Deprogramming myself from often good, but largely program and doctrine-driven churches, I am discovering the joy of becoming a part of a mission-driven community. Most of my church experience and church planting training has been thoroughly Western and attractional–relying on plans, time lines, informational meetings, monologue preaching and teaching, Bible-studies, book studies, evangelistic events, etc. In fact, some of my most transforming church experiences up to this point have been self-initiated community groups that revolve around the internal mission of mortification of sin (see article).
Kanye Sends 50 Cent West
In the show down of hip-hop album releases, Kanye West’s Graduation versus 50 Cent’s Curtis, Kanye won by a large margin. That’s right Kanye sent 50 Cent West. Neilson reports Graduation sold 957,000 copies to Curtis‘ 691,000 copies. This makes Graduation the top selling album of the year, with Linkin Park as the runner-up, which sold 623,000 of “Minutes to Midnight” when it debuted in May.
No word yet if 50 will keep his vow of retiring from music if Kanye beat his record sales. Was this a marketing snafu or overconfident self-promotion? It seems that the hubris heavy album competition is fitting for the ego-centric, money snatching lyrics of these two hip-hop artists. Now if Britney can just challenge Simpson, we’ll have even more great news to read.
Missional Cultural Engagement
Here.
Redemptively Engaging Peoples and Cultures
This is our mission statement—To redemptively engage peoples and cultures—snipped from our vision statement: “Cultivating communities of Spirit-led disciples who redemptively engage peoples and cultures through Christ for the glory of God.” Last night our core team discussed what it means to be missional, to redemptively engage peoples and cultures.
After defining culture, we watched the video below of Tim Keller. A great disucssion ensued. Below are some highlights.
o Tim Keller Video (cf. Driscoll video)
§ “Missional Church understands what it is like to not believe.”
§ As a church that seeks to redemptively engage the peoples and cultures of Austin, it is imperative that we understand the peoples and cultures of Austin.
· Certain amount of cultural knowledge that I possess as a church planter, some from books other from conversations. However, we are all called to make disciples of all nations, and anecdotal knowledge is better!
· How can we do this?
· We are all missionaries. Begin asking people what they believe about faith, culture, city growth, environmental issues, etc. Try to write down verbatim quotes after discussions and bring your answers next week. These will inform our discussion about being missional next week.
o Engaging Culture: What do we mean by engagement? It is an approach to culture that is neither secularist nor sectarian. It is neither uncritical nor hypercritical, not thoughtless participation in or blanket withdraw from culture. Instead, it is my hope that we will be convinced, inspired and equipped to critically and winsomely engage culture by recognizing and celebrating what is good, redeeming and renewing what is broken, critiquing what is gray, and rejecting what is bad.