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I had the awesome privilege to baptize my daughter Margo this past Sunday @ Versailles Christian Church in Versailles, MO – the church my wife grew up in. Praise God!

Here are some pics from the baptism:

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And as a part of this beautiful sacrament, we all prayed this together to thank God for his work in our lives…

Prayer of Thanksgiving

In the beginning, O God, your Spirit moved over the water, and you created all that is, seen and unseen.
We give you thanks for the gift of water that sustains all life.

In the time of Noah, you destroyed evil in the water of the flood; and by your saving ark, you gave a new beginning.
We give you thanks for new beginnings.

You led Israel through the sea, out of slavery into the freedom of the promised land.
We give you thanks for the gift of freedom and the gift of the land.

In the water of the Jordan our Lord was baptized by John and anointed by your Spirit; by the baptism of his death and resurrection, Christ set us free from sin and death and opened the way to eternal life.
We give you thanks for our own baptism and the gift of eternal life.

The Lamb has come to lead us to springs of living water.
We give you thanks for the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.


margo-xmas

Parents often forget that their most important mission field is the home. Living missionally as parents means that God’s goodness should infect our homes as we humbly live out the power of the Gospel in our own lives. And as this happens, we pray God will woo our children to his saving grace.

I am so excited to share that last night, I had the privilege to lead my daughter Margo in a prayer of faith and trust in God’s grace for her salvation. What an unbelievable opportunity! Since Cooper trusted in Christ back in January 2008, Margo has been asking a lot of questions. There have been many moments over the last year of her life where I thought I saw the “lightbulb” come on for her, only to be convinced that she needed some more time.

Last night, we were reading the story of Jesus and the children from Matthew 19 from The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones (an amazing Gospel-centered children’s Bible) and I could tell that something clicked in Margo’s spirit. She got it. The part of the story that she resonated with said this:

…no matter how clever you are, or how good you are, or how rich you are, or how nice you are, or how important you are – none of it makes any difference. Because God’s love is a gift and, as anyone will tell you, the whole thing about a gift is, it’s free. All you have to do is reach out your hand and take it.

…You see, children loved Jesus, and they knew they didn’t need to do anything special for Jesus to love them. All they needed to do was to run into his arms…

After I read this, Cooper said, “That’s what I did, Dad,” and Margo said, “That’s all I have to do, Dad?” I told her yes. It knew it was time. It had all been leading to this moment. We went upstairs and we talked for a bit and prayed together. Wow…

What is beautiful about this is that Cooper was drawn to the saving knowledge of Christ through the Word by the same Bible almost a year and a half ago. God’s word is alive!

She is so excited to get baptized, especially to show her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins about her decision, but she is almost more excited to take communion as a family. At The Journey, we come forward to take communion and Holly, Cooper, and I have been doing this together for the past year and a half. Margo has been joining us as we go forward but not partaking. She has been asking more questions lately about what the elements represent.

I think this has been another big part of her journey to Christ. It reflects what can happen when, as an ordinary family, as Tim Chester and Steve Timmis say, you do ordinary things with Gospel intentionality. Just having Margo around the sacraments made an impact on her. It drew her into wanting to be a part of God’s family.

I thank the Lord for the professions of faith of Cooper and Margo and continue to pray for my two youngest, Sloan and Everett. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord…

For further reading, the following post was written in January 2008 and captures my heart on bringing the Gospel to your children, highlighting what is most important and exposing some misconceptions. I would encourage you to read: Bringing the Gospel to your Children: What I’ve Learned So Far


crucifixion
Photo by nikoretro. creative-commons-logo

The Song of The First Born

Christ is the image of the invisible God,
the first born over all Creation;
For in him all things were made, in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities,
All things were created through him and for him.
Christ is before all things and in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church.
He is the beginning, the first born from among the dead,
that in everything he might be pre-eminent.
In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through him to reconcile to himself all things,
whether things on earth or things in heaven,
Making peace by the blood of his cross.

Colossians 1:15-20



Photo by hickory hardscrabble

I thought I’d wait until we had a little space from Christmas to re-post something here on the blog so your visceral reaction would not so closely connected to the present tense.

Just before Christmas, my friend Shaun Groves wrote a four-part series on the idea of “going giftless.” (And yes, I’m using the word “guiltless” in my blog title on purpose; a little turn of the phrase)

It’s challenging. You may not agree with everything in the series but I think it will be good for your soul to wrestle with this. Holly and I took a big step in this direction with our family this Christmas. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow…

Here is the series:

Going Giftless Part 1
Going Giftless Part 2
Going Giftless Part 3
Going Giftless Part 4



Ed Stetzer & David Fitch – a missional conversation from Missional Tribe on Vimeo


From Missional Tribe:

Shot in Chicago in November of ‘08, Part One of this 45 minute conversation features Ed Stetzer and Dave Fitch discussing what they each mean by the term “missional”. They also spend some time discussing attractional vs missional – and whether missional church, as it seems to be presently framed is “interested in converts.”

A very good conversation between two PhD’s, who are also church planters, teachers, authors and missional instigators in their own right.

This video was produced by Toronto’s mkpl.tv – Producer, Imbi Medri. Director/Editor, Bill Kinnon. It is made available under a Creative Commons License – Attribution – No Derivative Works. Copyright Holders: Medri Kinnon Productions Limited, Ed Stetzer, David Fitch.


2. David Fitch – Reclaiming the Mission

David Fitch, Betty R. Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary; founding pastor of Life on the Vine Community, an emerging church in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago; co-founder of Up/Rooted, an emergent cohort that gathers leaders and thinkers to engage issues of the emerging church and the post-modern context; and author of The Great Giveaway comes in at #2.

David has been one of the most influencing voices in the development of my ministry/church planting philosophy. It started with The Great Giveaway, but continuing on with the stream of consciousness on his blog, let’s just say, it’s a gold mine. I believe it will be shown that David was one of the most important shaping influences on the grounding of missional orthopraxy in the twenty-first century.

I’m looking forward to becoming a regular part of the missional leader learning community in the future. I was personally invited to the one in January but can’t make. I hope to down the road..

Check these:
Please Lord, Don’t Let Me Get Pragmatic: Spiritual Formation for Missional Leaders
“The Numbers Are Going Up But Something Doesn’t Feel Right”
Conversion a casualty of Missional Theology?
When They Will Not Come – Community: The anti-attractional process of beginning a church with community
The Middle In: The Unique Missional Opportunity

Top 8 Recap
8. J.R. Woodward | 7. Jonathan Dodson | 6. Neil Cole | 5. Drew Goodmanson | 4. Bob Hyatt | 3. Alan Hirsch


Tim Chester, co-author of the seminal book, Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around the Gospel and Community with Steve Timmis, has a new book coming out in mid-2009 called The Ordinary Hero: Living the Cross and Resurrection.

Here is Tim talking about the ethos of the book:


You can find all of Tim’s books here at Amazon.

You can read Tim’s blog at: Reformed Spirituality and Missional Church.


In my studies with Ed Stetzer, one of the interesting individuals he has introduced to me is missiologist Francis Dubose. You can read Ed’s thoughts on Dubose here and here.

According to Ed, Dubose is the first person to use the word missional in the adjectival sense we use it today in his book, God Who Sends: A Fresh Quest for Biblical Mission (1983). Dubose was a professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary where the Francis M. DuBose Award for Excellence in Kingdom Missions is given in his honor.

Ed believes that Dubose roots his idea in the “sentness” of a “missionary church” which impacts at least one stream of the missional conversation which he calls that the “missionary” stream.

Recently, Andrew Jones had the opportunity to sit down with Dubose, who is 85 and living at a retirement “hotel” in San Francisco, and asked him about his thoughts on his impact on the current missional conversation.



Brad Briscoe has a great summary of Dubose’s book, God Who Sends here:

• God Who Sends: A Fresh Quest
• Being Sent and the Pentateuch
• Being Sent and the Historical Books
• Being Sent and the Prophets
• Being Sent and the Gospels
• Being Sent in Acts & Epistles

[HT: Andrew Jones]


As many of you know, Thursday and Friday of this week, I had the privilege to hang with Ed Stetzer at a conference for Mississippi Baptists @ Camp Garaywa in Clinton, MS, just outside of Jackson.

This was, in part, an ‘intensive’ to launch my directed studies in missiology with Ed through Liberty Theological Seminary. I had a great time, learned a bunch, and got a big head start on my first paper re: modern missions history.

Instead of a play-by-play of each of the five sessions Ed keynoted, I thought I’d combine the larger talking points into one post – particularly those on the missional church. Enjoy…

*God is a sender by nature
*Missional means to live sent: a sent church and a sent Christian
*God uses the church to make known the manifold wisdom of Himself
*Missional does not necessarily mean contemporary
*Lack of ’sentness’ deforms/disfigures the nature of the Gospel
*Sentness causes us not to transcend, but to recognize and engage culture
*Gospel becomes reduced to “only come” when it’s not missional
*We’ve created an artificial three-tier approach to ministry: 1) lay person, 2) professional minster, and 3) missionary
*We have lost mission to: 1) ‘clergification’, 2) cultural wars, and 3) buildings
*We’ve created the very system we loathe – an unhealthy clergy co-dependence
*We have to give ministry + mission back to the people God empowered for the ministry + mission
*Forms have driven church rather than missions
*Most churches tend to reflect old culture – those successful in last paradigm has the most difficulty in current paradigm
*A church that is incarnational is interested more in the harvest than in the barn
*Are we going to be protectors of common subcultures or missionaries?
*Irony of our subcultures: we should look similar and live differently than the world – we have looked different and lived the same
*Evangelism is sharing the Gospel – missions is understanding people before we speak with them
*What is the mission? Great commandment/commission – to serve [Luke 4:18-19] and to save [Luke 19:10]
*Missiology: what focus + strategies should we use to most effectively expand the kingdom where we are sent
*The missional church is a biblically faithful, culturally relevant, and countercultural community for the Kingdom of God


Starting a new thing here on the ‘ole blog: vodcasts. And to kick it off, a series on the book of Acts. And as I mention in the opening moments of the video below, I have like 28 series going on the blog. Not a great finisher. I do plan on wrapping up some of those in the near future. Really. I mean it.

I have a feeling that I might like this idea of vodcasts a lot. The only downside is you seeing my mug instead of my words. Oh well…

So here we go. Vodcast 1 on the book of Acts:


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Husband and father of four, university instructor, seminarian, worship consultant, and church planting intern.

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