imagining how the church can reorient around mission

I have been preparing for Christian Associates’ 2nd annual North American conference called “Connect.”  On Saturday morning at Connect, our 80 or so participants will wrestle with how we “embody the gospel communally.” The premise is that we default to expressing the good news in quite individualistic fashion, making it harder for normal people to really comprehend the beauty and breadth of God’s message in Christ for the world. The gospel is most clearly understand when embodied by communities that believe it and act as signs, foretastes and instruments of the now-and-not-yet Kingdom of God (as the great missiologist Lesslie Newbigin reminds us).

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I believe that our theology does make a difference. There is a Rich Mullins song that states how important  our theological belief system is. He sang referring to the Apostles Creed, “I did not make it, but it is making me.” I believe that. Our theology is not irrelevant or unimportant, but it forms who we are and how we are to act.

If our theology does not move us to love God and our neighbor more, move us to declare the Christ to the world, and move us to step toward the poor, the disenfranchised and oppressed in a redemptive way, then it may be time to revisit what we believe.  In other words, it should make us different….more Kingdom oreinted.   read more

I really like this short video clip.  The line that comes on first is, "Theology matters because…what we know about God shapes the way we think and live."

A second line, the statement at the end, "We are all Theologians," is so important.  Anyone who thinks about God is functioning theologcally.   read more

After attending the services at our church last night, I am still speechless. Good Friday commemorates perhaps the greatest mystery in the history of the world. How is it that God Himself—the Creator of the Universe—can suffer death at the hands of His creatures?

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"The Kingdom is primarily the dynamic reign or kingly rule of God, and derivatively, the sphere in which the rule is experienced. In biblical idiom, the Kingdom is not identified with its subjects. They are the people of God's rule who enter it, live under it, and are governed by it. The church is the community of the Kingdom but never the Kingdom itself. Jesus’ disciples belong to the Kingdom as the Kingdom belongs to them; but they are not the Kingdom. The Kingdom is the rule of God; the church is a society of men."

The Theology of the New Testament, George Eldon Ladd

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’  All that are in Hell, choose it.  Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.” 

(C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 72)  

In fairness to Rob Bell, here he is with a statement of his creed.  It's quick and you might want to listen.  I am sure this will infuriate some and allay others.  Regardless, from one Rob to another – Grace.

Such is the power of the eyes of faith.  The eyes of the body can only see what falls under the sense of sight, but with the eyes of faith it is just the reverse.  They see nothing that is visible, but they see what is invisible just as if it lay before their eyes.

The Need for Faith, John Chrysostom

On the basis of a publisher’s promotional paragraph and an advertising video in which Rob Bell questions someone’s certainty that Ghandi is in hell, Justin Taylor sounded the web-wide alarm that Rob Bell’s forthcoming book Love Wins espouses universalism (the doctrine that everyone will eventually be saved). Though he too had not yet read the book, John Piper followed up with a puzzling melodramatic tweet bidding Rob Bell “Farewell“. An avalanche of tweets ensued — all (so far as I could discern) by people who had not read Bell’s forthcoming book — to the point that this yet-unpublished book became one of the top ten tweeted topics. (If this was planned by HarperCollins, the publisher of Love Wins, it was brilliant!!!)

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There have been many times when I've struggled to figure out what bearing many Old Testament passages have on my life today, in a radically different cultural setting. Israel was born into a nation of many gods, and called to a radical monotheism. Christians in most of the western world today are born into a culture that is largely devoid of a real concept of God. Alan Hirsch, however, points out in his book Forgotten Ways that perhaps this difference is less than we might think. Early Christians, Hirsch writes, proclaimed that Jesus is Lord not only for the sheer truthfulness of the statement, but also in opposition to the desire of the current government to have "lordship" over their lives.

Today, we are not faced with a broad pantheon of actual gods being worshiped, nor are we faced with a singular dominating political power which desires absolute allegiance. But we are faced with a formidable opponent in the pluralism which dominates much of intellectual surroundings. Setting aside the positive elements of pluralism which allow for increased opportunities for dialogue, as Christians we must recognize that our only allegiance must be to Christ. Though perhaps we are not so likely to suddenly become Buddhist-Christian hybrid quasi-religious ascetics, there is still danger present: danger to subtly accept more and more of other religions until our desire to spread the Gospel is seriously diminished. A lack of commitment to the commission of making disciples can easily be connected to a lack of commitment to the bold statement, "The Lord our God is one." In the present buffet style favorite-flavor-of-religion, we must be constantly meditating on the supremacy of Christ and his dominance in our own lives.