ben's blog

Avoiding Jesus as Savior

Tim Keller says this in The Reason for God:

If you are avoiding sin and living morally so that God will have to bless and save you, then ironically, you may be looking to Jesus as a teacher, model, and helper but you are avoiding him as Savior. You are trusting in your own own goodness rather than in Jesus for your standing with God. You are trying to save yourself by following Jesus.

In missional circles, a lot of emphasis is placed on following Jesus, living out the ways of Jesus, taking him seriously as a rabbi. I think most of this talk and emphasis is good, but do you think it can sometimes end up as a way of avoiding Jesus as Savior? It's easy to look heroic as we try to live out the ways of Jesus, but it is a lot more uncomfortable to take a good long look at the gospel and realize that what makes us Christians isn't how well we follow Jesus, but the fact that we are complete and utter failures who have been accepted and blessed by God because of what Jesus did for us on the cross.

What do you think? Does an emphasis on following Jesus make it more difficult to remember the gospel of grace?

A less individualistic gospel

Scot McKnight apparently recently took a stab at a brief gospel presentation that manages to de-stabilize the individualism of most presentations I've heard. He preached a gospel that manages to keep the church front-and-center in God's purposes (as it should be, I think). See what you think:

God loves you and everyone else and has a plan for us: the kingdom community.

But you and everyone else have a sin problem that separates you and everyone else from God, from yourselves, from one another, and from the good world God made for you.

The good news is that Jesus lived for you, died for you, was raised for you, and sent the Spirit for you - so you all can live as the beloved community.

If you enter into Jesus' story, by repentance and faith, you can be reconnected to God, to yourself, to others, and to this world.

Those who are reconnected like this will live now as God's community and will find themselves eternally in union with God and communion with others.

Those who preach this gospel will not deconstruct the church. Instead, they will participate in what God is doing: constructing the kingdom community even now.

8 Ways to be Missional Without Overloading Your Schedule

Sometimes people ask me what it really means to be missional. They hear the word and imagine their already-busy lives being consumed by yet another obligation. But while following Jesus in the way of mission is definitely a commitment that will take time, energy and money, it doesn't have to be overwhelming in the sense of "one more thing to do."

Being missional is not something we add onto our lives, it is our lives. It's kind of like walking around with polarized sunglasses on - we do everything we normally do, we just see everything in a new light. Being missional means we stop sleepwalking through our lives and open our eyes to the activity of God and the opportunities for embodying and sharing the gospel all around us.

I recently found a blog post by Jonathan Dodson that features 8 really great practical suggestions for helping us learn what it means to be missional. I have re-posted them below. Jonathan lives in Austin, Texas, so just substitute the specific localities he mentions with your own local elements.

8 Ways to be Missional Without Overloading Your Schedule
By Jonathan Dodson

1. Eat with Non-Christians. We all eat three meals a day. Why not make a habit of sharing one of those meals with a non-Christian or with a family of non-Christians? Go to lunch with a co-worker, not by yourself. Invite the neighbors over for family dinner. If it’s too much work to cook a big dinner, just order pizza and put the focus on conversation. When you go out for a meal, invite a non-Christian friend. Or take your family to family-style restaurants where you can sit at the table with strangers and strike up conversations (Mighty Fine Burgers, Buca di Peppo, The Blue Dahlia, etc). Have cookouts and invite Christians and non-Christians. Flee the Christian subculture.

Goodbye churched culture...

"A churched culture is not so much defined as a culture in which a certain statistical percentage of the population is actively participating in church work... Rather, a churched culture is a culture marked by the presence of a persistent, pervasive, major feeling among the people that the church is important."

- Kennon Callahan

I think it's safe to say that even in Fort Wayne, this kind of culture is on its way out, and in some places is gone completely. What we have now is a mission field. Thus the need for missional churches.

Peculiarity and relevance

 Found these words (and picture) on Matt Stone's blog:

You can't make a difference
to the world
If you're no different
from the world.

Seems that in our excitement to be "relevant" to the culture around us we often forget that our relevance actually lies in our peculiarity.

Does God need the church?

In all the deconstructing and rethinking of church practices that seems to be going on today (a good thing in and of itself), it seems that sometimes we get to the point of thinking about whether God really needs the church to fulfill his purposes for this planet. To put it slightly more theologically: How does the church as the people of God fit into a missional theology?

Gerhard Lohfink wrote a book awhile ago called Does God Need the Church? Here's a quote that answers very much in the affirmative, that the church is central to the mission of God:

"It can only be that God begins in a small way, at one single place in the world. There must be a place, visible, tangible, where the salvation of the world can begin: that is, where the world becomes what it is supposed to be according to God’s plan. Beginning at that place, the new thing can spread abroad, but not through persuasion, not through indoctrination, not through violence. Everyone must have the opportunity to come and see. All must have the chance to behold and test this new thing. Then, if they want to, they can allow themselves to be drawn into the history of salvation that God is creating. Only in that way can their freedom be preserved. What drives them to the new thing cannot be force, not even moral pressure, but only the fascination of a world that is changed" (p.27 - emphasis mine).

I saw this quote on Dave Fitch's response to Frank Viola over the missiology/ecclesiology issue, and I was prompted to remember a blog post from over two years ago, where I discussed the questions Simon Chan asked in the first chapter of his Liturgical Theology:

In the first chapter of Simon Chan's Liturgical Theology, he asks the question of whether the church is to be primarily understood as the instrument through which God will accomplish his purpose in creation, or rather the expression of that purpose itself. Is the church here to work for the fulfillment of God's purpose in creation, or is the church itself the fulfillment of God's purpose in creation? If the church in the instrument of God's purpose, then we understand it primarily in functional terms; what it does. But if we understand the church as itself the expression of God's purpose, we look at the church in ontological terms; what it is...

But what if the church is both the expression of AND the instrument of God's purpose in creation?

Which seems to be what Dave Fitch is saying when he argues that ecclesiology IS missiology and vice versa.

In the end, I think that any paradigm that seeks to place missiology "ahead of" or "prior to" ecclesiology (ala Hirsch) is problematic, because the church always ends up being provisional and/or optional.

To put it bluntly: Yes, God needs the church.

Missional, meaning... what?

Dave Fitch puts words to something I've sensed as I see all the different types of people and churches who talk about being "missional."

He talks about Reformed Missional, Anabaptist Missional, and Pragmatic Missional. You'll have to read the post to find the definitions and descriptions, as I don't have time right now to recap them.

I don't think that any one of those groups needs to have a corner on using the term, but it's helpful to see the differences, because they are tensions I've felt eve within myself as I struggle to define what "missional church" ought to be.

Missional churches: taking a long view

Bill Kinnon over at Missional Tribe explains very well the new tensions and dynamics of planting churches missionally (as opposed to using a consumer model). Check out the whole post (and watch the video at the end - I'm planning to when I get some time later). Here's a quote from the post:

Missional communities have within them the potential to exponentially infect the communities where they have been strategically placed by the hand of God. As they live out their lives now, embedding themselves into the very warp and woof of the community life - they embody the profound possibility of working as leaven - permeating the entire “loaf” of their community.

This way of thinking runs counter to the ROI mindset of much Western church planting. (We have an expectation of Return on Investment when we provide funding for church plants.) The McDonalds/Consumer Church mindset of numbers now is what kills the spirit of missional church...

Only a long view allows us live in the midst of the now and the not yet. We have a real expectation and hope of seeing the Kingdom lived out in our communities - but we recognize that we may be like those in Hebrews 11 who do never see the fruit of their labour. Does this mean we abandon the life and return to a consumer church model? God help me, no! As I’ve said before, Hudson Taylor and David Livingston did not see the overwhelming harvest that continues to come from the seeds they planted as missionaries in China and Africa, respectively - but they lived with both an expectation and a hope for that harvest.

(Non)conference starts today!

As regular readers will know, there has been a sad dearth of postings around here lately.

But this morning the Seeding Missional Communities (Non)conference commences. I am looking forward to a great time of encouragement and discussion from people from the area. Looks like someone will be video-recording the event, and it will be posted online (at a soon-to-be-announced location).

Seeding Missional Communities (Non)conference

 
Saturday, January 3rd from 8am-4pm Christ Community will be hosting a missional (non)conference thing called "Seeding Missional Communities: A Learning Commons" at Heartland Church (1025 Vance Ave).

Dave Fitch (a pastor at Life on the Vine in Chicago) as well as other missional leaders from the area will be in Fort Wayne to discuss an array of issues including:

1. The merits of missional orders as a community-forming missional/evangelistic discipline.
2. The Sunday gathering as missional.
3. The need for a missional evangelistic tool to nurture new conversions in our communities.

It won't be anything fancy, we'll just gather, have different presenters and open discussion, and some time for decompression. THERE WILL BE NO CHARGE. No one will be selling books. We're just getting together to encourage and commiserate for the gospel.

If you plan to come, email me so we know how much coffee to make! If you'd like to present, email Dave. If you need a hotel room, the Holiday Inn IPFW will give you an $89 rate if you reference the "Seeding Missional Communities" conference.

The day will look like this:

8:00am: Introductions and prayer
8:45am: First presentation (20 minutes)
9:15am: Discussion- questions - prayer
10:00am: Break - coffee - chat - decompression.
10:30am: Second Presentation (20 minutes)
10:50am: Discussion - questions - prayer
12:00pm: Lunch
1:30pm: Third presentation (20 minutes)
1:50pm: Discussion - questions - prayer
2:45pm: Fourth presentation (20 minutes)
3:05pm: Discussion - questions - prayer
4:00pm: Dismissal - benediction - sent out for mission

To give you a taste of what an informal presentation looks like, take a look at Dave Fitch's 15 minute presentation below at Canada's Cultivate gathering last year. It's short and it's goal is to get the discussion going. This is the kind of presentation we'll be shooting for.

Dave Fitch - the Cultivate Talk on Missional Orders from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.