The power of this clip is in its irony…
I think we all have a Jesus we like ‘better than the other ones’. Raises the question of how we do Christology with integrity when we have our own preferences and biases at play.
That is how many people were at our church this morning.
What does that figure tell you?…
What does it not tell you?…
Ok, so maybe that’s a bit pedantic, but we do sometimes get horse and cart the wrong way around. The church was birthed because of mission and since then we have been trying to make sure we don’t simply morph into a club for the converted.
Even when we start to use old fashioned words like ‘missional’ we can still be ‘missional in name only’ and I would suggest that this is what has happened around the place to some extent.
Ben has a very good post free over her dead body movie download blue murder at st trinian s movie download crazy eights movie download viagra pphn that offers some pointers as to whether you might be ‘MINO’ (missional in name only) so you might like to check it out and see how you go.
As a senior pastor of a small church I am not even sure if the word ‘missional’ is in the vocab of our church. As we begin the journey I will be interested to see how people are thinking and how we make the mission of God central to our lives together. In some ways ‘no knowledge’ is better than being simply familiar and innoculated against missional concepts and praxis.
I think the cartoon above says it well…
Gotta love irony!…
I found the first one thru Gaz infamous online
A prayer for the New Year
O Ingenious God,
I rejoice in your creation,
And pray that your Spirit touch me so deeply
That I will find a sense of self
Which makes me glad to be who I am
And yet restless
At being anything less
Than I can become.
Make me simple enough
Not to be confused by disappointments,
Clear enough
Not to mistake busyness for freedom,
Honest enough
Not to expect truth to be painless,
Brave enough
Not to sing all my songs in private,
Compassionate enough
To get into trouble,
Humble enough
To admit trouble and seek help,
Joyful enough
To celebrate all of it,
Myself and others and you
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
A Franciscan Benediction:
May God bless you with discomfort,
at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger,
at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.
My God bless you with tears,
to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war,
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their
pain to joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness,
to believe that you can make a difference in this world,
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.
Amen.
Well…
I guess that all depends on how you do it…
Here’s an evangelism lesson for us. Thanks to Ed Stetzer for the heads up
A quote from the clip:
“I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, and you think, ‘Well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward’… How much do you have to hate somebody not to proselytize?”
Hmmm…
Australian bookseller Dymocks has come up with a list of the 101 best books ever published download greedy michael clayton dvdrip meet joe black divx online
ttc xx hope clomid good day , according to Australian readers. More than 15,000 people took part in the online survey.
Of personal interest is the fact that Tim Winton had 3 of his in the list and that the Bible rated 23rd. I have read of the top 10 and 21 of the top 101. How about you?
How the Da Vinci code rated so higlhy is beyond me…
Yesterday the latest edition of PRAC magazine
arrived at my home and as I read it I felt great hope and synergy
PRAC is a publication of Crossover download storm warning dvd that old feeling online download , an Australian Baptist group focused on helping churches get serious about evangelism and this most recent copy contained material that I would rate as well worth a read when it comes to missional thinking.
The edition includes two excellent articles – ‘Council Meets Again’ by Brian Winslade and ‘Third Servant Baptist Church’ by Dale Stephenson.
Brian Winslade’s article asks how do we gear our churches to emulate the actions of the Jerusalem council who decreed that ‘we should not make it hard for the Gentiles who are becoming Christians’. This involves asking what is core to the gospel and how do gentiles then figure out an expression of faith that is distinctly theirs. It is an appreciation that we need to allow the gospel to take root in a group and for the church to take whatever shape is culturally appropriate. This kind of missional thinking will go a long way to breaking down the one size fits all mentality of church that dominated the late 20th C.
Here’s an excerpt:
I have a sense, metaphorically speaking, that the Jerusalem Council is once more in session. Those
of us with a long personal Christian history need to appreciate that God is doing something new in
our world, and the shape of the future will likely be very different from the past. We also need to face
the fact that non-church Western society no longer understands us. In many ways, we speak a different dialect. Certain theological boundary fences and emphases don’t make sense and have little to do with our core message.
He finishes the article by saying:
Now might be our turn to do something similar. Let’s embrace experimentation in mission and outreach, and deliberately give creative expressions of Christian mission room to find their place. Who knows, we might just cooperate with a fascinating new movement of the Holy Spirit!
As a rabid experimenter and tinkerer those words are music, and it is encouraging to think that maybe we are becoming much open to church in a variety of forms.
Dale Stephenson has also written an excellent article on the importance of defining how we assess our progress as churches. I always find ‘measurement’ a challenge because much of what is not measurable or evident. I also find the pooh poohing of faithfulness in the face of apparent absence of ‘results’ as very short sighted. On the basis of this thinking the OT prophets were absolute losers who should have been written up as failures rather than people we admire.
Dale’s article suggests we do need to be accountable for our actions and when we know what outcomes we are seeking then we can take this more seriously and pursue it more carefully. He writes:
I believe that Churches tend to concentrate too much on numbers and not enough on outcomes. We take comfort from what I call pool data, for instance how many people attend our services, rather than the strength of each individual’s faith and commitment to Christ, to community, to service and to the world. I call the measure of these commitments stream data
and I believe they more accurately reflect the Church’s faithfulness to its mission than how many people show up on the weekend. leaders need to measure the increasing commitment of their flock through meaningful outcomes, yet I rarely come across churches or pastors who exercise this level of accountability.
I believe there is a great challenge in front of us to measure well rather than simply default to ‘how many bums’.
Perhaps what I am reflecting on here is that the messages from the ‘centre’ (denominations etc) are now on a very similar frequency to those that are being offered from those of us at the edges.
I took a bit of time off today to go down and watch Ellie sing some carols at her school.
As much as I’m not a big fan of carols I do see them as a way of reminding ourselves of the Christmas narrative and keeping the reason for Christmas primary and in front of us.
Today was a reminder that we live in a secularised society and that the Christ story is largely disregarded. Of the 7 songs that the kids sang today not one had any reference to Jesus or the essence of Christmas.
Now I’m not a fundamentalist ranter, but when the 7 songs chosen are all in honour of ‘Santa’ I do get a tad tetchy.
I would love to ask those kids what they understand Christmas to be about to see what messages are being conveyed either consciously or unconsciously.
Ok so the first day was Monday when we had our leader’s meeting, but this morning we fronted up as a family to Quinns Community Baptist Church, the group of people we will be leading for the next 6 months.
As I woke up in the morning my mind reflexed back to my time at Lesmurdie… a church of 400 or so with 3 services. I would get there at 8.00am to pray with the crew, then there was the 8.30 service, the 10.15 and the 6.30 with a bit of time at home for a nap.
I was immediately feeling very relieved to wake at 7.00 and realise I didn’t need to roll out of bed in a hurry to get to the prayer meeting. I was equally relieved to be driving home from my parent’s carol’s service tonight realising that we didn’t need to be concerned for the running of an evening service.
It was a pretty warm ole day by Perth standards – 38 degrees or something similar – and you felt every bit of it in the school building in which we meet. It was a longish service too by normal Quinns standards and mentally I began to cull my sermon realising I had probably bitten off more than I could chew for one day. I was planning to do it over two weeks but as I got up to speak realised than next week had already been accounted for… .
So it was a case of adapt and figure it out as you go.
As far as church services go it was fine – but then if you’ve read here for a while then you already know that I am not overly worried about whether we achieve ‘excellence’ or if we just have a great time together. I reckon it was a great time together and the vibe around the place was very positive – always encouraging.
I am increasingly feeling like we may have something of value to offer these guys and am looking forward to the 6 months ahead. We have set ourselves some simple but achievable goals that will let us know if we are a viable long term prospect or whether we are likely to ruffle too many feathers.
There were some moments of great joy this morning as we began this new stage of the journey and we’re looking forward to what develops with this great group of people…
As we sat down to dinner last night in Oscars restaurant in Currambine, a family of 3 pulled in alongside us – mum, dad and 8 year old son.
Immediately upon sitting down dad proceeded to get the son set up with a portable DVD player and headphones. While dinner progressed mum and dad ate and chatted while son sat and watched a movie.
Something in us went ‘what the the hell is happening here?!’
I understand that kids can be hard work at dinner. I understand that a colouring in book is nice or maybe something to keep them amused after its ‘been a while’, but to pull out the DVD player as plan ‘a’ and not even engage with one another was as bizarre as I have seen in a while.
As we look at our trip around Oz next year we are considering some form of in-car entertainment system, but by the same token we are concerned that when we get back and someone asks the kids what they saw as they travelled they will say “Wall – E” or “Madagasgar”.
I wonder if we have become blind to some of the (negative) ways in which technology has interrupted our lives. I am techy junkie and love my tech toys, but I can see some interesting times ahead…