Great post over at Bob Hyatt's blog about the reading and re-reading of Scripture with a narrative and christological hermeneutic. Great stuff...

Here is the continuing series on principles of 21st century mission.

Principle #2 Ask questions - Do not hurry to the answers

In today's postmodern world a premium is put on asking questions (which is good)
Question this - question that.

Questions shape where a church will go.

" If you are a leader, you and your team should always be asking searching questions. If you are not a leader, don't be afraid to ask your leaders the important questions." p. 25

"One popular writer on leadership in the business world said that a great leader doesn't have to produce all the answers and then try to motivate others to follow his(or her) vision. However it does mean they must have the humility to see that they do not yet understand enough to have the answers, but be willing to ask questions that will then lead on to the best insights." p.26

A study was done in the past few years and it was determined that leaders that were humble and did not have all the answers - were the leaders of some of the biggest companies (Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and others.) Arrogance and answers at the top do not always mean success.

Here is an excerpt of an interesting article that Pastor Rod got from Credenda Agenda. Culture is not always sinful - but the human heart is sinful... (that does not mean that the sinful human heart does not create sinful culture I might add as a caveat)

Got to be Good Looking Cause He's so Hard to See

Douglas Wilson

A Marine general during the Korean War at one point found himself and his troops surrounded by massive amounts of Chinese soldiers. He looked at the situation, rubbed his hands, and said, "Well, they can’t get away now."
We too are entirely surrounded—by the minions of pop culture—and we need to cultivate a more optimistic view of our opportunities. At least there should be no difficulty figuring out which direction to shoot.
At the beginning, we need to agree on some key principles to guide us through the particulars. First, unless we are talking about a violation of the Ten Commandments, we must not rush to judge any particular manifestation of pop culture as malum in se, as "a sin," as evil in itself. Literacy in pop culture, and enjoyment of various features of it, are no sin.
Secondly, when sin is laid at the doorstep of pop culture, we must not locate it in the wrong place. Sin has to do with the human will and the law of God—obedience or disobedience. It is not found in paint, alcohol, syncopation, or baggy trousers. All of these things can be used in sinful ways, some more easily than others, but sin, when it exists, must always be located in the human heart. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.

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.

"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

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

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.

I received this book - Permission Granted to Do Church Differently today I have read a little - it is a great book - from a prophetic guy named Graham Cooke - he has been sensing from God the things that the Vineyard (our church) have been sensing. It would be a great book for people to read that do not have an understanding of missional church and where we are going (as the universal church) - we are encountering nothing less than a third reformation of the church... it is incredible what the Holy Spirit is doing.

Those of you who received this as an email - I put you on a notification list when I post on my blog so you can kinda keep up with my thoughts..

Michael Frost at the Mission conference that we attended discussed Missional rhythms that his community embraced. He advocated that each respective community pray about what could be some missional rhythms in their body. Here are the rhythms - they are pretty profound.

Find a Third place to infiltrate with a group of people. i.e. a pub, a cafe, PTA, club etc.

then begin to practice these things.
Blessings - bless three people a week - 1) a unbeliever 2) a believer 3) either of the first two
E- Eat - eat like crazy with people - unbelievers, believers etc.
L- Listen to the Spirit - discern - what is God saying to you?
L- Learning - he encouraged us to saturate our selves in the gospels - learning Jesus - watching him in the gospels - how he acted/what he did - what he said/ how he loved/ how he did mission - where he went.. etc.
S- Sentness - the need to engage in mission - going where Jesus would go.

we are beginning to pray and think about what our missional rhythms would be in our community. I think that several of these are good -but we need to add or adapt some of these to our context.

The conference that we went to this past weekend - was an incredible experience. It was almost like getting "saved" again (actually I was - from my misplaced understanding of "church")

Basic concepts -

Our Christology (doctrine of Christ) informs our missiology (doctrine of mission) which informs our ecclesiology(our doctrine of the church.) In simple terms being like Christ informs our ways of being in the world which informs our way of doing church. So often in our "church world (Christendom for short) our doctrine of the church informs how we do evangelism.

Also from a book that I am reading by one of the guys at the conference (Michael Frost - Exiles ) this interesting comparison...
Evangelistic - monologue, presentation with doctrinal points, formulaic
Incarnational - Dialogue, exchange of ideas, communicated through various conversations and experiences

Also the whole concept of third places and missional rhythms... I will blog more on these later with more detail.

Wrote a paper the past few weeks that was due today on a sythesis between healing prayer and spiritual direction. It does not go into great detail but covers the compatiblity of the two. It was a fun paper to write (as fun as a paper can be.)

There is a great series on spiritual formation going on over at

http://deeper.typepad.com/

Check it out.

Is it possible to be so countercultural that we become relevant to the society around us? In other words does one have to be so much like the surrounding culture to be relevant or could a group be relevant because they are so different from the surrounding culture? i.e. Amish.

Whereas the Amish (simple folk) are not relevant technologically do they have relevance in other, more important areas? Such as making a rushed world slow down or providing a critique of the rampant consumerism in our society?

How does the church become totally relevant and totally countercultural? Is this possible?

I seem to have this pathology that I can't soil pretty things. It is kinda like getting a new journal to write in and not being able to because I am afraid of "messing" it up with writing. So thus with this blog. I know the stupidity of that - but nonetheless I find myself not blogging because of the same reason. So I decided to blog anyway...

Yesterday I was discussing a topic with some youth that I spend time with - we were talking about the redeem-ability of certain types of music. They believed (like most today) that there is no form of music that cannot be redeemed for the Kingdom of God. Whereas I agree with them on the surface, (most forms that I believe cannot be redeemed have more to do with personal taste than true "irredeemability" (is that a word?)) I challenged them to think about what they said on other levels.
1) All things are inherently redeemable.
2) Then all music is redeemable.
3) Therefore other things must be redeemable as well such as specific forms of government, etc.

When I brought up to them on the basis of their argument that communism and socialism, under their argument, must be redeemable, they kinda shirked a little. I told them that if this is true than the problem with all things whether music or socialism or even capitalism is that without Christ in the center it has the potential to become corrupt.

Is it possible for there to be a communist form of government that is redeemable? Socialist? Even anarchy? What do you think?

" ... the conviction grew among us that reading Scripture is an art - a creative discipline that requires engagement and imagination, in contrast to the Enlightenment 's ideal of detached objectivity. In our practices of reading the Bible, we are (or should be) something like artists."

- Art of Reading Scripture - edited by Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays

I think that viewing scripture like that would change many people's perspective of the importance and power of scripture. Scripture as an image - the Word of God, the image of God - both God and Man. As we partake of His flesh and drink of His blood - we begin to reflect the divine image about which we are given many precious promises. Engaging imagination in Scripture - Ignatian, comtemplative - live giving.

I am still in chapter 2 of Resurrection it is a great book - but it is definitely slow reading. But worth it. It is just with seminary reading and other stuff that I am reading it will take time.

We are going camping this weekend with our church and I am looking forward to it - nothing like some retreat time. The people who are not going camping are driving down Sunday morning for "church in the woods" - something great about worshipping God in all that He had. But of all his creations - people are by far the most enjoyable.

We have put our meeting at Beechwood on temporary hold until we pray and find a better place to meet and connect with our community. I am positive that we need to do this - but the ten million dollar question is "where?"

Started the mammoth Resurrection of the Son of God - by NT Wright last night.
Wow that book is going to be a paradigm shift in my thinking - especially the questions about what happens to a person when one dies. We Christians have all our cliche answers - but I believe that we never really stop to explore the philosophical implications of some of what we believe.
Why did God make us with bodies if we are never really going to use them but for a few years on earth? Why do we spend majority of our time on "heaven" as an after death experience nowadays versus what the Bible did - the resurrection?
These are some questions that I am very interested in exploring and have very practical implications about how we live our Christian lives.

On another topic about the body - I have had some kind of sinus infection that is driving me nuts. Headaaches, drainage, sniffles etc. I always seem to get them in the early spring and late fall. My wife says that cold weather has nothing to do with it - but weighing the facts I just cannot agree with her. But enough whining - I will get better.