Marva Dawn …

Some of you saw this clip this weekend during Wheatland’s worship time. You can check it out again.

Check out TWOTP

Filed under: missional

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.

Filed under: Willard, missional

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.

Missional Word Images

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)

Filed under: missional

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

Filed under: missional

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

Filed under: Peterson, from the sublime to the profane, missional

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

Filed under: Christian Time, missional

Missional Order

This is a special site that some friends and I have been working on. Brad Brisco, from Missional Church Network, and Georges Boujakly are two Southern Baptist friends who have provided much practical wisdom to me.

Check it out:

Missional Order

Filed under: Christian Time, missional

The Semantic Thrillride: Emerging, Emergent, Missional

Not long after Easter 2006 I found myself staying in a motel north of Nashville, TN. While I can’t remember the name of the town I do remember an unusual message I received when checking my e-mail that night. It read something like this:

Dear Paul,

I discovered the blog for the Wheatland Mission and was wondering, is the Wheatland Mission and Emerging Church?

Sincerely,

TR (The name has been reduced to initials to protect Todd Ramsey’s identity.)

My response was, in a word, unintelligible. I had not met my interlocutor and wondered a little bit if the question was a set up, a question kind of like: When did you stop beating your wife? … or, Should we pay taxes to Caesar? Of course, it wasn’t a setup but an honest, friendly question. At that time I had been

Filed under: from the sublime to the profane, missional , Emergent, missional

Do you fly the green “E”?: Emerging, Emergent, Missional, etc.

Some of you have, in recent months, asked questions about the relationship between the Wheatland Mission and Emergent. Some have asked, “Is Wheatland Emergent?”. Still others have asked, in general, what the deal is with the Emerging/gent Church. What is known as the “emergent conversation” is something that I have followed, listened to for the last few years. Still, the terms, the players and the conversation partners are

Filed under: McKnight, missional, people , Emergent, emerging, missional

Tallskinnykiwi and his Missional Synchroblog Summary Magical Mystery Tour

Some of you occasionally read Andrew Jone’s blog at tallskinnykiwi. He recently composed an article for the webzine Next-Wave where he summarizes a recent, large scale blogging experience oriented about the meaning of the word missional and the continued use of the term. My friend Brad Brisco contributed to the synchroblog and you can find his post here.

Andrew Jone’s article is good stuff. You should check it out: Next-Wave: The Skinny On Missional

Filed under: missional , missional, tallskinnykiwi