May 2012
2 posts
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WatchThis video is a wonderful picture of two things: Gospel-centered communities living on mission together and church as family. May God multiply these kinds of communities exponentially, for his Glory, and may it happen in my lifetime. Live sent!
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Understanding the Missional Church →
The link above contains a very concise explanation and history of the term “missional” from someone in my tribe, the EFCA.
Reactions? Is this assessment correct? What’s missing, if anything, from the author’s take on missional?
Personally, I’m thankful for the article and especially the following paragraph. “The missional conversation goes much deeper than strategy....
April 2012
1 post
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“The evangelical church will not survive unless it aggressively pursues...”
– Aubrey Malphurs, Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1992), 117.
March 2012
2 posts
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On Your Face Before God, On Your Feet for His... →
I love this blog post from Trevin Wax. He’s right on. Thought I’d share this.
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Cancer, A Theology of Suffering, and Missional...
Recently, Miriam and I have been reading the Metaxas biography Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy together. Early in the book Metaxas writes about the death of Dietrich’s older brother Walter during World War I and the effect it had on the Bonhoeffer family. The legacy of faith passed on to Bonhoeffer by his godly mother, Paula, can be seen by her choice of Walter’s funeral...
February 2012
3 posts
2 tags
“We affirm that Christ sends his redeemed people into the world as the Father...”
– The Lausanne Covenant
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The Choice Before Us
“There exists in every church something that sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence. So we must strive very hard, by the grace of God, to keep the church focused on the mission that Christ originally gave to it.”
~ C.S. Lewis
I want to begin with a story. It’s the story of the Church. Once upon a time, and for almost two thousand years, the Church...
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“It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind...”
– Lesslie Newbigin
January 2012
3 posts
3 tags
Cancer, A Theology of Suffering, and Missional...
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...
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Be Missional, Not Superficially Contextual →
Check out this excellent blog post by Jonathan Dodson on contextualization and the missional church. Good stuff!
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“Mission is not primarily concerned with church growth. It is primarily concerned...”
– David Bosch
December 2011
2 posts
3 tags
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....
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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...
November 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Why corporate church won’t work →
Really interesting blog post by Breen. What do you think?
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October 2011
3 posts
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“It seems we work very hard to insulate ourselves from the very world Jesus says...”
– Ed Stetzer & Philip Nation, Compelled by Love, p.33.
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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...
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A Luke 10 Way of Life | Part Two
Part Two of a Four-Part Series (Part One can be found here)
Luke 10:1-12 is a key text for those who want to live a sent life. Here are my presuppositions about this section. Living sent is not for a select few, for professional ministers only, for pastoral staff or missionaries or the extremely gifted. Jesus appointed seventy-two others, the laity, and sent them out to do what he did. With this...
September 2011
8 posts
1 tag
“It is scarcely possible to overemphasize the centrality of the fame of God in...”
– John Piper, The Pleasures of God, Multnomah Publishers, p. 118.
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A Luke 10 Way of Life | Part One
Part One of a Four-Part Series
Luke 10 is an incredibly important text for those who want to live a sent life.
After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.
Here are my observations.
Living sent is not for a select few, for the inner circle of disciples or even just the twelve. Living sent is not just...
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Why the Missional Movement Will Fail →
Here’s an excellent article by Mike Breen about some of the shortcomings of the current missional movement. Personally, I agree with his conclusions. How about you?
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The Organic Reformation
I recently finished reading The Organic Reformation by Tom Johnston and Mike Chong Perkinson. I have to say, while the book isn’t the greatest book ever written, it is unquestionably a timely book worth reading. It’s thoughtful, well-reasoned and has some theological depth to it.
As with many pastoral resources published these days the underlying premise is that something is wrong...
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WatchHere’s a video (18 minutes, but worth it!) of Tom Johnston and Mike Chong Perkinson of The Praxis Center for Church Development explaining the simple principle that is helping churches, denominations, and the region of New England see a movement of multiplying disciples. The principle is called the Irreducible Core and is comprised of three things: loving God, loving people, and making...
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The 'Sentness' of Ordinary Individuals →
Here’s another great story from SOMA Communities about what life can (and should) look like when believers live as a missionaries in their neighborhood. There are some recurring themes in all stories of this type: utter dependence on the Holy Spirit for guidance, times of listening and waiting on God to speak, high value on personal relationships, the cultivation of community through mealtimes,...
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"Sentness" -- New Logo
Through the gracious gift of a friend (thanks Paige!) the blog now has a new logo that perfectly captures the visual idea behind “sentness.”
Our lives, informed and shaped by the grace of God through the cross of Christ, necessarily take on a posture that leans away from self and toward others. This centrifugal effect of the gospel upon our lives is what some have called...
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“The church tends to make tame the life that was once in us and then confines its...”
– Tom Johnston and Mike Chong Perkinson, The Organic Reformation
August 2011
5 posts
3 tags
Ed Stetzer - Sent: a Study for the Church →
Has anybody used this study? If you have, please leave me a comment about the benefits/drawbacks.
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“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as...”
– Matthew 10:16
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Why 'Sentness' is Needed
These stats are taken from a friend’s Ph.D dissertation:
34% of the U.S. adult population has not attended any type of church service during the past 6 months
6 out of 10 unchurched people consider themselves to be Christian
1 out of every 3 is unchurched (73 million adults)
Since 1991, the adult population in the US has grown by 15%, and during the same period the number of adults who do...
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The Way of Spontaneous Expansion
Recently, I’ve been reading selected writings by Roland Allen from his book The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church. For those of you unfamiliar with Allen, he was an early twentieth century Anglican missionary and missiologist who had a profound influence on Lesslie Newbigin. In many ways, much of the current discussion about the missional church finds its roots in Allen’s writings.
...
July 2011
4 posts
2 tags
What made you want to adopt? (Part 2) →
Here’s a little back story from Miriam’s blog about why we feel God is leading us to adopt. Miriam, thanks for posting this!
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WatchGreat little video depicting the kind of mental shift needed to live missionally. May God multiply this kind of church, the kind that sends out its members to reach people where they are at.
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Each Precious Day →
Check out Miriam’s new blog. She’s posting about our adoption journey.
June 2011
11 posts
4 tags
There is some wonderful stuff in this message that...
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The Need for a New Set of Metrics
If as a church we keep sending out as many missionaries as the number of people coming into church through conversion so that our net growth is zero, would we be considered a healthy church under evangelicalism’s current church health metrics (buildings, bodies, budgets)? What if we never break the 300 barrier because of this? What might this say about our current standard of metrics? May...
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“Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious...”
– A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, p.17-18.
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What Greek Grammar Can't Do to Help Recapture the...
There’s no doubt in my mind that some kind of apostolic function must be recovered in order to help churches and denominations transition to missional. A church culture where sentness, everybody sent as missionaries, is the norm means sodalic gifting is operational in some way. A simple, face value reading of Ephesians 4:11-12 has convinced me of this. We can’t expect the body of...
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Musings on the Missional Manifesto, Part 5: The... →
Excellent post by Ed Stetzer. Thought I’d pass it along. This paragraph in particular caught my attention.
The church finds its significance as a body who is sent on a kingdom mission. Missionary congregations are communities that reflect the reality of the gospel of the kingdom in their life together and their life for their world. And, they are a body empowered by the Spirit and Word of...
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“We can fight to reestablish the church as a physical place where certain things...”
– M. Scott Boren
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Where Does 'Sentness' Come From?
If one of our goals is to see every believer on mission with Jesus, sent as Jesus was sent, to make disciples who make disciples who make disciples, how does that happen? From where does this missionary impulse come? What’s the starting point? Where does sentness come from?
The starting point for a sent life is the gospel. Period. 9Marks recently asked the question, “does the emerging...
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WatchThis two-minute summary of the missional church is excellent. May God multiply this kind of church a thousandfold.
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“The fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is not inadequate...”
– David Wells, God in the Wasteland, p. 114.
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The Kingdom of God and the Dangers of an...
There’s a lot of talk these days about the Kingdom of God. Kingdom this. Tangible kingdom that. Along with “missional” it’s one of the hot buzzwords in emerging evangelicalism. Books and videos and DVDs on Kingdom living abound. Everybody wants a piece of the Kingdom. Take, for instance, this search on Amazon. (By the way, I just purchased a new DVD series called The...
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Seven Leadership Observations From the Life of...
Drawn from Arnold Dallimore’s Spurgeon, Moody Press, 1984.
1. Covenant of Service
Spurgeon made a covenant with God to serve Him as long as he was on this earth. This statement written just days after his conversion hints at the dedication, zeal, and commitment with which he would serve Christ throughout his life. He says,
O great and unsearchable God, who knowest my heart, and triest...
May 2011
7 posts
2 tags
“If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t...”
– Augustine
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Onward to Missional: "Sentness" in a Post... →
For those of you connected with the EFCA, I’d love to meet you at the National Conference at a workshop I’m helping to lead.
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WatchThe Church As Family. A video from last summer featuring two friends and moi. The younger good looking one is me. (Just want to see if you’re reading this!)
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“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me,...”
– John 20:21