The 4 P's of Missional Life and Ministry

Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 04:49PM

Last night while driving from my house to Franklin and Marshall College to speak at InterVarsity Christian Fellowship I was listening to some seminar given at Dallas Theological Seminary by Michael Frost.  In the seminar Frost was talking about the missional life and he laid out 4 P's of missional life.

The 4 P's are:

Proximity-  This is based off of John 1:14 where Jesus takes on flesh and blood and moves into the neighborhood.  This is being in close relationship and close space to those who Jesus misses the most.  This can mean to move into a new neighborhood that God is calling you to move into, or to just spend more time in the relationships and neighborhood that God has already placed you.

We step into the experience of those we seek to win and serve. We need to step out of our comfort zone and move into proximity of those who would not be in our normal circle of friends. Ministry happens in the neighborhoods.

Presence- When we spend time in the world we are litterally the presence of Christ in the world.  We are the hands and feet of Christ.  We will be with people in relationship and in the midst of that relationship Christ will be present.

We are to practice the presence of Christ in the midst of the world. We should be doing what Christ would have been doing if he was still physically walking in this world.

Powerlessness- This is probably one of the hardest thing from the perspective of a white middle-class educated male who at times doesn't realize that he has always been on the side of the "power" dynamic.  But what Michael Frost is getting at was shared in the context of a story about 2 Texans who were teaching english to some burmese refugees.  Frost said to ask the refugees to teach them something, like cooking to change the power dynamic.

Proclamation- This is one piece that all too often is missing in the missional conversation.  We react so strongly against the "evangelism" that is about manipulation, hell-fire and brimstone, and lacking in relationship that sometimes we just let our actions speak for us.  (especially from the perspective of an anabaptist).

Should we actually tell people about Jesus? If we move into the neighborhood and build relational proximity and are the presence of Jesus, going empty handed and naked as the powerless ones, sooner or later someone is going to want to know who you are and why you do what you do. The answer to that question is of course the proclamation of the person of Jesus. Without this proclamation we will be seen as just another good person. Of what value is that?

So I am digesting what this means for my family and I as we discern our next steps together and also as leaders within the Veritas community.  I also am wondering how Veritas might live out these 4 P's in our communal life.  How are you or your community living these 4 P's out?  I would be interested in hearing comments, thoughts, and suggestions..

Oops...take 2

Monday, November 8, 2010 at 01:40PM

When you leave me in charge of the technical aspect of stuff..like what happened yesterday....you end up with nothing recorded......So here is the text from the message from yesterday and the questions we discussed.

We have two more weeks left in our sermon series entitled “The Generous Life” and until we transition into Phase 2 of Veritas.  This week we’ll be covering the Stewardship of Talents and next week we’ll wrap it all up with discussion centered on the stewardship of God’s creation.

So as I was working on developing this series I knew that I needed to do one week on being good stewards of our talents.  And I knew that I needed to use the Parable that we are going to look at this morning.  I knew this because this parable is one that led me to planting Veritas, calling me to take a risk and use what he has blessed me with.  God spoke so strongly to me through this parable and continues to speak through it to me.  And I am sure that he will speak to you through it as well.

The parable that we are looking at together today is found in Matthew 25:14-30 and is called the Parable of the Talents.

“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more.  So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.  “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’

“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ “The man with the two talents also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.’  “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ “Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’  “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?  Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. “‘Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents.  For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.  And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

This is one of the better known parables that Jesus told during his ministry here on earth.  But what was the point of the story for his hearer’s?  And what about us 2,000 years later?  Is the point of the story the same and an even deeper question, is the story and the point of it even relevant in our time?  Let’s spend some time this morning discussing the parable, its point made by Jesus, and the relevance of it in our modern life.

The first thing that we need to look at together is this word talent found in the parable.  In the English language we commonly use that word when we say people have received talents of music, business, leadership, and the like.  That use of the word is derived from this parable.  But what was a talent in Jesus’ day?  It was originally a measure of weight and later the word came to denote a fixed amount of gold or silver.  A talent was a unit of money which in modern terms equal roughly 1,200 dollars.  So while we may think that the third servant wasn’t given that much in the way of talents, we see that it was significant nonetheless.  Servants of God are not all endowed with equal gifts and talents.  But it’s not how much the servants were each given, but what they did with it once that had it that truly mattered.  Just look at the Master at the end of the story, what did he look for?  Goodness and faithfulness in his servants.  Whatever financial success these servants enjoyed came because they were good and faithful.  The Master looked first for these things, not the bottom line.

In this parable Jesus points out that talents are given to be used, and not buried in the earth.  These talents are to be used, shared, and given to help others, and not keep it to ourselves (whether we are talking about money, time, or talents).  It reminds me of another passage of Scripture which talks about the reason for our gifts.  1 Peter 4:10 (a letter written by an early Christian leader named Peter) says, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.”  Any gift that we may have received from God (money, time, talent, etc..) everything that w have should be viewed as being entrusted to us, not for ourselves, but to be used for ministering and serving the body of Christ and the world.  Our possession’s are not ours in a selfish sense, for we are just stewarding them for God, as he has given us them to further his kingdom with.

This is where the connection lies between last week’s discussion and this weeks.  Each of us have different talents (music, teaching, art, athletics, dance, drama, etc..) and so we desperately need each other in order for the body of Christ to be complete and whole.  No one’s gift is more important than any other in the body of Christ, all are needed.  Whether we feel that we have been given 5 talents, 2 talents, or only 1 talent, we need to use those talents in concert with others within the body of Christ to further the kingdom.  Again it’s not how many talents that you have been given, or how you are using those talents to further your own kingdom, but it is how you are using them to further the kingdom of God that truly matters the most.

I’ll tell you what messed me up the most when I read this passage about 4 years ago.  It was the ending of the parable in the Message translation that God called me to jump ship and take a risk in planting Veritas.  In the Message version the ending of the parable goes like this, “The master was furious. 'That's a terrible way to live! It's criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best, why did you do less than the least? The least you could have done would have been to invest the sum with the bankers, where at least I would have gotten a little interest. "'Take the thousand and give it to the one who risked the most. And get rid of this "play-it-safe" who won't go out on a limb. Throw him out into utter darkness.'”

Did you catch the difference between this ending and the one from the New International Version?  The issue that the master had with the servant was that he didn’t take a risk, and the one who received the most was the one who took the greatest risk.  We must venture with Christ at risk.  We can’t be content with “things as they are.”  We must break new soil.  We miss the point of this story if we fail to see that Christ requires of his followers the hazard of the untried road.  Or as Charlotte Bronte put it, “Better to try all things and find all empty, than to try nothing and leave life a blank.”  So when all is said and done regarding this parable, the central thrust and meaning of the story is that it is a plea that we live in courageous faith.  Willing to take risks for the kingdom of God.  When we are good stewards of the talents that we are given, that means we will take risks in using them to spread the Good news of Jesus and seek to further his kingdom.  To use our talents means risk.  Listen to this poem regarding risk….

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out for another is to risk involvement. To expose feeling is to risk exposing your true self. To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd, is to risk their loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To hope is to risk despair. To try is to risk failure. But the risk must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing and is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live. Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave, he has forfeited freedom. ONLY A PERSON WHO RISKS – IS FREE

So how can you and I be good stewards of the talents we have?  How can you and I risk for the kingdom?  And how can we as a community of faith take risks to spread the good news of Jesus and seek to further his kingdom?  That is where we’ll seek to talk about in our discussion time.

1.  What thoughts, ideas, comments, disagreements, insights, etc... do you have in regards to the passage of Scripture and in being a good steward of our talents?

2. What is one talent that God has given to you, and how have you been a good steward of it?  Or how could you be a good steward of it?

3.  How has God called you to risk for the Kingdom of God?  In the next week what risks might you take for the Kingdom?

4.  What risks might God be challenging Veritas to take for his Kingdom?  In what ways can we as a community risk for the Kingdom?

The Generous Life-Stewardship of Relationships

Monday, November 1, 2010 at 12:46PM

Due to technical difficulties, (the message wasn't recorded yesterday) I'll be copying my message below along with the questions that we discussed.  Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, ideas, etc...

So we are in the midst of a new series called “The Generous Life” looking at the issues of stewardship.  Stewardship of finances was our first week, last week we did stewardship of time, this week we are covering stewardship of relationships, and the final two weeks we will cover talent and the environment.

As we look at the stewardship of relationships I want to start with a story/cartoon that is found in the book that some of us have probably read called Blue Like Jazz.  The story is called Don the Astronaut and goes like this….There once was a man named

Don Astronaut.  Don Astronaut lived on a space station out in space.  Don Astronaut had a special space suit that kept him alive without food or water or oxygen. One day there was an accident.  And Don Astronaut was cast out into space.  Don Astronaut orbited the earth and was very scared.  Until he remembered his special suit that kept him alive.  But nobody’s government came to rescue Don Astronaut because it would cost too much money.  (There was a conspiracy, and they said he had died, but he hadn’t.)  So Don Astronaut orbited the earth again and again, fourteen times each day.  And Don Astronaut orbited the earth for months.  And Don Astronaut orbited the earth for decades.  And Don Astronaut orbited the earth for fifty-three years before he died a very lonely and crazy man—just a shell of a thing with hardly a spark for a soul.

So what is the point of this story?  I believe it has to do with the importance of relationship and community in the existence of humankind.  God made humankind as a social creature and without relationships; we dry up and become “just a shell of a thing with hardly a spark for a soul”.  Miller says more about relationships and gives us more insight into Don Astronaut when he says, “I thought faith, mine being Christian faith, was something a person did alone, like monks in caves.  I thought the backbone of faith was time alone with God, time reading ancient texts and meditating on poetry or the precepts of natural law and perhaps, when a person gets good and godly, levitating potted plants or pitchers of water.”  But, in reality, God has made us for relationships from the very beginning.  Let’s look at a Scripture found in the 1^st book of the Bible, a book called Genesis.  Let’s look together at Genesis 2:18 and see what it might say to us regarding what it means to steward our relationships.

Genesis 2:18 says, “The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."  I find this text extremely interesting.  In the first chapter of Genesis we see this literary rhythm taking place where God creates, and then calls his creation good and the rhythm continues.  The only time that rhythm in the first two chapters of Genesis is broken is found in this verse.  For the first time, God seeks something that is not good: the aloneness of the man in the garden.  God never intended us to be alone.  But have you ever thought about it?  In a very real sense Adam was not alone; he had God to walk with him very literally.  But God knew that Adam needed someone that was like him to make him fully complete.  Humanity, in the state of being alone, is incomplete, unfulfilled and lacking in much that we were created to be.  Perfect solitude would turn the Garden of Eden (paradise) into a desert, and a palace into a dungeon.  To be alone in the world is a depressing condition.  The writer of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes says this about being alone vs. being in relationship, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.  But how can one keep warm alone?”  In this text we see the necessity of relationships and I believe to be fully human and to fully live out what God calls us to, we desperately need each other.  In our best state in this world we have need one another’s help, for we are truly connected to each other.

This interconnectedness that God calls us to reminds me of the story of the redwood trees.  The huge redwood trees of California amaze mankind. They are the largest living things on earth and the tallest trees in the world. Some of them are 300 feet high and over 2,500 years old. One would think that trees so large must have a tremendous root system that reaches down hundreds of feet into the earth. But not so! The redwoods have a very shallow root system. If one was to get down on his knees and examine the redwoods' root system he would find that all the roots intertwine. They are locked to each other. When the storms come, the winds blow, and the lightning flashes, the redwoods still stand. They are not alone for all the trees support and protect each other. Each tree is important to all the other trees in the grove.

This is a great picture of what it means, to me, to be a good steward of the relationships we have.  To intertwine together so that when one experiences the blowing of the wind, the storms of life, and is threatened to be blown over, that we help support that person.  We do what the Apostle Paul (an early follower of Jesus) says we should do in the New Testament book of Philippians, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.  Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”  Stewardship of relationships requires that we look at others through the eyes of Christ. Jesus can help us see past the outside layer– whether that is a false bravado or a false “lone ranger” attitude– and see the hurts and pains that are really common to all of us.

Not everyone will respond nicely to us, but we can let them all know that the door is open. We want to share life with them just because they too are special, unique persons of worth created in the image of a loving, gracious God. No hidden agendas, no “check marks” on a list, no “brownie points” for inviting someone to church– just loving them because God loved them first.

I believe that understanding the sense that we truly and deeply need each other, that we need to put others first, and that seeing others through the eyes of Jesus, means that we will become better stewards of the relationships that God has given to each of us.  That we will begin to realize the amazing beauty of relationships and community.  God continues to challenge me, encourage me, convict me, and amaze me through the community that we are becoming together and I want to be a good steward of this community by loving each of you, by challenging each of you (and myself), by supporting each of you (as you support me), and by putting your needs and the needs of the wider community and world before my own.  That we would make decisions as a faith community that we be more focus on others needs than our own.  I don’t believe you can be a good steward of your relationships until you can put the needs of other before your own.  That is a foundational step to being a good steward.  Or as Donald Miller puts it in Blue Like Jazz, “If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus.”

How do you and I steward the relationships that God has given to us?  What does it look like to steward the relationship between husband and wife?  Between parents and children?  Between friends, roommates, co-workers, neighbors, etc..?  How do we die to ourselves and put the needs of others before our own?  Let’s take some time and discuss together what stewardship of relationship looks like, times we have blown it, and times we have gotten it right and what it might mean in the midst of our Veritas community.

Discussion Questions:

1.  What comments, thoughts, ideas, disagreements, insights, questions, etc.. do you have regarding stewardship of relationships?

2.  How do you or could you steward the relationships/people that God has given to you?  What practical examples can you give in this area of stewardship?

3.  How have we or how can we as a community, be good stewards of the relationships within our community and also in the wider community/world?  Where have we done a good job and where do we need improvement?

Adrian Plass-Amen

Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 04:50PM

Today while working on some artwork for a series called Echo the Story I was listening to some messages given by Michael Frost at Dallas Theological seminary.  Michael always knows how to smack you around about mission, the Kingdom of God, and living out the Missio Dei in the world.  On the second message that I listend to he quoted a poem that I have heard before (from other Frost recordings).  But it again struck me regarding the call of Jesus on my life (and on all of our lives).  So I thought I would take this space to share the poem called Amen by Adrian Plass.  Read it, digest it, struggle with it, pray and discern what God might be calling you to, and how he might use you to further the kingdom of God.

When I became a Christian I said, Lord, now fill me in, Tell me what I’ll suffer in this world of shame and sin. He said, your body may be killed, and left to rot and stink, Do you still want to follow me? I said Amen - I think. I think Amen, Amen I think, I think I say Amen, I’m not completely sure, can you just run through that again? You say my body may be killed and left to rot and stink, Well, yes, that sounds terrific, Lord, I say Amen - I think.

But, Lord, there must be other ways to follow you, I said, I really would prefer to end up dying in my bed. Well, yes, he said, you could put up with the sneers and scorn and spit, Do you still want to follow me? I said Amen - a bit. A bit Amen, Amen a bit, a bit I say Amen, I’m not entirely sure, can we just run through that again? You say I could put up with sneers and also scorn and spit, Well, yes, I’ve made my mind up, and I say, Amen - a bit.

Well I sat back and thought a while, then tried a different ploy, Now, Lord, I said, the Good book says that Christians live in joy. That’s true he said, you need the joy to bear the pain and sorrow, So do you want to follow me, I said, Amen - tomorrow. Tomorrow, Lord, I’ll say it then, that’s when I’ll say Amen, I need to get it clear, can I just run through that again? You say that I will need to joy, to bear the pain and sorrow, Well, yes, I think I’ve got it straight, I’ll say Amen - tomorrow.

He said, Look, I’m not asking you to spend an hour with me A quick salvation sandwich and a cup of sanctity, The cost is you, not half of you, but every single bit, Now tell me, will you follow me? I said Amen - I quit. I’m very sorry Lord I said, I’d like to follow you, But I don’t think religion is a manly thing to do. He said forget religion then, and think about my Son, And tell me if you’re man enough to do what he has done.

Are you man enough to see the need, and man enough to go, Man enough to care for those whom no one wants to know, Man enough to say the thing that people hate to hear, To battle through Gethsemane in loneliness and fear. And listen! Are you man enough to stand it at the end, The moment of betrayal by the kisses of a friend, Are you man enough to hold your tongue, and man enough to cry? When nails break your body-are you man enough to die? Man enough to take the pain, and wear it like a crown, Man enough to love the world and turn it upside down, Are you man enough to follow me, I ask you once again? I said, Oh Lord, I’m frightened, but I also said Amen.

Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen; Amen, Amen, Amen, I said, Oh Lord, I’m frightened, but I also said, Amen.

"About You" by Dick Staub

The latest offering that I received from The Ooze Viral Bloggers is the book "About You" by Dick Staub.  The subtitles to the book are probably one of the best parts of the book and cover exactly what Staub is getting at in the book.   The one subtitle is "Fully Human, Fully Alive."  and the second one is "Jesus didn't come to make us Christians; Jesus came to make us fully human."

That second subtitle is actually a quote from Hans Rookmaaker, a theologian and author.  The other day while being interviewed by a seminary student about Veritas, I was asked the question, "What gets you excited in ministry." and my answer must have reflected this reading when I said, "Someone who becomes fully alive."

There are lots of great stuff in this book about how we have settled for the mundane, ordinary existence but we were, in the words of Switchfoot,

"We were meant to live for so much more Have we lost ourselves? Somewhere we live inside Somewhere we live inside We were meant to live for so much more Have we lost ourselves? Somewhere we live inside"

We are meant to live a life that Jesus calls the "abundant life."  Or what St. Irenaeus said, "The glory of God is man fully alive."

There are a lot of great thoughts in this book and I needed to hear it as I have often been guilty of just settling, of going through the ruts and routine, and missing the beauty, the majesty, the deeper, fuller life that Jesus calls us to.

Here are some quotes that I especially resonated with:

"Jesus' authenticity and vibrant humanness attracted people and intriqued them."

"The Jesus would jumped off the pages was a radical thinker who was actively present in his culture (not withdrawn from it), was a loving presence (not hostile), and was a transforming presence in his culture (not a conformist).  He clearly marched to the beat of a different drum.  And I was relieved to see he did not carry the baggage associated with the religion that bears his name.  He did not demonize, alienate, and demean fallen people; he loved them.  He revealed to everybody- from the smug religious tyupes like Pharisees to social and religious outcasts like prostitutes and drunkards- that there was a more abundant and full life available t othem now, not just in the future."

"For centuries thereafter it was Christians who created a better and richer culture, writing the best music, creating the best art, and cultivating a rigorously intellectual life.  They also rolled up their sleeves and served society in practical ways, providing care for the physically infirm, offering community to the lonely outsiders and financial assistance to the poor.  They pursued science as a way of understanding the universe and harmonized their theology to fit the facts they discovered in their no-holds-barred scientific inquiry.  It became obvious to me that Jesus calls us not to become entrapped in religious practices that make us less human but rather to a dynamic, zestful, fully alive and fully human experience."  (This is a great quote and really connects with what I feel the calling is for Veritas).

There are a lot more quotes that I could share but I will end with a quote that spells out the book and the reason for it, and one of the reasons that Jesus, I believe, came to earth.  John 10:10 says, "I have come that they may have life and have it to the fullest."

Missional Church Planting

Tuesday, October 12, 2010 at 09:48PM

As Kim and I walk through this journey of church planting, and specifically missional church planting, there are days (like today) where I am feeling depressed, tired, burnt out, frustrated, and wondering why we aren't growing by leaps and bounds (or even wondering if we are growing at all).  Then I begin to think of all the "clever" gimicks that I could do, the 4,000 dollars I could spend on a series of mailers, and a bunch of other ways to get people to come to Veritas.  And then I always run into something that stops me in my tracks and helps me focus on what we are really about.  Today it was a post called "Transitioning from Traditional to Missional" and while the name doesn't describe what we are doing or trying to be about, the blog certainly spoke to me and our situation.  Here is the blog:

Transitioning From Traditional to Missional

Posted by Brad Brisco May 20

Over the past few months I have had an increasing number of conversations with pastors and church leaders about moving existing churches in a missional direction. I have been asked what key issues or topics need to be considered when attempting to transition a traditional church. The following list is certainly not conclusive or comprehensive, but here are nine elements that I believe need to be considered when making a missional shift:

1. Start with Spiritual Formation

God calls the church to be a sent community of people who no longer live for themselves but instead live to participate with Him in His redemptive purposes. However, people will have neither the passion nor the strength to live as a counter-cultural society for the sake of others if they are not transformed by the way of Jesus. If the church is to “go and be,” rather than “come and see,” then we must make certain that we are a Spirit-formed community that has the spiritual capacity to impact the lives of others.

This means the church must take seriously its responsibility to cultivate spiritual transformation that does not allow believers to remain as adolescents in their spiritual maturity. Such spiritual formation will involve much greater relational underpinnings and considerable engagement with a multitude of spiritual disciplines.

One such discipline should involve dwelling in the word, whereby the church learns to regard Scripture not as a tool, but as the living voice of God that exists to guide people into His mission. If we believe the mission is truly God’s mission, then we must learn to discern where He is working; and further discern, in light of our gifts and resources, how He desires a church to participant in what He is doing in a local context.

2. Cultivate a Missional Leadership Approach

The second most important transition in fostering a missional posture in a local congregation is rethinking church leadership models that have been accepted as the status quo. This will require the development of a missional leadership approach that has a special emphasis on the apostolic function of church leadership, which was marginalized during the time of Christendom in favor of the pastor/teacher function.

This missional leadership approach will involve creating an apostolic environment throughout the life of the church. The leader must encourage pioneering activity that pushes the church into new territory. However, because not all in the church will embrace such risk, the best approach will involve creating a sort of “R&D” or “skunk works” department in the church for those who are innovators and early adopters.

A culture of experimentation must be cultivated where attempting new initiatives is expected, even if they don’t all succeed. As pioneering activities bear fruit, and the stories of life change begin to bubble up within the church, an increasing number of people will begin to take notice and get involved.

3. Emphasize the Priesthood of All Believers

Martin Luther’s idea of the priesthood of all believers was that all Christians were called to carry out their vocational ministries in every area of life. Every believer must fully understand how their vocation plays a central part in God’s redemptive Kingdom.

I think it was Rick Warren who made popular the phase “every member is a minister.” While this phrase is a helpful slogan to move people to understand their responsibility in the life of the church, God’s purpose for His church would be better served if we encouraged people to recognize that “every member is a missionary.” This missionary activity will include not just being sent to far away places, but to local work places, schools and neighborhoods.

4. Focus Attention on the Local Community

As individual members begin to see themselves as missionaries sent into their local context the congregation will begin to shift from a community-for-me mentality, to a me-for-the-community mentality. The church must begin to develop a theology of the city that sees the church as an agent of transformation for the good of the city (Jeremiah 29:7). This will involve exegeting each segment of the city to understand the local needs, identify with people, and discover unique opportunities for the church to share the good news of Jesus.

5. Don’t Do It Alone

Missional activity that leads to significant community transformation takes a lot of work and no church can afford to work alone. Missional churches must learn to create partnerships with other churches as well as already existing ministries that care about the community.

6. Create New Means of Measuring Success

The church must move beyond measuring success by the traditional indicators of attendance, buildings and cash. Instead we must create new scorecards to measure ministry effectiveness. These new scorecards will include measurements that point to the church’s impact on community transformation rather than measuring what is happening among church members inside the church walls. For the missional church it is no longer about the number of people active in the church but instead the number of people active in the community. It is no longer about the amount of money received but it is about the amount of money given away.

A missional church may ask how many hours has the church spent praying for community issues? How many hours have church members spent with unbelievers? How many of those unbelievers are making significant movement towards Jesus? How many community groups use the facilities of the church? How many people are healthier because of the clinic the church operates? How many people are in new jobs because of free job training offered by the church? What is the number of school children who are getting better grades because of after-school tutoring the church provides. Or how many times do community leaders call the church asking for advice?

Until the church reconsiders the definition of ministry success and creates new scorecards to appropriately measure that success, it will continue to allocate vital resources in misguided directions.

7. Search for Third Places

In a post-Christendom culture where more and more people are less and less interested in activities of the church, it is increasingly important to connect with people in places of neutrality, or common “hang outs.” In the book “The Great Good Place” author Ray Oldenburg identifies these places of common ground as “third places.”

According to Oldenburg, third places are those environments in which people meet to interact with others and develop friendships. In Oldenburg’s thinking our first place is the home and the people with whom we live. The second place is where we work and the place we spend the majority of our waking hours. But the third place is an informal setting where people relax and have the opportunity to know and be known by others.

Third places might include the local coffee shop, hair salon, restaurant, mall, or fitness center. These places of common ground must take a position of greater importance in the overall ministry of the church as individuals begin to recognize themselves as missionaries sent into the local context to serve and share.

In addition to connecting with people in the third places present in our local communities, we need to rediscover the topic of hospitality whereby our own homes become a place of common ground. Biblical hospitality is much more than entertaining others in our homes. Genuine hospitality involves inviting people into our lives, learning to listen, and cultivating an environment of mercy and justice, whether our interactions occur in third places or within our own homes. Regardless of our setting, we must learn to welcome the stranger.

8. Tap into the Power of Stories

Instead of trying to define what it means to be missional, it is helpful to describe missional living through stories and images. Stories create new possibilities and energize people to do things they had not previously imagined. We can capture the “missional imagination” by sharing what other faith communities are doing and illustrate what it looks like to connect with people in third places, cultivate rapport with local schools, and build life transforming relationships with neighbors.

Moreover, we can reflect deeply on biblical images of mission, service and hospitality by spending time on passages such as Genesis 12:2, Isaiah 61:1-3, Matthew 5:43; 10:40; 22:39; 25:35; and Luke 10:25-37.

9. Promote Patience

The greatest challenge facing the church in the West is the “re-conversion” of its own members. We need to be converted away from an internally-focused, Constantinean mode of church, and converted towards an externally-focused, missional-incarnational movement that is a true reflection of the missionary God we follow.

However, this conversion will not be easy. The gravitational pull to focus all of our resources on ourselves is very strong. Because Christendom still maintains a stranglehold on the church in North America – even though the culture is fully aware of the death of Christendom – the transition towards a missional posture will take great patience; both with those inside and outside the church. Many inside the church will need considerable time to learn how to reconstruct church life for the sake of others. At the same time, the church will need to patiently love on people, and whole communities, that have increasingly become skeptical of the church.

Good stuff but very hard to live out, especially the patience part.  Praying that we can live out this type of missional life and faith in the midst of our church plant.

Is the COB doomed (and does it matter)?

Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 02:40PM

The other day I came across a blog from Jeremy Yoder where he asks the question, "Is the MCUSA doomed?  (And does it matter).  MCUSA is the abbreviation for Mennonite Church USA.  In the blog he lays out some amazing points, points which if we just changed the abbreviation from MCUSA to COB (Church of the Brethren), we would get an accurate picture of where the COB is as well.  So I thought I would post his blog on mine, and everytime you read MCUSA or Mennonite (for all your COB people) just change it to COB and/or Brethren and tell me what you think.  Does it accurately deal with our reality as a denomination?  Would love to hear your thoughts...

Is MCUSA Doomed? (And Does it Matter?)

September 29th, 2010 – by Jeremy W. Yoder, Editors Blog

This post emerged out of a number of on-line and off-line conversations I’ve been having over the past several weeks about the status quo and future of the church. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Christianity in the West is ‘in trouble’ as the center of the church shifts from North America and Western Europe to the Global South due to growing secularization. For Anabaptists, the end of Christendom should be a moment of opportunity due to our own historical place at the margins. Yet MCUSA is experiencing some of the same challenges and problems as the rest of North American mainline Protestantism.

As a result of these conversations, I started to ask myself whether MCUSA is ‘doomed’ to shrivel up and disappear. I’m not exactly an optimistic person, so as I mulled over these questions, I realized that doom might not be the right word to describe the current situation. However as I mused, I did come up with a list of what I think the biggest challenges that MCUSA faces during the post-Christendom shift.

Note: this is my list based on what I’ve observed and experienced as the current state of the Mennonite Church. It’s not an exclusive or exhaustive list. Feel free to disagree with me and please let us know what you think are the main challenges the denomination faces in the comments section below.

Do we know what it means to be Mennonite or Anabaptist? When I attended Goshen College a decade ago, I remember the never-ending discussion about Mennonite identity, particularly by those ethnic Mennonites (like myself) who no longer considered themselves Christian. Mennonites in North America have long associated Mennonite faith with a particular ethnic and cultural heritage — what happens to that heritage when we no longer have faith? Is it possible to be “Mennonite” without being Christian? What does that even mean?

It also appears to me that when my parent’s generation in the 1960′s and 70′s rejected the cultural particulars of conservative Mennonite dress, they bought into the generic American Protestantism of mainstream culture. As secularization sidelines Protestant Christianity from a position of privilege, what does that mean for us?  At a time when more and more Christians (i.e. Greg Boyd and Stuart Murray Williams) are interested in the Anabaptist tradition of being the church on the margins, why do many ‘cradle’ Mennonites feel uncomfortable about being Mennonite?

Are we really committed to following Jesus? I have observed an element on the liberal side of the Mennonite Church that has a deep commitment to peace and social justice, but only a nominal commitment to Jesus Christ. I do think that social justice is an important component to the mission of the church, in the sense that the Bible depicts justice with social, political and corporate dimensions along with the emphasis on personal salvation. However, I am concerned about a Christ-less Christianity that I see among some of my fellow travelers who embrace the pursuit of social justice, but seem unsure or indifferent about following Jesus. The church advocates for justice as a response to who we believe Jesus Christ is. Without that foundation for the mission of the church, I believe the church ultimately ceases to be Body of Christ and instead morphs into something else. What do we do when our concepts of justice conflict with the exclusive claims of Christianity?

Is MCUSA prepared to be an urban denomination? MCUSA is in the middle of a demographic shift in which many Mennonites are changing from a rural context to an urban one. A survey by Ryan Ahlgrim last January in The Mennonite noted that along with “racial-ethnic” congregations, urban “Anglo Anabaptist” churches constitute a growing edge of MCUSA. This shift occurs either through migration to urban centers like Philadelphia and Denver (or in my case, Baltimore) or by the development of rural areas. The sprawl of Lancaster or Elkhart Counties mean that many traditional rural Mennonite areas are no longer rural.

And yet many of our churches continue to have a homogeneous rural culture. While there will always be rural and small town Mennonite churches, I also believe that MCUSA’s future also lies with the non-Anglo and urban congregations that may better reflect the theologically diverse and multicultural world that many of our young people grow up in. In other words, the ‘typical’ everyday experiences of Mennonites are dramatically changing, and it remains to be seen whether our conferences and agencies are willing to invest in building the kind of church infrastructure that will minister to Mennonites in these new contexts. We need urban church planting. We need an urban presence for Mennonite agencies and institutions. Last year’s move by MCC East Coast to Philadelphia was a step in the right direction. Will the rest of the denomination follow?

How Serious Are We to Sharing the Gospel? Evangelism and evangelical are dirty words in some Mennonite circles because they carry connotations of the Religious Right and the so-called ‘Culture Wars’ of the past thirty years. However, I wonder whether in our rush to prove that we’re not one of those Christians, we have failed to present the Gospel story in our churches and our communities in a compelling way. At a time when many churches face dropping membership numbers, evangelism may not only be a biblical mandate, but also necessary for survival. I recognize, of course, that traditional evangelism makes many of us deeply uncomfortable (myself included). At the same time, some of the most innovative thinking I encountered at seminary involved evangelism, due to a growing recognition in some circles that the traditional methods no longer work in a post-Christian culture. But regardless of the type of evangelism we do, they all involve getting out of the comfort zones of our churches and developing relationships with our neighbors and communities.

I also believe that part of the current crisis is a result of our failure to evangelize our own children. I was struck by an article in Mennonite Weekly Review over whether Sunday School is “becoming extinct” as it fails to compete with other activities. I’m not a fan of the Sunday School model, but I do believe that if the traditional methods no longer work, we need to deliberately explore and find others. Biblical literacy is an extremely important part of developing faith in the next generation. Do we need to view our own churches as part of the mission field as well?

But I also believe that the mass evacuation of the Mennonite Church by its youth also has cultural reasons. We have long expected the culture of the church to do our heavy evangelical lifting for us. We expected that our children would become Christians because we were Christians and dragged them to church every Sunday. While that approach may have worked in a predominately Protestant culture, I don’t think it works anymore. Christianity is now only one option among many and we must do a better job at telling the story of our own particular tradition in the cacophony of voices that bombards us from every direction. Cultural Christianity is not enough — how do we help our young people encounter the risen Christ in an authentic and compelling way?

So is MCUSA doomed? Probably not — the word doom carries an idea of finality to it and I don’t believe that the denomination’s future is written in stone. But we are facing a period of contraction, when the church will not have the same amount of resources to embody and live out the mission of God in the world. We do have some hard and painful choices ahead of us. But we also have the opportunity for creativity and innovation — to find new ways of being church in this complicated world. After all, we come from a long tradition that has often greater challenges than what MCUSA faces today. If the worse case scenario happens and MCUSA ceases to exist, I am also convinced that someone else will pick up where we left off.

Finding God in culture- U2

Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 01:06PM

We just wrapped up a series at Veritas called Finding God in Culture in which we took a long at a TV Show, a Movie, and a Band and ask the question, "Where is God in the midst of culture."  This past Sunday we looked at the music of U2.  You can listen to the audio from the message but below you will find the discussion questions (which we did before the message) and the message.

Discussion Questions:

1.      What stands out to you as your read these lyrics to these 2 U2 songs?

2.      What do you think they mean?

3.      What connection is there between the two songs and our Scripture for today?

So today we wrap up our 3 week series entitled “Finding God in Culture” in which we have looked at various forms of media within our culture.  Hopefully we have seen where these forms of media from our culture have connected with our faith journeys, as individuals and as a community of faith.  Two weeks ago we looked at Desperate Housewives and the idea of being the kind of people and community that is safe for people to explore faith and spirituality.  Being open to questions, doubts, and struggles.  Last week we looked at the movie Avatar and the connection between the movie and the main character Jake and the incarnation of Jesus.  We also talked about the idea of followers of Jesus incarnating Jesus in the world today, being the hands and feet of Jesus seeking to bless people that we meet each day.

Today, as you know, we are and have looked at the music and the lyrics of the seminal rock group from Ireland called U2 (maybe you’ve heard of them).  We have looked at the lyrics of two songs from them, one from earlier in their career (Rejoice) and the other one a more recent addition to their musical catalog (Magnificent).  I believe there is a thread that runs through both of these two songs and straight into the Scripture that we are looking at together, that being Romans 12:1-2.

Let’s take another look at the Scripture together, what the Apostle Paul was trying to get at regarding our lives as Christ Followers, and where the lyrics from the two U2 songs connect.

In Romans 12:1-2, the Apostle Paul (an early follower of Jesus who planted many churches) wrote these words to the early followers of Jesus in the church in Rome, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

The first thing that Paul brings to the readers mind is the root of why we should follow Jesus and live out the meaning behind these words, that being God’s mercy upon us.  We should desire to follow after Jesus, laying down our lives as an act of worship, because of the many mercies that God has bestowed upon each of us every day of our lives.  Mercies both large and small, ranging from even waking up this morning, taking a deep breath, and looking at the Creation all around us, and going to the love of Jesus, his death on the cross for the redemption of each one of us, the renewal of all of creation, and the forgiveness of our sins.  In other words, our response in living a life of worship is based on God’s mercy towards us.

Paul then goes on to say that once we have rooted everything in God’s mercy, there is something that we need to do in response to that mercy.  Our response to God’s great mercy, shown the most prominently through Jesus, is to offer our bodies as living sacrifices.  The readers of this letter in the first century, both Jewish and non-Jewish, knew first hand what sacrifice was all about.  To beg that they make themselves a living sacrifice was a striking image.  Both Jews and Non-Jews understood that you brought something living to the altar, and you killed it as a means of worship.  So Paul was taking something that his audience understood (a metaphor if you will for following Jesus), and changing it a bit.  The difference is that the sacrifice Paul was talking about was a living sacrifice.  The sacrifice is living because it is brought alive to the altar, and then it stays alive at the altar, it is an ongoing sacrifice.

Now the question comes to my mind is “when Paul says that we are to present our bodies as living sacrifices, what does he truly mean by body?”  Are we literally to put our bodies on the altar?  I think it is best to see that body is a reference to our entire being, our body, our will, our emotions, our mind, our everyday life, and everything that we have and are.  A non-Jewish person reading these words in the first century would probably never have thought of presenting their body to God.  The thought of the day was that the body was unspiritual and that God was unconcerned about it.  Paul shows here that God is concerned with our bodies as well.  The body is the chief instrument of the person and is to be presented to God through service to humanity, by preaching, teaching, ministering, and helping people, and not merely for some space of time but throughout all of life.

We are to be a holistic living sacrifice.  We are to offer our entire selves to God.  No other offering can be such that God will approve of.  When someone presented a sacrifice to the altar, especially a burnt offering, all of the offering was to be used; nothing was to be held back.  It is the same with us, nothing should be held back from God.  All of our lives should be a sacrifice to God.  Our reasonable service is a life of worship according to God’s word.  Or in other words all of our lives are to be worship unto God.

I love how Eugene Peterson, author of the Message (a version of the Scriptures) puts Romans 12:1, “So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.”

Now the next part of the verse is crucial for us to understand, because without verse 2, we wouldn’t want to live out verse 1, laying our lives down as a living sacrifice.  In order to live a life of worship to God, and being a living sacrifice, our lives must be transformed by God, and not conformed to the world around us.  We need our minds to be renewed everyday through the reading of Scripture, spending time in a renewed community of Jesus followers, prayer, meditation, fasting, and worship.  Then as we are transformed on the inside, the proof of that transformation will be evident on the outside, as others will see what the good and perfect will of God is through our life.  When you aren’t conformed to the systems, power, and thoughts of this world, but transformed, your life will be in the will of God and will be a living worship service to God.  Or as Paul puts it, a living sacrifice.

This idea that all of our life is worship to God, and not just an hour on Sunday morning is where I believe we connect our third core value (authentic worship expression) with our scripture for the morning, and also where we find God in culture, through the lens of the lyrics of U2.  The Apostle Paul calls us to a life of worship, and Bono sings about seeing all of life as worship.

In the song “Rejoice” Bono sings these words, “This morning I fell out of bed.  When I woke up to what he has said.  Everything's crazy.  But I'm too lazy to lie.  And what am I to do.  Just tell me what am I supposed to say I can't change the world.  But I can change the world in me.  If I rejoice.  Rejoice...”  To me what Bono is getting at is that no matter what is going on, good or bad or what, we can change how we view everything if we view everything through the lens of worship.  Through the lens that we are a living sacrifice called to rejoice and worship God in the mountaintops and the valleys of life.  The everyday life, ordinary life that Euguene Peterson talks about in his translation that I mentioned earlier.

In the other song that we looked at called Magnificent, Bono sings this, “I was born, I was born to sing for you. I didn't have a choice but to lift you up.  And sing whatever song you wanted me to I give you back my voice from the womb.  My first cry, it was a joyful noise, oh, oh”  Here I believe, Bono could be referring to the idea that his voice all the way from now back to the womb was his living sacrifice, his gift back to God to be used however God would see fit, and that it is and was a joyful noise of worship.

So my prayer is those words from the song, “I was born to sing for you.  I didn’t have a choice to lift you up.”  That we, like Bono, could realize that we were born to worship God.  Worship God with everything that we are, everything that we have, and everything within us.  That we would take our life to God’s altar, lay down on the altar, surrender our entire selves to God’s fire, then get up and be a living sacrifice for God.  Dying to what you want and living to God’s life in you and living through you, as you go out into the world and live a life of worship to him.

Coffeehouse Theology

The latest book that I received from The Ooze Viral Bloggers to review and blog about is the book "Coffeehouse Theology" by Ed Cyzewski.  It was a helpful read in that it dealt with theology, not as an abstract, propostional, systematic belief system, but as a living, breathing, life giving, 'organism" (if you will).

The author centers his discussion around what he calls A Web of Theology (no doubt in part to the idea of a web of belief idea by W.V.O. Quine in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"- which he makes reference to.)  According to his web of theology there are 6 parts to theology (which he says are all interconnected)  The 6 sources and contexts of thelogy are mission (which surrounds everything), Tradition, God, The global church, Scripture, and Culture.

Mission is the outside of the web.  The author says that all theology serves the mission of God.  It is teh reason we do theology.

Tradition informs and adds insight into the Central pieces of God and Scripture.

God is at the center of theology as both a revelatory source and our guide to theology.

The global church informs and adds insight into the central pieces of God and Scripture.

Scripture is a the center of theology as a primary source of God's revelation.

Cultural/Context plays a part to.  Within the purpose of Mission, Theology takes place in a cultural context.

To me I think the most helpful piece was the reality that our culture and where we live, etc... plays a huge part in how we understand, read Scripture and practice theology.  The author puts it this way, "Our local settings and cultural values- in other words, our context- influence how we read God's word."

Some other quotes that I resonated with from the book include:

"God is already at work in our world.  We need to decide if we want to join his mission."

"congregations as outposts for God's mission in the world, sending-off points where we regroup and refuel before going out as God's ambassadors."

"Christianity doesn't exist apart from culture."

"Lesslie Newbigin said, 'Jesus ministry entailed the calling of individual men and women to personal and costly discipleship, but at the same time it challenged the principalities and powers, the rulers of this world."

"Postmodernism influences our cultural context, and we need to figure out a way to deal with it.  The postmodern era can be both friend and foe- just like the modern age, which put the Bible into the hands of the average person but also caused Christians to stop relying on God's supernatural intervention in our world."

There are probably alot more I could say about this book.  I would recommend it to anyone who is wrestling with questions of theology, the role of Scripture, and the modern/postmodern shift in our world.

Missional Discipleship

Monday, September 20, 2010 at 03:09PM

The other day I attended a monthly lunch with other leaders who are wrestling with what it means to live missional lives and lead missional communities.  We talked about what a missional disciple is and looks like.  I remembered a paper that I wrote during my Sustaining Pastoral Excellence cohort group experience regarding Discipleship and what it is based off of Micah 6:8.  I sent it to the leader of the group and he encouraged me to post it here.  So that is what I am doing.

For this discussion I will use one Scripture as a starting point.  That Scripture is found in the Old Testament book of Micah.  Micah 6:8 says this, “He has showed you, O man, what is good.  And what does the LORD require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

There are three parts to this Scripture.  Three parts to what is good and what God requires out of his followers.  Those three parts of a disciples life are to act justly, to love mercy, and to walking humbly with God.  Let’s take a look at these three parts separately.

1.                  To Act Justly:  According to the Webster’s dictionary justly means to act or be in conformity with what is morally upright or good.  So to act justly is about using our lives for good in our world.  All too often I believe we limit discipleship to inward things (spiritual disciplines like prayer and bible reading) while in fact discipleship is an inward and an outward journey.  To be a follower of Christ means that we will work for justice in our world.  Scripture bears this out.  God has a heart for the poor, the needy, and the oppressed.  There are over 2,000 verses of Scripture that deal with poverty, the poor, the needy, and the afflicted.  Some of these verses include: Matthew 25:31-46, Amos 5:24, and Luke 16:19-31.  A disciple of Jesus will show his discipleship by acting justly.  Some ways of showing justice include:  service, working towards peace and justice issues, prayer about world situations, peaceful protest, writing letters to government officials, and building relationships with others who are less fortunate.  So one of the ways to recognize a disciple is that a disciple should be working towards justice in our world.  We should be working to make our world a better and more just place for all people.  Martin Luther King Jr. said Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  Disciples of Jesus need to be on the forefront of justice issues in the world, standing up for the needs of the poor and the oppressed, and working to right wrongs on all levels (personally, relational, corporate, governmental, etc..)

2.                  Love Mercy: Mercy is defined as compassion or forbearance shown especially to an offender or to one subject to one’s power, a blessing that is an act of divine favor or compassion, or compassionate treatment of those in distress.  As Christ followers we have been shown mercy- in that Christ has taken the penalty for our sake.  In other words we don’t get what we rightly deserve.  And as we have been shown mercy by God we in turn should show mercy to others.  We realize that it is not anything we have done or will do.  Titus 3:4-6 says this about our lives and God’s mercy, “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior” As we grow deeper in our faith journey, one of the fruits that we should display more of is mercy.  We should love mercy, because without it we would be lost.  We should love to show others mercy, because we realize that we are no better off than anyone else.  Someone once said that the ground at the foot of the cross is level.  I believe this trait of discipleship is severely lacking in our world today.  We need more Christ followers to show mercy, to not judge others, and to be filled with compassion, grace, and love for all people.  When we see ourselves how we truly are (loved by God but sinners saved only by the grace of God) that we are able to show others mercy.

3.                  To Walk Humbly with our God: I believe this is the inward nature of our discipleship.  To Act Justly is outward focused.  To Love Mercy is both outward and inward focused.  To walk humbly with our God is inward focused.  This is the area of discipleship that we talk about the spiritual disciplines such as prayer, solitude, bible reading and study, silence, and fasting.  This is where we live out the meaning of John 15, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”  To remain in God is to daily work on our relationship with Him.  Just as we need to work on our relationships here on earth by listening, communicating, and spending time, we are to do these things with God.  To walk with God implies a journey not a final destination that we can reach now.  Our faith is a journey with a companion.  This walk with God is reminiscent of that final walk that Jesus took to his death.  In Luke 9:23 we read, “Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  This verse, I would say, also does a great job of summing up what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.  To deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him.  To deny the flesh (the attitudes, actions, desires of this world), to take up your cross (that actions, attitudes, desires of the Kingdom of God including suffering), and follow Him (make him Lord of your life).  The Kingdom of God is about walking humbly with God, denying yourself, and following after Christ while the Kingdom of this world is about walking arrogantly with yourself, making your own decisions, and looking out for number one.  Being a disciple of Jesus, and a member of the Kingdom of God is so opposite of our natural tendencies.  It goes against everything our flesh and our world tell us.  That is our job as disciples to follow after God even though everything else tells us the exact opposite.  A disciple of Jesus followers after God by being constant in prayer, diligent in study, fasting, listening, and being in communion with God and with other disciples.

When we get down to the matter of discipleship we must realize that what the Lord requires us is not an easy road.  Look where it got our master Jesus.  To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God is so much the opposite of the kingdom of the world.  Discipleship requires work, patience, and determination.  To be a “Christian” is easy, just say you believe in God.  To be a Christ follower is difficult.  G.K. Chesterton said it best, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”  But the best things are those things which aren’t easy and free.  The best things are the things that we work for and give our lives to.  Discipleship and following Jesus is the best thing and it is worth everything that we have.  After all Jesus gave us everything that he had (his blood, sweat, tears, and life). We should return the favor.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.....

Finding God in Culture- Desperate Housewives

Monday, September 13, 2010 at 10:40AM

Yesterday at Veritas we began a 3 week series called "Finding God in Culture".  We took a look at the TV Show Desperate Housewives and how it connected to the value of being a safe place for a spiritual search.  Below is my message from Sunday and the discussion questions that followed. (We'll be posting the audio from the sermon soon.)

Today we begin a 3 week series entitled “Finding God in Culture.”  Throughout our 3 weeks we will be taking a look at media (TV, Movies, and Music) and seeking to find God’s fingerprint in them.  We’ll also seek to find out what we can learn about being a disciple of Jesus through these various mediums.  We’ll also talk about how we can be formed spiritually through our encounter with pop culture.

But before we truly dive into our 1^st encounter with finding God in culture, we need to do a little background work on understanding the pop culture and media that is all around us and how it works in our world.

When we look at the culture around us, especially pop culture and media, we need to see these things as both a map and a mirror.  Think about what these two things do for us.  They allow us to see where we are going and where we currently are, as well as reflect our current “condition”.  Or as Walt Mueller, president of Center for Parent and Youth Understanding in E-Town says, “Youth culture is a map and a mirror. It is both directive and reflective. We watch it to see where it's sending us and our kids. We watch it to see where we are. We monitor, deconstruct, and exegete it to know how to bring the map of the Biblical world and life view to bear on the realities that exist.”  This is the very reason that we are looking at pop culture in our 3 week series, to understand where our culture is heading and where it currently is, and also how it reflects where people in our world are, and where they are heading.

In today’s clips taken from Desperate Housewives we see the main character going to church and desperately seeking answers to her questions about life, faith, and God.  If we look at these clips as a map and a mirror, we realize that there are many people who are seeking answers to these very spiritual and existential questions regarding life, faith, spirituality, God, and the kingdom.  I believe that as a map, this points to that fact that the more we go along in our world, the more questions and wrestling will be happening in our world.  I also believe that all too often the last place people are and will look towards to help them wrestle with these huge issues is and will be the church.  Why is that?  Why are Oprah, Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, and the Deli Lama on the forefront of people’s minds when it comes to the spiritual questions and issues of our day and the church is the last option or no option at all?  I have some inkling that I know why.

The other week I had received a copy of a book called “Colors of God” in the mail from the Ooze Viral Bloggers.  I read the book and then write a blog about it.  There was a part of the book that I believe opens up, to me, the reason people look elsewhere when it comes to spiritual questions.  The authors tells the story of a woman who was having some very real questions and doubts about faith, but didn’t feel like she would share it with anyone at all.  Here is a quote from the book, “I sat there thinking, Are you kidding me?  She had some very reasonable questions about God and faith in the midst of a real tragedy and had to keep it completely to herself, feeling like a Judas.”  The author continues, “She said that she started to ask a few questions about this or that at her woman’s prayer group, and they all began to lay hands on her and pray for her and give her verses- this confirmed to her that she could not be safe: ‘The church is not a safe place for the questions I have.’”

And so that is what it comes down to.  People believe that the church is not a safe place for a spiritual search.  But how have we gotten here?  Let’s look at a story in which Jesus was asking questions and it was encouraged and helpful, not discouraged and not helpful.  The story is found in Luke 2:41-51 and is the only story told in the 4 Gospels of Jesus life as a child (except for the birth narratives).

“Every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the Feast, according to the custom. After the Feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." "Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" But they did not understand what he was saying to them. Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.  And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”

Let’s look at this text and see how it applies to our encounter with Desperate Housewives.

So here we see Jesus coming of age and going to the Passover feast.  When the feast was over and everyone headed back home, Jesus stayed behind but no one knew it.  After traveling for a day, they began to realize that he wasn’t with them, so they turned around and headed back to Jerusalem to find him.  They probably looked everywhere they could think of, finally coming to the temple and seeing him sitting among the teachers of the law in the temple courts.  It’s what he was doing in the temple courts that I want to focus a bit of time on.  The Scriptures put it this way, “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”  He was curious about the faith and wanted to ask the learned men questions about it, even though he was the answer to the men’s questions.  This picture of Jesus found in this story is the picture of a precocious learner and not that of a teacher of the religious leaders.  Jesus was proposing questions to them all the while respecting the law and the prophets.  There is no reason to suppose that this was for the purpose of perplexing or confounding the religious leaders.  The questions were doubtlessly proposed in a respectful manner and the answers listened to with proper deference to their position within the religious community.  In other words, Jesus didn’t set them up so that he could show off his wisdom and answers.  I believe there was a true curiosity and hunger to learn that Jesus had, even though he was God in the flesh.

The other interesting thing about this situation is that this question, answer, discussion format was the way that the Rabbis of Jesus day taught.  It was normal for people (maybe not 12 year olds all the time), especially religious leaders, to sit around, ask questions, and dialogue around texts of the Old Testament, especially the 1^st 5 books called The Torah.  Sometimes this process was called Midrash, when they sat around and debated and tried to get at the meaning of a text.  They would bring up opposing viewpoints for the sake of discussion.  And so probably what was taking place that day when Mary and Joseph found Jesus in the temple was that he was participating in a midrash around the Jewish faith, traditions, and beliefs.

Something else stands out in this text which I believe is connected to what took place in the temple is the statement found in verse 52, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”  I believe that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature because of the questions, answers, and dialogue that took place on that day in the temple.  I believe that there were intrinsically linked together.  To gain learning, wisdom, and understanding in all of life, not just in our faith journey, requires us to ask a lot of questions.  Or put another way by the German Jewish inventor Charles Steinmetz "No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions."

One of the core values of what we are about as Veritas is that we are the kind of community that creates a safe place for a spiritual search.  The kind of community that is open to questions, doubts, and struggles.  That we can be open to each other about the things that we are wrestling with and that no question should be off limits.  The kind of community that Lynette in Desperate Housewives needs.  The kind of community, which I believe, many people, who are represented by Lynette, need and desire.  The kind of community which I need and desire and I believe you need and desire.  A safe place for a spiritual search.

So let’s continue our discussion together around Finding God in Culture, the clips we have just watched and will watch from Desperate Housewives, the questions we have in our lives, and how we can be a people and a community that is a safe place for a spiritual search.

3 Discussion Questions:

1.  What are your thoughts, comments, insights, reflections, etc... concerning the 3 clips that we played from Desperate Housewives?

2.  What questions regarding God, spirituality, and faith do you hear from those around you?  What questions do you have regarding these things?

3.  How can you and I be "safe" towards those with questions?  How can Veritas continue to live out our call to be a safe place for a spiritual search?

Next week we'll look at the movie Avatar.

Colors of God

The other week I received the book "Colors of God:  Conversations on Being the Church" by Randall Peters, Dave Phillips, and Quentin Steen as part of the Ooze Viral Bloggers, in which I read the book and then blog about it.  All three authors are a part of neXus, an emerging church in Canada.  A tag line on the back of the book got my attention, "OK, so the church is broken, now what?"  With my interest piqued from the subtitle and that tag line, I started reading.  I want to share the 4 parts of the book, the parts that I truly resonated with, and the parts that I have serious issues with.

The book is divided into 4 parts or colors, hence the idea of Colors of God. The 4 colors are the core values of neXus (the capital X I guess is a nod to the idea of Generation X.)  The colors are Blue for Gospel Faith, Green for Healthy Living, Red for Inclusive Community, and Yellow for Cultural Engagement.  Not sure why they chose the colors they did (except the Green color which makes sense).

My main part of the book that I truly resonated with and resonated strongly with was their piece of cultural engagement.  When the one author listed The Village as a movie that spiritually impacted him, I was right with him, and had some of the same thoughts about the movie and it's commentary on the modern church.  Quentin says, "We have to return to the way the church once was- the artist spoke the language of God in the common language of the people."  Hence the use of Stain Glass and the Jesus narratives on them.  I guess the best part of that section was the relization that much of the evanglical church has bought into a type of Gnosticism and lives by the idea that there is a sacred world which is good, and a secular world which is bad.  One quote from that section puts it this way, "This misses the whole thrust of incarnational theology; that God in Christ, came down from heaven and lives within the entire material world."

Another section that connected with me, and with Veritas' Core Value of A Safe Spritual Search was in the discussion of Inclusive Community.  The whole discussion about being authentic and starting with the Pastor was a great bit, and a good reminder that if I want authenticity in our community that I need to go first.  One quote from that section says, "They feel safe.  I don't hear that word used in teh same sentence as church- very odd.  And safe means that I can be myself."  Another part from the Green section dealt with a woman who began asking some tough questions and dealt with how her church community dealt with her questions.  "She said that she started to ask a few questions about this or that at her woman's prayer group, and they all began to lay hands on her and pray for her and give her verses- this confirmed to her that she could not be safe: 'The Church is not a safe place for the questions I have."

The one thing that I believe started out as a good intention and I first thought it was great was the different approach to writing.  Instead of one voice writing, it was a discussion between 3 people, and it almost felt like we were easdropping on their conversation. At first I liked it, but then the further I went into the discussion, it really felt contrived, especially in the q and a part where "people" asked questions and they responded.  I didn't see any disagreements played out between the three and the Q and A seemed like someone spouting out "traditional 'evangelical' straw man questions' that got put up and then knocked down even quicker.

There are some issues that I have with this book.  One of which is the idea that we don't have to, they say "manage" our relationship with God.  Which almost seems like to me just live your life and you and God are good.  I know that I can do nothing to earn God's love.  He gives it to me freely.  But because of that I want to love, serve, and know him better.

Another part was their exegesis around the idea of confession.  They say, "there is nothing more damaging to the gospel, my faith, and to my position in Christ than this daily confession of sin.."  They say that it leads to this concern that "What happens if I don't confess every sin.  Then am I damned?"  But I believe their exegeisis on 1 John 1:9 is weak, and Jesus wants us to confess the sins in our lives on a regular basis, because it hampers our relationship with Him.  Not that he stops loving us at all.  But wants the best for us.

I could go on and share some other thoughts regarding this book (God is never disappointed in us, their take on the idea regarding who goes to heaven, etc..) but this post is long enough.  If I were to give this book a score of 1 to 10 (1 being horrible and 10 being amazing) I would give it about a 5.  Good but not great.

Blessed are the Peacemakers

It’s hard to believe but summer is almost over.  In just 2 short weeks kids will be going back to school, some of our college friends will be back with us, and we’ll be talking fall events, football, and our one year birthday party.  Being that it is almost the end of summer, it is almost the end of our summer long series entitled “Vintage Christianity”, looking at the 8 Beatitudes found in the 1^st book of the New Testament, Matthew Chapter 5:1-10.

We have covered the first 6 during the summer and today we are covering the 7^th, and next week we’ll be wrapping up the series with the 8^th beatitude and then making a transition to another series called “Finding God in Culture” starting on September 12 looking at movies, TV, and music and connections to our 3 Core Values.

Today we are taking a look at Matthew 5:9 which says, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God.”  Or in another translation “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.”  So today we are going to talk about what peace means, what it looks like to be a peacemaker, and how this beatitude is a radical, upside down kingdom of God value just like the other 7 beatitudes.

Let’s look at the word peace.  It shows up all over the place in our world, but do we truly know what it means?  We hear it when the politicians decry the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, we hear people talk about peace on earth, and of course all the contestants in the Miss USA pageant say they want world peace.  But I don’t believe we quite have a true understanding of peace and how to obtain it, in our own lives and in the world around us.  The word peace is found all throughout the Scriptures, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament.  The word peace is translated Shalom in over 250 occurrences and means “the absence of agitation and discord; rest, harmony, and wholeness.  It includes as well the ideas of good health and prosperity as well as having both a temporal part to it and an eternal part.  But shalom isn’t the only word translated as peace in Scripture.  The other word is the Greek word eirene and refers to inner calm, a sense of perfect well being, but expands to include harmonious relations between God and people, people and people, nations and families.  It is the word used to designate the role of emperors and ambassadors sent out to facilitate peace where there is conflict.  We get the sense, both in the O.T. and the N.T. that this word peace means more than just absence of strife.  It is personal and social well being in the widest sense of the world and is very holistic in that it deals with everything.  All of our relationships, situations, the creation itself, and God.  It is about more than just pacifism, and being against war (which by the way we are still pacifist and believe that war is wrong).  So the central meaning behind peace is the idea of reconciliation.  Reconciliation between God and us.  Reconciliation between people.  Reconciliation between nations and countries.  As disciples of Jesus, we should be all about the work of reconciliation and we should bring into all our relationships a quality which makes for harmony and blessing.

But before we become peacemakers in our world we have to realize something.  We need to realize that ultimately all the talk of peace in the world is utterly futile without Jesus.  Ultimately, all peacemaking begins and ends with Jesus Christ whose very purpose was to reconcile God and humanity.  But shalom is not merely the absence of war and conflict; it is the presence and the promise of truth with a Capital T.  So let me ask this, before we get to talking about peace in the world, and the conflicts that exist around the world, and in the relationships that are all around us, what about you?  Are you at peace with God?  I don’t believe you can truly be a peacemaker in the wider world, working for reconciliation in all facets of life, until you are at peace, and reconciled to the author, sustainer, and the prince of peace, Jesus himself.

So if peace is personal and social, internal and external, and all about reconciliation, and is done from a person who has been and continues to be reconciled to God through Jesus,  then what is the work of a peacemaker?  Just like there are many facets to the word peace, there are many different facets to being a peacemaker.  The work of peace has to do with sharing with others about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and how you have been reconciled and brought to peace through Jesus.  The work of peace means we work at breaking down walls that exist between individuals, groups of people, and yes even countries.  The work of making peace also means that it is about the task of reconciliation between groups, people at odds, and making people aware that God is reconciling himself to us.  It is about those who seek peace by loving their enemies by doing what God himself does, and by definition are children of God, in that when they work for peace they look like God.  It’s about disciples of Jesus being about the ministry of reconciliation found in 2 Corinthians 5:17-20 which says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.”  So peacemaking is about evangelism and sharing about the reconciliation that is possible through Jesus.

To be a peacemaker also means that we are the bringers of peace to a wounded world, to invite others into the presence of the Lord, to open the circle and extend a hand of invitation into the community and to become a peacemaker themselves.  So being a peacemaker is also about things like working against racism, working against injustice in all areas of life, and being on the forefront of justice issues in the wider world.

One of those justice issues that we definitely need to address more from the church’s standpoint is the area of war.  My question to each of us is how did we get to this place where so many in the church don’t question our countries involvement in war.  Now we all may have different opinions when it comes to war, but let’s talk a little bit about peace, the just war theory, and being a peacemaker.

Somehow this idea of being a pacifist in the church has become almost a rare thing, but in the early church most if not all followers of Jesus were peacemakers in a very real way.  In fact here is a quote from an early Church father Tatian, “

“I do not wish to be a ruler.  I do not strive for wealth.  I refuse offices of military command.  I despise death.”  The early Church Fathers believed that following God was antithetical to working for the empire and fighting their battles.  They believed in working for and “fighting” for peace.  And so for us sitting here today 2,000 years later in a world that hasn’t become more peaceful, and the heroes in the news and movies are not the peacemakers, the church needs to be more active in the role of living this beatitude out more fully, not just in standing up against the violence, death, and destruction of countries, people, and infrastructure from war, but from the violence, death, and destruction that happens when people aren’t reconciled to God, to each other, and to the whole of creation.

I want to close with an illustration that shows just how far from God’s ideal of peacemaking we have come.  In the beatitude that we looked at to be a peacemaker means all the things we talked about (reconciliation, standing up against violence, hatred, evangelism, mission, social justice, love, and peace).  But in the early west a peacemaker was a type of pistol.  When you watch the early western’s you see most people having a colt peacemaker.  In 68 years Colt made over 357,000 peacemakers.  What does this say when a weapon of death, destruction, and violence is called a peacemaker?  Apparently in our world the only way to make peace is through violence.  This idea of the myth of redemptive violence.  Jesus is the true peacemaker and brings peace not by bringing violence on others, but by having violence done to him.

So as we transition into our discussion time, I want to say that this idea of peacemaking can be an area of contention and I want to reiterate that when we share and when we agree and when we disagree we need to do it from a place of respect and love for each other.  Together we’ll talk about the word peace, what it looks like for you and me to be peacemakers, and also talk about pacifism and working for peace in the wider world.



Here are the questions that we discussed during our time of discussion....

1. What thoughts, comments, ideas, disagreements, etc…. do you have regarding today’s beatitude?
2. How did the discussion about the word “peace” challenge you, change your understanding, confirm your thoughts, etc….?
3. What are your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, etc.. about pacifism?  What are your beliefs, thoughts, ideas, etc.. about Christ Followers participating in war?
4. What does it mean and what does it look like for you and I, and Veritas to be about the work of peace?

So what are your thoughts, comments, etc... about being a peacemaker in our world.  A world that often says, "Blessed are the violent."  Send me a message on this website or make a comment on the blog.

Veritas at Purple Door

Well this past weekend five of us from Veritas attended Purple Door and had a booth to promote Veritas and to give away literature and our new CD. We talked with a lot of different people, gave around 80 or so CD's away, and hung out with each other. Whether or not people will come and check us out on a Sunday is yet to be seen. But it was still a good time to be there, listen to some good music, and get the word out about Veritas. One of the coolest things that took place during our time at Purple Door was that our Worship Leader and our drummer were given the chance to play for 15 minutes on the Gallery Stage. The video below shows Matt and Shawn playing "Pop Train Wreck" which is a hilarious work that Matt put together. So take a look at it and see for yourself why it's so funny.

Arts in the Veritas Community

I have blogged alot about the arts and artistic expression within the Veritas community. I continue to do some thinking on helping to develop the arts within our community, allow our artists freedom to explore their giftings in the community, and develop ways of having various arts represented throughout our church. I have been thinking about this due to our CD "Veritas: Music and Art from our community Volume 2" coming in the mail yesterday. I am continually blown away by the creativity of those within our community. The CD is amazing, the art is awesome, and the poetry is open, sincere, authentic, and beautiful. I have also found the following video done by an amazing artist and person within our community (who developed the front and back of the CD as well). I saw it on Facebook and asked her if I could post it on the blog and she gave me permission so I decided to put it on here for others to see. It's an awesome piece and I believe you will be touched as I was when I saw it. (We have some future plans for continued embracing of the arts within Veritas such as the Veritas "school" of the arts, and using various artistic expression within the worship gatherings on sunday morning)

Here is the video called "Metamorphisis":