Fish out of Water?
At the risk of sounding repetitive, I want to once again bring up the idea of contextualizing the church from the culture around us. “No culture-free expression of the gospel exists, nor could it,” we are reminded by the book Missional Church, edited by Darrell Guder. Culture was described to our class as the water in which we swim, as though we are fish in a tank or an ocean. We cannot divorce ourselves from our water.
Auxiliary Learning
Why don’t I love?
As I sit and think about the missional church discussion, I feel the compulsion to bring it home. Am I living it? I’m expounding it as the necessary next step of the church, but in what ways am I living it? My church family is truly my family; I love them just as dearly as my own mother, sister, and father. And with my family, I can sense and feel the cries for ever deepening relationships, connection, and love. But, like my family, my church is able to easily dismiss the advice and inclinations of an inexperienced 22 year old, because I “lack wisdom.” This is true, I do not deny that I’m about as experienced as a boot camp graduate is in combat. But, I feel this deep sense of longing for a mission, something that I can rally behind and fully trust and interact with. I sense that I have found something in the Incarnational/missional mentality that seems to present itself in the Bible. Something within me longs and yearns for this message to be presented to the church and to the world. But, then I face reality and have to admit that a 22 year old theology graduate’s voice is one of literally billions crying out millions of messages in the world. How is mine heard? Or yours? I don’t think it can be; it has to be lived. My church is struggling to find a rallying message, what if I lived one? I can yack on a blog all day long, but aren’t actions what we remember? Try to retell the beatitudes and what the point to all of that is. Now try to retell Jesus’ raising of Lazarus and what the point is. Tell me about yesterday’s class message or the last sermon you heard on Incarnational ministry. Now tell me about when the God of the universe incarnated himself in your life and became real to you. If this missional mentality is truly biblical and Godly, we don’t need to change our churches, we need to change our lives. God will cause the rest will follow.
Six of One…Half a Dozen of the Other
What if all of a sudden your church just disappeared off the face of the Earth? How would you feel? I know I would be asking a lot of questions. I would be hurt, sad, confused, and frustrated, but one thing would be certain…I would need a new church. I would start searching as soon as I could. At least, that’s what I hope I would do. Maybe my church has sucked me in with its attractional model and I wouldn’t ‘feel the same anywhere else’. Maybe I would be compelled to start living amongst foreign people and start my own church. I don’t know for sure, but I do know what I think. I have been reading recently in Alan Hirsch’s book the Forgotten Way that there are two forms major forms of church these days: the Missional-Incarnational church and the attractional church. Hirsch makes and argument that the attractional church does a good job of pulling people in and making Christians out of unbelievers within a certain community, however, those people are then extracted from their culture and assimilated into the culture of the church. The Missional-Incarnational church, on the other hand, embeds itself in a culture, learning the ways of unchurched people of various backgrounds with several barriers between them and the church and tries to reach them for Christ over time eventually making disciples and sending those people out into the world. I have a problem with both of these models, however. Jesus did both. Jesus preached to large crowds and did mass healings. The Bible suggests He may even have been quite charismatic, but He did the incarnation thing like we could never even imagine doing it. I mean the GOD of the UNIVERSE put on human skin for thirty years before He even began to preach. My response to this idea is that if we truly seek to be like Christ we must do as He did and embrace both of these forms of church. We have to be willing to cross cultural boundaries, but we can’t give up on our own communities. What if we did church in a Missional-Incarnational-Attractional way?
Made for Mission
Relevance+Credibility=Relecredibilitance
Relevance and credibility is a weird thing. It is something that most of us strive for in any given profession or vocation, yet there really is no standard or universally objective way of achieving it, nonetheless determining one's own prestige or level within a given context or demographic. It's a completely intangible thing, yet so desperately necessary for almost anything. The closest thing I can think of would be a diploma or college degree. They are pieces of paper that "award" you or grant you a certain level of credibility, maybe even gain you entrance into a job because of it. But even still, once in a new job, bosses and co-workers alike who have been their longer probably wont give much respect or credibility, basically because of your inexperience in whatever field you are entering. The same is with a professor. Even if someone has their Phd, that doesn't automatically mean that their students will respect them. There still is a weird sense or need for the professor to connect with his audience, or "win them over." Only then will the students allow them to speak into their own lives relevantly, much the less learn.
You may be wondering where I am going with this, and the reason is because of this: I really believe that there needs to be some sort of credibility or respect won on the part of the church (those being sent) among those they are trying to communicate the gospel with.
Justice and its Consequences
Emilie O
Justice…What and Whose.
Do You Really Believe?
One of the biggest struggles found within American Christianity today is that, on average, 70% of Americans claim to be Christian. The key word here is “claim.” If I claim to be a tremendous athlete you would probably think of a couple ways to describe me: either, this guy is completely full of himself (self-righteous) or he looks the part, but could be deceiving me (an imposter). Ultimately, you wouldn’t want to hang out with me or you would be skeptical towards the validity of my claim. Sadly, this relates to the reaction that many non-believers have towards the self-righteous imposters of the Christian faith.
Do you truly believe that every three out of four people you encounter are in fact following Jesus’ great commission? The answer is a definite NO. Let me remind you of what the great commission says. In Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus says, “… go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…” If only one non-believer existed for every three believers, God’s work would be done swiftly throughout America entirely. Every conversation held between two people would be so entirely intentional that no one would be able to deny God’s love and grace.
Egypt’s Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as “human shields” – Ahram Online
Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.