"It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community. He committed the entire work of salvation to that community. It was not that a community gathered round an idea, so that the idea was primary and the community secondary. It was that a community called together by the deliberate choice of the Lord Himself, and re-created in Him, gradually sought - and is seeking - to make explicit who He is and what He has done. The actual community is primary; the understanding of what it is comes second."

—Lesslie Newbigin

(Source: youthblog.org, via jameshenley)

Cancer, A Theology of Suffering, and Missional Living

Our living on mission with Jesus shouldn’t grind to a halt due to illness or difficulty or pain. However, most of us do not have an adequate understanding of the sovereignty of God or a theology of suffering that is robust enough to see how our pain, weakness and brokenness can further the mission of Christ and God’s glory. Our bodies are jars of clay (2 Cor. 4:7). It is precisely those times of weakness and brokenness that God wants to use to shine the light of Christ to a world in need of light and hope. Those fissures and cracks in the jar, they’re meant to further the mission of Christ—if we would only let God work through us.

Below is the transcript of an email from my mother that I received last week. She’s granted me permission to share this note. Presently, she’s facing a second round of cancer. She believes, and I concur, her cancer is God’s gift to her right now for the benefit of others. She writes,

Dear Family,

I have just completed my first chemo treatment, but what made it an exceptionally good day was to be able to share about our Lord. He provides so many of these opportunities if only we just walk across the room. I  also want to express my deepest gratitude for everyone of you and especially your faithful prayers on my behalf. Thank you!  Upon receiving my current diagnosis I have soberly sought the Lord through self examination. My life is willingly open and laid bare before His word, open to His eyes, and open with whom I must give an account.

THIS IS WHAT I HAVE LEARNED. We can go a long time thinking that we are just fine, spiritually great, and spiritually healthy. We have become experts in self deception and projecting images of ourselves that are far from reality. But life continues to go on.  A little slumber a little sleep. When will we WAKE UP? That wake up call for me was the second diagnosis of cancer. I am so thankful that I can rest in God’s sovereignty that what He permits, He permits for a reason, and that reason is His design. How can I not embrace His perfect design for my life without wholehearted gratitude and devotion to Him?  No cross, no crown. This truth has totally anchored and sustained me and has given me a boldness and confidence in my spirit that I can go forward with great faith and expectation because He is in control. I am driven to His Word and like a skillful surgeon so His Word begins to cut to the bone.  

THIS IS WHAT I AM HEARING!  Do we belong to God?  Do we live to glorify Jesus?  Are we willing to be reproached for Christ’s glory?  Oh how I pray this is true for all of us.  I am confronted by Him and His standards not by my standards.  His motives not my hidden motives. As He exposes pride, complacency, selfishness, critical spirit, impatience, bitterness, unforgiveness, comparisonitis, procrastination, jealousy, greed, self-centeredness, he is exposing the adversaries that cancer is meant to attack. These are deadly sins and cancers of the heart. How this must grieve a Holy God. Can we say like Paul that nothing good dwells in us. John Piper has said ” the aim of God in your cancer is to knock out the props from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on Him.” May God cut these sins out of our hearts. I don’t want to waste my cancer but I receive it as a gift that God will be glorified in this cancer.  

NOW FOR THE GOOD NEWS! Heb.4:16. His word heals, restores, strengthens and forgives, therefore, we can come boldly with confidence to the throne of grace that we may receive grace and  mercy to help in time of need. Hallelujah! I am learning to let the Word reign in my life so that God can reign in my life. Our Lord wants a penitent revived people for His own possession. May His name be highly exalted because He is infinitely worthy. Let us go forth in obedience and bring glory to His name.

God be praised
His Word believed
His name be trusted

Christ’s love to all,

Sue Hesse

Very few people I know have lived life with as great a passion for disciple-making as my mother. She eats, sleeps, and breathes making disciples who make disciples. Here’s the beautiful thing about my mother’s life right now. If she were perfectly healed this instant, that wouldn’t be the real miracle. What you’ve just read, the work God’s doing on the inside, that’s the real miracle. Without a doubt cancer has made my mother more missional than before. Please pray for her health like I do. But please know this, restored health is not my mother’s greatest desire. She’s already been promised restored health in Christ—it will happen either in this life or the next. That’s a given. Cancer cannot win. More importantly, pray that the transforming grace of Christ, which is so powerfully at work in my mother’s life right now, might be multiplied to others through her cancer. Pray that the divine odor of Christ would spread everywhere the fragrant knowledge of him.

Mom, I love you! Continue to live sent!

Be Missional, Not Superficially Contextual

Check out this excellent blog post by Jonathan Dodson on contextualization and the missional church. Good stuff!

"Mission is not primarily concerned with church growth. It is primarily concerned with the reign and rule of the Triune God."

—David Bosch

Year in Review

A hearty thank you to everyone who’s read and followed the blog this year. As a noob to blogging this whole endeavor has been quite the learning experience for me. Consistent, thoughtful, original blogging is extremely rewarding but also hard work and quite rare. I have a few resolutions and goals in mind for 2012 to make the blog better, the first of which is more consistent posting. I welcome your input and suggestions too. How can I make this blog better? How can I best serve you?

Happy New Year. May you know more of Christ in 2012 than in all previous years combined. Live sent!

PS The most popular post of 2011 was one entitled Where does ‘sentness’ come from?

Occupy Bethlehem

For the past four months we’ve been inundated with images and stories of protesters occupying Wall Street. Lest we become shortsighted and forget, the first occupy movement began 2000 years ago. Occupy Bethlehem.

The Christmas story is the story of God’s invasion of Bethlehem. To occupy it. Christmas is the story of God’s dissatisfaction with our status quo and his protestation of our condition.

Motivated by love, Christmas is the story of God taking action through Christ to redistribute heavenly riches to the 99%.

You waste Christmas if you reject God’s occupy movement.

Christmas is not about what you offer to God or what you offer to others. It’s not about your occupation of Bethlehem. Christmas is about what God offers to you. To quote my friend, “the incarnation is God’s claim on us, not ours on him. He is the invader.” It’s his occupation. It’s his plan to redistribute the riches of his grace to the oppressed 99%, to you and to me. 

The reason this first occupation was so significant, significant enough that the ripples are still being felt today, is because the infinite God, the one who laid the earth’s foundation, who marked of its dimensions, who laid its cornerstone, this God took on flesh. The [eternal] Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. God occupied humanity in the person of Jesus.   

This wedding of the infinite and the finite in the person of Christ doesn’t mean that God changed into flesh but simply that God, the infinite and unchangeable, took on humanity without changing his original nature. In other words, “remaining what he was, he became what he was not.” This occupation, God with us in the person of Christ, is God’s radical protestation of our condition. It’s the start of his unfathomably beautiful plan through Christ to redistribute heavenly riches to the 99%. 

For God was God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Christ], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

Do you realize how much God the Father has loved you? Have you comprehended the extraordinary lengths he has taken to reconcile you to himself? Spiritually speaking, do you recognize that you are part of the oppressed 99%? Without hope, destitute and spiritually bankrupt? This Christmas can you affirm the hope of Incarnation as expressed in the Nicene Creed?

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

You waste Christmas if you reject God’s occupy movement, the incarnation of Christ for you.

This Christmas you too have been invited to come to the Bethlehem stable. A place as far from Wall Street as you can get. You come, not to occupy it, but to be occupied. Christmas is not about what you offer to God or what you offer to others. It’s not about your occupation of Bethlehem. Christmas is about what God offers to you. God is the invader. It’s his occupation.

The hope of Christmas is that if God can take on flesh and occupy humanity he can occupy your life. Through Christ his plan is to distribute the riches of his grace and mercy and love and forgiveness to the oppressed 99%, to you. All that God asks is that you join his protest movement, that you too protest your condition and welcome his occupation receiving the one he has sent. This Christmas, through faith in the one God has sent, may the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace occupy your heart and mind multiplying your joy and delight. Merry Christmas.

Why corporate church won’t work

Really interesting blog post by Breen. What do you think?

Disciples or Consumers?

I’ve been contemplating disciple-making quite a bit recently and I remembered this video put out last year by the Verge Network.  Thought it was worth looking at again.

"It seems we work very hard to insulate ourselves from the very world Jesus says we should be focused on. It seems we have created, without malicious design, a Christian bubble—an evangelical subculture—where Christians live surrounded only by other Christians, and as a result, there are few among the lost whom we get to know intimately. Christian experts tell us how to raise our kids, how to handle our finances, what music to buy, what movies to see, and which books to read. The bubble is complete. But God is on a mission outside the bubble."

—Ed Stetzer & Philip Nation, Compelled by Love, p.33.

A Second Reformation

This coming Monday marks the anniversary of one of the world’s most famous, unintentional protests. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther sent a letter to Albert of Mainz which contained a document entitled, “Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.” More famously known as The Ninety-Five Theses, this disputation, or protest, sparked the Protestant Reformation. 

Since everybody, from Wall Street to California, is protesting and since the anniversary of the Ninety-Five Theses is coming up, I thought I’d get in on the action too.

Below is a list, the product of a prayer retreat with my EFCA Missional Architect peeps earlier this year in Estes, CO. The list is not meant to be incendiary; it’s motivated by love. We are not anti-Church. We love our tribe, the EFCA. And we love the Church, the bride of Christ. However, the Church in the West needs a Second Reformation. If there was some central door to the “Institutional Church” I’d nail this list there.

Every believer is a residential missionary. The church does not send missionaries, rather, sent ones are the church and God has sent already sent her.

We believe in missional partnership rather than church membership.

Sentness must be in every church activity or program. We believe that God, starting with Abraham, has always sent his people to accomplish his purposes in the world. If the church lacks sentness it is not functioning as the people of God should.

The Irreducible Core of the Christian life: Love God, love others and make disciples is the DNA for disciple making and organizational structures rather than the institutional church serving itself (e.g., how do we make budget and grow and keep the consumer Christians happy).

Being missional is not an evangelistic strategy, nor a program, or an appendage of the church. Rather, living missionally needs to be in every disciple and every process by which we make disciples. 

We believe a missional movement will not take lightly the issues of injustice in the world.

If the Holy Spirit does not direct, the church has no hope. Too many church strategies are based upon resources, or good wisdom or a “hunch” about the future. We do not ask the Spirit of God to bless our ministry, rather we ask the Spirit how to join him in the ministry he already is blessing.

God is at work in the world as much as he is at work in the church. Missional disciples experience a fullness of Jesus because we live with him in both spaces. 

Doing always flows out of being. Churches with staff must have regular communal practices to hear from the Father. If not, ministry flows from human giftedness and effort, not God.

Authentic community is ‘family on mission.’ And churches need both community and mission. We cannot be solely focused on tasks which mirror the corporate church nor can we just focus on the inter-personal relationships which neglect the needs of the world.

We believe that our Lord intended his followers to live his way of life, not merely believe the propositions that he has taught. Disciple making must be more than a Western educational experience where we download mere information. Rather, we must teach and pass down a lifestyle. “That’s why I have sent Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord. He will remind you of how I follow Christ Jesus, just as I teach in all the churches wherever I go.” 1 Corinthians 4:17.

Mission flows out of conversational intimacy with Jesus.

God is in the church as much as he is in the world. The church must be led together to see where he is already working in the world.

We believe that parents should be equipped to teach their kids how to live on holy mission more than how to avoid “PG-13” movies. Teenagers know about morality but their faith is boring because they lack mission. (1 Peter 2:9).

We need conversational intimacy with our great God –individually, in our families as well as our spiritual families. 

We expect miracles and experiences which can only be explained by a transcendent God and thus the church can no longer be closed to the gifts of the Spirit.

Autonomous in governance, yet the local church should not be independent of each other. We need to be inter-connected (yes, financially) to love all people, especially the poor. Our current models of church favor the rich and our (EFCA) districts lack the unity to love all people. This autonomous ‘spirit’ needs to be crucified.

Starting churches is insufficient because we never assume Jesus or the Gospel when we speak of church or community. Followers of Jesus must precede a 501c3.

The most fruitful ministry is life on life –organic, not programmatic. As Jesus developed the three, the twelve, and the seventy-two, every shepherd must follow the Great Shepherd’s disciple making example.

We believe we must re-organize our lives and the passions of the church to take serious the command of Jesus to love “the least of these.” 

The church decentralized for the purpose of mission is a major contributor to why many churches outside the western world are growing (and perhaps why the church in the western world is declining).

The mission that Jesus launched is different than the church.

We need to be more excited about making disciples than starting churches.

We believe we must be willing to re-think the busyness and activities of the church and if necessary, annihilate their existence if they do not have sentness. If these activities and programs lack sentness it’s proof they already are lacking the Gospel.

We want to see communities where those who are far from Christ can come to belong before they believe or behave. Churches need to re-learn how to have dinner with “tax collectors.”

We believe our church buildings should be missional training centers or missional outposts rather than containers of God’s people.

We believe we must repent of a church culture that has isolated itself from the broader culture.

We believe the church should exist as a missional community of hope that blesses the world around it. We are FOR the world, not AGAINST it.

Being missional means that we brag less about a spectacular ministry and brag more about a sincere heart (2 Cor. 5:12).

Preaching without the cross isn’t Christianity.

Incarnational ministry does not mean that we are merely a distributor of goods and services to the poor, but that we know the names, the faces, and the stories of those in need. We consider them to be friends.

Social justice needs reconciliation with God at its foundation or it is humanism. 

Leadership is not about methods, models, styles or forms; it is about character and one’s calling from God. Qualifications for ministry come from God.

A seminary degree is not a requirement for leading a church –the character of Christ and the gifting/calling of the Spirit is. 

Apostolic and prophetic ministry should have a customary place among us.

Gospel drift results from missional shift. Consumerism is the god of this church age and leaders are happy to keep feeding the monster if it means they still get a paycheck.

We have taught a Gospel which emphasizes being a good moral person rather than a dangerous disciple on the mission of Jesus.

Christians should be nourished by the Word of God and then act to obey. Christians today have more information from Bible studies than they can ever put into practice.

Never assume that when we speak among Christian leaders of multiplying churches or even the Gospel itself, that we are speaking about Jesus.

Being missional means that Jesus is Lord of all.

We seek out people of peace to open pockets of people to the Gospel (Luke 10:5-6).

We pray to the Lord of the Harvest for laborers of the harvest and EXPECT him to raise them up (Luke 10:2), both leaders for the harvest and leaders from the harvest.

We believe we are called to exegete our local context in the same way a missionary would in a foreign cross-cultural context.

Every believer is called to live on the mission that Jesus launched. Yet, that will often look different for each follower of Jesus.

We believe as Jesus followers that we must be committed to sharing life in a significant way with those who are far from Jesus.

As missional followers of Jesus we believe that we cannot expect people to live up to Biblical standards without the help of the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we must contextualize the message of Jesus for the local culture not the local church culture.

We believe we shall always be searching for intersections between the Gospel, the church and the local culture.

We believe that the discipleship process can occur before the conversion experience.

Here I stand!

A big thanks to Joe Schimmels, our Missional Architect Frontman, who tweaked and massaged this list.