A Missional Church

Milfred Minatrea in his book, Shaped by God’s Heart talks about churches who are not just “mission minded,” but are “missional.” These churches are much more than interested or even passionate about missions projects. Every member of the congregation of a missional church conceives of themselves as a missionary who is “determined to bring the transformational influence of Jesus Christ into their world every day.” Some of his descriptions of missional churches are listed below. I share these in the hope that they will compel you as they have me:

Missional Churches…

• are specialists at extending invitation and create multiple entry points through which the spiritual inquirer can begin the journey toward faith
• tirelessly equip their entire membership to live as authentic followers of Christ
• seek to be real, not real religious.
• understand faith as something that is not just held, but is to be lived.
• believe that authentic worship invites participants, not spectators. Worship is not just learning about God, but it is encountering God. It is not just hearing about God, it is hearing God.
• passionately and relentlessly seek to intersect with the lives of people who do not know the love of Christ and serve them.
• fully expect to change the world!

One of our members recently sent me a message describing her vision that our church would help God’s people “find their fire and their passion for God” so that we will “want to explode out into the community, and the world for that matter, with our new found fire.” Now that’s a vision you can sign me up for!

My Brand of a(pseudo)theism

I love to read and Amazon.com, I’m sure, loves me for it. Each time I go to their website, they have recommendations for me. Since I read a lot of religious and theological books, one of their recommendations caught my eye. It was a book that was written by a “former Christian” pastor, now atheist, on why he had given up his belief in God. Then I noticed that there was at least another former Christian pastor who had also made the same claim and written a book about it.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that there is something about what these persons have done that compels me. Like them, I’ve grown disenchanted with religion. I am really fatigued with the religious enterprise that much of my experience of the church has become. I’ve given up on believing in a god that either is good, but not powerful or is powerful, but not good or is neither powerful, nor good. I just can no longer follow a passionless, uninvolved, perpetually silent god who allegedly cared and interacted with human beings twenty centuries ago, but who seems an awful lot like an imaginary friend nowadays. In fact, I can’t even believe in that god anymore.

I am sick of a religious belief system that majors in shame and offers an anemic collection of “positive thinking,” temporary emotional “worship experiences,” and superficial churchy relationships as a remedy. I reject grace that aims at justifying, but not removing my sin and leaves me unchanged and powerless in the face of temptation.

I decided to share this development with God about my new disbelief. In the midst of this time of prayer, I came to discover that I think God agrees with me. In fact in 1st Timothy 3:5 we are warned about people who have a “form of religion” but who aren’t experiencing its power. I honestly believe that God’s Spirit is bearing witness with my own, that what I’ve been lacking is the genuine power of God that resurrected Jesus Christ from the dead, to resurrect me from my own death and sin!

These guys beat me to the book deal, so I guess I won’t get rich with the shock value of publishing my claim. I found myself praying for these former pastors, now atheists. I applaud their rejection of an idol god and an ineffective religious world view. I hope that they and others somehow become confronted, as I have, with the real God Who is neither silent nor uninvolved. I pray that the Pentecostal power of the genuine Holy Spirit of God falls upon them and us and produces in us a current and transforming relationship which forgives our sin and justifies and truly redeems us sinners!

I praise the living, passionate, interested, powerful, loving God for this development in me and I pledge my belief in Him and my commitment to live in relationship with Him made possible by the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. Praise God!

Pastoral Priorities

I borrowed much of this from a friend who shared this in his first newsletter after a new appointment as Senior Pastor of a local church. I think there is much wisdom here for pastors and churches.

1. Worship and preaching must be my first priority. I cannot sacrifice my time for planning and preparation for secondary demands that bid for my time. A worship service that is alive and eventful is central to all we do.

2. Leadership is my second priority, both in terms of being a leader and developing leaders. Understand that leaders are supposed to lead, not just facilitate, coordinate, or enable. I will accept the privilege, responsibility, and accountability of leadership.

3. Pastoral care is my third priority. Teaching, visitation, prayer, counseling, writing, telephoning, being present with you in your daily joys and sorrows—all this assures that ministry for me remains people-centered rather than activity-centered.

4. I am committed to moving forward. Churches have the tendency to develop a “maintenance” posture, dealing only with their problems rather than opportunities. I will not settle for the status quo. I will encourage you to pioneer new areas, to take creative leaps of faith, and not to be bound by the problems of the past.

5. I am committed to speaking the truth in love, without compromising one for another. I will not back off difficult issues. I will try to be clear about where I stand and what I believe. But I will seek to do everything in love and respect for you, and welcome your dialogue.

6. I will learn to use you in the ministry of this church. Delegation and leadership development have been hard for me to learn, yet I realize many pastors end up spinning wheels on matters they have no business or expertise in doing. My job is to “equip the saints for the work of ministry” and not try to do it all myself.

7. I will be a servant to your spiritual needs, but not a slave to your whims and prejudices. I am learning that I cannot be everything to everybody.

8. I value quality and quantity. I want us to do all things well, yet to be a faithful church, we must unapologetically always reach beyond ourselves. Growth is a key factor by which we must measure the effectiveness of our ministry.
I look forward to our ministry together. By God’s grace and in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can accomplish much to His Glory in the coming years.

Reification

Reification is a fancy philosophy concept that I don't completely understand, HOWEVER, part of the meaning has to do with how we take abstract ideas and make them concrete.

A simpler issue is when we take VERBS and turn them into NOUNS. For example, when we take character qualities and activities of God like LOVE, FAITH, GRACE, HOPE, and JOY and consider these something like commodities that we can trade in. What does it mean for us to have more or less faith? ...more or less love? ...more or less grace? Is that possible?

I suspect that if we love as God loves, there is no quantity to our love. It isn't a person, place, or thing that can be measured. It is a quality of God that either characterizes us or doesn't.

How might it change our prayer if we took a break from those words and prayed what they really represent? Prayer that asks that God help us to put God first and to care about others as much as we care about ourselves. Prayer that confesses our belief in God and asks that we might trust him ever-more. Prayer that expresses our gratefulness for God's unmerited favor for ourselves and asks that we might take on that kind of character to extend unmerited favor upon our sisters and brothers.

It isn't that any of these words aren't wonderful words or that they represent anything bad. It just might be that they become such easy labels that we slowly start to forget all that they are really supposed to mean. What does it really mean to LOVE, to be persons of FAITH, to transact PEACE, to be GRACEFUL in our relationships with God and others? Shouldn't these words really always be verbs?

Holiness of Heart and Life

This is an excerpt from a paper that I am submitting in response to my reading of a book by Scott Jones entitled, John Wesley's Conception and Use of Scripture. I'm just curious if any of you who read my blog might have a reaction to my reaction to this book:

Holiness of Heart and Life

This is an area where I have often wished that my denomination (United Methodist) had more closely followed John Wesley’s teaching and example. I fear that much of our preaching, and much of our congregation’s expectations of preaching is based on grace that Dietrich Bonheoffer termed “cheap.” There seems to be little in the way of accountability for “going on to perfection” for the average lay person in membership of the UMC (or for post-ordained clergy for that matter).

I truly doubt that one could preach Christian perfection as presented in Wesley’s sermons and letters as illustrated by Jones (author of above book) without more than a little objection from laity and eventually even from ecclesial executives who love harmony perhaps even more than they love scriptural authenticity. This kind of preaching, in the context of much prayer and by the power of the Holy Spirit, is what I believe brought about the last Great Awakening. Our culture, and that of Great Britain’s as well, is I fear in just as dire a spiritual and cultural predicament as they were prior to that great revival.

Broken World -- Broken People

If you decide to follow the attached website link (by clicking this blogpost title), please be prepared for some pretty sad pictures. The article is about the drinking culture of Great Britain, particularly as experienced over New Year's Eve night. As I viewed the pictures and read the captions, I began to experience a powerful wave of genuine sorrow for the people in them.

It appears to me that Satan must compete with his own personal best for just how much God-given dignity and value he can strip us of in exchange for as little benefit as possible. I wonder what these people anticipated when they set out for their evening? I doubt they anticipated being beaten bloody in a drunken brawl or passing out in a street in a pool of their own vomit.

These were the conditions of most of Europe in the mid-1700's just before the Great Awakening in which genuine Holy Spirit-empowered revival broke out throughout Europe and then America and literally saved their and our culture from self-destructing.

I was just thinking that if all this breaks my heart, how much it must break God's heart, Who created these people in His own image and likeness. I pray for another Great Awakening for all of our world.

What a mission field we live in!

Defeating a Critical Spirit

When I was in college the dean of the school of business really pushed for our curriculum to require a class in critical thinking. She complained that young people don’t possess the ability to think critically.

In some ways she was right. We do need the skills to evaluate an argument or position before we agree with it or reject it. Not everything that we read is true just because it is in print, or because somebody famous said it. It is helpful to be able to evaluate what we encounter with a basic logical critique.

In many other ways, however, I believe that our culture is incredibly predisposed to critique everything. It seems as if: Nobody can rise to the level of hero nowadays without every fault being investigated and exposed. If anyone does anything that might appear truly altruistic, we immediately wonder what their real motivation might have been. I am amazed at how automatic the vilification of a candidate for public service is just by virtue of which party she or he chooses.

Maybe we could use those critical thinking skills a little better by choosing not to listen to allegations which are offered without a basis in provable fact (like at least 75% of the allegations I have heard about our new President-Elect). Maybe we could assume that people are people before they are republicans or democrats or liberal media or fundamentalist or right wing or whatever other label they wear. Maybe we could give people we don't agree with at least enough credit to assume that they love their families, their country, and God as much as we do.

I believe that there is truly room for critique and disagreement. I believe that we often need to contend with others for what we believe. I also believe that if we aren't careful, we exceed these values and descend into a truly (unconstructively) habitually critical perspective about everything and everyone. I have excused much of my own critique of others, particularly in the Church, as an expression of my passion to be an effective leader in an effective Church. While I have no intention of any apathy with regard to my love of God, my core values, my faith, or my ambition for the Church or myself; I do purpose to value others and to be more free with affirmation and more reserved with critique. I purpose to assume the best rather than the worst about those I disagree with, at least until when and if I'm proven wrong. I purpose to value collaboration at points of agreement over seeking to defeat those I disagree with. I want to live by the conviction that love truly does prevail!