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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:


Ed Stetzer continues to introduce the individuals who will be serving as framers for The Missional Manifesto, as well as speakers for missionSHIFT (the conference that I have the privilege to be working with him on) which takes place July 12-15 in Ridgecrest, NC.

Are you registered for the missionSHIFT conference? You don’t want to miss it. Register here.

Here are Ed’s recent introductions and the best soundbites from his interviews with each of them:

Dan Kimball

Dan Kimball is on staff at Vintage Faith Church, planted in 2004 in Santa Cruz, CA. He is the author of several books including They Like Jesus But Not The Church. He is a columnist for Leadership Journal and Outreach Magazine. He is adjunct faculty at several universities including Wheaton College, George Fox University and Western Seminary where he teaches on church and mission. Dan is part of the leadership core for Origins, a new network focused on evangelism and the mission of Jesus to new generations. He blogs at dankimball.com.

(Dan will serve as a “framer” for “The Missional Manifesto,” as well as speak on what evangelism looks like in the postmodern mileu)

Kimball:

“I have so much excitement and joy for the church at large right now. Just the fact that we are now becoming so much more engaged in dialogue about what being on mission means is a source of encouragement for me. I really sense that there is a wonderful stirring happening amongst so many people and leaders about this. So the one thing I think we are doing better at engaging in God’s mission is that we are really talking about it now, both theologically and in praxis and living it out. It feels like a tide is changing right now about all this in a very hopeful way. What incredible impact could be made as we unite and rally around God’s mission all the more.”

Hugh Halter

Hugh Halter is the national director of Missio, a ministry team committed to training, developing, and apprenticing Incarnational leaders for the church. Within Missio, Hugh co-directs the MCAP, an online collaborative training environment for Incarnational leaders, pastors, and church planters. Hugh is also lead architect of Adullum, a local movement of incarnational communities in Denver, CO. As co-author of The Tangible Kingdom, and the accompanying Tangible Kingdom Primer, Hugh is an advocate for disoriented God seekers and loves to inspire and re-orient leaders around the mission of God. I was happy to write the foreword for his next book, AND…the Gathered & Scattered Church coming out through Zondervan/Leadership Network/Exponential in April.

Halter:

“The biggest hope is in the conversations that are going on. It used to be a fight to ask people to consider moving away from purely attractional forms of church, but a much greater percentage want to move forward. What’s most exciting is how the existing church is not only in the conversation, but is asking for help and now innovating some really cool movements of incarnational community.”

Bob Roberts

Bob Roberts has earned degrees from Baylor Univeristy, Southwestern Seminary, and Fuller Seminary. He planted Northwood Church in 1985 that has since planted 140 churches in the United States. He has written for various periodicals and journals both faith based and secular international relations journals. He works with the United Nations and various State Departments of various governments around the world doing humanitarian engagement projects. He frequently travels to seriously challenged nations to help with development, engagement, and reconciliation. Their focus is to engage the society with the Gospel through the use of ordinary disciples vocations. Bob has written 4 books: Transformation, Glocalization, The Multiplying Church, and recently Realtime Connections: Linking Your Job with God’s Global Work. Bob speaks around the world on globalization, faith, church planting, engagement, and a variety of global affairs issues. He is married to his wife of 30 years Nikki, they have 2 children, Ben and Jill, a daughter-in-law Ashley, and an exchange student they consider their own – Ti.

Roberts:

“The motivation to be missional is good. The context of narrowing it just to the US, or traditional “missions” is dying. A new conversation is emerging that’s global, but I don’t think we get that in the US. My hope is that we learn to speak and live globally in the global era and missional is global incarnation…”


“We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.”
– John Stott

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Last week, I posted on the importance of understanding that God’s mission is a global mission. I promised you some brand new and soon-to-be-released books that will help you put the “mission” back in “missional.”

Recently released:

Paul Hiebert: The Gospel in Human Contexts: Anthropological Explorations for Contemporary Missions

Product Description:

While the gospel is timeless truth, it enters into ever-changing and widely varied human contexts. In order to meaningfully communicate the gospel to particular humans, those involved in cross-cultural ministry need to understand people and the particular influences–social, cultural, psychological, and ecological–that shape them. Further, we must understand ourselves and the influences that have shaped us, since our own contexts influence how we understand and transmit the gospel message. Therefore, we must master not only the skill of biblical interpretation but also the skill of human interpretation. That task is the topic of this book, the summation of a lifetime of experience and thinking by a world-renowned missiologist and anthropologist, the late Paul Hiebert.

Timothy Tennent: Invitation to World Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-first Century (Invitation to Theological Studies Series)

Product Description:

This unique text is arranged in three parts according to the Trinity’s roles, relationships, and activity. Tennent questions whether missions as currently conceptualized is adequate and he challenges the reader by building the book around key theological foundations such as “missio Dei” and the “new creation” vision for the global church. This volume will call and enable the reader to understand how missions is biblically and theologically basic to Christianity, and how missions is essential to living out an abundant and impassioned life.

Coming soon:

David Hesselgrave + Ed Stetzer: MissionShift: Global Mission Issues in the Third Millennium (July 2010)

Product Description:

Veteran missionary David Hesselgrave and rising missional expert Ed Stetzer edit this engaging set of conversational essays addressing global mission issues in the third millennium. Key contributors are Charles E. Van Engen (“Mission Described and Defined”), the late Paul Hiebert (“The Gospel in Human Contexts: Changing Perspectives on Contextualization”), and the late Ralph Winter (“The Future of Evangelicals in Mission”). Those offering written responses to these essays include: Van Engen, Keith Eitel, Enoch Wan, Darrell Guder, Andreas J. Köstenberger, Hiebert, Michael Pocock, Darrell Whiteman, Norman L. Geisler, Avery Willis, Winter, Scott Moreau, Christopher Little, Michael Barnett, and Mark Terry.

Craig Ott + Stephen Strauss with Timothy Tennent: Encountering Theology of Mission: Biblical Foundations, Historical Developments, and Contemporary Issues (Encountering Mission) (May 2010)

Product Description:

This fresh, comprehensive text fills a need for an up-to-date theology of mission. It offers creative approaches to answering some of the most pressing questions in theology of mission and missionary practice today. The authors, who are leading mission experts, discuss biblical theology of mission, provide historical overviews of the development of various viewpoints, and address theologically current issues in global mission from an evangelical perspective. This readable yet thorough text integrates current views of the kingdom of God and holistic mission with traditional views of evangelism and church planting. It also brings theology of mission into conversation with ecclesiology and eschatology. Topics covered include contextualization, the missionary vocation, church and mission, and theology of religions. Sidebars and case studies enable readers to see how theology of mission touches real-life mission practice.


Jonny Baker of the Church Mission Society (a group of evangelistic societies working with the Anglican Communion and Protestant Christians around the world), as well as co-author of Alternative Worship and blogger, recently reflected on the recommendations of the report, Mission Shaped Church edited by Graham Cary, since it was released by the Church of England 6 years ago.

Jonny Baker:

For anyone new to this area, a quick summary. in 2004, the Church of England published a report called Mission Shaped Church which recognized the creativity in mission around the fringes of the church and new emerging expressions of church. this was against the wider backdrop of cultural changes, decline in attendance of churches over around 20 years, and economic pressure but was a very hopeful recognition that something new seemed to be happening. this report has since sold around 27,000 copies and has had an unprecedented impact for a church report…

…the MSC report had a series of recommendations and how these have been carried forward…it’s easy to forget how much has happened in 6 years within a large institution that could easily have done nothing but has broadly embraced the notion that the future is not a one size fits all church but a mixed economy of church. (emphasis mine)

For what it is worth, Mission Shaped Church is a very helpful addition to the missional conversation. It’s a bit off the radar for those of us in the U.S. and many evangelicals will struggle because of its origins in the Church of England — but I would say to you, there is much to be gleaned from it. (One of my favorite “missional” quotes comes from this book: “Start with the Church and the mission will probably get lost. Start with mission and it is likely that the church will be found.” p. 116 — missiology precedes ecclesiology)

Baker goes on to list what he believes are the main achievements of the report since it was first published:

1. A change in environment – mission is on the agenda
2. Practice – there is lots going on and we need this to multiply
3. The church has legislated for a mixed economy
4. Training is developing through a mission lens
5. There is now a recognition of the need for pioneering entrepreneurial leadership

Baker also posts the report’s concluding statement:

A real journey begins when small teams or individuals decide to travel from the security of their familiar church life to be pioneers. Many have begun their journey but many more are needed if the non-churched are to be given the opportunity to follow Christ in their own language and culture today. Reflection on what has been achieved…and the new opportunities and resources now available, will enable us to discern how we can together take forward Christ’s mission to the whole of our society with its rapidly changing social structure and patterns of living. We have made a good beginning.

No matter you place on the globe, we have only just begun on this mission-shaped journey…

Read all of Baker’s reflections here.


Christianity Today recently asked religious leaders such as John Green, senior research adviser for the Pew Forum on Religion + Public Life; Cathy Lynn Grossman, religion reporter for USA TODAY; and Ed Stetzer, president of Lifeway Research this question: What was the most significant change in Christianity over the past decade?

Scot McKnight claims that evangelicalism’s metamorphosis in the late 20th century was also the most significant emphasis in the first decade of the 21st century. He says this shift was:

…a gradual, if largely unacknowledged, repentance from the near gnostic division of the spirit and the body that shaped its gospel in the early part of the 20th Century to a robust embracing of the missional gospel…

According to McKnight, a part of this “missional gospel,” is what most people call:

…”social justice” and, while I prefer to use the word “justice” and define “justice” by the will of God as taught through the Bible and the Church, it is now a part of much of evangelicalism — and not just as an appendix to the spiritual work done at the church.

McKnight sifts through the glut of books on social justice and recommends a new book by Peter Greer and Phil Smith called The Poor Will Be Glad: Joining the Revolution to Lift the World Out of Poverty. (Smith lives in the city where we are planting a church in the urban core in the spring of 2010: Tulsa; check this article from the Tulsa World: Tiny loans make huge difference in lives of poor)

Read McKnight’s entire post here.


I’ve decided to re-post the first installment of a series I began back in April of 2009 (wow, that is a long time ago) and am going to continue it now.

I am hopeful this will spur all of us to do inventory on why we aren’t missional and move towards living sent and joining God in his mission to proclaim and enact the Gospel…

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Wednesday night, I had the privilege to attend “Theology at the Bottleworks,” a Midrash ministry of The Journey [my family's home church + where I am doing my church planting internship] at a pub, Schlafly’s Bottleworks, in beautiful Maplewood.

In older, simpler times, a pub or “public house” was often the focal point of the community, playing a similar role to the local church, where people gathered to openly discuss significant issues of the day. The Journey is re-entering the “public house” to reach into culture by tackling spiritual, political, and philosophical themes in an open environment.

And yes, this has been the setting for the infamous “Beer and the Bible” controversy that brewed, pun intended, back in 2007. There is great comment from my good friend and Journey pastor, Jonathan McIntosh, on the web home for Mike Corley of The Mike Corley Program here about TATB [unfortunately, the audio seems to be nonexistent]. You can read a couple of somewhat objective articles about TATB from the Baptist Press here and the Christian Post here…

I am shadowing the moderators for the next couple of months to eventually become a part of the moderation team over the next year. And let me say, after observing my new friend Matt moderate last night, this is going to be one of the most difficult yet shaping things I have ever done. I’m excited about what God is going to do in me through this…

This particular evening was unique in that it was the 4th anniversary of this outreach event. To be specific, this was the 48th TATB event. Pretty astounding.

There were probably about 50 people there and I was told that there are usually 70+. And my best guess was that it was split down the middle: 50% religious, 50% non-religious.

The topic was “The Impact of Technology on the American Way of Life.” And a lively topic it was. Here were some of the great points made/questions raised across a wide spectrum:

>technology makes us lose touch with reality into isolation
>human interaction is overrated
>technology pits art + creativity vs. efficiency + mass production + instant gratification
>technology makes you more human, not less
>does technological innovation undercut traditional fundamentals?
>technology makes us skip the fundamentals of knowledge, i.e., spelling
>new technology wouldn’t be realized with the fundamentals changing
>are we headed to a Wall-E or Matrix world?
>technology can enhance relationships but cannot substitute for human touch, empathy, etc.
>do we like where technology is taking us?
>technology moves us away from real sources, i.e., analog musical recording vs. digital
>to curb abuse of technology, we have to discipline ourselves and self-moderate
>technology is neutral; we use technology, it doesn’t use us
>technology is good for scientific + medical purposes but not relationships
>we are trading quantity of connectedness over quality of connectedness, i.e. Facebook friends vs. real friends
>there is no counterbalance with technology from the spritual + ethical side of the equation
>should we limit/restrain technology?
>Bible gives principles not specifics on how we should handle “stuff”, i.e., Genesis 1 “subdue” principle

So what does this have to do with why we aren’t missional? I sat at a table with a non-religious, 50+ year-old Greek curmudgeon, a non-religious 30+ year-old American-Asian (originally from Hong Kong) molecular biologist and resident at Children’s Hospital, and a non-practicing 30+ year-old Orthodox Jew. Uh, yeah. And it wasn’t the large group discussion that impacted me. It was the discussion with my three new friends after the discussion that did. Big time…

My experience Wednesday night unearthed some things inside of me that I need to preach to myself to help me understand where my heart and head don’t line up with regards to my missional posture to culture. So I thought I’d invite you to join me on the journey.

As a part of a series, I am going to unpack what I believe are the 5 main things that keep us from being salt and light in culture. I hope you join me in the conversation…


Bob Roberts, lead pastor at Northwood and author of such books as Transformation: How Glocal Churches Transform Lives and the World and Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World, has written a brand new book called, Realtime Connections: Linking Your Job With God’s Global Work.

If you read Transformation or Glocalization, you know that Robert’s loves to talk about how to enact the tagline of his new book: engaging your occupation with God’s global (or as he likes to say, glocal) mission. Here is what he says about his new book: “The book basically looks at the 21st century and projects forward from practical action that’s being done right now in a local church and what it will look like to see the Great Commission fulfilled.”

He goes on to say:

It’s written for everyday ordinary disciples – not preachers or just church leaders. It’s a “missional” book for everyone and what a missional disciple looks like.

I can’t think of a more helpful book when many are preaching, writing, talking about what a theology of work looks like. Connecting our work to God’s glocal agenda is a must and this book will no doubt help us to that end.


Tim Chester, co-author of the must-read, Total Church (with Steve Timmis), writes regularly on missional issues on his blog. Chester is a leader in The Crowded House – an international family of church planting networks – and within TCH, he leads The Edge Network in Sheffield, UK. He is also the director of the Northern Training Institute and co-director of The Porterbrook Network.

Recently, Chester wrote about what it looks like for a Christ-follower to have missional identity. Read his thoughts:

Mission as identity

For many people mission has become an event. We have guest services. Evangelistic courses. Street preaching. Youth programmes. There’s nothing wrong with these things. But mission is more than a slot into our schedules. It is an identity and a lifestyle. Mission is about living all of life, ordinary life, with gospel intentionality.

Missional communities

We are called to be missional communities – not lone evangelists. The life of the covenant community is to be a light to the nations. ‘By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ (John 13:35) Our love for one another reveals our gospel identity. The world will know that Jesus is the Son of God sent by God to be Saviour of the world through the community life of believers (John 17:20-23). This does not primarily mean inviting people to meetings. It is about shared life into which other people are welcomed.

Scattered communities of light

Imagine a globe in darkness with one point of light. That was Israel in the Old Testament, one point of light in a dark world, drawing the nations to God. And New Testament believers are still be communities of light, drawing people to God. We still draw people in towards the centre. But the centre is no longer one geographic location in Palestine, but a hundred, thousand communities of light scattered across the globe. We are not be like a lighthouse, occasionally sending a beam of light across the city. We are to be communities of light and hope and love in a dark and broken world at street level, on the street corner.

Here is Chester speaking on this same topic at the recent Lead09 conference:

Tim Chester Session 1 | Lead 09 from Atmosphere Church on Vimeo.

I think it is interesting to note that Chester places missional identity in the context of community. I would go so far as to say that mission divorced from community really isn’t mission in its fullest sense.

When God said to Abraham in Genesis 12, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing…and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you,” I believe He was saying that mission flows from within community. Oh, that we would be “communities of light” bringing people into the marvelous light of God’s grace.


rethink-badge-large

It’s been a long time coming but my good friend, Jonathan McIntosh, former teaching and campus pastor at The Journey (my home church here in the Lou) and now vagabond holed up somewhere in a Mississippi backyard eating some yellow watermelon (which apparently is sweeter and you would know if you followed Jonathan on Twitter), has launched a blog.

Actually, Jonathan is headed to seminary in the very near future and in the meantime, he is going to be rocking it on a new blog called Rethink Mission.

JMac says this about his blog:

Rethink Mission is about inspiring gospel-centered missional churches. We are committed to doing that in three ways:

1. Blogging on the intersection of the gospel, the church, and culture.
2. Interviewing church leaders to provide a resource library on how other leaders do ministry in an ever changing culture.
3. Providing coaching and teaching for pastors and church planters.

Jonathan is one of the most humble, caring, genuinely authentic, culturally savvy, Christ-loving people I know. If the launch and subsequent posts of the blog are any indicator of what is to come, you should add Rethink Mission to your RSS reader ASAP.

Check out the three-part “missional Q & A” with lead pastor of The Journey, Darrin Patrick, on preaching missionally to get a taste:

Missional Preaching – Part 1
Missional Preaching – Part 2: Contextualization
Missional Preaching – Part 3: People

Also, here is Jonathan talking about Wilco and the Bible. If you knew JMac, this is perfectly normal:

A Wilco Review & the Bible from Rethink Mission on Vimeo.


If you are a pastor, this is a must see.

Darrin Patrick, lead pastor of The Journey (my home church and where I intern) interviews my friend Ed Stetzer, President of Lifeway Research and Lifeway’s Missiologist in Residence, on what he sees as the pressing issues within evangelicalism today.

I believe this is Ed at his best, bringing prophetic insight to a wide variety of topics that should be of interest to those who love the church and the Gospel. Enjoy:


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