Kingdom

Brant is a genius. If you haven’t read his thoughts, go there first and then come back.

I want to take his connection one step further. Brant says, “If you view this as the typical eco-sermon, you didn’t really watch the movie.” His interpretation of Wall-E as being about sexuality, companionship and procreation from a pro-life perspective is absolutely on point. But I wonder if there is another connection here that we are intended to draw, and one that I believe we NEED to draw.

For some reason, in our society we are largely told that one side of the debate cares about protecting the earth while the other side of the debate cares about protecting life; and somehow we are supposed to believe that these are incompatible. The fear is something along the lines of - if you affirm the other side’s position then you are compromising your own.

Wall-E gives us another landscape all together. Care for the earth is a Pro-Life position.

And, hug.

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Oh, one other thing. I think the film also speaks about the stuff we are made of. We need to be creative. Our first directive is to care for God’s creation. Similar to  Jesus stating that if we fail to worship the rocks will cry out … if we fail to take care of the earth the robots will cry out? or something. When the opportunity to recapture that creative, garden tending impulse arrives the ship captain will overcome any obstacle to make sure we take hold of it.

And, hug, again.

Tags: wall-e, movie, pro-life, earth, eco, politics, religion, creation, jesus

Canada Day Rawdon St. Block Party 2008, originally uploaded by senor diecast.

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

We’ve all heard politicians saying that America is the world’s greatest hope. While that is certainly not anything close to truth I have also heard some Christians saying the same thing about the Church. But is it?

Tags: America, hope, church, obama

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.

Do More

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.

God’s mission is our 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.

Tags: missional, mission, creation, god, jesus, missioning

This post is a contribution to the Missional Synchroblog organized by Rick Meigs.

It held promise. Honestly, I had held out hope. As much as I had had issues with the direction of the place in the past, I had never heard a blatant rejection of the type of Christianity that I hold dear. In all actuality this is a place that for me holds a high place of honor when it comes to mission. A church with a proud missionary tradition of going to the farthest reaches of every continent, and even to our own indigenous people groups. They had sent people into the “darkest” places on earth. Those who were sent were known in every context to be people of great love and compassion. I know many of them personally and can attest to these claims.

Like I said, regardless of any other frustrations I have had with leadership, committees, programs, structures, and style, I had always said, “These people get mission.” I’m not sure if I still believe that… Let me explain.

What I heard today was a point by point upholding of the old ways. The “take Jesus to the dark places where they didn’t have him, and tell them the message that will save their soul from flames” way of doing mission. It wasn’t all bad, but much of it was downright horrible.

Things started off well enough. We sang songs (you can’t go wrong with a good old hymn sing). We sang and prayed about the importance of getting into God’s streams – of following Him where ever He may go. After all, it is true that “people need the Lord”. (He’s the open door)

The first lines of the sermon were pretty much great. “Your mission cannot fail because it is God who has ordained it.” Oh, but wait… what was that? As we walked a hop-skip-jump Roman Road for the next 30 minutes I found myself frantically searching for the context surrounding the cherry-picked verses that outlined a lot of stuff that did seem to be in that context…

• how knowledge about Jesus was what people need to be saved
• how if there is anything we need to include in a gospel message it is the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus – anything else we may do or say can just get in the way
• how people first need to know that they are doom to eternal hell (I had a hard time finding the word eternal in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man — but no doubt it was somewhere in Romans)
• we heard how the biggest prayer meeting in all the cosmos was going on in Hell right now
• we heard how when Jesus said to GO he added on the “make disciples” line as a secondary command. Sort of a “while you are going and saving souls you might should probably make a few disciples along the way as well.”

All of these statements trouble me to various degrees, but their were two things that troubled me more than anything. I heard today that God has given us a mission. We as people have a mission to reach people. Our mission is crucial because it is the way God has chosen to work in this world. God has chosen to limit himself to using people to accomplish the gospel. Over and over it was Our Mission. God didn’t seem to have much to do with it at all, outside of giving us the power to accomplish it. So, the question that arises is, “What is God really up to then?”

How did we miss it? Being a church that has stood on its head for mission for the last 50 years, where have we been looking that we have missed the most crucial aspect. How did we not hear anything about the fact that GOD has a Mission in this world? Did I miss something? Has God completed what he is doing and now he has chosen to sit back and watch us do our thing? Not a chance! Our God is active. He is present. He is at work. He is reaching out to the broken and hurting. He is sitting patiently and moving actively with the stubborn and stressed, the hungry and suffering, weak and afflicted.

Yes, we are part of this. God wants us to be a part of this. God wants us to find our place in His mission. Our God is a Missioning God who has called us to partner with Him for His cause. That cause being the restoration and completion of ALL THINGS. The redemption of all sin (disintegration from God). The patching up of broken dreams and relationships. The patching up of wounded knees and hearts.

We are also called to proclaim the message of God. We are called to proclaim the message of Jesus, our hope of a life lived in the glorious reign of God. His Kingdom here on earth. Our Saviour who would could not be beaten by the powers of this world. But who was resurrected as fully aligned with the Kingdom of God as ever before. Our Saviour the fully integrated person of God, moving and active in our world then just as He is today.

Today, in that church service, the question repeated over and over was “do you know where you are going after this life?” The question I believe God would have us ask is much more Missional, much more Incarnational. God’s question to us is, “do you know where you are living Today? Are you living in My Kingdom, or are you living in the Kingdoms of this world?”

The second thing that bothered me is very much tied into the first. Since we are called to participate with God’s Mission in the world we have to ask ourselves, what is God’s Mission? I believe He is doing the same thing Jesus was doing. Proclaiming peace in the midst of war, healing in the midst of sickness, hope in the midst of despair, subversion in the midst of Empire, and life in the midst of death. As missional Christians we are called to live a life that is marked by our Master. A life drenched in Kingdom values. We are not called to lead people toward an intellectual understanding of how they are sinners, need Jesus, and can have Jesus come and save them so they can have be given life after this life. Jesus’ intellectual conversations on the metaphysics of salvation were few in comparison to his many interactions with “the least of these”. Interactions where he provide immediate healing and hope, not just a hope for tomorrow or the next life, but a glorious hope for today. Coupled with this hope was the call to “go, and sin no more”. Jesus called those he had healed into a life in the Kingdom.

And you know what. Missionaries get this. In spite of the bad focus that I heard from the pulpit today, those who are really going out into the world have the heart of Christ guiding them into acts of compassion that far exceed their drive to provide personal conversions by intellectual understanding. Missionaries are far more easily found in hospitals tending to the sick or in service garages fixing some chap’s car or on the streets of some megacity playing with the street-kids, than in pulpits and seminaries and libraries.

So today at the commissioning service of two people who I adore and who I know have a desire to join in with God and His work in the world I found myself torn in two directions. Every thing preached from the pulpit spoke of the modern assumptions of a world that is run by a distant, removed God who touched humans and sent them on their way to reconnect with Him, eventually, in another life. Everything in the faces of those two people spoke of a God who resides with his people. A God who would not be traveling across the ocean with them in a few weeks, because he would already be there when they arrived. A God who is doing mighty things in this world and who has called us all into FULL participation with Him. Not as an afterthought to salvation, but as a way to be involved in God’s work toward the redemption of ALL THINGS.

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I definitely urge you to explore the rest of the participants in this missional synchroblog. All 50 are linked below.

Alan Hirsch Alan Knox Andrew Jones Barb Peters Bill Kinnon Brad Brisco Brad Grinnen Brad Sargent Brother Maynard Bryan Riley Chad Brooks Chris Wignall Cobus Van Wyngaard Dave DeVries David Best David Fitch David Wierzbicki DoSi Doug Jones Duncan McFadzean Erika Haub Grace Jamie Arpin-Ricci Jeff McQuilkin John Smulo Jonathan Brink JR Rozko Kathy Escobar Len Hjalmarson Makeesha Fisher Malcolm Lanham Mark Berry Mark Petersen Mark Priddy Michael Crane Michael Stewart Nick Loyd Patrick Oden Peggy Brown Phil Wyman Richard Pool Rick Meigs Rob Robinson Ron Cole Scott Marshall Sonja Andrews Stephen Shields Steve Hayes Tim Thompson Thom Turner

This diagram by Len Hjalmarson has done a lot of great things for my brain.

Len says, “Each brings their own renewal dynamic to the broader church, and I’m convinced that the convergence zone is where some of the most creative experiments will occur.” I too believe in the convergent zones being the places where the really good stuff happens. And from my own experience, this convergence is inevitable (as I pray all healthy happenings should be).

Len’s doodle reminds me of a whirlpool, or one of those big funnels in the mall where you can roll a coin down into the center. When you enter one of these three worlds (Missional, Emergent, Monastic) you get pulled into the others. In my experience, the more excited I became about the movements and ideas circling within Emergent thought, the further I was pulled into the ideas proposed by the Monastic and Missional movements. I find myself swirling around from one to the other and being pulled toward the inside of the funnel where I am more and more influenced by all three simultaneously. Relationships in one sphere lead to relatioships in the others. There is no sense of having to pick one camp over and above the others. In this way the center is not a crushing place that squeezes all things into one thing, but a broad place where more depth and variety of experiences just seems so much closer and accessible. The closer you get to the center there is more energy and more movement. Life seems to flow even more vigorously.

The center is really a non-center. In my experience it has been like the classic idea of a blackhole that opens up into another world on the other end. There has been a lot of spinning and confusion and joy and sadness and question and answer and question and in the midst of it all a broad horizon is becoming visible. An environment that is experienced and felt, and yet is far off. Allow me to indulge in some quick and dirty photoshopping…

The disappearance of the previously contentious issues is so refreshing – another thing that Len hits on. Gone are the squabbles over musical choice, emotional faith or intellectual faith, dispensational gifting, sheep stealing, or denominational representation. These sorts of squabbles seem to have been left on the other side of the squeeze. The further we all travel into our future, the more these things fade into the past. No doubt there are other issues arising that our children will distance themselves from in time. That’s just humanity. But maybe our journey down the slippery slope will provide a better vantage point for our future to deal with these emerging issues.

A great short by The Work of the People

All things…

All things…

All things…

it echoes throughout scripture.

Tags: liturgy

“We’re in a racketball court here. Knock the thing around!”

– Doug Pagitt

(love it)

“The God we affirm is then, at its best, inspired by the incoming of God and born there, but it is never to be confused with God.” – Peter Rollins

You know those times when your thoughts are building and changing so quickly that you barely have time to reflect on each of them and give them the brain time they deserve? Those times when all you can do is pound your hand on the table or attempt to suppress a squeal of excitement? Yes. Those times.

You know those times when thoughts start to crawl beneath your skin and into your eyeballs amidst the most queasy of itchiness? When you find yourself only able to think about how you need to stop thinking about these concepts because they are burning worse images in your head than those Faces of Death videos from grade seven? Yea…

Admittedly, three years ago the ratio of the first to the second would have been entirely reversed, but still, Pete’s latest book had me in both regions of anxiety. When reading The Fidelity of Betrayal the table pounding squeals far outweighed the eyeball squirms, but they were still there.

Pete takes us through three (four) aspects of our experience of God that we possibly need to be ready to betray in order to avoid mistaking these objectified realities for the creator God we worship. These being the Word, the Name, and the Act of God – the fourth being Truth itself (himself).

My biggest pauses came when I heard myself saying things like, “Aw that snake wasn’t such a bad guy,” Even though my beliefs about the story of the fall have changed drastically in the last while, I was still believing that the person-hood of God was contained in the words written about the encounter between God, Eve, Adam, and the Serpent (poor snake). Pete’s intent is not to pull us into a sympathy for the devil but to pull us from a loyalty to our words about God as contained in the Bible. We need to search out a deeper devotion to our creator born out of that betrayal. So while I’m not ready to run off to join some serpent cult, I am more ready to embrace the ambiguity of God’s nature within the Biblical narrative and try to see past my simplified ideas about a knowable personality of God.

Skipping ahead to the end of the book, Pete prompts us to consider a betrayal of our secured church boundaries in favor of a communal encounter with a God that we find in a religion without religion. A religion founded on the movement of God in miracles of love and reflected on through sacraments and then third and least made knowable through a set beliefs and creeds. I’m still to find a church institution that doesn’t try to downplay 1 John 4 in some way – to attempt to house the “of Gods” first within a church structure, system, or belief net.

So, I finished this book angrily and over-joyed. I’m angry because I feel alone. I feel alone among a sea of churches and Christians. I feel an insecurity in my beliefs that somehow fills me with a wonderful desire to fill the absence with love. I’m angry that I believed for so long that doubt and insecurity would be my enemy in life – that I needed to make sure I built my house on a church-rock. The problem being that the church-rock lately has felt much more like quicksand. Quicksand that pulls down anyone that doesn’t fit in order to make room to stabilize those who would do well in that system. And the thing is, I have a vision of Jesus jumping right off that church-rock too. Not to pull people back up on top, but to be present with those who have been sucked down.

It seems scary, and right now I feel alone, but I am going to try to stop squirming and go down too. I’m thinking that’s where I’ll find God. It seems that’s where heaven is.

A big part of why Missional living really resonates with me is because of a fresh understanding about Spiritual Gifts. Something I read the other day really summed up my new direction really sweetly…

“Our motivation for having spiritual gifts is not our own reputation, or desire for recognition or position, but rather the common good of the rest of the body. The gifts are given to the body, expressed through us as individuals, but the focus remains the body.” – Rob McAlpine, Post-Charismatic?

Over-individualized ideas of spiritual gifts has in the past resulted in a fractured body. Pastors and elders over here, Sunday school teachers over there, long-term missionaries in yet another corner. If our systems and positions worked in a previous setting we assumed that God has meant for us to do the same job wherever we find ourselves.

I am Missional because there seem to be much more important things than finding fitting into our structures. A missional call to find out where God is at work and to join him there means we need to forget for the time being whatever individual aspirations or giftedness we may think we are carrying with us. Not that we will never use them again, but for the good of the Kingdom we first need to forget ourselves and our mission and find God’s.

Missional living in this culture is perhaps, as Brother Maynard has suggested about the gift of prophecy, post-certainty.¹

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This was part of a missional synchroblog started by Jonathan. Here are the other participants:
Ben Wheatley – WWSBD What Would Shepherd Book Do?
Bryan Riley – Jesus is the Way and He Was Missional
Jonathan Brink – Why I Am Missional
Blake Huggins – Missional Synchroblog: Why Am I Missional
Alan Knox – Demonstrating the Heart of God
Tim Jones – Participation or Observation?

At the beginning of the year I set a goal for a certain number of books I was aiming to read this year. I think I am fairly far behind it right now. The goal was more to encourage me to continue to search out voices to hear. I don’t really read a book just to get through it. I’ve found myself slipping into an old habit of reading more than one book at a time and taking a while to finish any of them. Therefore, I am proposing to myself that I grab one book this weekend intending to read the whole thing in one go. I haven’t done such a thing in many years. I think the last time was grade nine while reading a fantasy series by David Eddings called The Belgariad (fantastic, as I recall – which would be why I read the whole five book series in one week).

So, tomorrow I’m going to turn pages in Post-Charismatic? by Rob McAlpine (aka RobbyMac). I’m not from the charismatic stream officially, but have interacted with the local Pentecostal and Vineyard churches quite often throughout my life. I’m especially interested in learning to engage more fully with this stream of Christianity to move forward into a more generous and spiritually expressive future. I’m excited about the opportunity to look both look backward while facing forward into a hopeful future together with my charismatic and post-charismatic sisters and brothers.

Oh, and Rob, I’m really sorry about the absence of picture on the amazon.ca page. That’s actually my fault and it will be corrected next week!

Pax

Tags: reading, charismatic, postcharismatic, robbymac,

I am really looking forward to this…

Tags: phyllistickle, emergence, emergent, books

Tony Jones has uploaded the first in a series of videos based on interactions found in his book The New Christians. Say hello to Trucker Frank!

Tags: emergent, emerging, trucker frank, tony jones

scott: i have been pondering over the weekend about the word ‘missional’

scott: i find that defining terms is not something that i excel at, but i have sort of narrowed it down to 3 bible passages that make the term work in my life

david: right. i’m hoping we can all help each other to understand it better

david: i have yet to put something together too.. i use it often, but I think i use it differently

david: on different days

scott: haha

scott: it seems to be the kind of word that can have more than one meaning to it

david: ya… well that’s part of it.. i wan to get beyond the missionaries/normal people way of thinking about it

scott: i am on board for that

scott: i have been seeing it as a ‘team-working’ (if you can’t tell, i just made that term up) of the greatest commandments, the sheep and goats being judged, and the great commission

david: cool

scott: for me it focuses it on the main aspect of loving people, and because of that love, taking care of their physical needs and sharing the gospel

scott: i like looking at it like that because it can work on a micro and a macro scale

david: you mean, it is about individual relationships and also relates to the call of the church as a whole?

scott: yes… to the individual and to the body. also, it relates the day to day with the long term

david: or the whole mission of god

scott: yes

scott: the mission of taking care of spiritual and physical needs in an ongoing way, based off of the love that we have for others

david: i think that’s one of the important distinctions

david: we tend to think of our mission as first and foremost shouting on street corners

david: forgetting that jesus said that the gospel is good news to the afflicted

scott: for sure… and going that out of obligation and not as an act of love

scott: going = doing

david: right

scott: so yeah… that is what i have been thinking about the word ‘missional’

david: i believe mission has to absolutely foundational to a group of people that would call themselves part of the church

scott: i would have to agree with you, sir. for most of my life, the word mission dealt with profession

david: right

scott: that is all the word was to me, but i think that it should be a purposeful lifestyle

scott: a sincere one, at that

david: i believe that is why people leave churches

david: they have not been given a chance to be missional

david: it is fairly unfulfilling to just take up space

david: many times we take away the job of everyone and give it to the professionals

scott: that is a very good point, dave

scott: and when people can’t pitch in, then they aren’t actually a part of a family, they are a guest

david: the majority of the church is told that their job is to fund the professional christians

david: which is great, but comes up short

scott: haha… for sure, which makes it a business relationship more than anything

david: share holders

scott: exactly

Tags: missional, church, jesus, incarnational

I attempted to distill this list down to some absolutely peerless
resource connections. If anyone has something to add please do!

This 50 minute clip should absolutely be seen first:
Michael Frost on Youtube

After that these are all excellent places to search through:
Shaping of Things to Come, Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch (Book)
Missio Dei, Fred Peatross (Book)
Allelon.org reading list
Resonate.ca
Resonate Audio Podcast (features some great talks by Michael Frost)
Friendofmissional.org
Missio Dei (Wikipedia)

Then there is also the little project that this blog is part of that is trying to add more story and understanding to our missional lives.
Missional Synchroblog

Tags: missional, emergent, emerging, church

Right now I am engaged in conversation with friends. Tuesday night church it has come to be called. We are collected from a variety of backgrounds (city and country, pastor and student, business world and outdoors enthusiasts) with a shared thirst for true community and mission.

We are dreaming about and beginning to participate in a community that we have decided to describe as missional. Missional was the FIRST word that we chose as a point of connection. It came before church, baptist, relevant, emergent, postmodern, purpose-driven, subversive, or biblical. All buzzwords begin to lose immediacy through our careless useage as characterized by the grandfather of buzzwords: Christian. Before the followers of “The Way” were labeled with the first-century buzzword of “Christian”, they were engaged in mission.

Every successful buzzword has action at its core. Christians were those in communities that were following the mission of God as perfected by Jesus, and living it within a cultural mission flavoured by the Jewish and Greek customs of the day. But somehow the perfect example of Jesus didn’t finish the mission. He sent his followers onward to continue to live this mission. To be missional is to be in transit. In the past there was a bestowing of mission. That comission is then acknowledged and acted on. We are now Missioning.

To be missioning is to live intentionally restorative reflections of God’s creative purpose into every part of our lives. Every relationship, every endeavor. Our missioning community is aiming to create connections and space to empower each other to live these lives of deep restoration. We are determined to not build walls, but instead to plant gardens. We are determined to go kayaking and laugh together in the woods. We are determined to cry with each other. We are determined to never wear our “Sunday Best”.

Since friendship and strategy just don’t seem to fit together, we are determined to avoid every 4 step evangelism strategy. In the words of Brian McLaren, we are counting conversations, not conversions. Instead, we commit ourselves to knowing each other’s strengths. We commit ourselves to listen to the purposes of God in the people we don’t yet know. We commit ourselves to our commission beyond our allegiance to any buzzword. Christian, Postmodern, Emergent, or Missional.

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This post is part of a Missional Synchroblog organized by Jonathan Brink

Synchroblog Participants
Jonathan Brink - Meeting God Where He’s Already Working
Ben Wheatley - Are Things You Are Living For Worth It
Blake Huggins - What Does Missional Living Look Like
Alan Knox - Living in the love of God
Dave DeVries - The Missional Challenge
Bryan Riley - What Does Missional Living Look Like To Me
Jeromy Johnson - What is missional living to me
Tim Jones - Living Like the Word Says
Nathan Gann - Inevitability?

Tags: Missional, Emerging, Emergent, Church, Christianity, Jesus

“Recognizing the story of the gospel is planted within the very culture that it is destined to transform accounts for the story’s own transitory nature. Our story is en route. As the gospel story is being finished in our midst, so are the practices of the gospel community. Jürgen Moltmann writes: ‘The restless world corresponds to the restless hearts of the children of Abraham. All transitory creatures are, along with Abraham’s children, on the way to that future in which the restless God comes to rest and finds his home in the house of the completed creation.’”

Troy Bronsink, An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, 67

This is a thought stream triggered by our recent movements into a new local church community. The question deals with the concern that an open-source community church structure could perhaps devolve into an ugly patriotism.

I don’t think that Ubuntu Philosophy fully describes the Kingdom of God and our part in it, but it is very helpful in opening us up to the ‘other’ and not fearing the differences among us.

The major difference between patriotism and Ubuntu philosophy is that patriotism is a deep commitment to an ideal community rather than to a real community. Patriotism kills community by being married to the idealism of the nation and the notion that it is superior to all others. It is a devotion to conformity rather than community. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is the spirit of listening to those around you and trusting in the wisdom of the community more than listening to your own ideals for that community. It is not that we all abandon our uniqueness and become one homogeneous blob, but that we bring all that we are into community and trust each other with our whole selves.

I would liken Patriotism to brand loyalty. In the ‘church as a business’ model brand loyalty became really important. Your denomination held all the ideals and the pastor took on the role of CEO. The Western church became a bunch of patriots, both to the country (which was portrayed as Christian) and to their right interpretation of Scripture above all others (or in the mainline church to the power structures, institutions, and sacraments).

In the model inspired by Ubuntu/Open-Source philosophy there is no ideal other than what beauty comes from the togetherness of the community itself. It is a remarkably flat structure. It’s not that there is no longer power or structure, but that structure is defined by the relationships. It changes and shifts depending on the needs of the community. A pastor is no longer CEO but takes a role fully integrated in the community. Ideals and right interpretation are not handed out from above by a superpower, but are formed in community. There is no brand or ideal to be loyal to. In its place is a community of people who all put each other before themselves. A community that takes seriously the care and support of and from all members. I love that line in the New Testament “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.”

This is an intense belief that there really is a priesthood of ALL believers. It is a system that gives voice to the margins, believing that since God always seems to speak from the most unlikely places we should posture ourselves to better listen for that still small voice.

Maybe this is again why we need to be “intentional” about this thing. never forsaking the actual community for an ideal community. Because our ideal will always neglect important aspects that our individuality will miss.

Tags: Church, Emergent, , Emerging, Ubuntu Philosophy, Patriotism, Community

Sunday’s comin’

There is an amazing tool out there called the Instant Message (IM). What follows is an IM conversation distilled into an essay and a dialogue. The colors define which side of the conversation the ideas emerge from. When the conversation is lumped together into paragraphs it is because we are forming a cohesive thought through our individual voices. Contradictions will almost certainly live within the same paragraphs, but they will be less frequent. When disagreements emerge the form changes into more a distinctive dialog/IM style. Ideas will flow in and out of the writing and meanings will shift. Disagreement and Agreement flow in and out of each other. In essence I am trying to capture some great ideas, but more importantly the nuance and beauty of conversation…
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The Kingdom of God and Jesus’ work of atonement on the cross… Are they separate? Do they accomplish different things? Is one superior to the other?

I think they go hand in hand. You can’t get in to the Kingdom without the work on the cross, and the work on the cross finds it’s meaning within the context of the Kingdom. It seems, in the context of “the kingdom of God is among you”, that there is a slightly different emphasis on the meaning of the cross… and resurrection. I’m not so sure the main point is saving from sins they way we usually think of it. Perhaps it is a way in to what God has been doing since the beginning of time – introducing the Kingdom.

And that creates another question. Does the kingdom exist outside the church or Christianity as a whole, or is Christianity the boundary of the kingdom? If it does exist on the outside, what does it mean for the cross to be the entrance?

Perhaps it depends on how you define Christianity. Is it what we know… or what it was intended to be… and are those the same thing? Now, I don’t really think they are the same thing in a “for all time” sense, but we really can only work with what we live in… what we know. And that brings us back to the original question. If the kingdom really is defined by the work on the cross, and the cross can only be understood in the context of the kingdom, then what came first? The work of Jesus on the cross must find its fullest meaning in the kingdom, but is the kingdom entirely held up in the cross? Held up in the sense that the cross only has something to say about the defeat of sin or fixing our fallen-ness.

Partially, I think the cross is about restoration. About restoring us to the Kingdom. But I also feel that leaves a lot out. I mean, it’s just that there is a whole lot of Bible in between the “fall” and the “restoration”, and then there has been a lot after it too.

Let me sum up: Jesus life and ministry was a Perfect example of living in the kingdom of God. By necessity this example was contrary to the system of the roman rule and the Jewish religious system. Both groups saw this difference and had to try to end Jesus’ influence to keep their kingdoms in place. Jesus died at the hands of those kingdoms. BUT, that wasn’t the end. As Paul says, we preach Christ both crucified and RISEN. The risen Savior shows that there is ultimately a victory in the Kingdom of God.

FRIEND TWO: Right, but all of that fits in to the framework of Fall and Restoration. They are the bookends of the bible. And, everything, I think.

FRIEND ONE: Well, the beginning is people trying to sort out how we got ourselves in the messes we are in.

FRIEND TWO: Right… because we have fallen away from God.

FRIEND ONE: And the end was hope to those Christians living in the horrid conditions of Roman Empire.

FRIEND TWO: But I think that extends to us as well…we live in horrid conditions that are far from God’s kingdom, or what it is supposed to be. We have a taste – a hope – of things to come… ala Romans 8… â€?All creation groans.â€? It knows things are screwed up – we know things are screwed up. The cross gives us a way to be restored. The resurrection gives us hope of this restoration.

Kingdom restoration has been God’s plan all along. Kingdom living was God’s plan before “originalâ€? sin (whatever that means). And the cross is our hope. It’s a way back to the kingdom, to how things should be. But our hope is not just the cross. Jesus’ whole life and ministry is the gospel of the kingdom – the hope of restoration.

FRIEND TWO: The cross is a means to that end

FRIEND ONE: Wasn’t his life also the means?

FRIEND TWO: It was the example of what the kingdom really is. The cross makes it possible for us to enter in to it.

FRIEND ONE: That’s where I get hung up

FRIEND TWO: Hung up on the cross, eh?

FRIEND ONE: I don’t know. There is a bit of incongruence.

FRIEND TWO: What is incongruent?

What is incongruent is the idea that the cross is the way. Jesus never said that. Jesus said, “I am the way.� HE brought the good news of the kingdom with him. HE made a way for us to be restored.

… to be continued.

Today I continue and complete my lately read summaries. There is not nearly as much of a theme with this bunch as there was with the previous list. However, each of these four books were no less formative. Let’s dive in.

1. Pagan Christianity - George Barna and Frank Viola

Straight into the fire. First, the airing of grievances. Frank really diminishes his very important points in two big ways.

First, the word PAGAN. From various interviews and responses to critics it is clear that Frank’s argument in this book is not that Pagan = Evil. The discussion goes along great until the inevitable mentions of the P word. It’s gets to be just about as bile-inducing as Heretic, or Biblical, or American Beer. I wish the title of the book was something like “The Fossilizing of Christianity” or “Calcified Christianity”. I don’t know. The idea that the God of the universe would be concerned with paganism is so daft to me.

Second, there is a lot of rigidity in the way Viola and Barna present this organic dream of church. Josh Brown’s misgivings after hearing Frank speak in Florida speak a bit to this. I really was taken back by the idea that someone so infatuated with an organic church model could be so rigid in how that works itself out. I just don’t understand the New Testament community as being meant to be prescriptive to all eras. Certainly Jesus’ reminder to make love of our neighbor on par with our love of God (indeed the two should be and must be indistinguishable and inseparable) is a very really need in every faithful community, but not the skins that we wrap around it.

Viola’s warnings to avoid deifying our church structures that are not “biblical” (ew!) are very important to heed when these structures obscure a picture of loving, worshipping, formative community.

There are a few opportunities for imagination that I have taken from the reading of this book:

• Full understanding and implementation of the priesthood of all believers.
• Movement toward every member functioning, and given space to contribute in our meetings
• Imagination with regards to compensation to staff (bi-vocational pastorate, etc)
• Revisiting giving
• Communion in community (Party!)
• Reworking Christian education and programs

I am very glad to be done with this book though. It was not a pleasure to read. I did not leave it feeling positive, but I am determined to work with it and leave behind the foulness and build love and creativity from Frank’s work. Not in an effort to be more biblical or less pagan, but in an effort to be a fuller representation of Christ’s body and Kingdom resident.

2. The New Christians - Tony Jones

Two words sum up this book for me. Inviting and Hope.

This is a book that is very inviting to anyone who has questions about the bold frontiers of Christianity in America and the world. This is not a harsh book. Tony is gracious in his arguments and easy to engage throughout the work. He is honest when it comes to past criticisms of Emergent and even includes a fairly even handed early history of the friendship. Incidentally if anyone was skeptical about that word choice (friendship) to describe emergent, I think TNC does a great job of laying bare just how much this really has grown out of friendships. And it continues to evolve new kinships and conversations. Discussions with Jewish communities who also find themselves in this emerging landscape gush with grace and honesty.

The New Christians helps us to understand that we can’t pigeonhole emerging into a Christian phenomenon. This is just one part of a world wide shift. We can either embrace the changes and live fully into this moment God has given us, or we can continue to recede into our caves of comfort and modernity. One thing is clear, the God’s world will not stick around to wait for you.

I really appreciated the final chapters where Tony engages with a variety of emerging communities and developing philosophies (wikichurch). The beautiful messiness of these communities really draws me. These communities are nobody’s attempts to be trendy or relevant, they are just the only way we know how to do things. Sitting in church structures that were normal for our great grandparents just doesn’t make sense anymore. This is the Hope. God is not done yet. See, he is doing a new thing. Even now it springs up. Can’t you see it? Our hope is fully in him as we march on into the frontiers of now.

Man, now that was meandering…

3. What is the What - Dave Eggers

I don’t know how this book pulls it off! And I don’t know how I’ll explain that exclamation without giving away too much of the story!

One day, around 10 years of age, I was deep in my own dreamland as usual. I miss-judged the edges of my bed and summersaulted right out into open bedroom air and landed squarely on my upper back. I felt that horrible woosh as the last pockets of air jumped from my lungs and I wheezed and cried feebly for them to come back inside. This book is that experience, but repeated every 10 minutes for 350 pages.

The plight of the Lost Boys of Sudan make me wonder if I will ever experience life. How could I really know what a good day is when I have been able to avoid seeing my friends snatched away in the jaws of lions. Or had to walk past children barely old enough for school as their life leaked away from starvation. Reality is too real. My selfishness inside wishes this book was not around to confront my fat belly and overextended credit.

It seems that great stories of life aren’t read so much as they read us.

4. The Shack - William P. Young

A book that opens up a possibility of what it means to claim you can say anything of substance about what God does or doesn’t do. Secondarily this book imagines possible dance steps of a God who is Three in One (Father, Son, Gardener). William Young seems to have provoked the wrath of all those critics who just can’t stay away from their keyboard long enough to wait for Brian McLaren’s next book. Personally, I loved it. This book claims nothing about truth, but rather dreams a dream. I haven’t studied trinitarian thought enough to say anything about the theology in this novel. So I will end here. It didn’t change my life as some have said, but I won’t deny the tears on my cheek near the end. Good stuff.

Making a New Year’s Resolution to read a certain number of books means that you end up reading some books. Seriously. So, in order to do some worthwhile reflecting and remarking, here are the books I have recently read and some minor thoughts that have arisen in me from them. I think I will split this into two or more parts, assuming that many eyes glaze when reading long passages on a screen. I know mine do.


The first four are in definite relationship:

1. Everything Must Change - Brian McLaren

Much has been written about this book. So I will not really interact with it in depth. Just a couple of thoughts. I appreciate so much the work that Brian is doing. The conversations he is involved in all over the world are so important. The trajectory of his life has made him the center of a hurricane of criticisms.

After considering this work from a social point of view I find myself lacking in resolve in so many areas. I drink too much, I buy too much, I work too little for the luxury I have. I neglect my neighbour, I dislike my neighbour, I work against my neighbour, I don’t know my neighbour. I am grateful for someone like Brian who will confront me and witness to the mission of Christ that we are called to that manages to wind its way out of the church buildings that use to captivate our Saviour (perhaps to keep him from being crucified again.)

When considering Brian’s book from a theological point of view it is another effort to get us to shed this diabolical notion that God’s work (and the church’s) is to save individual souls from eternal hell. More than anything we need to surrender our warehousing instincts. No more pray a prayer and saved forever. However, this DOES NOT mean we are otherwise left to work out our salvation through our works.

Jesus proclaims that simply believing his good news brings salvation. This is “salvation by grace through faith” in a planetary sense: if we believe that God graciously offers us a new way, a new truth, and a new life, we can be liberated from the vicious, addictive cycles of our suicidal framing stories. That kind of faith will save us. If we don’t believe, we will persist in trying harder and harder, again and again, to acheive our own salvation through our existing narratives and the techniques they inspire. Even if Jesus’ “saving poetry” is true, our failure to believe it will keep us from experiencing its saving potential, and so we’ll spin on in the vicious prose cycles of Caesar.” (McLaren, p. 270)

This leads me to a thought I have had recently. Should our salvation as fully expressed in the work of Jesus Christ really be coupled, and really, made one with a subsequent (and preexistent) call to follow? Whether through believing or working I am thoroughly suspicious of a salvation story that ends in something WE do. But I will leave this thread alone for now.

2. Irresistable Revolution - Shane Claiborne

Another World Is Possible.

There isn’t much to say other than GO READ THIS. This book stirred my imagination and dropped a 50,000 pound weight on my pride and greed. There is not a page in the 300 or so that does not convict. Unfortunately I read it a while ago and have since loaned out my copy so I can’t drop down the myriad of quotes that I have underlined in it. I do have one which I had copied into a text file.

“When we are trying to teach kids not to hit each other and they see a government use violence to bring about change, we start to consider what it means to give witness to a peace that is not like the world gives. (John 14:27)” (Shane Claiborne)

As he mentions in his book, it is in much sadness that we hear this kind of life being called Radical. This is the way we are supposed to live! It should be Normal. Everyone, can we please pledge to help make Shane normal?

3. Colossians Remixed - Silvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh

The imagination thing continues in this epic outpouring from the lives of Silvia and Brian. And I mean lives. These two live out their theology, which is the only way to do it. Praxidoxy? I don’t know.

Anyway, Colossians Remixed is one part commentary, one part translation, one part targum, one part social conscience, and four zillion parts pure creation/gospel/reconciliation-particaptory imagination. How has our current social structures and abuses disguised the subversive culture confronting message of Paul to the Colossians? Now that we have rediscovered the danger inherit in this text how do we translate it to speak into the powers and principalities of our own times? And dare we? If anyone knows of similar treatments of other books in the Bible please send me in their direction. 5 Stars. (note… I actually somewhat dislike the giving of a rating, but I just can’t help it here…. 6 Stars!)

4. Martin Luther King Jr. (Penguin Lives Biography) - Marshall Frady

I’m pretty sure this guy was quoted in all three of the books mentioned above. What to say…

Marshall does not sugar coat King. I really appreciate this. King was in this world just as much as George Wallace. King had no intention of trying to separate himself from the dirt of life. He lived an imperfect life and made it his goal to live intentionally whole. The weight of his choices crushed him from every side. And sometimes he melted. But he could not be moved. As much as we would like to imbue King with angelic status it just doesn’t stick. And I am glad that we are kept from that in Frady’s biography. We can more easily march alongside King and stand against the firehoses and know that while we go home and weep, so does this man who only hopes to have the strength to do it all again – only because he must.

“We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside . . . but one day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved.” (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)

Here stands another Radical. Let us stand with him! Please!

Next time….

5. Pagan Christianity - George Barna and Frank Viola

8. The Shack - William P. Young

Is it just absolutely horrible that as I read Brian and Sylvia’s incredible book on the dangers of nationalism above our call to be disciples that I feel a sense of pride that these fine folk are Canadian? Probably. I expect to be horribly convicted of this patriotism by the end of the book.

This has been a fascinating read. Challenging too. Right now in my life I am very quick to deify post modernism as a cure-all for what ails the modern church. This book has done a marvelous thing for me. Calling me back to an allegiance to the Kingdom of God rather than to the philosophies and empires of earthly systems. While I don’t think I will ever dispose of the critical methods of deconstruction and the desire to give ear to “the other”, I will also push to first and foremost pledge my allegiance to the Slaughtered Lamb.

ONE: Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world
ALL: Have mercy on us
ONE: Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world
ALL: Free us from bondage to sin and death
ONE: Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world
ALL: Hear our prayers prince of peace
ONE: For the victims of war
ALL: Have mercy
ONE: Women, men, and children
ALL: Have mercy
ONE: The maimed and the crippled
ALL: Have mercy
ONE: The abandoned and the homeless
ALL: Have mercy
ONE: The imprisoned and the tortured
ALL: Have mercy
ONE: The widowed and the orphaned
ALL: Have mercy
ONE: The bleeding and the dying
ALL: Have mercy
ONE: The weary and the desperate
ALL: Have mercy
ONE: The lost and the forsaken
ALL: Have mercy
ONE: Oh God have mercy on us sinners
ALL: Forgive us for we know not we do
ONE: For our scorched and blackened earth
ALL: Forgive us
ONE: For the scandal of billions wasted in war
ALL: Forgive us
ONE: For our arms makers and our arms dealers
ALL: Forgive us
ONE: For our Caesars and our Herods
ALL: Forgive us
ONE: For the violence that is rooted in our own hearts
ALL: Forgive us
ONE: For the times that we turn others into enemies
ALL: Forgive us
ONE: Deliver us oh God
ALL: Turn our feet to the way of peace
ONE and ALL: Hear our prayer, grant us peace
ONE: From the arrogance of power
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: From the myth of redemptive violence
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: From the tyranny of greed
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: From the ugliness of racism
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: From the cancer of hatred
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: From the seduction of wealth
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: From the addiction of control
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: From the idolatry of nationalism
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: From the paralysis of cynicism
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: From the violence of apathy
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: From the ghettos of poverty
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: From the ghettos of wealth
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: From the lack of imagination
ALL: Deliver us
ONE: Deliver us oh God
ALL: Turn our feet to the way of peace
ONE: We will not conform to the patterns of this world
ALL: Let us be transformed by the renewing of our minds
ONE: With the help of God’s grace
ALL: Let us resist evil wherever we find it
ONE: With the waging of war
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With the legalization of murder
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With the slaughter of innocents
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With laws that betray human life
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With the destruction of community
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With the pointing finger and malicious talk
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With the idea that happiness must be purchased
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With the ravaging of the earth
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With principalities and powers that oppress
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With the destructions of peoples
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With the raping of women
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With governments that kill
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With the theology of empire
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With the business of militarism
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With the hording of riches
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: With the dissemination of fear
ALL: We will not comply
ONE: But today we pledge our ultimate allegiance to the Kingdom of God
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the peace that is not like Rome’s
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the gospel of enemy love
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the kingdom of the poor and the broken
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the King who loves His enemies so much he died for them
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the least of these with whom Christ dwells
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the transnational church that transcends artificial borders of nations
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the refugee of Nazareth
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the homeless rabbi who had no place to lay his head
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the cross rather than the sword
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the banner of love above any flag
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the one who rules with a towel rather than an iron fist
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the one who rides a donkey rather than a war horse
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the revolution that sets both oppressed and oppressors free
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the way that leads to life
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: To the slaughtered lamb
ALL: We pledge allegiance
ONE: And we together proclaim His praises f