imagining how the church can reorient around mission

       The first word that comes to mind for me when I contemplate this word is weakness. It is difficult for me to envision that God would want his followers to be weak, so I wanted to understand this idea of being powerless. Christ called his followers to be like Christ. If we are supposed to live our lives incarnationally then we need to approach culture with a position of powerlessness. Christ lived his life in a powerless position. He had every right to approach people in a position of power, but he chose to humble himself and be powerless to society. Then we find that Jesus calls us to be missional and live in a powerless state of mind. Powerlessness is radically counter culture. Powerlessness goes against everything sought after in our current culture. In our culture power gives people identity and meaning. Jesus calls us to live incarnationally because we find our identity and meaning in him and not in power. To live incarnationally is to live humbly and understand that God has created everyone with purpose. Power in this sense is an illusion of dominance. This dominance degrades God’s creation, and disposes equality. Who are we to understand God let alone his creation apart from Christ? God calls his followers to be in an active loving relationship with him. Relationship is based on balance. Without balance relationships turn to neglect and abuse. God calls us to love not only our neighbors but our enemies as well. We have no problem humbling ourselves before God, yet we seek power over others. God calls us to humble ourselves even before our enemies. Christ’s sacrifice is the greatest example of powerlessness.  

-Cory 

Some say that calling is “where your passion and the world’s deepest hunger meet.”  I’ve always loved this definition, don’t get me wrong, but what bothers me is who wouldn’t?!  In a sense it gives you permission to go after whatever you want and call it following God.  I’ve struggled for a while now trying to figure out if I agree with it or not.  I feel selfish just making a ministry out of what I love.

Since these wonderings about calling I have since become much more hopeful that this is actually true.  I heard the story of Mother Teresa wondering how to know where God wants her to go.  Her bishop gave her the answer of following joy.  This may seem selfish at first, but look where her Christ like joy got her!  Second, one of our guests in class said that life is too short to have a job you don’t love.  He is working with youth who are homeless.  Finally, in class today we learned about what a great ministry tool your own passions can be.  Bringing your passions outside of the church it’s a great way to meet non-Christians in a natural way.  Then your ministry happens in daily life interactions having to do with your passion!  read more

How You Doin’? 😉

In Mark Van S’ article Incarnational Practices he gives 5 rules for social interaction. They are great rules. They talk about when it is appropriate to casually chit chat with someone that you have “given the nod” to once in a while in a “third place.” read more

                Chapter 4 of Forgotten Ways starts off with this quote from Ivan Illich, “We can only live changes: we cannot think our way to humanity. Every one of us, every group, must become the model of that which we desire to create.” This quote quite effectively gets to one of my main struggles. I can talk quite fluently in the language of missionality. I know quite a bit of the Biblical basis behind a missional church. I even have the desire for my life to be modeled after the life of Jesus. And yet when it comes down to it, I am mostly inactive with regards to mission. Sure I do the occasional good neighbor type of thing, but my whole life is not oriented around the mission of God. This is a saddening and frustrating fact when I look at my own life.

                Why don’t I live my life on mission then? It is easy for me to come up with excuses, both good and bad, to answer this question. Some that I usually fall back on are a lack of true discipleship in my life, my temporary living situation, or not really feeling called to do that specific missional practice at this point in my life (I told you some were bad). Ultimately though, none of these excuses suffice. Even a cursory reading of the Bible clearly conveys that all are expected to take care of the poor and needy and to spread the kingdom of God. No excuses are accepted for not doing so. Jesus does not leave a way out when speaking about the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. Either care for “the least of these” and be called to inherit the kingdom or don’t and receive eternal punishment. No mincing of words there. The expectation is to live missionally. It is to bless those that the Lord has brought into our lives. We are called to live as Jesus did. A tall order no doubt, but we are not alone in this endeavor; we have been given God himself, the Holy Spirit. It is he that enables us to live Christ-like lives. So what is stopping us? What is stopping me? Nothing! I have been blessed with the example of Jesus. I have the desire to see a more missional church and a more missional me. The only thing missing is my own living out of these ideas. And I think it is high time I start living in obedience to God rather than thinking of what this obedience looks like.

                Certain feelings and differences have led to people leaving the church. They still say they love Christ and want to follow him, but they are done with the church and all its flaws. By leaving the church, these people are ridding themselves of fellowship, resulting in a gradual fall from faith. The church gathering should be a place where believers can recharge and share stories, encouraging and praying for one another. So, is this where the church has missed the mark? Are churches becoming so wrapped up in their own programs and events that they look beyond the need of a specific person right in front of them? Churches have gotten so tied up in their routine and set agendas that they often look past the people they should be most intentional with. The focus should be to branch out and be on mission for God, but those that come to the gathering should not be neglected.

                Another problem is the disunity among the preaching of the Gospel itself. Church attendees have been caught in the middle of a seemingly unimportant dispute pertaining to ideas rather than facts. Instead of worrying about simplistic issues that have no relevance, maybe people should focus more on those around them and what they need to hear. Predestination is a specific issue that I have experienced people bickering over. Even though it is good to enlighten yourself and have a stance towards these sorts of issues, the battle of who is right is a complete waste of time (unless of course someone is completely off the reservation with their interpretation). This is a concept that is impossible to completely understand, yet people will allow their understanding of it to start a quarrel. I feel like disunity, such as this, is a big factor in the “drop-out rate” of the church. How about we focus on originality, intentionality, and true preaching of the Gospel, instead of worrying about minute details that have no relevance in the act of making disciples?      

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I thought I would lighten things up a wee here on "The Drum."  A little too much important missional stuff. This is hilarious.  She falls in, gets out and walks on like nothing happened.  HT - from Eric Blauer.

The little church-planting drill we did in class the other day really opened up my eyes to a stark reality: it’s really difficult to foster a missional mentality and develop a church with a high degree of intentional thought. Sitting in class, I have all sorts of grandiose plans for how I’m going to take this fantastic material back to my church and see an instant revolution. But, once I sit down and try to actually set my thoughts in action I realize, as Rob said, that sometimes just becoming embedded in a culture takes two years.

I write these things because I had a conversation with my pastor yesterday. I was excitedly telling him about all the great things I wanted to do with this information I’m receiving, and I saw an uncomfortable look steal across his face. He didn’t say anything, but as I think back on our conversation and even further back on my two years at our church, I can see the baby steps that have taken place to try to make our church Incarnational and missional (though we have different language for it). These steps have been small not because of a lack of prayer or energy put into them (there have been tremendous amounts), but because of some of the obstacles that exist within the body of the church. They are numerous, and I have an occasional tendency to be one of them. I expect obvious and immediate change, and when that doesn’t occur, I’m all too quick to pass judgment on my church’s leadership, theology, and ministerial ability. Hopefully, now I, and the rest of our class with me, will be able to humbly come alongside our churches to help their development, rather than blog from the cheapseats and expect something to get done because of it. All authority on heaven and earth has been given to Jesus, therefore while we’re going, let’s make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit, teaching them to keep everything which he commanded us. This may take a while, but we’ll see that he is with us every day until the end of the world.

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. read more

I attended a small group today and enjoyed myself as our group went through a few Psalms and discussed what we think was going on in King David’s life when he wrote Psalm 22 and 51.  I knew these two Psalms fairly well as well as the background that comes from reading Samuel.  Because of this I had a feeling for how the discussion was going to head.  One of my brothers and one of my sisters present also knew King David’s story and why he wrote those Psalms and prayed those prayers to his King and ours.  They had much to say, but little to learn.  What they got out of the discussion was mostly a review for them, or a reminder, which is very, very important.  But, they were not nearly as engaged as two of my other brothers who were unfamiliar with the background for Psalm 22 and 51.  These two brothers ended up getting a lot more out of our discussion because they were breaking new ground and learning new ways to pray and why we pray.