SpiritFarmer

There has been a long tradition which sees the mission of the Church primarily as obedience to a command. It has been customary to speak of “the missionary mandate.” This way of putting the matter is certainly not without justification, and yet it seems to me that it misses the point. It tends to make mission a burden rather than a joy, to make it part of the law rather than part of the gospel. If one looks at the New Testament evidence one gets another impression. Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact? The mission of the Church in the pages of the New Testament is more like the fallout from a vast explosion, a radioactive fallout which is not lethal but life-giving. One searches in vain through the letters of St. Paul to find any suggestion that he anywhere lays it on the conscience of his readers that they ought to be active in mission. For himself it is inconceivable that he should keep silent. “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (I Cor. 9:16). But nowhere do we find him telling his readers that they have a duty to do so.

Lesslie Niwbigin, former missionary in India (nearly forty years)

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

I went to a funeral yesterday. It’s kind of a weird thing, but two of the things I was most uncomfortable with when I was “entering the full time ministry” were hospital visits and funerals, and now those are two of my favorite things about my job. I usually leave funerals wishing I could have known the deceased better – even when the funeral is for someone I’ve known fairly well. I always leave with a desire to communicate my love for people more effectively, and to give myself away to others more freely. The people who make a lifestyle out of generosity (emotional, energy, time, money) are the ones who have the greatest impact.

After a barrage of nasty little anti-Muslim comments about The Living Room blog in a number of places, I’ve decided that the only reasonable thing for me to do is add the blog to my blog roll.

Michelle are beginning to plan our first Dinner Club night – probably the first weekend after we’re done at the church. I know this isn’t anyting terribly original, but we’re going to invite 15-20 friends from different aspects of our lives – church, family friends, Michelle’s work, general people we know – and just have dinner together. Michelle and I will be the only ones who know everyone. We will give our guests the instruction to get to know one another, but on a significant level – no deep dark secrets, but we want our friends to get beyond the surface stuff and talk about what’s really important in their lives. I’m really hoping/expecting this to go well, and that by the end of the night we’ll send our guests home having scheduled the next Dinner Club gathering, with the expectation that they will bring friends of their own next time.

It’s gonna start getting dicey around here pretty soon. I only have a little more than five weeks to finish well here, and start well on the church planting path. That sounds super busy to me. Probably too busy for me to be blogging right now.

Here’s a pretty passionate and powerful statement from Tony Campolo about the war via Jordon Cooper. It was actually given before the war began, but it has some really interesting arguments about the whole Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and how that is connected. Whether you agree with these thoughts or not, it’s a compelling thought to consider the impact on Christian missions.

Interesting weekend so far. Friday night we got to host Jason, Brooke, and Paige for dinner and some hang out time. I’ve known Jason for a little under a year at this point, but it sure feels like longer – in a really good way. Kinda weird side note here, but I was just thinking the other day that it would be cool to find out how I could be of direct service to helping the Iraqui people put their lives back together after the war. Then Jason starts talking about doing that kind of thing on Friday night – sounds like something new may be brewing.

Anyway, then last night we had dinner with some friends we’ve had for ten years or more. It was fun to hang out for a little while and laugh a bit, but the coversation felt forced to me in some ways. It brings up some weird feelings in me. Sort of like realizing that I’ve been born again . . . again. Not in the “I lost my salvation” sense, and definitely not in the “Fuhrayunnnnnd, you must be born agayunnnnn” sense. But when I had my most recent spiritual breakthrough and began seeing all the crap I had bought into within the modern church, it’s kind of like having had a conversion experience, where all of a sudden I’m having a harder time relating to the friends I’ve had in the past, because we have different values and different language and different goals now.

In a way it’s cool to embrace “new” friendships and settle into a way of doing life that I’ve embraced and feel energized by. But in another way it’s a little scary, because I find myself feeling like I want to just leave some of those old friendships behind. So I have to ask myself if I’m not just creating a newer version of a Christian huddle/ghetto for myself? And if I’m going in a church planting direction, will I be unintentionally leading others to do the same? I hope not. In this new emerging church thing, it’s going to be important for me/us to reach out not only to those who don’t know Jesus at all, but also those who have been introduced to Jesus via a system that has clouded the issue for them. In both cases, there’s a need for conversion. I for one hope to be converted to Jesus daily for the rest of my life – daily crucifixion of my selfishness, pride, envy, etc. and conversion to the one who gave all he had in order to find me and serve me – go read Philippians 2.

O.k., the waiting is over. Our nation is at war. Take your responsibility seriously. Move in as redemptive a way as possible into your world. Pray like crazy for peace. Practice peace in your conversations, in your relationships. Think of those in your life that could be classified as enemies (whether by you or by them), and pray for them, bless them, serve them. Pray that all the “smart” bombs hit their intended marks instead of innocent people. Pray for wisdom for all governmental leaders – their job sucks right now. Pray for the Jesus followers around the world – especially missionaries who have risked all for the sake of the gospel. Avoid the temptation to spend excessive amounts of time in front of the television and radio news channels. Read a good book instead.

Interesting facts from a DAWN report. 33 things you probably didn’t know about the global Christian community.

7. The total cost of Christian outreach averages $330,000 for each and every newly baptised person.

[read more]

I read this post from Todd Hunter’s blog the other day and have been chewing on it ever since.

“We keep trying to make Sunday church into “community” with people driving to these meetings from 20-30 minutes away. We then try to fix this obvious lack of community by adding some form of ‘home group”. Now people drive 20-30 minutes to a second meeting and we fool ourselves into thinking we have created community. [read more]

That, along with some other discussions I’ve read and been a part of seem to suggest that community is improbable without proximity. That’s a strugle for me. Now, I am very open to the thought that I haven’t matured to that level yet, but I’ve got some questions/issues. I’ll admit that community along with proximity is highly advantageous because of the unplanned contact that people have with one another, but I don’t think that’s the whole picture. It seems to me that proximity is being held out as an ideal, but the definition of proximity is in need of attention. Awhile back I read Randy Frazee’s book, The Connecting Church, which points in some of the same directions as the “community enhanced by proximity” stream. Frazee, though, idealizes relationships based on proximity in large part as a lost virtue of an earlier time in American life – i.e. “the good ‘ol days when people would sit on their front porch, drink lemonade, and talk to the neighbors passing by.” I really don’t have a problem with that as ideal or even as a model to try to recreate, as Frazee’s church in Texas does.

However, I believe that proximity has changed since those days. In the good ‘ol days, transportation, entertainment, and communication technologies were not what they are now. Now people don’t spend nearly as much time within the zones of the older definition of proximity. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no proximity. Cell phones, e-mail, IM, blogs, etc. are newer applications of proximity. The fact that I’m writing these words in Southern California, and someone in Ohio or Canada or South Africa or next door to me will read them is testimony to a new form of proximity. Quite honestly, I’ve “accidentally run into” people on the internet many miles away and had conversation with them the same way I’ve “accidentally run into” people in the grocery store. It doesn’t mean that this is superior, but it’s not necessarily inferior either. Proximity absolutely helps when it comes to community, but we need to be wise to what the changing nature of proximity is. I do recognize that without actual physical proximity, there’s a need for more intentionality. But maybe that’s just another element of our new reality that we need to accept and deal with creatively, the same way we have to accept and creatively deal with spam in our in-boxes.

To me it boils down to this: I stopped think along the lines of “modernity bad/postmodernity good” or vice-versa a long time ago. It doesn’t matter whether postmodernity is good or bad, it just IS and the sooner I figure out how to approach life and taking the gospel to the world that postmodernity has changed, the more effective I’ll be at following Jesus. Similarly, whether proximity means living on the same block or across town, people live their lives in a new way. Maybe we need to creatively approach concepts of community with this in mind.

I’m still chewing on this, and I’ll be happy to be enlightened by anyone out there who can help sharpen my thinking a bit.