via @tulsaworld: Plans to renew Central Library have expanded http://t.co/5gfQmJe0 | awesome revitalization happening in S Denver corridor [go]7 hours ago
honored to have just turned in my 2nd cover story to @UrbanTulsa Weekly on how MHAT is tackling chronic homelessness. look for it soon... [go]8 hours ago
Very interesting // RT @greene_wayne Dewey Bartlett commits $3 million city parking fund to proposed downtown Pops Museum. (HT: @edsharrer) [go]8 hours ago
Dodson is pastor of Austin City Life in Austin, TX and is a prolific blogger. Both reposting great missional thoughts from others and adding some of his own, particularly on the issue of missional ecclesiology, Dodson is a must read for me.
My good friend, Art Rogers, lead pastor of Skelly Road Baptist Church in Tulsa, recently completed an excellent series on the institutional vs. missional church.
I can’t begin to tell you how much I resonate with Art’s thoughts, particularly the difference between a centrifugal and centripetal church community. Also, you have to check out the “icons” of the institutional church. Love it…
The reason I am so encouraged by the series is Art is the real deal – he is on the ground, endeavoring to transition his church toward a missional mode. Not just theory my friends…
Some of you may remember that back in August, Ed was invited to record a television program for the Assemblies of God. Those videos are now live and re-posted here from edstetzer.com. Enjoy…
As many of you know, Thursday and Friday of this week, I had the privilege to hang with Ed Stetzer at a conference for Mississippi Baptists @ Camp Garaywa in Clinton, MS, just outside of Jackson.
This was, in part, an ‘intensive’ to launch my directed studies in missiology with Ed through Liberty Theological Seminary. I had a great time, learned a bunch, and got a big head start on my first paper re: modern missions history.
Instead of a play-by-play of each of the five sessions Ed keynoted, I thought I’d combine the larger talking points into one post – particularly those on the missional church. Enjoy…
*God is a sender by nature
*Missional means to live sent: a sent church and a sent Christian
*God uses the church to make known the manifold wisdom of Himself
*Missional does not necessarily mean contemporary
*Lack of ‘sentness’ deforms/disfigures the nature of the Gospel
*Sentness causes us not to transcend, but to recognize and engage culture
*Gospel becomes reduced to “only come” when it’s not missional
*We’ve created an artificial three-tier approach to ministry: 1) lay person, 2) professional minster, and 3) missionary
*We have lost mission to: 1) ‘clergification’, 2) cultural wars, and 3) buildings
*We’ve created the very system we loathe – an unhealthy clergy co-dependence
*We have to give ministry + mission back to the people God empowered for the ministry + mission
*Forms have driven church rather than missions
*Most churches tend to reflect old culture – those successful in last paradigm has the most difficulty in current paradigm
*A church that is incarnational is interested more in the harvest than in the barn
*Are we going to be protectors of common subcultures or missionaries?
*Irony of our subcultures: we should look similar and live differently than the world – we have looked different and lived the same
*Evangelism is sharing the Gospel – missions is understanding people before we speak with them
*What is the mission? Great commandment/commission – to serve [Luke 4:18-19] and to save [Luke 19:10]
*Missiology: what focus + strategies should we use to most effectively expand the kingdom where we are sent
*The missional church is a biblically faithful, culturally relevant, and countercultural community for the Kingdom of God
3. Contextualization, if defined and implemented correctly, is a good thing. But if it isn’t, it can be syncretism disguised as ministry, as David Fitch shows us.
4. Thabiti Anyabwile alerts us to what he thinks is a more pressing issue than in-house debates over things like The New Perspective and postmodernism. Read about it here.
6. Should we pay pastors? In light of the missional conversation taking place re: tent-making, bi-vocational ministry, de-centralized leadership, etc., Bob Hyatt takes on this hop topic in many ministry circles.
Also, check out this video from the forthcomingThey Like Jesus But Not The Church DVD curriculum from Zondervan, which shows Kimball in full ‘missionary’ mode:
