Try this interaction: - entering, attending, dwelling and listening . . .
to and with your spouse, with a good friend;
to and with your Church or small group fellowship;
to and with the Scriptures - Old and New;
to and with your children;
to and with your parents;
to and with your colleagues, school-mates;
to and with your neigbour
to and with what God is already up to in the neighborhood.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Al Roxburgh's Thoughts
Alan Roxburgh re the 'Missional Church'
Roxburgh believes:
* We don’t need to hear any more bad news about declining numbers. We know we’re in trouble. We just need to work out how we can live in the world we’re in.
* The maps of the 20th century, still used in training of clergy, are no longer as helpful in helping us grow.”
* We can’t continue to rely on the models of church growth used in the 20th century. Producing babies to replace ourselves, is no longer cutting it.
* The 40/40 rule, in which graduates could count on 40 years of secure work at 40 hours a week, is the foundation of our expectation of volunteer commitment. But the rule is no longer in use in the workplace.
* We’ve relied on loyalty in the past, hoping that people will sign up based on their existing sense of commitment to the denominational or local brand. For many denominations, the way to deal with the new scene is to transfer all hope into church planting. But we’re discovering that the dynamics have changed even in new environments. We’re in a time of transition from a previous environment of stability and control into a new future that is unpredictable and beyond our control.
* We should avoid the ’saviour mentality’ found in many models in which congregations buy in a CEO/dynamic visionary senior minister who can identify, articulate and roll out vision, goals and outcomes. The model imposes many of the categories of modernity which have led the church to where it is now.
* Despite many books giving advice on how we configure the church, we still have the challenge of working through culture change, changing the cultural imagination of a group of people in a particular setting.
* We’re used to the model of defining the problem, defining the solution and rolling out a strategic plan. We need to avoid presenting a ‘plan’ which has the potential to drive or disillusion people in a way that is ’straight out of hell’.
* Leaders need the skills to cultivate an environment, create spaces for the ‘in between’ where the Spirit is given the opportunity to work. Much of our work is ‘fast track’, moving quickly from strange to familiar, the other to the close. Many of our plans take the ‘other’ and make them objects for our own ends. Much of our efforts at project management are about the baggage of ministers.
* We need to begin where people are, not where we want them to be. For example, much of the ‘emerging church’ conversation assumes that Pentecost was just for young people. The reality was that the visitors to Jerusalem were likely to be in retirement age, making Pentecost a ‘geriatric event’.
* People need to be invited into conversations that seek to help them make sense of their lives, and that give them language for the world in which they live. We need the means to listen to the narratives beneath the narratives. Too often, congregations are not a place where people are invited into free speech. People are told what they should believe and say.
* We can start by cultivating awareness of the world around us. We can help people find words for the reality around them. We can invite people into ongoing dialogue about their growing awareness, recognizing that we’re usually aware of 10 percent at most of our world (like an iceberg). Free speech includes sticking with the dialogue long enough to hear what is really going on in the community. It means resisting the tendency to look for the ‘real agenda’.
* When we have developed the skills of patient listening and dialogue then we can ask “What does this mean for us as a congregation?”
* This is about dialogue. It is not about organizational change. Organizational change is a waste of time if you are trying to change culture. It’s only useful after the fact of change. Not changing anything provides space for listening and dialogue.
* We should stop focusing on the church. Look at what is happening in the world.
* We must go out into the villages, enter our neighbourhood(s), enter into the homes of the other. Enter their narratives.
Roxburgh believes:
* We don’t need to hear any more bad news about declining numbers. We know we’re in trouble. We just need to work out how we can live in the world we’re in.
* The maps of the 20th century, still used in training of clergy, are no longer as helpful in helping us grow.”
* We can’t continue to rely on the models of church growth used in the 20th century. Producing babies to replace ourselves, is no longer cutting it.
* The 40/40 rule, in which graduates could count on 40 years of secure work at 40 hours a week, is the foundation of our expectation of volunteer commitment. But the rule is no longer in use in the workplace.
* We’ve relied on loyalty in the past, hoping that people will sign up based on their existing sense of commitment to the denominational or local brand. For many denominations, the way to deal with the new scene is to transfer all hope into church planting. But we’re discovering that the dynamics have changed even in new environments. We’re in a time of transition from a previous environment of stability and control into a new future that is unpredictable and beyond our control.
* We should avoid the ’saviour mentality’ found in many models in which congregations buy in a CEO/dynamic visionary senior minister who can identify, articulate and roll out vision, goals and outcomes. The model imposes many of the categories of modernity which have led the church to where it is now.
* Despite many books giving advice on how we configure the church, we still have the challenge of working through culture change, changing the cultural imagination of a group of people in a particular setting.
* We’re used to the model of defining the problem, defining the solution and rolling out a strategic plan. We need to avoid presenting a ‘plan’ which has the potential to drive or disillusion people in a way that is ’straight out of hell’.
* Leaders need the skills to cultivate an environment, create spaces for the ‘in between’ where the Spirit is given the opportunity to work. Much of our work is ‘fast track’, moving quickly from strange to familiar, the other to the close. Many of our plans take the ‘other’ and make them objects for our own ends. Much of our efforts at project management are about the baggage of ministers.
* We need to begin where people are, not where we want them to be. For example, much of the ‘emerging church’ conversation assumes that Pentecost was just for young people. The reality was that the visitors to Jerusalem were likely to be in retirement age, making Pentecost a ‘geriatric event’.
* People need to be invited into conversations that seek to help them make sense of their lives, and that give them language for the world in which they live. We need the means to listen to the narratives beneath the narratives. Too often, congregations are not a place where people are invited into free speech. People are told what they should believe and say.
* We can start by cultivating awareness of the world around us. We can help people find words for the reality around them. We can invite people into ongoing dialogue about their growing awareness, recognizing that we’re usually aware of 10 percent at most of our world (like an iceberg). Free speech includes sticking with the dialogue long enough to hear what is really going on in the community. It means resisting the tendency to look for the ‘real agenda’.
* When we have developed the skills of patient listening and dialogue then we can ask “What does this mean for us as a congregation?”
* This is about dialogue. It is not about organizational change. Organizational change is a waste of time if you are trying to change culture. It’s only useful after the fact of change. Not changing anything provides space for listening and dialogue.
* We should stop focusing on the church. Look at what is happening in the world.
* We must go out into the villages, enter our neighbourhood(s), enter into the homes of the other. Enter their narratives.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
So Send I You . . .
So, perhaps really just trying to break the ice, I said: "Well, I see that your church sanctuary could seat about 300 people - but somehow you have managed to 'grow' it down to 30. But - not to despair: Jesus only had 12 or so to start with!"
Pressing on, I asked: "What would it take . . . what kind of church would prepare and send out 30 missioners this week, rather than those 30, or their leaders at least, ruing the fact that 'golly, we only have 30 people around here anymore to 'run the church?'"
Could this church be perhaps one - perhaps the only church in this community, that is preparing it's people to go, or at least 'as they go' - to be missioners - as opposed to paying some pastoral leader(s) to do religious things (trying to get congregants to help - though mostly ducking when the nominating committee draws night) - paying some or committing ourselves to doling out religious goods and services on our turf (ie. the local church building), when and if the 30 manage to bring a friend, attracting them somehow to the programs, and to the building, of the local church - attracting them to our building and programs and necessarily extracting them from where they usually live and move and have their being (i.e. the neighbourhood, work, where they work-out, etc.)
Pressing on, I asked: "What would it take . . . what kind of church would prepare and send out 30 missioners this week, rather than those 30, or their leaders at least, ruing the fact that 'golly, we only have 30 people around here anymore to 'run the church?'"
Could this church be perhaps one - perhaps the only church in this community, that is preparing it's people to go, or at least 'as they go' - to be missioners - as opposed to paying some pastoral leader(s) to do religious things (trying to get congregants to help - though mostly ducking when the nominating committee draws night) - paying some or committing ourselves to doling out religious goods and services on our turf (ie. the local church building), when and if the 30 manage to bring a friend, attracting them somehow to the programs, and to the building, of the local church - attracting them to our building and programs and necessarily extracting them from where they usually live and move and have their being (i.e. the neighbourhood, work, where they work-out, etc.)
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Znaimer's Manifesto re Television
Znaimer's Manifesto re Television - implications for Mission ?. . .
1: Television is the triumph of the image over the printed word.
2: The live nature of television is flow, not show; process, not conclusion.
3: A global television expands the demand for local programming increases.
4: The best TV tells me what happened to me, today.
5: TV is as much about the people bringing you the story as the story itself.
6: In the past, TV's chief operating skill was political. In the future, it will have to be mastery of the craft itself.
7: Print created illiteracy, TV is democratic. Everybody gets it.
8: TV creates immediate consensus, subject to immediate change.
9: There never was a mass audience, except by compulsion.
10: Television is not a problem to be managed; but an instrument to be played.
1: Television is the triumph of the image over the printed word.
2: The live nature of television is flow, not show; process, not conclusion.
3: A global television expands the demand for local programming increases.
4: The best TV tells me what happened to me, today.
5: TV is as much about the people bringing you the story as the story itself.
6: In the past, TV's chief operating skill was political. In the future, it will have to be mastery of the craft itself.
7: Print created illiteracy, TV is democratic. Everybody gets it.
8: TV creates immediate consensus, subject to immediate change.
9: There never was a mass audience, except by compulsion.
10: Television is not a problem to be managed; but an instrument to be played.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Mission in a Changed World
1. Mission is still best accomplished by the establishment of local indigenous congregations of believers.
2. ‘Indigenous’ means (among other things) the congregation will be self-governing, self-financing and self-propagating
3. New local congregations are start when a particular culture or people-group is targeted by a denomination, a sponsoring key church, or cluster of churches in an Area, the converted leaders from within that culture or sub-culture. This may or may not be limited to geographical proximity to a particular local church.
4. Local congregations may start as a small home Bible-study, a particular outreach, a store-front ministry, a men’s breakfast fellowship, a professional group meeting for fellowship at noon, an ‘Alpha’ outreach, etc.
5. Effective, indigenous mission happens as missioners immerse themselves (or are already immersed and knowledgeable) among a primary culture or sub-culture so as to learn the ways of that culture or sub-culture — language, music, ways of feeling, thinking and acting, habits, particular challenges, opportunities, strengths, weaknesses, fears, hopes, etc.
6. Effective mission is always highly relational (trust, credibility, affinity, involvement, shared experience)
7. The ‘key church’ model may be an effective one to emulate (ie. one church — many congregations)
8. The house church (perhaps incorporating cell, congregation and celebration) is very effective in cities.
9. Rediscovering the ‘Celtic Way of Evangelism’ may be a great boon in helping to re-evangelize the West.
10. Large expenditures of money for buildings and property is not essential – & may be a liability to start-up, survival and continuance.
11. In traditional church-planting methodology, the ‘mother church (born in the Modern age) may seek to clone itself. In a Postmodern day and setting this will be a liability. A sponsor church must free the emerging congregation to be itself in the particular cultural context in which it is being born. Encouragement, resource-sharing as requested, and freedom/permission- giving are required of the ‘sponsoring congregation.’
12. An apostolic partnership of lay and full-time leaders can work with local churches and mission planters to establish a number of new congregations in any urban setting.
13. A denominational partnership will involve identifying the people-groups formerly reached in ‘overseas mission contexts’ who are now living in the urban centres where the denomination already has established churches.
14. Established congregations in the urban context may assist in reaching the new people groups that are near to them, by: 1. making their buildings available; 2. sharing resources as possible; 3. inviting lay and full-time Christian leaders from the people group (already nearby or overseas)to come and assist them in the work of reaching this particular sub-culture or people group.
15. New mission movements and emphases (with a regard to the establishment of indigenous local churches where possible) may be encouraged in a number of ways; for example, 1. local churches (key churches) can start focused and targeted ministries to a particular culture or sub-culture. (providing buildings, willing workers, finances, encouragement, resources, etc.); 2. trained, gifted lay leaders emerging from schools of learning may be deployed in these new works; 3. gifted, lay leaders emerging from among the particular people group may be given further training and encouragement to work among their own people of this particular culture or sub-culture; 4. pastors and lay leaders, from a particular culture or subculture, may be invited (Macedonian call) to 'come over and help us' in this particular context of opportunity.
16. Denominations must be careful not to readily give financial subsidies to the pastor leaders as this will make only the individual, instead of the church, accountable in any way to the denomination.
17. Denominations should avoid giving full financial subsidies to emerging congregations, as this creates the wrong sort of dependance upon the sponsoring denomination. Rather, a dollar-for-dollar matching grant might be considered so that the indigenous (ie. self-financing) potential of the emerging congregation is not compromised.
18. Emerging congregations should be encouraged to pursue ministry without large outlays of moneys for buildings and lands, until or unless the congregation is strong enough to consider raising (from within) its own major outlay of fiscal resources for such an enterprise.
19. Key to the establishment of new congregations is the ability of the pastors and leaders involved to share faith and introduce people to a new life in God, through Jesus Christ, made possible through the forgiveness of their sins through His finished work at Calvary. Evangelism involves ‘showing and telling’ the story in a variety of ways, and through many different means – and always accompanied by a radical love for the people that is disarming and attractive.
2. ‘Indigenous’ means (among other things) the congregation will be self-governing, self-financing and self-propagating
3. New local congregations are start when a particular culture or people-group is targeted by a denomination, a sponsoring key church, or cluster of churches in an Area, the converted leaders from within that culture or sub-culture. This may or may not be limited to geographical proximity to a particular local church.
4. Local congregations may start as a small home Bible-study, a particular outreach, a store-front ministry, a men’s breakfast fellowship, a professional group meeting for fellowship at noon, an ‘Alpha’ outreach, etc.
5. Effective, indigenous mission happens as missioners immerse themselves (or are already immersed and knowledgeable) among a primary culture or sub-culture so as to learn the ways of that culture or sub-culture — language, music, ways of feeling, thinking and acting, habits, particular challenges, opportunities, strengths, weaknesses, fears, hopes, etc.
6. Effective mission is always highly relational (trust, credibility, affinity, involvement, shared experience)
7. The ‘key church’ model may be an effective one to emulate (ie. one church — many congregations)
8. The house church (perhaps incorporating cell, congregation and celebration) is very effective in cities.
9. Rediscovering the ‘Celtic Way of Evangelism’ may be a great boon in helping to re-evangelize the West.
10. Large expenditures of money for buildings and property is not essential – & may be a liability to start-up, survival and continuance.
11. In traditional church-planting methodology, the ‘mother church (born in the Modern age) may seek to clone itself. In a Postmodern day and setting this will be a liability. A sponsor church must free the emerging congregation to be itself in the particular cultural context in which it is being born. Encouragement, resource-sharing as requested, and freedom/permission- giving are required of the ‘sponsoring congregation.’
12. An apostolic partnership of lay and full-time leaders can work with local churches and mission planters to establish a number of new congregations in any urban setting.
13. A denominational partnership will involve identifying the people-groups formerly reached in ‘overseas mission contexts’ who are now living in the urban centres where the denomination already has established churches.
14. Established congregations in the urban context may assist in reaching the new people groups that are near to them, by: 1. making their buildings available; 2. sharing resources as possible; 3. inviting lay and full-time Christian leaders from the people group (already nearby or overseas)to come and assist them in the work of reaching this particular sub-culture or people group.
15. New mission movements and emphases (with a regard to the establishment of indigenous local churches where possible) may be encouraged in a number of ways; for example, 1. local churches (key churches) can start focused and targeted ministries to a particular culture or sub-culture. (providing buildings, willing workers, finances, encouragement, resources, etc.); 2. trained, gifted lay leaders emerging from schools of learning may be deployed in these new works; 3. gifted, lay leaders emerging from among the particular people group may be given further training and encouragement to work among their own people of this particular culture or sub-culture; 4. pastors and lay leaders, from a particular culture or subculture, may be invited (Macedonian call) to 'come over and help us' in this particular context of opportunity.
16. Denominations must be careful not to readily give financial subsidies to the pastor leaders as this will make only the individual, instead of the church, accountable in any way to the denomination.
17. Denominations should avoid giving full financial subsidies to emerging congregations, as this creates the wrong sort of dependance upon the sponsoring denomination. Rather, a dollar-for-dollar matching grant might be considered so that the indigenous (ie. self-financing) potential of the emerging congregation is not compromised.
18. Emerging congregations should be encouraged to pursue ministry without large outlays of moneys for buildings and lands, until or unless the congregation is strong enough to consider raising (from within) its own major outlay of fiscal resources for such an enterprise.
19. Key to the establishment of new congregations is the ability of the pastors and leaders involved to share faith and introduce people to a new life in God, through Jesus Christ, made possible through the forgiveness of their sins through His finished work at Calvary. Evangelism involves ‘showing and telling’ the story in a variety of ways, and through many different means – and always accompanied by a radical love for the people that is disarming and attractive.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
The Unfinished Script
So here we are, with an unfinished script, at least some indication of the final Act and a promise that we have the Holy Spirit as our Director (though not a new writer!), and we have to improvise. If we are to faithfully live out the biblical drama, then we will need to develop the imaginative skills necessary to improvise on this cosmic stage of creational redemption. Indeed, it would be the height of infidelity and interpretive cowardice to simply repeat verbatim, over and over again, the earlier passages of the play. The task is not so much a matter of being able to quote the earlier script as it is to be able to continue it, to imaginatively discern what shape the story now must take in our changing cultural context.
- Colossians Remixed, Brain J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat
- Colossians Remixed, Brain J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat
Friday, June 26, 2009
Renewed, Resourced, Reshaped . . .
If today's, and tomorrow's, church is to engage in . . . mission, seeking both to implement the achievement of Jesus and his resurrection and thereby to anticipate the final renewal of all things, it must itself be renewed, resourced, and reshaped for this mission.
N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
Monday, April 20, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Rethinking Heaven and our Mission
In "Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church," (HarperOne), Canon N.T. Wright claims that God is redeeming THIS creation. As Paul Marshall puts it in his book by this title), "heaven is not my home." Our bodies and all of nature are good and the resurrection of Jesus is a foretaste of Eternity's physicality. There is more continuity between this world and the next than is commonly assumed.
N.R. Wright claims that the Kingdom of God is that which restores (not destroys) creation. Other writers agree (cf. Al Wolters' "Creation Regained" or Michael Wittmer's "Heaven Is A Place on Earth") that Jesus-apprentices are not destined for an ethereal existence in some place beyond creation and history. We shall be with Jesus - and He is coming back to Earth (read the climax depicted in Revelation 21 and 22). The good but fallen Garden will be transformed into the City of God, where the very leaves of the trees are for the healing of the peoples (ethne).
With Tom Wright's help, we may rethink our assumptions and attitudes about life, death, and life after death. This will also influence how we think about what matters most in life, and the very mission of God. William Willimon writes on the jacket blurb: "This is, quite simply, the best book we have on the substance of Christian hope." Rob Bell says it challenges "the tired old theologies of escapism and evacuation to help a whole generation of us more clearly grasp the Jesus revolution, for here, now, today." Dallas Willard says it recovers "the original, radical understanding of resurrection, salvation, and the Good News of life now in the Kingdom of God."
Blessed = 'Wonderful News"
"Matthew for Everyone, Part One:"
"Jesus is not suggesting that [the Beatitudes] are simply timeless truths about the way the world is, about human behavior. If he was saying that, he is wrong. Mourners often go uncomforted, the meek don't inherit the earth, those who long for justice often take that longing to the grave. This is an upside-down world, or perhaps a right-way-up world; and Jesus is saying that with his work its starting to come true. This is an announcement, not a philosophical analysis of the world. It's about something that's starting to happen, not about a general truth of life. It is gospel: good news, not good advice.
Follow me, Jesus said to the first disciples; because in him the living God was doing a new thing, and this list of 'wonderful news' is part of his invitation, part of his summons, part of his way of saying that God is at work in a fresh way and that this is what it looks like. Jesus is beginning a new era for God's people and God's world. From here on, all the controls people thought they knew about are going to work the other way round. In our world, still, most people think that wonderful news consists of success, wealth, long life, victory in battle. Jesus is offering wonderful news for the humble, the poor, the mourners, the peacemakers.
The world for 'wonderful news' is often translated 'blessed,' and part of the point is that this is God's wonderful news. God is acting in and through Jesus to turn the world upside down, to turn Israel upside down, to pour out lavish 'blessings' on all who now turn to him and accept the new thing that he is doing. But the point is not to offer a list of what sort of people God normally blesses. The point is to announce God's new covenant.
In Deuteronomy, the people came through the wilderness and arrived at the border of the promised land, and God gave them a solemn covenant. He listed the blessings and curses that would come if they were obedient or disobedient. Now Matthew has shown us Jesus, coming out of Egypt, through the water and the wilderness, and into the land of promise. Here, now, is his new covenant.
So when do these promises come true? There is a great temptation for Christians to answer: in heaven, after death. At first sight, verses 3, 10 and 11 seem to say this: 'the kingdom of heaven' belongs to the poor in spirit and the persecuted, and there's a great reward in heaven for those who suffer persecution for Jesus' sake. That, though, is a misunderstanding of the meaning of 'heaven.' Heaven is God's space, where full reality exists, close by our ordinary ('earthly') reality and interlocking with it. One day heaven and earth will be joined together forever, and the true state of affairs, at present out of sight, will be unveiled. After all, verse 5 says that the meek will inherit the earth, and that can hardly happen in a disembodied heaven after death.
No: the clue comes in the next chapter, in the prayer Jesus taught his followers. We are to pray that God's kingdom will come, and God's will be done, 'on earth as it is in heaven.' The life of heaven--the life of the realm where God is already king--is to become the life of the world, transforming the present 'earth' into a place of beauty and delight that God always intended. And those who follow Jesus are to begin to live by this rule here and now. That's the point of the Sermon on the Mount, and these 'beatitudes' in particular. They are a summons to live in the present in the way that will make sense in God's promised future; because that future has arrived in the present in Jesus of Nazareth. It may seem upside down, but we are called to believe, with great daring, that it it in fact the right way up. Try it and see."
--- N.T. Wright, "Matthew for Everyone, Part One:"
"Jesus is not suggesting that [the Beatitudes] are simply timeless truths about the way the world is, about human behavior. If he was saying that, he is wrong. Mourners often go uncomforted, the meek don't inherit the earth, those who long for justice often take that longing to the grave. This is an upside-down world, or perhaps a right-way-up world; and Jesus is saying that with his work its starting to come true. This is an announcement, not a philosophical analysis of the world. It's about something that's starting to happen, not about a general truth of life. It is gospel: good news, not good advice.
Follow me, Jesus said to the first disciples; because in him the living God was doing a new thing, and this list of 'wonderful news' is part of his invitation, part of his summons, part of his way of saying that God is at work in a fresh way and that this is what it looks like. Jesus is beginning a new era for God's people and God's world. From here on, all the controls people thought they knew about are going to work the other way round. In our world, still, most people think that wonderful news consists of success, wealth, long life, victory in battle. Jesus is offering wonderful news for the humble, the poor, the mourners, the peacemakers.
The world for 'wonderful news' is often translated 'blessed,' and part of the point is that this is God's wonderful news. God is acting in and through Jesus to turn the world upside down, to turn Israel upside down, to pour out lavish 'blessings' on all who now turn to him and accept the new thing that he is doing. But the point is not to offer a list of what sort of people God normally blesses. The point is to announce God's new covenant.
In Deuteronomy, the people came through the wilderness and arrived at the border of the promised land, and God gave them a solemn covenant. He listed the blessings and curses that would come if they were obedient or disobedient. Now Matthew has shown us Jesus, coming out of Egypt, through the water and the wilderness, and into the land of promise. Here, now, is his new covenant.
So when do these promises come true? There is a great temptation for Christians to answer: in heaven, after death. At first sight, verses 3, 10 and 11 seem to say this: 'the kingdom of heaven' belongs to the poor in spirit and the persecuted, and there's a great reward in heaven for those who suffer persecution for Jesus' sake. That, though, is a misunderstanding of the meaning of 'heaven.' Heaven is God's space, where full reality exists, close by our ordinary ('earthly') reality and interlocking with it. One day heaven and earth will be joined together forever, and the true state of affairs, at present out of sight, will be unveiled. After all, verse 5 says that the meek will inherit the earth, and that can hardly happen in a disembodied heaven after death.
No: the clue comes in the next chapter, in the prayer Jesus taught his followers. We are to pray that God's kingdom will come, and God's will be done, 'on earth as it is in heaven.' The life of heaven--the life of the realm where God is already king--is to become the life of the world, transforming the present 'earth' into a place of beauty and delight that God always intended. And those who follow Jesus are to begin to live by this rule here and now. That's the point of the Sermon on the Mount, and these 'beatitudes' in particular. They are a summons to live in the present in the way that will make sense in God's promised future; because that future has arrived in the present in Jesus of Nazareth. It may seem upside down, but we are called to believe, with great daring, that it it in fact the right way up. Try it and see."
--- N.T. Wright, "Matthew for Everyone, Part One:"
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Into a Neighbourhood . . .
Al Roxburgh writes: "One of the serendipitous moments was a conversation with a woman who had just graduated from a program in church planting. She talked about what she and her husband wanted to do with the next twenty years of life since they are in that ‘retirement’ age bracket. I loved her response - they are planning to move into a neighborhood, settle down for the long haul and build their lives in to the ordinary spaces and rhythms of the community - out of that basic life commitment they will discover the kind of church God wants to call forth. What was so energizing about her description is that way it corresponds with a lot of conversations I’m having with people these days. There’s this undercurrent, not a movement yet, of people like this women who are ready to dwell in the ordinary and see what God will do. That’s the future of the church! She wanted to know if there were others who sensed the same kind of call to move back into the neighborhood. We need to start connecting and sharing stories with one another. Then she said - all I ever find are these church planters with big strategies (what I call the high testosterone approach to planting church) and big plans for people’s lives and I’m not interested in that! I think a lot of us are in that space."
-- Allelon: A Movement of Missional Leaders
-- Allelon: A Movement of Missional Leaders
Saturday, March 28, 2009
The Whole World Welcome
've been thinking about how, in John 12 - when the Greeks come and say: 'Sir, we would see Jesus' - that that starts the time-clock of our Saviour moving deliberately towards the Cross. 'Now is my hour come!' He says, when so many times earlier the text says - 'because His hour was not yet come.' And then he talks about 'except a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it abides alone, . .. ' etc. Hmm. I wonder why their search and query signaled that kairos beginning and the chronos-clock influence, too?
I think it means that when the (further) opening comes, through this query of the Gentiles, (these Greeks, the 'nations'), it moves the issue beyond the salvation of the Jews only - to the reality that He came for the whole world (which lets you and me, perhaps nonJews as we are, get in on this wonderful Reality of God's Grace, Forgiveness, Welcome and inclusion, and also our inclusion into the call to Mission with faithful Abraham (and with Jesus, the 'Seed' of Abraham) - in blessing all the ethne of the word). God is rescuing People, Places, and Things - from sheer grace, mercy and love. God knows, none of us deserve it.
Not only Jewish boys on Judean hills come to worship (albeit a short distance geographically and culturally and religiously), but 'magi from the East' come too (these other signs in human form, of 'the nations' gathered), coming from afar (geographically, religiously, culturally . . .) all of us coming, all of us drawn by God's Word (the Gospel in Scripture), perhaps by the stars themselves (the Gospel revealed even in all nature and science itself, though more obscure and needing direction) - to the Saviour.
For God so loved the world (the 'cosmos') . . . He gave - that whosoever (not just Jews - but those Greek inquirers, too) might have Life (starting now and never ending). . . . Wonderful !!
Whew, a wee Easter (and Christmas) sermon, eh?
I think it means that when the (further) opening comes, through this query of the Gentiles, (these Greeks, the 'nations'), it moves the issue beyond the salvation of the Jews only - to the reality that He came for the whole world (which lets you and me, perhaps nonJews as we are, get in on this wonderful Reality of God's Grace, Forgiveness, Welcome and inclusion, and also our inclusion into the call to Mission with faithful Abraham (and with Jesus, the 'Seed' of Abraham) - in blessing all the ethne of the word). God is rescuing People, Places, and Things - from sheer grace, mercy and love. God knows, none of us deserve it.
Not only Jewish boys on Judean hills come to worship (albeit a short distance geographically and culturally and religiously), but 'magi from the East' come too (these other signs in human form, of 'the nations' gathered), coming from afar (geographically, religiously, culturally . . .) all of us coming, all of us drawn by God's Word (the Gospel in Scripture), perhaps by the stars themselves (the Gospel revealed even in all nature and science itself, though more obscure and needing direction) - to the Saviour.
For God so loved the world (the 'cosmos') . . . He gave - that whosoever (not just Jews - but those Greek inquirers, too) might have Life (starting now and never ending). . . . Wonderful !!
Whew, a wee Easter (and Christmas) sermon, eh?
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