I was a shepherd in the traditional/conventional church. I also served as a deacon, a preacher, and a missionary. Today I believe more in the church of Bob Evans every Sunday afternoon, the church at Starbucks on Friday evenings and then there is my new institutional church at a University Hospital. (FYI—degrees in Nuclear Medicine and Bible; chose to make my living from the medical side)
For employees who have excessive absenteeism or a history of tardiness there is a policy that places them in a process with the end result being dismissal (verbal warning, written warning, etc) I choose not to do that. Instead I invite them into my office and use the wisdom that comes with sixty years of life and the spiritual wisdom God has blessed me with nudging them closer to success and Jesus (this is my policy and the process I choose). I really believe if I died tomorrow the employees of this institution would carry signs to my funeral expressing their love for me.
And then there are the folks at New Wineskins who encourage me in my wacky writings and the conversations I have with the many I talk with in Christian circles.
I am blessed!
Files under Church, Culture, How to Live, Jesus, conventional church, conversation, future church, influence, love, missional, orbiting the church, revolution, unchurched |
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There are a couple of challenging reads I want to suggest to the readers out there. The first is a short 16 page download. You can get it for $1.00. Not bad.
Here’s a brief review:
The line between American culture and Biblical conviction has been irrevocably blurred since the Pilgrims and Puritans made landfall on our shores. The sad fact of Christianity in the United States is that our theology has been more informed by the culture than the reverse. If anyone has any doubts, Fred puts them to rest using the example of our country’s preoccupation with alcohol consumption. When we have otherwise intelligent scholars trying to convince us that Jesus turned the water into the oxymoronic “non-alcoholic” or “non-intoxicating” wine, it is high time to acknowledge that our culture is driving our theology rather than our theology being based on sound Bible study. –Rick Chromey; Kentucky Christian University
Abstinence or Moderation? : Liberty or Law? [link to a dollar download]
The second offering is a 116 page book that
Jim Henderson of Off The Map called the “best missional book on the market.” It an easy read with lots of stories and one of the first books by an emergent that can claim to be more a construct than deconstruct. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. You can find a link to the book on the left side bar near the bottom of this page. Just start scrolling down…
Files under Culture, bible, book review, missional |
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Read my conversation with Alan Hirsch, the author of The Forgotten Ways [here]
I was shocked when I heard that Leonard Sweet had accepted the position left vacant at Grace Community Church with the firing of John MacArthur. Read the complete story [here]
Files under Alan Hirsch, April Fool, Consumerism, Culture, Evangelism, Interviews, Leonard Sweet, conventional church, conversation, emergent, mission, missional |
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My good friend Larry Chouinard, who blogs at Spiritual Conversations, has made his most recent publication, The Way of the King, available as a free download. [download it here]
Files under Evangelism, Larry Chouinard, emergent, missional |
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Think about the evolution of small group ministries from its inception until now. What happen to small groups? What has become of this ministry today? Would it be fair to define small group ministry as a robust group of young believers who are actively engaging the missing? Or would we see a small group of Christians who passionately pursue intimacy and nurture in relationship. With all that said, I remember a very talented parachurch group that traveled across America offering training in small group evangelism. Small groups were being herald as the solution to church intimacy and church growth. The prospect was exciting.
The most creative idea I heard that weekend was the empty chair concept. We arranged our chairs in a semi-circle and the group leader sat an empty chair in the middle of the circle. He then emphasized the importance of filling the chair with one of our friends or neighbors in the coming week. This was my first experience with the empty chair and it pumped me up. But not only me, everyone was encouraged to think, “friend.” The session ended with a rally cry. And we kept it very close to our heart: “they might not come to a church building but they’ll come to your home.”
It’s been almost twenty years now. And I find it unfortunate that this may have been as close as we came to establishing a missional goal for small group ministries. If so, at some point in time we lost our way. Most small groups I’ve been involved with have become a home bible class study with no concrete evidence to offer that would show our care and concern for the people Jesus misses the most. And few have shown a concern for building relational intimacy with other believers. Maybe the format is not conducive to the accomplishment of those things.
Small groups never took off because of the natural tension that exists between nurture and evangelism. Nurture comes natural, evangelism does not. I can remember the dialogue—should we incorporate nurture groups and evangelistic groups as one or should we form two separate groups? There was never clear direction on this so we went with what came natural–hoping we could be evangelistic without being intentional.
Files under Evangelism, leadership, missional, small groups |
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If the Churches of Christ had given equal time and energy in equipping the people of God in missional aptitude as it has in convincing and pacifying its membership in transitioning from acappella to instrument accompaniment the Churches of Christ would be much closer to reversing the decline in its membership.
Files under Church of Christ, acappella, instrumental music, mission, missional |
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Jesus incarnated and engaged an oral culture. Centuries after Jesus’ resurrection humanity transitioned an oral culture to a print culture. Uniquely my generation has seen rapid transition from print to broadcast to digital. This rapidity has caused overlap between the eras and the predominant teaching methods of each era. Oral readily contributed to experience (and irrationality), print to rationality, broadcast gave us a global perspective and digital is shifting our way of knowing to an interactive, global, anytime, anywhere experience. This will continue to complicate methods of teaching—reaching far into the future. Even more interesting is how these changes are forcing God’s people to carry out mission in an environment similar to the time when the ecclesia was born. Michael Riddell says, “Mission is always in the direction of the other, and away from ourselves.”
Files under mission, missional |
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Don’t leave this post until you watch this podcast. You’ve got to. Take the time; it’s an awesome conversation illustrating what it means to follow for Jesus. It runs for approximately 30 minutes. Grab a coffee, a Latte, or a Mocha and sit still for a few.
Do it. Now!
Get out of your own backyard. […link]
Files under Church, Evangelism, missional |
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The greatest barrier to a clear Kingdom vision may be a misunderstanding of what a priority- missional community looks like. I acknowledge that most Christian churches have a missional aspect. But when one examines a missional-priority church more closely, one discovers a significant difference between church outreach and a missional church. That difference begins at the theological foundation and ultimately finds expression in practices inherent to the broader Kingdom vision. Practically speaking missional-priority means spending more time with the missing than with Christian friends
Individually some of us do this at work and in our neighborhoods. But leaders “who are in the know” become responsible for building a culture of missional priority believers.
How does a conventional church reverse its direction?
In short, missional leaders begin by systematically talking to the community about process salvation and each individual’s place in the process.
Missional leaders help the community understand the ease and simplicity of entering into salvation’s process and correct the common held belief that it is the Christian’s responsibility to take God to the missing. That old container is removed by helping the community understand that no one takes God to anyone. God is already in the lives of their co-workers, friends, and family. Missional leaders teach the community the simplicity of helping their friends connect the dot.
This becomes the center-piece of the assembly. It’s talked about every time the community comes together
- Missional leaders remove the fear. Ordinary attempts replace memorization, speeches, and coercion
- Unfortunately, there are those in church leadership who suffer from a “missional instinct deficit” which makes missional culture building impossible. Church leaders can’t be talked into or coerced to live passionately for building a culture of missional Christians. It has to come from deep within because the process of culture building is time intensive-demanding a tremendous amount of energy and patience
- All across America churches are expending energy and time crafting the Sunday morning ‘worship’ while a large percentage of resources are being consumed by staff and buildings. Churches that opt for missional culture building will have to redirecting their focus and resources. Otherwise the process will never get out of the starting gate.
For the conventional church the man in the pulpit has to consider missional culture building as important as sermon building if change is to take place. He has the pulpit. He has influence. But he must have the wisdom and the understand as well as a strong passion for developing a missional community of believers If all these things come together a faith community has the potential of transcending the attractional consumer church and sparking a community to belief and action.
But without a total commitment to the idea of missional culture building on the part of leadership, it’s a stillborn thought.
I haven’t given up on the conventional church as many have, but it would sadden me to think historian Barbara Tuchman was right when she said…
“In the scaled of history, inertia always outweighs that of change”
Files under Evangelism, missional |
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Take a trip to your local college campus and what you’ll discover is that non-Christian religious groups conspicuously outnumber the Christian groups. Wicca, Bahai, Muslim, and Buddhist groups dot the campus landscape as never before. Religious diversity is not only encouraged but also considered supreme in this new culture. Harvard professor Diane Eck states that, “Before 1965, we could conceive of ourselves as mainly a Christian nation but the influx of people of radically different religions and conversion of others to those religions — Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism — has resulted in two kinds of change:
- first, we must relaize that the diverisites we find in religions today are changing the face of American, and
- second, that America is changing the religions, evolving in a climate of diversity and freedom.” Newsweek Magazine recently pointed out “…young people are openly passionate about religion—but insist on defining it in their own ways.”
In the transition from the old era to the new we have a mix of people with copious worldviews. But in the very near future we will watch a generation be born in an exclusively unique environment. The United Kingdom, Western Europe, Australia, and Canada have been post-Christian for a decade or more. America is just now transitioning and Latin America is a decade behind us in this transition. This being so, we need to see ourselves as missionaries; what do missionaries do? They cross borders.
from ReclaimingtheMission.com
Among the new missional leaders, church is the name we give to a way of life, not a set of services. We do not plant an organized set of services; we inhabit a neighborhood as the living embodied presense of Christ. Missional leaders now root themselves in a piece of geography for the long term. We survey the land for the poor and the desperate, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. We seek to plant seeds of ministry, kernels of forgiveness, new plantings of the gospel among “the poor (of all kinds)” and then by the Spirit water them, nurture them into the life of God in Christ. [read the complete post]
Files under Church, Culture, Diversity, missional |
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