30 Ways to Bless Your Workplace

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: authenticity, Christianity, Gospel, incarnational, mission, missional, missional living, orthopraxy, relationships, sent, work
• Date: Aug 10,2011

Missional.

As Ed Stetzer has said, it is a theological junk drawer word. If you want to give the illusion that you are an individual or a church that “gets it,” just slap “missional” in front of it and you are good. Or so one would think.

Let’s try this. Missional church. Missional community. Missional lighting. Well, okay, maybe not missional lighting but you get the idea.

The truth is that, yes, missional finds its impetus in the mission of God or the missio Dei (John 17:18) but missional is not missional without an outworking of the mission of God in orthopraxy. In practice. In real-life, gritty, in-the-trenches operation. No aftereffects, sorry, you’re not missional. You may bloviate but it’s not authentic or integrous.

The majority of those who make up the priesthood of believers are not vocational ministers. That means the primary sphere that most of the Christians in the world are on mission in is their workplace.

For those of us that have worked outside of the confines of the local church, we know the gap that exists between what people know of our faith and what they do not. Living out our Christianity in the workplace is a difficult endeavor.

Below are 30 ways to bless your workplace (read “engage missionally). I think these are brilliant. Read them and maybe find one or two that you can enact in the coming weeks to bring the gospel to bear on your primary mission sphere.

Josh Reeves:

…I have compiled 30 ideas for engaging people in your workplace. The workplace is an everyday context where many people spend the majority of their time. It is important for us to know what it looks like to bring gospel intentionality to our jobs. Hopefully this will help spark a few ideas for connecting with and blessing your coworkers.

1. Instead of eating lunch alone, intentionally eat with other co-workers and learn their story.

2. Get to work early so you can spend some time praying for your co-workers and the day ahead.

3. Make it a daily priority to speak or write encouragement when someone does good work.

4. Bring extra snacks when you make your lunch to give away to others.

5. Bring breakfast (donuts, burritos, cereal, etc.) once a month for everyone in your department.

6. Organize a running/walking group in the before or after work.

7. Have your missional community/small group bring lunch to your workplace once a month.

8. Create a regular time to invite coworkers over or out for drinks.

9. Make a list of your co-workers birthdays and find a way to bless everyone on their birthday.

10. Organize and throw office parties as appropriate to your job.

11. Make every effort to avoid gossip in the office. Be a voice of thanksgiving not complaining.

12. Find others that live near you and create a car pool.

13. Offer to throw a shower for a co-worker who is having a baby.

14. Offer to cover for a co-worker who needs off for something.

15. Start a regular lunch out with co-workers (don’t be selective on the invites).

16. Organize a weekly/monthly pot luck to make lunch a bit more exciting.

17. Ask someone who others typically ignore if you can grab them a soda/coffee while you’re out.

18. Be the first person to greet and welcome new people.

19. Make every effort to know the names of co-workers and clients along with their families.

20. Visit coworkers when they are in the hospital.

21. Bring sodas or work appropriate drinks to keep in your break room for coworkers to enjoy. Know what your co-workers like.

22. Go out of your way to talk to your janitors and cleaning people who most people overlook.

23. Find out your co-workers favorite music and make a playlist that includes as much as you can (if suitable for work).

24. Invite your co-workers in to the service projects you are already involved in.

25. Start/join a city league team with your co-workers.

26. Organize a weekly co-working group for local entrepreneurs at a local coffee shop.

27. Start a small business that will bless your community and create space for mission.

28. Work hard to reconcile co-workers who are fighting with one another.

29. Keep small candy, gum, or little snacks around to offer to others during a long day.

30. Lead the charge in organizing others to help co-workers in need.

Climbing the Fences: The MissionShift Conversations, Part 2

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Bible, Bible study, church, contextualization, culture, Evangelicalism, Gospel, hermeneutics, Jesus, missiology, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, missionSHIFT, orthopraxy, theology
• Date: Feb 2,2011

[This post is an entry in the Missionshift Book conversation happening @ edstetzer.com]

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, MissionShift: Global Mission Issues in the Third Millennium is an important book for those of us interested in the how the field of missiology impacts ministry in the 21st century. This week, we look at the late Paul Hiebert’s essay on mission’s present entitled, “The Gospel in Human Contexts: Changing Perceptions of Contextualization.”

==========

Hiebert begins his essay by challenging how little we take the time to study “systematically and deeply the contexts” in which we serve. (83) His concession that Christians, many times, impose their culture onto a receptor culture and thus, truncate the Gospel message is an important launching point for the sake of the discussion of mission’s present. Until we yield to the truth of this concept, we can’t proceed in our attempts to contextualize the gospel in a culture that is unlike our own. We live as monocultural beings in a multi- or sub-cultural world. As Hiebert says, “We do not stop to consider what aspects of our contexts come from our sociocultural and historical situations and what comes from Scripture.” (83)

In Hiebert’s essay, he attempts to plumb the depths of how contextualization has been used, examining unhelpful approaches such as non-contextualization, minimal contextualization, and uncritical contextualization. He concludes his essay by looking at a more constructive mode: critical contextualization or what he calls, missional theology.

According to Hiebert, non-contextualization takes place when we “come as outsiders and assume new converts will join and imitate us.” (85) Many will see the problems inherent in this method. In our attempts to contextualize the Gospel, we must admit that the process of contextualization should not and can not be “acultural and ahistorial.” (85) This is the misguided approach to “colonial” mission we saw in most Protestant missions in the early 20th century.

Minimal contextualization happens when we experience culture, language, and religious shock and we are compelled to deal with “others” and the question of “otherness” but ultimately don’t. (85) It is minimal because “we become aware of the depth and power of the people’s culture and the need to contextualize…the message…but we are afraid that this can distort the gospel.” (88) So, we stop short of the work needed to understand other cultures and our communication becomes “sender-oriented.” (89)

After the 1930s, uncritical or radical contextualization arose out of a growing awareness of anthropological insights that were observed in human contexts at the time. Unfortunately, this led to two beliefs. First, a conclusion that “we must measure communication not by what is sent by the speaker but what is understood by the listener.” (90) As Hiebert notes that in this paradigm, “…there is no way to test whether the meanings understood in one culture are the same as those found in another culture. There are no objective tests for truth.” (90). Secondly, pragmatism emerged in which we adopt which systems are most useful (also called cultural relativism). This was seen in the liberation theologies in the 1960s and 70s that were “untethered to the true intent of Scripture” and more recently, was seen in the Emergent movement that surfaced in the 1990s in which many in the movement assimilated itself deeply into culture to the extent there was no distinctiveness or “saltiness” and “lost its prophetic voice.” (107, 91)

A helpful correction materialized called critical contextualization in which Hiebert rightly cites was forged by individuals like Leslie Newbigin and the Newbigin-shaped, Gospel in Our Culture group, formed by George Hunsberger. The heart of this model is that the gospel “…is encoded in forms that are understood by the people, without making the gospel captive to the contexts.” (93) Hiebert continues, “in this view…missionaries are transcultural people…who come to serve the local churches instead of being rivals for power and positions.” (94)

So how do we enact critical contextualization? Hiebert suggests that there are three principles that will help: ontology (relating the transcontextual nature of the Gospel) , phenomenology (understanding the sociocultural context for Gospel understanding), and missiology (engaging culture with the transformative message of the Gospel).

Hiebert advocates that in ontology, we emphasize the Gospel is divine revelation to humans, “given in the peculiarities of history and locality but…given by God and reveals God’s universal message to all of manking.” (94) In other words, it is transcontextual and not “equated with any particular human context.” (94) Further, in phenomenology, we must strive to put the Gospel in specific sociocultural contexts for people to grasp it. According to Hiebert, this is done by studying Scripture and humans and building a bridge between them. Finally, in missiology, the “knowledge of the Gospel makes us responsible to share its message of salvation…with all people.” (99) And this gospel “is not just information to be communicated…it is a message to which people must respond.” (99)

One of the most hotly debated issues from Hiebert’s essay was the concept of the church as a hermenuetical community. Norman Geisler states, “How can local theologies have the right to interpret the gospel wrongly, namely, to distort the gospel?” (139) I think Geisler insinuates more than what Hiebert is trying to say here.

What does Hiebert mean by the church as a “hermenuetical community?” I think we should let Hiebert answer that.

In his section entitled “Studying Scripture on the Issue at Hand,” he says, “…as the church we are entrusted with the gospel. If we do not all study it together [emphasis mine], we will not be active participants in knowing and living it, and we may be led astray by lone individuals.” (97) Simply, the church as a hermenuetical community studies the word together so we can uncover our biases for interpretation. The community serves as a “check and balance” against the very thing that Geisler is concerned about — Gospel distortion. In fact, this approach places a high value on trust within the community to self-govern itself against Gospel malformation.

Michael Pocock makes a helpful distinction with what I sense Geisler is concerned about regarding “local theologies.” He says, “Theology is a human product; it has no claim to infallibility. It is what humans do in arranging and rendering revealed truth in understandable categories. Revelation has a magisterial use while theology has a ministerial function.” (108) There is a difference between “revelation” and “theology” and Geisler seems to be equating the two. Hiebert states, “…we dare not equate the gospel with any human theologies. Our theologies are partial human attempts to understand Scripture.” (92). Ed Stetzer adds, “Revelation is eternal, objective, absolute truth. Man’s attempt to explain it theologically are based in human language.” (159)

Pocock continues in clarifying what I believe is Hiebert’s goal for the hermenuetical community, “…Evangelical believers hope that the theology they construct corresponds as closely as possible with revealed truth…” (108). In fact, Geisler’s statement that “Would it not be better simply to claim that we do not know all the truth but that the truth we know is truly known?” gets at the heart of Hiebert’s thrust. (138) A hermenuetical community humbly enters the study of Scripture “claiming” that their interpretations may be biased (“we do not know all the truth”) to work together to develop a truth that can be “truly known.”

The irony in all of this is, as Stetzer shows, “Is Geisler…affirming he understands perfect universal truth and that his understanding is not culturally conditioned but absolutely true?” (162) Hiebert speaks of the “corporate nature of the church as a community of interpretation extends no only church in every culture, but also to the church in all ages,” and to this, Geisler states, “Roman Catholics smile since such a claim supports their position that even infallible Scripture needs an infallible interpreter.” (95, 139) Doesn’t Geisler seem to be placing himself in a “papal” position of authority here or at best, the purveyor of the process towards the best interpretation?

To be fair, Geisler is concerned with Biblical fidelity and so am I. But so is Hiebert. To this end, Hiebert would have done well to make a clearer distinction between the Gospel (which I would equate with the aforementioned idea of “revelation”) and the contextualization of the Gospel. At times, the line between the two was a bit gray, at other times, very clear (see Hiebert’s citation of E. Stanley Jones statement on p. 95)

Hiebert’s approach to a hermenuetical community reflects what John Davidson Hunter, in his book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World, calls “faithful presence.” This posture towards culture is one of humility and grace. Geisler is concerned with Hiebert’s rejection that “other theologies and religions are false and must be attacked [emphasis mine].” (86) Geisler says, “If Hiebert means only that we should speak the truth in love to those who hold false views, then who would object? But truth is truth, even when not spoken in love…” (136)

For someone who is pushing for Biblical fidelity, why does Geisler posit it is sometimes appropriate to choose truth over love — even “attack” over love. Jesus was full of truth and grace. Truth only is a posture of an assertive (and probably, repulsive) aura . As Stetzer says, those who have held this view, “have rarely made contact with non-Western thinkers in an effective way.” (161)

So why does the conversation around, and further, the experimentation of contextualization need to continue? I believe Pocock and Stetzer crystallize the answer to this question:

“Where progress has been difficult over a long period, there must be room for experimentation and mistakes. Where there have been great awakenings, there have often been ragged edges that appear heretical to some, what Ralph Winter once called ‘the silver linings’ of otherwise dark clouds.”
–Pocock, p. 110

“This task of reaching out to other cultures is under the Holy Spirit’s direction. That task requires us being humbly certain of our own beliefs and methods, rather than arrogantly being so sure that we know what God would do and have us say in any situation…Crossing the barriers is more important if the world is our focus. We don’t accomplish this by throwing away the truth; we achieve this by holding the gospel close and climbing the fences with it in order to share it on the other side.”
–Stetzer, p. 158

[Note: The respondents also contributed to a healthy debate surrounding issues such as syncretism and the C-1 to C-6 contextualization spectrum but for the sake of space, I am going to hold off on entering those discussions. In short, I think there has to be a middle ground between Geisler and Pocock/Darrell Whiteman on the extent to which certain forms carry meaning. In some ways, I feel Pocock/Whiteman may go too far and Geisler may not go far enough but this review does not allow further conjecture.]

The Trialogue of God, Culture, and Contextualization: The MissionShift Conversations, Part 1

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Bible, Christianity, church, church planting, contextualization, culture, eschatology, Evangelicalism, Gospel, history, Jesus, kingdom of God, missiology, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, missions, orthopraxy, resurrection, sanctification, sent, Trinity
• Date: Jan 17,2011

[This post is an entry in the Missionshift Book conversation happening @ edstetzer.com]

MissionShift: Global Mission Issues in the Third Millennium is a timely book in the midst of the missional conversation we find ourselves in at the top of the 21st century. It’s a book that I hope gets the press it deserves because it is a indispensable resource for those wrestling with what it means to be “missional.” A big thank you goes to David Hesselgrave and Ed Stetzer for compiling this opus.

At a cursory scan, the book is moored by essays related to mission’s past, present, and future from three of the leading-edge missiologists of our time: Charles Van Engen, the late Paul Hiebert, and the late Ralph Winter. In response to these essays, Hesselgrave and Stetzer gathered a “who’s who” in the field of missiology to interact and debate about the issues therein.

In the coming weeks, I am going to respond to each section in MissionShift. Today, I would like to comment on the first section of MissionShift related to mission’s past.

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

I have to admit that Van Engen is one of my favorite missiologists. His books, God’s Missionary People and Mission on the Way, are must-reads for any pastor, church planter, or missionary who is engaged in mission today. These books have informed my thoughts on how mission, the church, the Kingdom of God, and eschatology intersect, like few other.

Van Engen begins by showing us the plethora of ways the word “mission” is being used today — and thus the confusion surrounding the term. Some are attempting to use it correctly, while others are using it to “stand for any kind of new life, vision, vitality, and direction of the church — often with little or no theological or missiological reference.” (10)

I concur with Van Engen that due to this blurring, “it is especially important that the Christian church wrestle with its mission in the sense of articulating the reason and purpose for which it exists” because “a cohesive, consistent, focused, theologically deep, missiologically broad, and contextually appropriate Evangelical missiology has not yet emerged for this new century.” (10, 24)

Van Engen is the consummate historian in this essay, accentuating the important shifts in mission thinking in two millenia of mission’s history. He capably takes us through mission’s past by walking us through mission in the early church through the Constantinian era through the late 1700s circa William Carey through mission reconstruction in the 20th century.

Some will question (like essay respondents Keith Eitel and Andreas Kostenberger) the length at which mission’s past influences Van Engen’s mission present. But as Ed Stetzer notes in his response, the privilege of Biblical revelation does not “preclude us from gaining favorable insights from the history of the church…where God’s truth about the world and the people who live in it may be discerned.” (77)

One of Van Engen’s most important contributions in his essay is where he reminds us that the original Biblical meaning of the word “mission” — apostello and pempo — denotes being sent “forth to service in the Kingdom of God with full authority (grounded in God).” (11)

His point here is to highlight that mission is participating in the mission of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the sender is Jesus, whose authority “defines, circumscribes, limits, and propels Christian mission.” (12) This is a simple but profound subtlety in the debate over mission today. Who sets the agenda? Whose bias is inserted — the mission agency, the denomination, the sending church, the non-for-profit or something/someone else? Van Engen says, “Biblical mission is God’s mission.” (12)

So how do we let God set the docket for mission?

I believe we do this in large part as we see mission as robustly Trinitarian (as respondent Enoch Wan argues Van Engen is lacking — though Stetzer will later argue that Van Engen is not neglecting in this idea). Van Engen seems to purport this idea but I wish he would have been a bit more clear on this issue. To be fair, Van Engen leans toward this notion in a couple of ways:

1) First, he says “The church is sent by her Lord” and then goes on to say, “mission is participation in the mission of Jesus Christ…in the power of the Holy Spirit,”; I think we can synthesize his thoughts here to support a Trinitarian grounding of mission, but it’s not easily ascertainable (12)

2) He does cite David Bosch’s magisterial definition of mission from Transforming Mission in which Bosch says, “Mission [is] understood as being derived from the very nature of God. It [is] thus put in the context of the Trinity, not ecclesiology or soteriology.” (footnote, 24)

I believe that as we reflect and dialogue on the implications of a Trinitarian grounding for mission, contextual orthopraxy will emerge. These questions strike me as helpful questions to ask ourselves as we use the filter of the Trinity for mission:

–What does the story of God tells us about how God interacts with His people? How does this inform us on how to interact with people?

–How does the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus show us how to live in such a way that the Gospel is attractive to those in our spheres?

–How can we pursue the leading of the Holy Spirit to make prayerful, discerning decisions about mission in our contexts?

In summary, the most helpful respondent essays are from Stetzer, Darrell Guder, and Wan as Eitel’s is polemic in nature and the least helpful. Kostenberger’s response is generally helpful but also seems to show a paranoia that Biblical revelation is being usurped in the name of contextualization.

Guder specifically enriches the conversation by stating, “The authority of Scripture is not then defined so much by our anxiety about boundaries and guidelines but by the powerful way in which God’s written Word continues our conversion to our vocation.” (53) This reminds me of Tim Keller’s thoughts that the key to a Christian’s sanctification is not to tread into deeper theological waters but to come back to the Gospel found in the Word again and again. One of the by-products of this Gospel-wakefulness converts us to a community of faith that understands our vocation as missional.

Stetzer hits the nail on the head when he says, “For us to be biblical…in our reflections on the church’s mission, we must have a theological interpretation of the message of Scripture… (and) of our culture, and a theological application of the gospel to our culture.” (77) This Newbiginian-like trialogue of God’s story (Bible) and culture (context), and practice (contextualization via the local church) does not dilute Biblical revelation but rather enhances it to the glory of God flowing from Trinitarian mission.

the church for whom?

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church, church planting, city, contextualization, culture, Great Commission, incarnational, irreligion, mercyview, missiology, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, post-Christendom, relevintage, sent, urban, video, vision
• Date: Nov 7,2010

As I prepared to move to Tulsa to plant mercyview [Lord willing, a network of missional communities and expressions scattered all over this city and region], I had countless interviews “exegeting” the culture here, sitting under the wisdom of Tulsans from many different sectors: business, government, religion, etc.

Before I even visited the first time, I knew I was stepping into a highly churched culture. My research was confirmed as I talked with folks here. And in my conversations, it became very clear to me that new churches, for the most part, were contending for the same small slice of the pie that represents the “reachable” people groups.

I realized that Tulsa is in desperate need of a mobilization of Jesus-followers who are concerned about bringing spiritual and cultural renewal to the forgotten, the broken, and the wounded in the city; servant-messengers who are in the city, for city. Particularly, for those not-yet-Xians…

Michael Frost echoes this sentiment in this video:

notes from mercyview lab #5

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, community, culture, culture making, discipleship, evangelism, Gospel, incarnation, incarnational, missional, missional church, missional living, Old Testament, prayer, social justice, vision, work, worship
• Date: Aug 20,2010

This past Sunday marked the end of the exciting first phase of planting the Gospel in urban Tulsa. God has been good! It has been a great summer as we have looked at the ethos of mercyview and how it fits in the spiritual and social climate here.

This Sunday, August 22, we will dialogue formally and informally about the base-level covenant and pray that by early September, God will bring together a group of deeply committed men and women to help plant the Gospel in their hearts and in the city of Tulsa.

But this post is to share the notes from mercyview lab #5, particularly for those of you that weren’t able to be with us. First, here is the all of the content from the previous labs:

–-Lab #1: The Gospel: The Center of Everything [download synopsis here]

–-Lab #2: Salt and Light: An Alternative City Within a City, For the City [download synopsis here]

–Lab #3: A Missional People: Sent as Missionaries to be Witnesses [download synopsis here]

–Lab #4: Seeking the Shalom of the City: How a Center-City Church Transforms Culture [download synopsis here]

Lab #5 was the final piece of the DNA of mercyview: the apex of holistic ministry interlocks the four ministry fronts [evangelism + worship // community + discipleship // justice + mercy // faith _ work] well. Here is a synopsis:

–Churches that thrive in cities should be characterized by an integrative balance of four ministry areas: missional evangelism, community formation, justice and mercy, and the integration of faith and work. Christians should seek personal conversion, deep Christian community, justice, and cultural renewal in the city.

–It is rare for a church to combine several of these emphases in ministry and extremely rare to have them all. One of the reasons is that the leaders of these ministries often resist and resent the others. But there is no reason to pit them against each other. They do not contradict but rather supplement each other.

–Only if we do all of these ministries at once will any of them be effective. They are interdependent and interlocking. And it is the only way to see our cities comprehensively influenced for Christ.

A. Connecting people to God: Missional Evangelism + Evangelistic Worship

1. Missional Evangelism [2]

–Evangelism rarely happens by osmosis. A prevelant myth in many churches is that if you give not-yet-Xians a chance to rub shoulders w/Xians, they are guaranteed to catch a dose of the Gospel. This myth is sometimes used to justify not making any special effort to provide evangelism programs or training. It allows churches to feel that they are obeying the Great Commission just by doing good deeds for Christ’s sake. A holistic approach places spiritual nurture and social care on a equal footing from the start.

What is missional evangelism?

a. We share the Gospel by word and deed, not word or deed. Modeling the Gospel through personal piety, acts of kindness, and the pursuit of justice is powerful and can draw people to Christ – if they learn why you are doing what you do.

b. We expectantly hope that those who hear the Word will embrace the message and repent. The bedrock of the Gospel is Christ’s incarnation of God’s love to a broken world. But accepting that love brings more than warm feelings – the powerful love of a just and holy God calls for repentance – turning away from personal and social sin through the power of the Holy Spirit.

c. Evangelism does not stop when someone accepts Christ. The ultimate goal of evangelism is not to win converts but to make disciples. Discipleship-oriented evangelism is concerned not only with non-yet-Xians but also dechurched Xians. The radical life of obedience preached by Christ is impossible without the teaching, accountability, and fellowship (koinonia) of a loving church community. If we make converts but fail to connect them to a Biblical, supportive, worshiping Xian community, then you have not completed the evangelistic mandate.

How do you do missional evangelism?

a. Pray: Prayer is the key to unlock relationships – it is what will draw, change, cause people to be comitted to their relationship with the Lord. Because salvation is God’s work, we must permeate all our evangelistic activity with prayer.

b. Listen: The temptation in proclamational evangelism is to try to take the conversation where we want it to go. Evangelism takes place best when the target community is treated not as a project but as people that have dignity and deserve respect.

c. Look: Look for a way to serve (go the extra mile), to connect (no two people are alike), to invite (take next step in their relationship with God-the journey from unbelief to to belief is a long one), and to fellowship (long-term relationship)

2. Evangelistic Worship [1 Corinthians 14:5-25 + Acts 2] [3]

–Non-believers are expected to be present in Xian worship. Paul in 1 Corinthians 14:23 expects both “unbelievers” and “the unlearned” (literally “a seeker”– “one who does not understand”) to be present in worship.

–Non-believers must find the praise of Xians to be comprehensible. It should not be missed that Paul tells a local congregation to adapt its worship because of the presence of unbelievers. It is a false dichotomy to insist that if we are seeking to please God we must not ask what the unchurched feel or think about our worship.

–Non-believers can fall under conviction and be converted through comprehensible worship. . In 1 Cor 1,4 it happens during the service, but in Acts 2, it is supplemented by “after meetings” and follow-up evangelism. God wants the world to overhear us worshipping him. God directs his people not to simply worship, but to sing his praises “before the nations.” We are not to simply communicate the gospel to them, but celebrate the gospel before them.

B. Connecting people to each other– Community and discipleship [4]

–We seek to spiritually form people mainly through community. Growth in grace and wisdom and character does not happen so much in classes and instruction, or even in coming to large worship gatherings. They happen mainly through in counter-cultural communities where the implications of the gospel are really worked out cognitively and ‘worked in’ practically in ways that no other setting or venue can afford.

1. The function of Xian community

a. Mission: The quality of our community is the real secret of mission. When the world sees exceptional community it is both 1) more convincing of the truth of Jesus’ message, and 2) far more inviting and encouraging to join up with.

b. Character: Jesus created communities of learning, where there was plenty of time to work out truth in discussion and dialogue and in application. Therefore, the crucial (though not exclusive venue for discipleship is in communities, not classes. Character is mainly shaped by the people with whom we live–with whom we eat, play, converse, counsel, and study. It is therefore our primary social community that makes us what we are at the deepest level.

c. Ethics: Most of the “ethical principle”‘ or “rules for behavior” in the Bible are not just code-books for individuals but descriptions of the new community of love and holiness.

d. Spirituality: A human being is too rich and multi-faceted a being to be known one-on-one. We think we know someone but an individual can’t bring out all that is in the person. We need to see the person with others. And if that is the case with a human being, how much more so with the Lord. You can’t really know Jesus by yourself.

Summary

It is a typical mistake of Christians to miss the centrality of community. We often think of community as one more thing we have to do in the “rules” of behavior. But community is the way we are to do all that Christ told us to do in the world. It is the way we do ‘ethics’; it is the way we do learning.

C. Connecting people to the city – Justice and mercy [5]

–We did not want to emphasize mainly evangelism (as conservative churches do) or mainly social justice (as liberal churches do) but give a very high emphasis to both. A gospel-centered church should combine ‘zeals’ that are ordinarily never seen together in the same church.

What is justice?

–Bruce Waltke: “The tzadiq [just] are [those who are] willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the wicked are [those who are] willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.”

–Living justly means the constant recognition of the claims of community upon us; it means disadvantaging ourselves in order to advantage others. According to the Old Testament, God’s justice means to share food, shelter, and other basic resources with those who have fewer of them (Is 58:6-10.)

–The basis for ‘doing justice’ is salvation by grace. Xians may disagree about the particular political approach to the problems of injustice but all Xians must be characterized by their passion for justice and their personal commitment to annihilate injustice through personal giving, sacrifice, and generosity.

What is mercy?

–Xians are to “show mercy” or eleos. This word is used to describe holistic ministry in Luke 10:25-37 and James 2:14-17, two of the key passages in the Bible about wholistic ministry. “Mercy” sometimes has a general meaning but sometimes it specifically refers to helping the poor and needy.

–Martin Luther: “We are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone.”

Keeping justice and mercy in tension

–There are two unbiblical political ideologies and reductionisms that reign in our culture today. Many ‘conservatives’ are motivated to help the poor mainly by mercy. On the other hand, many ‘liberals’ are motivated to help the poor mainly out of a sense of indignation and aborted justice. Both views, ironically, become self-righteous. One tends to blame the poor for everything; the other to blame the rich for everything.

–A balanced motivation arises from a heart touched by grace which has lost its superiority-feelings toward any particular class of people. It is the gospel that motivates us to act both in mercy and in justice.

D. Connecting people to the culture – Integrating faith and work [6]

–All of our work matters to God. We agree with the original Protestant Reformers that so called “secular” work is as valuable and God-honoring as Christian ministry.

–When you use your gifts in work you are answering God’s calling to serve the human community. Our work then, whatever it is, matters greatly to God.

–On the other hand, God matters to all our work. That is, we also believe that the gospel shapes and effects the motives, manner, and methods we use in our work.

–What then is our vision? We do not want Xians to privatize their faith away from their work nor to express it terms of a subculture. Rather we want to see growing Xians working in their vocations both with excellence and Xian distinctiveness, transforming the culture in which we live from.

========

[1] Adapted from “Integrative Ministry” by Tim Keller from London Church Planting Consultation, 2008-2009.

[2] Adapted from Chapter 3, “Making Evangelism Central,” from Churches That Make a Difference: Reaching Your Community with Good News and Good Workds by Ron Sider, Philip Olson, and Heidi Unruh, 2002.

[3] Adapted from “Integrative Ministry,” Keller.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

notes from mercyview lab #4

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: acts, Bible, Bible study, Christianity, church, church planting, city, community, culture, culture making, emerging culture, evangelism, Gospel, Great Commission, homosexuality, incarnational, Israel, mercyview, missiology, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, Old Testament, Paul, post-Christendom, Poverty, religion, Revelation, social issues, social justice, theology, urban, work
• Date: Aug 3,2010

This past Sunday, it was great to see new and familiar faces, to intercede for one another and the future of mercyview, to dig into the Sacred Text, and to dialogue at mercyview lab #4 [we have one more next week before we move into a new phase for our burgeoning community].

We are fervently praying that as we approach the end of the summer, the “culture” of mercyview is crystal clear and God will call together a group of men and women who have an overwhelming desire to plant the Gospel deeply in their hearts and in the great city of Tulsa.

Here is the content from the previous labs if you’re interested:

–-Lab #1: The Gospel: The Center of Everything [download synopsis here]

–-Lab #2: Salt and Light: An Alternative City Within a City, For the City [download synopsis here]

–Lab #3: A Missional People: Sent as Missionaries to be Witnesses [download synopsis here]

In Lab #4, we talked about how a center-city church, seeking the “shalom” (peace) of the city, can redeem culture. Here is a synopsis:

–In Jeremiah 29, we find the purpose of the Babylonian exile for the Israelites was cultural assimilation and while the Jews were living in that place, as a counter-culture, they were to engage fully in life, even in the life of a city that was ostensibly opposed to God, “seeking the peace and prosperity” of the city.

–This may sound radical to us today but it is very much in accord with what Jesus deemed to be the second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39). And It is right in line with the idea that Israel, God’s people at that time, was to be a “blessing for the nations” (Gen. 12:3)

God’s invention

–An Old Testament city would look like a human settlement surrounded by a fortification or a wall. This was very important because behind the wall, human society was very different than what existed outside of the city in the countryside.

–The average city in Old Testament times was 1000-3000 people and 205 people per acre (NYC has 105 people per acre). What made a city back then was not “bigness” but density, diversity, and mixed use (within 10 minutes you can walk to work, eat, learn, shop, live). The same is true for today’s cities.

–It is widely understood that when God tells Adam and Eve to “have dominion” and “fill the earth” he is directing them to build a God-honoring civilization. They are to bring forth the riches that God put into creation by developing science, art, architecture, human society. Therefore, God was calling Adam and Eve to be city builders.

–This new Jerusalem is the city is the Garden of Eden, remade. We began in a garden but will end in a city. God’s purpose for humanity is urban! Why? Because the city is God’s invention and design not just a sociological phenomenon or invention of humankind.

–City building is an ordinance of God just like work and marriage. God made the city to be a developmental tool, designed to draw out the riches he put into the earth, nature and the human soul at creation.

Cities develop culture

–Cities are the main creators of culture, values, and belief.

–Whatever develops in the center-city tends to have a profound effect throughout the rest the city, region, nation, and world. Influence tends to move from the center-city outward.

–In the latter half of the twentieth century in America, many churches left the cities and moved out to the suburbs. Today many evangelical Xians in the United States bemoan the fact that they have lost their influence on the culture. The reason is obvious: they are no longer in the cities.

How cities develop culture

1. The city as a place of refuge and safety

–It has always been a place where people come who are too weak to live in other places. When Israel moved into the promised land, the first cities were built by God’s direction as ‘cities of refuge’, where the accused person could flee for safety and civil justice. Thus God invented cities to be a sign of divine, not self, protection.

–Even today, people like the homeless, or new immigrants, or the poor, or people with ‘deviant’ lifestyles, must live in the city. The city is always a more merciful place for minorities of all kinds. Why? The density of the city creates the possibility of strong minority communities.

–Density creates diversity.

2. The city as a cultural “mining” center

–Even the description of the wicked city of Babylon in Revelation 18 shows how the power of the city draws out the resources of creation-of the physical world and of the human soul.

–Cities draw and gather together human resources and tap their potential for cultural development as no other human-life organization structure can.

–The city was designed by God to do, as an instrument of glorifying Him, by ‘mining’ the riches of creation and building a God-honoring civilization.

3. The city as the place to meet God.

–Cities are the key to evangelism in any area. Paul’s missionary journeys essentially ignored the countryside. When he entered a new region, he planted churches in the biggest city, and then left.

–Because of the diversity and intensity of the cities, urbanites are much more open to radically new ideas – especially the gospel. Because they are surrounded by so many people like and unlike themselves and so much more mobile and subject to change, urbanites are far more open to change/conversion than any other kind of resident.

–We need to care about the center-city: We need to be concerned about the city, if for no other reason than our future is likely to be profoundly influenced by what happens there.

–We need to change our view of the center-city: It is not an evil place from which we ought to flee. Negative views are directly linked to disengagement.

–We need to understand the crucial importance of the center-city: We need to commit ourselves to living in the city. All true ministry is incarnational. We are unlikely to have much effect on the city if we are not living where we can be salt and light.

–We need to engage the center-city at many different levels: proclaiming Christ to individuals and communities, doing justice, engaging culture, and integrating faith and work

–We need to reach the center-city to reach the rest of your city, the region, and the world

–We need to reach the center-city to reach your own heart with the gospel: You will eventually come to see that you need the city more than the city needs you. Tim Keller says it this way:

1. In the city you’ll find a) people that seem ‘hopeless’ spiritually, and b) people of other religions or no religion and of deeply non-Christian lifestyles that are wiser, kinder, and deeper than you. This will shock you out of your moralism and force you to either finally believe the gospel of sheer grace, or give it up altogether.

2. In the city you will find that the poor and the broken are often much, much more open to the idea of gospel grace and much more dedicated to its practical outworkings than you are.

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

[1] Adapted from Allen Barth and Tim Keller, “A Vision for our Cities,” from Redeemer City to City.

[2] Adapted from Tim Keller, “A Bibilcal Theology of the City,” from Evangelicals Now.

[3] Adapted from Tim Keller, “City Vision” from UPL Consultation 2 mp3.

[4] Adapted from Barth and Keller, “A Vision for our Cities,” from Redeemer City to City.

ethos of a missional community

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, church, community, culture, evangelism, Gospel, hospitality, incarnational, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, orthopraxy, relationships
• Date: Jul 22,2010

One of today’s brightest thinkers on the issue of missional communities is Jeff Vanderstelt, lead pastor of Soma Communities and Vice President of the Acts 29 Network.

Recently, Jeff sat down with Scott Thomas, president of A29, and shared his thoughts on the ethos of missional communities and the interviews were posted on the A29 blog. Watch these four videos and let them challenge your thoughts about what being in community and mission look like:

Life on Mission

Life on Mission from Acts 29 Network on Vimeo.

Being on Mission Together

Being on Mission Together from Acts 29 Network on Vimeo.

How To Share Your Faith

How to Share Your Faith from Acts 29 Network on Vimeo.

A Life That Needs Gospel Explanation

A Life That Needs Gospel Explanation from Acts 29 Network on Vimeo.

organic church planting = slow church

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: authenticity, Christianity, church, church planting, community, leadership, missional, missional church, missional living, organic, relationships
• Date: Jul 17,2010

For all the adjectives out there to describe the church – total church, deep church, simple church, essential church – I’m convinced that for those planting organically, the only adjective that fits is “slow.”

(As a general rule, organic planting is moving from a core to a crowd vs. a crowd to a core; for more on this, see Ed Stetzer’s Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community, Chapter 11 “Planting Missional Ministries”)

I’m not the first to come up with this idea. Tim Chester recently wrote on this and it really hit home. He says:

In recent years we have been offered all sorts of options for church: organic church, messy church, simply church, total church.

Let me add another: slow church.

There is a slow food movement that extols the merits of hand-cooked food made from local ingredients cooked for as long as takes – an antidote to fast food. The slow food movement has extended so that people are advocating slow cities.

I’ve reading through Proverbs over the past few weeks and have been struck by how many call for us to slow down.

I think Tim is onto something…

Planting organically is a very different approach than the traditional form of planting. Traditional planting isn’t wrong – it is a way – just as organic planting is. And yes, these are very general terms. But I’m finding that planting organically is, well, slow.

Echoing our experience, a church planter tells of how slow church looks in practice:

–not worrying when the church is apparently growing slowly, or not at all
–learning to value and be thankful to God for the ‘small’ actions of his grace: The idea grasped in a bible study, the godly resolution of a…conflict, the provision of work, the opportunity to bless our neighbors by doing their garden, the chances to speak about Jesus in the workplace, the unity in song, the growth in a desire to see people come to know Jesus, opportunities to look after each other, the conversation…
–praying for God to act to bring change and for the Spirit to open eyes to the truth of gospel
–our interventions in one another’s lives being focused on lovingly commending the good news of the gospel, rather than driving only at behavioral outcomes
–patience and persistence in prayer
–joy and hope coming not from activity or success ( which struggles when faced with a quiet life or failure) but from knowing the Lord Jesus
–learning to be thankful for the people God has put you with…

I think if I had to sum up the difference between the two approaches, it would have to be the issue of the “buffer.”

In the organic model, there is no stage, no lights + sound systems, and very little space between the leader and the community.

Instead…

There is a living room.

There are strangers facing one another, beginning to work through the uncomfortable stages of community.

There is lots of conversation.

There is a leader – but he is more of a harmonizer, integrating his vision with burgeoning vision of the community.

In short, there is very little “buffer.”

Here is what I think (in my humble opinion): The secret to developing concrete community in the infancy of a church may be found in the lack of a buffer.

I have nothing against preaching, corporate worship, preview services, etc. but if church leaders generally agree that 80% of true discipleship and spiritual growth come from smaller groupings [1], I’m afraid we might be skipping over something so essential in the formative stages of a church that may be difficult to backtrack and find again.

We think how you start means everything. It says a lot about who you want to be and how you want to be known.

We think whether you are a part of an established church or trying to birth a new church community, the end game is to be in rhythmic gospel formation in the context of community on mission. Everything else is periphery.

So we are choosing little to no buffer for the sake of instilling the DNA of deep gospel formation in community. It’s messy and measured. And there is no question that this means the birth of mercyview will be a slow simmer.

And that is just fine.

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

[1] Dan Kimball, Emerging Worship: Creating Worship Gatherings for New Generations (El Cajon, CA: emergentYS, 2004), 29.

Photo by KaiChanVong // reprinted under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

notes from mercyview lab #3

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: acts, Bible, Bible study, Christianity, church, church planting, community, contextualization, culture, evangelism, Great Commission, incarnation, incarnational, Jesus, mercyview, ministry, missio Dei, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, New Testament, organic, orthopraxy, Phillipians, post-Christendom, Poverty, sent, social justice, theology
• Date: Jul 14,2010

After taking a week off for the 4th of July, this past Sunday we jumped into the 3rd of 5 labs this summer, looking at another foundational piece of mercyview.

It was great again to gather with friends, to pray for one another and the birth of mercyview, to look at Scripture, to dialogue, and of course, eat good food (this week, it was Oklahoma Caviar!).

Our prayer is that by the end of the summer, the DNA of mercyview is clear and God will call together a group of men and women who have an overwhelming desire to plant the Gospel in the city of Tulsa.

For those who have missed a lab or are “peeking over the fence” via the blog, here is the content from the previous labs:

–Lab #1: The Gospel: The Center of Everything [download synopsis here]

–Lab #2, Salt and Light: An Alternative City Within a City, For the City [download synopsis here]

In Lab #3, we talked about what it means to live “sent.” Specifically, we talked about being a missional people, sent as missionaries to be witnesses. We broke it down like this:

1. Sent
2. Sent as missionaries [1]
3. Sent as missionaries to be witnesses [2]

–When we talk about being “sent,” we are talking about the “in the world” part of the “in the world but not of the world” concept taken from Romans 12:4.

–Jesus prayed for His people to be in the world, living as a city within a city, and living sent. In John 17:15-19, we see Jesus pray three things in His high priestly prayer:

1. Don’t take them out of the world
2. Keep them from the evil one + sanctify them in the truth
3. Send them into the world

–The word “missional” captures the heart of how we do the “in the world” part of Xian community – is the adjectival form of the word “mission”

–Most believers readily grasp the idea of Jesus being sent to the world. The fact that Jesus was the “sent one” is one of the most fundamental identifications of Jesus, called the missio Dei. The issue is to realize that as Jesus was “sent”, His prayer is that we would also be “sent.”

–The concept of a missional church is recognition that God is a sending God and we, the church and individual believers, are to live sent. Our sent and sending identity is connected ontologically with the very existence of the church.

–Why be “missional?” Alan Hirsch says:

When the church is in mission, it is the true church. The church itself is not only a product of that mission but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God’s purposes in and through his people.

–Research indicates that the vast majority of church activities and groups, even in a healthy church, are aimed at the insiders and fail to address the missional issues facing the church in any situation. If evangelizing and discipling the nations lie at the heart of the church’s purpose in the world, then it is mission, and not ministry or fellowship, which is the true organizing principle of the church.

–The old adage was this: If you preached to believers, you were called a “pastor.” If you preached to non-Christians in your own culture, you were an “evangelist.” If you needed a passport to get there, you were a “missionary.” This is not helpful…

–“…all Christians are missionaries or they are not Christians. The only kind of Christian there is, is missionary.” (Theodore Gill)

–”What kind of missionary would go to a foreign city, find a place to live, find a source of income, find where to buy food, maybe find a hobby and a wife, and then kick back and enjoy his surroundings, never befriending the locals? We wouldn’t call him a missionary – we’d call him a resident.” (Winfield Bevins)

–Two ways in which we are to be missionaries:

1) Incarnationally

Jesus had to be God to be able to lift us out of our sin, but had to be fully human to create the right conditions for such redemption to take place. It is from inside the human condition and experience that God fulfills his own requirements for the salvation of the human race.

Three theological themes of the incarnation:

a. Identification: The incarnation embodies an act of profound identification with the entire human race. In an act of unspeakable humility, God actually takes upon himself all the conditions, even the limitations, the struggles, and doubts of humanity. To identify incarnationally with a people will mean that we must try to enter into something of the cultural life of a “people”; to seek to understand their perspectives, the hurt, their real existence, in such a way as to genuinely reflect the act of identification that God made with us in Jesus.
b. Locality: The coming of God among us was in Jesus constituted a “dwelling” among us (John 1:14) and geography itself took on a sacred meaning. Jesus became Jesus of what? Nazareth. Geography matters! If you want to incarnate the Gospel in a particular setting, you will have to think about living in that setting.
c. Sending impulse: Incarnational mission implies a sending impulse rather than one of “extraction.” God is a missionary – he sent his Son into our world, into our lives, into human history. Incarnation implies some form of sending in order to be able to radically incarnate the various contexts in which we live. It extraction from culture vs. insertion into culture.

“You cannot become a part of the organic life of a given community if you are not present in it and experience its cultural rhythms, its life, its geography. We too need to practice the missional discipline of presence and identification with any of the people and groups we hope to engage with.” (Alan Hirsch)

Two objectives of incarnation:

a. Real connection: This objective here is for not-yet-Xians to see that Jesus is “for” the unreached people group. Particularly in the Missional Communities, we want to introduce people to the network of relationships that make up that believing community so they can see Christian community in action. People are often attracted to the Christian community before they are attracted to the Christian message.
b. Real demonstration: This objective is to demonstrate that Jesus is “with” the unreached people group. Being thoroughly loving and gracious within the community will transform attitudes toward Christ. In a sense, the incarnational community has to completely reframe the unreached people group’s perceptions about Jesus and the church.

“…the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.” (Leslie Newbigin)

2) Contextually

Perhaps the most important text on the subject of ‘contextualization’ is 1 Cor 1:22-25 — Paul offered Christ’s salvation in a way the culture could relate to (offering true power to the Jew and true wisdom to the Greek) and which connected to ‘baseline’ cultural narratives. And yet, at the same time, it confronted each culture’s central idolatry (calling Jews to repent of works-righteousness and Greeks of intellectual hubris) with the meaning of the cross.

Contextualization can be defined as the dynamic process where the never-changing message of the Gospel interfaces with specific, relative human situations. Because the Gospel is always God good news, it cannot be defined w/o reference to the human context.

“Contextualization is not ‘giving people what they want’ but rather it is giving God’s answers (which they may not want!) to questions they are asking and in forms that they can comprehend.” (Tim Keller)

How we contextualize:

a. Speak in the common language: avoid “tribal” language, “we-them” language, and inspirational talk and speak as if not-yet-Xians were there.
b. Enter and re-tell the culture’s stories with the gospel
c. Create Xian community that is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive: embody a ‘counter-culture,’ showing the world how radically different a Xian society is with regard to sex, money, and power.

–There are two sides to the missional coin – in other words, there are two primary ways that every Christian can become missional.

1) The first is by sharing a verbal witness. This is more commonly known evangelism. This is when you share the gospel message with your words.

Once we firmly trust and believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior, we must make his name known to the entire world. This is also called the Great Commission.

Many people want a form of evangelism they can compartmentalize in their schedule, switch off, and go home from but Jesus calls us to a lifestyle of love (1 Thessalonians 2:8).

“We can identify forms of evangelism that involve sharing the Gospel without sharing our lives, as well sharing our lives without ever having the courage to share God’s word. Paul’s ministry involved both: sharing his life and sharing the word of God.” (Steve Timmis/Tim Chester)

What does evangelism in the post-Christendom era look like?

Three steps in sharing our faith via the enter-challenge-re-establish approach.

a. Enter the framework: uncover “belief positions” and “themes of relevance”
b. Challenge the framework: show tension between their theme and their belief
c. Re-establish the framework: relate a brief presentation of the gospel to their theme

2) The second way we can fulfill the mission of God is called the social witness.

God is concerned about the needy, destitute, hurting, poor, and orphans of the world. The word of the Lord tells us that we are commissioned to care for those around us who cannot care for themselves.

In the abstract- evangelism is more important than social justice, not because the soul is more important than the body, but the eternal is more important than the temporary. However, practically —if you don’t care for the needs of people, why will they listen to you? The reality is that the more we do justice the more effective our evangelism will be.

Justice can precede evangelism. It creates plausibility for the gospel proclamation, and in reality it often draws non-yet-Xians in. This then leads them into Xian community and leads to a great openness to evangelism.

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

[1] Adapted from Alan Hirsch/Michael Frost: The Shaping of Things To Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church, “The Incarnational Approach” (Chapter 3) and “The Contextualized Church (Chapter 5).

[2] Adapted from “Contextual and Missional” by Tim Keller from London Church Planting Consultation, 2008-2009

extract’d: evangelism is a lifestyle

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: authenticity, Christianity, community, culture, evangelism, extract'd, mission, missional, missional living, organic, post-Christendom, relationships
• Date: Jul 1,2010

“We do not need to tell people the whole gospel every time we get the chance. This is because evangelism is not an event, but a lifestyle. It takes place in the context of an on-going relationship in which other opportunities will arise. We believe God is the great orchestrator of mission. So we look for opportunities to talk about Jesus, but we need not be overbearing when those opportunities arise.”

-Tim Chester, “Answering People’s Questions” from his blog, Reformed Spirituality and Missional Church

Photo by russeljsmith (covered under Creative Commons/Attribution 2.0 Generic)