a church for the world

The Rarest of All Things

It has always been strange to me that as Christians we build our entire faith on a single great miracle, but at the same time we are very skeptical of the miraculous happening today. I know that often I’m doubtful when I hear of miraculous healings or any such things. A good understanding of miracles is sorely lacking in the Western Church today. So I would like to start to think about how the miraculous plays into missionality and the spreading of the Kingdom. I don’t even pretend to think I have the all the answers to this (especially not in 350 words) but I would like to posit a few ideas.

I think that the miraculous aspect of the Holy Spirit’s power must be rediscovered in order for the Kingdom of God to be spread in all its glory. In Matthew 11:4-6 Jesus tells John the Baptist that he is indeed the Messiah by pointing to both the preaching of the Gospel as well as the healings that were happening. If we are to continue Jesus’ ministry on earth then we also need to step out in healing the sick as well as proclaiming the Good News. Throughout scripture Jesus points to the miracles performed as witness to him being sent by God. We too are sent by God and therefore we also have access to this witness. This may seem a little strange and I don’t want to say that a ministry that isn’t seeing miracles is not from God. But I do think that miracles should be expected. I think C.S. Lewis says that miracles are the heavenly realm invading the earthly realm at a certain time and place. This is exactly what happens when the Kingdom of God is spread on earth. We are bringing more and more of the earthly realm under the dominion of and into contact with the heavenly. Therefore as we go spreading the Gospel and expanding the Kingdom we should not fear or be surprised by miracles but rather embrace them as God’s confirmation of our ministry and sending.

Grow and Fall up!

This may seem like I am an ipod stuck on repeat, but my passion for boldness can not be contained. The conversion process for different people resembles a chess game. Multiple moves are present in the beginning (multiple good ones at that).However, once you pick your move, there is no turning back. Our initial impression can lead us to either a quick “game” or multiple checks on the move to a checkmate (conversion). People can tell something is different inside of us and naturally people dislike different. Therefore, the only down fall is that we may lose some self-esteem. But to hide the real reason for our difference is a shame. A recent run-in with this happened while talking to a single mother. After a while she got angry with me for speaking about how God has influenced my life. Her observation was that I am an overly happy person that needs to grow up and deal with my own problems (OUCH!!!). Anyways, she saw something different in me that was a full reflection of what God has done in my life and she obviously wasn’t in the right state to want that kind of influence. Could you blame her? She had put up with some crap in her life and males were the main cause of it, so it had to be hard for her to overcome her struggle with me being a man. I seemingly presented something new that she had not experienced before and it made her uncomfortable. Her reaction to me was justified, but I believe that one day she will look back on our conversations and be thankful for them. God gave me the push to be bold, therefore I followed that through, all the way until it knocked me down. I believe that God allows us to fall in order to exalt himself and humble us, but then picks us back up and sends us on our way. We are not running the “business,” therefore, we will not always see the fruits of our labor (so to speak).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP5aVMt66so&feature=related Perfect band name and pretty good song! read more

A Necessary How To

You need to listen. Truly. And true listening means empathizing.

It means putting yourself, your mind, heart, and soul, into another person’s entirely different perspective. Climbing outside the windows of your own eyes is the first step to really engaging in the context of the person you are hearing. Leave behind your own agenda, your tight schedule, your opportunistic abuse of people (which is all too common—forgive us, Lord). Ask God to give you the power of empathy to truly understand and feel the joys and sorrows this person is conveying whether consciously or not. Next you must focus not entirely on the words your person is using. Sense the emotion, the givens, the surprises, the instincts, and the passions. By doing this and putting yourself aside you may begin to receive in a clear way, and in a way Jesus might have received, an understanding of the woes and delights that are so real to this soul standing before you. This depth of discernment of another person is the beginning of the mission. It all starts with finding out how exactly the Gospel is changing or will begin changing this person’s life for Christ and His mission, which has beautifully become our mission.

Relevance Reversed

“I didn’t go there in college,” he said, smiling a bit sheepishly. “It was the cool church.” These were the words of our guest in class yesterday, commenting on a church in town that was, and is some ways still is, a magnet for the city’s college students. I couldn’t help but smile back slightly, catching the humorous irony in his statement. Yet his words also expressed a tension that has recently been brought to the forefront of my mind.

The word “relevant” has been mentioned frequently during this course. And with good reason. A missional ecclesiology, as we have seen, implies a willingness to enter the culture and environment of those to whom we would witness, just as God the Son was incarnated on earth. In other words, it requires contextualization. “To be faithful to its calling, the church must be contextual, that is, it must be culturally relevant within a certain setting,” explains missional theologian Darrel Guder.

Discussions about the dangers of superimposing our own cultural particulars on others, under the deception that they are inherent to the gospel, have been in an important consideration as we wrestle with the meaning, and the how to, of contextualization. But what about the flip side? If one side of the spectrum is dangerous, and we have succumbed to it in the past, then the opposite extreme – that of capitulating to culture, of altering the gospel in order to appeal or to create a name for ourselves – is just as real and perilous. Do we sometimes compromise the gospel in order to be relevant, to make sense to the culture which surrounds us? I suppose this same question could also be asked in another way. At what point does the good and necessary desire to be relevant become superficial and distracting – a striving after that which is ‘cool’ for its own sake?

Lesslie Newbigin captures this tension saying, “In the attempt to be ‘relevant’ one may fall into syncretism, and in the effort to avoid syncretism, one may become irrelevant.” I would also argue that relevance can only extend so far before degenerating. It is true that the gospel is relevant. In any context and situation, Jesus always “relates to and has a direct bearing to the matter at hand,” according to the dictionary definition of the word. But the fact of his Lordship also challenges and transforms, creating an alternative way of being for those called into his Kingdom.

– Adrienne

Too much noise!

This morning we talked about how leaders need to become good listeners. We are supposed to listen in three areas of our lives: listen in context, listen to ourselves, and listen to God. All three of these areas fail if we do not have the right intentions. It can be somewhat difficult to escape the business of today’s modern workers and the advancements in “noise” technology. We have so many options to distract us from our daily devotions or just being quiet in general. We walk around on our cell phones, listen to our iPods while we study, and on our spare time watch TV. We get so comfortable with being immersed in noise that we almost forget how to be quiet! Some people might even find it uncomfortable to just sit and listen. I do believe that God speaks to us in very many ways such as scripture, experiences, or in nature. However, as Christians, listening is one skill that needs to be practiced continuously. Something that helps me is to put aside at least a half an hour a day (preferably in the morning) and maybe read a verse or two and just allow the rest of the time to let God speak to you. There are many spiritual practices out there that can help you with listening; it just depends on the person. read more

God is creative

God is a very, very creative God. He made the mountains high, the valleys low, the ocean, the plains, the stars and planets. He made EVERYTHING unique and different in its own way. At the peak of Creation He made man and woman in His image and just like Him, we are very creative. We are also very unique. No man, woman, boy or girl is the same and we are all to give glory to God through our differences and nuances. One thing that some Christians falsely assume is that God wants more "church" people. God wants more people who dress up on Sundays and go to a religious building where they sing some songs, patiently listen to a man at a pulpit speak about the Almighty, and then they conclude and socialize with one another before calling it a morning church service. I am one of these people and I really enjoy this style of Sunday worship, but that's just me, not the other 6 billion people out there. God made each and everyone of us different, and He has either allowed different things to happen to us, or put us through those different things so that we can be different. The LAST thing God wants is another pompous Zach running around trying to shove Bible down people's throats. What God wants is for all of His children to embrace what makes them unique, and for His children to reach out to those people who they come into contact with. God needs more Church people, more hands and feet of Christ people, more individuals changing the way they act around their friends who do not know Christ, rather than fleeing altogether from these friends. And it all starts with prayer and a change of heart, an attitude that LONGS for Christ's Kingdom here on earth where all His sons and daughters know Him. The stereotypical "church" guy can only reach other "churchy" guys. The hipster for Christ can reach his fellow hipsters. The skate boarding high school kid with a bad hair cut can reach his buddies at the skate park. The sweaty ditch digger can reach other ditch diggers. God wants an army of His sons and daughters who specialize in their areas of interest, looking out for one another and continuously reaching out to those around them. Zach W.

“Being Missional” in Scotland

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Idolatry and Missiology don’t mix

I have not written a blog all week until now. I didn't know what to write about, but tonight I was privileged enough to explore idolatry with some lovely brothers and sisters. We were studying Psalm 31 and how it relates to the idol of approval. I was supposed to be leading this exploration with another sister, and just as I never would have thought, ended up learning more than I lead.

Our idols get in the way of the Gospel and when I turn my eyes from God and worship approval, my idol impedes the good news being shared. Last night I had some purely wonderful news to share about how God was working to heal my heart. I have three best friends and through a series of events, I lost sight of my joy and ended up sharing an unexcited, dull, abridged version of my news. Only today did I really get to reflect on that and come to a conclusion as to why I reacted in such a way.

I desired their approval so much that I ended up chickening out and playing it safe. I became ashamed that Jesus should have to die for my sins, that I would have to see a therapist to work out the mess left in the wake of sin, and as a result, I held back. I didn't tell them what God did in my heart, I didn't stand witness to the Kingdom of God. Today I was guided to the realization of how tangible and imminent the effect of our idols are. They actively assume the role of God in our hearts and when we worship them, we cease to be beacons of light in that moment. In conquering our proclivity toward sin and idol worshipping (by the grace of God) we shine so brilliantly that none can ignore us. In destroying our idols, we finally believe in the Gospel ourselves, in the story of who God is, what Jesus did, and how that affects our lives in real time.

-Emilie

Too Much Church

There has been a lot of criticism of larger churches going around over the past two weeks of class and I’ve been struggling with what to think of the issue. On the one hand it seems as if larger churches would have an easier time making more of an impact on the community and attracting a certain type of persons to church but on the other hand we’ve seen that smaller churches can have an easier time being missional and reaching people personally. In class today we heard how the community in Portland was hesitating to begin meeting in a large public building, but kept their gatherings to small house churches, and with good reason. In Alan Hirsch’s The Forgotten Ways he speaks of how the church he started began as simply a community largely focused on mission and it was very exciting. However because it was such a great community and exciting many Christians moved to be part of the church and it grew rapidly, but unfortunately not everything was good about this growth. The larger and more stable the church grew, the busier the people became with church stuff and ironically the less missional impact they actually began to have. This can be the danger of larger churches, I believe, not that larger congregations necessarily prohibit mission and a following of the word, but that larger churches can result in more internal activities for people to get wrapped up in. We have to be careful we don’t get too busy and involved in church functions and concentrate more on living missionally outside the church building.

Tim

What are we going to do without a king?

B.D. was our guest in class today, what a cool guy by the way. I mean he is a person I could really look up to, he is really living out a missional initiative, everything he shared with our class is right on par with what we have been talking about. He brought up a good point, that a lot of church plants depend solely on one personality and they end up fizzling out. I see this phenomenon happening in almost every one of the mega churches and I could see why most people depend on having a central figure head to lead the church but I wonder how to create a church body that works outside of this framework, one where the church can continue to operate without a Perry Noble or Mark Driscoll.
Working out of the idea that innovation is better than recycling ideas I would say it would be vital to fight the tendency to revert to what has worked in the past and start asking questions and observing the community you want to impact. I love the idea of crossing boundaries, doing something new and risky while maintaining an incarnational presence in the community. A pastor is often seen in Christian circles as being at an equivalent level as a president or even a king with the power to overrule or veto anything that doesn’t suit him or her. I think an important starting point would be to look into how to affirm the position of a pastor as someone who prophesies to a community of believers while shepherding them without turning into an overlord. I know this is possible, unfortunately churches have been too stuck in the traditional church method to try something new, I don’t know exactly how to do this on a practical scale, possibly keeping power from the guy who speaks to the congregation. I honestly don’t have an answer but it seems to be a prominent problem that can and should be addressed.
The Natural question is, what would a congregation do without a head pasto? without a king? the easy answer is, hopefully we will cast down our pride, turn back to the true king and embrace the Kingdom of Yahweh.
Jeremy

imagining how the church can reorient around mission