extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: authenticity, extract'd, leadership, ministry, pastoring, preaching
• Date: Apr 1,2009

“rope knot” by leo reynolds

Though the experiences of Christ and the Spirit may be ever satisfying, and the word be life giving, the blessings of family and the fruit of ministry be ever present, the longing for heaven and the violent reality of its absence will leave you with a broken heart that will express itself in and empty and sour stomach feeling.

Upon feeling this you will very much be tempted to think your doing ministry wrong and want to seek someone/something/some success or affirmation that will take away this feeling. For most pastors you will flee from this feeling through seeking a more successful position. Don’t do it though. It is in this emptiness created by the absence of heaven and this utter dissatisfaction with life apart from heaven, that will keep your lamp lit for Jesus, it will place the gospel ring of truth in your preaching that can’t come about any other way.

His true work within you is right here in this place, and it is your half broken heart that allows you to have the burning in your bones of Jeremiah, the passion to weep in the Garden with Jesus and the courage to stand with Paul before an opposing congregation and preach Christ crucified as the power and wisdom of God. It is this knot in our stomach that will keep you an honest preacher in a sea of compromised men.

-Rick McKinley, from “Reflections on the Minstry” via rickmckinley.net

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, authenticity, extract'd, pastoring
• Date: Mar 13,2009

Until you experience significant failure in your personal life or ministry, you won’t even know that your heart is functionally operating in contradiction to what you’re saying with your mouth. And you certainly won’t be in a position where you get those two things in line.

-Tim Keller from “Risk and Failure” @ Innovation3

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: art, authenticity, books, culture, extract'd, movies, music
• Date: Feb 16,2009

I prefer showing over telling simply because it works – it’s an effective memorable way to communicate a message. Popular movies, books and music do influence, to varying degrees, the way we perceive ourselves, God and each other. And, like olympic figure skaters, they do this without looking like they’re trying – without preaching, using mostly story. And more than one camera, a multi-million dollar budget, and a household-name director. But is that any excuse for making yet another Christian flick that tells us to do the right thing?

-Shaun Groves, from his blog entry, “Show and Tell” via shaungroves.com/shlog

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, church, church planting, extract'd, missional living, missions
• Date: Jan 22,2009

…we need to think hard about our definition of success in church planting and in the life of the existing church. Too often, pastors and leaders are hearing an unspoken communique that success is leading a church of several hundred or growing 10% in attendance every year or building a new building…Maybe success is about obeying the voice of God and making disciple making disciples. Maybe the only numbers we should be counting in our churches is the number of missionaries that leave the parking lot on Sunday morning rather than the number of people who came to see the show.

-Darren Casper, from his article, “A challenging piece on,’what is church?’” from his 1.22.09 St. Louis Metro Baptist Association newsletter

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: extract'd, independent music, movies, music
• Date: Aug 27,2008

Will the real indie stand up?

At this point, most people acknowledge that there’s indie rock– music produced without corporate financial backing– and Indie Rock, a corporately funded mainstream genre that’s defined by normative musical aesthetics, not ideology or actual practice. The same idea carries over to indie film. There’s a festival and art-house circuit that’s essentially Hollywood’s shadow, governed not by artistic and financial freedom but by its own internal hierarchies and genre trappings. A number of tiresome trends have infected this circuit in recent years, including a cynical approach to ethnic and identity politics to garner perfunctory acclaim, condescending caricatures of rural types, and the accumulation of quirks and non-sequiturs in lieu of credible characterization.

-Brian Howe, music critic for Pitchfork Media, from his review of the soundtrack of the indie film Woodpecker

Photo by PUM Clothing by Mr. B. Covered by Creative Commons License.

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, culture, extract'd, incarnational, kingdom of God, missiology
• Date: Aug 5,2008

“…the lowest common denominator in all of the missional-incarnational practices is discipleship and the difficulty of discipling people in the midst of a consumerist culture. The story of the middle class in America is one of safety, security, comfort and convenience. In other words, American Christians have overwhelmingly chosen the story of the American way rather than the way of Jesus.”

-Brad Brisco from his “Alan Hirsch in New Orleans” entry from his blog, Missional Church Network

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church, church planting, culture, emerging culture, extract'd, ministry, missiology, missional church
• Date: Aug 2,2008

“Is it wrong or less spiritual to meet the needs of Christians who perhaps aren’t growing at other churches, who can move to the next level with Christ under the shepherding of a different church? Sure, this is important. If this is the goal of your church, fine. But be careful about calling this ‘growth.’ Churches can make a difference in some way with some Christians, but it’s unlikely they’re making a dent in culture by reaching the unreached or helping the truly disenfranchised.

…the death of so many churches is creating a feeder system for what some may call relevant or visionary or emergent churches. It is good that we are ‘rechurching’ America, but we also need to realize that when the feeder churches die off, everyone will feel the paucity of churchgoers. If we don’t focus on the ‘brand spanking new’ conversion of people, neighborhoods, and cities, in just a few short years, we’ll be going to refurbished church buildings…”

-from The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: advertising, church, extract'd, humor
• Date: Jun 1,2008

“I won’t hide the fact that I come at the whole thing with more than a bit of skepticism. And that’s not helped when your ministry website (and this is a tip to anyone in ministry out there) seems to be mostly about you and asks people (with huge blazing graphics) to “sow into revival.” If your revival needs funding something ain’t right.”

-Bob Hyatt, lead pastor of Evergreen Community in Portland, from his blog entry “nu-charismania”

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Gospel, culture, evangelism, extract'd, language, missiology, relevintage
• Date: May 29,2008

Beware of the greater reaction which will take place after you have acquired the language, and become fatigued and worn out with preaching the gospel to a disobedient and gainsaying people. You will sometimes long for a quiet retreat, where you can find a respite from the tug of toiling at native work—the incessant, intolerable friction of the missionary grindstone. And Satan will sympathize with you in this matter; and he will present some chapel of ease, in which to officiate in your native tongue, some government situation, some professorship or editorship, some literary or scientific pursuit, some supernumerary translation, or, at least, some system of schools; anything, in a word, that will help you, without much surrender of character, to slip out of real missionary work. Such a temptation will form the crisis of your disease. If your spiritual constitution can sustain it, you recover; if not, you die…

-Adoniram Judson, Baptist missionary in Burma [Myanmar] from a letter written June 25, 1832

[HT: John Piper]

———–

Photo by chascow

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: extract'd, social justice
• Date: May 18,2008

“We are guilty in the church for wanting to take credit for everything we do. That is quite different from not letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing. We call the press to come and see us put a blanket on a homeless guy.

I think Jesus has some pretty stern words for that. Instead we are learning that in joining these others we don’t need to get our name on their letterhead. In fact, our name never needs to be mentioned. We just don’t even go down those roads. If the press never learns of what we do, who cares? The one who sent us sees it all and He is the one we are serving.”

-Rick McKinley, lead pastor of Imago Dei, from his blog entry, “Leading Into Mission,” from rickmckinley.net