Recently in Missional Category

Tony Stiff is a graduate of Westminster seminary, a friend, and a solid young thinker -- and he will do a four part series for us on "Missional" theology and Bible reading. I look forward to this series and I ask you to join in the conversation.

I must tell you how much I appreciate folks like Tony -- regular readers of this blog, regular commenter, and one willing to offer suggestions like this for the blog. It is folks like you -- and Tony -- that make this blog what it is. Thanks.

Now over to Tony, and here's how he opens:

"Every time I walk into a Christian bookstore I see the word missional applied to dozens of trendy books on how to do church from authors of diverse traditions. It seems like missional is the newest model on the shelf for pragmatic evangelicals to buy and consume and self-apply. Missional is doing for younger evangelicals what Neo-Evangelicalism did for the last generation."

 I had someone share this sentiment with me over a conversation on the the importance of the missional church. Perhaps as you look at this booklet [and read this post] you're saying to yourself something similar, "the missional church is just the latest buzzword,"  "the missional church is a pragmatic theologically light version of the church," etc.. If these things were true then why in the world should any group of Christians - small or large - spend time exploring what the missional church is? The honest answer is they shouldn't. If the missional church is just the latest fad in the church then its not worth our time.

The essence of the missional church in the West is to recognize a change of conditions: from the Christian West to the Post-Christian West. What is the biggest evidence for this in your opinion? Where do you most feel the Post-Christian condition?

This Friday is for Friends post is from our long-time blog friend, "T," the one who once won a contest on this blog in which we gave away a pair of crocs. T, you still wearing them? By the way, we are always looking for more submissions for our Friday is for Friends slot. I get lots of notes from folks who appreciate this open forum for our readers.

People familiar with John Wimber and/or the Vineyard will know what "Doin' the stuff" refers to.  And if you want a good intro to 'missional' thinking, go here or here.  But what does "missional" have to do with "doin' the stuff" that Jesus was known for?  Towards that question I want to throw a few ideas for folks in both camps to think about, because I think that the missional movement and doin' the stuff could be a match made in heaven--and earth. It's also why I have Wimber's Prayer Model as a tab on this blog, because I think routinely praying for people who are sick, both with the compassion of Jesus and the power and insight of the Spirit, is a pretty missional habit to pick up.

T asks this question of us: Is being "missional" much easier to say than to do? And what do we really mean when we say we are being "missional" like Jesus? 

Some specific thoughts:

AHH has been reading and occasionally commenting on the Jesus Creed blog since Fall 2008.  He lives in Colorado where he works at a government science lab, and he is ordained as an Elder in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  He is a little publicity-shy, but to find what the initials stand for and other info, you can see his website here. We are looking for more submissions from you for "Friday is for Friends."

The Missional Inigo Montoya

One of my favorite lines from The Princess Bride comes when the swordsman Inigo Montoya, after witnessing several events his boss calls "inconceivable," says, "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means."

I had an Inigo Montoya moment at church recently.  In a series of sermons on a new expression of vision that I find promising, one Sunday was devoted to the phrase "Missional Outreach".  The sermon examples, while representing good ministry (how someone had invited the speaker to Fellowship of Christian Athletes long ago, kids being invited to meet Jesus in our High School ministry), included nothing I recognized as "missional." 

In fact, the speaker said something at the start like "serving our neighbors is good, but it's not what I'm talking about today."  This reinforced my feeling that, at many churches, "missional" gets applied to anything directed at non-Christians, including "come inside our structures to meet Jesus" programs that are the antithesis of the ideas in The Missional Church.  I wanted to say "I do not think Missional means what you think it means."

We don't get the issues (behind the book) on the table with descriptive clarity until chp 4 in Mark Noll's new book, The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith, and in my estimation Noll is making a proposal that flies in the face of a plenty of popular thinkers today.

What is your general view of the missionary movement of American Christianity? What are the negatives and positives of the American missionary movement? Does the church have the obligation and the vocation to spread the gospel? Is missionary work the best way to do that? What is missionary work -- in your view?

What about missionaries? What about American evangelical missionaries traveling around the world, gospeling and bringing with them their American ways? These are the questions behind Noll's book, and he sets out three basic options for how folks are examining the relationship of American Christianity to the world's cultures:

First, some think the whole thing smacks of manipulation and colonialism (which always evokes the term "exploitation"). In other words, some interpret the whole missionary enterprise as capturing the world for America.

Second, some think of missionary work as influencing cultures and the world but not in a manipulative sense; instead, the emphasis will be on these cultures choosing to participate in the missionary work and the gospel.

Third, others think in less than causation and more in correlation terms. Noll's own thesis -- and this is important for the whole series we are doing about his book -- is that it is shared and common historical experience that led to similarities between American and world Christianities.

Noll uses The Jesus Film as an example of how to examine the appropriate of these terms, or one might say how these three views can explain the film's universal presence and impact. If I were teaching a class, I'd ask the class to converse about how each view would explain the film.

Last Friday morning I flew out to Philadelphia to speak at Biblical Seminary. John Franke was installed as the Lester and Kay Clemens Professor of Missional Theology. It may have been the most satisfying and stimulating theological conference I've ever attended.

John Franke is at the cutting edge of moving "missional" from the practical theology disciplines to the heart of systematic theology (see Franke books), so it was an honor for me to be invited to be one of the speakers. In fact, the four plenary speakers reflects something about John: his ecumenical vision and his missional theology. Tim Keel, pastor at Jacob's Well, spoke about the crisis of imagination. Darrell Guder, famous as one of the main architects of "missional theology," spoke on the promise and perils of "missional." And then Brian McLaren spoke on the epistemology, and he reflected on 1 Cor 8 and the use of knowledge for destruction. I'm sure all the talks are on CD, but I don't have the link -- so if someone does have the link, send it along.

Dave Dunbar, President at Biblical and a friend of mine since the early 80s, and John Franke selected from three segments of John's work: evangelical, mainline, and emergent. It was a hearty brew and mix. I think everyone would agree.

It was fun for me to see so many friends: JR Briggs, Todd Hiestand, Sherry Kull and some academic friends (I'll not name them all). I got to chat with Kent Berghuis who wrote the best book on fasting I've read, and I even saw some of the students in my class I taught there on Galatians. When we were done -- and they scheduled this event with enough breaks to keep us from fatigue -- some of us went to Applebee's for brews and appertizers and chat.

Thanks John and Dave.

We come to the end of Chris Wright's exceptional book, The Mission of God. The mission of God to make his name know to the whole world finds its end in Jesus, in the early Christian preaching to the nations,...

The last two chps of Chris Wright's excellent book, The Mission of God, concern the most pressing topic of anyone who wants to examine the Old Testament through the lens of "mission." I tend to think most either ignore what...

The most neglected books in the Old Testament are the Wisdom books, and so it is nice to see Chris Wright look at "mission" in light of what the Wisdom books teach (2d half of chp 13: The Mission of...

How does "who we are" impact mission in this world? This is the subject of the 13th chp of Chris Wright's book The Mission of God. He addresses here subject I have addressed myself, so I was delighted both to...

Is care for the world a part of the mission of God and, therefore, of our mission in this world? Chris Wright's The Mission of God is one of the very few -- and you might be able to count...

Chris Wright's The Mission of God brings together his life of thinking, and chp 11 of this book ties together his thinking about election, redemption and covenant and how each gives rise to "mission." In this chp he focuses on...

Any reading of the Old Testament immediately confronts a significant "missional" problem: the OT is not "missional". Chris Wright, however, argues that the great covenant moments of the OT have within them the missional theme. So today we look at...

If the exodus is the primal act of redemption, the Jubilee of Leviticus 25 is the primal act of restoration. So Chris Wright in The Mission of God. One text that has played a big role in anabaptist thinking, and...

Recently I was asked where theology was headed. I assured my reader that I wasn’t “in the know” but that I would hazard a guess or two. First I thought we were likely to see a more robust Trinitarian theology,...

There are two feisty parties in the church today. Let's call them "spiritualizers" and "activists." Chris Wright, in the second half of chp 8 (The Mission of God) says each emphasizes biblical truth but omits what the other emphasizes. He...

How significant is the "exodus" in shaping the biblical idea of mission? Real significant would be the answer of Chris Wright in The Mission of God (chp. 8 ). Here's how he begins the chp: "How big is our gospel?"...

Monday we looked at the big tough question about "missional" even being appropriate for the Old Testament. Today we look at chp 7 in Chris Wright, The Mission of God, to discover the number of texts that push the universal...

Cathleen Falsani, an award-winning religion writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, calls her new book Sin Boldly and finishes it off with this subtitle: A Field Guide for Grace. That title, "sin boldly," comes from Luther, but this book is not...

This week the tough question is this: Why, if God wanted to make his Name known throughout the world, did God choose to make that Name known only through one people? From a different angle, that tough question looks something...

The second half of chp 5 in Chris Wright, The Mission of God, explores how God's confrontation with idolatry shapes mission. Some very good ideas here. How does the theme of idolatry shape mission today? Where do you see idols?...

Those who concentrate on the New Testament mostly ignore idolatry; those who concentrate on the Old Testament face it daily. Chris Wright's 5th chp in his book The Mission of God faces idolatry as he maps the missional focus of...

So how does a biblical view of monotheism -- that YHWH is the one and only God -- and this God's mission to make himself known throughout the world, especially in Jesus Christ, lead to a missional understanding of the...

One of the more interesting conversations in the Church is the one about the deity of Christ. Very few of these conversations, though, frame the conversation in such a way that it emerges out of the Story of God in...

How does the theme of judgment ... or, how does knowledge of God as judge open up the missional theme in the Bible? This is the question of the second half of chp 3 in Chris Wright's The Mission of...

To claim the Bible is shaped by a missional concern, as Chris Wright does in The Mission of God, is to give oneself a challenge. Namely, to show that the God of the Bible is a missional God. Here's how...

If chp 1 of Christopher Wright, The Mission of God, took issue with various ways Christians have tried to make sense of a missional calling, chp 2 explains his own big ideas ... and, again, drink these in because they...

I begin this new series on Christopher Wright's book, The Mission of God, with a view to helping us (1) understand the Bible better and (2) understand "missional" better. I've mentioned Wright's book before, and I've mentioned that we will...

Yesterday Kris and I sat down with two leaders with CRM: Melinda (Wigton) Cathey and Alex Krutov. They are involved with a ministry to orphans in St. Petersburg, Russia. Kris and I were reeling all afternoon after listening to Alex...

The word "missional" is in the air, and I've taken a stab myself at defining it (Bloglossary). The word to use for many of those using this word is "muddle." What to do? I believe every pastor and every church...

Stephen Tomkins' gift seems to be irony and the ability to prick the halo bubble around saints, which he did with John Wesley but does a little less directly in his book William Wilberforce: A Biography. Wilberforce was exposed to...

Biblical Seminary now has an online certificate in missional studies....

Mother Teresa's launching of the apostolate called the Missionaries of Charity was an immediate success, in all the right ways. The story is found in chp 7 of Come Be My Light.. How often do we know the "inside" story...

Every now and then I post a brief review of books that I simply can't give a lengthy series to -- and they often deserve it. But, I can only do so many books on the blog and we've got...

While in Denmark I got an e-mail from a friend. I had explained to my friend that the tax system in Denmark had basically (not completely of course) eliminated poverty. The Danes pay 25% sales tax and anywhere from 50-67%...

One day before we came to Denmark Kris asked me how much Danish I thought we might be able to understand. My comment was that we didn't need to worry because my understanding was that most Danish knew English –...

In Jon Wilson's fine study, Why Church Matters, we turn this week from "Foundations" to "Renovations" and in his two chps on this topic he speaks first about "Witness." And his way to put it all together is in this:...

A letter and a response: Scott, I didn't want to hijack one of your missional Jesus blogs so I thought I would email this to you separately and if you had time to answer that'd be great - if you...

Here's another letter used with permission. I'll reply later, but what would you say -- how do we make our ministries, including those with our youth, more missional? Hi Scot, I have touched base with you a couple times in...

The most significant book ever written on house churches in the 1st Century is by Roger Gehring and is called House Church and Mission. I don't very often write posts on this blog about published dissertations, but that is because...

I was thinking I would weigh in later yesterday to Matt Kronberg's solid, sensitive question. But (besides playing golf and spending the rest of my day working -- if one calls what a professor does "work"), the conversation level was...

Another letter with a very good question. I open it up to you today and I'll weigh in later. I hope the missional leaders and emerging movement leaders will listen to this question. This pastor is suggesting that the term...

I'm reading on table fellowship of late and today I wish to call to your attention three books on hospitality. The first is more for the general reader, the second and third for the more academic setting. Still, each is...

Anyone who has the cleverness to write a book on hospitality called Making Room gets my vote for a good title, and also gets my attention. And, because I'm working a bit right now on table fellowship, I read through...

If you don't know Jarrod McKenna, of whom I had not heard until recently, his blog and his efforts to extend peace in all directions -- including this 22 minute interview -- through the way of Jesus are each worth...

Here is another letter, an encouraging one, from a pastor whose vision has shifted in a missional direction. Used with permission, with slight editing. He's got a great question, too: What does a discipleship class look like in a missionally-shaped...

Dear Krista, Your question is a good one, and it is one that has haunted my own academic career for more than twenty years. Here's your question: "how one should react to those preaching the traditional Romans road-- especially at...

Monday I flew down to Nashville where the kind folks at Abingdon -- nearly all of them brand new to me -- welcomed me into their fine downtown facilities for a book launch for A Community called Atonement, due out...

Imagine yourself at a table with others. (I'm not talking about dinner.) Who is at the table? Now here's the big question: Is your normal time at table with others a time when you are with folks just like yourself...

Todd Hunter made two major presentations. The first one on Friday evening was on the meaning of missional and I didn't take as many notes as I might have because I was listening so intently. Todd, I should mention, is...

We were anything but sleepless in Seattle. In fact, it was a weekend dedicated to a conversation about missional. (The mp3s are here.) I'll post three times on the Missional Matrix event at Vineyard Community Church, an event sponsored by...

I just finished a deeply moving book by Edward Gilbreath, Reconciliation Blues. There is nothing in this book that makes you think Gilbreath, an editor at CT, thinks the end of racialization is imminent. Instead of repeating well-worn figures, Gilbreath...

Anyone who begins a chp with this quotation from TS Eliot has my attention: "The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he...

Dan Kimball's new book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church, is a must-read for pastors for one big reason: what Dan learned can be a spur for a more effective ministry. What did he learn? That to reach his...

The core of the problem for Alan Hirsch, in his The Forgotten Ways, is Christendom. That is, the Church created by Constantine and whose ways simply haven't changed all that much since the 4th Century. The solution, Hirsch thinks, is...

This post will put together William Webb's 18 criteria but will begin with a few of my conclusions about the redemptive trend. You might want to print this out for future use. My suggestion is that you use a set...

The 17th and 18th criteria in William Webb's paradigm of the redemptive trend -- or how we move the Bible's message into our world in a progressive, redeeming way -- deal with Extrascriptural criteria. No matter how biblical we think...

Last week we began looking at Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways. This week we want to look at chp 1. Alan Hirsch is a practitioner (not simply an "armchair theologian") of missional churches; he has been involved in revitalizing, re-envisioning,...

What are the ingredients of a good conversation? Remember, a conversation is not the same as information-exchange or lecture. First, a good conversation (and therefore a good conversationalist) requires a safe environment. By this I mean space -- somewhere to...

I had a wonderful experience yesterday. I met with 25 emerging pastors and church leaders and Christians from South Africa who are here to learn how they can become more missional as Christians and churches in South Africa. Dr Nelus...

How, Miroslav Volf in his The End of Memory asks, does a Christian remember rightly? In particular, how does a Christian remember suffered wrongs if the Christian learns to remember throught he lenses of the Exodus and the Passion? This...

If you are interested in justice, if you are interested in the struggle for justice, and if you need a shot in the arm to bolster your courage to fight through the mundane and the red-tape, then I've got a...

William Webb, in his Slaves, Women and Homosexuals, examines a singular question: how to analyze which parts of the Bible are "cultural" and which parts are "transcultural." The book is a study in method: How do we make such decisions?...

We've been saying for a long, long time that "emerging" is more than philosophy and theology and progressive thinking. In fact, it is about "how to do church." Our local paper, The Daily Herald, has a front-page story about homes...

Catholics have been happy with me for three years -- for two reasons: I have embraced Mary in a Protestant sort of way but even more because I wrote an article a few years back that detailed why it is...

Dear Holly, Now that you are in Philly for Christmas, I have a recommendation to make -- and it's about my only recommendation for Philly: if you get to Chestnut Hill, go to Chestnut Hill Coffee Co and have a...

Willow Creek is hosting a Student Ministries Leadership Conference Feb 28-March 2, 2007. It is called SHIFT. Read about it here. I've been asked to lead a break-out session. Stay tuned for more details....

I've heard it, I've read it, and I've seen it happen: it is a characteristic of many in the emerging movement. But it's got to be understood for what it is: I call it "inclusion reaction." This inelegant expression tells...

Perhaps America's most prized possession is freedom. We call it "liberalism." Stanley Hauerwas contends that "liberalism is a political philosophy committed to ... a social order and ... government ... formed on self-interest and consent." Notice those two terms: self-interest...

If what I am calling "the" emerging question is as central as I think it is -- and that question is 'what about those who do not know about Jesus Christ'?, then the entire "in vs. out" issue is immediately...

Sarah Sumner's chp 11 in Men and Women in Ministry discusses what 1 Peter 3:7 means when it says that women are the "weaker vessel." Sarah begins with a lesson in how to do word studies, but first our questions....

Wendell Berry's Citizenship Papers is not an easy book to work through chp by chp because it is quite repetitive -- but the chp "Two Minds" seems to me to put together some of his central ideas about a more...

First: Happy birthday to my sister, Alexa. Now to our day's post: Is God a "father" or a "mother"? How should we talk about God? And is the word "Father" fixed or flexible? This is discussed in Sarah Sumner's book,...

The generation that grew up with Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street, was also thoroughly indoctrinated in public education and through the media to think all religions are the same. Tolerance, the deistic doctrine of our day, is not only a...

Here's how Obery Hendricks defines kingdom, or the sovereignty of God, in his book The Politics of Jesus: "a new world order of transformed human relationships; it was social, economic, and political relationships in this world made holy" (99). Enough...

Friends tell one another a story, and the story invites the friend into its own world. Here's mine: last year Kris and I decided to have a garage built. (We had lived here for about 20 years without one; it...

The 7th chp (and chp 8 ) of Sarah Sumner's Men and Women in the Church begins with this statement: "If Christian women have a tendency to pretend they are inferior, the opposite is true for Christian men" (81). This...

In James Vanoosting's And the Flesh Became Word, he has an essay about leaders and administrators. He trots out three "types" of leaders: business manager, military commander, and intellectual leader. He then suggests another image, simile, for leaders. I suggest...

If you want something very serious about American religious practice, I suggest this report from Baylor. You might want to print this out and think your way through it; lots of facts; trends are visible; myths of the media debunked....

From a commenter who read my paper from Westminster I got a great question, and now I'd like to reflect on the diversity of this thing called "emerging.": I delineated four Rivers leading into Lake Emerging: Postmodernity, Praxis (worship, orthopraxy/orthodoxy,...

Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday we were at Westminster Theological Seminary where, at the initiative of the student body, a conference was hosted about the emerging movement. First of all, Kris and I want to express publicly our gratitude to...

So when people call themselves "traditionalists" with respect to the role of women, esp in ministry, what do they mean? And, are there traditionalists today? Sarah Sumner's book, Men and Women in the Church, chp. 3, discusses such questions with...

Any church that prohibits women from minstering in ways that women minister within the pages of the Bible, regardless of the text that church chooses to use in order to restrict women (usually 1 Cor 14:34-35 or 1 Tim 2:11-15),...

RT France's last chp in Women in the Ministry of the Church deals with women who are examples of ministry in the Bible. It begins with the Old Testament: Miriam (Ex 15:20), Deborah (Judg 4:4-5), Huldah (2 Ki 22:12-20), Noadiah...

The following letter and my response are posted here with permission. Please sit down because this is real stuff -- stuff out of a heart spiritually abused. I know from other letters that she is not alone, and we pray...

We were not only shocked by the graphic horror of those small kids in that schoolroom being murdered in cold blood, but at the same time dumbfounded by the simplicity of the Amish children and community in their unified response....

We need to resume our look at LeRon Shults, Reforming the Doctrine of God. He speaks of God's infinity and Trinity and futurity, and I have called this the "in-God and un-God" because his study deals with terms like infinity...

In chp 2 of RT France, Women in the Church's Ministry, the subject of authority is addressed. France contends that at the bottom of the discussion about the role of women in ministry among evangelicals in the Anglican communion was...

Here is an encouraging letter from a woman who dwells with gifts among the Plymouth Brethren. She wrote this, and with her permission, I think we all need to read it: Here's the question: What events or which persons have...

Romans 13:5 is a near echo of a saying of Jesus: "Therefore, it is necessary to submit [live within the order] to the authorities ... because of conscience." Here's what Jesus said in Matthew 17:26-27: "Then the sons are exempt...

In 1992, on the 11th of November, the General Synod of the Church of England voted by a majority of more than 2 to 1 to ordain women to the priesthood in the Church of England. That vote raised considerable...

Rebelling against authorities is rebellion against God -- so Paul at Romans 13:2-4. Tom Wright contends that Paul is looking at the authorities as part of "God's intended order" and "not its corruputions." Paul, of course, would learn the rough...

A nice convergence: our series on Women in Ministry and on Scriptures and Scripture converge in the chapter by Pamela Cochran on "Scripture, Feminism, and Sexuality." This chapter in Justin Holcomb's book, Christian Theologies of Scripture, neatly and efficiently rehearses...

One of the challenges women face in ministry today is the accusation of the feminization of the church. There are a variety of platforms on which this accusation is hurled, but each of the platforms works against women in ministry....

For a long time I've wanted to do a series on women in ministry, but not only is a blog not the ideal place for such a series, many of us get so riled up that conversation slips all too...

David Wells, author of Above All Earthly Pow'rs, was one of my teachers in seminary and the best lecturer I have ever heard. I was mesmerized by his sketch of theology, and will never forget his standard answer to questions:...

If you are interested in reading how 20somethings sometimes think about the church and how they think it falls way short of what it is supposed to be like, and if at the same time you want to see that...

The word "orthodoxy" is slippery today, and many use it for something more than the historic creeds. Orthodoxy refers to the faith statements of the classical creeds. "Heresy" refers to teachings contrary to those creeds. This week we are exploring...

For many in the emerging movement there is a good reason to express the Christian faith by appealing to the creeds: that reason is ecumenical. By appealing to the creeds one is able to get way behind and well beyond...

Sometime back I did a couple of posts about emerging evangelism to see where my thinking was on what I think is a pressing new issue: how to evangelize in a postmodern age to what I call the "Mr. Rogers...

I will be participating at a local seminary, St. Mary of the Lake, in a conference on postmodernism and evangelization. I will be speaking on Thursday evening. There are some very good scholars at this event, and it might be...

A brother from South Africa sent me this, and if you haven't seen it (which I hadn't), it is worth the read. I have the first third of it or so here. Many evangelistic efforts often close hearts rather than...

Will it be "kingdom" or will it be "soteriology"? This, in my estimation, is more central to the emerging movement than many think. Traditional evangelicalism is stuck in the Pauline theology of salvation (soteriology) and many of us in the...

Anyone who takes the Story of the New Testament seriously will include the earliest chapters of Acts in any serious discussion of the missional life of the first Christians. What was a missional life like for them? Any thoughts? You...

Another way at looking at emerging evangelism, or what we might better call a missional preoccupation in life, is to examine how Jesus related to others. So today we will simply sample Matthew 8--9, two chapters that record Jesus' interactions...

The central term for what would be called in another generation "evangelism" is "missional" for the emerging movement. This week I will focus on the New EE, the sense of evangelism for the emerging movement, and to do so I...

Perhaps the word "missional" is more appropriate to the emerging sense of evangelism, and I suggest the following are some of the major complaints against traditional evangelism. We can all give some bad examples of evangelism, and the best way...

Tonight we were asked to challenge the Montecito Covenant Church to be a missional community of faith, and I'd like to share the outline of our talk. First, though, I'm impressed with this community of faith -- its piety, its...

Perhaps a nice place to re-address the question of what "evangelism" looks like and will look like in the emerging movement is to summarize the points made in Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, Emerging Churches, chp. 6: "Welcoming the Stranger."...

One of my students, Tim King, was overwhelmed by the needs of the homeless and has joined others to found a marvelous ministry to the homeless: To the Streets. Soon there will be a national day of sleeping outside to...

Both Heaven Hope and Holiness are misunderstood -- for neither permits or encourages escape from this world. I'm willing to say that the emerging movement today is a holiness movement, and by saying that you might accuse me of nonsense....

The Heaven Hope of Christians has been called into question by the emerging movement. Why? Two reasons, at least: first, because it sometimes leads to an other-wordliness on the part of Christians, which is little more than a form of...

Peter is writing his letter to resident aliens and migrant workers in Asia Minor, and they want to know how to live in the Roman Empire. Why do they ask such a question? Because they are now living in the...

Yesterday we looked at 1 Peter's readers: "aliens and strangers." We laid out the two major options, and in this post I want to provide an argument for why I think these two terms describe the social location of Peter's...

In this series of posts, I will focus on 1 Peter as reflective of a theology and a set of churches in an emerging situation. That is, I will examine 1 Peter from front to back as an attempt by...

Here's the deal. My school has asked me to post this auction to support missions work for our students. If you win the bid at NPU [#11], which funds go for missions work, I'll take you and a friend out...

A question for you and I hope a brisk, informed conversation. But first a brief explanation. I have been hearing of late, from a variety of quarters, that more and more churches are starting "satellite campuses" and, in effect, "satelliting"...

Kris and I were at NorthBridge Church this morning, a wondrous new church in Antioch, IL. Mark and Michelle Albrecht are the pastoral leaders, and they have adopted a genuinely missional approach to gospel work. This was the first Sunday...

Kris and I were at the Covenant Church in Roseville, MN, Saturday and Sunday. We had two sessions on Jesus Creed on Saturday, and they straddled a wonderful home-made lasagna dinner for all of us. The pastors, Rick Carlson and...

The man in black is physically gone, but his legacy remains: the image of a man dressed in black, that deep talking-singing voice, that one string that sustains the beat, and the story of a man who learned the hard...

If you haven't seen Tall Skinny Kiwi's charts, do so. There are worth thinking about. No chart says it all, but these two say things that need to be said....

In this last in a (and Kris would say too) long (of a) series on how Jesus would understand being missional, I want to look at what is perhaps the most profound of all the ideas mentioned in Matthew 9:35-11:1....

Lightning Atkinson, a student of mine who is praying and planning to plant a church with his wife Sara, now has a nice blogsite, called Churchbrew, and he has already put up some good ones. The ones today by Sara...

Full-scale missional work, as we see in Matthew 10:37-39, moves from love to sacrifice. He who loves anyone more than me, Jesus says, is not worthy of me. Anyone is clear, and a very forceful. But... But what is striking...

Missional work can be divisive. It doesn't have to be, often it is not, but sometimes it is. One of Jesus' harder and harsher words is this: "Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth --...

This is getting to be a long series, but Matthew 10 is long and it is important to stick it out to see what Jesus has to say about missional work. In our verses today, Matthew 10:26-33, there is a...

In this next section of Matthew 10 (vv. 21-25), we find a chain-link phenomenon connected to much of missional work even today. The missional person who is devoted to creating the way of Jesus in a liminal situation (a situation...

To participate with Jesus in the mission he calls his Apostles to, and to make that a template for our day, is to be in tune enough with the Spirit that when difficult times arrive we can expect the Spirit...

In this series on Matthew 10, we are looking at the meaning of "missional" in light of what Jesus said to his Apostles when he sent them out as "missioners." Missional work involves a balancing act of innocence and shrewdness....

Reputation may not be everything, but it matters to Jesus. His concern was Kingdom reputation when the Apostles got involved directly in missional work, and when they were performing the Kingdom as an extension of his mission. So, Matthew 10:11-13:...

Jesus told his missional Apostles not to take money, not to carry a beggar's bag, and not even to take extra clothing and shoes -- and then adds they are not to take a staff (probably a protective device). There...

One of those sayings with a funny name, "The Prohibition of Foreign Missions by Jesus," comes from Matthew 10:5-6. Jesus here tells his followers to concentrate on the "lost sheep" of the house of Israel and not go off to...

I'll be off to class early tomorrow morning, so I'm posting this one tonight. And if I don't get something off early, Kerry Doyal writes me and tells me I'm sleeping in or something. In this third post on Jesus'...

The Real Shepherd, the Pastor of pastors, Jesus himself, was a compassionate person whose compassion for people drove him to prayer and to action for the people. A missional orientation will only be genuinely missional to the degree that it...

In this series of posts, I will look at what Jesus did and said and says to us today about being missional. "Missional," if you recall, is a global term for what God is doing in this world and how...

I've mentioned this in a previous blog or two, and I've had enough conversations with pastors and others who'd like a brief listing of this, that I've decided to make a separate post of it so it will be more...

This series on Generous Orthodoxy, which I think remains an evangelical movement until it can find a genuine fourth way, I have looked at a number of features that may provide a basis for conversation as we look into the...

Graham Old's comment stung. Thanks Graham. The list on spiritual formation was slanted too one-sidedly toward individualism, and so I want to add a second list to balance it out. This one focuses on formation as a communal and missional...

Somehow I lost this blog in cyberspace, so here it is again. A very good study of what it means to be missional as found at Andrew Hamilton's site....

Another "emerging" type book crossed my desk and I want to be an advocate for much of what he says.But first, a clarification: Emergent describes the offical organization of Emergent Village and now coordinated by Tony Jones. Emerging describes the...

Enough of the posts on the significance of "post," though some more will probably come to my head.The emergent movement's strongest asset and its clear prophetic voice is around this idea: the purpose of the Church, the local church, is...

No word is more used among the Emergent folk than the word "missional," so I'll use it too. Some of these churches will chuck an occasional Sunday gathering to "do something for others." In so carrying its missional emphasis, a...

Issue #2: The missional and holism issuesFundamentally, the Emergent movement is a “missional” movement and it is holistic in its mission, and until it is addressed from that point, it won’t be addressed centrally. I am not aware that hordes...