sentness

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.

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.

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 passage Jesus is explaining how to go about finding the people that will become his disciples. I think this text is describing a way of life for every follower of Jesus. 

In Luke 10:3-4 Jesus gives a second directive for how we are to make disciples who make disciples. Jesus simply says, “Go!” Why? Because the fields are ripe for harvest. The crop is dangerously close to rotting in the field. And as we go he sends us with a sense of vulnerability, dependency, and urgency. 

Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.

Go Vulnerably

Jesus sends his followers out as vulnerable baby sheep (lambs) among savage wolves. He likens the task of finding and making disciples to a high stakes mission where the sent one might get eaten. Why? Because making disciples is a dangerous proposition. However, sheep in the pen are in no danger or threat of being eaten by our enemy. So Jesus pushes us out of the fold to where his lost sheep are. But our vulnerability in the field isn’t a liability. It’s an opportunity to depend upon Jesus, “that Great Shepherd of the sheep who will equip you with everything good for doing his will,” as Hebrews 13:21 says. We may be vulnerable and powerless, but he isn’t.

Frequently I hear pastors bemoaning the lack of involvement of the men in their congregations. Maybe John Eldredge was right with his book Wild at Heart? Maybe more men aren’t engaged in disciple making because we’ve bored them with our picture of Christianity. Could our desire for a safe, suburban Christian experience have undermined our disciple making mission more than we realize? I have a hunch; recapture the dangerous urgency of the disciple making mission and men will follow. 

Go Dependently

Jesus also sends his followers out provisionless. “Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals.” Jesus stripped the seventy-two of the extra, ancillary things unnecessary to the disciple making task. In sending them out provisionless he was preparing them to be dependent on him.

Sometimes I think the wealth of resources available to us here in the West has hindered our disciple making more than it has helped. We’ve become dependent on our wealth, resources, curriculum, clever strategies, ministry fads and latest disciple making schemes so much so that we’ve forgotten how to depend upon the Great Shepherd himself. That Jesus sends his followers out provisionless, utterly dependent on Him for survival and success, tells us something about the disciple making task. He is the only provision we really need. Do you believe that? Does your disciple making activity prove that belief? 

Go Urgently

The disciple making task is such an urgent task that Jesus instructs his followers to forgo the lengthy, customary greeting of the day to get on with the business at hand. “Greet no one on the road.” These words scream urgency. Time is of the essence. The harvest fields are white!

Most wide-spread, spontaneous disciple making movements that I can think of off the top of my head have operated with this sense of urgency. Maybe one of the reasons we haven’t seen a disciple making movement in the West is because our churches and families have become urgent about the wrong things. I can think of a hundred other good, church related activities that, frankly, have become more urgent than my calling as a disciple maker.

If you are a church leader here is where you can really model for your people the heart of Jesus. As much as you are able, prayerfully cultivate this sense of urgency. Help your people see what’s at stake. The Amber Alert has already been posted. Lost sheep are in danger of being eaten by wolves. So, sound the alarm but not in an alarmist kind of way. Rally the fold to the Shepherd who will then lead his sheep.

Go vulnerably. Go dependently. Go urgently. Does that describe how you go about making disciples? Live sent!

Coming soon…Part Three

(Part One can be found here)

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 for professional ministers or pastoral staff or missionaries or the extremely gifted. Jesus appointed 72 others, the laity if you will. If you call yourself a Christian this mission charge is for you. This text is describing a way of life for every follower of Jesus.

Jesus first models this Kingdom Way of Life in his own ministry. Having modeled it he instructs the twelve to do the same things he did (Luke 9). And then, in a masterstroke that harbingers the promise of the priesthood of all believers, he sends out the Average Joe, seventy-two others. In doing so we must see that he’s also sending us.

In Luke 10:2 Jesus gives his first directive for how every believer is to go about making disciples who make disciples. We are sent to pray fervently.

He told them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’

This is how we are to go about ministry in Jesus’ name. This is the work of ministry. The church will rise or fall, the mission of making disciples who make disciples will either succeed or fail on the strength or feebleness of our prayer life.

Jesus explains why prayer is essential. We pray because the task ahead of us is immense, the harvest is plentiful.

Predisposed by God for the reception of the Gospel, men are likened to a crop of fully ripened grain ready for harvest.

We know the harvest is plentiful. That’s a given. How we go about harvesting is another matter. There are a gazillion books out there that will give you a technique or model to follow in order to see a disciple making movement. In opposition to most of those Jesus says we should pray. We pray because it’s His harvest. Not ours. He owns the fields. He’s the Lord of the Harvest. 

If you are tired of trying to manufacture fruitfulness or going it alone then Jesus’ is commanding you to stop, repent of your hubris and self-importance, and begin by praying to him, the Lord of the Harvest. This is a command!  Beg the Lord of the Harvest. Plead with him to raise up workers. This is not some weak, half-hearted milquetoast prayer. Nor is it a prayer to raise up workers in some other part of the world for the task of foreign missions. This prayer is a powerful, intense, passionate plea to the Lord of the Harvest concerning the fields right under our noses, the fields we have been sent into. 

The unspoken consequences of not praying are clear. Without the hard work of prayer there will never be an adequate harvest, there will never be a sustained movement of reaping. The crop rots in the field. In other words, maybe the reason we haven’t seen a recent disciple-making movement here in the West is because we are trying to manufacture a work of God by means other than prayer. 

Last week I had a conversation with a young missionary to France working with Agape Europe. He told me the story of how some from their team had recently traveled to India to observe a church planting movement. Their team longed to see a fresh work of God in Western Europe so they were open to learning something new. What they learned humbled them. Before going to a new village to plant the Gospel, prior to doing anything in Jesus’ name, these simple Indian believers prayed for three months. They simply asked God to show them who he was sending them to.

We have tried to do something similar in our missional community. Instead of wearing ourselves out with activities trying to draw people in we’ve begun to funnel that energy into praying to the Lord of the Harvest. We fully realize that we are the answer to our own prayers. God is sending us out as workers. And we believe he will show us who he is sending us to in our neighborhood when we pray.

Jesus says in John 6:29,

The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.

I’m starting to realize that it really is a work of God when a person, a pastor, a church rejects all the church growth models out there to simply take Jesus at his word and pray fervently. May we be a people of prayer for the sake of the Kingdom and the harvest. Live sent!

Coming soon…Part Two