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: culture, evangelism, extract'd, Gospel, 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

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, church, community, emerging church, evangelism, extract'd, missiology, quotes of note, relationships
• Date: Apr 15,2008

The question is not are we going to grow a church or change our communities and the world. It isn’t an “either or” question–it’s a “both and.” Any church that is growing numerically has a higher standard and expectation of engagement than a church that isn’t. Any church that is engaging should be reaching lost people at a higher rate and more intensive rate than one that is merely a Sunday event. How can you have one without the other. When we split the two, we either have a Sunday event which allows people to deny and ignore God in comfort while absolving guilt because the sacrifice of church attendance was laid down, or a humanitarian organization which feeds the stomach but not the soul.

-Bob Roberts, from his “Ready For Korea and the World” entry from his blog, Glocalnet

[Photo by Scott Keddy. Covered by Creative Commons License]

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: extract'd
• Date: Apr 3,2008

“It’s better to be alienated by the Christian world if that is what it takes to reach the alienated.”

-Erwin McManus from “Awaken 08″

[HT: Eric Bryant]

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, church, emerging church, extract'd, missiology, New Testament
• Date: Mar 15,2008

“We both believe that if we aim at ministry, we seldom get to do much mission. But if we aim at mission, we have to do ministry because ministry is the means by which mission is achieved. The established church has generally got this wrong. Most never get to do real ministry with real outsiders because they aim primarily at the ‘saved.’ This we believe is a distortion of authentic New Testament faith and praxis. The church does not exist for itself but for its mission.”

-Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch from The Shaping of Things to Come

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: extract'd
• Date: Feb 13,2008

“Fantasy is what people want but reality is what they need. And I’ve just retired from the fantasy part.”

-Lauryn Hill introducing the song “Adam Lives in Theory” on her 2002 MTV Unplugged 2.0 album

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Bible, Bible study, church, extract'd, leadership, pastoring, relevintage, research
• Date: Feb 1,2008

“I must admit that I find all of this completely astonishing. The people who are growing spiritually are the people who are reading their Bibles. And it’s the same group of people who find themselves less dependent on the church, and more likely to be dissatisfied with the church. What does Reveal conclude from this? That the church isn’t as necessary for mature Christians because they have their Bibles. What?! How about concluding, “Maybe we should teach more Bible in church.”

How did they miss this?

If it’s the Bible and prayer that matures the mature, isn’t it the Bible and prayer that will mature the immature? And if it’s the Bible and prayer that matures people altogether, isn’t that what the church should be doing when it gathers?

Remarkably, Reveal tells the dissatisfied that it’s their fault for not being self-starters. Isn’t that like a math teacher telling the parents of the teenager who is dissatisfied with the teacher’s teaching, “It’s his problem because he’s not teaching himself math at home.”

-Jonathan Leeman of 9 Marks Ministries, responding to Chapter 3 of Willow Creek’s Reveal study, “What Did We Discover” on the 9 Marks Church Matters blog

extract’d

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church, concert, extract'd, planning, quotes of note, religion, sacred space, technology, theatre, worship
• Date: Jan 18,2008

A new feature for 2008: extract’d. This is where I ‘extract’ a quote of note that has garnered my attention that I think might garner yours. It’s intended to spur conversation. And yes, it is eerily like Out of Ur’s “Out of Context” feature. But on relevintage, I get to pick the quotes. So there…

Here’s this week’s edition:

“It has nothing to do with the Christmas message. . . . It’s selling a sensation, an experience. . . . What competitive churches understand is that you are not going to sell your service on the basis of doctrine because it’s all the same. When people go to church they . . . want to know if there’s a good show. And often that’s not coming out of doctrine, it comes from music, theatrics and the sound system.”

-James Twitchell, professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida, from a recent Chicago Tribune article, “Megachurches, megashows: Some organzations spend $1 million on performances to spread message”.

HT: Justin Taylor