Missional Matters

Vol 3:8 Missional Journey: Lent – A Time for Embracing Being Disoriented

2012-02-21T12:57:00.000-08:00

As a Mennonite community, the community I pastor, we areembarking on a journey throughout Lent in which we seek to focus on Psalms of Disorientation and Reorientation. Walter Brueggemann is the one who gives voiceto this understanding of the Psalms (cf. Prayingthe Psalms, Spirituality of thePsalms) and expresses that the Psalms of Lament are meant to disorient us.

Brueggemann expresses that lament language is evocative,rather than descriptive (cf. Praying thePsalms, pp. 29ff).

“The function of such lament speech is to create a situationthat did not exist before the speech, to create an external event that matchesthe internal sensitivities. It is thework of such speech to give shape, power, visibility, authenticity to theexperience. The speaker now says, ‘It isreally like that. That is mysituation.’ The listener knows, ‘Now Iunderstand fully your actual situation in which you are at work dying to theold equilibrium that is slipping from you.’ The language may even run ahead of the event. Ricoeur (to whom much of this discussion isindebted), following Freud, has seen that the authentic artist is not focusingon old events for review (after the manner of the analyst) but is in factcommitting to an act of hope. Arttherapists know that persons who draw and paint are not simply announcing theold death but are choosing a future they are yet to embrace. Thus the lamentPsalms of disorientation do their work of helping people to die completely tothe old situation, the old possibility, the old false hopes, the old lines ofdefense and pretense, to say as dramatically as possible, ‘That is all overnow.’

When we hear someone speak desperately about a situation,our wont is to rush in and reassure that it is not all that bad. And in hearing these Psalms, our natural,fearful yearning is to tone down the hyperbole, to deny it for ourselves andprotect others from it because it is too harsh and, in any case, is anoverstatement. And likely we wish tohold on a bit to the old orientation now in such disarray. Our tendency to such protectiveness isevident in the way churches ignore or ‘edit’ these ‘unacceptable’ Psalms.

Our retreat from the poignant language of such a Psalm is infact a denial of the disorientation and a yearning to hold on to the oldorientation that is in reality dead. Thus an evangelical understanding of reality affirms that the old ispassing away, that God is bringing in a newness (2 Cor. 5:17). But we know also that there is no newnessunless and until there is a serious death of the old (cf. John 12:25, 1 Cor.15:36). Thus the lament Psalms ofdisorientation can be understood, not in a theoretical but in a quite concreteway as an act of putting off the old humanity that the new may come in (cf.Eph. 4:22-24)” (Praying the Psalms,pp. 30-31).

Lent is more than a time of expressing sorrow for oursinfulness, it is indeed to be a missional journey requiring courage to embracedisorientation so that we might be reoriented to a new way of being human,particularly a new way of being human as exemplified by Jesus, and so being demonstrativeof what God’s redemptive mission seeks to bring about in all of creation.

So often we regress from such a missional journey bysuccumbing to the temptation of going back to our old orientations. When we are disoriented we want to go back tothe way things were – no matter how bad they might have been because at leastwe know what to expect, rather than looking forward to a future we have no ideaabout. Like the Israelites in thewilderness, we would rather go back to Egypt and slavery, than to head out inthe desert, discover what it means not to be in control of our lives, learndependence upon the Spirit of God – and through this journeying, even if ittakes 40 years, be reoriented to a new way of being human in relationship withGod, trusting God, open to God’s participation in our lives, and open toparticipating in the life of God and in God’s mission in the world.

Reorientation can never come through our holding onto ourold orientations – they will only rot in our hands. Reorientation can only come through the dyingof our old orientations as we dare to journey through our being disoriented. Resurrection life only comes after death, itcan never come by way of clinging to ways of living that can never result in newnessof life.

Therefore, Lent is a time not to conserve what we have nor atime to hold onto our mere perceptions of life, but, rather Lent is a time todare to journey with the Spirit of God, to allow the Spirit to lead us out intothe desert, to experience, even embrace, disorientation rather than fighting it,so that we might be open to seeing our old orientations for what they are –dead – as we come to a new place of being reoriented to the life of God in us –and grow, mature, in becoming human in ways that we are only able as weidentify with Jesus Christ and live in the presence and power of the HolySpirit.

May we this Lent embark on a journey that embraces death, but reorientsand leads us into life.

Vol 3:7 A Church in Which the Spirit Dwells: Organizing Around the Moving of the Holy Spirit

2012-02-14T11:37:00.000-08:00

I have had a number ofconversations with church planters or others involved in revitalizing theircongregations about how they plan to restructure the organizing of theirchurches to facilitate increased ministry effectiveness. In fact, I remember one such conversation in whichmy friend pointed to a 30-step plan his denomination had given to him to followin planting and organizing a church, that I facetiously expressed, “all youneed to do is add people, and you’ll have a church.” To which, missing my tongue-in-cheek commentreplied, “Yes, that’s right!”

This is a further reflection onCraig Van Gelder’s and Dwight J. Zscheile’s The Missional Church inPerspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation. To reiterate, inthis book, Van Gelder and Zscheile explore how the missional conversation hasunfolded since the book Missional Church was published in 1998.

On p. 159, the authors express “it isvital to keep at the forefront of our imaginations the creative power of theSpirit in shaping church organizations. . . . The creativity of theSpirit animates and renews forms of church organization as part of God’sdynamic and ongoing creation.”

I agree with this statement, though I have discovered it isnot easy to let go of our inclination to control outcomes or directions inseeking to lead the churches we are called to serve as pastors.

On the Church Board of my congregation, we have talked abouthow ministry is developed by the leading of the Spirit. In the early days of this dialogue – over ayear ago, it was often expressed as to how chaotic this seems to be – “how canwe control or give shape to what we need to be or do if we are led by theSpirit?” Being open to the leading ofthe Spirit seems like chaos to us because wewant to shape the way our churches are organized and how we engage inministry and in what kind of ministry we are to engage.

But after a year or so of growing in learning to be open tothe leading of the Spirit in our daily lives, in the life of the church, inseeing the kind of ministry involvements the Spirit has opened up, we as a communityare discovering that walking and depending on the Spirit is a rhythm that relievesus of much anxiety in organizing ministry and the church. The Spirit seems to know how to lead us as acommunity of Christ.

We are learning to express this in a number of ways:

1. We have the attitude in our community that whoever comes into our community – to join us in worship, or to participate in some other way, in an ongoing basis, they are ones whom the Spirit of God is bringing into our midst. That means whoever comes, changes the structure and personality of the community. Likewise, as people leave – move to other towns, go off to school, etc, our personality and structure changes as well. As we receive these whom the Spirit brings into our midst, we realize that they bring new questions, new ways of seeing things, new ways of doing things – which we are learning to be open to – because we believe this to be a moving of the Spirit in our midst.

2. In receiving those whom the Spirit brings into our midst, we realize that they are not just brought into our community to back-fill our ministry openings, as if the gifts they bring may somehow be utilized in our established ministries. Rather, in recognizing their being present with us as the moving of the Spirit, we receive these persons as gifts of the Spirit – not that they only have gifts, but that they themselves are gifts of the Spirit to the community – to shape our life, to shape our ministry, to shape our witness, to shape our organization, to shape our noticing and participating in what God is doing through God’s redemptive mission in the world.

3. In this being open to people as gifts the Spirit is bringing into our midst, we find ourselves learning to be more open to what the Spirit desires to do in each of our lives – as individuals and as a community. We are talking about old issues and new issues in new ways that had never before. These gifts of the Spirit give us fresh eyes to look at ourselves, our practices and invite us into exploring new practices that lead us to grow deeper in Christ.

4. We are coming to recognize that what is going on in our midst cannot be readily depicted on an organizational chart, because what is going on is more like a rhythmic dance in which the Spirit is teaching us how to dance in partnership with God as God is active in the world bringing life and wholeness in the reconciling of humanity and the re-creation of the world. Organizational charts or dance instructions are helpful as we begin to learn to dance, but once we catch the rhythm of the dance we are invited into by God, we learn new steps, new moves that have more to do with the Spirit than a mere instruction or organizational manual. Essentially, what we are discovering is learning how to trust the Spirit to lead us as we participate with God in dancing with God in God’s mission.

I am sure we will be learning more as we grow in being open to theSpirit of God, and I am looking forward to such discoveries – but I hope thesefew insights can serve as a catalyst for your community exploring beinginvolved in ministry and organizing yourselves around the moving of God’sSpirit.

Vol 3:6 Let’s Get Rid of Leadership: The Need for a New Vocabulary to Reframe Our Concepts of Leading

2012-02-07T12:17:00.000-08:00

The term leadership is inadequate to express how we are to lead aswe participate with God in God’s mission.
This week I reflect further on Craig Van Gelder’s and Dwight J. Zscheile’s TheMissional Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation.To reiterate, in this book, Van Gelder and Zscheile explore how the missionalconversation has unfolded since the book Missional Church waspublished in 1998. The conversation has moved in different directions, manywhich are indeed not very missional, but reframe perspectives, in missionallanguage, which have little to do with discerning where God is active in theworld.

On p. 155, the authors express that in order for leadership to be understoodmissionally, it needs to be expressed as participatory leadership.However, I think we need to go further than that in reframing a missionalunderstanding of leading. We will never escape the temptation of taking chargeor taking control, even when using participatory as an adjective, aslong as we continue to be preoccupied with describing what we do in terms of leadership.

Okay, you are confused, so let me unpack my thinking a little.

Van Gelder and Zscheile express that “leadership is one of the gifts of theSpirit (see Rom. 12:8)” (p. 155). But they do not have that quite right. It isnot leadership that is a gift, it is leading. What we havedone for the past 20-30 years is reframe this gift of leading into astatus, a role and named it leadership. Church Growth made leadershipthe primary gift for accomplishing the success of an attractional ecclesiologyand we have not even questioned whether this focus is adequate as we seek to leadmissionally. Could it be that we are comfortable with the temptation to beleaders who excel at leadership? And to the extent that we succumb to thistemptation of being a leader, we will miss what it means to be involved withGod in God’s mission.

In all my exploration of Jesus and his ministry it is obvious that heexercised the gift of leading, but I think it is to completely misunderstandJesus and his ministry by identifying what Jesus did in terms of leadership;he never advocated a role of leadership – he was always a servant(cf. Matthew 20: 20-28; Mark 10:35-45; John 13:10-17)

As long as we, in the missional church, seek to describe the gift of leadingin terms of leader and leadership, we will never really getaway from leadership’s tendency to control or to take charge,no matter what adjectives we seek to utilize. We try to ameliorate our deepsense that leadership expresses something antithetical to the Gospel and themission of God by using a whole host of adjectives to soften its negativecharacterization: pastoral, participatory, spiritual, servant, etc. Yet, merelyplacing an adjective before the noun of leadership, does little tochange what eventually leadership becomes – a way to lord it over others.

At issue is the noun that we use. Not even servant leadership isadequate enough – because servant is still merely an adjective – whatwe need to do is discover a new noun for describing what we are called to do aspastors in the missional church.

I propose that we use the nouns of servant and servantship,rather than leader and leadership, to describe what we are todo in leading the communities we are called serve in participating with God inGod’s mission – after all it is how Jesus described his participating with Godin God’s mission.

I know that whenever I bring up such a need for a paradigm shift, I get moreor less a negative reaction. I think I know why. I contend that we really donot want to give up control, no matter how we try to soften the concept ofleadership with an appropriate adjective. This is a temptation just as insidiousas Satan’s temptation of Jesus – for him to take control of his ministry bytapping into his divinity. But Jesus knew that participating with God hisFather in God’s redemptive mission required him to empty himself of hisdivinity, and with it every temptation to take charge – and instead he livedand led by serving as a servant among us.

I think if we were to take the time and energy to explore servantshipas we have explored leadership in the past 20-30 years, we will beginto embrace a much more missional approach to leading than we ever will becapable of doing in maintaining our grasp on concepts of leadership. So, Isuggest that we find ways to stop talking about leadership or even participatoryleadership and begin to learn a new vocabulary, and a new way of being thepeople of God, as we seek to participate with God in God’s mission as servants.

I would really be interested in your comments and taking this conversationfurther.

[For more of my thinking on this, link to my web site: www.imissional.org and connect to my articleentitled: What is Pastoral Leadership? under the Resources tab.]

Vol 3:5 Collaboration as Making Space for the Gospel in Participating with God in Mission

2012-01-31T10:26:00.000-08:00

This week I reflect further on Craig Van Gelder’s and DwightJ. Zscheile’s The Missional Church inPerspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation. To reiterate, in this book, Van Gelder andZscheile explore how the missional conversation has unfolded since the book Missional Church was published in1998. The conversation has moved indifferent directions, many which are indeed not very missional, but reframeperspectives, in missional language, which have little to do with discerningwhere God is active in the world.

On p. 144, the authors raise this question: “One keyquestion for Christian communities today is how to pursue their propheticvocation within society apart from the framework of Christendom.” This question asks how we are to be missionalchurch without the privileges of Christendom upon which we have becomedependent?

Drawing on insights from Lutheran theologian Gary Simpson,in which he expresses that missional communities need to exist at theintersection of public and private life, Van Gelder and Zscheile express that “congregationsshould see themselves as participants in God’s wider work in the world andsociety. This takes place not onlythrough the church but also beyond it in such civil society organizations associal service institutions and charities. Congregations need to partner, collaborate, and participate in what Godis doing in the world” (p. 144). They further clarify this by stating thatchurches “be spaces where the questions of human flourishing in a givencommunity are brought for critical discussion that leads to action” (p. 144)that foster the common good.

The nature of this collaboration is different from the kindof collaboration in which churches wrap themselves in a nationalistic identityin order to seemingly have relevance within society – where often it becomes starklyclear that a Christian group is more aligned with an American agenda than aGospel agenda. The missional call is acall to be collaborative in society, but not as a community that loses itsidentity, or sells out its identity, but rather collaborates and partners as acommunity of character with other societal organizations as a participatingwith God in mission, who is already active in the world through the Spirit.

In such missional collaborations, there is a making space for the Gospel insociety, rather than a selling out or a diminishing of the Gospel in order tobe deemed as relevant. Our relevance isin our participating with God as God is active in the world. In participating with God, we need to realizethat we do not partner or collaborate on our own – but rather in ourcollaborations, we are conduits for the continuing work of the Spirit of God inre-creating human life, societal life, so that all may be made new.

In making space for theGospel through partnering and collaborative efforts, we will need to findnew ways of expressing the Gospel narrative – it is much more than merelyengaging in evangelism telling people that they need God. I believe it is through evangelism that we makespace for the Gospel, but in ways that live out the Gospel rather than onlygive words to the Gospel – we proclaim the Gospel by actions, as well aswords. As one of my mentors noted –Jesus words are not the only revelation we have in the Gospels, his actions arerevelation as well.

So in our partnering and collaborating as missionalcommunities, we make space for the Gospel – we level mountains and fill invalleys, making a highway for the Lord, so that God has transformational accessinto people’s lives. In partnering wereveal who we are as a new community, revealing the Gospel through our actionsof advocating for justice, of healing the sick, the blind, of setting theprisoner free, of expressing the year of Jubilee for the 99%.

Making space for the Gospel is a walking with the Spirit, forthe Spirit to have unimpeded access into the lives of humanity. Making space for the Gospel challengesmissional communities to not separate themselves from the world, but to engagethe world in relationship, being in and among the world as communities ofcharacter, as communities of the Gospel – who live out the Gospel in such asway that observers may express the reality of the Gospel by witnessing the waywe live and act for the common good of society.

Whereas, Christendom gave us a false sense of our privilegedstatus, being missional leads us to be a different kind of community that seeksto love the world as God loves the world, that relates to and engages the worldas God does – from a place of servanthood and humility. As we have eyes to notice what God notices,and in noticing develop collaborative relationships, missional relationships,we partner with God in bringing about God’s redemptive purposes in theworld. Such a posture helps us live intothe reality that this mission is not about us, but about God’s love for theworld and what God desires and is bringing about in making all creation new.

Dare we be such missional communities of character that makespace for the Gospel in the world, by partnering and collaborating with groups,organizations, peoples in whom we see God at work?

If so, we will become a new kind of Christian community in the world – in the world, re-envisioning a new wayto be the world because we partner with God who has a vision of a reconciledand recreated world.

Vol 3:4 Can Jesus be our Starting Point for Engaging in God’s Mission?

2012-01-24T11:19:00.000-08:00

I am still reflecting on Craig Van Gelder’s and Dwight J.Zscheile’s The Missional Church inPerspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation. To reiterate, in this book, Van Gelder andZscheile are exploring how the missional conversation has unfolded since Missional Church was published in1998. The conversation has moved indifferent directions, many which are indeed not very missional, but reframeperspectives in missional language which have little to do with discerningwhere God is active in the world.

This week I would like to offer some reflections, perhapseven some questions for on-going study, regarding a critique they haveregarding Christology as a starting point for participating with God in God’smission.

Referring to Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch’s ReJesus, Van Gelder and Zscheile expressthat “Frost and Hirsch fail to realize that the trinitarian understanding ofGod’s mission they use to frame their Christology is in fact a theologicalmissiology – a missiological framework that defines the interrelationship ofGod, church, and world. They chooseinstead to make Christology [rather than Trinitarian theology] their startingpoint . . .” (p. 80).

As an Anabaptist this is also a critique I need to pondersince Anabaptists have a Christological preference in expressing whatdiscipleship and mission entails.

As they continue their critique, they argue that havingJesus as the starting point for engaging in mission “tend[s] to (1) diminish the role of the Spirit in thelife of the church as well as in the world; (2) foster an understanding ofchurch as a contrast community within the world that seeks to emulate theexample of Jesus; and (3) reduce missiology to an applied discipline, thuseclipsing its richer biblical and theological assertions” (p. 80).

For me, I believe the only way we can begin to participatewith God in God’s mission is through Christ – and therefore, in desiring toparticipate in the Trinitarian mission, we can only enter into that missionthrough a Christological engagement and understanding – because as Johnreveals, Jesus is the only one who has seen God, is God, and is in closestrelationship with God, who makes God known to us (cf. John 1: 18). Likewise, Paul expresses in Colossians 1: 15that Jesus is the image or the icon of the invisible God. We cannot know God, participate in God, orparticipate with God in God’s mission unless we enter into relationship withJesus and participate with Jesus in his participation in the mission ofGod.

Christology, then is key, but perhaps it depends on whatkind of Christology we hold.

I believe the starting point for engaging in God’s missionis Christology, but the kind of Christology that is necessary is one thatengages us, through Christ Jesus, to participate with God in God’s mission inthe manner in which Jesus was involved in mission.

I think Van Gelder and Zscheile rightly express that thisrequires more than an emulation of Jesus – it requires more than following theteachings of Jesus in the expression of our discipleship – it requires ourparticipation in Jesus. What this leadsto is our continuing the ministry of Jesus in the world – what Ray Anderson, inThe Shape of Practical Theology,describes as christopraxis.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a pastoralcolleague a couple of weeks ago. He isin the midst of writing a monograph on comparing Micah 6:8 with John 14:6, comparingmercy, justice and walking with God in relation to Jesus being the way, truthand life. Our conversation thatafternoon, over coffee, reflected upon Jesus being the way and demonstratingthe way we are to participate with God in God’s mission. This requires more than a mere emulating ofJesus, because mere emulation still leaves us to try and engage in God’smission in our own ways. Only as weparticipate in Jesus do we begin to be integrated in the way of Jesus, in whichJesus is the way.

Such a Christology rooted in participation of Christ – as Christparticipated with God the Father in mission, must then be the starting pointfor our engagement of the mission of God. Such a Christology does not diminish the role of the Spirit, because theway of Jesus embraces the Spirit of God – all that Jesus did in ministry was bythe power of the Spirit – how can we do otherwise, unless we only emulate Jesusand not participate in Jesus.

Further, such a participation in Jesus, shapes us to live asthe incarnate people of God, the incarnate body of Christ within our world,within our cultures. We are not merely acontrast community, as Van Gelder and Zscheile critique, as if we could separateourselves from the world – but like Jesus, as we participate in Jesus, we areengaged with the world and in the world – we are instead a new kind of humanityin the world. In the expression thatStan Hauerwas uses – we are a communityof character in the world, demonstrating as Jesus demonstrated, a differentway of being human, a different way of being a human community in theworld. Being different is not merely beinga community in contrast, we are a community showinga new way of being human in the midst of the brokenness and deathnarratives of the world. This also isdependent upon the Spirit of God – for Jesus was dependent upon the Spirit todemonstrate the character of new creation.

And in light of this, such a missional understanding ofChristology frames missiology as being no mere applied discipline. Rather, it seeks to give expression to theway we are a new human community in the world because we participate in Jesus,who participates in the trinitarian mission of God. Jesus, and Jesus alone, is our entry intoparticipation with God in God’s mission – and so a missional Christology is therightful starting place – in fact the only starting place for our participationwith God in God’s mission.

I realize that what I am expressing here is a quick overviewand just a beginning of my exploration of the connection between a trinitarianunderstanding of mission and Christology – and I realize it requires more in depthinvestigation, yet, I believe we cannot understand God and God’s missionwithout a missional Christology.

So, I invite your reflections as well – that we may engage intheological dialogue together.

Vol 3:3 Competing Fictions and the Mission of God

2012-01-17T13:32:00.000-08:00

I am writing this week from Eastern Mennonite Seminary inHarrisonburg, VA in which I am participating in a pastor’s conference focusingon God and Mammon: Reframing StewardshipAmidst Abundance, Scarcity, and Conflict with Walter Brueggemann being theprimary presenter.

Last night Brueggemann said something that got my attention –we live in a society, an empire, that necessitates that its citizenry embraces anarrative of accumulation. This narrativeof accumulation involves a spiritual attraction to money and demands ourloyalty. Our North American empire tellsthis story so pervasively through media, through advertising, through thepolitical and economic systems, through the military machine, making it sovisible that we all want to be part of it. In order to maintain this narrativeof accumulation as the only viable narrative, the Empire states that allother narratives, all other stories are fictions – even the Gospel.

In fact, the Gospel is a fiction, by the norms of the Empire. The Empire claims that it has the only truth –the truth that perpetuates the narrative of accumulation.

So how do we who seek to participate with God in God’smission respond?

Brueggemann states that we need to display a differentnarrative –we need to challenge the epistemology (or way of understanding) ofthe Empire. We are called to live outour being human, under the rule of Christ, in missional communities in radicaldifferent ways which reveal a different story, a different vision – in fact, embracingGod’s Story and Vision, so that in our living, our speaking, our doing of allthat we do, what is revealed is that the narrative of the Empire, the narrativeof accumulation, is indeed a fiction in light of the narrative of the Gospel, inlight of the active mission of God in the world.

In that the Empire seeks to make its fiction real, God’smissional people commit themselves to partner with God in living in such a wayas to unmask the falsehood and deceptive nature of the Empire’s narrative. Itis about making a spectacle of the principalities and the powers, which Jesusdid by embracing the violence against him and against humanity thrust upon him onthe cross.

This involves more than merely declaring that the Gospelnarrative is a better narrative. In theface of the narrative of the Empire, we are being called to live as a community of character (Stanley Hauerwas’term) that so lives out the Gospel narrative that it puts on display the systemof death that is inherent in the Empire’s narrative of accumulation. It is not merely finding God’s mission in themidst of our culture, but to so participate with God that we demonstrate, inthe power of the Spirit, that God’s mission in the midst of culture actively re-createshumanity and creation, so that humanity is no longer subject to the powers ofsin and death.

Perhaps a first step in doing so, as the people of God inNorth America, is in confessing ourcollusion with this narrative of death, this narrative of accumulation, thisnarrative of the Empire – for we have found comfort in this narrative. Confessing and living out the narrative of theGospel – the only narrative of life – in contrast to the narrative of theEmpire will be a costly confession, a costly living out of our discipleship.

But only such a costly discipleship will unmask the fictional nature ofthe Empire’s narrative.

Vol 3:2 The Relational Nature of God’s Mission

2012-01-10T12:25:00.000-08:00

These days I am reading Craig Van Gelder’s and Dwight J. Zscheile’sThe Missional Church in Perspective:Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation. In this book, Van Gelder and Zscheile areexploring how the missional conversation has unfolded since Missional Church was published in 1998. The conversation has moved in differentdirections, many which are indeed not very missional, but reframe perspectivesin missional language which have little to do with discerning where God isactive in the world. In their section on“Expanding and Enriching the Theological Frameworks” they present an importantdiscussion on the relational nature of God’s mission in relation to Trinity.

They make clear, and I agree, we cannot understand or engagein God’s mission unless we embrace a theological understanding of theTrinity. They express that a major facetof a theological focus in Trinitarian renewal “is the fresh attention beinggiven to the relationality of God” (p. 105). Which they state, “represents a crucial complement to the sendingemphasis so characteristic of the West” (p. 105).

They relate “that theologians such as John Zizioulas haveargued that the Cappadocian fathers . . . made a revolutionary move against thebackdrop of Greek philosophy by asserting that relational personhood . . .” (p.105) is an inherent aspect of understanding God as Trinity. Stating further, “in this view, God’s verybeing is not an abstract divine substance characterized by certain attributes,but rather is profoundly personal. Thereis no personal identity without relationality” (p. 105). What this means is that Trinity is to beunderstood more in terms of the relationality inherent within the Godhead –expressed by the concept of perichoresis, than an abstract defining of God byGod’s attributes or functions. Inessence, we begin to grasp what it means for God to be Trinitarian when werealize that “Trinity is seen as a community” (p. 105).

This reveals the relational character of God’s mission inwhich we, as the people of God, are invited into relationship with God toparticipate with God in God’s mission. As the Van Gelder and Zscheile express, “in this Trinitarian perspective,to be a person is to participate in others’ lives, to have an identity shapedby other persons, rather than to be an isolated individual” (p. 105) – each personin the Trinity is in relationship with and involved in each person of theTrinity and God’s mission is an expression of the relationality inherent withinTrinity.

One of my take aways from this, in the brief space of thisblog, is that for God, the mission of God is not merely a “task.” Mission is not just something God merely does– as an act outside of the personhood of God – God’s mission matters toGod. Because God is relational, God’smission involves God in all of God’s Trinitarian relationality – God cannot beany other way. Mission is somethingpersonal for God; mission is something that does not happen outside of God, butinvolves God’s heart, involves God’s character, involves God’s love. God enacts God’s mission not as an actoutside of God, but rather God is personally involved in bringing about whatGod is purposing in reconciling humanity to God and recreating creation –bringing about God’s eschatological telos.

This helps me to understand my participation with Jesus inthe mission of God. It has often beensaid that to be adept in ministry that we need to exercise professional boundariesin relation to those we serve. To methis is merely an excuse for being impersonal (though I understand that “boundaries”are essential if we are not abuse others – but that is another discussion abouta different kind of understanding of boundaries). The result of being impersonal is that we areapt to exercise our own ministry, but not God’s mission. To be involved in ministry that participateswith God in God’s mission has to be inherently relational and personal. I believe, ministry to others must notmaintain a professionality, but must involve all of who we are as persons, inrelationship, taking the risk of being hurt by the love we extend to others andreceive from others – ministry, like God’s mission, must be intensely personaland relational. To minister in any otherway is to not participate with God in God’s mission – because to minister inany other way is to minister in ways which are foreign to God’s Trinitarianrelationality.

I know I need to develop this line of thinking some more – and so I amopen, as always, to your constructive comments.

Vol 3: 1 Participating with God in God’s Mission in the Ordinary Rhythms of Our Lives

2012-01-03T10:25:00.000-08:00

For those who do not follow a liturgical calendar, we are enteringthe season of Epiphany. Epiphany is a Greekword meaning “manifestation.” Epiphany is a time of God’s presence beingrevealed through the discovery by the magi that God has come to be among us in beingborn as a human being in the person of Jesus. God being manifested in Jesus reveals God up close and personal to theworld.

God’s incarnation in Jesus is all about God coming to beamong us, to dwell among us in ordinary ways – perhaps even in obscureways. After all, though the scribes whoknew the Scriptures were on the lookout for the coming Messiah, it was notuntil about two years after Jesus’ birth that astrologers from the east,following a star, asked the question, “where is the one who has been born kingof the Jews? We saw his star when itrose and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2).

God’s incarnation in Jesus was not meant to shine aspotlight on God so as to garner celebrity status for God in Jesus – though thisis what Satan was trying to do through his tempting of Jesus (cf. Matthew4:1-11). Rather, it seems that God purposesto be manifest, to be revealed in obscure ordinary ways that permeate theordinary goings and doings of people’s lives with God’s presence. God came to dwell among us in ways whichthose following the headlines would not notice, but only those crying out for re-creation.

The idea of incarnation as an act of re-creation in theordinary goings and doings of people’s lives is evident in Mark’s gospel as hedescribes the appearing of John the Baptist. The word used for his appearing, an appearing which pointed to thecoming Messiah is egeneto (root: ginomai). It is the word for genesis in the New Testament and has multiple meanings dependingupon context. It is a creative wordwhich can mean being born or begotten, to be created, to take place, forsomething new to happen to someone – and here it means “to appear” – as acreative presence coming onto the world stage in the wilderness to revealsomething new that is redemptive, reconciliatory, re-creative of creation –light in a dark world!

John participated with God in God’s mission by pointing to,revealing the coming of the Messiah, through whom God would make all things new(cf. Colossians 1: 15-20).

It is evident from Jesus’ ministry that he lived out God’s incarnationin the brokenness, ordinariness, mundane reality of our humanity. He hung out where the most of us hangout. Jesus did not frequent venues thatgot him noticed by People magazine,but instead was with people in places in which he was called a glutton, a drunk,and a friend of sinners (cf. Matthew 11:19).

The significance of understanding the ordinariness of God’sincarnation – God living out his humanity in ordinary places, is that God’smission happens in the broken, ordinary, everyday places of our humanity. And, in light of that, our participating withGod in God’s mission encompasses the ordinary rhythms of our lives, theordinary places of our lives, the ordinary activities and duties of our lives –as we encounter others doing ordinary things and going to ordinary places. Participating with God in God’s mission is a low calling – and by that I mean that weare called to the low places, the ordinary places.

For it is in the low places, the ordinary places that weparticipate with God in God’s mission as Jesus did. May we discover how to participate with Godin God’s mission in the same ordinariness, brokenness as Christ Jesus:

“He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much ofhimself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matterwhat. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside theprivileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayedhuman. It was an incredibly humblingprocess. He didn’t claim specialprivileges. Instead, he lived aselfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death – and theworst kind of death at that: a crucifixion.” (Philippians 2: 6-8, The Message).

And because he participated with God in God’s mission inthis way, and enables us through the power of the Spirit to participate withGod in a similar way, we worship him who continually reveals and manifests Godto us in the midst of our brokenness and ordinariness:

“Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honoredhim far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heavenand on earth – even those long ago dead and buried – will bow in worship beforethis Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to theglorious honor of God the Father” (Philippians 2: 9-11, The Message)

May we see more clearly the presence of God in the ordinariness of ourlives – because that is where God is to be seen!

Vol 2: 43 The Soul of God: A Christmas Gift - Resurrection and Missional Participation

2011-12-20T11:07:00.000-08:00

As we come to the end of the year, this will be my lastreflection on Ray Anderson’s theological memoir, The Soul of God.

Anderson notes that in Christianity that we rightfully makemuch of the cross – the cross is essential to the mission of God, but then heremarks that the cross is the end, it is not the beginning – Resurrection isthe beginning.

As we celebrate Christmas this week and focus on Christ andhis incarnation, we realize that his participating with God in God’s mission puthim on a trajectory that leads him to the cross. Yet, the good news of the Gospel, of God’sreign, of the outworking of God’s mission, is that it does not end at the cross,God’s mission through Jesus is fully manifested through the Resurrection.

Hear Anderson’s reframing of our understanding of the cross:

“The cross is the end of our life as mere sinner, not thebeginning. The cross put an end to thelaw which condemns, says Paul. The crossis not a place to revisit time and time again in morbid fascination with thethings that weigh us down and destroy our worth as God’s children. ‘I died tothe law so that I might live to God,’ wrote Paul. ‘I have been crucified withChrist’ (Galatians 2:19). What Paul saysof himself is true of every human being. In the cross all of humanity died when Christ died. That is, through Christ God brought theconsequence of sin upon himself, so that death no longer has power to determinehuman destiny. ‘It is no longer I who live,’ added Paul, ‘but it is Christ wholives in me. And the life that I live inthe flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself forme’ (Galatians 2:20). Not every personcan say that, but only those in whom the spirit of the resurrected Christdwells (Romans 8:9).

‘The worldbehind me, the cross before me,’ we assert when singing the familiar song, I Have Decided to Follow Jesus. That isso wrong!! I would rewrite it to say, ‘Thecross behind me, the world before me!’ No one should think that following Jesus leads back to the cross. That is finished! Once and for all. . . . The Lost Lane-end Into Heaven, as thenovelist, Thomas Wolfe, wrote, is not found at the foot of the cross but in thepathway marked by the light shining out of the empty tomb. There is indeed a cross in my past, but notin my future. I want to walk in thelight and be singing of a Risen Savior when Jesus walks in the door!” (pp. 115,116).

Yes, those of us who have been set free through Christ havea cross in our past, but now as we live, identifying with Christ, continuingthe ministry of Christ in the world, we live participating with God in God’smission in the light of the Resurrection. We are a resurrection people, a people who still have stuff in our livesthat needs to be crucified, but the trajectory of our lives now is beyond thecross, living in light of the resurrection of Christ – which in beingidentified with him through our baptisms, we are living as ones who have been resurrectedinto the life that is God (I say this because in Exodus 3 we discover that God’sname is not a noun, but a verb meaning Being,Life, Is – God is Life, because God is the Living One from whom all livingemanates!)

And in being resurrected, we are living participants withGod in God’s mission of bringing life, peace, hope, joy – life to all ofhumanity and to all of creation. Missionis not something we do, but rather how we now live because we are aresurrection people connected to God, in relationship with God, through ChristJesus in the power of the Spirit of God. The mission of God is about transforming all of creation. And as we live as transformed ones, beinginfused with resurrection life, we participate with God in God’s mission,because we now share in the life that is God. The resurrection has re-created us and prepared us, so that our livingas human beings is all about what God is accomplishing in this world to makeall new.

What a Christmas gift – a gift of God that began in theincarnation of God in Jesus, that led to the cross – Jesus taking on all theviolence thrust against humanity, and culminated in the victory over sin anddeath through Jesus’ resurrection. Becauseof this gift in Jesus, we now are empowered and filled with the Spirit of Godto participate with God in God’s mission of making all creation new. Merry Christmas!

[I will be taking a break next week, so my next posting will be duringthe week of January 6, 2012 – see you next year.]

Vol 2:42 The Soul of God: Offering God our Brokenness - God’s Grace in Broken Places

2011-12-13T10:45:00.000-08:00

In this Advent season, a time of grace and hope, we oftenmisunderstand grace – grace, however is a gift, not for how good we have been –ala God checking a list to see who is naughty and whose nice, but a gift ofgrace in the midst of brokenness, barrenness. If this is the case, then grace is indeed an act of hope, especially inour difficulties we face in these days. Ray Anderson, in his theological memoir, The Soul of God, states that indeed this is the case.

Anderson begins with some hard toreceive words: “The grace of God mustfirst kill before it can make alive” (p. 101). He continues: “The grace of God requires barrenness not our belief as aprecondition. True faith and trueobedience come as a gift of God’s grace, and the inner logic of that giftrequires that where we have inserted a human possibility the grace of God mustremove it. This was true for Moses, ashe experienced his own failure and futility, only to witness God’s power andgrace through his weakness” (p. 101).

Anderson also reminds us ofAbraham and Sarah – Abraham believed he could fulfill God’s promise to himthrough Ishmael, rather than through the impossibility of Sarah bearing ason. But it is precisely in the midst ofSarah’s barrenness that God’s grace is manifest.

And this is what we need toembrace as well if we are to be a people who are transformed by God’sre-creative work in us as God makes all things new. We not only participate with God in God’smission, but we are also transformed through God’s mission taking hold ofus. When we think we have something tooffer God as a precondition to our being involved with God in God’s mission – themission becomes about us, rather than about what God is accomplishing. But the mission is not about us – because God’sgrace presupposes barrenness, not fertility (as in the case with Sarah).

It is in our weakness – readthrough the narrative of God’s encounter with his people throughout Scripture,it is always in our weakness that God’s presence, God’s activity ismanifested. It is when we say to God, “I’vegot this, take a break,” that we no longer are in need of God’s grace, nor ofGod’s hope, love, nor mercy – and as a result, we fail. Such failure is indeed a grace, because itrealizes that we have nothing to offer to God except our brokenness, ourbarrenness – so that all God does in us, and all God does through us is indeedthe active outworking of God’s mission.

And so Anderson concludes: “Wemust understand that the grace of God presupposes barrenness, not fertility;that impossibility from the human side is the condition which demonstrates mostclearly the inner logic of grace. Wemust also learn that humans have a share in the grace of God; that humanobedience and faith are not set aside by grace, but are drawn into the grace ofGod as an indispensable aspect of God’s ministry, [God’s mission]. After all, Isaac did not drop down fromheaven on a supernatural parachute! Rather, his birth resulted from a human actas much as did the birth of Ishmael. Grace is not a supernatural addition to a natural life, but theempowering of natural life to realize and produce a divine potential. The miracle of God’s grace is not thatAbraham could disseminate his seed, but that a barren woman could conceive fromit!” (p. 102).

This Advent and this Christmas, as we think of what gift we can give God– we realize that what we give are things that the world discards – our failures,our barrenness, our brokenness. In offering such “gifts” or “non-gifts” to God –these are indeed acts of faith, acts of obedience, recognizing that the nothingwe have to offer is exactly what God needs to carry out God’s mission, and graciouslyto work through us to transform the world. May we give God all of our nothingness and be open to receive the giftof God’s grace – that, as the Gospel reveals, is fully manifested in JesusChrist – the content of God’s grace.

Vol 2:41 The Soul of God: Advent as the Incarnation of God’s Mercy

2011-12-06T13:08:00.001-08:00

In this Advent season, many wonder why God became a humanbeing to dwell among us. The simpleanswer is that God loves us and is merciful to us. What does this mercy entail? Ray Anderson’s theological memoir, The Soul of God, has an insight.

When humanity abandoned God to try to do life on their own,we were like teenagers who know their parents know nothing. But we did not do well on our own – we endedup betraying one another, stealing from one another, accusing one another,killing one another. But God does notabandon us, God is merciful!

Anderson expresses:

“The soul of God is intrinsically a relational soul. The soul of moral theology must possess themoral instincts of love rather than the insensible letter of the law. ‘The letterkills but the Spirit gives life’ (2 Cor. 3:6). As suggested earlier, the intention of mercy is the creation of a newmoral being. Mercy is not an abstractvirtue, but a means for maintaining a relationship damaged by moralfailure. Mercy is what keeps sin frombeing fatal” (p. 90).

He continues:

“Mercy is the motive behind God’s love for the world. This mercy is extended toward ‘all thefamilies of the earth’ through the seed of Abraham, which extends through thegenerations to Jesus, according to Paul (Gen. 12; Gal. 3:16). Divine mercy guarantees forgiveness and makesreconciliation possible. Forgiveness isoffered to all through Christ, and reconciliation is the intended goal. God does not want any to perish, ‘but all tocome to repentance’ (2 Peter 3:9). Mercymust be received in order for forgiveness to be realized as a gift of grace. The goal of grace is not merely the grantingof amnesty, which often leaves the one who is estranged free of guilt, but amercifully restoration with life in community. ‘Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you hadnot received mercy, but now you have received mercy’ (1 Peter 2:9-10). Receiving mercy, experiencing forgiveness,and being reconciled to God within the people of God is to know the salvationof God” (p. 91).

Anderson shares a story that expresses how the merciful andforgiving redemptive mission of God recreates us to be merciful and forgivingas well – as a new humanity demonstrating a different reality in a world inneed of mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation.

“In 1993, Amy Biehl, a 26 year old Fulbright Scholar, wasmurdered by 4 blacks in South Africa while registering voters for the nation’sfirst free election. Her murderers were apprehended and imprisoned. Her parents, Peter and Linda Biehl, went toCape Town to establish a foundation with the goal of violence prevention. This foundation, named for Amy, continues tomaintain a presence for peace. Under thegovernment’s newly formed Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established togrant amnesty for political crimes to those persons who confess and give thewhole truth about their actions, the four men who murdered Amy were given fulla pardon and released from prison on July 29, 1998.

Commentingon this action which they supported, Amy’s parents said, ‘It is this vision offorgiveness and reconciliation that we have honored.’ They believed that this is what theirdaughter would have wanted. Peter Biehlthen added, ‘We’re not dispensing forgiveness. We’re not God. But we support thedecision.’ Releasing the men fromfurther punishment in no way mitigated the crime, to which they confessed. Forgiveness in this case, however, was an actof mercy which the Biehls saw as an important steo in the journey toward peaceand reconciliation” (pp. 91-92).

Advent, God’s coming to be among us in Jesus Christ, was notabout establishing a religion in order to create further division amongsthumanity, it was all about showing to us that God’s mercy is not merely an idea– God’s mercy has hands and feet that touches us deeply and personally. Jesus reaches out to us to extend God’s mercyto us so that we might experience forgiveness and reconciliation beingrecreated as a new humanity, restored to relationship with God, which restoresus to relationship with one another.

Advent is the most earthy act of God’s mission – in Jesus, God isbrought into relationship with us and we into relationship with God. May we always be open to the embodiment of God’smerciful presence in Christ Jesus.

Vol 2:40 The Soul of God: So this is Christmas - Jesus, the Embodiment of God’s Mission

2011-11-29T13:18:00.001-08:00

In this Advent season, many wonder who this Jesus, whom wecelebrate at Christmas, really is. Jesusis the active participation of God in humanity in order to reconcile humanityto God. This insight is expressed in RayAnderson’s theological memoir, The Soulof God.

There is something completely unique and completely humanabout Jesus that embodies and fulfills the mission of God in restoring all ofcreation. In the fifth chapter of The Soul of God, Ray Anderson relatesthat “Jesus did not become the Sonof God by being anointed with the Spirit of God and by doing the works of God;rather because Jesus is the Son ofGod, the works which he does testifies to that inner relationship” (p. 69).

It is not only that Jesus is completely unique as God and ashuman; it is also that God is unique as God and our creation is unique as anact of God.

I recently found a copy of Georg Vicedom’s The Mission of God, which gave expressionto the initial understandings of what missioDei entails, which helps us understand the uniqueness of God.

Vicedom stated:

“Christianity, in contrast to other religions, emphasizesthe fact that God created the world and [humankind]. . . . The world is not an effusion of the Deity and thus a part of [God]. Nor did it come into existence throughbirth. Above all, the world did not originatealongside of [God] or against [God], so that it would thus be a forceantagonistic to [God]. There is nodualism or emanationism involved. Thesetypes of explanation, familiar to us in other religions are completely out ofthe picture. With [humanity], the worldis the creation of God brought into existence by [God’s] Almighty Word inaccordance with [God’s] will. In otherwords, God has created . . . a ‘Thou,’ and thus a place for activity on [God’s]part. This was already the case beforethe Fall. The imago Dei can certainly only mean that God created a being which could have fellowship with [God] andtherein found life satisfying” (Vicedom, The Mission of God, 15).

Creation is, therefore, a unique act of God, because onlyGod creates – no other gods have created as God creates. And, therefore, since creation is unique toGod, incarnation or God coming to participate in our humanity through JesusChrist is an act that is unique to God in the fulfillment of God’s redemptivemission, so that humanity might be reconciled to God and restored in communionwith God. It is because we are unable tounderstand the uniqueness of God’s creation that we are also unable to fullygrasp the unique act of God in becoming a human being, in participating in ourhumanity – for our benefit. But that isthe creative act of Christmas – which we are invited to receive as a gift fromGod.

As Anderson expresses, “the Apostle Paul proclaimed as a sacramentof salvation, ‘In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and throughhim God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things . . .’ (Col. 1:19-20).In the person of Jesus Christ, this double movement took place simultaneously, not sequentially. At every moment during the life of Jesus, theinner being of God was being revealed through the words and actions ofJesus. . . . At the same time, everyword and action of Jesus was a movement from below to above, reconcilinghumanity to God” (p. 71).

And so as John Lennon sings, Happy Christmas (War is Over), with these words:

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight . . .

I pray that we are open to experience the God who creates by receivingGod’s participation in our humanity in Jesus, and that we may have eyes thatsee Jesus and hearts and lives that respond to his words and actions that givelife and restore us to live in community with God.

Vol 2:39 The Soul of God: Being in Christ and Christ Being in Us

2011-11-22T10:27:00.001-08:00

God’s mission connects us with God through Jesus Christ. This insight is expressed in Ray Anderson’stheological memoir, The Soul of God.

In the fifth chapter of TheSoul of God, Ray Anderson relates that “to know God is to be reconciled toGod, and in being reconciled to God we come to know God” (p. 71). He expands on this, lest we think that theact of reconciliation is something we do, “both revelation and reconciliation takeplace through our being in Christ and Christ being in us” (p. 72).

Allow me to offer a length quotation by Anderson that helps usunderstand the necessity of Jesus in being reconciled to God.

“It would not be wrong to say that Jesus is the truebeliever, whose own faith in the Father becomes the basis for our faith in sucha way that we are freed from the ambivalence and inward uncertainty whichalways plague our own attempt to believe. It would not be wrong to say that Jesus is also the true disciple, whoseown obedience lived out in the face of temptation in such a way that we arefreed from our own instability and unreliability of will. . . . Every day of his life, Jesus took that human will and bent it back inperfect obedience to his Father so that in being joined to Christ our will isgraciously conformed to his own willingness, which exists to this very day inthe humanity of Christ now glorified and existing within the very being of God. This is the basis for our assurance in unionwith Christ through being made partakers of Christ through the Spirit. There is part of God in us through theindwelling Spirit of Christ. The Christwho in us, says Paul, is our ‘hope of glory’ (Col. 1:27). At the same time, Paul says, our ‘life ishidden with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3). This means that there is something of us already abiding in the verypresence of God through Christ!” (p. 72)

As I reflect on this statement, on this confession, myresponse, during this week of Thanksgiving – but also during any week – is oneof giving thanks and praise to God. God’smission is not merely about effecting some grand recreation; God’s mission isindeed very personal in which in our being reconciled to God through ChristJesus, there is a part of God in us, and a part of us in God – meaning we arebrought into community with God – participating and sharing in the life of Godand God participating and sharing in our lives. I am not talking about our becoming divine – we have been created humanand that is our gift from God – but God always intended that we in our humanitywould be in community with God. The goodnews of Jesus Christ – of God with us as a human being – is that we have beenrestored to being in community with God through Jesus. In God being human among us in Jesus – we areinvited into community, into relationship with God through Jesus. Indeed, this is a thanksgiving that my wordsare incapable of fully expressing – which can only adequately and minimallyexpressed in worship of God.

Join me this Thanksgiving in giving worship to God through Jesus Christ.

Vol 2:38 The Soul of God: Living and Breathing the Mission of God – A Mission that is Personal

2011-11-15T12:17:00.001-08:00

God’s mission is deeply personal. This insight is expressed in Ray Anderson’stheological memoir, The Soul of God.

In the fourth chapter of TheSoul of God, Ray Anderson shares a perspective from this theological mentorThomas F. Torrance “that God confronts humans as subjects” (p. 61).

Anderson states that Torrance expressed “that God confrontshumans as subjects ‘by addressing them personally and claiming from thempersonal responses’” (p. 61). Theimplications of such an understanding, as Anderson reveals, is that God’s revelationand communication with humanity is deeply personal and rooted in thecommunities in which humans reside. Tospeak of God’s encounter apart from a personal and communal understanding isto, in my words, to misunderstand the personal and communal nature of God’sredemptive mission.

Anderson expresses, that Torrance concluded, “Knowledge ofGod takes place not only within the rational structures, but also within thepersonal and social structures of human life, where the Spirit is at work as personalizing Spirit. As the living presence of God who confrontsus with His (sic) Being, addresses usin [God’s] Word, opens us out toward Himself, and calls forth from us theresponse of faith and love, [God] rehabilitates the human subject, sustaining [them] in [their] personal relationshipwith God and with [their] fellow creatures” (pp. 61, 62).

Mission cansometimes be seen as an impersonal task – it is something we do or are calledto do – with the focus being on the something. But this understanding of God and God’snature as One who addresses us personally and claims from us personal responses– either a yes or no to God, whichinvolves our hearts as well as our minds, leads me to regard mission as notsomething that is impersonal, but as an activity, an engagement that alwaysembraces someone. God’s mission, God’s acts of salvation,therefore, are not somethings, theyare always personal acts engaging and embracing someones.

How can I say this in another way?

Just as Jesus is the embodiment of God’s reign, Jesus isalso the embodiment of God’s mission. Jesus in his person lived out the mission of God – by bringing thepresence of God to encounter the sinful brokenness of humanity. God’s mission has a heart, God’s mission hasa circulatory system, God’s mission has a nervous, muscular, and skeletalsystem, God’s mission has organs. Thatis to say – God’s mission is lived through the thoughts, actions,relationships, dreams, sufferings, struggles, and hopes of people – most fullyin Jesus Christ, but also now through us – as the people of God, as we areidentified and rooted in Christ Jesus.

God’s mission is not something that happens outside of us,as it did not happen outside of Jesus – God’s mission happens in us, through usand engages others in their lives and through their lives. God’s mission is deeply personal and not atall impersonal, not at all about something – it is always about someones –bringing about liberation, setting us free from what binds us, what bindsothers, bringing healing and wholeness, conquering sin and death – not just outthere, but in us and the power it has in us. God’s mission is deeply personal, because God is personal, becausehumanity is personal. The power of sinand death would have us see humanity impersonally, but the grace of God givesus eyes and ears to notice that God intends us as human beings to be deeplypersonal – with one another and with God.

So, may we help each other live and breathe the mission of God in ourlives.

Vol 2:37 The Soul of God: A Missional Credo – Living as Jesus

2011-11-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

As I further explore insights from Ray Anderson’stheological memoir, The Soul of God, Icontinue to be deeply influenced in being shaped in living missionally.

In the second chapter of TheSoul of God, Ray Anderson shares regarding the humanity of Jesus as to whatit meant that he was sent – as a wayof shaping how we are sent. I share his statement here without comment –it is for me a missional credo.

“As Jesus was: Inthe midst of a religious culture that prized appearance and cultivated form,Jesus appeared clothed simply in grace and truth. He refused to recognize as spiritual thatwhich was artificial and affected. Hevalued the truth of being and doing over the righteousness of words andprayers. Both in the street and in thetemple, he uses one language for both the saint and the sinner. He stated divine realities in terms of humanexperience. His life-style was that of ahuman person living among humans. Because he was the truth, hehad no fear of exposure, nothing to defend.

Because hewas human, he had no fear ofhumanness, in himself or others. Becausehe came in love, he had no fear of love – he was open to all who were open tohim.

So we should be: Areal Christian must also be a genuine human being. Spiritual growth is manifested in those whodemonstrate the fruit of the Spirit in relationship with others (Gal.5:22-23). The Christian is to be relatedto one’s own society in the same way that Christ was related to the world (John17:18). The test for truth in aChristian is what the world sees of Jesus Christ in us, not what otherChristians see of themselves in us.

We are committed to live a transparent life,willing to be known for who we really are, not only by who we say we are.

We arecommitted to live in openness toward others, accepting them as Christ hasaccepted us, having a spirit of tolerance toward others who do not share ourconcepts or convictions. Yet we knowthat openness is not permissiveness, and tolerance is not compromise.

We arecommitted to the fact that a Christian has anxieties, temptations, moods,doubts, frustrations and problems. Thisis what it means to be human.

We arecommitted to have no ulterior motive or religious device in our love for God orour love for our neighbor: that is, we are committed to authenticity”(Anderson, The Soul of God, 25).

Well, maybe one comment: To seek to be authentic in this way is to seek to live missionally.

And also a prayer: This I know I do not have within me,unless the Spirit of God enables me.

Spirit of God take hold of me,

shape me, transform me,

so that I might live as Jesus

– authentically and missionally.

Vol 2:36 The Soul of God: Deconstructing an Abstract God

2011-11-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

I am further exploring insights I have gained from readingRay Anderson’s theological memoir, entitled, The Soul of God. RayAnderson. As mentioned in last week’sblog, he has had a tremendous influence in my life, shaping much of myunderstanding and engagement of pastoral ministry.

In the second chapter of TheSoul of God, Ray Anderson expresses that “the abstract concepts of Godwhich stirred my intellectual self now left my soul undernourished andunfulfilled. I did not doubt that theywere true, but they no longer satisfied my search for truth” (p. 23).

He continues by saying that too many of us have abstractconcepts of God, or we understand God as being distant from us, aloof fromus. Abstract concepts of God are “disconnectedfrom people’s daily lives” (p, 23).

In response he presents Jesus as one who deconstructs God’sabstraction by being the very exegesis ofGod. He states, “Jesus is not onlyone who touches our own human souls with grace and truth, he is the very soul of God in humanform. Theologians call it incarnation, which is the Latintranslation of the Greek phrase, ‘became flesh’ (John 1:14). John does not shrink from telling us that theone whom we call Jesus is identical in being with God and, in fact, the very exegesis of the Father. When we use the term [exegesis], we refer tothe discipline of expounding and explaining the exact meaning of a text ofScripture. John uses the very Greek wordwhen he says that God’s only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, ‘has madehim known [exegeomai]’ (John 1:17)”(p. 23).

Anderson further expresses: “Jesus is literally the exegesisof the soul of God” (p. 23).

The ministry of Jesus was connecting the heart and presenceof God with the people whom God loves – which encompasses all humanity. Jesus did this not merely as arepresentative, but as God in human flesh, exegeting the very soul of God, sothat we might be in relationship with God up close and personal. There is nothing aloof or distant about God’sencountering of us.

How is this significant in our being the missional people ofGod?

In being the sign of God’s present and coming reign, we asGod’s people are also to be about exegetingthe presence of God – i.e., that we are so open to God’s life and presencewithin us that whomever we encounter and whomever encounters us can encounterGod personally. We are no mererepresentatives, carrying God as a name on our business cards; we are ones whoare God-carriers, Christ-carriers, Spirit-carriers who bring the presence of Godinto every situation, every context, every encounter we find ourselves in.

Our being in mission – participating with God in God’sredemptive mission, is to make God known, not as ones who tell about God, butas ones who are indwellt by the presence of the Living God – indwellt by theSpirit of God.

We come to know the Living God through the Living Christ –and we share the Living Christ with others as we live our lives deeply rootedin Christ’s presence.

The way we live in Christ’s presence involves anintentionality in our living – we do not merely live for ourselves, but we cometo the place of realizing that all our living is for the sake of God, everyaspect of who we are is rooted in Christ, our identities find their fullestexpression in being identified in Christ – so that we along with Paul, inGalatians 2:20, can express that “we have been crucified with Christ and it isno longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us and through us.”

I admit, more times than not, my life is a poor exegesis of Christ, butit is my prayer each and every day that my life indeed who be an exegesis ofJesus, who is the exegesis of the very soul of God.

Vol 2:35 The Soul of God: God Includes Us in God’s Missional Purpose

2011-10-25T15:00:00.000-07:00

Over the next few weeks I will be exploring insights I havegained from reading Ray Anderson’s theological memoir, entitled, The Soul of God. Ray Anderson, though I was never able toshare it with him personally, had a tremendous influence in my life – he hasshaped much of my understanding and engagement of pastoral ministry. If you have not discovered his writing, Iinvite you to do so – particularly challenging is his, The Shape of Practical Theology – which is my estimation is a mustread for every person desiring to serve in a pastoral role.

In the first chapter of The Soul of God, Ray Anderson givesvoice to his responding to God’s invitation to enter into pastoral ministry. He draws on an example of how his fathertalked with him about involving him in ministry efforts while growing up –“Tomorrow, we will go to those who are like sheep without a shepherd and bringthem to a safe place” (p. 17) – to describe how he sensed God’s call upon hislife.

This “we” language of his dad’s, Anderson describes as “hislanguage of love” (p. 14). His dad wasintensely relational and he would often speak in terms of “we” “when speakingof his life and tasks including [Ray] as a participant. ‘We will plant corn in this field next year’”(p. 14). Anderson expresses that this“we” enabled him to realize that in his father’s eyes he “was not just a boywho carried his [father’s] lunch, but a partner in the family enterprise” (p.14).

When Ray Anderson responded to God’s call upon his life, hecame to realize that he was being included in the “we of God.” The “‘we of God’ reached out and included me”(p. 17). My notes in the margin expressthat this is what makes our callings intenselymissional.

The “we of God” describes the perichoretic or relational understanding of Trinity. God is in three persons, but not in a statichierarchical relationship – rather God is involved in a divine dance – which iswhat Eugene Peterson describes as what is being expressed by perichoresis (cf. Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, pp. 44, 344 n15) in which “thedivine modes of existence condition and permeate one another mutually with suchperfection, that one is as invariably in the other two as the other two are inthe one” (Peterson, p. 44, citing Karl Barth in Church Dogmatics 1/1, 425).

God is a “we” as much as God is “I AM.” And when God calls us to participate with Godin the mission and ministry of God, we are invited into the “we” of God,invited into the “dance” of God. Godreaches out and includes us in what God is doing in the world – we areintegrally involved with God in God’s redemptive mission of reconciling humanityto God through Jesus Christ and restoring creation.

Ministry or mission is not a solitary venture, but inherently a deepparticipation with God and the purposes of God in the world. As Jesus promised his disciples, and us aswell in Matthew 28, “I am with you always to the very end of the age.” We are included in the “we of God” as werespond to God’s invitation to participate with God in God’s mission! I cannot think of any better way of beinghuman making a difference in our broken and alienated world.

Missional Matters Now Integrated with www.iMissional.org

2011-10-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a friend of mine, all of my missional related online materials are now integrated into one web presence. My blog Missional Matters is now integrated with online resource material found on my web site - www.imissional.org - where one can also find numerous missional-focused articles under A Missional Reader.

So to keep following this weekly blog, you can directly connect to the Missional Matters page by linking to: http://imissional.org/blog/missional-matters/

Thanks for reading - feel free to comment as well.

Vol 2:33 Mission and Evangelism: Living Life through “Gospel Filters”

2011-10-11T10:19:00.000-07:00

Ben Campbell Johnson in Speakingof God: Evangelism as Initial Spiritual Guidance expresses the process ofdiscernment as listening through “gospel filters” (cf. p. 121).

I would like to take that a step further by asking thequestion as to how we live our lives through “gospel filters.” This is not a way of seeing through “rosytinted glasses” which causes us to see what we want to see, but seeing andliving life through “gospel filters” is about living and doing life, all oflife, in light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of the Reign of God.

This is a way of engaging life, engaging whomever we meet,through the eyes of Jesus. How doesJesus look at, respond to what is going on in our lives, the relationships wehave, the encounters we make, if he were living our lives. In fact, as we confess that our life ishidden in Christ, that we have been baptized not only into his death, but alsohis resurrection, we can confess that Jesus is living our lives – or we areliving Jesus’ life. I am the first toadmit that my life looks more like my own, my agendas, my passions, etc., butas a disciple of Jesus Christ, I commit myself each day to live my life rootedand grounded in Jesus – so that he might live in me and through me.

And in light of that confession, I realize that it is mydesire to live my life through the eyes of Christ – through “gospel filters.”

Campbell-Johnson gives voice to this by alluding to the “Iam” sayings of Jesus and seeing the life we live through the gospel filter ofthese “I am” declarations (cf. pp. 123-127). These statements by Jesus are: I am the bread of life (John 6:35); I amthe light of the world (John 8:12); I am the door of the sheep (John 10: 7); Iam the Good Shepherd (John 10: 11); I am the vine (John 15: 5); I am the Way,the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6); and one he misses, “I am the resurrectionand the life” (John 11:25).

So, for example, Campbell-Johnson states in relation toJesus’ “I am the bread of life” that this “points to the nature of God as theone who nurtures and sustains us” (p. 123). Or, in relation to Jesus’ “I am the light of the world” that this pointsto Christ as the one who “enables persons to understand the meaning of theirlives and illumines the direction for them to take” (p. 124).

To live out lives with “gospel filters” means to immerseourselves in Jesus Christ – to live into the way he sees the world, the way heregards people, the way he engages situations. In essence, it is to continue the ministry of Jesus in the world, in thesame way Jesus lived and ministered in light of God’s redemptive mission in theworld.

This is not a mere adding of religion to our lives, it isrooting our whole being in the life of Jesus Christ – for us to more thanbecome like him, for us to be shaped by him so that all our living grows(because we are developing into Christ-likeness) in being an expression of thegospel of God’s reign being lived out in the ordinary daily routines of ourlives.

To live our lives with “gospel filters” means that we needto immerse ourselves in the Gospels, in God’s Story so that our minds and livesare transformed by the Spirit – so that we grow in seeing all of life throughthe Gospel – and more, living our lives through the Gospel.

May we encourage each other to live our lives through “Gospel filters.”

Vol 2: 32 Mission and Evangelism: Open to Seeing What God is Doing in Us

2011-10-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

Ongoing reflections relating to Ben Campbell Johnson’s Speaking of God: Evangelism as InitialSpiritual Guidance, which focuses on reframing evangelism within amissional perspective.

We have been exploring what it means to reframe evangelismas a conversation involving giving initial spiritual guidance or direction to peoplewith whom the Spirit connects us. Yet, Irealize that I often am more quickly ready to provide spiritual guidance toothers than receiving spiritual guidance in my own life. To be missional in evangelism, we need to beones who are also open to have others name the way God is active within ourlives.

A missional approach to evangelism involves learning to hearwhat God is doing in our lives.

Spiritual conversation is a two-way street – it is not onlyabout our talking with others, or actively listening to what is going on inothers (see last week’s post); it also involves being open to listen to whatGod is doing in us.

How do we expect to be aware and sensitive to how God is atwork in others if we are not aware and sensitive to how God is active inus? In sharing or naming where God isactive in others, the conversation will inevitably turn to others asking howGod is active in us. Will we be able torespond?

Engaging in evangelism through a missional perspective isnot only about “doing evangelism” as if it is a task in which we “do something”in the presence of others, no, it is about being open to the good news of Godin our lives as well – or perhaps first and foremost: transforming us, shapingus, challenging us, empowering and equipping us, sending us to participate withGod in God’s mission.

Our lives are a laboratory for exploring how God is activein the world – we discover God active as God is active in us. In naming or giving words to God’s activityin us, we begin to share our story that is being shaped by God’s Story. God’s Story gives us a vocabulary, aframework for shaping our story. We findthe Exodus event describing desert wanderings in our own lives in which wediscover God, disobey God, and rediscover God. The parable of the Prodigal, gives words and meaning to the times we runfrom God in our lives. Reading thepsalms gives prayers and praises to times of despair and rejoicing in ourlives.

As we learn to listen, see, hear what God is doing in us –as we learn to share this story of God’s Story in our lives, we become personswho become more adept to seeing, hearing, noticing how God is at work in thelives of others with whom we live among day to day.

Listening, being aware of God being active in us, is not anact of selfishness, but rather an act of awareness that equips and enables usto be aware and help others be aware of how God is active in them.

Missional evangelism then is a communal activity – requiringour being open to God’s activity in us, as we seek to be aware and lead othersto be open to God’s activity in them. This is how we walk together opening up our lives to the re-creating andre-storying activity of God in our lives and in the world.

May we develop our awareness of God working in us – to give us eyes tosee and ears to hear God at work in the all of humanity.

Vol 2:31 Mission and Evangelism: Learning to Listen

2011-09-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Today’s reflection continues with Ben Campbell Johnson’s Speaking of God: Evangelism as InitialSpiritual Guidance focusing on reframing of evangelism within a missionalperspective.

We have been taught that evangelism is about sharing theGospel – and indeed it is, but too often, we misunderstand that sharinginvolves first and foremost the ability to listen. To speak without listening is not to sharethe Gospel at all, but it is to perhaps pontificate, speaking not to the heartof a person, but merely putting the message of the good news out there.

A missional approach to evangelism involves learning tolisten.

If we believe that God is at work in the world and that inbeing led by the Spirit of God to participate with what God is doing, then wecan also believe that the Spirit leads us into conversations which have thepossibility of developing into relationships.

The first insight in learning to listen, according toCampbell Johnson, is realizing that the outcome of evangelism is not ours toworry about – “the power and outcome belong to God; we offer ourselves as willing participants in God’s intentionfor the moment” (p. 71). To be able tolisten, requires us first to be listening to where God is leading us, with whomhe is connecting us, so that we can be in a place with another to discover whatGod is doing in them and how we might name God’s activity in their lives.

Campbell Johnson, then describes three other characteristicsof learning to listen.

First, one must learn to become an empathetic learner. “To listen to another, [one] must lay asidetheir personal agenda” (p. 71). This isto notice the person as God notices the person. If our encounter is no accident, but a connection that the Spirit of Godhas led us into, then given attention to the other. Hear what they are expressing; give attentionto them; focus on their life experience. Campbell Johnson states that this is the basis for genuine dialogue.

Second, one must learn to listen with one’s whole person –with eyes, ears, and heart. CampbellJohnson states that with our eyes we observe the nonverbal cues of the personwe are engaging in dialogue. What doestheir posture, their facial expression say about what is being expressed indialogue? We are also to listen with ourears – not only the words, but their tone, their inflection, the context of thewords – which enable us to gain an understanding of what the other isexpressing.

Finally, one must learn to listen through Gospelfilters. “These filters enable us tohear the narrative of another in the context of biblical truth” (p. 71). In what ways does the person talk about theirstory with or apart from God? We areseeking to become aware of how God is at work in this person’s life. As we listen to them through a rubric of theGospel, we will be able to name or address their longing for God, their longingfor purpose, for direction; their struggle with alienation, brokenness,etc.

In listening through Gospel filterswe are being shaped by the Gospel in learning to listen for cues that God istrying to get us to see – cues which enable us to speak into a person’s lifewith the shalom presence of Jesus Christ – but not with a pre-rehearsed spiel,but rather to point out the touches of grace by which God is touchingthem. In learning to listen, we discoverhow to express the Gospel in terms of the good news which is already beingaccomplished in their lives. The Gospel,when it is more fully expressed in response for explanation – cf. the Ethiopiancourt official in Acts 8, finds a place of rootedness, finds a place in whichthe hearer is able to give assent because the Gospel is uncovering thebrokenness in their lives and the healing that comes through Jesus Christ.

Francis Assisi’s observation, “Wherever you go preach theGospel, and if necessary use words” is appropriate to developing the art oflistening in being missional in evangelism.

May you have ears to hear what God is saying, and eyes to see what Godis doing, as well as to see what God sees.

Vol 2: 30 Mission and Evangelism: Being Intentional and Deliberate

2011-09-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

Today’s reflection continues with Ben Campbell Johnson’s Speaking of God: Evangelism as Initial Spiritual Guidance focusing on reframing of evangelism within a missional perspective.

One of the issues we seem to have with the task of evangelism is the intentional manner in which we are asked to engage persons in conversation about the Gospel. Johnson, however, rather than avoiding intentionality, expresses that engaging in evangelism as initial spiritual guidance is in fact a conscious and deliberate act. He cites Morton Kelsey on spiritual direction.

“Spiritual guidance is the conscious and deliberate attempt to accompany other people on their journeys to and in God” (p. 26).

Johnson continues expressing: “Kelsey picks up on three important elements relevant to our effort. He emphasizes that guidance is a conscious and deliberate effort; it does not occur accidentally. He suggests that we accompany persons; we do not speak from a distance, nor do we initiate persons into the faith and then leave them. And, he emphasizes that guidance begins before persons know God and continues after they have begun to know who God is.” Johnson continues stating, “All these requirements apply directly to the task of evangelism and suggest the kind of soft, sensitive approach appropriate for many [people]” (p. 26).

Over the next three weeks I would like to unpack these three elements – today I begin with evangelism as spiritual guidance being “a conscious and deliberate effort; it does not happen accidentally.”

What this does not mean is that it is an invasive effort, barging in on someone else’s space. Being conscious and deliberate do not have to mean that we are boorish and in people’s faces. Rather, what I believe it means is that we are always conscious and deliberate in our efforts to speak of God as the Spirit of God leads in conversations – it means not to miss the opportunities the Spirit opens in the midst of our conversation with others.

To be conscious is to be continually aware – aware of who we are, aware of what God is up to in the world, aware of noticing what God is noticing, etc. To be conscious is to go about our daily lives – working, playing, shopping, eating, resting, sleeping, loving – always aware of God being part of our daily lives and daily living.

Too often where spiritual malaise creeps into American Christianity is when we live our lives unaware of God’s presence, God’s activity going on all around us. We live, as someone once stated, as functional atheists. We may state that we believe in God, but we live in ways which seemingly are unaware of God being part of our daily lives – we live “on our own” without God.

Therefore to be conscious in evangelism has more to do with us – about our being conscious of God active all around us, in us, and in the lives of others. Do we live our lives aware of God? Do we live our lives seeking to see, to notice where God is active, to notice what God notices? This takes the focus of our own lives and centers our focus on God and what God is up to during our waking hours. To proclaim, “this is the day the Lord has made,” is more than starting off our day with a skip and a smile – it is an intentional, conscious, and deliberate focus on centering all of who we are and all that we seek to do in God.

And, this choosing to be conscious of God, of Christ, of the Spirit, is what makes our consciousness deliberate. We are intentional about beginning our days, each and every day seeking to be conscious of God and God’s missional activity in the world. God, then is no longer a mere happenstance in our lives – our calling upon God when life gets tough, rather intentionally, consciously and deliberately we attune ourselves to the presence of God.

When our lives are conscious of God and deliberately focused upon God, then we cannot help but be aware of God in every conversation, every activity in which we are involved – and as a result, we will find God coming up more in our conversations – i.e., finding ourselves engaging in evangelism, especially as it relates to naming the presence of God in people’s lives – providing initial and ongoing spiritual guidance.

The reason we struggle so much with evangelism, and why I also struggle with evangelism, is when we are not aware of God in our lives, and when we are not deliberate about being conscious of God and God’s activity in us and around us. But when we live with a deliberate consciousness of God, we will be present to God and to others just as breathing is present to us in every moment of our lives.

My challenge to us is that we develop practices – Scripture reading, prayer, spiritual conversations – that shape us to be deliberately conscious of God in all we are and do.

Vol 2:29 Mission and Evangelism: Helping People Discover God at Work in Them

2011-09-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

This summer I read Ben Campbell Johnson’s Speaking of God: Evangelism as Initial Spiritual Guidance. I found his reframing of evangelism intriguing having missional ramifications.

Evangelism is always a task that would leave me in a cold sweat. How do I walk up to a stranger and share with them the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Or how do I go up to someone I know and find a way of weaving Jesus into the conversation. Both approaches I have to admit I have had very little “success” with.

I have always found it easier to be ready to share “the hope that is in me” when I am already in conversation with someone and in dialogue we find ourselves talking about God, about spiritual things, etc. It just seems more organic and incarnational – fitting the way God has wired me.

Yet, being missionally-focused requires, I think, an intentionality that seeks to be in constant awareness of what or who God is noticing, to what God is up to in the world. In recognizing that God is at work in the world, and that God is at work in every human life, seeking to re-create and restore all humanity and creation in relationship with God, Johnson’s insights on evangelism as providing initial spiritual guidance offers some incarnational ways of engaging in sharing the good news of God’s reign present in the world.

In recognizing that God is active somehow in every person’s life – though many, perhaps even the majority are unaware of the extent God is active in their lives and situations, giving the credit to luck or circumstance, enables me to approach relationships and conversations very differently.

In engaging people in conversation – as to what they are reading, or what is going in their lives, even chit-chat like how they are, with an awareness of God being active in their lives, enables me to converse with them prayerfully. It attunes me to listen more closely to what they are expressing, what experiences they are sharing, rather than finding a place to break into the conversation with my story, with my agenda. In listening, I am developing an awareness to notice how God is active in their lives. In noticing how God is active in them, I find that I have the freedom to name God’s presence in them – “it seems like you had a God-moment there” or “it seems that God was guiding you in that.” It’s a comment I am able to make noticing that God is doing something significant in their lives – yet I really don’t expect a response from them. However, invariably a response comes – “what do you mean?” Conversationally, then I am able to respond with how I notice God at work in them in a particular situation, helping them to see or discover God at work in them.

That is about it. I trust the Spirit of God to open up a growing awareness in their lives of what God is doing in them, through them. I do not have to cover all the bases in one conversation as if I will never see them again. Rather, in engaging in conversation a relationship with them develops in which the dialogue can move in directions wherever the Spirit of God leads. Because God is at work in every human life, because God is the one who carries out God’s mission and I am a participant with what God is doing, it is not my responsibility to make it all work out. Instead, in partnership with God, I relate, converse, respond, in accordance with the leading of the Spirit in situations that the Spirit has led me into in order to respond to the stories they share that are pregnant with the moving of God – though they do not necessarily see. I have the opportunity and privilege of helping them see God at work in them. In seeing, and being open to consider this reality, they are in a place where they can respond to God’s moving in them.

Unless we engage persons in conversations that name how God is moving in them – initial spiritual guidance, others may never discover and name for themselves what God is up to in them. This is the kind of evangelism that is filled with hospitality, with relationship, with conversation – and avoids my having “cold sweats.”

I’d be interested in your responsive comments.

Vol 2:28 Being in Mission: Living Centered in Jesus – Loving God with all our mind

2011-09-06T13:44:00.000-07:00

This is the last installment of six focusing on living centered in Jesus. As previously blogged, I stated that “to be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of our purpose, focus, and direction (heart), to have Jesus as the center of our spirituality and meaning making in our lives (soul), to have Jesus as the center of all our living and in all what we do (strength), and to have Jesus as the center for our thinking and speaking (mind).”

To be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of all our thinking and speaking.

I relate this perspective to loving God with all our mind.

What does it mean to think and speak Jesus? One thing it does not mean is that we use Jesus’ name in every sentence or conversation – but rather that our thinking and speaking is centered in what Jesus would think and talk about, not so much content-wise, but the manner in which he addresses God’s desire for the wholeness of all humanity and creation.

A couple of years ago during Lent, the congregation I serve focused on Anabaptist spirituality using a resource by David Augsburger entitled, Dissident Discipleship: A Spirituality of Self-Surrender, Love of God, and Love of Neighbor. The first practice that Augsburger identified was the practice of Radical Attachment. He expressed that “radical attachment to Jesus is not believing something about Jesus (a pietistic experience), or believing in Jesus (a conversionist experience), but believing Jesus (in discipleship) and believing what Jesus believed (in imitation)” (p. 23).

To think and speak like Jesus has to do with believing Jesus and believing what Jesus believed. Jesus is more than the object of our faith – in which it could be argued that we set the tone of what or how we believe (in Jesus). To believe Jesus – to not only listen to him, but to be influenced by him, and to believe what Jesus believed – to be shaped by his belief in God, his mission, his love for humanity, his worldview, is to be transformed in all that we are and do – also transforming how we think and speak.

Do we think and speak in ways that place the agenda of our lives ahead of others, even ahead of God’s missional agenda for the world? If so, then we are thinking and speaking in ways which are not centered in Jesus. To think and speak centered in Christ is, in no matter what we do because all life is not wrapped up in Sunday worship, is to have the eyes of Christ – to grow noticing what Jesus noticed when Jesus took notice of people and situations all around him. It is also to have the ears of Christ – to grow hearing what Jesus heard and how Jesus heard as he gave attention to the people that he encountered. It is to have the mind of Christ – growing thinking about how God’s reign addresses and engages normal everyday events. It is to have the speech of Christ – speaking in ways that give voice to God’s passion for humanity, in ways that reveal the presence and concern of God in a broken and in need of healing world.

To think and speak centered in Jesus is to live being very conscious of the presence of God, through the Spirit of God, in every aspect of our living. Even though life is about caring for ourselves, our families, etc., it is not merely about us – we have been called out of the world to be a new human community demonstrating the purposes and mission of God in the world – living in such a way that we demonstrate God’s relationship with us and we with God, and living noticing and naming what God notices, expressing and extending the compassion, grace, and hospitality of God in every encounter we have.

To think and speak centered in Jesus is to realize that we are always on the lookout for where God is showing up. It is living an intensely God-aware life which shapes our worldview, our thinking, and our speaking.

I think this is what Paul was alluding to in his letter to the Church in Rome when he talked about “being transformed by the renewing of your mind,” a transforming that reframes us in ways that we no longer conform to the pattern of this world (cf. Romans 12: 2) – in everything, including our thinking and speaking

This Christ-centered way of thinking and speaking is also expressed in Paul’s letter to the Church in Colosse – “set you minds on things above, not earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:2).

Thinking and speaking centered in Christ changes the way we are and changes the way we are with others. May we be open to love the Lord with all our mind, being ones who are grasped by the Spirit of God to think and speak in such ways in the world that we express what and the way Jesus expressed hope and grace to a world in need of shalom.

Vol 2:27 Being in Mission: Living Centered in Jesus – Loving God with all our strength

2011-08-30T12:03:00.000-07:00

This is the fifth installment of six focusing on living centered in Jesus. As previously blogged, I stated that “to be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of our purpose, focus, and direction (heart), to have Jesus as the center of our spirituality and meaning making in our lives (soul), to have Jesus as the center of all our living and in all what we do (strength), and to have Jesus as the center for our thinking and speaking (mind).”

To be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of all our living and in all we do.

I relate this perspective to loving God with all our strength.

It always amazes me that in North America, especially in the United States, that so many of us express belief in God, even Jesus Christ, but Jesus seems to have little impact on the way we live. In fact, it seems that we live in ways that expresses the notion that Jesus may serve American ideals more so than our ideals being brought under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Allegiance to the American empire seems to be the prioritizing allegiance. Loving God with all our strength challenges this state of affairs.

One thing that keeps me from becoming an American citizen – I live here as a permanent resident – is the oath of allegiance that every new citizen needs to take. I know that it relates to temporal matters, but I cannot in all good conscience express denouncing all other allegiances in order to give allegiance to the United States. All other allegiances, even my allegiance to Canada (I am a Canadian citizen), is secondary to my allegiance to Christ Jesus and his reign.

So in stating this, my confession is that all my desires, my choices, my living, my actions – my loving God with all my strength – grow out of centering my life in Jesus Christ and his Lordship. I confess I do not always get this right – at times I live in ways which displace my allegiance to Christ as the first and foremost allegiance in my life, but yet, as I grow as a follower, disciple, and worshiper of Jesus Christ, I actively seek to realign and reorient my life around living life centered in Jesus Christ.

Giving allegiance, rather than mere assent or belief to Christ, reframes every aspect of my life. It calls into question all that I do, all that I am, all that I hope for, plan for, seek to accomplish. It calls me to examine for what reason I do or for how I am all aspects of my life. I have to admit it is easy in our American lifestyle to relegate Jesus to Sundays, or to times of need – in order to pray for help. Yet, to have every aspect of my life shaped by giving allegiance and worship to him alone, is to find ways of keeping not only my life centered in him, but for him to be the primary focus in all I am and do.

Living in Christ, loving God with all my strength, calls for me to be intentional about my living, my actions; it provides a different perspective for living out my life. It is not primarily about my comfort, my success, my advancement – but rather it is about giving expression and giving presence – through acting and being – to the purposes of God in the world.

I guess what I am getting around to is asking myself the question as I begin my day everyday or examine my actions at the end of the day – is whether I am intent on living my life in such a way that it is not Roland that is magnified, but rather God’s purposes, God’s redemptive mission is being manifest – in fact God is being magnified.

What this requires of me – though I do not always do it well or with consistency – is to engage in a daily office of beginning my day centering myself in Jesus Christ and throughout my day seeking to realign myself to Jesus and his ways. This takes intentionality, this takes developing practices which keep my life focused on Christ, open to the Spirit of God, keeping myself attuned to God.

These practices include beginning my day reading Scripture, meditating and praying. I often use an online resource developed by Irish Jesuits entitled sacred space at www.sacredspace.ie . I engage in reading and spiritual conversation which keeps me attuned to God and God’s purposes. I also pray, read Scripture at times throughout the day – often linked with times of confession in order to realign myself to God’s purposes.

I find that not only does this centering myself in Christ transform my attitude and perspective during the day – but also shapes the way I am and the way I act – enabling me to love the Lord my God with all my strength.

Vol 2:26 Being in Mission: Living Centered in Jesus – Loving God with all our soul

2011-08-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

As previously blogged, I stated that “to be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of our purpose, focus, and direction (heart), to have Jesus as the center of our spirituality and meaning making in our lives (soul), to have Jesus as the center for all our living and in all what we do (strength), and to have Jesus as the center for our thinking and speaking (mind).”

To be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of our spirituality and meaning making in our lives

I relate this perspective to loving God with all our soul.

For me the crux of the question of “soul work,” as some persons have expressed it, is who or what is at the center of the spiritual work we are trying to do in our lives. In conversations over the years I have discovered that Jesus is often seen as merely a resource for the work of spirituality and meaning making we are doing in our lives – indicating that in fact we are at the center of the work we are doing in our lives. Spirituality then becomes our work, rather than what God is accomplishing in our lives. Such a spirituality is shaped by our interests, is more rooted in psychology, in which we make the determination of what we open ourselves to in shaping who we are as people. Therefore, rather than being a spirituality that is rooted in God, it is in fact more rooted in ourselves.

What does it look like then for Jesus to be the center of our spirituality, for Jesus to be the center of our meaning making in our lives?

For one, it means that we enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ where Jesus shapes the spirituality of our lives, where Jesus shapes us. In being a follower of Christ, we seek to be shaped and oriented around ways of living that exemplify the purposes of God. I.e., we seek for our lives to be shaped by what is important to Christ, rather than merely what is important to us.

Second, it involves us participating in this relationship with Christ as his disciples – ones who learn from him, ones who are open to Christ setting the agenda in our lives, ones who seek to live in obedience to him and his ways, recognizing that in doing so we ultimately discover who we are more than any agenda we may develop for ourselves. When we are in charge of our own spirituality, we seek to discern on our own the meaning and direction of our lives – and I have discovered that I am my own worst master. There are too many things in my life that distract me from living into that which Christ desires for me.

Third, it involves learning to see myself the way God sees me. It is through serving God in Christ, in worshiping God through Christ, that I begin to catch glimpses of the meaning and purpose that God has for me in loving me. Rather than thinking that I am enslaved and less human in serving God, I indeed have discovered that I am more enslaved and less humane when I seek to serve myself and be the sole director of the direction of my life. In serving God, in worshiping God, I am indeed liberated, more so than I can ever imagine.

I once conversed with a friend who was going off for a few weeks to do some soul work in his life, to sort through some inner child issues, to come to grips with some relational problems he was struggling with. He named the kind of work that he needed to do in his life as spiritual work. Now I recognize that we cannot compartmentalize our lives and all the work we do in our lives is indeed spiritual work, but the question I raise is who is doing the work in us – is it work God doing in us, or work we are doing relying on God as a mere resource along with other resources? I asked him a question as he was describing the work he was seeking to do in his life – I asked, “where is the ‘I have been crucified with Christ’ self or soul work he was seeking to do?” or “where is the ‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’ self work that he was purposing to embark upon?” We need to do psychological work in our lives, but it is not spiritual work unless it is work that we yield to Christ to do in us – for sure in partnership with us, but it is work that we the direction of over to Jesus.

When Paul talks about in Philippians 2 that we are to work out our own salvation, it is not meant to work out our salvation on our own – but to be intentionally in relationship and in discipleship with Jesus who is accomplishing the work of God in us.

There are probably more things I could say on this, but the point I want to get at is that immersing ourselves in Christ is probably the best soul work we can engage in – it is work which yields ourselves to the transforming work of the Spirit of God in us, and equips us to be active participants with God in God’s redemptive mission in the world.

Vol 2:25 Being in Mission: Living Centered in Jesus - Loving God with all our heart

2011-08-16T10:37:00.000-07:00

I am back from my month-long reading sabbatical and grateful for the time granted me by my congregation for time for reading, reflection, and a little bit of relaxation as well. In future blogs I want to focus on how some of my reading is shaping my on-going missional engagement, but I realize that I was in the midst of a 4 or 5 part blog on living centered in Jesus – but I am sure some of my thoughts generated from this sabbatical will find their way into my comments.

I mentioned in a previous blog that “to be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of our purpose, focus, and direction (heart), to have Jesus as the center for our spirituality and meaning making in our lives (soul), to have Jesus as the center for all our living and in all what we do (strength), and to have Jesus as the center for our thinking and speaking (mind).”

To be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of our purpose, focus, and direction

I relate this perspective to loving God with all our heart.

What or who we place at the center of our lives has a way of shaping everything else that we are and do. If Christ is compartmentalized in our life, then he serves whatever we have placed at the center. This language of loving God with all our heart is language of worship and it is in a worshipful attitude that we need to explore what it means for Jesus being the center of our purpose, our focus, our direction in life.

Another voice in this exploration comes from one of the books I read during my sabbatical – Walter Brueggemann’s Praying the Psalms. He talks about the Psalms as being disorienting and reorienting. The Psalms challenge our old orientations in which we rely upon ourselves, we trust in ourselves and as a result see the difficulties or vanity of life all around us. This challenging of our old orientations is mean to disorient us, to knock us off of what we hold as centers in our lives in order to see the inability for such centers to sustain us as human beings. In response, the Psalms reorient us to a new center – a center that is God, trust in God, reliance upon God – the One who alone is God (YHWH) – who alone can lead us in ways that shape us to be who we were created to be.

When something or someone else besides Jesus is the center of our lives, our lives will continue to be disoriented – we will come face to face with life’s struggles and not know how to get passed them in a healthy way. In centering our lives in Jesus our lives are reoriented to the things of God and around the things of God. Our lives are reoriented to notice what God notices, to see what God sees, to see what God is doing, to hear what God is saying. In our lives being centered in Jesus, all of who we are and what we do is reoriented around the purposes of God – which guides the living of our lives in radically different ways, than when something else has been the center.

Being missional is more than being about the task of engaging in mission, or being incarnational – it is first and foremost about loving God with all our heart. Such a loving is founded upon a reorientation of our lives that only happens as we are rooted and centered in Jesus Christ.

May we live in such a way that we are always open to the reorienting love in God shaping and directing our living.

Vol 2:24 Being in Mission: Living Centered in Jesus - Part 2

2011-07-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

Before I reflect on what I was planning to reflect on this week – exploring living missionally centered in Jesus by examining Luke 10:27, I need to add a part 2 to last week’s thoughts on living centered in Jesus.

This week I am at the Mennonite Church USA Convention in Pittsburgh and I am noticing how it seems in our speech that we often take Jesus for granted, merely assuming that Jesus is at the foundation of what we are discussing – yet never mentioning his name. However, I am developing the conviction that unless Jesus is explicit in our conversations, i.e., reflecting on issues with intentionally bringing Christ into the dialogue, we may discover that Jesus is less than implicit in our thinking about being missional.

For example, on Monday night during the first night of the Convention, Shane Hipps, who is now a teaching pastor at Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, spoke on reconciliation and being ambassadors of reconciliation. I know he alluded to Jesus a few times in his talk, but in the reporting of it in the Convention newspaper, there is no mention of Jesus at all in connection with his exploration of reconciliation. In fact, in reporting on Shane’s talk, it was reported that we were being called to be “ambassadors of reconciliation” and though that is true enough, yet without being explicit about Jesus Christ – the text in 2 Corinthians actually says that we are called to be “ambassadors of Christ” – the question remains in what or in whom do we base what we mean by reconciliation – who sets the agenda for reconciliation, who accomplishes the possibility of reconciliation?

As Stanley Hauerwas once commented in an interview on the web site Jesus Radicals, there is a difference between Mennonites who foster peace and justice from a humanist perspective (i.e., adhering to concepts of peace and justice disassociated from any connection to Christ Jesus) and those who advocate for peace and justice as an expression of their rootedness, their discipleship in Jesus Christ (i.e., Christological Mennonites). He expressed that there is a need for more “Christological Mennonites.”

From my perspective, I do not know how we can be intentionally missional without being intentional about Jesus as well. As an aside: Before you get the impression that Mennonites do not engage Jesus intentionally, allow me to dispel that – there were many times in prayers and comments and even specific conversations, where specific explicit connections to Jesus are being made. However, I am noticing this can be the exception, rather than the norm.

However, what I would like to think is that we as Mennonites are merely making assumptions that Jesus is behind our language of peace and justice and reconciliation – but then that may be an assumption I am making as well. In talking with another delegate today, they expressed something similar that they have witnessed in their own congregation, that members hold to certain ideas of justice that are not ostensibly rooted in Jesus Christ.

Yesterday morning we spent some time in 1 Cor. 3:1-4 where Paul is addressing the Corinthians stating that they are “acting like mere human beings” (v. 3). Rather than our being content with “being mere human beings,” Paul is calling us to be a people who are rooted in Christ Jesus and open to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to be spiritual, rather than “worldly.” Unless we are intentional about our being rooted in Christ, being led by the Holy Spirit, we will continue to major in missing the point – in neglecting to make Jesus explicit in pursuing justice, peace, reconciliation, and in being missional. Failing to make Jesus explicit in our conversations, in our dialoguing on faith issues, we will continue to act as “mere human beings” rather than being a people who live within the new creation and foster reconciliation through being ambassadors of Christ – who indeed is the one who has effected and continues to effect reconciliation through the Spirit empowering us who are Christ’s disciples (cf. 2 Cor. 5: 16ff).

I guess the key question for me is how we can be sure that Jesus is not a side thought, an afterthought, or an unexpressed thought in our exploring what it means for us to be the missional people of God. In living as disciples of Jesus in the world, we need to find ways to include him in more of our language - it not only helps us, but helps others see Christ as well.

Vol 2:23 Being in Mission: Living Centered in Jesus Christ

2011-06-28T09:37:00.000-07:00

This past week I was up in Canada officiating my nephew’s wedding to his lovely bride. As we were making last minute preparations for the wedding, a primary focus was centering all that we were planning to do in the person of Jesus Christ. My nephew and his bride were choosing to exchange their vows in a context of worship and chose to make their vows in the presence of Jesus Christ. In fact, the text for the basis of the wedding meditation was Luke 9: 23-26 which focuses upon denying self, taking up the cross daily and following after Jesus – in giving themselves 100% one to the other, they realize that they must give themselves completely to Christ.

This was a good reminder for me about what being in mission entails – it means being centered in Jesus Christ in all that we are and do. Jesus cannot be an afterthought or a side thought if we seek to be missional, rather Jesus is at the center of who we are and what we do as we seek to participate with God in God’s redemptive mission of making humanity and all creation new.

Over the next few weeks I want to explore further how we live missionally by being centered in Jesus. I cannot help but think that the command to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” (Luke 10:27) speaks to how we are to be missional centered in Jesus Christ.

To be missional is to have Christ Jesus as the center of our purpose, focus, and direction (heart), to have Jesus as the center for our spirituality and meaning making in our lives (soul), to have Jesus as the center for all our living and in all what we do (strength), and to have Jesus as the center for our thinking and speaking (mind).

I end this week by praying the prayer of St. Patrick, in which he shares this centeredness in Jesus Christ. St. Patrick’s Prayer begins with:

I bind unto myself today

The strong Name of the Trinity,

By invocation of the same,

The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this day to me for ever.

By power of faith, Christ's incarnation;

His baptism in the Jordan river;

His death on Cross for my salvation;

His bursting from the spicèd tomb;

His riding up the heavenly way;

His coming at the day of judgment;

I bind unto myself today.

And then the last two stanzas of the prayer express a deep centeredness in Jesus Christ:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,

The strong Name of the Trinity;

By invocation of the same.

The Three in One, and One in Three,

Of Whom all nature hath creation,

Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:

Praise to the Lord of my salvation,

Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

May we be continually reminded that in Jesus Christ alone can we participate with God in God’s mission.

Vol 2:22 Being in Mission: Engaging in Mission in Relationship with God

2011-06-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

This week I am down at Northern Seminary teaching a course on Leadership in Missional Perspective. Today we were discussing as a class about how easy it is to turn mission into a task that we go about doing as a church in seeking to serve God or serve others. But being missional is not about accomplishing a task as it is about participating with God who is in relationship with us. There can be nothing more personal that participating with God in God’s mission.

In exploring God’s nature as missional, God is not the kind of God that sits on a throne somewhere telling us what to do in mission. The opposite is in fact the case. God is actively engaged in the world – God is actively engaging the lives of people – God invites us as the community of the new humanity (code word for the church) to participate with what God is up to in the world. If mission was God merely telling us what to do, then mission would indeed be a task – which we might carry out personally or impersonally.

But God does just not tell us what to do – God invites us to participate with what God is up to in the world. In inviting us, God invites us to come alongside the Spirit, who is actively engaged in the world. This makes mission a very personal act, a very relational act – not only with those with whom we are engaging, but also because we are in relation with God who is leading us in mission.

Jesus in John’s Gospel makes very clear that the way he engaged in mission was through hearing and seeing what God the Father was about in the world – to hear and see requires us to be in proximity to God and God in proximity to us.

It’s been a long day teaching and so I am not sure if I am communicating clearly – but what I am trying to express is that mission is a process of serving in partnership with God, God who comes alongside us, who is with us, who is in relationship with us. We do not do mission alone carrying out a command – rather in relationship with God we participate with God in making all things new.

Mission then is about God being personal to us – and therefore, in mission, we share God being personal with others. May we be set free from seeing mission as a task and be engaged in sharing the love of God with those to whom God sends us in very personal ways.

Vol 2:21 Being a Missional People - Living in Openness to God

2011-06-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday was the last Sunday of the Easter Season, which brought to conclusion the series the congregation I am serving has been focusing upon throughout the Easter season – Being a Community of the Resurrection. The focus of this series, taken from 1 Peter, was discovering the characteristics of being a community of the Resurrection in today’s world. We focused on being a community born into a living hope; a community that lives as aliens in society demonstrating a different reality of being human; a community who are living stones demonstrating the new human community that God is creating; a community that shares in the sufferings of Christ; a community that serves in the way of Christ in the world – doing and saying what we hear God saying and doing; and this past Sunday our focus was upon being a community that humbles itself before God and casts its anxiety on God because “it matters to God about us.” In response to this utter dependence upon God for living, God lifts us up to our rightful place, using the same language of Christ being exalted – our rightful place is to be the new humanity that God is creating, a community of people who live in communion with God in all that we are and do.

Being such a community is what it means to be missional. We are not a community that merely has a place for God, rather we are a community that is deeply rooted in communion with God, deeply rooted in God’s Story and Vision, deeply rooted in our attachment to Jesus Christ, deeply rooted in being led by the Spirit.

Missional is about being the people of God on purpose and with purpose. We live seeking, desiring, longing to participate with God in what God is up to in our world. What God is up to is not a side-interest of ours as a community centered in Jesus Christ, it is the primary motivation for our living and for our actions – we want to notice what God notices, we want to move where the Spirit of God is moving, we want to participate in the redemption and making whole of the world as God is, in short – we see every aspect of our lives being for the purpose of participating in God’s purposes.

For me that changes my whole outlook on what my life is about, what my life in my community is about.

This morning I was talking with someone who was struggling with doubts about God – doubts are good and I believe lead us to give up on our trying to figure God out on our own. Doubts bring us to a place where we have nothing to offer God leaving us open to experience God as God chooses to reveal himself to us. May we, as a people who seek to be missional, not put all kinds of things in the way of God becoming full in our lives, but may we be open to receive whatever God desires to pour out into our hearts, our minds, our lives by yielding our lives in a posture of openness to the Spirit of God.

I believe then we will see what God sees in very new ways.

Vol 1:20 Being a Missional People: Living as "Living Stones"

2011-05-24T08:21:00.000-07:00

Being connected to Jesus Christ as his disciples, as ones who worship him, we are in danger of others identifying us with their images of him. Many of go about trying to change the image of Christ in the world so that we in the wake of such renewed imagining of Jesus, we may become more accepted as well.

Yet, too many do not know who Jesus is. That is not a new problem – Jesus has always been misunderstood – even by us. Too many have an emaciated view of Christ – Jesus was merely a religious teacher, having religious things to say, trying to bring spirituality into the real world. But such an emaciated image of Jesus would have little impact upon society – and perhaps some indeed do believe he was unable to pass muster in the “real world.”

Peter in his first epistle writes: “As you come to him, the living stone – rejected by human beings but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2: 2-3).

How does this define us as missional people? How are we to be in a world that misunderstands Jesus?

Jesus is the stone the builders rejected. When Jesus was asked to explain the parable of the tenants in Luke 20 – the parable in which those who were minding the vineyard thought they could inherit the vineyard by killing the owner’s son – he asked them the meaning of Psalm 118:22 “the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”

Jesus who is rejected by all – because Jesus does not fit preconceived categories of who Jesus ought to be, is the one through whom God builds a whole new kind of building in the world – not made with stones and mortar, but with Jesus as the cornerstone and recreated human beings as living stones who identify with Christ Jesus – signified by the act of baptism. In identifying with the Rejected One, we too are rejected ones – but it is in this particularity that we are the missional people of God in the world, whom God uses as building blocks to create a whole new world (cf. Paul Stookey’s song Building Block.)

God engages, not those who are the greatest or most gifted, nor the most politically astute, nor the most powerfully situated to bring about God’s redemptive mission of creating a whole new world. God seeks out those who are marginalized, those who are rejected, to identify with the Son of God who has been rejected – for through him – the cornerstone, God connects living stones in order to build a new spiritual building, a whole new community of people, a living community of people who through their lives and their living bring about God’s will on earth, just as it is in heaven.

As we read through the rest of Peter’s epistle, we discover that living missionally, doing good, involves suffering, suffering that comes through identifying with Jesus Christ. In Christ, we are a people born into a living hope (1 Peter 1:3) and are called to live as foreigners, as aliens (1 Peter 1:17), and are the ones through whom God is building a new community, a community of living stones who are filled with a living hope in order to be a sign, foretaste, and instrument of God always breaking in reign in order to make the world new.

Whether we see ourselves as rejected or accepted all depends upon whom we focus our attention – if we try to follow after Jesus Christ but our attention is on the world – we will be ever battling being rejected, but if we live focused on God who has chosen and called us to be “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Peter 2:9), then no matter how rejected we are as the missional people of God, we know we are accepted to participate with God in being a new community in an unfolding whole new world.

Vol 2:19 Missional Stories: Being Aware of God

2011-05-17T18:31:00.000-07:00

Another way in which we weave God awareness into our lives is through the telling of missional stories. Now I do not mean telling stories of missionary efforts or exploits in fields overseas – what I am talking about is telling stories of our encountering God in the midst of our everyday lives, moments when we become aware that we are participating in something that God is doing.

This coming Sunday, the congregation I serve is focusing upon the passage in 1 Peter 2 that talks about our being living stones – a metaphor that we are a living people of God because we are intimately connected with Jesus Christ the Living Stone. Peter talks about Christ being the cornerstone of the building God is building. This building, however, is not made with brick and mortar; it is a building made with “living stones” – a building that takes shape as the people of God come together, as communities of the Resurrection express their radical attachment to Christ and their stubborn loyalty to one another.

And as living stones, we have stories to tell. The stories we witness – of God working in our lives, of God working through our lives – become “living stones stories” – stories in which we not only give expression to what we notice, but at a much deeper level, stories which declare what we are noticing about God and God’s activity in the world. In essence, these living stone stories are not mere declarations, but become declarative stories, praise stories which express the wonders of God, the wonders of what God is doing in the world to make all things new.

Telling such stories which give praise to God are deeply missional stories. In the telling of these stories we grow to understand more comprehensively what God is up to in the world. In the telling of these stories we develop our theologies of missional praxis – of our participating with God in God’s redemptive mission.

We need to develop the practice of such story telling – we need to experiment with it in our gathering times, we need to help each other be aware of God, of interpreting for one another where we see God at work in us and through us, through one another. As we learn to tell such missional stories – we will become more intentional in our living as missional communities.

Lord, give us voices to express what we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and experience with our lives.

Vol 2:18 Missional Awakenings: Being Aware of God

2011-05-10T12:53:00.000-07:00

Years ago I watched the 1990 film Awakenings starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. The film tells the true story of British neurologist Oliver Sacks, fictionalized as American Malcolm Sayer, who, in 1969, discovers beneficial effects of the then-new drug L-Dopa. In administering it to catatonic patients who survived the 1917–28 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica, they awakened after decades of being catatonic and begin to encounter a strange new world (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awakenings)

I have discovered people in churches being awakened as well when they finally discover what it means to be involved with God in God’s mission. A student in one of my courses I teach on being missional, interrupted me one day in class half way through the semester and asked, “So, it’s not about me, it’s about God?” To which I responded, “Yes!” She asked the question two or three more times to which I responded with a resounding, “Yes!” It sunk in. She understood. She got it. She began to understand that mission is about what God is doing in the world and not about what we are up to in the world – that being saved or elected by God is more than getting a ticket to heaven – it is about being invited by God to participate with God in God’s redemptive mission – being co-laborers with God.

Recently, I have heard stories shared with me from people with whom I have been sharing what it means to be missional, for them to finally come to a place of discovery about what God is doing in them and in the world. They come to a realization that God has done and continues to do something for them, but that our response is not merely to do something for God, but rather it is about opening ourselves to see where God is active all around us and beginning to participate with God in God’s redemptive mission. It is great to witness the missional awakening that happens as persons express with excitement their seeing God in real and different ways and the freedom that following the Spirit of God brings.

Missional awakening helps set people free from being anxiety-ridden in trying to do the right thing for God. It brings about a real-time encountering of God as we go about living out our lives. Rather than God being relegated to mere cognitive belief, God becomes real and personal and it becomes pretty evident that those who have been awakened see the world in whole new ways – through God’s eyes.

My missional awakening came about five years ago. I was reading the missional literature and I was getting my understanding around it – but I came to discover, not just with my head, but my heart, that God indeed was the initiator and catalyst behind God’s mission. That deep realization began to enable me to be free to be who God made me to be as one who finds joy in freely participating with what God is unfolding everywhere I look. God is indeed active in every human life in the world and actually beginning to see that gives me a whole new perspective as I engage those God brings into my life each and every day.

Rather, than my rushing around keeping my own agenda, I am growing to take the time to be sensitive to what the Spirit of God is saying to me, to what the Spirit of God prompts me, whom the Spirit of God causes me to notice. Rather than these persons and situations being distractions, these are the re-orienting of my daily life so that my living becomes more and more a participation in what God is up to in the world – it truly is an awakening.

Whereas in the film Awakenings, the L-Dopa only had temporary effects, the patients began to revert back to their catatonic state, those of us who come to a place in our lives where we yield ourselves to Christ’s Spirit, we come to discover that the missional awakening we encounter transforms our lives in such a way that we never can go back to the way we once were – and we are eager for others to experience the same reality.

Dare we surrender our need to control our lives and submit ourselves to the Spirit’s moving in us so that we all can experience a missional awakening as well? It is my prayer that we are open enough for God to enable us to be led by God and engaged with God in God’s mission. To God be the glory!

Vol 2:17 Missional Rhythms During the Week

2011-05-03T10:51:00.000-07:00

If being missional is all about being attentive to God and God’s activity in the world, then being missional is not merely a Sunday activity, in which we give attention to God in our worship of God, but is also a weekday activity in which we develop the practice or rhythm of living missionally focused on God.

We often separate Sundays from our Mondays through Saturdays. Sunday is an intentional day for focusing upon God, worshiping God, engaging Scriptures, praying for one another and praying to God together – all our listening, hearing, speaking centered in God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The rest of the week is filled with normal days, average days, ordinary days – weekday days in which we do weekday work. These days can and are often days filled with “disconnected acts” (cf. Peterson, The Pastor, p. 156). These are days for driving the kids to school and after school events, taking care of the family, earning a living, paying the bills, walking the dog, taking care of the yard, filling the car with gas – the stuff of life that we do week in and week out in order to make a life.

We may have time for God in our weekday days – perhaps it is through morning devotions, or a quick prayer before an event or presentation. But where are the missional rhythms that shape us in being the people of God who are sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign?

It’s true we can get so caught up in life that we miss life. What did Jesus say in Matthew 6? “Why do you worry about life – what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear?” So many things crowd into our lives that we try to organize that we miss the whole point of living life.

In response Jesus reminds us: “seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).

This is the essence of living missionally during the week. Before we get caught up in all the doing what we need to do, begin with seeking God, becoming attentive to God as you begin to engage the weekday world. This need not become another item on our “to do” lists, rather it is bringing our Sunday rhythm of focusing on God to the start of our weekday days. This is a relational practice, a missional practice – for attuning our hurried and hectic selves to a different pace, a different rhythm.

I believe we will be amazed as to how we become attuned to God and God’s activity throughout the day in the midst of our ordinary weekday world. We will begin to develop new eyes and new ears to see and hear what God is up to in the most ordinary of places. It is discovering that Sundays are not the only days that are about God, the rest of the week are also days in which God takes center place as we seek to live as God’s people participating with God in God’s redemptive mission. This does not mean we do not do all the day to day things we need to do, but what it will mean is that we will do them in a very different rhythm – one that embraces a way of being missional in the midst of the everdayness of life.

So, let’s live!

Vol 2:16 Missional Church: Communities of the Spirit

2011-04-26T11:47:00.000-07:00

As I continue reading Eugene Peterson’s memoir, The Pastor, I keep running into thoughts that ignite my pastoral and missional imagination, especially as it correlates with a post-Easter sermon series on 1 Peter in which I am focusing on what it means for us to be communities of the Resurrection, communities of the Spirit – filled with hope, sojourners in the land, being a royal priesthood, etc.

Peterson reiterates for me an understanding of church that is deeply missional. He writes about his discovery of the Lucan accounts of the birth of Jesus and the birth of the church as being parallel – “Luke 1-2, the story of the birth of Jesus, our Savior; Acts 1-2, the story of the birth of church, our salvation community” (p. 124).

He then raises the question about how we think about salvation and how we think about church. He expresses that often we think of salvation of God’s work and the church as our work, i.e., as “what we do to continue the work of Jesus in his absence” (p. 125).

But what Luke expresses in Acts that the birth of the church is a work of the Holy Spirit as much as the birth of Jesus was the work of the Holy Spirit. Peterson expresses that as he and the congregation, he was planting in Bel Air, Maryland, were studying the book of Acts they “were learning that the Acts text set the entire church operation as the work of the Holy Spirit. We were learning that folding chairs, the urn of coffee, and financial reports were included in the operation” (p. 125).

He concludes by saying:

"God gave us the miracle of congregation with the same sign he gave us the miracle of Jesus, by the descent of the dive. The Holy Spirit descended into the womb of Mary in the Galilean village of Nazareth. Thirty or so years later the same Holy Spirit descended into the collective womb of men and women, which included Mary, who had been followers of Jesus. The first conception gave us Jesus, the second conception gave us church." (p. 127)

This is a great reminder for us as we live as missional communities of the resurrection and of the Spirit in this post-Easter and pre-Pentecost season. In being missional communities, no matter how much we do, how much effort our ministry takes, how much we think this is our work – none of this is our work. Yes, we are involved, but all we are engaged in is all the continuing work of the Spirit working in and through the life of communities of resurrection to accomplish the redemptive purpose of God in the world. In fact, the more we make it “our” work, the less it is about what God is accomplishing and to that extent we cease being missional.

In fact, to participate with God in what God is doing in the world, requires us to open our lives more and more to the blowing of the Spirit, for the Spirit of God to move us, to shape us, to engage us – even our discipleship and missional engagement is a working of the Spirit in us, rather than our work.

As Paul urges us to “work out our salvation” (cf. Php. 2:12), rather than it being a “to do list” of our own efforts, we read in 2:13 “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” Being missional, being missional communities, being communities of resurrection is all about our being open to be taken hold by the Spirit because it is the Spirit who continues the ministry of Jesus in the world.

Vol 2:15 Pastoral Mission: Living Lives Which Point to God

2011-04-19T11:33:00.000-07:00

I find myself reading memoirs of people I have come to respect over the years who have shaped my thinking, my ministering, my engaging the people of God, my trying to live my life under the reign of God. At the end of January I read Stanley Hauerwas’ memoir entitled, Hannah’s Child, and this past week I picked up Eugene Peterson’s memoir entitled, The Pastor. Both, Hauerwas and Peterson have shaped me as a person and as a pastor.

In reading Peterson’s memoir I am reminded again of my pastoral identity and what I seek to be about being and doing amongst a community of people seeking to be missional.

Peterson talks about the pastoral understanding as one involving witness. He states, “a witness is never the center but only the person who points to or names what is going on at the center – in this case, the action and revelation of God in all the operations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (p. 6).

Early in my pastorate, though I was a good listener and a good caregiver, a not-to-bad preacher and a pretty-good teacher, my pastoring was more about me than about who I was to be about pointing to. It is good I left the pastorate in 1993; it helped me re-discover God’s calling upon my life as I spent 10 years exiled within academia. In 2006 I entered the pastorate again a very different kind of pastor – thanks much to the writings of Eugene Peterson.

Even though at times I am tempted to still make it about me – when I am critiqued about a particular sermon, or missed opportunity, I am getting better at not making it about me. I am becoming better at being one who has the privilege of pointing out God, and the activity of God, to those within the community which I have the joy to serve.

I am discovering it is a long journey in the same direction as I seek to walk alongside with these people as they discover what it means for them to be called “a people of God.” In walking with them, I try to remind them of God’s presence in our midst, of God’s activity all around us, of God’s encounters with them and their encounters with God. In being one of them, I seek to guide them into reading and telling of God’s Story and Vision in Scripture so that it shapes our imagination as we try to live as the people of God in the world, for Scripture to shape the telling of our stories as we seek to live participating with God’s redemptive mission in the world. I try to help them begin their days in prayer – entering the day being aware of God’s presence with them – that we do not live our lives solo, but in step with the rhythms of the Spirit of God.

I am discovering that pastoring in this way is deeply missional – because it is all about focusing on God’s purpose and what God is about in the world. It is not about what I am trying to accomplish – my early years in pastoral ministry burned me as I attempted to do just that; rather, now it is an adventure of exploring, discovering, encountering God and what God is up to in the world, and encouraging a community of people who are discovering what it means to call themselves followers, disciples, and worshipers of Jesus, to be witnesses of God’s presence and God’s mission to those who are in need of healing, of salvation – people broken like us in a world that God came into to set free.

This Easter, as I point out God in Christ on the cross, I find myself giving witness to God’s love in which Christ took upon himself all the evil and suffering in the world meted out against humanity, and conquered sin and death for all humanity by being raised from the dead. To point out this hope, this reality, that all might be set free by being in Christ, is being deeply missional as a pastor.

Vol 2:14 Embracing Mission: Living Missionally with One Another

2011-04-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I was involved in my Mennonite community’s regional annual assembly. The theme for the weekend was ¡Abraza! – Embrace! Embrace each other for the glory of God focusing on Romans 15:5-7. Paul in Romans 14 addresses how easily it is for us to become divisive with one another over things which matter to some and do not matter to others. But no matter what our differences we are to embrace one another for the glory of God. This is a word we need to hear as well in desiring to be missional.

In people or churches seeking to live missionally, I have begun to see signs of becoming competitive. One says this is the way to do mission, another expresses another way, one’s missional practice is edgier than the others and we come close to losing sight of the reason we are in mission. We need to be reminded that the mission we are involved in is not our mission – it is God’s. God initiates God’s mission; God carries out God’s mission; God will complete the redemptive mission of God. We, as the body of Christ are called, sent, and equipped to participate, not in our own mission, but rather, to participate with God in God’s mission.

This we cannot lose sight of – for if we do, we begin being about ourselves rather than being about God and God’s purposes. That is hard for us to realize because in our culture it is about us – but in being the people of God, no matter what our nationalities, our allegiance is to God – it is about God and God’s purposes! So, instead of competing with one another, we need to ask how can we be of support to one another, encouraging one another to discern clearly and participate with God for what God has for each of us to do in advancing God’s reign on earth? God has placed each one of our communities in different settings to be sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign.

Mission calls for us to embrace one another for the glory of God. There is enough mission to go around for all of us – God has gifted each of our communities to be involved in mission in unique ways which only we can do because of whom God has gathered together in our communities. Therefore, we need to ask how we can embrace one another, helping one another for we are involved together in the same mission. Do we not know that when we start pulling on God’s mission saying it is “ours” over against “yours” we diminish our witness in the world to what God is doing – we hide the fact that we are sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign. We reveal something, but not what God calls us to reveal.

So, even though we have our differences, even understand and implement God’s mission in different ways, let’s embrace one another, be there for one another – for together we are participating with God in God’s mission – for the glory of God.

Vol 2:13 Mundane Mission: Living Missionally from Day to Day

2011-04-05T12:46:00.000-07:00

The idea of missional has been around for a number of years, long enough for people to “cookie-cutter” their own ideas into what missional means. A whole group of people who are getting what it means to be missional also express that it is best expressed in edgy environments. It seems to me that being engaged in missional ministry has also taken on an aura of “coolness” – but what about those who are not “cool,” is there any hope for them being missional? Is there room for the mundane in being missional?

Years ago Lewis Smedes wrote a book entitled Mere Morality: What God Expects from Ordinary People. In it he expressed that it is about morality for the ordinary person – “life on the plains” (viii). Is there such a thing as being missional for the ordinary person? I think there is.

Now this does not mean that God’s mission is mundane – God’s mission is about making all creation new; it is about reconciling humanity to God and to one another; it is about removing the injustices of racism, oppression, poverty; it is about healing and setting free those who are ill, alienated, imprisoned – whether physically, emotionally, mentally, economically, and spiritually. There is nothing mundane about what God is doing redemptively in the world to make all things new.

But what is mundane about God’s mission is that it happens in the ordinariness of the everyday. The place where the Spirit of God is active in enacting God’s mission, of inviting God’s people into partnership with God in God’s mission are places like grocery stores, at gas stations, in our homes, at our places of work – wherever we find ourselves living out our lives. Often we think we are in mission when we are doing something special for God – like serving homeless persons at a soup kitchen, or stocking shelves at a food pantry, or hanging out with people different from us in a bar or café. Such ministries are indeed missional, if we are engaged in them because this is where we see God sending us. But these missional endeavors happen only on Wednesday nights at 7 pm or Friday nights from midnight to the early hours of Saturday, they are not the stuff of our daily living in which we are raising our kids, driving them wherever, loving and being loved by our spouses, working hard to make ends meet.

So what do we do with the rest of our time? Is not being missional a 24/7 calling? Indeed, it is! It’s in our comings and goings of our daily lives that we discover the myriad ways God is active in the world. As we ask God to help us notice what God is noticing, as we ask the Spirit to make us sensitive to the people around us, as we ask to live out the compassion of Jesus in the midst of daily living, we begin to see that God is active all around us. It is in the ordinariness of life that we have the opportunity to be less than ordinary in bringing the presence of Christ, in being sign, foretaste and instrument of God’s present and coming reign.

I believe being missional in the ordinariness of life – being missionally mundane, if you will, begins with a seeking to be aware of God’s presence and God’s activity in the minutiae of our days – maybe we will discover in having eyes to see what God sees that no day can ever be ordinary again.

Vol 2:12 No Place for Spectators: Pastoral Care, Church, and Mission

2011-03-29T11:33:00.000-07:00

There is no place for spectators in the missional church – all who respond to the call of Christ are sent into the world to be participants with God in God’s redemptive mission. Now at first, even as I make this statement, it sounds biased towards those who are able, and so perhaps even a bit harsh – what about those who may be unable to actively participate, those who may be struggling, those who are weak, those who are in need to help, those who require care – is there no place for them in the missional church? I guess it all depends upon what we mean by “participating with God in God’s mission” and how we think about those who require care in our midst?

I believe not only those who give care, but also those who are recipients of care in the church, are participating with God in God’s mission. It is a misunderstanding to think of those who are recipients of ministry are spectators and those who “do” ministry are participants. I understand a spectator to be someone quite different – not even on the giving care – receiving care continuum. A spectator is someone who is not involved. They sit on the sidelines or in the stands observing and they do not contribute to the ministry of the church. They neither give nor receive – they are just watching, seeing what is going on.

It is erroneous to think that only those who are doing are participating with God in God’s mission. This understanding has more to do with our Western bias that only those who are doing are productive or contributing. But that is to misunderstand what it means to be the community of Christ Jesus in the world. Those who receive ministry or receive care are also actively engaged in participating with God in God’s mission. Those who receive care, by their presence help shape the church be missional – to pray for one another, to care for one another, to share or carry one another’s burdens, to express grace, hope, love, peace, to offer comfort, strength and support. The body of Christ, at any moment, is filled with persons who require care and those who have been strengthened by the Spirit of Christ to extend care.

It is in this way that the church is a sign, foretaste, and even instrument of God’s present and coming reign. What does it look like for a community of Christ-followers to show the presence of God’s reign in the world? We reveal that we are the community of Christ by loving others and being there for one another in difficult times. We show what it means to be human under God’s reign by loving and caring for one another, as well as being loved and being cared for by others. It is in caring for and being cared for that the community of Christ reveals a different way of being human in the world – a way of being human that is in communion with God – the Trinitarian community.

Those who participate with God in God’s redemptive mission of making all things new are not only the ones who “do new life-giving acts,” it is also the ones who are the recipients of “new life-giving acts.” Jesus was most able to demonstrate the presence of God’s reign through those who were sick, blind, deaf, in prison, oppressed – those who were in need of being made whole. Those who claimed self-sufficiency, the “I don’t need any help, I am here to do” often found themselves not in need of a “physician,” opposing Jesus, becoming the enemies of Jesus.

I once read that Mother Teresa was asked what kept her ministering to the poor of Calcutta. She responded it had little to do with her desire to do good. If that was all that motivated her, she would have quit years ago; rather, she saw Jesus in the life of every leper, every beggar, everyone who was “the least of these.” Her life and ministry was dedicated to ministering to Jesus who was to be seen in every life.

Indeed, throughout Jesus’ ministry he not only cared for others, he was also cared for (cf. being housed and fed throughout his ministry, his feet being washed and anointed with perfume by a woman prior to his betrayal and crucifixion). Revealing and living out God’s mission in the world requires us to be both willing to give grace, as well as to receive grace. In this way God’s presence and God’s reign is manifested.

Vol 2:11 Worship and Mission: Worship as the Foundation for Mission

2011-03-22T13:46:00.000-07:00

I am in the midst of reading Christopher J.H. Wright’s The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Wright mentions that the first significant time the kingdom or reign of God is mentioned in the Bible is in the climax of the Song of Moses when the Israelites celebrated their deliverance from their enslavement by Pharaoh and seeing God’s victory over the armies of Pharaoh in the waters of the Red Sea – “The Lord reigns forever and ever.” (Exodus 15:8)

It is in the context of worshiping YHWH that God’s reign is declared.

This reminds me also of a statement that Ray S. Anderson expressed regarding what shapes our ministry or mission in the world – it is worship.

It is clear in John’s Gospel that what drives God’s redemptive mission in the world is God’s love for all humanity, all creation – God’s love for the world. We hear in John 3 that “For God so loved the world that he gave (sent) his one and only Son, that whoever believes in (or believes) him shall not perish but have eternal life”

It is God’s love for the world that motivates God in God’s mission.

How do we participate with God in God’s mission – it is first and foremost, not through engaging the needs of the world, rather it is first and foremost through engaging God in worshiping God.

Anderson expresses: “Christ’s primary ministry is to the Father for the sake of the world, not to the world for the sake of the Father. This means that the world does not set the agenda for ministry, but the Father, who loves the world and seeks its good, sets the agenda. This Christological, and actually Trinitarian, basis for ministry rules out both utilitarianism, which tends to create ministry out of needs, and pragmatism, which transforms ministry into marketing strategy” (Anderson, Theological Foundations for Ministry, 9).

The language Anderson uses for Christ’s ministry being to the Father for the sake of the world is language of worship. We are called first and foremost to love God, to worship God and it is through loving God that we become aware what touches the heart of God, to notice what God notices, to see the world through God’s eyes, to hear the cries that God hears. Too often we have tried to do ministry and mission by noticing what we noticed and merely asked God to bless our efforts. Instead, as we give ourselves to God in worshiping and loving God, we are enabled to love our neighbors as ourselves because it is the Spirit of God that gives us the heart of God to love our neighbors.

This is what Wright affirms in talking about the nature of YHWH’s kingship – God “exercises his kingship on behalf of the weak and oppressed” (Wright, 79). We only notice what God notices when we are in a worship relationship with God. In worship we recognize that God is the initiator of God’s mission and that God is the fulfiller of God’s redemption of humanity and of all creation

Therefore, the worship and loving of God is essential if we are to participate with God in God’s mission. We cannot be missional without first worshiping and loving God. Through worship we become instrumental for God’s purposes for making all things – otherwise, God merely is a “tool,” a “resource” for the advancement and empowering of our agendas for ministry in response to the needs of the world we see all around us.

May we grow in our mission as we grow in our worshiping and loving of God.

Vol 2:10 Believing and Mission: Believing in God or Believing God

2011-03-15T11:33:00.000-07:00

Would we leave all that we have, where our life has been established, where we have our relationships, our livelihood, our comforts and routines, to be part of that to which God calls us?

That is what Abram did in Genesis 12: “The LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” In calling, God revealed a promise: “. . . all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Verse 4 relates: “So Abram went, as the LORD has told him.”

Later on when Abram wondered how God would bless all peoples through him, especially since he and Sarai were childless, God described what God would do. Then we hear what transformed Abram’s life (though he still needed to live into the new reality God called him into) – “Abram believed the LORD, and God credited it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).

I think we often get it wrong when it comes to believing. As North Americans we spend much of our time thinking about what we believe – saying we believe in God. But that is to miss the point in my estimation. Believing in God has everything to do with us and how we interpret Scripture, how we see God, what we are willing to believe about God and also what we are not. We give shape to our faith, our believing.

This will not get us very far in being a missional people – we will frame mission in terms of what we are comfortable with doing, rather than participating with God in God’s redemptive mission.

But what distinguishes Abram (later Abraham) is that he not only believed in God (what), but we read that “he believed God” (who). This is a different kind of relationship with believing. The what kind of believing puts us in control, where we can set the agenda for our faith, what we do with it and so forth. However, the who kind of faith involves a yielding of ourselves to God and God’s leading in our lives. It becomes about God, rather than about us.

Believing God has everything to do with entering into a trust relationship with God, communing with God in which God is setting the agenda for our living, for the direction of our involvement in mission. Believing God, rather than merely believing in God recognizes that it is God who is directing our paths, that God is the initiator of mission, and we are called to trust God to lead and guide us in where God chooses to send us.

It is a way of believing in which we are at God’s disposal, rather than God being at our disposal. I suspect that much of our North American faith is comfortable with God being at our disposal – for God to bless us.

Believing God also shapes our practices differently than merely believing in God. When we believe in God we engage in prayer, reflection, conversation in ways that are more focused on a spirituality that is largely a journey of self-development – God is a “tool” for our development as persons. However, when we believe God – we open our lives to God, for God to work in and through us in the power of the Spirit – becoming like Jesus – not so much as a work we do in ourselves, but as a work that the Spirit of God does in us as we live in obedience to the God whom we trust, to the God whom we believe in order for God to accomplish the purposes of God somehow engaging us.

Believing God engages us in mission – God’s mission, in which we seek to serve God who so loves the world; any other kind of believing is to seek a God whom we want to support our causes, our agendas.

What kind of faith is your faith?

Vol 2:9 Re-Storying the World: Living Missionally - Living the Word of God in the World

2011-03-08T10:11:00.000-08:00

Eugene Peterson in his introduction to Micah in The Message expresses:

“Prophets use words to remake the world. The world – heaven and earth, men and women, animals and birds – was made in the first place by God’s Word. Prophets arriving on the scene and finding that world in ruins, finding a world of moral rubble and spiritual disorder, take up the work of words again to rebuild what human disobedience and mistrust demolished. The prophets learn their speech from God. Their words are God-grounded, God-energized, God-passionate. As their words enter the language of our communities, men and women find themselves in the presence of God, who enters the mess of human sin to rebuke and renew” (Peterson, Introduction – Micah, The Message).

This is an apt description of our participating with God in God’s redemptive mission – we are about remaking the world because God is about remaking the world. But it has more do to than just using the right words. Indeed we are shaped by the words we use, but more importantly we are shaped by the Story in which these within the Word of God are expressed – this is what Peterson alludes to as prophets learning “their speech from God.”

As a people who are called to live in mission with God we are a people who are also called to live out the Word of God, or God’s Story and Vision, in the world. The Story we live reveals a different rhythm, a different cadence of how we are human in the world. The Story we live, rather than contributing to the disordering or destroying of the world, instead remakes the world in light of God’s vision of shalom. In a sense, we live in a world that has been de-storyed (a play on the word destroyed). What we are about as we participate with God in God’s mission, is re-storying the world in light of God’s Story and Vision – remaking and restoring the world in light of God’s present and coming reign, seeing the breaking in of God’s will being done here on earth just as it is in the realm in which God rules.

And so as a people being about re-storying the world, we are called to be a people who are immersed in Scripture – because we recognize that we are not complete has human beings unless we are formed and transformed by the Story that is rooted in God, centered in Jesus Christ, and continues being expressed in us and through us in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Immersing ourselves in Scripture gives us a vocabulary, a phraseology, a narrative, a Story that shapes the way we live, speak, and act as a new creation. We cannot be God’s missional people without the Story and Vision of God being part of our DNA. Reading Scripture, reflecting upon Scripture, dialoguing on Scripture – particularly as a community, are the practices which open us to be permeated by God’s Story in our lives.

In this way we discover that the Word of God is as necessary for our being the people of God as the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat are necessary for our being human.

Let’s be about remaking, restorying the world as a people living lives immersed in the living Word of God.

Vol 2:8 Living Theologically, Living Missionally

2011-03-01T14:04:00.000-08:00

Something else I do besides pastoring a congregation and teaching adjunctly in seminaries is that I am involved in community organizing around food justice issues. Specifically I am part of an initiative, that I was involved in starting about 2 years ago, known as Ten Thousand Gardens (http://www.lovingneighbor.org/) which seeks to get more fresh produce into the food pantries of our communities here in Lake County, IL, in order to increase the wellness of those who cannot easily afford a healthier diet.

The reason I bring this up is to point out a discussion I was involved in this week, where I was talking with a farm manager, who also happens to be going to seminary, about developing a partnership between churches, farms, and food pantries for the sake of providing food for those who are poor – feeding those who are the least of these (cf. Matthew 25). In diagramming the partnership we were thinking about developing we realized that our conversation was infused with theological language – in fact we could not help but speak about such a partnership theologically, because we believe deeply that God notices those who are poor, those who are marginalized and disenfranchised by our current economic structures.

As we drew a circle around the three interacting circles, of a local farming community, a group of 2-3 churches, and two food pantries, we realized we were also thinking missionally. Such a partnership is not something we are desiring to be involved in merely for the sake of mutual relationships, but rather we began seeing it as something the Spirit of God is creating in order for us to participate in what touches the heart of God. Our partnering, perhaps even a kind of koinonia, if you will, is for the sake of participating together in mission, in partnership with God and God’s mission of restoring humanity and creation. We are coming together ultimately for God’s purposes.

This reminded me of the purpose of my living as a disciple of Jesus Christ – I cannot help but think of all that I am involved in through a theological and missional lens, because as a disciple of Jesus Christ I cannot divide my life into different compartments – and whether it seems that some of the things I am involved in are more sacred and others more secular, they indeed are all theological, all missional because it is the call upon my life to follow after Christ and to be sent by Christ in the power of the Spirit to participate with God in God’s mission in making all things new. Though I may not speak theologically or missionally in the many contexts I find myself in as I am involved in community organizing around food justice issues – I know that I am driven to be missional in whatever contexts the Spirit of God is leading me into.

May you also see all of what you are engaged in day to day through theological and missional lenses.

Vol 2:7 Noticing God Already Active in Our Community

2011-02-17T12:21:00.000-08:00

Being missional is all about God, participating with what God is up to in the world around us, noticing what God is noticing, seeing the people whom God loves whom God came to set free in Jesus Christ. Last week I mentioned I was at a gathering of FORGE America and though we were using the missional language I noticed that some were missing the point of what it means to be missional. I heard among some who participated the strategies with which they were going to bring into a community in order to engage people missionally in a community – but all they were doing was trading “program” language for “strategy” language.

The point is that we cannot go into an area with predetermined plans – be they programs or strategies; we must first enter into a particular place – be it a neighborhood, be it a urban community, be it suburbia – and begin listening for God, begin looking for God – where God is already active and engaging the people whom God came to in Jesus Christ. It means taking the time to be like Jesus, to be incarnational as Jesus was – and by that I mean, “pitching our tent,” being present among a people in order to discover where the Spirit is already moving. Once we hear the voice of God being expressed in cries of the marginalized, the poor, once we see God moving through unlikely groups of people and organizations, perhaps even a church or two, then we are ready to begin asking, “Lord, how do you want us to participate with you in what you are already doing?” It is only after we have engaged in such a process of discerning discovery that we can begin to develop strategies and/or initiatives.

For a while now, the community I serve has been discovering the voice of God in our community in which we find ourselves. We have heard God speaking through community organizers, through county agencies, through the gifts and passions the Spirit of God has poured out into our lives – and for our discipleship community of Christ we are hearing that engaging in food justice is one of the ways we live out the present and coming reign of God in our midst.

The congregation I serve is hearing God’s voice through various organizations expressing the need for strengthening the wellness of persons and families in our communities – churches, community organizations, people able to survive because food is available through food pantries. In this past week, I have been involved in five different gatherings or conversations where providing healthy food to those in need was the primary agenda – a group of pastors and churches sharing the need for accessible and affordable produce and other healthy alternatives in their own communities, a county commissioner convening a dialogue on how to develop urban community gardens, a forest preserve district interested in purchasing urban lots for allotment and community gardens, a conservancy willing to partner with us as a congregation as we seek to develop a church supported agriculture initiative, a local partnership of non-profits seeking to enhance the lives of those struggling to have a better life. This confluence of interest and voices is not mere coincidence – it is seeing and hearing God being active in our midst.

Indeed, God’s voice comes in many different ways, through many different people, through sacred and secular organizations – we need to be open to hear God speak through whomever and however God chooses to speak. Are we listening? Are we watching?

Vol 2:6 A Brief Note

2011-02-08T14:20:00.001-08:00

It has been a busy few weeks – being with my ailing parents in Canada, a week at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries for a Pastor’s Week, our church retreat and now this week I am at a Forge International Event. This week we are dialoguing on what Forge seeks to accomplish in equipping church leaders so that missional communities can be birthed.

We are engaging in some fruitful theological and missional dialogue – asking questions about in what ways we need to deeply reframe our understanding of “church” as communities which gather around Jesus Christ, what does it mean to be incarnational and missional in a place (some good dialogue on theology of place), as well as what educational models are best for equipping missional leaders in context, how can we avoid falling into the same “trap” of running programs – be they missional programs, neglecting to first begin with noticing what God notices in our contexts and participating with what God is already doing?

There is much to unpack here and I will say more about our discoveries in future blogs – just wanted to let you know where I am this week.

Vol 2:5 In the Midst of Mission Let Us Not Forget to Love God

2011-02-01T11:53:00.000-08:00

Last week I was at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries in Elkhart, IN for a week-long Pastor’s Conference. Two things shaped me that week that focus my thoughts this week.

I picked up Stanley Hauerwas’ Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir, which I read whenever I could find a place to sit down to read. Also, on Thursday morning, Leonard Dow, a Mennonite pastor from Philadelphia, preached reminding us not to forget to say “I love you Jesus” in the midst of our living.

In walking with Hauerwas as he reflects on his life journey and being reminded to say “I love you God,” I was reminded how human we are in the midst of our living – and how God is with us in the midst of our humanity. We are not alone – God is with us; we have been and are being set free from all that seeks to destroy us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; we are sustained as the Holy Spirit dwells within us; we are loved by God!

We are loved by God and God involves us in God’s mission because God loves us.

One of the things I have noticed about me is that in being missional I can quickly be caught up with the task of being involved in mission. I recognize that God is the initiator and accomplisher of God’s mission, but I realize that I am so caught up in “doing mission” that I forget to love the Lord my God. I may think it at times, but I find myself not saying it to God – hardly ever. I do love God, very deeply, and with all of my being – but in being caught up in mission I have forgotten to say these words outloud:

“I love you God, I thank you for all that you are doing in me, for wherever you are leading me, that you are leading me. I love you. I thank you that, as inept as I am, you trust me more than I trust myself in participating with you in seeing your will being done on earth just as it is in heaven. Jesus, I love you. You are with me – I am not alone – you sustain me, your flood me with your grace, your peace – and in times of loneliness or self-doubt you are with me, loving me. I love you Lord.”

Our involvement in mission is not to be a task, nor being a missional people is to be a mere duty-filled act of obedience. Our involvement in mission, in participating with God, is an act of worshiping God, an act of loving God. If it is not, no matter how engaged in mission we are, no matter how we move back into the neighborhood, we will miss revealing that God is redeeming the world because God loves the world – that God so loves the world that God sent the One and Only Son to be with us, not to condemn the world, but to set all humanity free (cf. John 3:16-17).

Our being a missional people is a call that is lived out in response to worshiping God, to loving God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, with all our strength. We are so good at doing – Lord help us to express our love to you with our words, with our voices, with our lives, and with our actions.

Join me in expressing our “I love you" to God.

Vol 2:4 A Missional Story

2011-01-24T13:03:00.000-08:00

This week I am at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries in Elkhart, IN for a week-long Pastor’s Conference focusing on preaching in the 21st century. I bring many questions with me to this coming week.

The congregation I serve has been experimenting with a different way of engaging God’s Story and Vision (Scripture) since last Easter. I have attempted being more interactive, dialogical in our approach. While reading Stuart Murray’s The Naked Anabaptist, I discovered that there was a term for this kind of preaching – Interactive Preaching. This style of preaching fits with our Anabaptist heritage of approach Scripture through a community hermeneutic – in which the community interprets Scripture together. Though this is part of our Anabaptist heritage, today in contemporary Mennonite churches, as well as most churches in North America, we seem to rarely practice such an approach in our exploring Scripture.

Recently I also came across Doug Pagitt’s book, Preaching Re-imagined, and I discovered that he provides helpful insights for an interactive approach – his term is progressional dialogue.

One particular insight of Pagitt’s helps us see that we are involved in a missional story.

In his 11th chapter on Implication vs. Application, he makes the point that in asking the application question of Scripture, we are asking what we are to do with the story, how the Bible applies to our own lives, how we can make use of the Bible for our own living, what is in this text for me – it perpetuates an individualistic hermeneutic where we make use of Scripture.

On the other hand, implication asks a different set of questions. It asks “how we fit into the story of God” (Pagitt, 100). Our lives find a vocabulary for living by weaving our lives into God’s Story and Vision – and as a result our lives become woven missionally into the stories of the world (cf. Pagitt, 100).

As the people of God we are not about living out our own stories, but we have been embraced, captured by God’s Story and Vision – it is God’s Story and Vision that shapes our life, shapes our faith, shapes who we are, what we do, how we engage others, how we are missional in the world. When we ask “what are the implications of a particular Scripture for our lives?” we are not asking an application question – it is not about how we use the Bible, but rather we are asking how is my life to be transformed by the Spirit of God so that I might live my life within a faith community, missionally and incarnationally in the world, in order to participate in the redemptive mission of God of making all things new.

Pagitt expresses that “application is about how a piece of information fits into your life. Implication is not about fitting; it’s about redefining. It’s not value-added suggestion; it’s a call to see the story and join in it” (Pagitt, 102).

We are involved in a missional Story – a story that calls out to us to become engaged in it – a story that reshapes us, transforms us and refits us for living our lives under God’s reign – we become part of God’s ongoing Story and Vision as it is being enacted by God today – until God brings shalom to humanity and creation.

Our Sunday mornings then are a time for engaging God’s Story and Vision, not just to hear and apply it so that it somehow adds to our lives, it challenges us to contemplate implications of how we need to continually surrender our lives to God’s Story and Vision so that we live out our callings of being a people of God who are sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign.

I will let you know next week the questions and insights I gained from this coming week’s Pastor’s Week.

Vol 2:3 A Missional Journey

2011-01-18T15:52:00.000-08:00

In continuing the series that the Mennonite congregation I serve is exploring, of being clothed with the Spirit of Christ, my focus this week is on missional journey.

I like the metaphor that our life is lived as a journey – it’s a biblical metaphor. We are all on a journey – times of celebration, times of sadness; times of strength, times of weakness; times of hope, times of despair; times of health, times of illness; times of victory, times of loss. Our lives are also lived in seasons.

Walking with Jesus Christ is all about experiencing life as a journey that is rooted in the Spirit of Christ. The challenge becomes how we seek to live out our lives in these seasons. Do we live grasping for breathe or do we find the rhythms of breathing in the Spirit of Christ?

Last Sunday, our community focused on Psalm 40: 1-11 which describes the journey of King David’s life lived in response to the presence of God – from waiting on God in times of despair, to being lifted up from the miry pit and being set upon a rock, to living life trusting God declaring the works of God in which he cannot find the words to give expression to what he encounters.

What makes the difference in our lives in as we journey through the seasons of life? I believe it has much to do with being open to the Spirit breathing the presence of God in and through our lives. Our breathing seeks to take control of our situations so that we have some control over the outcomes or directions of our lives – however, if we are honest with ourselves, we are more times than not, not all that facile at taking control.

Instead, when we surrender ourselves to the Spirit breathing into us and through us – we yield ourselves to a different rhythm, a rhythm in which the Spirit takes us along into rhythms which enable us to make confession in a similar manner as David expresses in Psalm 40 – a confession that realizes that it is God who embraces us in our living, leading and directing us in ways which fill us with life, giving us a different perspective in which our lives become more and more like Christ’s – being people who live our lives in openness and response to God’s engaging presence.

May we be open to breathing in the Spirit as we journey through the seasons of our life.

Vol 2:2 A Missional Spirituality

2011-01-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

In the Mennonite congregation I serve, we are using the Lectionary to open ourselves as a community to hear what God is saying to us through Scripture during the season of Epiphany – actually throughout the whole year. During these Sundays following Epiphany we are exploring a common thread woven through these texts – namely being clothed with the Spirit of Christ.

Last Sunday, we explored that we were created as human beings not only to breathe in air, but more importantly to breathe in the Spirit of God – Genesis 2:7 recounts that God breathed in us. Though we exhaled and began to breathe in what is toxic to us, God came in Christ to re-create us and to breathe the Spirit into our lives once again – cf. John 20:22 where Christ breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

This week we are exploring our being attuned to the presence and workings of God in the times and seasons of our lives. As we live being open to God encountering us, and as we are open to responding to God’s encounter, we begin to witness the presence and moving of the Spirit in our lives – and in so doing we lives as ones who are sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign (note to read my thoughts on our being sign, foretaste, and instrument, see to Missional Matters Vol 1: 3,4,and 5).

I make note of this to say that our spirituality is missional when it gives heed to the Spirit of Christ, and we live out a missional spirituality as we live being clothed with the Spirit of Christ. Breathing in the Spirit and being attuned to God are key aspects of our living missionally. We can be about our own lives, doing our own thing, breathing in God according to our own agendas, being aware of God in those moments which we set aside for being attuned – but then we about living our own lives, bringing in God when it suits us for God to participate in our lives.

However, living missionally, living within a missional spirituality is about growing in learning to live in the times and seasons of our lives being open to the rhythms and leading of God – it is we who are called and empowered and enabled by the Spirit of Christ to participate with God and what God is doing to re-create all of creation. Engaging in a missional spirituality is for us to respond to God’s embrace of us to participate in the life and mission of God, rather than God merely being a participant in the directions and agendas of our own lives.

To live missionally, to be a people who are embraced by a missional spirituality, involves being a people who daily posture ourselves to breathe in the Spirit of Christ, who daily attune our lives to the rhythms of God – recognizing that it is God who re-creates us, leads us, sustains us, so that in all our living we participate in living out what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer – “may your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth, just as it is in heaven.”

My encouragement to you as we live into this New Year is for each of us to breathe in the Spirit and to live being attuned to God and God’s actions – in this way we will discover what it is to be embraced a missional spirituality.

Vol 2:1 A Missional Blessing

2011-01-04T12:10:00.000-08:00

It’s good to be back writing after the Christmas and New Year’s break – I hope you all had a joyous Christmas and I pray for blessings upon you in this unfolding New Year. I use the term “blessings” perhaps in a little different way that is normally understood.

Often when we pass on blessings, we are wishing something good or bountiful for another – and often we may catch ourselves believing we are privileged because we are blessed. However, from both a biblical and missional perspective, I would like to reframe a common misunderstanding of being blessed.

I used to think of blessing as graces I have received from God, which though I understood as being undeserved, nonetheless I somehow felt I was privileged because I was blessed. Blessings were something I had received from God for my own well-being. However, a couple of years ago as I was leading the congregation I serve in a series on the Beatitudes, we began understanding the blesseds, not so much as “being happy,” but as beginning to develop our ears and eyes to notice what God is seeing and hearing. The poor or poor in spirit are blessed (Matthew 5:3), as well as those who mourn, those who are meek, those who are seeking for justice, those who act with mercy in an unmerciful world, those who are pure, those who stand in the way of violence as peacemakers, because God is taking notice of them; God somehow hears their cries, sees their sufferings and says to them “I see you, I hear you – I will be with you and yours is the kingdom of heaven.”

In being the missional people of God, our blessings are not so much of what we receive from God, though indeed we have received much for which we ought to gratefully respond in worship, but rather, our blessings are realized when we notice what God is noticing in the world which transforms our hearts and lives to participate with God in God’s redemptive mission of seeing God’s will being done on earth, just as it is in heaven.

Our being blessed is to be invited to participate with God in making all things new. I desire no other blessing than being part of God’s project of creating a new humanity and a new creation that God is bringing about in our world. In yielding myself to God, in yielding my life to the Spirit to surrender all that is still unsurrendered in my life to Christ and his lordship, in offering myself to God’s purposes, for God to do in me what God desires to do so that I can be a sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign is true blessing – all other blessings pale in comparison.

And so I offer this prayer of blessing – which I also shared with my community:

May you be aware of God’s actions all around you,

May you notice what God notices,

May you be attuned to God’s ways.

May you be open to God encountering you,

May you hear God speaking to you,

May you sense God’s presence with you and leading you.

May you live your life in worshipful response,

Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,

And loving your neighbor as yourself.

Indeed, may your New Year be blessed!

Vol 1:43 Rhythms of Being - Being a Sign of God's Presence

2010-12-14T11:53:00.000-08:00

This is the final Advent reflection (4 of 4) - As the people of God in the world, we are called to demonstrate a different way of being human as we participate with God in God's mission of redeeming humanity and creation. Throughout Advent, I will be exploring what it means for us to demonstrate a different rhythm of being the people of God in relation to rhythms of our culture.

Advent is a time of expectation – a time for expecting the coming presence of God into the world!
We celebrate Advent as a remembering – of God becoming human in Jesus almost 2 millennia ago.
It is also a time for anticipating – of Christ Jesus returning to make all things new.
But what about during this in-between time, now – where is the presence of God?
Are we willing to be the sign of God’s present redemptive activity in the world?

In the Old Testament the presence of the prophet was the sign of Yahweh’s presence with his people. The prophet was a mouthpiece for the voice of God.

In the New Testament, Jesus is the sign of God – of God coming to be with humanity – Immanuel, God with us; revealing not only the will of God, but God to us – God has come to “save us” (to set us free from sin and death – a saving for more so than saving from). Jesus performed signs or miracles to demonstrate the presence and power of God over all that oppresses and captives humanity. Exorcisms, healings, feeding of thousands, raising the dead were not meant to give Jesus “miracle worker” status, so he could have his own ministry, but rather they were demonstrations that God is active in the world to defeat the principalities and powers that enslave humanity rather than serve them!

Today, the church, the Body of Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit, is the sign that God is still active, still engaged in the life of all humanity to bring about something that is radically new. By our witness, by our actions, by our living, we are people who point to God who is present and active.

How aware are we of the sign we are called to be?

In Isaiah 7, we read of King Ahaz, king of Judah, behind the walls of Jerusalem under attack by King Rezin of Aram and Pekah, son of the king of Israel; these two wanted to come out from under Assyria’s rule over them and wanted Ahaz to join them in their rebellion against Assyria. God came to Ahaz, speaking through the prophet Isaiah to continue resisting alignment with them, “Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid [maintain the current policy of peaceful submission to Assyria]. Do not lose heart . . . [their plans for conquest] will not take place, it will not happen . . . Stand firm in your faith [do not put in with their plans which are doomed to fail] or you will not stand at all” (Isaiah 7:4-9)

Then God through Isaiah makes a strange request of Ahaz: “Ask the Lord your God for a sign [that this will happen, in order to strengthen your faith].”

It’s a strange request because when Jesus was asked for a sign by the Pharisees, Jesus responded saying, “A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except for the sign of Jonah.” (Matt. 16: 4). Jesus rejected the demand for a sign because he was unmasking the concealing of their refusal to repent, their refusal to align themselves with the purposes of God’s reign.

But, here God is asking Ahaz to ask for a sign so that it can be revealed that God is present in this time of distress in Judah.

Ahaz refuses and Isaiah rebukes him. Ahaz sounds righteous in stating that he does not want to put God to the test, but actually he expresses a false humility, he is expressing unbelief, he is expressing his being closed to God and God’s influence in his life; Ahaz wants God at his disposal, God on his terms, not his living his life on God’s terms, being at God’s disposal.

Yet, in response to Ahaz’s disobedience, God gives a sign anyway – a virgin will conceive, give birth to a son, and by time the child is able to make decisions, the attacking kingdoms will be no more. Look to this child – it is the everpresent sign of God’s presence with Judah – this child is the evidence of Immanuel – God is with us.

Whereas Ahaz refused asking for a sign, often times I find myself refusing to be a sign of God’s present and coming reign.

Do we see the sign that we are to be in the world? Do we see that our lives are not about ourselves, but about what God is up to in the world? Do we see that we are living bearers of the Gospel, signs revealing the active presence of God in the world?

The reality is that we find ourselves to be more like Ahaz than we’d like to be. Too often we imitate the attitude of Ahaz in which we refuse to be signs of God’s active presence by being communities that express a false humility, a religiosity that gets by with just having enough of God, but not overdoing it, being a community where life merely revolves around us, rather than enacting and dispersing the good news of the Gospel of God’s reign – the “setting all captive humanity free” mission of Jesus Christ in the world.

Being a community that is a sign of God’s presence reorders all our priorities, reorders all that we focus upon – life in Christ is not primarily about us, our comfort, rather it is participating in God’s actions of making all things whole through Jesus Christ – the active presence of God for all humanity.

In Christ Jesus, we are the sign of God’s active missional presence in the world – to refuse to be the sign is to refuse the Spirit leading us to participate in the purposes of God in the world.

NOTE: I am taking a 2 week break from posting to Missional Matters over the Christmas break - I wish you all a joyous Christ-filled Christmas and may the new year be filled with opporrtunities for living a mission-filled life. To God be the Glory! - I'll post again on January 7th.

Vol 1:42 Rhythms of Patience - Waiting for Healing and Restoration

2010-12-07T07:41:00.000-08:00

Continuing Advent reflections (3 of 4) - As the people of God in the world, we are called to demonstrate a different way of being human as we participate with God in God's mission of redeeming humanity and creation. Throughout Advent, I will be exploring what it means for us to demonstrate a different rhythm of being the people of God in relation to rhythms of our culture.

John the Baptist knew what his mission was, even when he was imprisoned (cf. Matthew 11: 2ff), but he was getting impatient, unsure if indeed Jesus was the coming one, the Messiah – he was not seeing the fruit of God’s mission of healing and restoration to Israel. As God’s people, being involved in God’s mission – at least we hope we are, we wonder like John as well – is all that we are doing making a difference? Is God’s mission of redemption and healing and restoration transforming the world in which we live? We get impatient as well – where is all the healing and restoration?

We tend to look at the grand sweep of things and in our trying to be God’s missional people, we miss seeing life being transformed all around us. But what does Jesus say to John’s disciples, what is the Spirit saying to us? Jesus’ response is one of asking whether they have eyes and ears that see and hear what God is up to in the world. Jesus in essence is asking, “are you noticing the mustard seed-sized things going on? Though, in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus does not present the parable of the mustard seed until chapter 13, we are privy to this parable in which Jesus links God’s reign with the mustard seed – remember the reign of God is like a mustard seed, small, unnoticeable, unless you know where it has been planted – but it is growing, always growing – until it is revealed to be a plant that birds nest in and others notice.

In reflecting on Jesus’ response to John’s disciples, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” I cannot help but wonder whether we take the time to tell stories of the presence of God’s reign active all around us, stories of God’s life-giving rhythms being manifested in contrast to the life-sapping rhythms of our culture? We get so busy, so into our own agendas, so caught up in the commerce of the season, of life, that life and ministry becomes another doing, rather than noticing that God is active in mustard seed-sized happenings all around us. If we take the time to hear and see – we will begin to notice some pretty amazing things – in fact we will begin to see that God’s mission is being carried out everywhere.

I don’t know about you, but patiently, daily, attuning my eyes and ears to notice what God is up to, to seeing God working in the small things gives me hope, changes my sighs of impatient waiting and wondering into encouragement so that I do not tire in doing good, gives me resolve to continually submit myself to participate in what God is doing in making all things whole – because God is in fact doing this.

What are you seeing and hearing?

Vol 1:41 Rhythms of Repentance and Bearing Fruit

2010-11-30T11:25:00.000-08:00

Continuing Advent reflections - As the people of God in the world, we are called to demonstrate a different way of being human as we participate with God in God's mission of redeeming humanity and creation. Throughout Advent, I will be exploring what it means for us to demonstrate a different rhythm of being the people of God in relation to rhythms of our culture.

I can hear John the Baptist crying out to the religious leaders who were coming to see what was happening out in the desert – “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:7-8). Are we able to hear John crying out to those of us who are North American Christians – “You say you are Christian, you say you believe in God, you say you’re all about peace and justice, you say you are different, more privileged than those who do not have faith such as you – You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with your repentance?”

It is hard to hear those words from John – do we hear these words, when they are expressed by Jesus (in Matthew 4:17) as easier to hear because we think we have an “in” with Jesus – and repentance is for those who have not yet confessed Jesus as Savior and Lord in their lives? Perhaps, we still need to hear the call to repent with a fresh set of ears today as God’s missional people.

Too often, I find myself thinking I am getting God’s mission down, to the point where I think I have a corner on understanding what God’s mission is all about – even thinking that I have become somewhat of an expert in expressing what it means to be a missional community participating with God in God’s redemptive mission in the world. When I begin to think like that – I need to hear once again John’s word, Jesus’ word: “Repent, for the reign of God has come near.”

I need to be reminded everyday of what it means to live a missional life, a life that is continually being turned around from my agenda to participating with God in God’s missional agenda, a life that is growing in discovering more and more what it means for me to live missionally – where it has less to do with me and more to do with what the Spirit of Jesus is doing in the world. It has less to do with me and more to do with my being crucified with Christ – Christ living in me, rather than merely my living confessing Christ (cf. Galatians 2:20); more to do with Christ being exalted and me becoming less significant (cf. John 3:30); more to do with my life pointing to Jesus as Lord and less to do with Jesus pointing to me as a follower and disciple of his.

“Produce fruit in keeping with your repentance,” – produce fruit in keeping with your confessing Jesus Christ as Lord, produce fruit in keeping with your striving for peace and justice – may they not just be words in my life, may I indeed live out what I say I believe.

The call to daily repentance is a practice that reminds me that if I am to participate in what God is doing in the world, that reminds me if I am to help lead a community of people to live missionally, I’ve got to make straight a path for Jesus to enter into my life day after day; I’ve got to root my life in my baptism – that I have died with Christ and only what is resurrected in my life is that which is identified with his life; I’ve got to not think of myself as privileged, but one who has received the grace of God’s mercy; I’ve got to be open to being immersed in the Spirit, to breathe in the Spirit, to be corrected and shaped and molded by the Spirit so that my life and my desires, my ambitions are yielded to how God wants me to participate in what God is doing to make all things new.

Yet, I realize that I am incapable of doing all these things that I’ve got to do – and so repentance becomes an offering of myself in which I confess my inability to live missionally for God – I need God to do in me and with me what I am incapable of doing – and I discover that God does.

I find that the Spirit of God is renewing my mind, transforming my life, that I am receiving the gift of being able to live my life, mostly in small ways, by a different rhythm – a rhythm that is demonstrating a new kind of reality of being human in the world – fruit of a new kind of life – a life that is growing in Christ-centering harmony with God, in reconciling harmony with other human beings, and in restorative harmony with creation.

Indeed, I need to be reminded to repent each and every day because God’s reign has come near!

Vol 1:40 Rhythms of Being on the "Lookout for God"

2010-11-23T10:25:00.000-08:00

As the people of God in the world, we are called to demonstrate a different way of being human as we participate with God in God's mission of redeeming humanity and creation. Throughout Advent, I will be exploring what it means for us to demonstrate a different rhythm of being the people of God in relation to rhythms of our culture.

Being a follower of Jesus Christ has everything to do with asking a missional question: how does my playing sports, my going to school, my working in the lab, my teaching students, my providing healthcare, my doing research, my serving customers and clients, my nurturing a family, my growing and harvesting food through farming have to do with what God is doing in the world?

This is the stuff of our daily living that we are engaged in and whatever we do shaped the rhythms of our day, the rhythms of our time. But how do we engage in what we do in light of the rhythms of God’s mission in the world?

Jesus expresses in Matthew 28:19, “as you go about living your life, doing what you do, be about making disciples of all nations . . . .” This points to our daily being and doing as being for a greater purpose than just our being and doing. In being disciples of Jesus Christ we are called to demonstrate by our actions, our words, our living, our producing and consuming, and through our relationships, a different rhythm of being human in the world.

I believe a first step in living our lives in light of God’s mission so as to be about making disciples means that we live in a rhythm of being on the lookout for God.

It is very easy for us to live our lives giving attention to what is beneficial for ourselves – living on the lookout for ourselves – taking care of our needs, our families, etc. This is the way of our culture, the rhythm of being who we are in relationship to others – we all take care of ourselves – sometimes with help from others when life gets overwhelming.

Yet, in identifying ourselves with Jesus Christ, we are no longer called to merely live for ourselves, but we live for God’s purposes, participating with God in what God is doing in the world – God’s mission reshapes the DNA of our existence in the world. And so, whatever we are engaged in throughout our Mondays to Fridays, we live and work with a different rhythm.

We live in the rhythm of being on the lookout for God. What I mean by this is that as a missional people, not only are we attuned to what our jobs or careers demand of us, but in the midst of them, we are also attuned to what God is up to, where God is working, whose lives God is touching. And not only do we develop this being attuned to God, as God’s missional people we also help interpret to others the moving of God in their lives – helping them become attuned to the rhythm of God actively engaging them.

My wife and I have a friend who has had very little room for God working in his life or in the world. But over the past couple of years, in our being on the lookout for God around him and interpreting God’s activity going on either around him or in him, he seems to becoming more open to the possibility that there may be a God active in the world – his language is shifting from statements of “No way!” to “if that’s what you need it to be” to “Maybe?”

As God’s missional people we have the privilege of being one’s who, in being on the lookout for God, have the ability to point out God and the rhythms of God’s activity to a world caught up in rhythms that take little notice of what has the power to shape them and make them whole.

I find that I do not readily notice God unless I begin by attuning my day to be aware of God’s rhythms – this aligning myself to God’s rhythms, to notice God’s activity, often involves praying – “Spirit of God, open my ears and eyes to see and hear you today, Lord. May the rhythm of my day be open to be shaped by your rhythms – help me notice where you are, in whom you are working – and may I somehow be part of what you are doing.” It’s amazing how God responds to that prayer by helping me see and giving me the courage to show the active presence of God in the midst of the ordinariness of my day.

Vol 1:39 The Rhythms of the People of God

2010-11-16T09:54:00.000-08:00

As the people of God in the world, we are called to demonstrate a different way of being human as we participate with God in God's mission of redeeming humanity and creation. I wonder how this relates to our use of time?

I am preparing for Advent – throughout Advent the Mennonite community in which I serve as pastor will be focusing upon how we engage and make use of the time given as a gift to us by God. We do not often reflect on what kind of witness we express by how we make use of our time. How do we demonstrate the new reality of God’s reign as the missional people of God as it relates to reframing our understanding of the use of time?

Most of us, I am afraid, me included, do not offer much of an alternative to our frenetic use of time that we find in our North American culture. We run after time management gurus just as much as any other North American in hoping to get more out of the time available to us so that we can spend our time better or more effectively. We are, therefore, more apt to give witness to our culture, rather than what God desires to accomplish in God’s mission in redeeming our rhythms of time.

Of course, this is all connected with God’s Story and Vision, what God is purposing to accomplish in moving all history towards the completion of God’s mission, what God seeks to create in us as God’s people as we seek to be sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign .

Do we walk, live, by a different rhythm? In our actions, in our day to day doings do we display a rhythm of life that reflects more God and God’s purposes, or are we just mimicking the same rhythms of life all around us – the hurriedness, the frenetic pace of life that perpetuates the brokenness of our world, rather than the new reality, the new way of being human living life under the rule of God’s reign?

As I read the Scriptures of Advent, I am reminded that God demonstrates a different rhythm of life, a different way of engaging life – one that fosters righteousness and justice. In reading Isaiah 11: 1ff, I realize that God coming to be among us is for the sake of bearing fruit – a new reality, a new way of being with one another. “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him . . . he will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide but what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness he will judge the needs, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.”

If we think about the kind of fruit the time rhythms of our life portray – I wonder if we find ourselves identifying with Jesus Christ – one who redeems and recreates life rhythms and our rhythms of time, or do we find ourselves, perhaps even in the way we engage in ministry, fostering the rhythms of a society that never can find enough time?

These are some of the beginning questions I am contemplating. What questions do you have that might be added to these as we think about what it means for us to be the missional people of God in relation to a different rhythm of engaging time? Our time is indeed a part of demonstrating a different rhythm of the kingdom of God.

Vol 1:38 Who is the Main Character in our Stories?

2010-11-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

Over the past few weeks I have been reflecting on how we tell our stories. This grew out of my serving as a reader of a D.Min. Thesis of a former student of mine. Her focus was upon helping people find new pathways into Scripture. In the dialogue that always ensues in orals, a comment was made about the telling of our stories – we need to learn to tell our stories with God being the main character.

Now that may seem like an odd comment, because we all know that we are the subjects of our own stories. Our stories are about life as it happens to us, even our experiences of God, and we tell our stories through our perspective. These are our stories; this is my story.

However, I am finding this is to be a myopic perspective. None of our stories are just centered in us. The life of the world is not centered around us – our stories involve events and experiences, our stories engage others in which we are not the only character. Life happens to us, not in isolation, but in relationship, in community with a world of others. Though we tell these stories from our perspectives, we are not always the main character.

This has relevance, especially for those of us who desire to live missionally – participating with God in God’s mission of making all things new. The first thing I realize in participating with God in God’s mission is that God has a Story and Vision of what God purposes to do in the world. God is the initiator of the Story and God moves this Story to its Vision – Scripture is this story (which is why I often refer to Scripture as God’s Story and Vision).

The second thing I realize is that our stories are not just about what we did last weekend, or what we are planning to do next weekend, rather our stories chronicle our journeys through life – what we encounter, the meanings of those encounters, new insights, transformations we undergo, the purpose or vision that drives our living – this is the real story of who and why we are.

The third thing I realize is that God invites us into the Story that God has enacted and is enacting. Scripture gives account of God’s Story and Vision. It is a Story that involves each one of us – it is a story of our brokenness, our alienation from God and from others, it is a story about God reaching out to us in order to heal us, to set us free, to liberate us from the power of sin and death, to reconcile us to God and to one another, to establish us as a new humanity. Scripture, in essence, becomes our family album – sharing the Story that has gone on long ago – that now provides the vocabulary and direction for our own stories.

The fourth thing I realize is that in and through Jesus we are caught up in God’s Story and Vision for the redemption of humanity and the renewing of creation. If we find the words to tell this story that is rooted in the Story, Life, and Vision of God, we come to discover that God is actually the main character in our stories because we have a story because God liberates us by including us into the story that God is enacting.

Perhaps, baptism is that act that changes who the main subject is in our stories – before our baptisms, we are content with being the main character in our stories, but in baptism, in making confession of belonging to Christ, in giving our allegiance to Christ Jesus, we are raised up out of the waters identifying a new main character in our lives. The central character in our life becomes God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Spirit of God who are the shapers and sustainers of the ongoing Story and Vision of God through our lives. This is so because now we are no longer living for ourselves, but as a new creation, as a new community, we live our lives being a sign of God’s presence in the world, a foretaste of what human life is lived under God’s rule, as well as being instruments for living out the present reality of God’s will in the world.

In God becoming the main character in our stories, we do not lose ourselves, rather we find ourselves in ways we could never have imagined. It is only as God is the main character in my life, that my living is no longer limited by what I am able to do, but I am set free to accomplish the things that God chooses to do through me in my participating with God in making all things new.

Vol 1:37 The Ordinary Life of the Spirit of God

2010-11-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

This concludes my ongoing reflections on Roxburgh’s and Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church, at least for the time being – there are still other chapters in their book. The focus of these past weeks has been on following the winds of the Spirit.

I am continually amazed at the earthiness of God and God’s encounter of us, God’s creatures. What makes God of the Old and New Testaments unique is that God is involved in the ordinary daily lives of human beings – God is concerned with the messiness of our lives and somehow through our brokenness and through our incapabilities, God works out the missional redemptive purpose of making all creation new.

What Roxburgh and Boren express, is my conviction as well. “Our rock-bottom conviction is that the Spirit of God is among the people of God. . . . [W]e mean that the Spirit is actually at work in our ordinary, common lives. This means that God’s future – putting into action God’s dream for the whole world – is among God’s people” (p. 122).

Not only did God risk all in becoming human, God still continues to risk it all, risking the completion of God’s dream through a people who do not always get it right, who do not always yield themselves to God’s Spirit, even though we confess we are filled and empowered by the Spirit of God.

This is why we worship, why we make confession, why we seek forgiveness and to forgive, why we open ourselves to reconcile and be reconciled – to remind ourselves whose we are, to remind ourselves who is at work in us, to remind ourselves that it is not about us, to remind ourselves that God is making all things new through a people who are imperfect at best. In reminding ourselves we come to recognize that this work that God is doing through us is all the work of God, is all the work that the Spirit of God is accomplishing – and so day by day, we fitfully submit ourselves to Jesus Christ, to God’s purposes so that God accomplishes what we could never imagine to accomplish.

This truly amazes me that God is able to use a broken people who are submitted to Jesus and God’s purposes to accomplish what leaves us in awe.

And so, Roxburgh and Boren express: “Very practically, a missional church is formed by the Spirit of God at work in the ordinary people of God in a local context. A practical implication is that this imagination changes the focus of leadership. Rather than having plans, programs, strategies, and goals, they ask how they can call forth what the Spirit is doing among the people. When this happens, the potential for discovering the wind of the Spirit is exciting” (p. 122).

May we indeed be a people who daily practice opening ourselves to God’s Spirit – and then be open to see and hear how God involves us in God’s redemptive mission in making all creation new. Such Spirit-engulfed living leads us to live life in Spirit-imagined ways. I cannot imagine any other way I would rather live.

Vol1:36 Sailing with the Spirit of God

2010-10-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

Over the next two weeks I will conclude my reflections on Roxburgh’s and Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church, at least for the time being – there are still other chapters in their book. The focus of these last weeks has been on following the winds of the Spirit.

Roxburgh and Boren challenge us to develop a new imagination for understanding the Spirit in being the people of God. I have discovered that there is a theological resurgence in interest about the Spirit – all across the theological spectrum. The Spirit is not an “it,” or just an abstract reality – a way of thinking and talking ambiguously about God. Instead, the Spirit of God is being, is the real and present presence of God, the real and present presence of Jesus Christ in the ordinariness of human life.

In John 3 we read about the Jewish leader Nicodemus coming to Jesus in the night to get some questions answered that confused him in his observing Jesus in action. Jesus said to him that he must be “born again.” But before you assume you know where I am headed with this “evangelical” statement, Roxburgh and Boren express that “another way to say this is, ‘You need a new imagination.’” (p. 121).

They state: “Jesus was saying that the rules had to change and, therefore, Nicodemus’ understanding (imagination) was missing what God was actually up to through the presence of Jesus” (p. 121).

To become missional people is to have our thinking, our actions, our discovering reframed – in fact it involves such a radical reframing that being “born again” may be the only appropriate metaphor to describe our embracing a new way of thinking about the real and present presence of God in the world.

The image of sailing with Spirit, that Roxburgh and Boren, present is a vital one for us living as the missional people of God. Too often, they argue, we as the North American church have puttered about in a motor boat being in control of direction, destination, and how fast we get where we want to get going. We want to manage and control the things of God, rather than yield ourselves to be directed and led by the Spirit of God. When we are in control, we know where we are headed, it’s dependent on our abilities – we actually only need God as a figurehead at the forefront of our boats. But to be the missional people of God, we come to recognize that the Spirit of God is the one who is in control directing the purposes of God in the world in making all things news.

So, if the Spirit is in control, blowing where the Spirit wishes or pleases, then we need to learn how to sail – to raise our sails to move us where the Spirit seeks to lead us, to use us – for accomplishing God’s redemptive purpose in the world. We only learn to sail by sailing – by putting ourselves into the wind, into the Spirit.

I remember the first time I sailed by myself – it was on a twin hull Hobie Cat. I put my sail up and the wind grabbed me and took me out into the lake. It was a frightening experience because I was fearful of the wind and I did not know how to sail with the wind – instead I fought the wind and I capsized my boat.

We can do that with the Spirit as well – trying to control the Spirit, fighting the Spirit and we end up grieving the Spirit – and we wonder why then that ministry gets so hard and we burn out. Rather, as Roxburgh and Boren express – “the experience of sailing, on the other hand, involves learning to trust the winds of the Spirit . . . . In sailing God teaches us to attend to the ways of the Spirit” (p. 121). In learning how to sail, we need to learn to trust the wind. In learning how to be the missional people of God, we need to learn how to sail the winds of the Spirit – we will be the ones who are shaped and transformed by the Spirit as we learn to flow with the wind, with what God is doing to make all things right in the world.

This involves trust, trust involves risk, because we open ourselves to be taken wherever the Spirit seeks to take us. To open ourselves in such a way to God is to be “born again!”

Perhaps an experience that ought to be requisite in learning to live as the people of God is for each one of us to take up sailing.

Vol 1:35 The Ways of the Spirit of God

2010-10-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

Over the next three weeks I will conclude my reflections on Roxburgh’s and Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church, at least for the time being – there are still other chapters in their book. The focus of these last weeks is following the winds of the Spirit.

The authors state that “our missional journey calls us to learn habits of listening and discernment” (p. 119). They states that as Moses asked God to teach him his ways (cf. Exodus 33:13), so we too must be open to learning the ways, the habits and practices of the Spirit – to learn a new way of life made up of habits and practices that shape us as being the people of God in the world (cf. pp. 118-119).

I would add that learning the habits of listening and discernment involve our developing the discipline of listening and discerning what the Spirit of God is listening to and discerning in the places in which we find ourselves. The reason we need to develop this sensitivity to the Spirit is that we do not merely want to listen and discern what we notice, but as God’s missional people, we want to notice what God sees, what God hears, what captures the heart of God – otherwise we will engage in ministry as to what we think is best.

We are very aware that our ways are not God’s ways, and God’s ways not our ways (cf. Isaiah 55:8) at least not without our submitting ourselves to God. Yet to open ourselves to God’s ways and thoughts in our lives, we need to learn to be open to God, to be open to the Spirit of God. Likewise, if we are to develop habits of listening and discerning to what the Spirit of God is listening to and discerning, then we need to first of all be a people who open ourselves to the Spirit and to be shaped by the Spirit.

This is more than discovering our spiritual gifts or engaging in spiritual disciplines – often in our self-focused approaches, the Spirit becomes a tool for our spiritual agenda. Rather, in being open to the Spirit, we need to open ourselves to the Spirit’s agenda in us – to be shaped by the Spirit, to notice what the Spirit notices, and to engage in ministry which the Spirit leads us into.

It is not about getting the Spirit to do what we want to do; it is not about our using the Spirit. It is about yielding to the Spirit so that “the Spirit shapes the church for a missional life” (p. 120). And so we are being called “to attend to the ways the Spirit is seeking to form us as mission-shaped people in our neighborhoods and communities” (p. 120).

Being open and led by the Spirit is to be in a posture of receiving whatever the Spirit desires to pour out into our lives for the purpose of accomplishing God’s purposes – we become available to the Spirit of God to demonstrate and bring about God’s redemptive mission in the world. Being open and led by the Spirit involves surrendering our inhibitions, our barriers, our worldviews, our rationality, our fears, our strengths so that we might be yielded vessels for God to do the work of God through us – a people surrendered to God and living in the ways of God in a broken world.

As we are open to the Spirit of God in this way – we will begin to listen and discern what God is doing all around us – and because we are open to being led by the Spirit, we participate in what matters to God, and what matters to God becomes what matters to us. This is what it means to be a Spirit-led missional people of God. May we as the people of God lay ourselves open to be Spirit-open, Spirit-directed, Spirit-infused people.

Vol 1:34 In Journey with the Spirit of God

2010-10-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

These next four weeks will conclude my reflections on Roxburgh’s and Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church, at least for the time being – there are still other chapters in their book. The focus of these four weeks is following the winds of the Spirit.

The authors state that in becoming a missional church, “we are on a journey we can’t control . . . . This is a journey through a new country, a place we have never been before . . . . What we have to do is stop for a bit, gather ourselves, and become attentive to our surroundings. This stopping and suspending the need for answers will help us hear what the Spirit is saying in this new place. . . . It’s not a journey toward some ideal or vision of the church but one of encountering God in the ordinariness and messiness of local churches in this new place” (pp. 115-116).

What this entails is a stopping and waiting on the Spirit of God. When the people of God wandered in the desert during the Exodus, they stopped and moved when the glory of God stopped and when the glory of God got up and moved – their movement was completely dependent upon the moving of God who was with them. Their life was so dependent upon the presence of God – though they often complained, grumbled, and rebelled, that they could not fathom life in any other way – especially in the place of the wilderness for which they had no maps, nor a timeline for reaching the Promised Land. They were now wandering in the desert; this was no longer Egypt where they knew how to live, what they needed to do – though they were enslaved. This freedom they were experiencing in the desert was beyond their ability to grasp without being guided by the presence of the Lord.

Likewise, though we have tried to orchestrate and do church in many ways in our culture, we have to come to a place where we are being called to no longer rely upon our ingenuity and our timelines, rather we need to rediscover what it is to rely on the presence of the Spirit of God who is moving among us.

“We are asked to discern what God is seeking to shape even though all our instincts are to turn back to our default settings to make things work and control the outcomes. . . . [W]e have to let go of our need for manageability, predictability, and control in order to listen to the God from whom new things emerge. This is how the missional life develops. Our choices are between discerning God’s presence or defaulting to predetermined goals, vision statements, and strategies. We need to follow Moses’ example – he had confidence that God was present in the journey even though he had no maps of this strange territory” (p. 118).

I know this is not easy – because it requires a posture of surrendering ourselves to the Spirit of God. Many of us find it difficult to surrender ourselves to something or someone we do not understand or cannot control. It involves surrendering our trust in ourselves, to trusting the presence of God – it indeed involves a metanoia, a change of paradigm, a change of direction, a change of center in our lives, a change of our being in control of what we control – it is a learning to walk in a whole new way – a walking by the Spirit of God.

Do we dare open ourselves up to surrender ourselves to God’s presence, to God’s Spirit – for the Spirit to lead us where the Spirit desires to lead us?

I have discovered, through my own experience, that even in my inability to surrender, as I confess this inability and confess my desire to surrender, that God gives me the ability to surrender to the presence of God’s Spirit. I have discovered that in yielding all that I seek to control in my life to God’s Spirit that I am free to walk in the ways of God like I have never experienced before. Though I am still discovering how to open myself to God’s Spirit, I know there is no turning back for me where I seek to control the direction and outcome of my own life.

May we as the people of God lay ourselves open to be led by God’s Spirit.

Vol 1:33 Called to do Life Together

2010-10-05T13:49:00.000-07:00

Roxburgh and Boren state that the second practice in the church demonstrating that they are sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign is the practice of love (p. 110).
They state that this practice “speaks to the ways a group of people commit to do life together” (p. 110).

As I reflect on this practice of love, I realize that this is one of the more difficult things for us to do in the contemporary church – most of what we do is committing to spend some time together on Sunday mornings or some other evening – be it a small group or ministry setting. But, for us to commit ourselves to one another to do life together – that seems outside of our realm of what is possible.

Years ago I minored in sociology during my university days and I remember the sociologist Weber talking about the differences between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft. Gesellschaft, if I remember correctly, has do with gathering, while Gemeinschaft has to do with community. The first is just a gathering of people for some purpose, but it does not involve a strong commitment. Gemeinschaft, on the other hand, is the kind of gathering of people in which there is a strong commitment to one another over a period of time.

In the USA and Canada we have become comfortable in church life with Gesellschaft – merely gathering together with others for worship, ministry, etc., but when we are done after an hour or two, we are free to head home. We may share prayer needs, even what is going on in our lives, but we do not need to engage one another deeply. But Gemeinschaft requires a whole different paradigm of how we are engaged and connected to one another.

Roxburgh and Boren express, “the life of the missional church cannot be done by a conglomeration of individualists who see each other only at formal meetings [Gesellschaft]. Being missional means that we do life together in a way that marks us as distinct from the surrounding culture [Gemeinschaft]” (p. 110). This commitment to life together is something we need to commit to just as we commit our lives to Jesus Christ. It requires the same kind of repentance, the same kind of discipleship, in order for us to live missionally as the people of God in the world. It is a committing of ourselves to one another in community, for “in community we learn to love one another, and through the journey of learning to love we are formed and shaped by God through the others in a group” (p. 110).

There are those who are seeking to practice such a life of committed community, often described as the new monasticism, along with their Rules of Life (not so much rules, but a set of practices which name how they seek to do life together). It is probably worth looking at such communities and Rules of Life in order to discover the depth of the commitment required to practice love for one another.

I believe this is probably a huge stumbling block in our becoming missional communities – are we willing to give up our individualism, our comforts, our privacy, in order to share life together with others? Are we willing to share our possessions, share meals and home together, sharing in responsibilities? It is not something we can do on our own – for that would put us on the road to becoming coercive communities – no, it, like our following after Jesus, requires the Holy Spirit to take hold of our lives and lead us. Are we willing to consider being the missional people of God, but exploring how we might live in community, in Gemeinschaft together. I know I need to struggle with this.

Vol1:32 Called to be Present in the World

2010-09-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

Roxburgh and Boren state that the first practice in the church demonstrating that they are sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign is the practice of presence (p. 108).

The gist of this practice is that it “highlights the specific things that mark God’s people as those who relate to him in a contrasting way” (p. 108).

As I reflect on presence, I believe that practicing presence is about how those of us who identify ourselves as followers and disciples of Jesus Christ are incarnational in the world – it is about how we live in the world. It is about how we go about in all we do making the presence of God visible in the world. These are not meant to be hidden practices, practices kept for the few behind closed doors; no these practices are meant to be lived out in the presence of those whom we want to reveal the presence of God active in the world, redeeming the world, making all things new.

The unique thing about the God who is I AM is that God desires to reveal himself through those whom God has called and sent. God uses people to reveal himself. God became a human being to reveal himself. God who cannot be fully comprehended by our finite minds, reveals himself through finite human beings.

And so, it is in our living, we either practice the presence of God, or we are practicing the presence of self.

We often make life about ourselves, making a name for ourselves, developing a reputation, a pedigree – I am guilty of this myself. We seek and strive to be somebody in this world – and many of us are indeed successful at this.

But if we confess that we are followers and disciples of Jesus Christ, who do people see when they look at us? Do they only see us, or is somehow Christ made visible in and through us, our actions? Is God made visible through the way we live life in relation to others? Are we revealing God who seeks to set humanity free, or are we revealing ourselves, where often we seek to set ourselves free at the cost of others?

Reflecting on the practice of presence, reminds me that my passion in life is not to make a name for Roland Kuhl, but to participate with others to make a name for God, to reveal God. This is what Jesus came to do – “those who believe in me do not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When they look at me, they see the one who sent me” (John 12: 44-45). Paul also expressed, what expresses my desire as well: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

In seeking to live a life that relates to the God of Creation, the God of the Universe, the one who is I AM, I need to be continually reminded that I am called to live my life in such a way, practicing the presence of God, through worship, through engaging God’s Story and Vision in Scripture, through connecting and listening to God, keeping my life open to God, being available to God for what God desires to do in and through me.

For me, this is not a diminishing of who I am, or what I will be, or the gifts and talents that are in my life – living in the presence of God enables me to discover fully who I was created to be – and only in the presence of God, magnifying God, revealing God, do I deeply discover who I am. I become fully human as I live practicing the presence of God – I do not wish to be marked in any other way, except to be known as a person who is known by God and is growing in knowing God – a God who is “mysterious, wild, [and] relational” (p. 109).

Vol 1:31 Walking in the Rhythms of the Kingdom

2010-09-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

We become aware that in being God’s missional people participating in what God in doing in the world that we are called and sent to live out our lives as a contrast society – revealing a different reality, a different way of being human, one that is informed by being a follower and disciple of Jesus Christ. But how do we become such a society? Where are the maps, the directions, the steps to guide our steps? How are we to walk according to the rhythm of the kingdom of God?

Though many present-day sermons try to give detailed steps or directions about the way we are to live in contrast to the ways of the world, I have discovered that sermons are not the best way for shaping the way we walk and live as the people of God.

Rather, we are shaped by the stories to which we give attention. We become what we read, we become what we hear, we are shaped by stories. I am aware from numerous settings in which I find myself that quite a few of us approach the Bible as if it were unable to shape us – at least positively. We have predetermined notions that it is a book of principles and rules, do’s and don’t’s, moralisms that are outdated. Yet, if these same people would take a closer look, they would see that is very little of this, rather it as a book filled with stories – stories which can grab hold of our imaginations and lives and have the ability to transform us.

Roxburgh and Boren express that, “the gospel invites us to enter an alternative story shaped by the mystery, memory, and mission of God. Theologian Barry Harvey offers a way of seeing the Bible as God’s ‘travel narrative’: ‘The Bible provides nothing like a map that charts the precise path for us to follow into the future. What it does give us is the travel itinerary of God’s people, that is, the story of their pilgrimage as strangers and foreigners through this world toward the kingdom of God. . . . An itinerary, by contrast, consists of a series of performative descriptions designed to organize our movements through space: “to get to the shrine you go past the old fort and then turn right at the fork in the road’” (p. 105).

Further, Roxburgh and Boren state that we “can’t really understand a travel itinerary without actually getting out and walking the path, whereas a map can be comprehended without ever going anywhere” (p. 105). What that means is that we can only become a contrast society, walking in the rhythm of the kingdom, as we start journeying, as we live our lives by the rhythms of the biblical stories, as we engage the story of the Gospel with the story of our unfolding lives.

Living biblically is not so much living by the rules of the Bible, but being open to the stories of the Bible to shape our living, inform our stories, so that the rhythm of our lives imitates the rhythm of Scripture.

Walter Brueggemann describes the Psalms as an ongoing rhythm of being oriented, disoriented, and reoriented (cf. Spirituality of the Psalms). As we engage the story of the Gospel we are oriented to the rhythms of God, and when we, as we do, digress from these rhythms by living for ourselves, being uncompassionate to our neighbors, we experience disorientation – no longer in step with the rhythms of God, and so we are called to refocus, repent, reframe our lives in order to be reoriented to the rhythm of God’s reign once again in our lives.

Living in this way, we walk with a different cadence in society; we become a contrast society. It is living being mindful of God’s Story and Vision found in the biblical narrative, being shaped by its stories, its rhythms. When we see the Bible as something we only refer to on Sundays, we will never discover the rhythms and stories that are meant to shape our lives – the Bible will only remain a book filled with religious information, rather than becoming an itinerary to guide our journeying.

As the Bible, its stories, its people, the Gospel of Jesus, the letters of Paul, etc., begin to find their way into our imaginations, then we will find ourselves walking and living in the rhythms of God’s reign, and in so doing, we are sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s passion for the wholeness of all humanity and creation.

Vol 1:30 What Are We Saved For?

2010-09-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

I was talking with friends this past week about their son applying to different colleges. One of these happened to be a Christian college and in the application the question was asked, “Are you saved?” We talked about this for awhile regarding what kind of assumptions such a question was making; whether it was a question to alert the applicant to the environment at the college, or to alert the college as to the status of the potential enrollee?

But being missional involves the question of salvation, but maybe not in the way we are accustomed. Roxburgh and Boren express that, “we have lost the call to a salvation that not only saves us from sin but saves us for life the way God meant us to live in the first place” (p. 103). What are we saved for is indeed an important question and perhaps the kind of question that would make better sense on a Christian college application – because it says more about a person’s purpose and mission in life than merely asking if one is saved.

Lesslie Newbigin wrote that we often misunderstand the concept of election. Those who follow Jesus are the elect, but he notes, not in the way we think. We often tend to think of election and salvation as set us apart, perhaps even in a privileged way – but salvation and election in light of God’s mission is a call to participate with God in what God is accomplishing in making all things new. To be elect in this sense is a call, not to sit back and enjoy the privileges, but rather a call to minister as Christ Jesus did, often encountering hardship and opposition, in demonstrating the presence of God’s reign here on earth.

Roxburgh and Boren continue: “As a result, we don’t usually conceive of salvation as being a process of becoming God’s people who practice the way of life that he intended in the midst of the mess of the world” (p. 103). Indeed, being saved carries with it an onus, an onus of being part of what God is up to in the world, demonstrating a different reality, demonstrating a different way of being human, demonstrating a different way of dealing with institutions, with society, with culture – being saved in God’s mind is always being saved for God’s purposes, for participating with what God is bringing about and accomplishing.

A former pastor of one of the congregations I have served had the practice of asking those who were becoming members of the church, for what purpose they were becoming part of the community, what were they bringing into the community?. For him membership did not entail numerous benefits, but rather a call to serve, a call to act, a call to participate in what God was doing with the passions and gifts the Spirit of God bestowed upon them. He was asking, “what are you saved for?”

In being missional people, people set apart for God’s purposes, we need to get in the habit of asking ourselves and others, “what are we saved for?” As we try to answer that question, we will become more open to discovering what God is up to all around us, and how God has called and gifted us to participate in demonstrating what it means to be human in a very different way.

Vol 1:29 Aligning Ourselves to God's Dream

2010-09-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

What is your vision of God? For many of us our vision of God is too small, or even too aloof. We live in ways which reveal that we are unaware that God has a dream for the world, that God has hope for the way the world can once again be. We live as if God is around, but not near – God is really not involved in the life of the world.

Roxburgh and Boren, in Introducing the Missional Church express that: “God’s dream for the world is about redemption of all creation, not just individuals getting into heaven; it is about the restoration of life as God intended it to be; it is about realigning life around God and God’s ways” (pp. 101-102).

God is involved in the life of the world. God is involved in the lives of each human being (cf. John 3: 16-17). God’s hope, God’s passion, God’s desire is for all humanity and for all creation to be made new, restored to a wholeness, a shalom that is rooted in the very heart of God.

And where do we see this dream of God’s being demonstrated?

In the most unexpected place!

God has called and continues to call a people to be the sign of God’s dream for the world. Indeed, we are a broken and imperfect people, all humanity is. We are a people who are “jars of clay” (cf. 2 Corinthians 4: 7ff), vessels in whom God chooses to be present. God chooses to use that which is weak to reveal what restored life can become. It would seem that if God had sat in any of the numerous leadership seminars offered over the past 25 years, that God would have come up with a better plan, but God chooses to enact God’s dream through a broken people, who are developing ears to hear, opening eyes to see, hearts that are open to discover and understand, lives that are willing to be shaped and transformed, in order to demonstrate how God intends human beings to relate to one another.

The question becomes whether we seek to continue living in ways we think are best or whether we are open to being realigned by the Spirit of God to be the sign of God’s dream for the world demonstrating a different reality in being human. Living life with God is all about reorientation.

When we arise each morning – do we seek to live our own lives, seeking our own purposes, seeking our own ends, or are we willing to be part of a larger dream for humanity – a dream that continually challenges us to become human in ways we have never perceived, becoming more humane, becoming more compassionate, becoming more loving, merciful, faithful, courageous, hopeful – becoming complete human beings.

If the latter, then our life will be one of continual reorientation – a continually orienting ourselves to Jesus Christ (who is the embodiment of God, God who came to dwell among us), a continually embracing of Jesus Christ, a continually openness to the Spirit of God, of Christ, because in so doing, in our becoming like Jesus, we become a people demonstrating what it is to be truly human. This involves a purposeful aligning ourselves to God and the ways of God as revealed in Jesus Christ – it involves an aligning of ourselves to the Story and Vision of God (which we will explore more in detail next week).

Dare we align ourselves with God’s dream for humanity by opening our lives to being a sign of God’s dream?

Vol 1:28 Gossiping About the Gospel

2010-08-31T09:25:00.000-07:00

Reflections on Roxburgh and Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church (Baker, 2009).

Often Jesus’ kingdom-talk involved table talk. There is a rich theology of table in the New Testament. At table not only was food shared, but life was shared as well. When Jesus ate at with Matthew and his friends in his home, or at Zacchaeus’ home, or the numerous other times Jesus ate a meal with others, this was more than the intaking of nourishment, these became places in which life was shared, good news was shared. At table, when we really sit down at table enjoying the company of others over food, stories are shared, prayers are shared, fears and hopes are expressed – life is shared. In our fast-food world, we don’t take much time at table, sometimes we even eat in our cars as we rush from one place to the next.

As Roxburgh and Boren express:
“We think the New Testament has a whole lot to do with how people were trying to work out the meaning of God’s big story in the midst of all the local issues, tastes, and sounds of their neighborhoods and communities rather than principles and absolute propositions for all times and places. They understood themselves as sent to ‘gossip’ and communicate the Good News of Jesus in the midst of their neighborhoods and communities” (p. 97).

They go on:
“The New Testament is about ordinary men and women waking up to their neighborhoods and figuring out how to be the kind of cooks who set the gospel table using local ingredients” (p. 97).

There is a movement going on that is opposite to fast-food, its slow food – and I believe slow food gives us the opportunity to sit down with friends in local places over food, drinks, and conversation and begin to gossip about the Gospel. Sharing Jesus is not about sharing our religious points of view, entering into religious debate, rather it is sharing the life that we all crave, life that is a gift given by God to all those created in God’s image, life that is offered by God who has pitched his tent among us. Such conversations are not rehearsed, do not follow a script, but grow out of the stories of life shared around table.

I like to hang out in what Ray Oldenburg calls third places. These are places in local settings (cafés, pubs, coffee shops) where people hang out to connect, to unwind, to engage with and be enriched by others in their community (there are less and less of such places around). As I hang out in such places – primarily coffee shops for me – I begin to engage others in conversations, conversations where we talk about what is going on in our lives, conversations in which we share our days, our dreams, our struggles, our joys, our needs – and in the midst of such conversations I discover that my sharing is not just about me – but because the Gospel of the kingdom has taken hold of me – I also gossip about the kingdom, about life, about Jesus. All this happens at table, mixing gospel with local ingredients in order to share the life that God desires for all of us to embrace.

In our hectic-paced world, I invite you to slow down enough to be at table with others in your community – and as you do, you will discover that you will gossip about the Gospel as well.

Vol 1:27 Listening for the Spirit - part 2 (being incarnational)

2010-08-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

[Continuing reflections on Roxburgh and Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church (Baker, 2009).]

Stopping to listen is an incarnational activity. This past week I was asked by a person in the church I serve what I meant by “incarnational” stating that many in the congregation are not quite sure what I mean by that term when I use it. Though I thought I explained what I mean by this term, apparently it has not been clear enough.

When Jesus as God became a human being, God was incarnated or enfleshed in human flesh – God became a human being! God did not just “seem” human, but God actually became human.

John expresses this in John 1:14 – “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” Actually the phrase that John uses is the Word who became flesh pitched his tent among us. Pitching his tent among us is to say that God in Jesus came to live among us in the same way that we live with one another. God did not come and establish a mansion in our midst (to segregate himself from us), he came and pitched his tent, built a bungalow in our midst – to live like us, among us, to feel what we feel, to experience what we experience – God became one of us. And as one of us, God in Jesus living among us, spoke our language, embraced our customs and culture, and in the midst of embracing all that makes us human, engaged us in such a way so as to set us free – giving hope, healing, salvation (shalom and wholeness) to all who would open their lives to Christ.

Therefore, when we are incarnational, we are to be like Jesus Christ in the world – pitching our tents among those God has sent us to live among. We are not to be aloof, not to be superior, but we are called and sent to live among them like them. For us to become incarnational is to live in the same manner to those to whom we have been sent to represent the present and coming reign of God.

And as we began to focus on last week – this involves listening for the Spirit. Roxburgh and Boren relate that such listening has two parts (we’ll focus on the second part next week). “First, the church becomes attentive to what is happening through direct involvement with people in [their] location. The best way to do this is by entering the neighborhood and hanging out with people, joining community organizations, connecting with people across the street or at the local coffee shop, and taking walks and initiating conversations – doing a thousand little human things that make life rich” (p. 88).

This is the essence of being incarnational in which we are open to listen for the Spirit. The church in being incarnational is more than being able to confess the right doctrine, or offering a meaningful worship service; the church in being incarnational is evidenced by how we live within our communities where we pay our mortgages or our rent. We are the incarnational church of Jesus Christ when we engage the people all around us – and in developing relationships, real relationships with them, we are able through our living, our speech, our acts of kindness and compassion to represent the presence of Jesus Christ – who is the hope of the world, who alone can set humanity free from all that binds and enslaves us.

Being incarnational is more than holding to a theology of incarnation, it is living the way Jesus lived in the world – “pitching [our] tent in the community, gathering friends, praying with people, and asking what God wanted to do” (p. 88). It is about being present to those we connect with in our lives and neighborhoods demonstrating, in our connecting with them, a different way of being human that comes only through being in relationship with God through Jesus Christ and being wide open to God’s rule and reign in our lives.

Vol 1:26 Listening for the Spirit: Continuing Reflections on Introducing the Missional Church

2010-08-19T05:59:00.000-07:00

These are continuing reflections on Roxburgh and Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church (Baker, 2009).

In focusing on moving back into the neighborhood (MBiN), one of the key insights that the authors share is that we need to “stop to listen” (p. 86). Unless we “stop to listen” our ears, eyes and hearts will be filled with our own agendas and we will miss out what is going on around us and noticing what the Spirit is up to in peoples’ lives.

Roxburgh and Boren express the importance of “stop to listen” as follows:

“One of the first things a missionary to our own culture does is stop to listen to and enter into the stories of the people in order to understand how the culture actually functions. He or she reads books, listens to and watches the local media, as well as looks at trends, priorities, and so forth. But to be perfectly honest, the real work involves sitting with people, listening to their stories, and entering their world with an open mind and heart – not bringing predetermined decisions and goals to the table. If we come to sit with them in this way, we replicate what John describes in his Gospel: Jesus came to pitch his tent beside ours (John 1:14). When we do this, we will be able to hear what is happening and discern what the Spirit is up to; we will read people through God’s lenses and see what he want to turn these people into” (p. 86).

This addresses how we are to be in the world as followers and disciples of Jesus Christ – in reality it is not about us. In one of the courses I teach, after a number of weeks, a student raised her hand and asked, “let me see if I got this right – it’s not about us – is that right?” She got it – and so must we if we are to participate with God in God’s redemptive mission.

If we make it about us, our focus is upon ourselves, our needs, “what am I to get out of this?” – our ears and eyes are attuned to our agendas and needs. Yes, we are people who have needs, but I have discovered that the best way to be the people of God caring for one another is not through focusing upon ourselves, but by attuning ourselves to what the Spirit is saying and doing amongst us and all around us. It is in living our lives in partnership with God and God’s mission that we begin to sense how the power of God flows into us and through us as we are incarnational amongst those with whom God is seeking to connect. It is amazing how such an outward , stopping to listen outlook refocuses how I think about my needs and my agenda.

We are a people called and set apart to participate with Christ Jesus in being incarnational in the world – to pitch our tent besides others in order to discover not only what the Spirit is up to, but how we can be a part of what the Spirit is up to. In this way, the creativity is the Spirit’s as we discover new ministry opportunities and possibilities because as we stop to listen to the stories and lives of people we will become more than aware of how the Spirit is leading us to respond. This is how true ministry develops.

I am discovering that this is the best way and only way for living out my discipleship. I wish I had learned to live in this way 20 or 30 years ago. I do not want to live in any other way but to be open to where the Spirit of God leads as I attune myself to what the Spirit is saying and doing by stopping to listen to the people I have been placed among. And as I attune myself to the actions of the Spirit I am discovering that I am growing spiritually, becoming more and more like Christ. All I can say is Praise God!

Vol 1:25 Place Spirituality: Continuing Reflections on Introducting the Missional Church

2010-07-27T08:21:00.001-07:00

These are continuing reflections on Roxburgh and Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church (Baker, 2009).

Much of Alan’s recent work has been a focus on moving back into the neighborhood (MBiN) – and I am particularly intrigued by the insights shared in this book. One such insight is place spirituality.

Contrasted are space spirituality and place spirituality. Of space spirituality, Alan and Scott express: “We have been shaped by a space spirituality that is founded in the rootlessness of modernity and postmodernity. In that worldview, mobility and anonymity are essential so that individuals can recreate themselves in empty space without accountability or authority. In space spirituality there is little need to recognize anything concrete or historical. In this space we can have private, individualistic experiences with God, and the church’s primary job is to promote such experiences. . . . With space spirituality there is little need to understand our context” (p. 78).

It is obvious that there is nothing incarnational about this because we are simply living out our lives in a space, but not becoming connected to the place we are in. To understand Jesus and his incarnation – because God came in Jesus Christ to dwell among us, to set up his tent among us, to live rubbing shoulders, lives with us – we need to begin to understand the significance of place spirituality.

The authors continue: “Place spirituality, on the other hand, helps us recognize that we live in a territory that is full of history, meaning, heartache, and joy. Jesus was incarnate in a concrete time and place in history; he was not an abstract, cultureless being in some kind of spiritual space. And today the Spirit is leading the church back into the neighborhood, into concrete territories to recognize what God is doing there” (p. 78).

This place spirituality reframes how we think about ourselves as church. Church is more than our gathering on Sundays in a particular space – whether we own or rent the facilities in which we worship. Rather, we are called to be a people gathered in a particular place where we live out our following Christ, living as sign, foretaste and instrument of God’s present and coming reign. As such a gathered people, it is not just about our gathering for worship, but we are gathered to encourage and support one another in living in a particular place to see what God sees, to see what God is up to, to hear what God is saying – and the only way we can do that is to engage in the life of the place where we have been sent to be an incarnational community.

We have got to get away from merely thinking about our place in the world, and begin to discover why the Spirit of God has placed us where we have been placed.

It is not about us, but rather it is about being the people of God in a particular place to reveal the purposes and presence of God, to live out the will of God in the midst of the brokenness of our communities – by being in relationship with people, families, colleagues, political, educational, and economic structures – so that by our living and interacting we make visible the presence of God’s reign. Our living in relation with others as disciples of Jesus Christ is not to point to ourselves, but to make real the hope of true peace and true life that only comes through the working of God in the world. It is because God chooses to work through a people called to participate with God’s actions in the world – that we are called to indwell places, to become integrated with places, to know the people living in these places, namely a place spirituality.

Let us challenge ourselves to be open to the power of the Spirit in us – to live within a place spirituality!

Next Week: I am taking a break for a couple of weeks while I go camping with my nephews in northern Wisconsin.

Vol 1:24 Continuing Reflections on Introducing the Missional Church: Developing a Missional Awareness

2010-07-20T08:48:00.001-07:00

These are continuing reflections on Roxburgh and Boren’s excellent fresh reintroduction of missional church in Introducing the Missional Church (Baker, 2009).

Being missional is all about reimagining life in relation to the ongoing presence and activity of God in the world. Many of us who are in the church manage to talk about life experiences in ways which may cause listeners to wonder to what extent God is integrated within our lives. It is not that we have to use theological language, but it does mean we need to be theological aware that God is active all around us – and so how we view life must somehow engage language which gives expression to our awareness of God being active in mission and our participating with God.

In the opening section of chapter 4, Alan and Scott reflect upon what several church leaders were experiencing in experimenting Missionally: “. . . they were telling stories of engaging people in their neighborhoods. They talked about listening to the ways God was already at work in their communities. They shared about inviting neighbors over for meals and talking together about life with new friends around them. They had discovered that missional wasn’t about a new program or project inside the church but entering their community to sit alongside others and engage in gospel conversations. It was changing the ways they were being the church” (p. 65).

I share this quotation in part to ask how much of our lives and experiences are shaped by seeing what God sees, or seeing and hearing where God is acting and speaking. This is an awareness that we develop, an awareness in which we depend upon the Spirit of God to develop within us – otherwise we will probably go through life living, looking, and experiencing largely with our own eyes and ears.

The joy of being part of what God is up to in the world, is not only about hearing and responding to God’s call; it’s also about being transformed by the Spirit of God to our seeing where Jesus is in the world and our being like Jesus in the world. Spirituality today is often about us and our experiences, but our participating with God is not so much about us as it is our being in partnership with God in bringing about what God is doing in the world to make all things and all people new.

I am reminded of Mother Teresa’s advice to the novice sisters who came to Calcutta to minister alongside her. She said that if they were there only to help people they would not last long – rather what makes the difference is seeing Jesus in people. It is about seeing Jesus who is suffering, Jesus who is living in the gutter – and seeing Jesus is what kept Mother Teresa doing what she did – because she was more than caring for people, she was caring for Jesus.

As we develop awareness – an inner language – of seeing what God sees, of seeing God active in the world, we too will begin seeing our lives, our circumstances and experiences, seeing people all around us as Jesus living in our midst. Seeing Jesus engaging the lives of people all around us can only change the whole way we live because we become like Jesus in ministering to all those to whom the Spirit leads us.

Do we dare live in light of seeing what God sees?

Vol 1:23 Continuing Reflection on Introducing the Missional Church: Stepping Out into the Neighborhood

2010-07-13T10:32:00.000-07:00

These are continuing reflections on Roxburgh and Boren’s excellent fresh reintroduction of missional church in Introducing the Missional Church (Baker, 2009).

Over the past number of weeks my reflections were on mystery, memory, and mission. Today, I move on reflection on the next chapter of Does Missional Fit?

Being missional is being about having our imagination being inspired by the Spirit of God – to have new eyes, ears, and hearts to notice what God notices, and to catch glimpse of what God is already doing all around us in the neighborhoods in which we live.

Alan and Scott express that: “A new imagination is being formed within [missional] people. They realize that simply calling something missional is not the point. They know that it is much more than church planting or some form of house church. They have opened themselves up and ventured out on an experimental journey into their neighborhoods to see what God is up to in this world” (p. 53).

I have experienced the adventure of discovering what God is up to in my neighborhood by walking around my neighborhood, by connecting with my neighbors, by hanging out in what Ray Oldenburg calls third places (places where people in the community hang out and connect). Discovering what God is up to in our neighborhoods is about our becoming neighbors to our neighbors, taking a real interest in them as people – not as “targets” we are attempting to get into our churches. By having a conversation over coffee in a local coffee shop, talking about what we are reading or what’s going on in our lives, by talking with a neighbor over the fence or in the grocery store, by walking my neighborhood with my dog Dakota, praying for my neighbors, stopping to say hi and see how they are doing – is all part of being open, having ears and eyes and hearts open to what God is up to in their lives. And as we begin to discern what God is doing in them, we begin to discover how God might want to use us to be a part of what God is doing in their lives.

This kind of approach does not seem all that driven – at times it seems downright slow, but by all means it is intentional in having ears and eyes that seek to hear and see what God is up to. Being missional is being aware that God’s Spirit is already at work – Spirit work to which we add our prayers, Spirit work to which we add our lives, Spirit work to which we add our voices.

One of the greatest things I am discovering in being missional in this way is that the Spirit fills me, a guy who is basically shy and somewhat reserved (some conclude that this is due to my Canadian heritage), with courage to be open to notice what God is up to in my neighbors’ lives – and with this courage, I begin to speak not just about me and them, but what God is up to in their lives, their situations – and what is amazing is that I am not the first voice, but add my voice to what the Spirit is already speaking in them. What is amazing is that I do not have to “make” an openness to God happen – the Spirit of God has already gone ahead of me to open lives to the working of God in them – I become one who gets to participate with what God is already doing by being the hands and feet of the Spirit, by “incarnating,” if you will, the presence of the Spirit.

Why would I want to minister in any other way?

Vol 1:22 Continuing Reflections on Introducing the Missional Church: Rediscovering our Missional Calling

2010-06-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

In Roxburgh and Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church (Baker, 2009) the metaphor of the missional life is expressed through being a “missional river.” The currents of this river are described as involving mystery, memory, and mission (p. 39).

Over the past two weeks my reflections were on mystery, and memory; today I focus upon mission.

Mission focuses upon making clear what our role is within the world as the church of Jesus Christ. Just as Abraham and Israel were called for the sake of the world – which means that God reveals and demonstrates God’s purpose for reconciling humanity and restoring the world through those whom God calls, likewise God has called the church “to be the demonstration of what all creation is to be” (p. 45).

This is a reframing of how we understand church, how we understand ourselves in relation to church. As North Americans much of our religious experience, much of our church life has been around self actualization. Spirituality is defined and experienced as what heals us as we do the inner work of becoming whole. “The church in North America to a large extent has lost this [missional] memory to the point that mission is but a single element in multifaceted, programmatic congregations serving the needs of its members. The gospel is now a religious message that meets the needs of self-actualizing individuals” (p. 45).

Though healing work is important work, it is not our primary calling or work. Roxburgh and Boren state that, “there is no participation in Christ without participation in God’s mission in the world” (p. 45). I agree with this statement – we are called first and foremost to participate with God in accomplishing the redemptive purpose of God in the world (and somehow in the midst of this giving of ourselves to God the Spirit brings healing to us as a gift, which we receive as a gift). The church’s calling is to be “God’s missionary people” (p. 45).

In coming to understand this, we come face to face with the Gospel which confronts our tendency to make God about us, rather than our being involved in life and ministry for God.

On numerous occasions Jesus declared that to follow him involves denying self, taking up the cross (dying) and following after him (cf. Matthew 16: 24ff, Mark 8: 34ff, Luke 9: 23ff). Being baptized – by either water or the Spirit, is not about becoming privileged, or aligned with the powers of the world, but dying with Christ, being raised with Christ, in order to live to God (cf. Romans 6: 5ff).

Unless we get this, unless we understand this, being Christian, living out the Gospel is always going to be about us, our self-actualization. God is merely an aspect of our life, but not the center or all of our life. But if I respond to God’s call – it is a giving of all who I am to God; all of who I am is placed at God’s disposal for God to do in me, through me, whatever God desires to do with my life. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me (cf. Galatians 2:20).

If this cost is too great (cf. Luke 9: 57ff), then perhaps we need to reevaluate to what extent we can call ourselves followers and disciples of Jesus Christ. If God has a convenient place in our lives, rather than all of life being centered in God, then we may be religious folk, but we are not God’s people participating with God in making all things new.

I know we mess up more than we want to in life, and we do not always live exemplifying the purposes of God as God’s people, but is it our confession to be God’s people, a people who participate with God in living out God’s mission, to seek to be centered in God, to seek to love our neighbors as Christ loves us, to recognize we do not do this well alone but we need the Spirit of God to take hold of our lives? I pray that we who call ourselves Christian indeed do identify and center ourselves with and in Jesus Christ – in being rooted in Christ, only in this way are we empowered to be the people of God, accomplishing with God, God’s purpose for the redemption of the world.

Vol 1: 21 Continuing Reflection on Introducing the Missional Church: The Place of Memory in Shaping us as God's People

2010-06-22T08:09:00.000-07:00

Roxburgh and Boren’s in Introducing the Missional Church (Baker, 2009) express the metaphor of the missional life as being a “missional river.” The currents of this river are described as involving mystery, memory, and mission (p. 39).

Last week, I focused my reflections on mystery, today on memory.

Memory has to do with what shapes us as God’s people in present day. In remembering God and God’s Story, in that God is missional, we are shaped in being a missional people. The authors express that memory in Scripture is different than our understanding today. Today, memory or remembering has to do with reminiscing, but in the biblical narratives, memory and remembering had everything to do with living as the missional people of God.

Roxburgh and Boren express:

“The biblical narratives present a radically different understanding of memory. The memory of God’s choosing and acting is never confined to the past; it lives in the present and shapes the future. It is the reliving and reenacting of past events in the present because these events continue to have power and are the primary shapers of life.
The Feast of the Passover is an example. It relives and celebrates the first Passover, and in so doing it continually re-forms the people of God, giving them their present identity. This is why the language of remembering and forgetting is so prevalent in the Old Testament; to forget is to cease to be who you are as a people” (p. 43).

Another example is the Lord’s Supper – Jesus declared whenever we participate in communion that it is to be in terms of memory – not just remembering a past event, but in Jesus establishing a new covenant rooted in his life, death, and resurrection, we too are shaped to be the people of God as we are reminded of who we are when we partake of the bread and the cup.

We read Scripture, then, not so much to get information, but to remember the acts of God in human history so that we might be shaped to be the people of God. We participate with the cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 11 – because their lives and their stories of encountering God and God encountering them, shapes our being open to God encountering us and we encountering God. We immerse ourselves in the narratives of Scripture to be shaped to live as God’s missional people.

Therefore, we need to develop practices of memory by engaging Scripture. Whether we engage Scripture individually, corporately, through quiet prayer or through a corporate discernment, we engage Scripture in order to be shaped as God’s people. For this reason, we need to pray for a new vision of Scripture in our lives. For many, it has become a “dead” book, retelling of past events. But the writer of Hebrews tells us that Scripture is living and dynamic – it has the power to create and shape us as the people of God – it enlivens and enriches our memory, our remembering of who we are created to be, who we are gathered together to be as a community of Christ in this world.

Question for Response:
In what ways do you open yourself to Scripture so that the Spirit of God through it can create new life in you, shape you within community to be a person rooted in Christ, focused on living within God’s missional purpose?

Share these with one another – help each of us remember how we are being shaped.

Vol 1:20 Continuing Reflection on Introducing the Missional Church: The Mystery of God's Choosing

2010-06-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

As I continue to read and reflect on Roxburgh and Boren’s book Introducing the Missional Church (Baker, 2009), I find that I appreciate the metaphor of the missional life being a “missional river.” The currents of this river is described as involving mystery, memory, and mission (p. 39).

Stated is that “entering the missional waters is not about strategies or models; it is about working with the currents that shape our imagination of what God is doing in the world” (p. 39). In focusing on mystery, it becomes clear that in our rationalistic way of trying to understand the world, understand God, in order to make sense for us these things that are beyond our full understanding, that we are often uncomfortable with mystery.

Both in the Old Testament and the New, Israel’s existence and those who made up the early church – even those who make up the church today, cannot be explained by “human action or preference.” The mystery that we are called to immerse ourselves in is that God is a choosing and acting God – God chose Israel, God in Christ chose the first disciples, and God through the present working of the Holy Spirit draws people into living relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The rhyme or reason for this choosing is in God and not dependent upon our actions or status – God is the one who chooses, and as Roxburgh and Boren state, “the mystery is that God has chosen to act, and we cannot and will not find any explanation beyond his choosing and acting” (p. 42).

The purpose, however, for the mystery of God’s choosing is not to make us more privileged or more favored than others in the world – but rather, and this is key, we are “chosen by God to represent him for the sake of the world” (p. 42). I am reminded of a line in The Fiddler on the Roof, where Tevye remarks to God, in the midst of the struggle and suffering associated with being God’s people, that he had enough with the “blessing of being chosen” and wondered if God might choose another people for a while.

Though there is blessing in being chosen, being chosen to represent God for the sake of the world can often make life more difficult for us because we are called to give voice, act, and in all that we are and do to demonstrate what it is to be a people living under the reign of God. Living as God’s people is not about being more successful than others as it is about being a people who demonstrate what human life looks like when it is lived under God’s rule – no matter whether we experience worldly success or not. It is not about “become a Christian and have everything become marvelous in your life,” it is about being a people who live out the new reality of being human in a very different kind of way – being human in the ways of God.

In this sense, this makes “church shopping” obsolete, because church shopping is about our choosing. Yet, to live as God’s people, we need to recognize the mystery of God calling and choosing us so that we might live demonstrating God’s purposes in the world, rather than our own. As Roxburgh and Boren state: “Those called into the church did not choose to join a voluntary society; they are called and chosen by God. They are called to be a sign, witness, and foretaste of God’s [present and] coming kingdom. To participate in the missional journey is to embrace this mystery [of being chosen] and allow this reality to overwhelm and supersede the pressing matters of being a successful church or growing the church, which seems to dominate our imagination” (p. 42).

Simply put, the mystery is this: We are chosen to accomplish the purpose of God and to demonstrate human life that is shaped by God’s reign; it is not about our success, it is about God’s redemptive purpose, God’s redemptive mission being accomplished in which we are called and chosen to participate through Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And one last point – our living as ones called by God is not for the purpose of dividing or separating us from others, or for us to see ourselves as more right than others, but rather to give evidence through our living under God’s rule, of God’s desire to call all people into relationship with him in order for all to be re-created into a new humanity.

Next week: Continuing Reflections on Introducing the Missional Church

Vol 1:19 Further Reflections on "Introducing the Missional Church": Missional Imagination and Scripture

2010-06-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back I mentioned that I was reading Roxburgh and Boren’s book Introducing the Missional Church (Baker, 2009). Well I have gotten deeper into it and it worth some time reflecting on it further.

The back end of the book focuses on the missional change model which Alan introduced with Fred Romanuk in The Missional Leader (Jossey-Bass, 2006), but with added insight and clarity.
However, I would like to offer a few short reflections over the next few weeks – beginning from the first parts of the book. As I mentioned I am asking my Church Board to read through and discuss this book as part of our discerning what it for us as a community to be missional. One of the key areas that Alan and Scott Boren lead us to grasp is that being missional is not so much about defining and categorizing as it is being open to be led by the Spirit in developing our missional imagination.

Just as the kingdom or reign of God cannot be defined, but imagined, so to being missional is more about imagining than it is about developing strategies and models for us to follow. It is amazing that Jesus taught about the kingdom of God in parables, helping hearers to grasp “pictures” of the kingdom – pictures stay with us longer than words. Likewise, being missional is about getting into the flow of the Spirit, or the missional river as Roxburgh and Boren put it, which open us up to God, to see what God sees, and to see what God is doing and saying in the neighborhoods around where we live and worship.

Developing our missional imagination is a journey in which we begin to visualize the way God moves in our world in the presence of the Spirit – if we set aside our agendas and open ourselves to be captured by the redemptive activity of God in the world. Scripture has a foundational role in developing our missional imagination. Listen to what they express:

“Scripture does not so much define reality as invite us onto a journey in which we discover the world God is creating. This can make us restless and confused. If we persist on this journey into the strange world of the Bible, it will form our imaginations in radically new ways; it will change how we see the world. This happened to the Hebrew people when they were called out of Egypt. Its meaning and shape had to be discovered along the way. They may have thought it would be a simple matter of tracing a well-traveled line on a map and getting to the Promised Land, but God had different things in mind. In the desert God shaped a people with an imagination that couldn’t be taught or defined in Egypt” (p. 39).

Indeed we need a new understanding of Scripture as Alan and Scott describe. Too often we see Scripture as only being prescriptive, a book of what to do, stories that do not connect with our own lives, unless we do the difficult work of applying it to ourselves (which we are not all that eager to do at times). Yet, in seeing Scripture as God’s Story and Vision, of God’s interaction with a people through which God chose to demonstrate a new way of being human in the world, we begin to discover in these relationships, encounters, struggles, a way of being open to God who is able to create new life in the midst of all that is dying and dead – enabling our imagination to be ignited and shaped, enabling us to see visions and dream dreams (cf. Act 2) of new ways of being human and humane in the 21st century. Scripture is more than a book to be studied, it is to open our hearts, ears, eyes, our lives to the re-creating, making new, presence of God in the world – a way of hearing and seeing that comes through the imagination more than it does our senses.

No matter how much we desire God in our lives, little of this desire will become reality unless we become a people who immerse ourselves in the Story and Vision of God (i.e., the Scriptures, the Bible). In immersing ourselves in Scripture, we are shaped by the Spirit of God to see not only more of God with our imagination, but we begin to be set free to imagine and to live into that imagination of what God is doing in re-creating humanity and the world. Also, we discover how we are being shaped and called by God to be an integral part of incarnating our Spirit-immersed imagination in ways which reorient the world in the way of shalom (peace, wholeness). Perhaps an ongoing prayer for our being open for our imagination to be shaped by the Spirit of God is pray for a passion to be immersed in the Bible – for it to transform our imaginations and the living out of that imagination in our lives.

Next week: Continuing Reflections on Introducing the Missional Church

Vol 1:18 Being Missional in Preaching: Some Ways I am Trying to be Interactive

2010-06-01T05:23:00.000-07:00

For a number of weeks now I have been experimenting with a different approach to preaching – an approach which is more interactive. It has led me to trust the leading of the Spirit more, especially in the midst of preaching because not all the notes I prepared (which I have whittled down to two pages – since I do not want to be glued to my notes) get used in what I have to convey, rather what is communicated from the congregation in the midst of this interaction shapes much of where the message goes.

So I am in the midst of being retrained in how I preach, as is the congregation – the congregation is becoming more open to becoming active participants rather than listening spectators. Here are some things I am learning or ways I am trying to be interactive.

1. I still spend much time in preparation. I read and reflect on the passages that shape the message that I am sensing the Spirit of God wants us to engage on a particular Sunday. I should let you know that my practice of preparation involves about 3 weeks. The first week, which is about 3 weeks in advance of the Sunday this message will be focused upon, I read through the Scriptures, do some exegesis, and I attempt to see what comes to the fore of my mind and heart as I meditate on these passages. The second week – about 2 weeks in advance, I prepare an outline, interact with other authors, ideas, engage in dialogue with others on the theme, etc. The third week – in preparation for the coming Sunday, I write out what I want to focus upon – in a two page format (landscape, front and back).

2. I try to focus on only one point now – the one thing I believe the Spirit of God wants us as a community to focus upon. This one point usually grows out of one particular passage, which in turn becomes the main focal passage. I have discovered that focusing on one concept, one idea, enables participants to grasp hold of it much easier and integrate it with their lives – which after all is what we are hoping that engaging God’s word together effects.

3. In having one focus, I seek to try to get at it from more than one perspective, realizing that different persons in the congregation may connect with one out of two or three perspectives, or help reinforce what is being expressed and discussed for others.

4. This kind of approach is very dependent upon the congregation coming prepared for the Scripture engagement on Sunday morning – which we are still in process of forming as a habit. I develop an Interactive Discussion Guide, which gets emailed to the congregation on Wednesdays, and is reproduced in the bulletin on Sundays for those who have not yet prepared or need to be refreshed on the theme for the day. I include the primary passages, the focal passage, a quotation for reflection, and 3 or 4 questions to guide their reflecting upon and engaging the text.

5. On Sunday mornings, during the time in which we plan on interacting with the text together, I pull up a bar stool and sit down in front of the congregation so that we are more face to face for a conversation. I begin with introducing the theme with a thought or two to get us focused on the one thing we are planning to engage that morning.

6. This focusing is usually followed up with a question which encourages the congregation to begin to voice their perspective on the theme. This may involve people expressing their thoughts out loud, or I have even used a 3-4 minute small group discussion and then have different groups share what they were talking about.

7. At this point, I pick up a particular direction I sense the dialogue is heading and incorporate what has been expressed into what I have prepared ahead of time. Most of the time I notice that I neglect to present about one-third to one-half of what I prepared in order to engage the dialogue the way it has been expressed. I still keep the focus on the primary point, but the congregation’s involvement raises new perspectives and questions which help reshape the way I was planning on presenting the message.

8. Usually, at some point, after the main point has been addressed, I ask the congregation to reflect upon how this might shape their living – and this begins another round of interaction. I realize that I need to give time for people to speak – you need to be comfortable with a minute or so of silence as people try to formulate their reflections in order to speak. There is also the fact that some are getting up the courage to speak out loud – depending on what I am noticing in terms of body language, etc., I may ask someone what is on their mind to assist in giving someone the courage to speak.

9. After this time of interaction, I try to summarize and remake the main focus of the morning as it has been shaped by the congregation’s engagement. This is almost always something I have not prepared, but grows out of what the Spirit of God has been doing in our midst as we have engaged the text together.

Overall, I am still learning to become comfortable with this approach, comfortable with not saying everything I have prepared, comfortable with silence as people reflect, comfortable with giving space to the congregation to become comfortable in interaction. But I do not want to become too comfortable, because there is something about keeping it on the edge that makes this a work of the Spirit in our midst – unpredictable as to where we might head or a question that is raised, but intensely alive, but it allows for us to hear the Spirit speak through us as a congregation seeking to help each other grow in the way of Christ in the world, so that together we might participate with God in what God is doing in making all things new.

Next week: Further Reflections on Introducing the Missional Church

Vol 1:17 Being Missional in Preaching: Hearing the Voice of the Spirit in Our Midst

2010-05-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

Missional leading that is concerned with cultivating missional awareness is also concerned with the congregation discerning the leading of the Spirit. What is the Spirit doing amongst us? What is the Spirit doing in the community into which we are being sent? How are we being equipped and empowered by the Spirit to participate in God’s mission in our ministry settings? These are key questions – for which I see preaching playing an important role in cultivating a congregation to become more deeply sensitive to the Spirit’s leading.

A former colleague of mine at Northern Seminary, Michael J. Quicke, taught a course entitled Leadership Through Preaching, which ended up becoming a book – 360 Degree Leadership, in which he argues that preaching is key to leading that brings about transformation. In addition, I believe that the kind of preaching that is key is one that involves the congregation in discerning together where God is leading us as a church to participate with God in God’s mission.

In a previous column I mentioned that leadership is about discerning and articulating the vision the Spirit of God is casting within a church community, seeing the people themselves as gifts the Spirit bestows to the community because it is their gifts and passions that give us a clue of how God is shaping us to be participants in God’s mission.

Since Easter I have been exploring a different approach to preaching – I even discovered it has a name – interactive preaching – though little is written about it. Basically, it is about engendering a conversation on Sunday morning so that we encounter God’s Word in a multi-voiced way, rather than God’s Word being expressed as a monologue – i.e., my being the sole voice in preaching.

It involves retraining me as well as the congregation, because preaching for centuries has been the primary profession of the clergy – this is how I was trained in seminary. But if we take seriously the priesthood of all believers (which the Reformation expressed, but did little practically to bring it about) then somehow what God is saying to us, how we understand Scripture, how we hear the Spirit opening us to Scripture, is to be a communal activity, rather than an activity limited to clergy.

This is still very new to me and I am making mistakes as I am learning to be more open to hear what the Spirit is saying to us through the Word of God. I also believe that we as a community are beginning to learn to engage Scripture, express insights that the Spirit brings in ways that are fresh and particularly relevant. Over the centuries preaching has involved one speaking and the rest listening, but interactive preaching is an attempt for each one of us in the community to take on the calling of being open to Jesus, being open to the Spirit, so that together we might be led in being sent out to participate with God in God’s redemptive mission. Mission and ministry are corporate activities, so why not preaching as well?

This was the way the early Anabaptists engaged Scripture in worship – together; this seems to be what Paul was getting at in 1 Corinthians 14 in which each one brings something with them to share in their gatherings, for some to prophecy, and others to speak in tongues and others yet to interpret – it involves the church being the Body of Christ – building up one another, being responsible for discipling one another. It involves a whole different attitude in how we come to worship on Sundays – rather than being about “being ministered to by the Word,” we instead having spent time in Scripture, come prepared to engage others, share insights in hearing corporately what the Spirit of God is saying to us, so that we might be obedient as a community to where and how we are being sent by God.

It seems I am rambling a bit – but I am trying to get my mind and life more around what it means for a community to “preach” the Word to one another in an interactive way. I believe as we develop facility with this approach to preaching, the community I serve will become more deeply engaged in God’s Story and Vision (Scripture) and be continually transformed as a community that is sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign. May we be open to hearing and expressing God’s word as a multi-voice community.

Next week: Being missional in preaching – Some ways I am trying to be interactive

Vol 1:16 Reflections on What I'm Reading

2010-05-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

The book written by several missional authors that helped establish missional understanding in the North American context is Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Eeredmans, 1998). It provided a theological foundation for understanding the need for a missional understanding of church in North America. Many readers struggled with how to apply Missional Church to their settings, asking the question, “what does a missional church look like?” In response the Gospel and Our Culture Network produced Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness (Eerdmans. 2004) which presented nine congregational sketches – churches that were very different from one another – to show how being missional was not so much about a particular model of church, but instead displaying a particular pattern in being the people of God who are sign, instrument, and foretaste of God’s present and coming reign.

Other helpful books on understanding missional over the years have been The Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America (Eerdmans, 1996), StormFront: The Good News of God (Eerdmans, 2003), a recent collection of writings known as the Missional Church Series also published by Eerdmans, features titles such as, The Missional Church in Context: Helping Congregations Develop Contextual Ministry and The Missional Church and Denominations: Helping Congregations Develop a Missional Identity – to name two.

However, a recent book I have picked up is a great primer on re-understanding the importance of being missional. It seems that far too many have co-opted the term missional to mean what they want it to mean, such as being associated with church growth and attractional understandings of church, but all these dilute an understanding of what is meant by missional. Alan Roxburgh and Scott Boren have produced an excellent volume (so far at least since I just started reading it) on helping readers interested in understanding what missional is about to cut through all the pseudo understandings in order to help us rediscover the essence of being missional in North America. Their book is entitled, Introducing the Missional Church: What it is, why it matters, how to become one (Baker Books, 2009).

I am planning on having our Church Board read through this book together so that the community I pastor might come to more clearly understand why being missional is so important and in what ways we need to be open to being transformed so as to become missional in all we are and do.

Roxburgh and Boren take their readers on a journey to understand how missional is more of a metaphor than a model, how it is related to living as God’s people demonstrating the present and coming reign of God, how it reframes an understanding of church as being sent into the world, rather than being the community that sends. They talk about developing a missional imagination that is more rooted in a biblical imagination than a modern worldview. Missional is a fluid concept pictured better as a river than an idea to be defined. Missional is about participating with God in God’s mission, rather than our seeking God to bless our activities.

So, if you need a refresher on understanding missional or have never really understood what it means, I invite you to read this book along with me.

Next week: Being missional in preaching – Hearing the voice of the Spirit in our midst