I’m very much an amateur photographeur, but I do dig a few of the shots I was able to get away with last night. Maybe someday someone will buy me one of those big fancy cameras that grant instant photographic skill (or just photographic snobbishness).
I love my church.
Every year we block off a section of the street in front of the church (legally) and throw a block party on the Canada Day weekend. This year there were easily over a couple hundred people from the church and neighborhood filling the street where we had a barbecue, great conversation, a wee bit of frisbee, a multitude of sparklers for the kids, and a great fireworks display. We never advertise ahead of time – just block off the street, fire up the grill and welcome anyone who might happen by.
Rawdon Street Baptist Church has been a light in this corner of the city for a long, long time. Sometime soon I’m going to write out a bit of our history here for you. It’s never been that large of a family and it may never be, but it is far from anemic. I hope this little missional family continues to infect its neighborhood with the Kingdom of God for a long time to come.
An extended quote from the truly prophetic (think call for repentance, not fortune telling) book by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw:
Today the logic goes something like this: “Calling a ruler ‘Son of God’ is out of style. No one really does that nowadays. We can support a president while also worshiping Jesus as the Son of God.” But how is this possible? For one says that we must love our enemies, and the other says we must kill them; one promotes the economics of competition, while the other admonishes the forgiveness of debts. To which do we pledge allegiance? Surely, one of them must have the wrong idea of how to move history. Can a servant serve two masters? To say that we must kill our enemies and join the popular project to “rid the world of evil” is to call Jesus unrealistic. And that is possibly desirable for many; surely his ideas do not resonate with any common wisdom. But can you call Jesus the Son of God and say, “He just doesn’t understand the world today”? How ironic is it to see a bumper sticker that says “Jesus is the answer” next to a bumper sticker supporting the war in Iraq, as if to say “Jesus is the answer – but not in the real world.” Remember, Jesus’ followers were burned alive, beheaded, or fed to lions. They knew evil and the “real world.” They would meet it face to face. If there was anyone who tried to deal with evildoers and terrorists, it was certainly first-century Christians.
When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God. After all, what is the point in calling anything God if it does not also hold sway in every part of one’s life – especially one’s politics? (Haw/Claiborne, p.166)
Instead of worshiping flags and rulers and constitutions let’s start putting our hand over our heart in salute when we ask for forgiveness or when we say “thank you” to the provider (think sunshine, not Costco) for our daily bread. Maybe the act of saluting our creator will stop us in our tracks when we start to worship any other master.
Tags: politics, jesus, shane claiborne, chris haw, jesus for president, books, iraq, war
(Where does that phrase come from?)
Also, I’ve been thinking and have decided to head somewhere else. I’ve got to figure it out the details still, but I’ll let you know as we get closer.
Are you brimming with anticipation? No? Well, I don’t really care, because I am!
I am the unofficial webmaster for our church community. Last year I had set up a nice fancy wordpress site based on Adam Walker Cleaveland’s Cleaker theme, but I managed to utterly destroy it. I’ve finally gotten around to rebuilding from the ground up. I don’t excel at troubleshooting, so I chose to gut the whole thing (including the database) and begin fresh. Kind of like God did with the flood, with Noah being the spared index file.
Here is the new site. Fresh and simple, it is missing some essential info relating to what we actually do and when, but otherwise it is alive and kicking.
Tags: webdesign, wordpress, rawdon street
I was digging through a few recent Zunior Sampler Albums and found this gem. Hailing from Toronto (not actually living near a coast, their band name comes from a Paul Simon song), The Coast have just recently released their first full length album, Expatriate, and as Exclaim.ca says, “If they keep creating records like this, the Coast definitely won’t be expatriated any time soon.”
Here is a clip from a recent live performance on MTV. (please ignore the generic VJ-ness at the beginning)
You can hear more clips on their album page at Zunior. This is the place I would recommend for purchasing as well. Zunior does a great job of promoting lesser-known and independant artists and they sell their MP3 for generally cheaper prices than iTunes. You an also purchase very high quality FLAC files for about a dollar more than an lower quality purchase from Apple.
…as the world turns.
Check with me in a few days. We’ll see if I really believe myself here or not…
I thought I might post some of my reflections so far from my reading of the various posts on missional. My intent here is not to generalize or dismiss anything that I disagree with, nor to fully endorse anywhere I might find myself agreeing. This is an exercise in sorting. Doing consciously what our brains are doing subconsciously at all times.
I need to address what I think is a grave error. We have missed a step. The worthy opinion is that to be missional is to get off your ass more often. By all means, YES, but that isn’t the road to a more healthy worldview or community. The ingenuity and servant movement of many of those who are living missionally is very much in tune with what it is to be a follower of Jesus. Faith has to be lived out, but the wonderful thing about the concept of missional is that we can stop believing that it is up to us to run the course while God cheers us on from the bleachers. Missional isn’t just action, it is action with, resulting from, in response to, in the wake of, in the footprints of, in the arms of our missioning God.
I recognize that we need this kick in the pants because of our tendency to, more often than not, go the opposite way. But missional focus reminds us that ultimately it is our God who moves. With a spirit of watching the movement of God we can truly rest. Sabbath will cease to create anxiety because of our inaction.
As I mentioned in my last post, we have not simply been set loose by God to complete a task that has been laid out for us. Instead we are called into participation with Him as He recreates and renews creation. While our feet will be quickened to respond to his call when we truly live into this relationship, it is not our duty to march on and do what we believe God wants done.
More so, our duty is to notice. Notice the things that God is doing in our lives and the lives of our neighbors. When we really begin to notice what is going on we will see better the actions that are called for. Love notices, then responds. Love listens and then, perhaps, answers.
I fear that too often we believe that just because we have read a few books, including the Bible, that it is our job to be the Avengers; that by our actions the world will be a better place. This idealism is something I battle against in my own life and it never seems to work out all that well in history.
Let’s be less quick to just do it, and quicker to listen. Perhaps that posture of prayer and waiting is also a part of a missional life. Then, having regained our proper footing, we will be more ready to leap into action.
To everyone who has posted about our need to get out and do, know that I am not disagreeing with that at all, I just wanted to add one more spice to that recipe.
I’m probably going to post a few more reflections over the next couple days.
Tags: missional, missional synchroblog, prayer, gospel
I had a quick follow-up thought after putting up my Missional post last night. The thing that I find invigorating about a missional Christianity is that there is only one mission.
Let me explain:
In the modern paradigm there seem to be two things going on.
One: There is God’s mission, which was to send Jesus into the world to die for our sins and then to prepare a heavenly home for us post-resurrection.
Two: There is our mission, which is to tell people about what God accomplished and will accomplish (note the past and future emphasis with nothing to say about today)
In a missional Christianity God’s mission is very much different. Yes it includes the sending of Jesus, the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus. But those events are embedded in the thing that God has been doing all along. The past, present, and future work of the reintegration of all of creation with the purposes of God. In a missional Christianity we are called to be full participants in the work of this God on a mission. A God who most often has shown himself to us as He who is active and involved in His creation.
One mission. Yesterday, today and tomorrow.
