one beautiful mess

Yesterday, I was in a conversation with some friends and local pastors that I have been journeying with for the past year and I realized something new about myself.

In the last few weeks, there are two books that I have found myself frequently carrying around with me. The first is a book called The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow.

The second is a book that the leadership of our church will be reading together during the last part of 2009 called Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation by Robert Mulholland.

In one hand a business book about "the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive." And in the other hand a book about our spiritual journey with God and how God transforms us to his image of his Son Jesus in order that we would lay down our lives for others. My question is, how can anybody in their right mind carry around these two books and be reading them at the same time?

My genius answer, "Me." I love this stuff and more and more so see how a business book and a spiritual journey book relate to one another in God's Kingdom or God's Economy. When we see and hear the world with the perspective of God's Kingdom, we begin to realize that "everything is spiritual" as Rob Bell says. We begin to see how God wants to make all things new, whole and right; a place and experience of the world that is centered in God and is encompassed by God.

As I read and reflect more on these two books, there are surprising similarities because as I have discovered leadership comes from the core of who we are. As God transforms my identity so that I lay down my life for others, leading people through difficult challenges becomes more natural to who I am and more rooted in my inward life that no one else sees on the outside.

So, I guess I can walk around proudly with both books, set them on my table in Starbuck's, pick up my coffee and not wonder what the person across from me is thinking as they see the jacket covers of my two intriguing books.

engaging the world we live in

Yesterday, I caught up with a friend from Seminary named Shane Hipps who has published a few books both focusing on how media influence and affect our lives and perspectives of lives.

I admit that I haven't read either of his books yet but would love a free moment to do so at some point in the near future. What I find engaging in my conversations with Shane is that he has a remarkable way to engage personally and think deeply. It is always refreshing to engage with him and I remember this back to conversations in seminary. There are just some people that give and bring life to my life and Shane is one of them. Although I haven't read his books, I imagine they are deeply personal and get underneath our assumptions about life and faith. Hope to read one or both in the coming months.

already pondering Christmas

For whatever reason, I don't like Christmas.

I think it has something to do with the over commercialism of Christmas and the reality that I feel like I have to buy things from shopping malls. In the past, I would have pushed back my emotions, stuck my head in the sand and kept going on with the season at full pace but this year is different...I am already preparing myself for something different. I want to fully engage Advent Conspiracy as our community of faith engages it. I have desires to worship God more fully, spend less on things that will eventually be garbage, give more money away to people who need it and love all by contributing to God's work. I want to be creative with the gifts that I give. I want to spend more time with family. I want to make memories. This is my wish list for Christmas.

As I was reading today about Jesus' birth, I encountered some great quotes by Frederick Buechner in The Faces of Jesus that give me hope around the season of Advent and Christmas:

“At Christmas time it is hard even for the unbeliever not to believe in something, if not in everything. Peace on earth, good will to men; a dream of innocence that is good to hold onto even if it is only a dream; the mystery of being a child; the possibility of hope—not even the canned carols piped out over the shopping center parking plaza from Thanksgiving on can drown it out entirely.” (14-15)

“…when the child was born the whole course of human history was changed. That is a truth as unassailable as any truth. Art, music, literature, Western culture itself with all its institutions and Western man’s whole understanding of himself and his world—it is impossible to conceive how differently things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however it did. And there is a truth beyond that: For millions of people who have lived since, the birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it." (17)

“For better or worse, it is a truth that, for twenty centuries, there have been untold numbers of men and women who, in untold numbers of ways, have been so grasped by the child who was born, so caught up in the message he taught and the life he lived, that they have found themselves profoundly changed by their relationship with him. And they have gone on proclaiming as the writers of the Gospels proclaimed before them, that through the birth of Jesus a life-giving power was released into the world which to their minds could have been no less than the power of God himself.” (17)

“Like any baby, Jesus as a baby does not judge or exhort or puzzle the world with his teaching. He makes no demands, threatens no punishment, offers no rewards. The world is free to take him or leave him. He does not rule the world from his mother’s lap but, like any child, is himself at the mercy of the world.” (20)

“In trying to say too much, piety always runs the risk of saying too little or saying it wrong, and the great pitfall of Christian art, especially when it tries to portray the birth of Christ, is sentimentalism. The stable becomes a painted backdrop, the floor a carpeted stage, the manger a prop lined with artificial straw. Neither the holiness nor the humanness of the moment is rendered so much as the schmaltz, and the Incarnation becomes merely a Christmas card with all the scandal taken out of it instead of what St. Paul called “a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles,” instead of the proclamation that the Creator of the end of the earth came among us in diapers.” (20-21)

“As long as he stays the babe in the manger, he asks us nothing harder than to love him and accept his love, and the temptation is thus to keep him a babe forever, for our sakes and for his sake too." (23)

If you are like me and don't like Christmas, I hope these reflections by Buechner might lead you to rethink and reenact Christmas differently this year.

the missional question

Question: How does a person live missionally?

Here is a practical look at this question that was in the Neue Weekly e-newsletter today. After reading it, what do you think:

By Ashley Wolpert

In a culture that feeds off a vast array of social justice causes, it seems that the term missional living is being bandied about increasingly in our churches. But what does this really look like? Recently Dr. Ed Stetzer, co-author of Compelled by Love: The Most Excellent Way to Missional Living, spoke with Neue about what exactly “missional living” means, how church leaders can encourage their community live missionally and what some major barriers are. Philip Nation, Stetzer’s co-author, follows with a list of practical tips to help communities engage in missional living.

How would you define “missional living”?
Missional living is essentially living with our primary perspective as that of an ambassador for the Kingdom of God. It means making our lives not about us, but about Jesus and His Kingdom.
In an alliterated sense, missional living is an incarnational (being the presence of Christ in community), indigenous (of the people and culture) and intentional (planning our lives around God’s agenda) focus on the power of the Gospel to bring the reign of God into people’s lives.

When did you first arrive at this idea of “missional living?”
I think I first read missional ideas in The Missional Church (1998), edited (primarily) by Darrell Guder. I believe the subtitle of the first chapter is a great summation for the entire work: “From Sending to Being Sent.” After that, I was most impacted by Francis Dubose’s God Who Sends, which I read during my Ph.D. in Missiology.
Through their writings, and those of many others, the late 21st-century Church was again reflecting a local missiology for churches that moved from “pay for others to go” to “pay the price for me to go.”
Working through these ideas for nearly a decade as a church leader and missiologist, I arrived at the conclusion that the vast majority of missional literature and conferences were solely for the benefit of church leaders. So, I asked Philip to co-write with me to address that. Compelled by Love is a remedy for the average believer who is looking for a theological and practical bridge to move their lives in a missional direction.

What would you say is the greatest example of “missional living” in the Bible?
Without hesitation—it is Jesus Christ. He is sent by the Father. He is the incarnation of God. He sets aside His privileges (and rights) to live in our neighborhood. He communicates the Gospel in a way that is understandable to us. And, He is supremely sacrificial in the manner of His life and death.
Choosing one such example from mortal humanity is tough. However, for today, I’ll choose Moses. Without his knowledge, God was preparing him to participate in God’s work of deliverance. After he had failed miserably because of his sin, God still chose to use him—an imperfect vessel for God’s great work. In his old age, Moses served as God’s emissary to declare the glory of the one true God, awaken hope in the people of God and shake a society.

How can church leaders encourage their community to live missionally?
Missional living must be motivated with the truth and from the heart. Without the truth of Scripture and the Gospel, there is no reason to live any particular way. Since God has revealed the truth of His character and will, we should teach it to the Body of Christ as what we should do. Church leaders leading people boldly to understand God and His Kingdom should influence our manner of living.
We are blessed that God also desires for the truth to affect us. So through such heart motivations as love, hope, urgency and compassion, believers can be shown how missional living must be a compelled portion of life. Obviously, that was the point of Compelled by Love, as we used 2 Corinthians 5:14–15 as the central theme of the book. Because they are learning the greatness of God and His truth, believers must exhibit a deep desire to share such with the world.

What keeps people from missional living? Would you say there are any unique barriers for twenty- and thirtysomethings?
Believers do not live missionally for two primary reasons: a) because they believe someone else is doing it; or worse, b) they are selfish.
Too many Christians assume or deceive themselves into believing that someone else has explained the Gospel to our neighbors, co-workers and friends. Beyond that, believers choose their traditions over the mission. Entire congregations have decided that “the way we do things” is superior to the mission to go, be and tell the Gospel in understandable ways to the culture surrounding them.
The unique barriers for twenty- and thirtysomethings are also twofold. First, many are trying to await the renewal of the Church. Their hope is to show up one Sunday and it will suddenly be different—more missional, more externally focused, more compassionate. The problem: It won’t, unless they are willing to lead the way by serving in the church to which they are committed.
The second barrier is that the culture they face is farther from the Gospel than any other in American history. The young adults and families today have grown up without a mooring to biblical truth, and young Christians now have to begin at the beginning. They were raised to present five-point Gospel outlines, and it is not working very often. Instead, they must describe God in Genesis 1 and then Colossians 1. They will need to share about the freedom God offers first from Ecclesiastes and then Galatians. What I am trying to say is that twenty- and thirtysomethings must recognize the distance their culture is away from the cross and be prepared to work in soil that is dry and parched.

Ten Tips for Missional Living

1. Understand the Gospel. The mission of God is consumed with the person and work of Christ. As you understand Christ, you can accurately participate in God’s work of redemption. So read the Gospels—a lot.

2. Take an eternal view of people. The friends, neighbors and co-workers around you have an eternity in front of them. We need to see them as God does and care for them accordingly.

3. Be friendly. A Christian should be the most trustworthy confidant another person has in the world. Believers should be the kind of people everyone else wants to be around.

4. Watch for a chance to serve. People use up all of their energy on family, work and menial chores. Look for ways you can care for your neighbors—even if it is just cooking a simple dinner for them.

5. Be truthful. Missional believers contend for the faith while speaking in a way understandable to the hearer. No matter what, be ready to talk about the truths in Scripture.

6. Love like Jesus. He lived a robust life of caring for the lost. In elevating sacrificial love far beyond any previous thinking, He gave an example for us.

7. Be on guard. As you work alongside the King to extend His Kingdom, our spiritual enemy will immediately attack. Guard your heart in holiness.

8. Live missionally at home. Family is the first place for the mission of God in your life. When people see the impact it has on your home, they will be more willing to trust its veracity for their own lives.

9. Show patience. People are farther away from understanding the Gospel than in previous generations. Do not hesitate to invite them to submit to Christ, but know that they have plenty of questions that might need answering first.10. Do it for one reason—the glory of God. The only reason to be missional is to make Christ more widely known. God is worthy of being honored by all of creation, and it should be the main reason why we participate in His mission.

great quote...

Michael Frost wrote this...
"Someone once challenged me that in the world to come there'll be no mission, only worship. I couldn't disagree more. In the world to come we will still be charged with the task of declaring Jesus' rule over all of life. Sure, we won't be feeding the poor or planting churches. Those missional activities will cease when every knee bows, every tongue confesses, and every tear is wiped away. But I'm looking forward to the unhindered mission of the new age, not to an eternal worship service." What do you think?

books

I am in a season of reading and I don't want to stop. In fact, my desire for reading is distracting me from other things...like work and life.

There are two specific books that are challenging my thought process right now: (1) The Shaping of Things to Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch and (2) Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian World by Michael Frost.

Frost is speaking at a conference that I'm going to in August and I want to be prepared to engage with what he says and not simply be blown away with his provocative words. I'll comment more about these reads soon...

Eat This Book

My mind has been consumed with this little phrase the last few weeks as I read a book with this title by Eugene Peterson (Yes, CNP's I will have it finished and digested by the time I see you in Portland). What an incredible read! I was reading another book when I started this and had them both going but I decided to put the other book down as this book captivated my imagination.

This little phrase is pulsating through my mind as I try to digest the power of God's book and allow him to shape me as a human, a man, a Christian, a husband, a father and a pastor. How does the Bible shake me to its core and transform me to be a new being. This is what Peterson is writing about and I hope to digest it further in the next week or two.

Last week, I found myself thinking about this phrase from Isaiah and Revelation as I also was reflecting on high school students from our faith community that will soon be graduating and moving onto college. I find myself concerned that they have no idea where to begin when it comes to God's book and how God desires to shape us through it. I am concerned about students who don't know this book that God speaks through. How do we challenge them to eat this book as we are challenged to do the same?

I long to eat this book as Peterson puts it. Until next time...