The West-Mod Triumvirate

Western society, especially in the United States, can be characterized in large measure by three approaches or attitudes toward life, living and relationships:

• individualism – “every man for himself”, “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps”
• consumersim – “what can you do for me?”, “what’s in this for me?”
• materialism – “get all you can and can all you get”, possessions = success

The way we live our lives as Christians and pursue the missional life and incarnational community are also affected by these approaches to life. They influence the way we relate to people, our attitudes about church and what church is to “be” or “do”, and what we do with our possessions and money.

Halter and Smay, in their book The Tangible Kingdom (pp.147-155), address these issues and offer a simple statement as to how we, as Christ-followers, can live so as to tear down these “walls” that hinder missional-incarnational living.

The more we do “together,” the less individualistic we”ll be. The more we become “one” with Christ, the less consumer oriented we’ll be. The more we do for “others,” the less materialistic we’ll be.” (p.154)

In other words, we need to open ourselves more to others and community, focus more on becoming more like Christ, and be more giving of what the Lord has made us stewards of.

I can take a look at my life and see how each of these attitudes affects my life as a believer and church member. The affects are not always positive. But I do desire to be much more open with my life – in one-on-one relationships and in community, to be more Christ-like in all areas of my life, and to be much more benevolent and giving of what the Lord has entrusted to me for service in His kingdom.

As a citizen in a Western-Modern context, individualism-consumerism-materialism are ingrained in my life. To make the shift in each of the three areas will “go against the grain” in my life, but it is a shift that is necessary if I am going to live a more missional and incarnational life.

On my own this will be impossible. But, with God, all things are possible.

 

 

Ethnic Unrest In China

Please pray a tragic situation that is unfolding in China.

Over the past several days there has been rioting and violence in Urumqi, Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Xinjiang is located in the far-northwestern reaches of China. This region has a tremendous Muslim poplulation called the Uyghurs.

The Uyghur’s have long since felt that they have been descriminated against by the majority ethnic group in China, the Han. The current situation began when Uyghurs took to the streets in large numbers to protest against the descrimination.

Thus far, 156 people have been killed, 800 injured and 1,434 people detained by police and security forces.

Please pray for an end to the violence, loss of life, destruction, and for resolution to this tragic social and political situation.

Please also pray for believers in the city and region, for their strength and faith. May they be used of the Lord to comfort those who are bereaved, suffering, and fearful.

And, in the midst of a terrible situation, may the Gospel be shared and many come to faith in Christ as Savior.

You can read about what is happening in Urumqi at BBC and CNN.

 

Free Rice

Help feed the world’s hungry and your mind at the same time.

Go to Free Rice and test your knowledge about words, geography and math, among other subjects. Your time and involvement helps earn free rice that is distributed to the world’s hungry through the United Nations World Food Program.

It’s fun, exercises your mind and benefits a great, very needy, cause.

 

Interruptions – Nuisance Or God?

Earlier this week I was reading through the Gospel of Matthew and came across something interesting in Chapter 9. It’s not necessarily unique to Chapter 9, but it really stood out to me that day.

On several occasions, as Jesus was either teaching, engaged in healing ministry, or walking from one place to another, He was interrupted by people.

In verses 14 – 17, He was teaching about fasting. We read in verse 18 that while he “was saying these things to them,” a synagogue official came to Jesus and appealed to Him to come and restore life to his daughter who had just died. Jesus rose from His teaching and followed the father toward his home and daughter.

As Jesus was on His way, a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years came up behind Jesus and touched His cloak. Sensing her touch, need and faith, He stopped, spoke to her and she was healed.

Jesus then proceeded to the synagogue official’s house, in verse 23, where He restored the daughter to life.

The interruptions continued. Verse 27 tells us that as Jesus was ”passing on” from the official’s house, two blind men who had been following Him cried out for His mercy and healing. The miracle of the men receiving their sight at the touch of Jesus is recorded in verses 28-30.

Jesus then left the house in which the blind men had been healed. As He was “going out,” a dumb, demon-possessed man was brought to Him by friends or family. Jesus immediately cast the demon out of the man and he was able to speak.

After that healing, Scripture records that Jesus went into all of the cities and villages, continuing His ministry of  teaching the people, proclaiming the kingdom and healing many people.

So, what did I learn from this chapter that records four “interruptions” in a day in the life and ministry of Jesus?

I learned that Jesus always had time for people. Regardless of what He was doing, or where He was going, He gave time and attention to people. He was never so rushed or pressed by a schedule that He could not take time to meet a need, hold little children, or spend time with friends. Why? Because Jesus loves people and one way that it was expressed was by His willingness to be interrupted.

So many of us are driven by our busyness and held to our schedules by our day-timers. The calander that I used to use broke my days into quarter-hour segments, beginning at eight o’clock in the morning and running through 6pm each day of the week.

I’m not saying that it isn’t important to schedule things or that we shouldn’t have order to our days, but, are we open to people and interruptions as they occur throughout the course of each day?

Who knows, that “interruption” might be God trying to break into my day. It might be a God-appointed moment to learn more about Him,  to discover and meet a need, for His kingdom to be advanced here on earth, and for Him to receive glory.

How many times have I missed God because I was too busy to be interrupted?

 

Missional Renaissance by Reggie McNeal

I have just started reading Missional Renaissance by Reggie McNeal. I believe this is going to be an excellent follow-up read to his Present Future: Six Tough Questions For The Church.

What I would like to do is post quotes and comments as I read through the book. I am only half-way through the fist chapter and I am already stoked.

So, let me begin with a few things from the Introduction.

McNeal says that missional is “a way of living, not an affiliation or activity” that “goes to the very heart of what the church is, not just what it does.” To live missionally means to see “all (of) life as a way to be engaged with the mission of God in the world.”

Missional, as defined by McNeal, makes such a sharp break from the prevailing notions of church that it is impossible for us to think of church in the terms that we used to, as something that we “went to” or “participated in”, “joined” or “attended.”

It is suggested that if the institutional church is going to go missional, we will need to make three shifts in our thinking and behavior.

The shifts are:

1. From internal to external in terms of ministry focus
2. From program development to people development in terms of core activity
3. From church-based to kingdom-based in terms of leadership agenda.

The content of the book is built on and expands on these three premises.

As Reggie closes the Introduction, he makes this statement about the shifts:

They point you into a new world. They will move you from doing church as primarily a refuge, conservator, and institutional activity in a post-Christian culture to being a risky, missionary, organic force in the increasingly pre-Christian world in North America.”

******************************

I am really looking forward to reading Missional Renaissance. I believe that it will provide us with guidelines and encouragement for making the critical shifts in our thoughts and behavior that are necessary for making Kingdom impact in today’s “pre-Christian” America.

Ready? Shift.

 

My “Crowded House”

Pray. Pray hard!

Our four kids, the babies my wife keeps every day … Talk about “the crowded house!”

We need a bigger house!

 

Church Visitor

Here are several churches that I check out regularly. I discovered them while surfing the web or following links on other blogs or websites. They are all missional churches and each is comprised of small groups.

Their locations range from Washington State, through Colorado and Texas, on to Tennessee. I’m really excited that three of the churches are in Austin, Texas.

The Lord is doing an interesting work in the city whose unofficial motto is “Keep Austin Weird.” Austin was a major counter-culture and music center in the 1960s and ’70s. Alot of the vibe and attitude remains. Very hip. Austin is about two hours west of where I live.

So, here are they church:

• Adullam (Denver, Colorado) Co-pastors, Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, are the authors of The Tangible Kingdom (check my posts on The TK on this blog).
• Austin City Life (Austin, Texas) Pastor Jonathon Dodson has an excellent blog, Church Planting Novice.
• Austin New Church (Austin)
• Austin Stone Community Church (Austin) This church has a good blog as well, Missional Community Blog.
• Matthew’s Table (Lebanon, Tennessee)
• Soma Communities (Tacoma, Washington)

If you’re interested in missional churches and stuff, I trust that you’ll enjoy visiting these sites.

~ Blessings ~

 

Is This The Beginning Of Something?

A couple of years ago, one of my daughters started baby-sitting for a young family who are members of the same church that we are. They’re a nice couple, three kids, one on the way. I have had a number of opportunities to talk with the husband as I have dropped my daughter off and picked her up at their house on baby-sitting nights.

One of the things that I have learned about the young couple is that they have a strong desire to be involved in a small group of believers and God-seekers who are on mission in their community. In fact, they are very interested in the concept of organic (house) church.

About three weeks ago I asked the young man if he’d be interested in getting together to talk about and pray over the idea of coming together as a “missional community” in our part of town. He agreed and we met this past Saturday morning. As we met, we discovered that we have similar thoughts, passions and dreams for “church”, community and ministry. During our visit, the young husband also asked me to be his mentor as a believer, husband and father.

So, we agreed to meet weekly for accountabilty, visioning and prayer. We also thought that it would be good for our families to do a couple of things together this summer – suppers, movie nights, mall outings – for relationship building and just hanging out. In the fall we’ll start meeting together as a community group. 

I met with the young man this morning. We talked a little about computers and the week and then we shared a couple of things about ourselves that most people, other than our wives, don’t know. We shared personal prayer requests and prayed, not only for one another, but also for a couple of friends who need to know Christ.

We are going to read the Gospel of Matthew this week. My desire for the reading is that we will find in the life and ministry of Jesus, in His relationship to people, truths and insights for application in the relationships that we have with people in our neighborhoods and networks. We’ll share those thoughts when we get together next week.

Our prayer as we go through the summer is that the Lord will add others to our small group who share the same passion and desires for community and ministry that we have.  We are also praying that  He will unite us in heart and vision for the tangible outworking of the Kingdom in our neighborhoods and town.

Please pray for us as we embark on this journey.

 

The MI Factor

As I re-read The Tangible Kingdom by Halter and Smay, I am discovering that the message of the book rings as encouraging and inspirational to me today as when I first read it about a year ago. The passages that are highlighted in yellow and/or emphasized by red arrows still speak to my heart and passions. And, I am finding new statements and points that are striking chords with me this time around.

One such fresh passage is found in the chapter entitled “Posture.” Under the heading “Where Missionaries Begin” (p.38), Halter and Smay write that when we, Christ-followers and churches, engage people with something of an understanding of their assumptions, experiences, worldviews, and emotions,

everything changes: our posture with people, our livlihood, what we do with our spare time, who we spend our time with, how we structure the fabric of our lives. Yes, church is what we’re concerned about because we’re deeply entrenched in its minutia, but we can’t make transformative adjustments if we start there and work outward. We must go out and then let church reemerge as a reflection and the natural outgrowth of our missional way of life.”

Sounds a little like “becoming all things to all men so that some might get saved.”

Missional, being sent into the world as God’s representatives, has an “inseperable twin.” The “twin” is called “incarnational.” The authors quote the meaning of incarnation as “any person or thing serving as the type or embodiment of a quality or concept.”

The section continues with a statement that caught my attention. The authors write that

missional sentness is focused on leaving and everything related to going, but incarnational represents how we go and what we do as we go.”

I think of this as the Missional-Incarnational Factor (MI Factor).

As God the Father sent the Son to walk among men in order to reveal Himself  and His love for humanity, so He sends us into the world to do the same. God’s love was supremely manifested on the Cross of Calvary, but it is true that it was also revealed in and through relationships and community. So, it is true for us, that the message of His love and grace that we have been commissioned to share will be most effectively revealed in and through our relationships and the communities in which we live and move.

Who or what is it that the Lord may be wanting me/us to leave (comfort zones, relationships, church as we have always done it), to whom or where is He directing us to go, and how is it that He would have us live in order for His Kingdom to become more real and tangible in the lives of people who are in need of Christ?

That is the MI Factor question.

 

Missional Living … Simply Put

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post entitled “Missional Living (Def.)”  In the post I included two definitions of missional living; one by Floyd McClung , the other by Ed Stetzer.

Well, I have just started working through The Tangible Kingdom Primer that was sent to me by the Missio missions ministry and I have found a very short and succinct definition of missional life that I really like.

On Day 1 of the first week of the workbook, Halter and Smay, the authors of the Primer, define missional living as,

the decision to offer to God our plans in exchange for His plans.”

To me this simply means the total and unreserved surrender of all of my life – my plans for family and ministry, my dreams and aspirations for the future – to the Lord’s will, purposes, and leadership … to His plans for and use of me for the accomplishment of His will, the receiving of glory in all things, and the expansion of His Kingdom on this earth.

Missional living means openness to and involvement with people – intentional, genuine and purposeful engagement with people – for the sake of the Gospel and the Kingdom.

With this exchange comes the confidence of His provision for personal, family and ministry needs and freedom from the grip of fear and concern over the unknown that often keeps me from complete trust and surrender.

Jesus said, “As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.”

Where does He send me?

Into life.