Missional Bible Study Questions

May 1, 2008 | Filed Under missional, scripture | No Comments

questions.jpgIn light of yesterday’s post on “Hearing the Bible Missionally” here is another good link from Tyndale University College and Seminary where they present five key questions (taken from the work of the GOCN) that will assist those studying the Bible to shift to a missionally-oriented approach to a specific text.

For more on this topic you might also be interested in Michael Barram’s article titled “Located Questions For a Missional Hermeneutics.”

Hearing the Bible Missionally

April 30, 2008 | Filed Under missional, scripture | 2 Comments

treasure-in-clay-jars.jpgDallas Willard has said that our churches are full of converts who do not intend to become disciples. Another way to put it would be this: Our churches are full of people who are there to receive the benefits of grace without knowing that they are receiving such blessings “in order to be a blessing.”

In such congregations, mission tends to be one of many programs done by the community, rather than to define the very purpose and character of the community. Mission sermons are preached now and again in order to mobilize action or resources for a particular outreach. People know that mission is a theme of the Bible, and they expect to hear about it now and again. But discipling is rarely focused on mission. It is primarily understood, where it is talked about, as a process of personal spiritual growth. . . .

Where missional renewal is happening, different kinds of questions are brought to the Bible. Congregations are open to being challenged, to looking hard at their deeply ingrained attitudes and expectations.

The missional approach asks: How does God’s Word call, shape, transform, and send me . . . and us?Coupled with this openness is the awareness that biblical formation must mean change, and often conversion. Christian communities may discover that their discipling will require repentance and that their way of being church will have to change.

– Darrell Guder in Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness

He Has Sent Me

March 23, 2008 | Filed Under scripture | 1 Comment

isaiah-61.jpgOne of the passages to consider when highlighting the missionary/sending nature of God in the Old Testament is Isaiah 61. In the Hebrew, the phrase “he has sent me“ is the main verb controlling each of the redemptive deeds that follow. Unlike most English translations, the CEV and NEB have arranged the words to emphasize this fact.

The Spirit of the LORD God has taken control of me! The LORD has chosen and sent me

to tell the oppressed the good news,
to heal the brokenhearted,
to announce freedom for prisoners and captives.

This is the year when the LORD God will show kindness to us and punish our enemies. The LORD has sent me to comfort those who mourn, especially in Jerusalem.

He sent me

to give them flowers in place of their sorrow,
to give olive oil in place of tears,
(to give) joyous praise in place of broken hearts.

– Isaiah 61:1-3 (Contemporary English Version)

Mission in the New Testament

February 25, 2008 | Filed Under missional, scripture | 1 Comment

In preparation for writing the biblical rationale chapter for my dmin project I have been reading several good works that focus on the biblical theology of mission. So far I have discovered the two most helpful to be “Salvation to the Ends of the Earth” by Andreas Kostenberger & Peter T. O’Brien and “Mission in the New Testament” by William Larkin and Joel Williams.

Here is an excerpt from the Larkin text which emphasizes that Jesus was not only the one sent by the Father, but after the resurrection he assumed the role of sender:

mission-in-the-new-testament.jpgMartin Hengel has called Jesus “the primal missionary.” In so doing he places his finger on a key aspect of Jesus’ self- understanding. The record of Jesus’ teaching found in the synoptic gospels reflects the fact that he had a clear understanding of his own mission. He taught that he was sent by the Father with the task of seeking and saving the lost and that — although he envisioned a future worldwide mission — his own mission was focused on the nation of Israel. Jesus’ teaching on mission, however, encompassed more than his own task. It inclued the task entrusted to his disciples.

Prior to the resurrection, the disciples’ mission was identical to and an extension of Jesus’ mission. The resurrection, however, brought a significant change both to Jesus’ role in mission and to the disciples’ actual mission. As the risen Christ, he assumed the role of sender, who sent the disciples with the task of bearing witness to the forgiveness of sins that was now available in him. Their mission was now to be to “all the nations,” and that universal mission was to be carried out by obedient disciples who would continue their mission until Jesus returns.

- John Harvey, “Mission in Jesus’ Teaching” in Mission in the New Testament, William Larkin

Searching For God Knows What IV

August 30, 2007 | Filed Under books, donald miller, gospel, scripture, way of Jesus | 2 Comments

searching-for-god-knows-what.jpgHere is another excellent excerpt from chapter 10 of Donald Miller’s “Searching For God Knows What.” The title of chapter 10 is “The Gospel of Jesus: It Never Was a Formula.”

Becoming a Christian might look more like falling in love than baking cookies. Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that in order for a person to know Jesus they must get a kind of crush on Him. But what I am suggesting is that, not unlike any other relationship, a person might need to understand that Jesus is alive, that He exists, that He is God, that He is in authority, that we need to submit to Him, that He has the power to save, and so on and son on, all of which are ideas, but ideas entangled in a kind of relational dynamic. This seems more logical to me because if God made us, wants to know us, then this would require a more mysterious interaction than what would be required by following a kind of recipe.

I realize it all sounds terribly sentimental, but imagine the other ideas popular today that we sometimes hold up as credible: We believe a person will gain access to heaven because he is knowledgeable about theology, because he can win at a game of religious trivia. And we may believe a person will find heaven because she is very spiritual and lights incense and candles and takes bubble baths and reads books that speak of centering her inner self; and some of us believe a person is a Christian because he believes five ideas that Jesus communicated here and there in Scripture, though never completely at one time and in one place; and some people believe they are Christians because they do good things and associate themselves with some kind of Christian morality; and some people believe they are Christians because they are Americans.

If any of these models are true, people who read the Bible before we systematically broke it down, and, for that matter, people who believed in Jesus before the printing press or before the birth of Western civilization, are at an extreme disadvantage. It makes you wonder if we have fashioned a gospel around our culture and technology and social economy rather than around the person of Christ.

- Donald Miller in Searching For God Knows What

Searching For God Knows What III

August 27, 2007 | Filed Under books, donald miller, gospel, scripture | 1 Comment

searching-for-god-knows-what.jpgPerhaps the reason Scripture includes so much poetry in and outside the narrative, so many parables and stories, so many visions and emotional letters, is because it is attempting to describe a relational break man tragically experienced with God and a disturbed relational history man has had since then and, furthermore, a relational dynamic man must embrace in order to have relational intimacy with God once again, thus healing himslef of all the crap he gets into while looking for a relationship that makes him feel whole.

Maybe the gospel of Jesus, in other words, is all about our relationship with Jesus rather than about ideas. And perhaps our lists and formulas and bullet points are nice in the sense that they help us memorize different truths, but harmful in the sense that they blind us to the necessary relationship that must begin between ourselves and God for us to become His followers. And worse, perhaps our formulas and bullet points and steps steal the sincerity with which we might engage God.

- Donald Miller in Searching For God Knows What

Offering My Life To God

July 15, 2007 | Filed Under scripture, spiritual formation | 1 Comment

discovery.jpg“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

- Romans 12:1-2 (The Message)

Being Sent and the Pentateuch

April 4, 2007 | Filed Under missional, scripture, theology | 2 Comments

god-who-sends.jpgI mentioned last week that I have been reading an excellent book by Dr. Francis DuBose titled “God Who Sends: A Fresh Quest for Biblical Mission.” The book was published in 1983 when Dr. DuBose was professor and director of World Missions Center at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. In chapter 3 DuBose presents a survey of the theological sending passages within 7 Scriptural categories, the first being the Pentateuch.

While DeBuse hightlights multiple sending passages in the Pentateuch there are two specific references that seem to be most significant. The first is the climatic use of the sending in Genesis as seen in Joseph’s words to his brothers, “God sent me before you” (Gen. 45:5). More>>

The Power of Story

April 1, 2007 | Filed Under networks, scripture, theology | No Comments

story.jpgAn interesting thing happened last week with the direction of the group discussion in both of the network gatherings. While the ”plan” was to discuss the first few chapters of “The Forgotten Ways” by Alan Hirsch, in both cases the group couldn’t get past the first sentence of chapter one.  Actually it was the first half of the first sentence were Hirsch writes, “In true biblical fashion, a reliable understanding of the nature of things comes out of a narrative - a story invovling God’s dealings with human beings.”

Hirsch’s purpose in this statement I believe was to introduce his story of moving a faith community to become more participatory and missional. However, in our network gatherings we all began to discuss the importance and power of story. In the first two hours we struggled with why the church typically fails to recognize the power of story - telling our personal faith story, telling the stories of others, “preaching” the story in a coporate service setting, but most of all reading and understanding the story of God as the story of God.

What are your thoughts on the power of story? Why don’t we “tap into” story in the church? Why don’t we more often recognize the Word as the story of God? And what is lost in the reading and interpreting of Scripture when we do not recognize the story?

Eugene Peterson in “Christ Play in Ten Thousands Places” writes, “The moment we formulate our doctrines, draw up our moral codes, and throw ourselves into a life of discipleship and ministry apart from a continuous re-immersion in the story itself, we walk right out of the concrete and local presence and activity of God and set up own shop.”