Missional Voice
Missional Voice
Missional Community: The Anti-Enclave
Scott Boren asks "Is community, whether in a small group, mid-size group or a house church, just another spiritual option for people who have that felt need?"
Jesus "came to introduce us to a new way of life that challenges the life patterns of individualism, sexism, racism, isolationism, consumersism, workaholism and others that shape our lives in ways that we don’t even recognize. We most often overlook such life patterns because we assume that public issues like these belong to the realm of the secular. When we only see the Gospel as applying to our private lives it hard to imagine how it can apply to matters like abuse of the environment, how people of color are neglected by the governmental systems or how immigrants have trouble integrating into the local culture. We fail to see how the idol of success is destroying families and the drive for power and prestige is crushing our souls."
We are all interrelated.
Faith Works
Jim Wallis, in his book Faith Works: How to Live Your Beliefs and Ignite Positive Social Change, published in 2005, says that "two of the most powerful forces in the world right now are service and spirituality...together they provide the most potent combination for changing our communities."
He offers a recipe of 15 lessons about faith and action, learned over three decades of being a preacher, activist, author, convener of Call to Renewal* (founded in 1995 and united into Sojourners in 2006) and editor in chief of Sojourners magazine:
- Trust Your Questions
- Get out of the House More Often
- Use Your Gift
- Do the Work and You'll Find the Spirit
- Recognize the Three Faces of Poverty
- Listen to Those Closest to the Problem
- Get to the Heart of the Matter
- Throw Away Old Labels - It's Values That Count
- Find New Allies and Search for Common Ground
- Tap the Power of Faith Communities
- Be a Peacemaker
- Be a Contemplative
- Keep It Human
- Have a Dream
- Change the Wind
*On June 26, 2006, Barack Obama, before he launched his presidential campaign, spoke at Jim Wallis’s Call to Renewal conference, laying out a critique not only of the Religious Right but also of the secular left.
Interfaith Engagement
Interfaith cooperation, which is interchangeable with “religious pluralism,” has three essential components:
The Breath Inside The Breath
|
Are you looking for me?
Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat. My shoulder is against yours. you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals: not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables. ... |
Fostering Community In Spite of Culture Wars in the Church
Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma in Q Ideas For The Common Good opines that culture wars in the church are
not over and "contemporary political and religious rhetoric is tearing our communities apart, from the nation to the family, and mangling the missional commitments of Christian institutions." She
further notes, "the growing animosity among Christians who all claim devotion to Jesus Christ can make the church a hard place to be these days."
Kristin's call is for pastors and teachers to "listen with gentleness and compassion, ...
<< MORE >>
Is Church Shopping a Symptom?
John H. Armstrong (http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/john_h_armstrong_/2011/07/winning-and-losing-culture-markers-that-destroy-the-quest-for-unity-in-the-church.html) contends that our competitive and consumer culture in America are great obstacles to ecumenism and unity in the larger Christian church (the body of believers).
We live in a competitive culture of winners and losers, where individual free choice is so highly valued that church shopping has become the norm. This has forced congregational pastors/leaders to resort to recruiting behavior to build up their numbers and thereby maintain financial viability.
... << MORE >>Praying Alone?
Robert D. Putnam's book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, published in 2000, chronicles the rise of civic participation during the fifties and sixties, followed by what he describes as a decline in social capital over the next three decades.
"Social capital" refers to connections among individuals - social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.
Social capital is simultaneously a "private good" and a public good". As Claude S. Fischer ...
<< MORE >>Restoring Unity in the Church
John H. Armstrong's 2010 book, Your Church Is Too Small: Why Unity in Christ's Mission Is Vital to the Future of the Church argues that the mission of the church is to participate in the reconciling love of God and that we need to enlarge our hearts in non-sectarian, relational unity and cooperational love, plus have an ecumenical understanding of church.
Since `God is love,' our expressions of love within the Christian community must line up with His. It is His love that ...
<< MORE >>Bridging the God Gulf
The recent death of John Stott precipitated a sensitive article by Nicholas Kristov about Evangelicals without Blowhards.
...
<< MORE >>
While Kristof says that even though he is "not particularly religious himself, he stands in awe of those I’ve seen risking their lives in this way. it sickens me to see that faith mocked at New
York cocktail parties. It matters because religious people and secular people alike do fantastic work on humanitarian issues — but they often don’t work together because of mutual suspicions.
Unleashed Emerging Missional Network
A couple of days ago I attended Unleashed at Westgate Church in San Jose where Alan and Deb
Hirsch, Dan Kimball and Jim Belcher were featured speakers. Attendance (primarily by younger local pastors of ...
<< MORE >>
God's Wi-Fi and Unlimited Bandwidth
The electrical power went out on our block for several hours one evening his past week. No Internet (except through my smartphone); no television; no lights by which to read. It was
still dusk outside so we enjoyed conversation on the back deck before retiring to bed early - much like everyone did about 130 years ago before Edison invented the electric light bulb. Life was
simpler then - fewer distractions affected our relationships and they were more localized.
Electricity was in existence 2000 years ago, but we didn't know how to connect ... << MORE >>
Electricity was in existence 2000 years ago, but we didn't know how to connect ... << MORE >>
Apostles & Prophets or Pastors & Teachers
My friend Ross Rohde, in his TheJesusVirus blog noted that in Ephesians 2:20 "the church" (as fellow
citizens with God's people and members of God's household) is "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets...". Not the foundation of our truly wonderful pastors and teachers,
gifted to nurture and train the flock, but God's sent ones who herald the good news - the ones who with wisdom, love and boldness proclaim that Jesus is Lord and confront the powers and
principalities.
...
<< MORE >>
Change The World, Change Your Mind
My Jewish friend Jon and I have had a recent ongoing conversation centered around a plan to build a mosque about 2 blocks away from ground zero in New York City.
I maintain that average citizens in any country fundamentally want peace, security and a good life for their family, but their emotions are often manipulated
and exploited by politicians in a desperate effort to gain support their otherwise unpopular agendas under the name of patriotism. Talk show radio and TV hosts usually fan
the embers of prejudices, fear and differences at the very time we need ...
<< MORE >>
Jesus, Paul and The People of God
My wife and I attended the 19th annual Wheaton College theology conference April 16-17, 2010. My first impression was that Wheaton as an institution would not
have found a home in California where we are from. Started in 1860 during the civil war era, the current campus is exceedingly beautiful and historic while being thoroughly modern and sparkling
clean. It felt like Camelot - everything was tidy and bright young people who would bow their heads in prayer before a meal in the award-winning cafeteria. A riot of tulips ...
<< MORE >>
Ignominius Failure
I love the writing of Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times. He used my very descriptive blog title above in his March 17, 2010 editorial about health care legislation. He decrys "our politicians’ failure over the last half-century to provide universal health care, despite the efforts of Democratic and Republican presidents alike to pass it." He notes "It’s astonishing that Republicans today are lined up overwhelmingly against a health care package that is more modest and moderate than one that Richard Nixon proposed in the early ’70s."
I agree, but I also think that there is an ignominius failure of the Christian church to currently adress the evils in our world - poverty, greed, injustice, war, exploitation and lack of care for all of God's good creation.
I agree, but I also think that there is an ignominius failure of the Christian church to currently adress the evils in our world - poverty, greed, injustice, war, exploitation and lack of care for all of God's good creation.
Growing by Expanding Community
"Expanding community" is finding the optimal balance between centripetal and centrifugal forces. Many mainline Christian churches, in a concern about loosing members, focus on creating a stronger sense of their own community, while failing to see that growth occurs at the margins where members of the congregation interface with non-members. There is fear in releasing the congregation, but this is the missional core of the gospel to meet people and love them where they are.
Here's a video about Leading from the Third Row Leading from the Third Row.
Thank You Glenn Beck
N T Wright, in his wonderful book Following Jesus has two great quotes:
"A distinguished academic once remarked gloomily to me that the best way to win an argument in his Governing Body was to argue on the opposite side, thus provoking one's colleagues to interested
disagreement and luring them into the trap of supporting the position you really wanted them to take all along." p.83
<< MORE >>
Thank you Glenn Beck! I didn't realize you were so clever to use your recent outrageous statements conflating "social justice" with Nazism and communism ...
