The Relational Mission

The growth in knowledge of any object depends upon the encounter between someone who wants to know about that object and the object itself. This the only way to develop an understanding of any thing, of any animal, or of any person. The experience of a personal encounter is rudimentary. This claim may appear obvious when it comes to the knowledge of something like a rock, for instance, but understanding how we develop a battery of information about a rock can help us understand the way that God is understandable.  The character of a rock is effusive, that is it is self-showing. What I encounter when I pick up a rock and assess its characteristics is an actual manifestation or performance of the nature of what it means to be a rock. The rock’s “rockness” is shown through the encounter. In some ways, it’s like a dramatic performance. If you want to know the meaning of a play like Hamlet, you must look at the performance of the play itself. You will never understand Hamlet if you only...

God did not call us to be heroes. He did not challenge us to be zealots. And he did not invite us to be radicals. Instead he renamed us. He called us "saints," that is holy or set apart for him. Think of it this way: to be holy is a bit like those special dishes that were passed down to your mom that you only used once a year at Christmas. They were distinct from the everyday. They were treated with special care. God's church, God's people, are his group of saints, God's advertisement to the world. Of course we don't look like saints. And by the way, neither did the people in churches during the first century, but Paul addressed them as "God's holy ones" nonetheless.  However, we live with the myth that the success of the church depends upon us. And since we are far from looking like saints, the clarion call to heroic Christianity, to zealous discipleship and to radical mission looks so appealing to serious Christians. Being that the av...

Thirteen men lounged around a table, ready to eat dinner. Then one stood, removed his outer clothing and wrapped a towel around his waist. While the other twelve mumbled conversation between bites, he walked to a corner of the room and filled a basin with water. He first wiped James’ feet. Matthew was next and squirmed like a 5-year-old. The next three sat in silence. Peter broke the stillness. “Lord, are you going to wash my feet? … No, you shall never wash my feet." When I meditate on the story of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples in John 13, I sit in awe and wonder. Awe at the humiliation of Jesus washing filthy feet. Wonder because I don’t get it. Then I read the punch line: “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” Jesus commanded us to wash one another’s feet. Yet, below the surface, this command lacks meaning. Do we institute a church ritual of foot washing? But I don’t wear sandals. I walk little. Sidewalks and carpet protect me f...

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. —Eph 3:17-19  The summer after I graduated from Texas A & M, I was helping my dad on a construction job. He was purchasing a piece of machinery that would dig holes in solid rock. The salesman spent some time with us as we tested out the machine. During our conversation, he asked what I did. After I told him that I had just graduated from college, he responded, “Oh, no experience. There is nothing like experience.” Luckily, I’m not the type that is easily offended by direct words. And I knew that I was green. I knew that I needed experience, but I was not afraid of being young either. I just did not realize that graduating with honors and all of the knowledge floating around in my ...

" Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, as I promised to Moses" —Joshua 1:3 About 500 years before God spoke these words to Joshua, God promised Abraham that his descendants would possess and inhabit the land of Canaan (see Genesis 17). However, Abraham never saw the fulfillment of this promise, as his family grew from tribal nomads to a slave nation in Egypt. Moses was given the charge of leading the people from slavery into the Promised Land, but they rebelled out of fear, not having enough faith that God would give it to them (see Numbers 13). For 40 years, the Israelites wandered through the wilderness until they were prepared to enter the land. Moses was not able to see the filfillment of the promise, but now Joshua would. As a descendant of Abraham during the years of monadic travel and Egyptian slavery, it would have been easy to give up on the promise of the land. It would be easy to see such promises as wish dreams. It would ...

"A new beginning! We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new. Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life. Imagine that we could live each day as a day full of promises. Imagine that we could walk through the new year always listening to a voice saying to us, "I have a gift for you and can't wait for you to see it! Imagine!" Henri Nouwen, Here and Now , 16 For years, I would read a Henri Nouwen book about once every 12-18 months. I would mark it up, take notes, and copy quotes like this in my journal. Then I would put the book aside and think, "Well, I'm just not there yet." Upon reading his stuff, I would get what he is saying conceptually, but my soul didn't get what he was really saying. I felt like a little league baseball player watching the high school team practice. Then I realized that I had never been through the period...

I'm reading a mind-blowing book entitled Relational Being by the psychologist Kenneth Gergen. He is confronting the paradigm through which we understanding ourselves, which he calls "bounded" identity. That is, we have grown up in a world where we view ourselves as individuals first, as if there is a core identity that we possess that is independent and distinct from our relationships to other people or to our world. In other words, we tend to think about self in one category and our community in another. He lays out the falsehood of this view of the self by demonstrating how we cannot even understand our identity apart from our relationships. The most basic illustration of this is found in the way we are born into a family. We learn how to talk, how to think, and even how to reflect about our own identity from those who care for us as children. Our identity is wrapped up in social interaction. This takes us beyond typical ways of talking about individualism and ...

Train People in Relational Intelligence My friend Kevin Calligan is a licensed Christian counselor. Through the years, he has worked with people ranging from the chronically ill to those who just need an emotional tune-up. And of course, there have been numerous couples who have come to him for counseling. In his work with couples, he realized that the skills they did not possess were the same basic skills needed to make any relationship healthy. Gary Smalley came to the same conclusion in his book, The DNA of Relationships. He writes, “The exciting concepts and methods hammered out in our marriage intensives aply to all relationships, not merely to marriage. I made this discovery for myself as I saw major improvements taking place in my home and with friends." The difference is that it’s socially acceptable to seek out and receive relational training for the sake of our marriages. We just don’t think about a need to be trained to relate to one another in our friendships. And w...

Focus on Discipleship Most small group systems focus on the development of small groups. But the small group systems that stand the test of time are not founded upon small groups at all. They do small groups for the sake of discipleship. Their goal is not small group participation. Instead, it’s helping small groups of people confront the typical American life so that they can be formed or discipled into an contrasting pattern of life. These churches are aiming to generate an alternative way of life. Small groups for the sake of small groups will always blow in the wind of the culture. But small groups for the sake of discipleship have a deeper, transformational, and missional purpose. Elizabeth O’Connor writes of the missional experience of The Church of the Savior in Washington D.C. She states, “This deepening of the spiritual life is not spontaneous. People do not just become great Christians. They grow as they make certain purposeful responses to life and to the grace of God. W...

It was rainy today in Houston. A typical winter, yucky day. Yes, I can wear shorts but this is just dreary. This makes me think about life and the journey of finding God in the midst of the everyday and ordinary stuff that we do. This day makes me think about the suffering of the world, those who are facing great pain and loss. I think about the Christians who are being martyred as I write this. About wives who try and stay faithful to God when their husbands couldn't care less. About parents whose kids are making poor decisions. About people who have made radical choices to serve God, but things did not turn out like expected. The journey of following God will be marked by rainy days, rainy seasons, and sometimes even rainy years.When you are in those dreary times, all you can see is rain, grey and nothingness. The sun is nowhere. But those days are part of the journey. The dreary seasons teach us that walking with God is not about stepping from one triumphal act to the next...

  "But our citizenship is in heaven."—Philippians 3:20 Recently, while I was reading on my front porch, I noticed the sounds of East Indian music playing from a house four doors down the street. I overheard conversations between parents and children that I could not understand but obviously came from the second largest country in the world. This caused me to reflect further upon the reality that Jesus followers are called "foreigners and exiles" in 1 Peter. ( See previous post on this topic. ) My neighbors from half way around the world have been socialized to live in a certain way and now they are surrounded by a totally different way of life, that of Houston, Texas. For three years, I lived in Vancouver, B.C. When I arrived people told me that I would experience culture shock, that I would find it hard to connect with the way of life common to Canadians. I could not understand this. After all, we look very similar, we speak the same language and we share a ver...

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, —1 Peter 2:11a Ever felt like you don’t belong? You know that first day of school experience where we assume that everyone else fits but you don’t. You are a foreigner, an exile, who is different from everyone else. But that experience changes. After a week or so, most of us found our place, our group of people who were like us and school became less scary. We no longer felt like foreigners because we learned the rules about what it meant to fit in. This verse challenges us though. It is not referring to how we feel. It is referring to who we are. As Jesus followers, we are foreigners. We are exiles. If we feel this way, it’s because it’s who God has made us to be. We belong to a different kingdom, and we cannot fit in . We swim upstream because we are following the leading of the Spirit. We rub against the grain of the way life is supposed to work because we are going with the grain of God’s call on our lives. We find that the ...

A few days ago, I watched the beginning of The Two Towers , the second entry into The Lord of the Rings Trilogy . I've read the books at least twice and seen the movies at least eight times, so I know the story quite well. But this time I saw something new. In the first movie (book) we are introduced to a group of nine who volunteer to destroy an evil, powerful ring and they set out toward the one place where the ring can be destroyed. But at the end of the first movie, The Fellowship of the Ring , they are attacked and the group is split up. Two are killed, two hobbits head off one direction to destroy the ring, two hobbits are captured, and three expert fighters are left standing wondering what to do next. This is where the story twists. Logic, strategic planning and good leadership would say that the three strongest fighters need to remain focused on the primary cause, that of destroying the ring. Instead they chase after the two captured hobbits. Now if you have seen the ...

This is part 4 in a series called "Is Both/And Possible? ( Click here for the previous entries. ) We have tons of excellent options for setting up connecting small group experiences. ( See previous post. ) In addition, the options for excellent curriculum choices almost endless. But let's not assume that grouping people and getting them to talk about the Bible will move them toward mission. Without a way to create a sense of urgency for more, people will grow satisfied with a connecting group experience. Who can blame them? In many cases such groups have provided the richest and safest places they have ever known. What more could there be? We need to help people hunger for more. If they never develop any sense of urgency they will remain the same, forever cycling through group after group, and some church after church. This is where we need to think in terms of discipleship that leads to missional living. By this I don't mean a slew of classes. Instead I mean some th...

Recently, I asked if a common mission produces community ( click here to read) or if the experience of community results in mission ( click here to read) . Both are taught, often with great passion. Both have scriptural support. And both seem to have anecdotal evidence (great stories) to bolster the claim. However, when I have stepped back from both scenarios and looked beneath the specific path that a group has taken, I've found that in every case something deeper is really going on. In other words, the argument of community first versus mission first is a argument that leads us to miss the real thing that produces both. I'll first explain why this is true and then I'll point to the deeper issue that often is overlooked in small group strategies. Paul instructed the church at Philippi, "Consider other more important than yourself." This is the mind of Christ and this is one of the primary ways that the Spirit works through his people today. The problem is th...