imagining how the church can reorient around mission

Sept 14th- 9 am-1:30 pm – Free lunch included – hit the barcode below to register

This event, hosted by the Pacific Northwest Movement (PNWM), is free and open to all Pastors and Christian leaders interested in what church planting would look like in a rapidly changing culture.

I read an article this last week in which the author stated with the utmost confidence (read hubris) what will happen to the church “next.” Really?

Here are some clues as to what to focus on regardless of what happens next… read more

As I arise this morning to pictures and videos of a church full of people worshipping (some who I know personally) while a group of angry, torch bearing white supremacist rallied outside in Charlottesville, my heart is in knots. I honestly feel sick.

It feels like our world is going insane.

May God give my brothers and sisters who are there grace, courage, and protection and…

May God give the same to white Christians to use their voice to speak out against the hatred that is seemingly growing in our land (many who were quick to use their voices in protest of BLM rallies). Sadly, I hold little hope that they will use that same vigilance and protest regarding what happened last night.

May Christ, who is our peace and has broken down every wall, raise up his true church.

r

This is part 2 of Immanuel’s Theological Vision. You can find part 1 by clicking here.

We live in such a fragmented society. At this point, almost every element of society is responding as a victim. Everyone is slighted to one degree or another. Everyone is polarized. As a matter fact, in my 59 years, I have never seen a more volatile moment in our culture’s history. Here are a couple of examples.

The first one is a bit silly. A year ago I was watching football on TV and in the LSU game, the former Hall of Fame basketball player Karl Malone was in the stands. Apparently, his son plays for LSU. The picture they kept looping back to confirmed Malone was using a flip phone in the stands. Pretty innocuous, right? Not so in today’s age. As a result of him using a flip phone, the Internet went wild, accusing him of being an archaic buffoon. There was tweet after tweet and Facebook post after Facebook post talking about how ridiculous it was for him to use a flip phone. It got so intense that it could be called “crowd pounding.” Fortunately for Karl Malone, he probably could care less.

Another example is from my own life. It occurred during Pope Francis’ visits to the US. While I have no intention of converting to Catholicism, it is no secret that I have a serious man crush on Pope Francis. I think he is remarkable and have not been shy about sharing my admiration for him through my social media outlets. The sad part is, there’s a certain fundamentalist element of my history that is quite offended by me liking the pope,errrrr, “antichrist” I have had numerous people write me questioning my integrity as a Christian leader in showing my approval of Pope Francis’s trip. One even said, quoting from the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts that there will be many wolves coming among you, inferring that Pope Francis was one of the wolves that we should be aware of. Sheesh!

There are many other volatile issues where folks are separated such as racial tension, political angst and national cynicism.

Paul talks about this type of brokenness and estrangement in Ephesians 2. He talks about people being broken, separated, and estranged without God in the world. But he also goes on to say that Jesus himself is our peace and he has broken down every wall that separates us. In fact he goes on to say that God has created a new humanity. Everything that separates us from other humans; Jesus has provided a way for us to experience peace. God’s shalom. Paul even says that Christ does more than provide peace, he himself is our peace. This new humanity, Paul goes on to describe in the next chapter as the church.

So what does it look like? What does this new humanity look like?

Paul describes it for us.

“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:26-28

Paul says no more Jew or Gentile, which refers to ethnic separation. He says there is no more slave or free. In other words, no more economic elitism. He also says no more male or female, eradicating gender inequality. But Christ remedies each and all of those points of separation.

OK, this passage is the catalyst for my dream. It is that we would become a community of difference, a diverse community…wealthy and poor, men and women, married and single, from various racial backgrounds representing Christ in the world. See, the gospel doesn’t call us to give up our differences, but to subordinate them for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

Why? Because the church is to be as Lesslie Newbigin has said, a sign, foretaste, and instrument of the kingdom. John Durham uses a different word picture. He calls the people of God “…a display people.” Our community is to act and look like what the consummated kingdom is in reality. It is to show the world what the new creation is to look like. In a word we are to be new creation people.

German theologian, Gearhart Lofink wrote,

“It can only be that God begins in a small way, at one single place in the world. There must be a place, visible, tangible, where the salvation of the world can begin: that is, where the world becomes what it is supposed to be according to God’s plan. Beginning at that place, the new thing can spread abroad, but not through persuasion, not through indoctrination, not through violence. Everyone must have the opportunity to come and see. All must have the chance to behold and test this new thing. Then, if they want to, they can allow themselves to be drawn into the history of salvation that God is creating.”

I was speaking to someone this recently about our church community. They asked how it was going. My response was, “Well, we are not there yet, but Immanuel is emerging into God’s dream.” I can sense it; if you were a part, I think you could as well.

Peace,

r

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matthew 6:33

If we are told by Jesus to seek the Kingdom, doesn’t that infer it must be accessible in the present and, if so, describes our daily quest?

“Being missional means moving intentionally beyond our church preferences, making missional decisions rather than preferential decisions.” ― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches

I got the privilege of meeting with a young church planter from a mainline denomination yesterday. She is charming and passionate, though somewhat doe-eyed, seemingly not completely sure what she was getting in to (though, she is quickly arriving there).

I met her last week while teaching a track on the Missional Church at the Whitworth Institute of Ministry. While during the introductions, I came to find out about her dream and calling to church planting (got me excited) and how she was an embedded planter in a mainline church here in Spokane (got me even more excited, because I believe an embedded approach is the healthiest model to embark on the challenging journey of planting).

Anyway, that all led to us connecting yesterday. After some small talk, I began to ask into the “why?” and the “how?” of this new project. While I was thrilled to hear the church plant was being initiated, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my gut that those who were helping her hadn’t fully calculated the cost, nor were they clear on how to pull it off.

Part of the dilemma is that the local church she is embedded in and will supposedly send her out is in somewhat of self-protected posture. In other words, they like they idea of birthing a new church, but they don’t want it to cost them anything. There is already an apparent pulling back of support because they fear they will lose members.

Ok, listen carefully to this next part: You cannot do any form of mission, particularly church planting, without risk. Because the denomination she is a part of is dying, and the church that wants to send her is an aging congregation and apparently not robust, there is a contraction of resources…which is the very worst thing a denomination or a local church can afford to do.

If you want your church to flourish, you must have the courage to release resources – both money and people. It is not the churches job to try to keep people. If a church goes into protective mode, the very people the church wants to participate will not stay. The people who correctly see “life as mission” will go somewhere, where the church is not trying just to stay alive, but to a place where the church will give itself away for the sake of the Kingdom.

What happens is, to keep from dying, all resources flow toward vital systems, which seem logical and even natural. Yet, in the Kingdom, there is a counter logic. We hear Jesus say all of these crazy, counter-intuitive things like, “If you want to live, you have to die. If you wanna be great, you have to submit and become a servant.”

If a church, or a denomination for that matter, cannot transition its identity from a “container” for Christian people (Christendom orientation) to a missionary community, it will eventually come to an end. I know, those are hard words…sorry. Why? It will come to an end because the church is living counter to what God intended it to be…a community on mission.

r

“Conversion cannot be thought of simply as a change of heart; it is a change of citizenship.” Simon Chan

If you say you are a Christian, it is not an option – you must begin with theology (who is God, who am I before Him and what does He desire), rather than nationalism or partisanship (what is best for our country or the party I belong to) in discerning how to engage culture. While the latter is important, we must be the best of citizens; it MUST be subjugated to the will and ethic of the Kingdom. The most frightening thing for me is not our new President, or Russia or Islam or Fake News, or some other external influence, though each carry with them a reason for consternation. The thing that frightens me most is the famine of “believers” who recognize the collision of Kingdoms that is taking place around them.

This is unquestionably an indictment on the church for its lack of spiritual formation (a topic for another day).

If you begin with the latter, whether you know it or not, you portray a co-opted version of Christianity that is underdeveloped at best and repelling at worse to those who are sincerely seeking the real thing. #alternativepolitic #kingdomfirst

I have long felt like my calling in life has been to help change the mind of the church. Jesus made it clear that he came to proclaim the good news that the Kingdom of God was near. The imperatives related to this declaration were for his followers to believe and repent (Mark 1). Repentance, while it means many things, at its simplest, most rendered definition it means to change one’s mind. I believe that is what the church in the West must do – change its mind regarding its identity.

Part of repentance means to turn from one direction to another. The negative side of the turning happens by deconstructing what has become of the church in what many would call Christendom. Though it is not the thrust of this post, the church must turn from its over-reliance on power and cultural control, it's political co-opting, and it's baptized mimicry of a consumer driven society (Have you visited many churches lately? IMHO, most churches are discipling people further into the consumer life, all the while Jesus actually calls us to deny ourselves and to daily take up our cross). read more

There’s nothing like spending a 24 hours with Doctors thinking you’ve had a heart attack to get you into a “thinking about your personal mortality” space.