imagining how the church can reorient around mission

I had a bizarre experience on my flight from Washington Dulles to Tampa on Saturday.  I was sitting next to a guy and one of those flight shortening conversation (anytime I can get in a convo, the flight seems to disappear quickly).  The jet had in-flight Internet and I tried it just after we took off, but decided just to be sociable.  About an hour from Tampa we both we talking about and looking at how cool our iPhones were and he began to log-on to the Internet.  As the screen came up to choose which service to use we observed that there was two services available: 1) In-flight Free WIFI and 2) I am a Terrorist.  I am being completely serious.  We immediately notified the flight attendants. The undercover Air Marshals quickly got involved and things became quite intense. They put the plane on lock-down….nobody could move, nobody got to use electronic equipment, everyone was very curious about what we going on.  My conversation buddy and I were the only ones privy to the real skinny.  We finally arrived at our destination and were detained by the FBI.  After around 30 minutes were free to go.

What had happened, as best as I can figure, is somebody (with a great deal of tech savvy, but without a shred of common sense) on board got online and opened up another hotspot (easily done on a MAC) with the “terrorist” title.  Why?  Who knows?  Ontological question: Why do nutty people do nutty things?  I do know, because I was being interview by the Marshals (I felt like someone on CSI or something), that if they were to be or did get caught that it would not go well with them.  They would be taken somewhere they did not want to go…for a long, long time (Can you say, “Gitmo?”  Can you say, “Waterboard”). read more

I am in my final preparations for one of my longer trips.  If you want to pray for me, here are a few of the details.

I will be in D.C. this next week at the Ecclesia National Conference.  I really like these guys, particularly my buddy, J.R. Woodward.  While there, I get a chance to spend the day with one of my favorite people and most enduring friends, Al Tizon (we went to WPC together waaaay back in the day).  I should say, the venerable, Dr. Al Tizon.  He teaches at Palmer Seminary in Philly and is driving over for the day.  I am so pumped to see him.  He carries with him huge passion for the Kingdom, astonishing intellect and a prophetic voice for the nations.  Ok, I’ll stop gushing about him.  It is beginning to sound like I have a crush on him.  I wish you could meet him. read more

Jim Wallis writes, “The goal of biblical conversion is not to save souls apart from history but to bring the Kingdom of God into the world with explosive force. It begins with individuals, but is for the sake of the world… Churches today are tragically split between those who stress conversion but have forgotten its goal, and those who emphasize Christian social action but have forgotten the necessity for conversion… Both need to recover the original meaning of conversion to Jesus Christ and to his kingdom.”  Announcing the Kingdom p. 194

Although, I struggle a bit with the language of "bringing the Kingdom."  This type of language is missing from the NT.  When language related to the KOG is used, it is more related to us "entering it" or "inheriting it."  The language of bringing or building or extending is absent.  Regardless, I love Wallis' bridging of the conversionistic with the activist approaches.  A sadly missing wedding in much of evangelicalism. 

I am enjoying processing the following missional themes with leaders from a local church (which has had an active congregation for more than a century!). I’m more accustomed to doing training with pioneering leaders and church planters via a process CA’s president and I developed called INFUSE.  In this case I’ve built upon the INFUSE themes, with some new material added and a more simplified approach that frames the themes as a series of core questions. It is going very well so far, and the primary pastor seems quite pleased. I’ll soon be preaching at this church, so we’ll see how that could be additive to the DNA embedding process.

via dansteigerwald4ca.wordpress.com read more

Lesslie Newbigin wrote,

“…the missionary is assailed by three temptations: the first is to bury himself in the affairs of the church and to evade real meeting with the non-Christian culture. The second is to engage in a flurry of welfare activities of the kind most likely to be popular at the moment with the powers that be. The third is to align himself with the most sympathetic leaders of the other religions in the profession of loyalty to ‘truth’ the implication being that ‘truth’ is something which transcends and includes both his message and theirs.”  read more

      Dear Jesus, we tremble at the thought of you speaking these words to us. What could be more sobering and tragic than to hear you say, “You talk about me a whole lot, using plenty of spiritual language and Bible quotes. You’re very quick to recognize and correct false teaching. You’re even quite zealous to apply what you know to others. But your heart is very far from me.”

via thegospelcoalition.org read more

Did you catch the line they shared about how they viewed the poverty and hardship of the township they minister in?  They were told to, "Look at the gap – what it is now and what it will be when Jesus returns."  I don't think we can do mission adequatley unless we have both a clear Kingdom theology and and a mature eschatology (beliefs about the end times).  

After spending time with these two this last summer, I was humbled and inspired to look at and live differnently in the city I reside in.   read more

“The church is in God’s keeping.  We do not have the right to be anxious about it.  We have our Lord’s word that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Lesslie Newbigin – Evangelism in the City

Depicted in this photo, an image from an anonymous source on the ground in Egypt, is a team of Egyptian Christians forming a massive human shield to protect their Muslim countrymen as they prayed during the violent protests yesterday. Beauty amid the chaos.

via www.good.is read more

"We need to stop giving people excuses not to believe in God. You've probably heard the expression 'I believe in God, just not organized religion'. I don't think people would say that if the church truly lived like we are called to live." — Francis Chan, Crazy Love