Here is a good entry on third places and how to find them in your community over at the Blind Beggar - a great site dealing with missional Christianity.

I am reading through a book on mission devotionally - it is call Church on the Edge by Chris Stoddard and Nick Cuthbert - two chaps from across the pond. I have decided that I am going to blog on there "principles" (the book is made up of 22 principles for missional church.)

I am going to blog some things that they have to say with page numbers and then add my comments and opinions from the context that me and my buds are doing a missional expression of church.

Principle #1 Always put principle before method

They tell the story about a drill company wanting to revamp and a consultant told them that they made "drills" and that they needed to make "holes". The short of this is that we need to make disciples not churches - the church will come as it did in the early church if we make disciples.

They proceed to talk about the "off the shelf" models such as "willow creek" and purpose-driven and etc. saying that church needs to come out of a context of making disciples in our own context. I wonder soon if there is going to be an "emerging" model that people are going to start putting into place. I hope not.
They also explain what they are saying better when they break it down like this:

"For example, when the team from Willow Creek Community Church first came to Britain, they caused a lot of excitement with their passion and ways of reaching people, and many of us were quick to read their message as 'seeker services are the key'. Actually the principle thet were trying to communicate was 'prioritise(sic) unchurched people and learn to speak their language in order to reach them.' And then 'Oh, by the way this is what we do.' It was all too easy to be caught up with 'what we do' as opposed to 'why we do it.' "

The gist of this principle is that church needs to develop a list of principles and let the methods be flexible enough to adapt to however things change.

If we preach a gospel that does not involve the church - then why do we complain when people are not a part of it? If the Kingdom is not preached - then why are we offended when people do not what to particpate in the society/Kingdom of Jesus?

When are we going to see that an individualistic, comsumeristic gospel is what is killing the church in America?

"We are accustomed to by long usage to an elaborate system of church organization , a peculiar code of morality. We cannot imagine any Christianity worthy of the name existing without the elaborate machinery which we have invented. We naturally expect our converts to adopt from us not only essentials but accidentals. We desire not to impart not only the Gospel, but Law and the Customs. With that spirit, St. Paul's methods do not agree, because they were the natural outcome of quite another spirit, the spirit which preferred persuasion to authority. St. Paul distrusted elaborate systems of religious ceremonial, and grasped fundamental principles with an unhesitating faith in the power of the Holy Ghost to apply them to his hearers and to workout their appropriate external expression in them. It was inevitable that methods which were the natural outcome of the mind of St. Paul should appear as DANGEROUS to us as they appeared to the Jewish Christians of his own day." - Man before his times Roland Allen - Missionary Methods: St Pauls or ours - 1912

"Brethren, whatever other gifts you have, if you are to succeed, you must have hearts, and hearts that can feel." - William Booth

what a great quote -
+ Oh Lord for heart that can feel and feel deeply.

I do not want to join the fray of people who have opinions about the evangelical mess that Ted Haggard caused, but I was reading through a text about narrative preaching by Calvin Miller

and I ran across these quotes:

"Megachurch is all too often a congenial discussion of how to succeed, based on tiny exposition of a hidden verse deep in Proverbs. What the work is clamoring for is not the "gateway to success" but a window on the universe next door....
In this sense the sermon must be bound up in the lifestyle of the preacher. The preacher is not an answer man. Preachers are God-lovers. "

I do not want to say that all people caught up in the megachurch/pastoral system are like this - but it has been my experience and opinion that if truth be told it is this system of "non-relational insulation" that these two twin experiences that are apart of it are enough to damn a man's (or woman - let's be gender inclusive) soul.

I believe that Haggard will be the turning point of evangelical and mega-church Christianity.

Evangelical/charismatic Christanity must preach the true gospel - the one that Paul says results in the "fruit of changed lives" Col. 1:6

"Only in the heart of the Christian community can you find a concept of God as holy love, who seeks identity and fellowship with us and who desires union with us to such a degree that he willingly became one of us."

-Dennis Kinlaw Let's Start with Jesus

At Steve Addison's blog there is an entry about getting your blog right and learning to blog effectively.

Check it out!

The story of Scripture is something that I am going to start teaching on in the next few months. I am beginning to collect resources now for that. I would like to give an understanding of scriptures that show the continuous nature of of the story. I am buying some OT and NT survey books - but I want to write a curriculum that shows the "story" or narrative of scripture. I think that an overview such as that will make things make sense and will cause people to want to particpate in the dangerous story that is scripture.

Here is a quote from Bill Hull's new resource on discipleship -

"We not only have been saved by grace - but we have been paralyzed by it..."

Dallas Willard quoted by Bill Hull The Complete Book of Discipleship

Here is a discussion at Alan Hirsch blog about Jesus being disequilibrium to our lives. The jargon that he uses (he is a really smart guy) about "routinization of charisma" is basically sociology speak for us soon making the spontaneous "routine" - it happens in every organization. How do we keep it from happening? Read his entry. I have a feeling in the next few days he might answer that question.

+ Oh Lord Jesus - mess up our lives some more and keep us from being apathetic.