MY GOD,

Thou hast helped me to see,
that whatever good be in honour and
rejoicing, how good is he who gives them,
and can withdraw them;
that blessedness does not lie so much
in receiving good from and in thee,
but in holding forth thy glory and virtue;
that it is an amazing thing to see Deity
in a creature, speaking, acting,
filling, shining through it;
that nothing is good but thee,
that I am near good when I am near thee,
that to be like thee is a glorious thing:
This is my magnet, my attraction.

Thou art all my good in times of peace,
my only support in days of trouble,
my one sufficiency when life shall end.
Help me to see how good thy will is in all,
and even when it crosses mine
teach me to be pleased with it.
Grant me to feel thee in fire, and food and every providence,
and to see that thy many gifts and creatures
are but thy hands and fingers taking hold of me.
Thou bottomless fountain of all good,
I give myself to thee out of love,
for all I have or own is thine,
my goods, family, church, self,
to do with as thou wilt,
to honour thyself by me, and by all mine.
If it be consistent with thy eternal counsels,
the purpose of thy grace,
and the great ends of thy glory,
then bestow upon me the blessings of thy comforts
If not, let me resign myself to
thy wiser determinations.

From The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions

The church read this together today. Such a powerful statement of our
receiving and giving all to God: from Good, to Good, for Good. This, I
think is maybe what folks really mean when they assure you that “It’s
all good.”

Tags: prayer, thanks, good, blessing, puritan

During the next few weeks I am going to engage the art of journaling. Although I do keep this blog updated on a generally frequent basis, I don’t feel that I have made use of its potential in a way that has really been able to transform and impact my life and relationships. As my vehicle in this exercise I am going to be reading and journaling through Don Postema’s devotional journal, Space for God. As I read and pray through Don’s book I will interact with various themes and images that I come across. I will do my best to articulate prayers, pictures, stories and thoughts that are stirred up through my practice.

To be completely transparent, I am doing this in part to get a grade for a class. As part of my grade in Spiritual Formation I am to engage with Don’s book through a journal to be handed in at the end of the semester. I decided to do my journaling in this more public space both to encourage myself to be consistent with my journals, and to maybe share with you all some truth and beauty along the way. I hope that this is as invigorating for you as it for me.

“What else can make us one but prayer? What else can unite us but a common recognition that all that is, is a divine gift calling forth from us words and actions of thanks? What else can gather us but a spirituality of gratitude that sets us free from our many divisions and allows us to celebrate together the presence of the living Christ among us? Don has brought together John Calvin and Thomas Merton; Dutch and Japanese drawings; Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox reflections. What unites them? Gratitude, the deep awareness of the giftedness of life. The prayer of thanks is indeed the place where we all can meet – not looking at each other and finding fault with each other but looking together at him who forgives us our faults over and again.”

– Henri J. M. Nouwen (from the preface to Space for God)

Tags: journaling, spirituality, don postema, discipline

Eternal life. Where is it? When is it? For a long time I have thought about eternal life as a life after all my birthdays have run out. For most of my years I have spoken about the eternal life as the ‘afterlife,’ as ‘life after death.’ But the older I become, the less interest my ‘afterlife’ holds for me. Worrying not only about tomorrow, next year, and the next decade, but even about the next life seems a false preoccupation. Wondering how things will be for me after I die seems, for the most part, a distraction. When my clear goal is the eternal life, that life must be reachable right now, where I am, because eternal life is life in and with God, and God is where I am here and now.

– Henri Nouwen

This to me is one of the basic differences between the Jewish way (life with God here and now) and the Platonic/Greek way (life with God after you escape this world).

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

Luke 10:25-28

What is blocking you from tasting life with God now?

Tags: heaven, eternal, nouwen

We are tied to this place, and it is God’s place. God’s crib. We live lives that are designed to be connected to this planet. We often work hard to disassociate ourselves from this place. This kills us.

When we yearn to desert this world to go to another place we tell God that this creation is not acceptable to us. In a sense it isn’t and shouldn’t be. Its present form is cracked. Those cracks are sin. Lost harmony, broken relationships and prideful rebellion are the sinful cracks that cause us to long for our real land. But it is not somewhere else. It is here.

God’s plan is clear… Full restoration… of this, his good creation. Not just people.

We often come to see heaven as a place for people (instead of what I believe is its rightful designation as the place where God is). This view of heaven reflects our understanding of the earth as an object. We refer to our environment as a resource to be mined instead of being the life-giving, cycling, renewing, gifting environment of life that it is. We can’t exist as God’s people without God’s grasses and God’s cattle and God’s oxygen. He designed it that way and called it good. Why do we long to leave it all behind?

These hilarious, fake church signs are a marvelous commentary on the disconnect between heaven as complete and restored earthly creation fully embodying the purpose and mission of God vs. heaven as escape hatch for born-again Christians. I, for one, am a firm believer that my pet rock is included in the redemption of all things. Heaven is most definitely a place, but it is – and is to become – this place.

Tags: heaven, earth, kingdom, creation, environment, green

Anyway, today I was listening to an old Emergent Village podcast from December 2006 that was hosted by Melvin Bray. (Incidentally, why isn’t Melvin doing more podcasts for Emergent Village? And what is with the lack of podcasts lately? Surely there isn’t an absence of possibilities for content. Sorry, no more erratic questions.)

Back to the podcast… Melvin spoke of looking forward to 2007 as the year of “Justice.” No doubt that was largely the story. Prophets such as Brian McLaren and Shane Claiborne as well as many others, both contemporary and historical, liberal and conservative, led us artfully and with wisdom into a revitalized World Christianity that took seriously the question of stewardship and justice. In the larger global neighborhood both inside and outside the Christian church people turned their attentions to the need for a greater compassion.

This discussion has only just begun, and in many places our churches are only beginning to realize the greater significance and calling. Throughout a myriad of contexts the church really is emerging from her interior programs and ministries to see a world literally starving around her. I’m fairly certain I heard that there is an Emergent Manifesto of Justice being published sometime next year. (Does anyone know of a list of contributors to the project?) This rally surely must continue.

Coming around to the reason for this posting…
What are the conversations that you see being sparked around you as we are now into the second half of 2008.

What are the questions you foresee being asked in the coming year?

What will be emerging at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century?

What will emergent phenomena will we see in the year 2010? What will be the world’s questions a decade on from 9/11? Am I getting too far ahead of ourselves now?

May we never lose our sensitivity to the anxieties and questions of that which is other to ourselves.

Tags: future, emergent, emerging, justice, brian mclaren, shane claiborne, melvin bray, 2009, podcast

ROLLINS: What I’m trying to get at there is that God, as presented in the Bible, escapes our attempts at capturing him in conceptual form. This happens in two major ways. Firstly, we cannot grasp God, not because there is a lack of names, but because there is such a surplus of them. These different ideas and names of God clash at various times—for instance, when God is named a warrior and then a peacemaker, or one who is unchanging and one who rethinks situations. The fact that there are so many ways of naming and describing God is a way of saying that no name or group of names can grasp God.

…

ROLLINS: [T]o be orthodox is to bring praise to God through one’s life. While people these days are asking the question, “Is Christianity true?,” the more fundamental question must be, “What does Christ mean when he uses the word truth?” The reason I am asking that question is that when Jesus talks about the truth, He talk about life. The truth is what brings life. My axiom for today is that Christianity at its core doesn’t explain life but it brings life. We must thus ask whether our beliefs and actions bring life, healing and love to the people in the world.

You simply must read this interview with Pete done by Becky Garrison for the Wittenburg Door. Both of his books are blazing as well. I’m trying in my own context to search for the right questions in a way similar to how Pete thoughtfully takes us away from a Christianity based on belief of a certain set of absolute abstractions and in the direction of a Christianity thoughtfully lived. We regularly need to be reminded that Jesus was not a Christian in an abstract – know the right answers – sort of way. He moved so perfectly in love, beauty, grace, peace and justice that his spirit, actions and person were called way, truth and life. Truth is a person. Incredible. As Tony Jones puts it, “Truth had smelly armpits.”

DOOR: What then does it mean to be a Christian?

ROLLINS: It means entering into a journey of becoming one. It does not mean accepting a world view but rather entering into a healing journey of life. To be a Christian also means that one is committed to exploring this life through the Judeo-Christian tradition, wrestling with it, learning from it and being transformed by it. Being a Christian means learning how to be the opening of life into the world.

ht: Bob Carlton

Tags: jesus, peter rollins, philosophy, christianity, god, truth, becky garrison

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.

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

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.

—————————————
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

A great short by The Work of the People

All things…

All things…

All things…

it echoes throughout scripture.

Tags: liturgy

Part Four of Doug Pagitt’s promo videos for his new book, which I am reading right now.

…. and .. the video that we showed at the beginning of Chris and Em’s wedding ceremony. The couple are known for their love of all things tardy, so they each filmed their adventures in trying to get to the church on time which we debuted to those in attendance. It was good. And, yes, they did both actually get there on time.. we made sure of that.

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.

Reading The Fidelity of Betrayal on a dripping Saturday afternoon. I’m now into Part Two and his exploration of the Name of G–D through ancient mythologies such as Lilith, Isis, and then the Moses narrative. Reading Part One where Rollins explores how a faithful reading of the text of the Bible may involve our betrayal of the words we find has already lead to some fascinating and rich discussions with friends. I’ll leave you with a passage from Part One while I continue on myself.

“The words of the Bible, wonderful as they often are, must not be allowed to stand in for God’s majestic Word, as if the words and phrases have been conferred with some sacred status and the phonetic patterns given divine power. Rather, the Word of God can be described as that dark core around which the words of the text find their orbit, the unspeakable Source within the text that cannot be reduced to the words themselves but that breathes life into them.” (Rollins, p. 57)

Why do Christian communities feel this need to proclaim faith as their distinctive tie that binds? Do we really think that faith exists inside church and there is a faith vacuum outside? Of course not.

And no, it is not just a handy witnessing tool. You are not so sly when you say, “Oh, I was just hanging out with my faith community today.”

“Oh, yeah? A faith community, you say. And where did you get this foreign substance known as faith? I wish I had some faith that I could place somewhere. Spill the beans of faith!”

“Jesus gave me some!”

Yes, Jesus. The fella that blesses the Christian with the mutant superpower of Faith. Oh, if only the world would realize how awesome it is to have faith in something – anything! Surely, if there is one thing our communities can bless the world with it is faith. Maybe we should open up our faith storehouses and let the faith roll down the hill into the faithless valleys of darkness.

I need faith in something more than just having some.

Tags: phyllistickle, emergence, emergent, books

Tags: emergent, emerging, trucker frank, tony jones

In the last few days I have devoured this tiny book during lunch hour reading sessions. Mudhouse Sabbath is an honest and concise exploration of how ancient and more modern Jewish practices can enrich the lives of Christians if only we would look outside our own houses once in a while. Lauren takes us on a journey through a selection of Jewish spiritual practices including shabbat (sabbath), avelut (mourning), hachnassat orchim (hospitality), tzum (fasting), kiddushin (weddings), and mezuzot (doorpost inscriptions). In her distinctively vulnerable way, Winner takes us through her own attempts at incorporating these practices into her adopted Christian life. Lauren’s deep love and respect for both spiritual traditions and her knowledge of the quirks and intricacies of them each surfaces in every personal reflection.

One large theme echoed in my head in each chapter. The first and most important reason for a Jew to engage in all of the mentioned practices is because they were told to. Their first thought was never to personal benefits that arise from the practices, but to God’s command to be faithful; although the personal benefits are indeed numerous. “They don’t light Sabbath candles simply because candles make them feel close to God, but because God commanded the lighting of candles. Closeness might be a nice by-product, but it is not the point.” (Winner, xii)

Christians are more likely to practice spiritual discipline for personal benefit and it is a great freedom and privilege to do so. However, we would do well to consider the selfless attitude of obedience that marked the consistency with which the Jewish community has committed themselves to remembering these time-honored rhythms.

I also really love the devotion to community and hospitality as a spiritual discipline above all others. If your adherence to dietary laws does a disservice to your interactions with others then it ceases to be a blessing. The rhythms in the Jewish wedding and mourning traditions give preeminence to the role of the community in those celebrations. Often we think of spiritual discipline as something we act out in our bedroom when we are supremely alone with God. But a faith that is only personal gives us a very partial view of the real blessing awaiting a community that practices together.

My own attempts at spiritual discipline are always disjointed and more valiant in my head than they end up being in practice. The simplicity in Lauren’s book has strengthened me to try again. Practice is never all that fun, but the results are always thrilling and most surprising.

Tags: reading, lauren winner, judaism, christianity, spiritual discipline

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.

——————————————————————
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