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What are Some Practical Examples of What it Means to be Missional?
In the comments of the last post, Jim asked this question:
“I’m just beginning to try to help my established congregation turn itself into a missional focus.I really like the notes and presentation, but where I struggle is where your presentation leaves off…what does this look like practically…what are the practices your community is a part of…in what ways is your community different in appearance, look and action than what I see going on in my established non-missional congregation?
just looking …
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How does the gospel judge suburbia?
I’m working on a class at The Well for tomorrow that is basically serving as an introduction / overview to missional theology. It’s been a blast to put it together and I think we’ll spark some great conversation about our specific context and calling here in suburban Philadelphia.
Of course, I’ve been looking back through a few of my Newbigin books and came across this gem in The Open Secret:
“The day-to-day worship and word and witness of the …
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The Bible and Mission
“The Bible renders to us the story of God’s mission through God’s people in their engagement with God’s world for the sake of the whole of God’s creation…”
The Mission of God
Christopher Wright -
Begin Reimagining Your Life…
“We can begin [to reorganize our lives around the Kingdom of God] by surrounding ourselves with other people who are asking the same questions - who are suspicious of the emptiness of consumption and who dare to risk just a little bit more and dare to love just a little bit deeper.”
- Shane Claiborne as quoted by Tom Sine in The New Conspirators
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Guder and The Missional Church
“We believe that we are the church, that is, we are a community of God’s people called and set apart for witness to the good news of Jesus Christ. We are blessed to be a blessing. As the Father has sent Christ, so Christ sends us. Jesus Christ has defined us as his witnesses where we are. We believe therefore that the Holy Spirit not only calls us but also enables and gifts us for that mission. Our task is …
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Top 5 Books for the Back Table?
Steve McCoy asks a great question of his Southern Baptist Friends, “What 5 books would you recommend for a church’s book table?” So, i am stealing the idea for this post from him…
Most of the answers there were in the Reformed circles. Some good titles there. But, I do wonder what top 5 books you would put on the back table of a church.
Here are mine:
A Walk Through the Bible - Lesslie Newbigin (a great, short, non-churchy …
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African Friends and Money Matters: 1-5
As I stated recently, I am reading the book African Friends and Money Matters in preparation for my trip to Zambia. This book is broken up into 90 general observations about the differences between African and Western cultures. The author appropriately states that these are general observations and, like in any culture, there are exceptions to them. I am basically going to try and read about 5 of these observations every day or so until I leave. …
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Poverty
“Poor people die not only because of the world’s indifference to their poverty, but also because of ineffective efforts by those who do care…”
William Easterly, in the book The White Man’s Burden
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Does Your Church Really Need Jesus?
I’ve been reading Organic Church by Neil Cole. I’ll admit that when I saw the cover I wasn’t too excited to read the book. The coffee cup just kinda turned me off for some reason. Then, at our Ecclesia Gathering Alan Hirsch kept raving about the book so I figured I would give it the old college try.
I’ve been really impressed so far. I love the way …
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Christian Contrairians
“The stickler is that Christianity doesn’t make a very good religion in this sense. Christianity is not a faith of conservation and preservation. It is a faith of creation, participation, movement, and change. For conservation to happen, something needs to be stopped. Something needs to be limited. Something needs to be ignored. And too often that ’something’ is the unstoppable, unlimited, impossible - to -ignore activity of God at work in the world.”
Doug Pagitt (From the first …
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NT Wright on Preaching the Resurrection
“So many people think preaching the Resurrection means doing a little bit of apologetics in the pulpit to prove it really is true. Others simply say, “Jesus is raised, therefore there is a life after death.” This isn’t the point! Those types of sermons may be necessary, but there’s more to it than that. To preach the Resurrection is to announce the fact that the world is a different place, and that we have to live in that “different-ness.” The …
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Death by Meeting: Why meetings suck (the life out of you)
If you are part of any kind of organization or team, there is a good chance that you don’t look forward to the meetings that come with being a part of this team. This may especially be true if you are part of some kind of board or leadership team. Meetings seem to be the necessary evil that comes with any type of leadership. Most of us hate … -
Life Together Quote
“It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians.”
Dietrich Bonhoffer in Life Together
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Privatizing the Faith
“The community that confesses that Jesus is Lord has been, from the very beginning, a movement launched into the public life of mankind. The Greco-Roman world in which the New Testament was written was full of societies offering to those who wished to join a way of personal salvation through religious teaching and practice. There were several commonly used Greek words for such societies. At no time did the church use any of these names for itself. It was not, …
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Eugene Peterson on Life and Christ
“Rescue me from the person who tells me about life and omits Christ, who is wise in the ways of the world and ignores the movement of the Spirit.”
- Eugene Peterson in
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Newbigin on Private and Public Truth
“We read [scripture], naturally, as part of our real history, secular history, the history of which we are a part. What other history is there? There are not different histories, but there are different ways of understanding history…it is clearly an illusion to imagine that there are two kinds of history - sacred and profane, salvation history and secular history.”
- Lesslie Newbigin in Foolishness to the Greeks -
Bosch and Incarnational Ministry
“It should not bother us that [during different epochs] the Christian faith was perceived and experienced in new and different ways. The Christian faith is intrinsically incarnational; therefore unless the church chooses to remain a foreign entity, it will always enter into the context in which it happens to find itself.”
David Bosch in Transforming Mission -
Books of 2007: A few I missed in the list
I recently blogged through a series on all the books I read in 2007. Over the last few days I have found a number that I didn’t put in the list. So, I’m adding them below.
First, if you missed the other sections here is what I posted on so far:
Missional Theology
General Theology
Church Leadership
Pastoral Leadership
General Leadership (Business Books & Fiction)Now, here are some that I missed:
General Theology:
Proper …
Bonhoffer on Confession
“In confession the break-through to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown…”
Dietrich Bonhoffer in Life Together (p.112)The Gospel
“The gospel is the work of God to restore humans to union with God and communion with others, in the context of a community for the good of others and the world.”
- Scot McKnight in Jesus Creed