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I wrote last week about an exciting conference that was held in Austin called Verge – a conference by all accounts was catalytic for many re: gospel-centered missional community.

In my best estimation, the format of the conference was built around the six chapters (or ingredients) in section two, “A Journey to the Heart of Apostolic Genius,” of Alan Hirsch’s must-read book for all missional practitioners, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. The chapter titles are:

1. Jesus is Lord
2. Disciple making
3. Missional-incarnational impulse
4. Apostolic environment
5. Organic systems
6. Communitas

Here is Alan talking about these ingredients for missional community DNA via D.J. Chaung at Verge:


Last week, I posted on Bob Roberts’ new book, Realtime Connections: Linking Your Job With God’s Global Work and said:

I can’t think of a more helpful book when many are preaching, writing, talking about what a theology of work looks like. Connecting our work to God’s glocal agenda is a must and this book will no doubt help us to that end.

Recently, Jonathan Dodson, lead pastor of Austin City Life in Austin, TX, also wrote on the issue of the mission of work:

We can’t plant a missional churches that don’t address work. Most people spend the lion’s share of their time in their field of work. That field of work is not only a mission field, but it is a city field. It is an urban domain.

Cities are comprised of anywhere from 5-10 city domains: Government, Arts, Education, Social Services, Health Services, Technology, Family, etc. Missional Churches must do the hard work of helping their people see their vocation in urban domains in terms of missional calling, not merely for evangelism but for whole gospel living.

Here are a list of resources that Dodson recommends to help in this endeavor:

Websites

* Redeemer’s Faith & Work Center
* Mockler Center for Work and Faith

Books

* R. Paul Stevens: The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Ministry from a Biblical Perspective
* Tetsunao Yamamori and Kenneth A. Eldred: On Kingdom Business: Transforming Missions Through Entrepreneurial Strategies
* Tim Chester: Busy Christian’s Guide to Busyness
* Robert Banks: Redeeming the Routines: Bringing Theology to Life

I would add one more to the mix:

Wayne Grudem: Business for the Glory of God: The Bible’s Teaching on the Moral Goodness of Business


Over the weeks to come, Ed Stetzer will be introducing the people who will be serving as framers for The Missional Manifesto, as well as speakers for missionSHIFT (the conference that I am working with him on) which takes place July 12-15 in Ridgecrest, NC. I will be re-posting Ed’s introductions in their entirety here on transformission each Monday.

Here is Ed’s next introduction:

Today I want to introduce you to Linda Bergquist. She will be speaking at the missionSHIFT conference this summer. We are also excited to have her voice as a part of framing the Missional Manifesto.

Linda and her husband Eric live in San Francisco, California. She is a New Church Starting Strategist and the co-author of Church Turned Inside Out: A Guide for Designers, Refiners, and Re-Aligners from Leadership Network (2009).

I have known Linda (Dr. Bergquist ) for many years. When I was a professor (oh so long ago) she took several of us on a tour of the marginalized communities where God was at work in the Bay area. She has a passion for people on the edge of society and the change that the gospel brings. You can find out more about her work in San Francisco at her site Plant Churches with Us.

To introduce her to you, I asked Linda to answer a few questions about herself:

You work as a new church starting strategist in San Francisco. Tell us briefly how you came to do that work in that place.

Linda: I’ve been involved in missional activity since the week I became a follower of Christ, and in church planting since a few months after that. Five years and four churches later, with a seminary degree in hand, my home church invited me to join their staff and help them start churches. Ten years later, the senior pastor left for the Bay Area [and I took] the church planting strategist job in San Francisco. That was fourteen years ago.

What do I see that gives you hope for the church in America?

Linda: I see Dave and Brook Maturo who moved from a 4 bedroom house they owned in Florida to a small rented space in San Francisco, with no guarantee of jobs, to assist our church planting team become more effective. I see a church of poor Mongolian refugees, all new Christians, who sent the school supplies we gave them back to Mongolia where children are glad for even one pencil. I see business entrepreneur Ken McCord intentionally translating kingdom values into the workplace; notifying the utility company that his bill was too low, extending medical benefits to employees at the expense of his own salary, and caring enough to utilize more costly earth friendly processes. I see Marian Engelland planting churches, mentoring other women and running a nonprofit that serves the poor, even with twin baby girls and two other preschoolers. I see Jason Williams helping local churches collaborate with Afghan business owners to raise money to repair windows in a girl’s school in Afghnistan. I see really good DNA that’s worth reproducing.

You recently published Church Turned Inside Out. Tell us about the book.

Linda: Church Turned Inside Out is a design book for churches. My friend, Allan Karr and I wrote it because we wanted to introduce Christian leaders to the world of design thinking. Over the decades, church became algorithmic. We discovered a formula, and a set of rules that helped us find ways to get from here to there more efficiently and more effectively. But the present algorithm is not as reliable as it once was. New information has come into the equation, and it requires a more experimental posture. Some people experiment in ways that improve the results of the present algorithm (refiners and re-aligners), and others step into the mystery and discover new ways of thinking and being in the world. Awareness of both is needed for a good design process, and both are necessary concepts to carry the church into the future.

Obviously, the word “missional” is spoken of, used by, and claimed by many groups. Instead of giving another definition for the word, can you tell the readers an example of where you and your family are seeking to live missionally?

Linda: Sometimes I tell people that in the suburbs it’s easier to be nice, but in cities it’s easier to be good. So many things rub against us in a dense city– crazy driving, difficult parking, close proximity to every kind of noise and smell. It’s a different pace of life. Serenity, patience, and “nice people attitudes” seem distant and even extravagant. But in cities, the decision for goodness is ever-present. Will we waste the food from our large portion meal, or cut some off before we eat, and wrap it to give to that hungry person we will surely encounter on the way home? Do we follow the trail of blood that leads down the street and into a park to see who may need help or do we ignore it? Do we acknowledge the beggar on the sidewalk who is asking for money, or do we look away because seeing is too costly? Do we treat the Russian pizza delivery driver with respect and kindness? In Russia, he was a classical musician, but here, his limited English prevents him from being well employed. Every time I treat him more like a delivery driver than a classical musician, I rob him of his identity.

In terms of missionSHIFT and the Missional Manifesto, what would be a great end-game in your mind for this event and process?

Linda: There have been times and places in history that mobilize great movements. For example, I love the story of the Harlem Renaissance. African American poets and preachers, artists and educators showed up in Harlem at the same time in the 1920s and 30s. Together they imagined what it might be like to be black in America some day. Communication was more difficult then, but what happened in Harlem sparked the Civil Rights Movement. Today I imagine a new, decentralized, and wonderfully diverse movement of God’s people who respond to the urgent call of a missional manifesto and walk together in a revitalized kingdom direction.

Are you registered for the missionSHIFT conference? Head over to the website and sign up.


All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
Matthew 28:18

============================================================

Andreas Kostenberger, professor of New Testament at SBTS and editor of The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, looks at how Jesus’ authority emboldens his followers to join in God’s mission without fear.

Kostenberger:

…it is only after the crucifixion that Jesus claims to have all authority in heaven and on earth. It is the risen Christ who, in the manner of a conquering, victorious general, ascends the mountain and commissions his followers to go and conquer the worlds, similar to Alexander the Great and other military leaders who set out to subdue the universe and subject it to their will. But Jesus’ will be a gentle conquest…

He continues:

…as his followers go into all the world in order to disciple the nations, Jesus himself, Isaiah’s Immanuel, which is translated “God with us” (Matt 1:23), will be with them: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” How, then, can the church’s mission possibly fail, if Jesus, the risen Christ, the conquering general, will himself be present with his people in the power of the Holy Spirit?

Read the entire post here.


Tim Chester:

Mission is not one thing we do among others. Mission is central to the Bible story and central to our identity. We are missionary people. We are communities on mission.

Creation: God made humanity with a mission: (1) to fill and govern the earth, and (2) to be his image in the world, reflecting his glory. We create, we explore, we investigate, we cook, we clean, we repair, we do science and culture and art – all to the glory of God.

Fall: After our rebellion our mission distorts and turns inwards. At Babel humanity (1) comes together instead of being scattered (2) to a name for themselves instead of glorifying God (Genesis 11:4).

Abraham: ‘All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’ (Genesis 12:3) God chooses Abraham for the nations. The Saviour will come from Abraham’s descendants. See Genesis 18:18-19. The nations will be blessed as God’s people walk in his ways and ‘do’ justice. People will look on and see it is good to know God.

Continue to read how Chester traces “mission” through the metanarrative of the Exodus, Israel, the Prophets, Jesus, the church, the new creation, and God’s coming kingdom here.


10 VERY helpful tips for missional community leaders from Nate Navarro, Director of Missional Community @ Austin City Life in Austin, TX:

1. Know God
2. Know your people
3. Know your neighborhood
4. Don’t go alone
5. Say who you are (and who you aren’t) every week
6. Get out of the living room
7. Live missionally
8. Eat, laugh, pray, and serve together
9. Share your stories
10. Come to serve (not just be served) on Sundays

Read the entire post here and see how Nate expounds on each of these tips…


Christianity Today recently asked religious leaders such as John Green, senior research adviser for the Pew Forum on Religion + Public Life; Cathy Lynn Grossman, religion reporter for USA TODAY; and Ed Stetzer, president of Lifeway Research this question: What was the most significant change in Christianity over the past decade?

Scot McKnight claims that evangelicalism’s metamorphosis in the late 20th century was also the most significant emphasis in the first decade of the 21st century. He says this shift was:

…a gradual, if largely unacknowledged, repentance from the near gnostic division of the spirit and the body that shaped its gospel in the early part of the 20th Century to a robust embracing of the missional gospel…

According to McKnight, a part of this “missional gospel,” is what most people call:

…”social justice” and, while I prefer to use the word “justice” and define “justice” by the will of God as taught through the Bible and the Church, it is now a part of much of evangelicalism — and not just as an appendix to the spiritual work done at the church.

McKnight sifts through the glut of books on social justice and recommends a new book by Peter Greer and Phil Smith called The Poor Will Be Glad: Joining the Revolution to Lift the World Out of Poverty. (Smith lives in the city where we are planting a church in the urban core in the spring of 2010: Tulsa; check this article from the Tulsa World: Tiny loans make huge difference in lives of poor)

Read McKnight’s entire post here.


David Fitch, author of The Great Giveaway, a pastor of Life on the Vine, and the Chair of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary, recently put his twist on what church planting should/could look like in the post-Christendom culture.

Fitch:

We recognize then that when we get over a certain size, all we end up doing is making the goods and services of being a Christian more accessible and convenient for already existing Christians. We have no other option then, when we get too big, to ask fifteen or twenty people to leave and go be missionaries to dechurched places in post Christendom. This used to be called church planting. We often now call it “seeding missional communities.”

On discerning where to “seed” these missional communities, he says:

…we like to think in terms of “sending” groups of people as “missional orders” into a community – bands of people who can take time, and sink in and learn that culture and be among the place in which God has called them to minister Christ. When we discern places for such a missionary endeavor, we ask are these places “under-churched” and “affordable for us as we seek to live missionally and beneath our means?”

He goes on to share 5 issues to be discerned in “seeding” a new missional community:

1. Discern the 3 (or 4 or 5) leaders
2. Land in the community over launching in the community
3. Exegete the community over market surveys
4. Teach missional rhythms over attractional events
5. Prepare for a sustainable way of life over a long period of time over projected growth and financial sustainability after three years

I think Fitch’s instincts here are on the right trajectory. Read the entire post here and how he would flesh out the “seeding” process.


I’ve decided to re-post the first installment of a series I began back in April of 2009 (wow, that is a long time ago) and am going to continue it now.

I am hopeful this will spur all of us to do inventory on why we aren’t missional and move towards living sent and joining God in his mission to proclaim and enact the Gospel…

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Wednesday night, I had the privilege to attend “Theology at the Bottleworks,” a Midrash ministry of The Journey [my family's home church + where I am doing my church planting internship] at a pub, Schlafly’s Bottleworks, in beautiful Maplewood.

In older, simpler times, a pub or “public house” was often the focal point of the community, playing a similar role to the local church, where people gathered to openly discuss significant issues of the day. The Journey is re-entering the “public house” to reach into culture by tackling spiritual, political, and philosophical themes in an open environment.

And yes, this has been the setting for the infamous “Beer and the Bible” controversy that brewed, pun intended, back in 2007. There is great comment from my good friend and Journey pastor, Jonathan McIntosh, on the web home for Mike Corley of The Mike Corley Program here about TATB [unfortunately, the audio seems to be nonexistent]. You can read a couple of somewhat objective articles about TATB from the Baptist Press here and the Christian Post here…

I am shadowing the moderators for the next couple of months to eventually become a part of the moderation team over the next year. And let me say, after observing my new friend Matt moderate last night, this is going to be one of the most difficult yet shaping things I have ever done. I’m excited about what God is going to do in me through this…

This particular evening was unique in that it was the 4th anniversary of this outreach event. To be specific, this was the 48th TATB event. Pretty astounding.

There were probably about 50 people there and I was told that there are usually 70+. And my best guess was that it was split down the middle: 50% religious, 50% non-religious.

The topic was “The Impact of Technology on the American Way of Life.” And a lively topic it was. Here were some of the great points made/questions raised across a wide spectrum:

>technology makes us lose touch with reality into isolation
>human interaction is overrated
>technology pits art + creativity vs. efficiency + mass production + instant gratification
>technology makes you more human, not less
>does technological innovation undercut traditional fundamentals?
>technology makes us skip the fundamentals of knowledge, i.e., spelling
>new technology wouldn’t be realized with the fundamentals changing
>are we headed to a Wall-E or Matrix world?
>technology can enhance relationships but cannot substitute for human touch, empathy, etc.
>do we like where technology is taking us?
>technology moves us away from real sources, i.e., analog musical recording vs. digital
>to curb abuse of technology, we have to discipline ourselves and self-moderate
>technology is neutral; we use technology, it doesn’t use us
>technology is good for scientific + medical purposes but not relationships
>we are trading quantity of connectedness over quality of connectedness, i.e. Facebook friends vs. real friends
>there is no counterbalance with technology from the spritual + ethical side of the equation
>should we limit/restrain technology?
>Bible gives principles not specifics on how we should handle “stuff”, i.e., Genesis 1 “subdue” principle

So what does this have to do with why we aren’t missional? I sat at a table with a non-religious, 50+ year-old Greek curmudgeon, a non-religious 30+ year-old American-Asian (originally from Hong Kong) molecular biologist and resident at Children’s Hospital, and a non-practicing 30+ year-old Orthodox Jew. Uh, yeah. And it wasn’t the large group discussion that impacted me. It was the discussion with my three new friends after the discussion that did. Big time…

My experience Wednesday night unearthed some things inside of me that I need to preach to myself to help me understand where my heart and head don’t line up with regards to my missional posture to culture. So I thought I’d invite you to join me on the journey.

As a part of a series, I am going to unpack what I believe are the 5 main things that keep us from being salt and light in culture. I hope you join me in the conversation…


In Austin, Texas this week, over 2000 folks are attending Verge, learning from a diverse group of leading thinkers and practitioners of gospel-centered missional community such as Alan Hirsch, Francis Chan, Neil Cole, and Dave Gibbons.

In the opening talk on Thursday night, Matt Carter, lead pastor of Austin Stone Community Church, spoke on what Hirsch calls the heart of missional community, the theologically dense worldview: Jesus is Lord.

Carter told the Verge attendees this:

Missional community has the potential to be the thing that this generation will be remembered by – that will define this generation historically.

…I believe that missional community is the long awaited structure that the American church has desperately needed to unleash everyday believers into the mission of their everyday lives. For far too long, for too many churches – their story has been “come to us and we will feed you spiritually – we will provide you programs – we will make you comfortable with the idea of church.

…Missional community could awaken the sleeping giant of the American church. It is long past time for the American church to awaken from its materialistic, narcissistic slumber.

But Carter shared a warning:

If missional community is the only defining marker for our generation, then we have failed.

The temptation – the danger for us – is that we will love our mission more than our Savior. If we love our mission more than we love our Savior, then our Savior will have no part of our mission.

Read more of Carter’s comments via my buddy Jonathan McIntosh’s post here.


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