imagining how the church can reorient around mission

                In the last page of Missional Church Guder brings up a point that I had not thought about until reading it. A point that I think is critical as the church presses forward into a missional identity. He says that “missional ecclesiology… must reject every proposal to restore the trappings and privileges of Christendom. It must boldly question every temptation to indulge in compromises with worldly power and jeopardize the institutional practice of servant hood after the model of Jesus.”

                The era of Christendom is generally considered to have started during the reign of Constantine. At this time the church was growing at a very fast rate and was beginning to gain power in the Roman world. As this happened Constantine had the foresight to bring what was becoming a powerful institution under the arm of the government. It was not through the government that the church got its power but it was because of the power of the church that it was acknowledged by the government. I would argue today that the church is not really losing power because it is the end of Christendom but that it is the end of Christendom because the government sees that the church no longer holds power. read more

So, what about those thousands of birds that died suddenly in Beebe Arkansas on New Years Eve? Some say it was caused by fireworks. Others say it more likely was due to hail or lightening. And, of course, there will always be those who chalk it up to pesty aliens. (Why don’t they just leave us ALONE?!) read more

“Gazuntite” read more

Since I have been in the Missional church  class I have begun to realize how self centered I can be, I have referred to the church I attend as “my church” and I have spoken of God in terms of My relationship to him. I have begun to realize that this sort of terminology has twisted my view of what it means to be a Christian. I have built my faith on how I feel about God and what I get out of church rather than going out and working dependently on God and other Christians. It is unnerving to think that most of my journey as a Christian has been dictated by my personal experiences rather than by living incarnationally.
The most important commandments are to first love the Lord with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself, loving yourself comes later, sometime after women wearing head dresses in church. In short, my experience with church has been highly individualistic and it is extremely unhealthy. The church should be filled with people that love one and other and depend on each other and the people in the church need to spread that love to the surrounding community. Living incarnationally is not easy; it goes against our hard wiring of doing what feels easiest and best to ourselves. It calls us outside of ourselves, out of our bubble and into the open world. 
This shift from individualism may start with a simple shift in thinking which can even start with a change of vocabulary. When four pastors from the Spokane community joined us for class, Rob highlighted that they spoke of the churches they were a part of without calling it “my church” or “my congregation” but they spoke about it as if they were a part of something bigger than me. I hope I can learn from these wise men and begin changing even if it starts with my vocabulary.

We all have our ideas of what church is and we’re often told that if you want to be a serious Christian.. or a Christian at all, you are required to go to church.  But what is church?  Do we have to go to a service Sunday morning, listen to a sermon and sing some songs?  Church has been so Westernized that what many of us know as church is a lot of culture mixed in with church.  The problem is: what is culture and what is church?  Where do we separate the two?  If someone from a different culture comes to know Christ, it seems unfair to me, to tell them they have to attend our Western style church services if they want to follow Christ.  read more

The world is huge.  There are 6 billion people here and each and every single one of them is vastly different, yet God made them all so that He could love us and we could love Him back.  As we all know, most of these people have never know Jesus or refuse to know Him.  BUT, God has not given up on us.  He will never give up on us because He is so madly in love with us.  The Christians who do know Him have the duty of trying to show His light and power and love to this world that does not know Him.   We have many different strategies and styles of reaching out to those around us.  There are books galore that tell us the best way to “do mission” and to make disciples.  These resources are extremely helpful,  but they are merely sign posts that point us to the true answer to all our prayers.

            God’s Holy Spirit speaks into our lives, if we let Him and He guides our every step on this broken world.  If we truly listen to Him, He will give what we need to know when it comes to reaching out to our neighbor and showing them the love of Christ that dwells in us.  There is no best way, no formula, no amount of prayer or Scriptural study that can reveal to us how to make our fellow man submit to Christ, because every single one of us has been made fearfully and wonderfully in His image.  He knows us, and He can tell us “the way” to reach out to our neighbor.  Sometimes its picture perfect right out of a book, and other times it is something that could only work for this one particular person, and no other.  God knows what He is doing, we just have to give Him the reins.

            Ever since entering this class, I have been wondering what it looks like to do mission. After hearing four pastors talk about what it is like to live missionally in their neighborhoods, I noticed a common thread: hospitality. read more

“The purpose of the church is not to prove Christianity is true, but to demonstrate what the world is like if it is.”

The essential function of missional life is a demonstrative one. The story of faith is meeting Jesus, whenever or however you do, and leaving changed. A pastor I know says often that everything changes because Christ becomes your life. Our call once we have experienced grace is to extend that same grace “to the ends of the earth.” read more