Before I Start to Pray

I am bending my knee
In the eye of the Father who created me,
In the eye of the Son who purchased me,
In the eye of the Spirit who cleansed me,
In friendship and affection.
Through Thine own Anointed One, O God,
Bestow upon us fullness in our need,
Love towards God,
The affection of God,
The smile of God,
The wisdom of God.
The grace of God,
The fear of God,
And the will of God
To do on the world of the Three,
As angels and saints
Do in heaven;
Each shade and light,
Each day and night,
Each time in kindness,
Give Thou us Thy Spirit.

Ortha nan Gaidheal

Sending Capacity

Is the mission statement of your local church based on how to get people to go into the world, or how to get more people to come to church? The missional mantra that people are saying today is this: The church is measured, not by its seating capacity, but by its sending capacity.

 - Leonard Sweet

Lions and Lambs

The following article, entitled 'Choosing Mission Over Affinity' is from the blog 'Mere Mission' (July 15, 2007), in the context of thinking about what it looks like to missional communities to navigate a communal life without defaulting to consumer-oriented affinity. I concur with the article's sentiments:

"I am not inclined to advocate individual engagement with those it’s hard or unnatural relate to. To be sure, this is what local expressions of the Church ought to be doing, but doing together. There’s nothing wrong with cultivating relationships and growing in love with those to whom it’s easier or more natural to relate. However, if those clusters of disciples aren’t moving out together and seeking to engage people unlike themselves - those it’s more difficult to love, then there’s probably something lacking in terms of their Christ-centerdness.

"Affinity may indeed be one the hardest obstacles to overcome in suburban contexts, but if we are to embody the Kingdom of God for the sake of the world, it’s something we must grapple with together.

EndGame

Coming as it does in the last book of the Bible and pointing to the final consummation of things, at ages'-end . . .

Revelation 7:9 paints a picture of a great multitude “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongue” standing before the throne of God, worshipping the Lamb.

This phrase records socio-polical difference (nations) as well as cultural (tribe), ethnic (peoples) and linguistic (tongues) diversity. The image pulls together the pieces of God’s activity in history: the multitude of tongues at Babel is dispersed because of worship inappropriately placed; all the families of the earth are represented in the promise to Abraham. Peoples who were once strangers and aliens to the covenant are now gathered in the presence of God as a multicultural community of faith . . .

This is a God who invites each person, with his or her own personal, cultural, and linguistic identity intact, to come into this presence and take on his character, which inevitably discards those aspects of that identity not compatible with a holy God (Rev. 21:22-29).

- Dan Sheffield, p. 32. The Multicultural Leader: Developing a Catholic Personality

Post-majority World

We are aleady in a post-majority world.

According to the World Development Forum, if you lived in a representative global village of 1,000, there would be:

564 Asians
210 Europeans
86 Africans
80 South Americans
60 North Americans

There would be -
 

300 Christians (183 Catholics, 84 Protestants and 33 Orthodox)

175 Moslems
128 Buddhists
47 Animists
210 without any religion (a few confessed atheists)
85 from miscellaneous religious groups

Of this village -
 

60 would control half the total income
500 would be hungry
600 would live in shanty-towns
700 would be illiterate

Dissonance to Consonance

I've been thinking of what Al Roxburgh says about those of us who are 'liminal' Christians (waking to the fact that our churches are now 'on the margins' of society) needing to interact and learn from 'emerging' Christians - and vice versa. It reminded me of what Len Sweet wrote a few years ago in one of his 'Soul Cafe' articles. I looked it up. He wrote in two metaphors . . .

Said Len, 'We must learn to sing in harmony once again. It used to be we sang parts when we sang hymns. Now we sing the melody line, and leave it to the choir to sing parts. If we are to enjoy the post-majority world, where no one ethnic group will ever again dominate, we must learn to sing in parts, and to love sounds of harmony. By the way, my musician friends tell me that to resolve two dissonant notes, you either can force the notes together until they make the same sound or the sound you want to hear, or you can add a third note which will resolove the dissonance into consonance. The future belongs to those who can add the right notes, not force others to sing their part."