Good stuff from my friend Art Mealer at WagingLove.com: "We are all missionaries…right this moment…right where you are. We have multiple points of connection to others. The impact of each of these opportunities are highly dependent on who I am and how I live."
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Mission As The DNA
"Mission as organizing principle means that mission goes way beyond being some sort of optional activity or program for our churches. It actually is the organizing axis of the church."
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Hillsong's Christine Caine: Illuminate the Darkness
"It's time for us to wake up to the fact that there's a lost and a dying world and we have a responsibility to step out of our comfort zones, roll up our sleeves, and get involved in the brokenness of a messy humanity."
Prayer Evangelism
From Ross Rohde at Facing The Challenge: "A church in Argentina went around its neighborhood asking non-Christians what one prayer they would want God to answer. They then offered to pray for this issue specifically. At first, the non-Christians were skeptical, some even mocked the Christians. A few asked for requests like winning the lottery. The Christians responded by asking them, 'Is this really what you would want from the God of the universe?" When the non-Christians realized the Christians were sincere, many gave honest prayer requests. After all, it couldn't hurt. At this point the Christians said there was just one condition. Many non-Christians responded "What? Now I suppose you want us to go to your church.' "No," said the Christians, "going to our church isn't part of the deal, all you have to do is call me when God answers your prayer" '
God At Work In The World, Not The Church?
Brilliant insight from Brad Brisco at The House Studio: "The chief element to grasp about the missio Dei is that the mission is God’s. We are not called to bring our mission into a local context; instead we are called to partner with God in his mission. We often wrongly assume that the primary activity of God is in the church, rather than recognizing that God’s primary activity is in the world, and the church is God’s instrument sent into the world to participate in his redemptive mission."
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Chart of Shame?
Who Told You About Jesus?
Here's a simple but effective video on sharing Jesus with others. I was very surprised to hear a shout-out to my friend John Guyer!
Following Jesus Is Not Safe
The final challenge from Jason Dukes’ Beyond MY Church: “Following Jesus in not safe. I am amazed at how so many in church culture arrived at the notion that it is safe. It’s like we remember the time the people of the Bible got to walk across a sea on dry land with a natural aquarium on each side, but we forget the people who were beheaded.
It is a lie of church culture that the safest place to be is in the center of God’s will. It is not safe there. Secure. But not safe. And there’s a difference. Secure means held regardless of the ending. Safe brings the expectation that no danger will come.
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We in church culture must surrender the need to be safe in order to think and live ‘beyond MY church’ in our cities. We must surrender the need to personally be safe, and we must surrender the need even for our kids to be safe and happy. The darkness of our cities being overcome with His light depends on it.
It is a lie of church culture that the safest place to be is in the center of God’s will. It is not safe there. Secure. But not safe. And there’s a difference. Secure means held regardless of the ending. Safe brings the expectation that no danger will come.
…
We in church culture must surrender the need to be safe in order to think and live ‘beyond MY church’ in our cities. We must surrender the need to personally be safe, and we must surrender the need even for our kids to be safe and happy. The darkness of our cities being overcome with His light depends on it.
Incarnational Presence In Suburbia
Good post from Michael Wallenmeyer at MissionalInSuburbia.com: "In the Christian tradition, images of spirituality are most often cited to acts of withdrawal and relinquishment, treating all present attachements as counter to discipleship. At it’s core, it’s a spirituality of detachment. I would argue that spirituality in suburbia requires not detachment but even deeper attachments. In his book The Good Life: Genuine Christianity for the Middle-Class, theologian David Matzko McCarthy calls us to just such spirituality, one of deep attachment to the places we inhabit, treating a house and a neighbourhood not as an investment in some elusive future-a commodity to be bought and sold for financial gain-but a place in which we put down our roots and invest our lives. In essence, McCarthy calls for a ‘middle-class asceticism,’ a simplicity and moderation of life that nurtures long-term attachments, and deep genuine investments in the people, places and things of our suburban lives. This is a counter-cultural act, a radical statement of contentment in a consumerist society that thrives on our discontent. Indeed, there is nothing more counter-cultural in consumer-driven suburban Australia to say with conviction, ‘what I have and where I am is enough.’ On an individual level, this requires Christians living in suburbia dig deeply into the present, caring for and nurturing good neighbourhoods."
Try Just Being The Church For A Change
I’ll spend just a couple more weeks in Jason Duke’s excellent book, Beyond MY Church:
“If you only think of the church in terms of place or event or campus, then not only are you thinking of the church in a way that is not mentioned in the New Testament, but you are also thinking of the church in a way that rings hollow to your neighbor.
Think about it. Wouldn’t you agree that it is totally inauthentic and totally insincere and totally hollow for me (and you) to go to church events and church programs geared to feed my soul if all the while I am walking by or driving by someone, but I am too busy doing church stuff to be the church to them and possibly even offer them a taste that might feed their soul? Especially if it’s the person who lives right beside me or right down the street from me.
“If you only think of the church in terms of place or event or campus, then not only are you thinking of the church in a way that is not mentioned in the New Testament, but you are also thinking of the church in a way that rings hollow to your neighbor.
Think about it. Wouldn’t you agree that it is totally inauthentic and totally insincere and totally hollow for me (and you) to go to church events and church programs geared to feed my soul if all the while I am walking by or driving by someone, but I am too busy doing church stuff to be the church to them and possibly even offer them a taste that might feed their soul? Especially if it’s the person who lives right beside me or right down the street from me.
The Church's Double-Whammy Problem
Relocating the Body of Christ: Parish Collective and the 21st Century Church, particularly the video at the end, really click with what I'm reading in Jamie Smith's excellent book Desiring the Kingdom.
The video speaks to a theology of place and reminds us that we shape structures that continue to shape us. Jamie Smith calls, for instance, shopping malls liturgical spaces for creating a different kind of kingdom. One of the Church's biggest challenges then, is the double-whammy of losing the communal space where the gospel does its work, and losing it to shopping malls and WalMarts (and mega-churches?) doing an antithetical work.
I believe missional communities are the answer. But what REALLY ticks me off about way too many missional communities is that they're not really about missional community but about growing MY brand and building MY regional church somewhere. I've been told over and over that this is okay due to ecclesiastical differences. But I think it's more personal ego than theology. And I think it just may sabotage the missional community movement. 1LoveWake is first and foremost an ecumenical missional community!
I believe missional communities are the answer. But what REALLY ticks me off about way too many missional communities is that they're not really about missional community but about growing MY brand and building MY regional church somewhere. I've been told over and over that this is okay due to ecclesiastical differences. But I think it's more personal ego than theology. And I think it just may sabotage the missional community movement. 1LoveWake is first and foremost an ecumenical missional community!
Cocoon, Combat, or Conform?
Chapter 4 from Britt Merrick's upcoming book Godspeed: Making Christ’s Mission Your Own is now online at OutreachMagazine.com. Here's an excerpt: " The church has been commissioned in the world to love the very people God loves. We are the apostolic, sent people of God, sent to be on mission and in motion in our immediate contexts for His glory. Unfortunately, this doesn’t usually describe the church. More often than not, our proclivity as Christians is to withdraw from the world, take up arms with the world, or become like the world...We must be so satisfied in the love of Christ that we’re free to go and give love to others. That doesn't mean that we don’t need love. We do. It simply means that we won’t be doing mission out of a need to get love from people. Rather, we’ll do mission from an overflow of our identity in Christ and the fact that we are the beloved of God. With all of our failures, all of our fissures, all of our brokenness, all of our battles, and all of our drama—we’re accepted, adopted, and adored by God. If we get that identity right in our hearts, then we’ll get incarnational Christianity right in the world."
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