Have you noticed that it hardly matters what kind of church you grew up in? Very few of us hold on to any kind of denominational identity beyond Protestant or Catholic.
Do you think this kind of theological diversity is good? Can it be a problem?
Category Archives: missional
Edith Schaeffer’s Prayer for L’Abri
But in addition to these conversations and discussions, something else was happening.
People were finding it hard to ‘shake off’ what they were living through. Continue reading
The KIVA Effect
The impact of micro-lending and Kingdom thinking. Check out CT’s recent article: The Kiva Effect
HT: Tallskinny Kiwi
“Advent Calendar” by Rowan Williams
He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.
Marva Dawn …
Some of you saw this clip this weekend during Wheatland’s worship time. You can check it out again.
Check out TWOTP
Neue Journal
Anybody read this yet? Dallas Willard, Scot McKnight and a spate of other great articles makes this something I’m going to be reading regularly. Check it out here: Neue Quarterly
It appears to use its own reader. Let me know if you have trouble reading it online.
Images of Missional
Rick Meigs, over at Blind Beggar, posted this wonderful description of missional life over two years ago. It’s worth reading again and again. Missional life involves living life, listening to God’s promptings and blessing those we come in contact with. Not complicated, but not necessarily easy.
I’ve been wondering what being God’s missional people in our everyday life might really look like. After reading a comment over at Adventures In Mercy where the person used a word picture to make his point, it gave me the thought that maybe this would be a good device to explore certain aspects of missional.
Here is my attempt at some word images. Do these help you get a glimpse of some aspect of being missional? Can you create a word image to contribute?
Image One
The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy. And…Love others as well as you love yourself. (The Message)
Image Two
When the new neighbors move in you go knock on the door and welcome them to the neighborhood, you talk about football and fishing over the fence, you invite him to the Lucky Lab for a beer and get acquainted. You invite them over for barbecue and listen to his lame jokes with grace. When he tells you about the problems he is having at work, you talk about your struggles also and how God has helped you through them. When the wife’s dad dies, you let them know you are praying for them. When he asks about what you do with your spare time, you humbly tell him how you work down at The Bridge with street kids every other month, how you help with a homeless ministry, tutor students in reading at the local high school, and have a wonderful community of faith that you love being involved with. You live a modest low consumption lifestyle before them. You pray for them regularly and are always ready to talk about why you’re living the way you are.
Image Three
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me. (The Message)
Recession and Receding
Here are two articles, both a little old, but thought provoking and worth a read. What do you think?
The first is about the global economic recession and some ideas on how the church, and the individuals comprising the church, should respond. “Are You Recession Ready?” by Tom Sine the author of the classic Mustard Seed Conspiracy and a part of Mustard Seed Associates.
The second is about the coming receding/recession of the evangelical church. “The Coming Evangelical Collapse” by Michael Spencer, also known as iMonk.
HT: Tallskinny and nattyman
Eugene Peterson, from Tell It Slant
Some of us try to confine our Christian identity to what takes place on Sundays. In order to preserve it from contamination from “the world,” we avoid as much as we can conversation beyond polite small talk with the Samaritans. Others of us memorize phrases from Sunday sermons and teaching and then try to insert them into pauses in the conversations or circumstances over the next six days. But it doesn’t take us long to realize that these tactics are unsatisfactory. Or it we don’t realize it, the Samaritans surely do. pg. 18
Merton on the Advent
We are exiles in the far end of solitude, living as listeners,
With hearts attending to the skies we cannot understand:
Waiting upon the first far drums of Christ the Conqueror,
Planted like sentinels upon the world’s frontier.- Thomas Merton
