Missions v. Missional Part 2
The word missional’s meaning is rooted deeply within the understanding of the church’s purpose. This purpose displays itself in three different ways. The church is a missionary sent on mission as a sign and instrument of the Missio Dei. The first area in which we are called to be missional is as a missionary in our own culture. The general idea of a missionary is a person in a foreign country in a completely non-Christian culture. But in reality, today all Christians live in non-Christian cultures. Tim Keller gives insight into this reality by focusing on the missionary Lesslie Newbigin:
The British missionary Lesslie Newbigin went to India around 1950. There he was involved with a church living ‘in mission’ in a very non-Christian culture. When he returned to England some 30 years later, he discovered that now the Western church too existed in a non-Christian society, but it had not adapted to its new situation. Though public institutions and popular culture of Europe and North America no longer ‘Christianized’ people, the church still ran its ministries assuming that a stream of ‘Christianized,’ traditional/moral people would simply show up in services. Some churches certainly did ‘evangelism’ as one ministry among many. But the church in the West had not become completely ‘missional’—adapting and reformulating absolutely everything it did in worship, discipleship, community, and service—so as to be engaged with the non-Christian society around it. It had not developed a ‘missiology of western culture’ the way it had done so for other nonbelieving cultures.
Even if you are in a “Christianized” culture, the reality is that we still need to view ourselves as missionaries. Every culture needs some amount of contextualization of the gospel. This means that you have to be missionary to do the contextualization needed to present the gospel.
Missions v. Missional Part 1
What is the difference between a church that has missions and a missional church? This seems to be the question that everyone is asking lately, and it has been one that I’ve been developing a personal answer to for a while.
There always seems to be a new buzzword in Christian circles every few years. The words enter our vocabulary quickly and leave just as fast. People reword mission and purpose statements around them, and some even restructure their entire church around them. “Seeker-sensitive,” “purpose-driven,” “organic,” and “emerging” are just a few, but the newest to be added to the list is the word “missional.” It is the new buzzword of our day. There are missional churches, missional small groups, missional preaching, missional books, missional degrees, and even missional missiology.
But what does “missional” mean exactly? Most people use it without even stopping to determine what it means. Worst yet, some simply make it mean what they want it to mean to give themselves license to do idiotic and irrelevant acts. This is a sad thing, because the word missional has a deep and beautiful meaning for our churches today.
Spiritual Discipline: Service – Four tips for becoming a servant.
We live in a world where those with the most authority do the least amount of work. Those with the power don’t serve others. They are the ones that are served. It is the American dream to gain enough power and wealth that you never have to work again.
Jesus showed us that in the kingdom of heaven it is quite the opposite. The all-powerful God became a human being and served us by dying on the cross. Jesus is the perfect example of leading by example. He constantly served those around himself. While his disciples were arguing about who is the greatest, Jesus healed countless people, fed thousands, and humbly washed the dirty feet of those that were fighting for ranking in the kingdom of heaven.
A true Christian isn’t noted by their pious self-righteousness but by their humble servanthood. It is through service that we walk in the same steps that Jesus did when he was here on earth. Through a kinetic learning experience of serving, we grow in our understanding of God’s heart for the lost and hurting people of this world. Here are some simple tips and steps for developing a discipline of service.
Tip #1: Aggressively look for places to serve. For those of you raised with a strong work ethic engrained in your brains, this won’t be much of an issue. The rest of us need to constantly seek places to serve. This is both in the church and out of the church. Seek ways to serve fellow Christians, but also seek to serve those in your community and at work. If you ever catch yourself saying, “I wish someone would…” You need to take it upon yourself to be that someone.
Tip #2: Seek a change of heart. 1 Corinthians 13 says that if we do anything without love, it is pointless. If you have a heart that is begrudging towards service, seek God to change your heart. Jesus wasn’t reluctant in his service. It was his joy to serve. Seek God to give you a heart that takes deep joy in serving those around you.
Tip #3: Use your stuff to serve others. Everything that we have in our lives is a gift from God. Therefore we should see our stuff as a gift from God not just for us but also for those around us. Serve those around you by sharing your stuff with them. Open your house to share meals with friends and family and host events. Use the yard tools you have to care for and maintain more than just your yard. Give people rides in your car. If you have two of something, give one away. Develop yourself to see the stuff you have as being used more than just for you but for those around you.
Tip #4: Serve first and ask questions later. Just like generosity, our tendency is to ask the question “Why?” Why should I serve those around me? How is this going to develop my relationship with Jesus? The reality of it is that these questions can’t truly be answered on paper. You can read countless Bible verses. You could hear stories from people’s lives. You could hear hundreds of hours of sermons about Jesus humbling himself as a servant. But you won’t get it. You won’t get it until you mow your elderly neighbor’s yard without them asking or paying you. You won’t get it until you pick up trash in your neighborhood without anybody asking you. You won’t get it until you serve in your church’s nursery. If you decide that you aren’t going to serve until you fully understand why, you’ll never serve. The reality is you need to serve first and then ask questions, because by serving you’ll find the answers.
Spiritual Discipline: Confession – Five tips for developing a habit of confession and repentance.
Martin Luther began his 95 Theses with the primary thought of, “the whole life of believers should be repentance.”[i] Repentance of our sins doesn’t end when we become a Christian. It continues until we are received into heaven.
Unfortunately most Christians slowly begin to forget that it is Jesus’ righteousness that puts us in relationship with God. Over time they begin to trust in their own righteousness. This leads to either despair or pride, neither of which Jesus wanted for his disciples.
Therefore, it is a necessity to continuously seek God to expose our sins to us through the power of the Holy Spirit, repent of those sins, and confess them to loving brothers and sisters in Christ. Through repentance and confession we are able to experience true community and love. We are able to see each other as we truly are and love each other despite our sins because of the blood of Jesus. Here are some simple tips and steps for developing a habit of repentance and confession.
Tip #1 – Keep a short list of sins. One of the worst things you can do is to hide your sin. Sin holds you captive and steals the joy that is yours in Christ. It separates you from those around you. Don’t build up a list of sins before you confess and repent. The instant that God reveals a sin in your life to you, immediately confess and repent of your sin.
Tip #2 – Find a righteous person. When James says that “the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working,”[ii] he isn’t saying that there are people who are actually righteous on their own merit. He is talking about those who trust in the righteousness of Jesus. This is the type of person that you need to find to confess your sins to. You need to find a person that will help you see your sin in light of Jesus. Many times when ours sins are made real to us, we tend to focus on ourselves. A righteous person helps you see that there is forgiveness found in Jesus.
Tip #3 – Keep a journal. As Jesus reveals the sins in your life to you, keep track of them in your journal. Make note of your sin, how it made you feel, the consequences of it, and the work of Jesus in your life to remove it. Later you can look back on your journal to see how God has been working in your life.
Tip #4 – Don’t get discouraged. You might think that as you grow as a Christian, you will begin to feel like less of a sinner. The reality is quite the opposite. When you look at the writings of Paul the Apostle, you see a progression in his understanding of his sinfulness. Early in his writings, Paul simply called himself a sinner. Then he called himself a chief sinner. Towards the end of his life here on earth, he called himself the greatest of all sinners. This isn’t because he began to sin more. Instead, it is because as you walk with Jesus, your understanding of the glory of Jesus deepens. As your understanding of his glory deepens, your understanding of your sinfulness grows in light of his glory.
The beauty is that you are a work in progress. The Holy Spirit is continuously working on conforming you into the image of Jesus. This is a project that won’t finish in your lifetime. Therefore, trust in Jesus and his work in your life.
Tip #5 – Focus on Jesus. The ultimate purpose of repentance and confession isn’t to focus on your sin but to focus on Jesus. True repentance and confession turns you back to finding your identity in Jesus. It’s only when we find our identity in Jesus that we have truly repented of our sins. Anything less is simply pointing out your flaws with no ultimate power to have change in your life.
[i] Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, 2008, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/274.
[ii] James 5:16 (ESV)
Spiritual Discipline: Prayer – Six tips for talking to God.
As it’s already been stated, Bible reading and prayer are the two most basic spiritual disciplines of Christian faith. Prayer in the simplest way is talking to God. It is sharing with your loving Father your heart, thoughts, emotions, requests, needs, cares, anxieties, worries, praises, thanksgivings, hopes, and desires. The list could go on for days. God speaks to you through His Word and you speak to Him through prayer. Here are some simple tips and steps for developing a discipline of prayer.
Tip #1: Set up “triggers” in your life. We talked about triggers last week. Take things that you do everyday and make them triggers for you to pray. Here are some ideas to help you get started: taking a shower, using the bathroom, getting in your car, making coffee, getting in bed, getting ready to read your Bible, finishing reading your Bible, driving to work, driving home, finishing lunch, eating eggs, sailing on a boat, scratching your nose, and buying a tambourine. You get the idea. Take things that you do everyday and use them as a trigger to pray.
Tip #2: Have a plan. If you don’t have a plan, you can easily become a random prayer. Whatever comes to your head at the time is what you will pray for. You will constantly be praying for the same things over and over. This isn’t necessarily bad, but there are a lot more things/people in your life that could be praying for. So have a standard place where you keep track of all the things that you want to pray about. Then review this list at least once a day. This way nothing gets left behind.
Tip #3: Talk to God. This might sound dumb to some, but for others this will be an epiphany. I don’t know if you noticed this or not, but some people like to use what could be called “prayer talk.” This is where a person suddenly embodies the spirit of a TV evangelist and sees how many times they can say the words God, Father God, Lord, or Jesus (whichever is the persons favorite) in a prayer. It comes as a surprise to most that you can actually just talk to God. You don’t have to use His name as the punctuation to every sentence. You don’t have to speak in old English. You can just talk to Him. Just like you talk to your friends about your troubles and your successes, you can talk to Him. You can tell Him your struggles and failures. You can tell Him jokes. You can even be angry and cry out to Him (read a few Psalms and you’ll get the idea). Prayer is you simply talking to God. No flair. No technicalities. No special formulas. Just talking.
Tip #4: Write it down. When you develop a habit of constantly praying, it becomes easy to forget what you’ve prayed about. Therefore, you can lose track of whether or not God has answered your prayers. This is so you can look back and see how God has answered your prayers over time. Keep it simple though. Don’t set a limit. That means no minimum or maximum. It puts an unnecessary burden on you. Some days you will write pages worth of prayer to God. Other days it will be the simple phrase, “God help me.” The idea is to simply write it out.
Tip #5: Keep it simple. During the time of Jesus, Jews would have standard prayers for everything that they would do. You would have a standard prayer for plowing a field, eating a meal, drinking wine…even going to the bathroom.[i] The key was that most of these prayers were only a sentence long. The reality is that our prayers don’t have to be five minutes long for God to hear us. Sometimes the simplest prayers are the best prayers. If you can only think of a few things to say to God, then say them. God isn’t keeping a tally of how much you pray. He just wants to hear from you.
Tip #6: Keep it sweet. Remember whom you are talking to. While God is the King of the Universe, He is also the Lover of your soul. One of the reasons that David was a man after God’s own heart was because he was passionate and honest with God. He was open and honest as you can only be with a closest friend. The worst prayer isn’t a long prayer or a prayer said in Old English but a prayer that has no heart. If you aren’t praying out of a love for God, then are you really praying? The reality is that this is the core of all prayer…to seek the face of God….to seek after His heart. Prayer is one of the most intimate times we have with God. Treat it that way.
[i] Marvin R. Wilson, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith
(Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989).
Spiritual Discipline: Bible Reading/Journaling – Four Tips for Bible Reading and Journaling
The two most basic disciplines of the Christian faith are scripture reading and prayer. In fact, it is hard to separate the two. God communicates to His people through His Word, and we communicate with Him through prayer. This week we are going to focus on reading our Bibles and journaling, and next week we’ll look at prayer.
Reading our Bibles and journaling our thoughts are helpful tools to cultivate our relationship with Jesus. Through scripture we are able to learn more about Jesus, have Him speak to our hearts, and be prepared to do His work. Here are some simple tips and steps for developing a habit of spending time in God’s Word.
Tip #1: Have “triggers.” Probably one of the hardest things to do is to get in the habit of opening your Bible. Leo Babauta of WritetoDone.com talks about putting triggers in your life to help you develop habits.
What’s a trigger? It’s the event that sets off your habit. For example, when I used to smoke, I had a number of triggers: I would smoke upon waking, when stressed, after a meeting, etc. When I wanted to change that habit, I had to change each trigger so that I had a new habit to replace smoking. Upon waking, for example, I would exercise instead. To create a new habit, you need to strongly associate your habit with a trigger. For example, let’s say you want to write in the morning — you might awake, use the bathroom, make your coffee, and then start writing. So making coffee is the trigger for writing, and using the bathroom is the trigger for making coffee, and waking is the trigger for using the bathroom. And as you wake every day, you have no problem. Choose a trigger that you know you’ll do every day, and then do your writing right after it, without exception.[i]
Triggers can be a very powerful tool for any spiritual discipline that you are trying to start.
Tip #2: Have all the right resources. It is suggested that when you sit down to spend time in the Bible, you should have the following items:
A Bible – Make sure it is a version that you can understand (different versions of the Bible are written at different reading levels). This guide uses the English Standard Version, but you might find another version easier to understand. Just go to your local bookstore and test a few out. See how easy they are to read and if you can understand the words that are being used.
A Journal – This is where you are going to write down your thoughts. You can find several different styles at your bookstore. Don’t be afraid to switch journals if one isn’t working for you. Use the first few pages to keep an index of what you are learning each day. This way you can look back and see what you have been learning.
A Reading Plan – This guide provides you with passages to read every day while you’re going through the lessons. When you’re done going through this guide, read whatever you want. Just have a plan. There are several different Bible reading plans online that will take you through the Bible in a year, or you could make it as simple as reading two chapters a day. Whatever you do, use a plan, or you’ll spend half your time trying to figure out what to read.
A Planner - It’s going to happen. You are going to be in the middle of having a wonderful time with God. Journaling your heart out…and you are going to remember that you’re out of milk. This is where your planner comes in handy. You can write down, “get milk” and go right back to your journaling. If you don’t have a planner, just use a scratch piece of paper. Otherwise, your time with God will be hijacked by random thoughts of things you need to do for the day.
Tip #3: Use S.O.A.P. This is an acronym for a Bible reading and journaling structure from Wayne Cordeiro.[ii] It stands for the following:
Scripture: Start off with the Bible. Read the verses that are on your plan for the day.
Observation: As you read, write down any observations that you have from the text. Use the questions, “Who is God?,” and “How do I enjoy Him?,” to focus your observations even better.
Application: Based on what you have read…what should you do? Try to make this practical and realistic. Set a goal for the day based upon your reading. Write it down and hold yourself accountable to it.
Prayer: Last but not least, spend some time in prayer to God. Confess and repent of any sins that were brought to light while you were reading. Spend time thanking God. Also spend some time in silence listening to God. Make note of these in your journal.
Tip #4: Keep it simple. The goal of your time with God is to try to grow closer to Him. It’s not to check off your list. Don’t add extra burdens to this focus, such as: “I have to make at least 15 observations.” “I have to write at least 5 pages in my journal.” “I have to pray for at least 45 minutes.” The goal is to spend time with God and to grow closer to Him. Do what it takes to do just that…the rest is just distractions, burdens, and religion.
[i] Leo Babauta, “10 Steps to Create the Habit of Writing,” www.writetodone.com, January 9, 2008, http://writetodone.com/2008/01/09/10-steps-to-create-the-habit-of-writing/.
[ii] Wayne Cordeiro, “Plenary Session 1” (presented at the Exponential Conference (National New Church Conference), Orlando, Florida, April 25, 2007).
What is a Disciple of Jesus? – Part II
We ended yesterday with the following definition to answer the questions, “What is a Disciple of Jesus?”
A disciple is someone who is on the path to becoming like Jesus by the grace of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. As the disciple becomes more like Jesus, they find their identity in Jesus and image Him by worshiping God with all their lives, living in gospel community with other disciples, and going on mission to make more disciples of Jesus.
Let me break down this definition a little bit more. As the lead singer of Aerosmith, Steven Tyler, sings in his song Amazing, “Life’s a journey, not a destination.”[i] Being a disciple of Jesus has no ultimate connotation that you have arrived in any way. You see in the Apostle John’s gospel that those who were called disciples were simply on the path to being made into the image of Jesus. Some only took a few steps, whereas some followed Jesus to their death. The reality is that being a disciple of Jesus means that you are on the path, following Jesus.
Now like most journeys, there are going to be points of interest along the way (salvation, joining a church, special callings in your life, etc.), but these aren’t the ultimate focus. The ultimate focus of a disciple is Jesus himself. A disciple isn’t marked by their experience, knowledge, actions, or expertise. A disciple is marked by whom they are following. For a Christian, that is Jesus himself. Our ultimate goal is to be transformed into the image of Christ.
This isn’t by any merit of our own. The fact that we are disciples of Jesus is strictly by the grace of God. It is through the blood of Christ that we are called to be His disciples. You see this over and over again in the gospels when Jesus called his disciples: they were not called base on merit. There was simply Jesus’ call into their lives to “follow me.”[ii]
Our growth and progress as we follow Jesus is also nothing for us to boast in either. Sanctification doesn’t happen because of our own will, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Peter encourages some exiles of gospel in 1 Peter 1:1-2 by telling them:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:
May grace and peace be multiplied to you.[iii]
We are called by the grace of God and sanctified by the Holy Spirit to become more and more like the Son of God…Jesus. This is what it means to be a disciple.
My definition of a disciple ends with the sentence, “As the disciple becomes more like Jesus, they find their identity in Jesus and image Him by worshiping God with all their lives, living in gospel community with other disciples, and going on mission to make more disciples of Jesus.”
As a disciple is being transformed into the image of Christ, there are some clear areas in the life that will be transformed. Disciples will begin to find their identity in Jesus, worship Jesus with all their life, live in community, and be on mission to make more disciples of Jesus. That is the out powering from who the disciple is. These are the actions of a disciple. Over the next few weeks we’ll focus on each one of these more. Until then, I pray that you grow in your walk with Jesus.
[i] Aerosmith, Amazing (Geffen, 2001).
[ii] Matthew 4:19, Matthew 8:22, Mark 1:17, Mark 2:14, Luke 1:3, Luke 5:27, John 1:43
[iii] (ESV)
This is Awesome!
Kinetic Church in Charlotte, NC had a trailer stolen that had 75% of everything the church owned in it. Ok it’s not awesome that they got 75% of their stuff stolen, but it is awesome in how they responded. They posted this video on youtube and also put up some billboards around town to try to get in contact with the thief. They know the ultimate reason why they had the stuff in the first place. I have to give the guys at Kinetic Church some mad props. For what they did, I don’t know if I could have done the same thing.
Check out some other stories on the same event:
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