in quiet, sustained forms of on-the-ground fresh expressions of kingdom life in rural England.”

In light of yesterday’s post on the sending passages found in the Gospels, here is a sampling of the sending theme specifically from the Gospel of John: 

Sending and the Father

“For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (3:17).

“For he whom God has sent utters the words of God” (3:34).

“He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him” (5:23). Read the rest of this entry