Month: November 2010

Transitioning to Missional Church (Pt 3)

Posted on November 22, 2010

See Part 1 & Part 2 of the series Transitioning to Missional Church.

In Part 2, we considered why missional church is theological not methodological, followed by some reflection on the challenges of transitioning to a missional church. In this third and final part of the series, we will offer some guidelines in becoming a more intuitive church, an organism with missional intuition, as opposed to an institution with some programs for mission.

Intuitive Missional Church

In order to avoid being a church with a mission and to become churches as mission, it is important that we cultivate a new intuition. Intuition is the ability to perceive something without having to reason through it. It is reflexive behavior, a way of living that is natural. If a people develop a missional intuition, then they will act missionally without having to reason through it. Mission becomes a way of living, not a project they execute or process they reason through. Here are a few ways to make disciples, lead, plant, and grow churches, for whom mission is intuitive.

  • Intuitive mission relies on Spirit-led prayer and repentance that begins with repentance over the sins of institutional, individualistic Christianity. Cultivate a community that sees repentance as good news not bad news. That sees turning away from sin and turning to Jesus as an everyday pattern. This can’t happen apart from a culture of prayer. Prayer isn’t an early morning event; it is every moment existence. Paul Miller notes that: “Jesus most dependent human that ever lived.” People who live prayerfully, dependently, will be more prone to repent and turn to Christ, as opposed to tack mission on as a work.
  • Intuitive mission discerns missional leadership patterns from Scripture instead of uncritically implementing business models of leadership. It’s not about getting the wrong people off the bus and right people on. We are all on the bus of mission, just arrange the seats with wisdom. Pastor your communities with wisdom and thoughtful reflection. Get leadership moorings from the gifts of the Spirit and offices of leadership in Ephesians 4. Don’t create programmatic position descriptions and build people around a ministry; build ministry around people.
  • Intuitive mission cultivates missional DNA through personal and communal forms of training instead of relying primarily upon professional, monological communication. Don’t just talk. Listen. Listen as a disciple, coach, teacher, & pastor to how and why mission is a challenge for your people. Some of our best changes have come from listening closely such as Shared Leadership, 3 Marks of Missional Community.
  • Intuitive mission spends lots of time with people not programs, so that we have networks of relationships in which we can authenticate the gospel we preach.
  • Intuitive mission does “everyday things with gospel intentionality”, instead of seeing mission as either an evangelistic or social justice event.

    • Redeeming Marriage Blogging

    Posted on November 20, 2010

    Bruce Wesley is kicking off Redeeming Marriage with his first talk “How Marriage Works”. Laying a biblical foundation from Genesis for marriage with insight. For most this will guide the way, however some will need more help from sites like https://auritmediation.com/divorce-in-az/ and that is perfectly fine if you have exhausted all the Godly actions available to you.

    • “They were naked and unashamed.” God’s intention for marriage is that we can be completely known and unconditionally accepted.
    • Sin is Grade A selfishness. It refuses to believe that God knows what is best and insists in our own version of “best”.
    • What we need most is not a more vibrant sexual life in marriage, more spiritual intimacy, better job. What we need most is redemption.
    • Redemption not only forgives us for our selfishness but redirects us for serving our spouse.
    • Love is constant, mutual awareness.

    “Tear Down this Wall to Build your Marriage”

    • A wall of static in a marriage is created when life becomes so busy that spouses “don’t talk like they use to.”
    • Forgiven people should be forgiving people.
    • Forgiveness is free & trust is earned.
    • Your anger is your anger.
    • Use your words to give life to your spouse. Build them up, encourage them. Dont tear them down.

    Fights Worth Fighting

    Marital Sanctity

    • Dont ride in cars alone with members of the other sex
    • Dont have deep soul conversations with members of other sex
    • Dont counsel with the door closed
    • Dont discuss deep issues of your marriage with members of other sex
    • Affair Progression: Show attn/Express consideration/express empathy/accidental touch/response/private communication/sex

    Training Elders (or Centrist Masculinity)

    Posted on November 19, 2010

    As I’m training our current elder candidates, I’ve been significantly encouraged and sharpened by their response to the calling and qualifications of godly eldership. We’re using Strauch’s Biblical Eldership and Bob Thune’s adapted, gospel influenced Study Guide (forthcoming) as a general guide to our training. While these tools are certainly helpful, what has been most significant is gathering with men who care about the deep things of life. As we meet, we’re collectively cultivating a centrist manliness that is neither hyper-masculine nor hyper-feminine but deeply biblical and Jesus-shaped. I sense a “third view” of evangelical manliness emerging from our discussions. Here are few highlights from our time so far.

    Gravity and Joy in the Call

    Our very first meeting was marked with a gravity and earnestness about being deep men, husbands, and fathers. We went around the table and shared our fears and hopes about the call of elder. I was struck by how seriously these men weighed the call and how personally they embraced the process. Regardless of the outcome, we all agreed that this process would make us better human beings, men, and leaders for our families and church. This really set the tone for a training that is deeply relational not merely theological. This tone has carried over into all our discussions. We leave each 6-7:30am time challenged, inspired, and often changed. I take notes throughout.

    Centrist Masculinity Clears Away the Cultural Noise

    Our most recent discussion revolved around male eldership and essential masculinity. While we debated both liberal and conservative readings of a host of biblical texts, the real traction began when we considered what an elder who treats (not just sees) women and dignified equals. What would it look like in a church for men to not just affirm masculinity in theory but for them to lead and care for women and children around them? How would it change social interaction, leadership, teaching, City Groups, Fight Clubs, and family life? We are challenging one another to a centrist manliness that flows from a deep conviction about how God has made us and a personal commitment to relate to others out of profound love, grace, and godliness.

    Before this can truly happen, we observed that men need to clear away a lot of confusing cultural noise regarding how we interact with women so that we can relate to them as people made in God’s image who deserve godly, genuine attention not social disinterest or general disregard. We identified a few ways forward in cultivating deep, centrist masculinity.

    • Men need to toss aside the inequality of women depicted in objectified advertising, internet porn, and sex-saturated film.
    • Men need to cultivate a deep manliness that overflows in love and care for women through godly deportment and dignifying social interaction.
    • Men need to be dependently prayerful, profoundly Scripture saturated, Jesus formed, and others oriented.

    Transitioning to Missional Church (Pt 2)

    Posted on November 17, 2010

    See Part 1 of the series Transitioning to Missional Church.

    In Part 1 of this series, we established the difference between a church with a mission and church as mission. A Missional Church is church as mission not church with a mission. Missional is its nature not just its vocation.

    Why Mission is the Nature of the Church

    Why is missional the nature of the church? Because it is the nature God. Mission is not only an action of God; it is an attribute of God. God is a missionary God. That’s what the term Missio Dei means “the Sent God.” God has always been on a mission for his glory, that self-glorifying mission breaks out into creation, thru the fall, in redemption unto New Creation. In particular, we see the missionary nature of God in his sentness. Father sends the Son, Son sends the Spirit, Spirit sends the Church. The church is cut from the cloth of the missionary God. We have a family resemblance. We have a missionary nature because we have a missionary Father.

    In other words, mission is the breath of the missional church. Mission is not a tack-on to your life; it is your life. You exhale mission because you inhale gospel. The gospel flows through you, pulsing at various strengths but pulsing, in order to pump the blood of Jesus through the body of Christ so that it can exhale the hope of mission. This missional breath affects everything—how we check the mail, how we structure our week, how we relate to neighbors, how we do our work, how we read the Bible, where we live, how we live, how we make your everyday decisions. Missional is radical, like taking up your cross and following Jesus. Missional church is a gathering of cross-bearing, Jesus-following disciples who are committed to his mission.

    Missional church requires nothing less than a rethinking of our identity and our practice, of who we are and what we do. Therefore, in order to effectively embrace the challenge of moving from church with a mission to church as mission, new ecclesiastical structures are absolutely essential. The old church structures support mission as a task but not as an identity. They promote mission as an event but not as disciple-making, reducing mission to an option for the elite not essential for everyone.

    Challenges in Transitioning to Missional

    One of the greatest challenges in transitioning to a true missional church is syncretistic missional ecclesiology (SME). Syncretistic Missional Ecclesiology is the fusion of missional church values with institutional church structures. Many churches that attempt to make this transition, try to insert missional values into non-missional church structures. Leadership, decision-making, community structures all remain somewhat the same, while the leaders beat the drum of mission. At best, this will create more mission works but will fail to make missional disciples.

    The nature of missional church requires more than cosmetic adjustments to our inherited forms of church. Missional ecclesiology requires an entirely new way of thinking about church, from the bottom up. Church plants and established churches have failed to recognize this important point. As a result, they have blended institutional church with missional church. This syncretism is both theologically and practically defective.

    • Institutional mission relies on preaching, teaching, and writing to implement missional ecclesiology. Missional Church relies not only on a Sunday ministry of Word, but promotes a rest of week ministry of the word that is carried out by a speaking-the-truth-in-love community.
    • Institutional mission adopts a program of mission during a set season of the year to implement missional ecclesiology. Missional Church does not see mission as a tack-on to your life; it is your life. You inhale gospel and exhale mission through ordinary rhythms of life.
    • Institutional mission sees mission as the responsibility of a select group of people not the whole church including staff. Missional Church requires pastors and staff to live a missional life making disciples and redeeming social ill. It equips ordinary people to do ordinary things with gospel intentionality.