new missional resource: the meeting of the waters

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: books, church, community, culture, economics, emerging culture, futurism, mission, missions, post-Christendom, postmodern, social justice, technology, video, web, world issues
• Date: Feb 27,2010

The tall skinny kiwi, Andrew Jones, recently blogged about a new book that is coming out March 1 that he believes “is the most significant book on international mission” that he has come across in a long time. Big words…

The book is entitled The Meeting of the Waters: 7 Global Currents that will propel the future church and is written by Fritz Kling. According to Jones, Fritz has traveled to 40 countries to interview key leaders on these changes and the book is a result of those findings.

In his book, Fritz identifies seven trends that he believes will have a major impact on the church around the world. They are:

1. Mercy: Younger people of faith around the world increasingly demonstrate their piety and their love for others by serving–by feeding the hungry, addressing AIDS, rescuing girls sold into slavery, saving the earth, etc.

2. Mutuality: While Americans and the West had long been the leaders of worldwide “Christendom,” now Christians from countries all around the world have the education, access, resources, and confidence to share leadership with powerful countries like the US.

3. Migration: People everywhere are on the move, to meet economic needs, flee repression or combat, seek freedom or asylum, enjoy tourism, etc. While in the past Christian missionaries reached diverse people groups by ships or planes or trains, now everywhere in the world is more diverse.

4. Monoculture: Focusing on helping individual people in the unique cultures and countries in which they live, the Christian church has trained and sent missionaries around the world for a long time.

5. Machines: The importance of technology is not news to anyone, but its impact on Christian communities around the world has its surprises. Studies on technology and evangelism abound, so I highlight examples of how technology is radically changing disaster relief efforts.

6. Mediation: Many people say that the world is “flattening,” and that we’re all coming closer together. But the internet and available media are actually providing more opportunities, tools, and points for polarization and division. Who will mediate, and how?

7. Memory: In the shadow of so many game-changing trends, every country, region and village has its own “backstory” — those historical features, clues and codes that may be unseen but affect everything in those societies.

You can download the first chapter here.

Here is a promotional video about the new book:

joel hunter on social justice

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, Great Commission, blessing, church, community, culture, economics, incarnational, kingdom of God, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, orthopraxy, sent, social justice, video, world issues
• Date: Feb 11,2010

on the road again

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church planting, economics, social issues, travel, vision
• Date: Mar 9,2009

I’m in Tulsa again, this time with my family and my partner’s family in this endeavor, Clint Carter, to continue to firm up plans for the planting of networks of missional communities in large Midwestern urban metropolises in the High and Central Plains of the United States, with Tulsa, OK being the “base” for this adventure.

We arrived late last night and will be here through Thursday, meeting with local pastors and community leaders to continue to learn about the spiritual ‘climate’ and seek advice, encouragement, warnings that they would see fit to share; canvassing and “prayer-walking” areas that could serve a “base” for the collective and “hubs” for these first missional communities in the city of Tulsa; and visiting some church worship gatherings (this morning, we visited our friend, Art Rogers, and his church, Skelly Drive Baptist Church).

Tonight we attended a great event here in Tulsa via my new friend, Michael Bates, opinion editor for Urban Tulsa Weekly. See Michael’s comments below about it:

Tulsa Teachers Credit Union, one of the area’s largest thrift institutions, has been running radio ads lately about their humble origins — a cigar box in the desk drawer of a Central High School teacher, as teachers pooled funds to help one another meet their financial goals.

In the US, the cigar box approach to finance is long gone, and it’s hard to tell credit unions apart from banks these days, but the idea of mutual finance on a small scale is alive and well in the developing world, and it’s being used to lift people out of poverty in a way that’s sustainable over the long run. The idea is called microcredit, and it’s just one of the economic development tools being researched and taught by an organization called the Chalmers Center for Economic Development, which is affiliated with Covenant College and the Presbyterian Church in America. (The PCA is one of the Presbyterian denominations that still believes that Jesus is the Son of God and rose from the dead and that the Bible is the Word of God.)

The Chalmers Center’s director, Brian Fikkert, spoke this morning at Christ Presbyterian Church (CPC) about the work of the center. The organization is not a charity or a missions agency; rather, it researches best practices in the realm of sustainable economic development and then trains missionaries and church leaders in their application, by means of seminars, distance learning, and literature. The aim is to help the church to help the poor to help themselves, without creating dependency.

(For the OK-SAFE folks who are freaking out because I used the word “sustainable,” this has nothing to do with the environment. We’re talking about an approach to economic development that becomes self-perpetuating, unlike anti-poverty programs that require continued massive infusions of money from the outside.)

For example, about a year ago, CPC funded a Chalmers Center training course for Pentecostal pastors in Uganda, so they could start microcredit and micro-business development courses through their congregations. A Chalmers-trained woman is working for the Anglican Church in Rwanda; the archbishop wants every parish to begin one to three rotating savings and credit associations (RoSCAs) in the next year. So far they’re on track to have 80,000 families involved in a RoSCA by the end of 2009. A group of 50 HIV-positive Kenyans, rejected by their families and living in a slum in Nairobi, have been meeting weekly as a RoSCA. After a year or so, not only have they been able to build capital for their own needs, nearly every member has started one or more RoSCAs on their own.

Here in the US, the Chalmers Center is training churches to teach jobs preparedness and financial literacy and to set up Individual Development Accounts, to help the poor build wealth toward lump-sum expenses — a home, a car, education, equipment for a small business, resources to handle emergencies.

I hope to tell you more about what I learned this morning. It strikes me that these techniques may become more and more useful in the US and the west as our massive banking infrastructure falters. Going back to small groups, with mutual trust and accountability, pooling money to lend to one another, may be the way to escape the credit crunch.

This evening (Sunday, March 8, 2009) from 5 to 8:30 at Christ Presbyterian Church (51st St, between Lewis and Harvard), Fikkert will lead a Christian Economic Institute seminar on these topics. There’s no charge to attend or for dinner, which will be served during a break. If you’re interested in how to help the poor both here and abroad, please come.

Clint and I closed out the evening with a vision session at the trendy, third place: McDonalds.

the “postures” of Christmas

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: 'holy'days, Christianity, authenticity, community, economics, social issues
• Date: Dec 23,2008

It’s the week of Christmas. It’s the week we celebrate the culmination of anticipation of that first Advent; the incarnate Christ coming to earth to rescue the world from itself. Jesus, made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness to show us the “posture” of Christmas is always about giving, rather than receiving. Others-focused rather than navel gazing.

I wanted to pass on along two great blog entries on the “postures” of Christmas from a couple of friends. The first comes from my pastor, Darrin Patrick. Here is a snippet:

As we head into the craziness of Christmas week I have been thinking a lot about what people are trying to get “out” of Christmas. We all bring all of our expectations of what something should be into anything in which we participate. We do this with movies, restaurants, jobs, new puppies, and new relationships.

And, we do this “expectation importation” with Christmas. I think there are two main things that people would love to experience at Christmas. Two expectations that the human heart profoundly desires…

Continue reading “What You Really Want For Christmas” by Darrin Patrick.

The second entry comes from my new friend, Mark Powell, pastor of Third Baptist Church in Granite City, IL. His daughter, Joy, director of the Theatre Department at MBU, and I work together. Mark and I will hopefully be getting together on a regular basis after the new year for a mentoring type of relationship. I’m looking forward to it.

Mark writes on what we have to offer this Christmas. Here’s a piece of his entry:

…the god of America has always been wealth. We overly reward the athlete, the tycoon, even the government official with both wealth and honor for their service, often relegating altruism to an asterisk. This means that wealth equals success. And, I should quickly add that people on the Jesus-way are not immune from this notion of wealth and conspicuous consumption as the fulfillment of the American Dream. No, the seduction of possessions and high-rolling credit hits both the lifestyles of the rich and famous and the saved and faithful.

But, with the economic crash this idea has been called into question. Put differently, since the god of mammon has fallen on hard-times, one might well ask, where do we go from here?

Perhaps it is in difficult times that we can return to the core of who we are, to our deepest values. For the follower of the Christ, in the midst of these steep struggles — as we face layoffs and unemployment and falling wages and shrinking retirements — what do we have to offer the Savior this year? Perhaps it may be the most precious gift of all…

Continue reading “A Christmas Message from the Pastor” by Mark Powell.

donald miller’s monday night dnc closing prayer

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: economics, politics, prayer, social issues, social justice, world issues
• Date: Aug 25,2008

Wow…

Father God,

This week, as the world looks on, help the leaders in this room create a civil dialogue about our future.

We need you, God, as individuals and also as a nation.

We need you to protect us from our enemies, but also from ourselves, because we are easily tempted toward apathy.

Give us a passion to advance opportunities for the least of these, for widows and orphans, for single moms and children whose fathers have left.

Give us the eyes to see them, and the ears to hear them, and hands willing to serve them.

Help us serve people, not just causes. And stand up to specific injustices rather than vague notions.

Give those in this room who have power, along with those who will meet next week, the courage to work together to finally provide health care to those who don’t have any, and a living wage so families can thrive rather than struggle.

Hep us figure out how to pay teachers what they deserve and give children an equal opportunity to get a college education.

Help us figure out the balance between economic opportunity and corporate gluttony.

We have tried to solve these problems ourselves but they are still there. We need your help.

Father, will you restore our moral standing in the world.

A lot of people don’t like us but that’s because they don’t know the heart of the average American.

Will you give us favor and forgiveness, along with our allies around the world.

Help us be an example of humility and strength once again.

Lastly, father, unify us.

Even in our diversity help us see how much we have in common.

And unify us not just in our ideas and in our sentiments—but in our actions, as we look around and figure out something we can do to help create an America even greater than the one we have come to cherish.

God we know that you are good.

Thank you for blessing us in so many ways as Americans.

I make these requests in the name of your son, Jesus, who gave his own life against the forces of injustice.

Let Him be our example.

Amen.

God’s economy // our daily bread

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Bible, Christianity, economics, reflections, video
• Date: Jul 7,2008

This is unbelievable. So timely. Francis Chan on Proverbs 30:7-9:

the 7

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church, church planting, community, culture, economics, emerging church, emerging culture, incarnational, missiology, missional church, post-Christendom, post-Evangelical, postmodern, preaching, relevintage
• Date: Jun 22,2008

1. Ryan Wiskell ruminates on the ‘consequences’ of authenticity. Good stuff…

2. Here is a very practical [albeit a little corny] video on missional neighboring. How many of us see our neighborhoods as mission fields?

3. Here are three interesting entries on the rising gas prices: 1) “Will Blog for Gas”, 2) Kent Shaffer on “10 Theories on High Gas Prices and Church”, and 3) I-Monk on “Pray at the Pump: A Meditation on Jesus and Economic Discipleship.”

4. In keeping with I-Monk, he dropped another great post this week. He waxes on the pros and cons of “principle” preaching.

5. David Fairchild on the missionary movement of the church: gathering. It’s not what you think…

6. Yet another helpful taxonomy to understand the different ‘streams’ of nu-evangelicalism. Tom Sine, co-author of The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time with Shane Claiborne, sees a distinctly Anabaptist accent in these new movements…

7. And finally, two stellar posts by Mark Riddle on not going to church but being the church here and here. An essential distinction in the missional church conversation…