Missional

An Opportunity Waiting

David — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:45:47 -0700

CNBC had an article about corn price are increases. These increases will also drive an increase in milk, eggs, and then poultry and pork. They said that beef will also be affected.

The scary thing is, many people are already struggling trying to get by. Even those with jobs are finding it difficult to keep up with current costs. It seems the cost to live is outpacing increases in salary.

What does this mean for the church? What does this mean for those who are trying to join God in 'putting things back to rights?' There are opportunities now, but also opportunities on the horizon for the church to practice radical hospitality and also radical generosity (The term radical isn't really needed. It is used to signify that the opportunities we have, and will soon have, need to be addressed differently than we have in the past because the need will be greater). The question is, are we, as the church, going to be ready and willing to sacrifice our own comforts in order to be agents and instruments of God's kingdom?

Workshop for United Methodists

jeff — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:27:14 -0700

Kokomo Urban Outreach has been a pioneer the past two years in demonstrating how churches, working together, can impact their communities through extending Christ’s love missionally. Now your church has the opportunity to learn from Jeff Newton, KUO’s founder and pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church. This workshop will be held on Saturday, Feb. 2nd, from 10am-4pm EST, at Trinity UMC, and is part of the North Indiana Conference’s Sending of the Saints workshops. KUO’s vision is: “Every church a mission base, every person a missionary.” Come and learn how your church can become a mission base too and you can be a missionary!

Imagine what our neighborhoods and communities would be like if every church became a mission base in their neighborhood and every Christian thought like a missionary. What would happen if Christians loved the “overlooked and the ignored” the way Jesus did? Could our communities be transformed if Church members spent the majority of their time listening, loving and serving people “out there”? Is it possible for Churches to measure success by their impact in their communities? Would your neighborhood miss your church if it left the neighborhood?

Many churches that are declining believe that they must revitalize before they can reach out. The truth is, the best way for a church to revitalize is through reaching out. It’s not revitalization then outreach. It’s revitalization by outreach. To be effective in outreach churches and Christians must develop a missional mindset. In this workshop we will explore what it means to think missionally. Through discussion groups, hands on mission activities and missional stories participants of the workshop will focus on:
The Mission of God

* What Jesus says about Missional
* The DNA of the “Church”
* Marks of a Missional Church
* The Practical Side of Missional (ie Sidewalk Sunday School, Listening with your eyes, etc.)
* Out of sight, Out of mind (the plight of the poor)
* Living Missionally in everyday life

Why I am No Longer Culturally Relevant part 2

David — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:35:04 -0700

In part 1 I bemoaned the fact that I am no longer culturally relevant. Well, I didn't actually bemoan anything. Basically I have decided that being culturally relevant is over-rated. I guess, in my old age, I've begun questioning the validity of using cultural relevance to reach people for Christ. Of course I will still be living in my culture, but I do not want the culture to drive my methods of drawing people to Christ.

I feel like I'm in good company. Irrelevance is not new. My image of irrelevance comes from the desert fathers and mothers. Around 300 AD the church became culturally relevant under Constantine. Up to that point the church was counter-cultural and persecuted. When Constantine made Christianity the official religion of that society, the church saw an influx of people. Within a short period of time Christians went from being persecuted to having a privileged position within the culture.

This was not without its problems. While Constantine professed Christ, his life remained largely unchanged. The church followed his lead. Some, however, felt the church was being diluted by the very culture it was called to reach. It was then that some courageous men and women left the safety of the culture and went to the desert. It was there in solitude and silence that they discovered the voice of God.

To me the ultimate image of irrelevance is heading to the desert. In the desert these men and women were no longer part of the culture. It was this image that caused me to begin re-evaluating my role within the culture. To be honest, I identify with these desert people. So much of cultural relevance seems to be centered on our culture's addiction to entertainment. There, I've said it. Our culture's drug of choice is entertainment. I have decided that entertainment has taken up too much of my time and of my life. It is time to head to the desert!

Some may point to Jesus telling his followers to be "in the world." Some may point out that we are to be a part of redeeming the culture. Yet, something amazing happened as these men and women became irrelevant in the desert. People followed. People came into the desert; people who desperately wanted to hear a word from God. They came into the desert to ask these men and women to speak a word from God into their lives. The people knew these desert fathers and mothers would be able to do so. By becoming culturally irrelevant, the desert fathers and mothers became relevant.

I have to stop and wonder what this kind of irrelevance might look like today. For me, it looks like Eugene Peterson. Many people know of Eugene Peterson's work even if they don't know his name. He is the one who wrote "The Message" translation of the Bible. He has written many different books and I can always count on Peterson to speak a word of God into my life.

A few months ago I was reading (ironically enough) Relevant Magazine when they talked about Bono wanting to spend some time with Peterson. Peterson declined for a couple of reasons. One, he was working on a commentary on Jeremiah or something. The second reason was because he didn't know who Bono was.

I couldn't believe that Peterson didn't know who Bono was!! Bono has done so much, not just with his music, but with various organizations. While some may criticize Peterson for his irrelevance, anyone who has taken time to read the message or any of Peterson's books will realize he is anything but irrelevant.

Is it time for us to become relevant through irrelevance? Is it time for us to go into the desert? Is it time for us to put down our remotes and our Xbox controllers? Is it time to find a place where we can be irrelevant? By doing so, we might find we become more relevant than we thought.

Sheltering Pastors

David — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:18:31 -0700

I've been hesitant to write about the purchase of a new parsonage. This is in my 'blog' section because it is more of my reflections that anything else.

When my family moved to our current appointment we went from a 3000 sq. ft. house into a 1350 sq. ft. house. I have a wife and four children in this small, cramped parsonage (which has 1 1/2 bathrooms). Now I know in many places in the world this would be considered a palace, but here, not so much.

The search process was interesting. It has taken almost five years to get this far. Last week the church voted to purchase a new parsonage and has even found one that meets our conference standards (or at least enough of them).

There was only one problem with the parsonage: location. The current (small) parsonage is in one of the best areas of the county. Wonderful people live in our neighborhood. The new proposed parsonage is not in a very good part of the county.

What I've realized is that for the past four years I have been sheltered from the type of people who live in my county and community. The county I live in is last in per capita income and first in the percentage of smokers. The people in my current neighborhood make pretty good money and I don't think any of them smoke. For the past four years these are the people I see each day. These are the people I meet on the streets of the neighborhood.

I've began to wonder if the placement of the parsonage can be a doorway to missional living and ministry for the pastor. The proposed parsonage, while not in a horrible area at all, still reflects a more accurate representation of the people of the county. Some of them don't make a lot of money. Some (perhaps many) of them smoke.

After four years I feel like I will finally living in the midst of the brokenness, issues and problems of this county. It causes me to wonder how many other pastors view the placement of the parsonage as an opportunity for missional ministry. Maybe we should start updating all those old tired parsonages with parsonages strategically placed for ministry in the community. I don't know what the future will bring, but I'm excited about the new opportunities.

Why I Am No Longer Relevant Part 1

David — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:46:22 -0700

I've been struggling over the past few years over the issue of being culturally relevant. For years I have heard how the church needs to be relevant in order to reach the current culture. In fact, I was one promoting the need to be relevant. I had no trouble being on the cutting edge, or even the bleeding edge. I would make fun of those who would recite long creeds, or sing two hundred year old hymns. I would stand up front and play the newest and freshest songs available.

Over the past couple of years I have found myself growing tired of being relevant. I'm still not sure where this weariness is coming from. All I know is that it has been around three years that I've been practicing silence and solitude. I'm beginning believe that the two are connected although it could be related to my growing older each and every year. All I know is that the things in the culture are growing tiresome to me.

I understand the yearning to use current cultural relevance to reach the world. I know that to reach people you must learn the culture and speak the cultural language before you can share the message of Christ. But I have to wonder if we have allowed the 'numbers reached' to out weight the lives changed. I am beginning to question if our culture relevance is even effective. If we are simply wanting to get people into our building, or church, or apartment, then being as relevant as possible will certainly be effective. Is that really what we are after though? Is the goal to get them into our buildings or is there more than that?

In my experience we use the culturally relevant event to draw people. Once they come we usually will have some type of devotion, lesson, or message. We might even use the events so we can connect with people we might not meet otherwise. Of course this can lead to some pretty significant ministry, but what is the cost? Or do we sit back and say, it doesn't matter.

The New York Times questioned using Halo 3 as a way to draw youth to youth ministry events. There are people on both sides of the issue. Some say we should use any means available to reach those in our culture. Halo 3, even though it is very violent and rated M for mature, is used because it is an effective means to draw youth to the events. Halo 3 nights are an effective means to draw youth. Some say using Halo 3 is fine because we are reaching them for Christ.

Others question this method. They feel it is counter productive. They feel that mixed messages are being sent. Are we really willing to use any means necessary? Someone in the Times article asked why not use alcohol and pornography. Their point was that there are some things we will not use. We do have things we believe are inappropriate ways to draw people. If that is the case, then the question becomes, where is the cut off?

What if questions like these miss the point though? What if being relevant is irrelevant? What if by getting caught up in our culture we become so like the culture that we have lost any influence we might have on the culture? That is the question I've struggled with the past few years. As I spend time in silence and solitude, I'm discovering the relevance of the culture becoming more and more irrelevant.

Jesus told us to be in the world but not of it. I wonder how I can call others to be "not of the world" while I'm so busy trying to be relevant. It is an old question that probably won't be answered anytime soon. It certainly won't be answered in this post. All I know is that as I've grown closer to Christ, the things of the world have grown old. As I've spent time in silence, the cacophony of the media has become wearisome.

What if people don't really want or need the church to be culturally relevant? What if people really need the church to be counter-cultural rather than culturally relevant? What if the creeds and hymns I use to make fun of contain a foundation for living? What if our culture doesn't have the answers people are really needing? What happens if we keep allowing our culture to set our methods for reaching people for Christ? What does the Prince of Peace want say to those playing Halo 3?

I for one have decided that God is not calling me to be culturally relevant. I will continue to be "in the world" but I am choosing to do so by finding broken places in this world and being a part of "putting them back to rights." When you are a part of bring healing to brokenness, you discover just how relevant you are and that hearts begin to open to hear about the love of Jesus. I believe that is the type of church people need today. I also believe that is the kind of people God is calling us to be.

Measure of Missional Ministry

David — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:36:31 -0700

As as United Methodist statistics are my friend. In my conference we are pretty serious about our statistics. We keep track of how many people are coming to worship, Sunday school, short term classes, youth group, UMW, UMM, well...the list could continue. We use statistics as a measure of ministry. We believe we can know how well a pastor is doing and how well a church is doing ministry by looking at their statistics and comparing those to previous years.

What I have discovered is how what we measure determines how and what we do in ministry. When the measure of ministry is how many people come Sunday morning, I will spend time, energy and money in trying to get people to come Sunday morning. That is my goal. The more people who come, the more effective the ministry. If the measure is how many youths are in the youth group my focus is on the youth group and trying to get kids to come.

This all makes sense. If people coming to church is the most important thing in ministry we will spend time creating an inviting environment and then we will count and measure the result. If people stop coming, then we spend time discovering why so we can discover more effective ways to reach them and get them to come.

Our kinds of measurements are easy. They are objective. You do what you do...and then you count how many you did what you do to (or something like that). At the end of the year you can compare this year to last year and even set goals for next year. It all sounds good. It all seems right.

What if your goal isn't how many come Sunday morning, or Wednesday nights, but rather how well the church is being salt and light to the community? That is much harder to measure. You could measure how many people you have helped, or how many cans of food were distributed, but even that doesn't seem quite right. It is hard to measure how well you are being salt and light to the community.

Since it is difficult to measure a missional kind of ministry, we continue to track the same types of statistics. This can cause problems with determining true effectiveness. While some churches might be very effective in being salt and light to their community, it doesn't mean an increase in the type of statistics we track. In fact, it could me a decline! If church members miss Sunday morning to be in ministry in the community, what do you do? The church has to report statistics about how many show up Sunday morning. Do you encourage people to continue in the ministry knowing it will hurt 'the bottom line?' If so, some will believe the ministry isn't effective.

Coming to church might not be the best indicator for church ministry, especially if a church is trying to build on a missional foundation. Yet, since we continue to focus on worship attendance, churches will continue to pour money, effort, time, into Sunday morning worship, perhaps to the detriment to other community type ministries. Perhaps we are measuring the wrong things. Maybe we need to find ways to measure how well we are being salt and light in our communities. Could it be time to discover new ways to measure ministry? Is it time to find new ways to measure ministry? If what we measure determines what we focus on, perhaps it is time to throw out or statistics completely and allow God's spirit to determine our agenda and not our statistics.

Questions about Being Missional

David — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:55:58 -0700

So what questions can we come up with being missional?

Book Review ---"Everything Must Change" by Brian McLaren

jeff — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:36:32 -0700

I have read about one-third of the book,"Everything Must Change", by Brian McLaren. I am reading an advance copy the book will be released on October 1, 2007. It would be an understatement to say the book is challenging me. In his usual candor, McLaren is turning my world upside down. He did it to me in "A New Kind of Christian" and now in this book.

In this 300 plus page volume, McLaren, tries to answer two questions:

1. What are the biggest problems in the world?

2. What does Jesus have to say about these global problems? (11-12)

As problems are listed---environmental breakdown, gap between ultra-rich and the extremely poor, cataclysmic war, the failure of the world's religion---McLaren says that the message of the Christian faith is,"a message purporting to be the best news in the world should be doing better than this".(34) He argues that Christianity has "focused on the afterlife but has failed to address significant social injustices in this life".(33) "Christianity should be about God's will being done on this troubled earth as it is in heaven."(4)

McLaren suggests, “that when we align ourselves with God’s wisdom, character and dreams for us…then our society will take a radically different direction and our world we(sic) become a very different place” (I am reading an uncorrected proof, I am sure he meant would).(69) In order for this to happen we would have to reframe our stories. In some circles the story is that the world will get progressively worse until Jesus returns to destroy it. Other stories such as theocapitalistic stories say the rich are blessed by God and the economy moves mysteriously to solve all the world's problems and meet needs. If we reframe our story into the Jesus story, Jesus confronted the framing stories of his time and sought to turn them on end. Instead of a downward arc of self-destruction, we are introduced to the story of the Kingdom of God which brings transformation and hope. (70-75)

While I still have quite a bit more to read, I am challenged by this book on different levels. As an individual I wonder what I can do about Global Poverty. I do work with the impoverished in our city, who would be considered wealthy in developing countries. I know the story I grew up in would suggest that Jesus is my personal Savior, while McLaren says there is nothing is wrong with that, however, the question becomes---what next? On another level, I wonder what we as group of Christians would be able to do if worked with God for the transformation of the whole world. As I continue to read the book, I will be asking myself that question---What Next?