The Relational Mission

When I was in high school, our church youth group would sit every week and talk about the Bible. It was a small church and usually we only had four or five people in our youth meetings. At the end of our discussions our youth pastor would ask something like: What does this mean for your life? I distinctly remember one night when we all responded with "Pray and read the Bible." But in my mind I thought, "We always say that. Is that all there is?" I've come to see that there is nothing beyond prayer. At the same time, I've also realized that that everything lies beyond prayer. Communion with God is the ultimate of life. It's the reason that God created. We were made for communion. Our lives are true to the extent that we live in unity with God. Our lives are out of sorts to the degree that we are not living in communion with God. Prayer makes or breaks our souls. However, there is far more than prayer. Prayer itself is not the goal, the end game. God is ...

For almost 25 year, I've been meditating on a passage found in in Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "Spiritual love will prove successful insofar as it commends Christ to the other in all that is says and does. It will not seek to agitate another by exerting all to personal, direct influence or by crudely interfering in one's life. It will not take pleasure in pious, emotional fervor and excitement. Rather, it will encounter the other with the clear word of God and be prepared to leave the other alone with this word for a long time. It will be willing to release others again so that Christ may deal with them. It will respect the other as the boundary that Christ establishes between us; and it will find full community with the other in the Christ who alone binds us together. This spiritual love will thus speak to Christ about the other Christian more than to the other Christian about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Chr...

About three years ago, I was leading a small class on connecting with God. Honestly, I had never taught a class like this before. I just knew that I had to teach it. I think I was motivated to learn how to pray better. So I thought I would teach as a fellow journeyman rather than an expert. At first, I thought I would find some grand counsel from a book or resource that would open up the heavens and transport us into a heavenly relationship with God. I assumed that we would talk about a prayer pattern that would be helpful to all of us. But as I read various books, I came to another conclusion. I realized that most churches do exactly what I assumed that I would teach in that class. They promote and teach one primary way pattern for relating to God. For instance, in the church tradition of my childhood, I was taught the pattern of having a quiet time with God using ACTS, A-Adoration, C-Confession, T-Thanksgiving, S-Supplication. And we were taught that quiet times were best done ear...

I wrote this post and then I deleted it by accident. So here's the second post. I think it turned out a bit better. I've found that most Chrisitan know that they are supposed to pray. But I've also found that prayer can be a very frustrating experience. This is especially true when we view prayer as a something we have to make happen. You know the kind of thing that we do by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and we do out of effort and discipline. I've been there, oh so many times. I've prayed ACTS, through the Tabernacle pattern, and by walking through the Lord's prayer. I've journaled my prayers. I've forced myself to get up far too early in the morning. And I've copied the patterns of those held up as prayer warriors. Effort, effort, effort. Trying to make prayer work can be exhausting. Over the years I've found that prayer can be a joy when I don't focus on trying to make it work. Instead, I allow a different way of praying to ...

In my forthcoming book Difference Makers , I talk about how we make a difference with two groups of people, our neighbors and those in our networks. My hope in this book is to invite people to see how God is at work locally and discover how make a difference in the lives of those who live around us. One of the ways that we make a difference is through the ways we pray.  I'd like to suggest some ways to pray for our neighbors and those in our networks. General prayers for the your neighborhood or the places you touch in your daily life (work, school, etc.) Pray that the Kingdom would be manifest in the world around you (Mark 1:15) Pray that good news to the poor would go forth. (Luke 4:16-17) Pray that those in bondage would be set free. Pray that people could see the truth. Pray that those who are oppressed would be liberated.  Specific prayer for specific neighbors or someone in your network: Pray that the person’s heart might be “good soil” for the seed of God'...

The path to meekness which involves hearing God’s words of love for us often starts with our own voice. We must begin with what we have in our heart and learn to express it to God. ( See previous post on meekness for more about hearing God's words "My Beloved .") We must learn to express our true voice, even when what what lies within us falls short of what we think it should be. Let's call it "dialogical praying" the kind that reveals all of who we are, without the need to pretend to be different than we are. It grants us the freedom from having to get prayer “right.” It allows us to actually be the beloved to the point of being honest with ourselves and with God and foregoing any need to pray according to some kind of plan or formula. For some, expressing their true voice is not a big challenge. I have encountered a few who freely expressed themselves to God no matter their circumstances. Whether out of a sense of desperation or because that have a great...

Being a follower of Jesus means meekness will be a byproduct of our relationship with Jesus. However, it seems that we have defined Jesus followership today in such a way that we can avoid meekness. As a result, we miss out on the life that Jesus wants to give us as we fall short of the character the Spirit is weaving into the world. How then do we participate in meekness? Or put another way, how do we make room for the meekness of Jesus in our lives? I think part of the answer lies in being true in the way we pray, as opposed to praying in ways that might be called perfunctory or inauthentic. When we are true and truthful before God, we are freed to hear God's voice of love for us. This frees us to participate in meekness. Henri Nouwen spent a lifetime praying and writing about prayer. He was a Catholic priest and taught theology at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard. Then for the last season of his life, he was the pastor at l’Arche Daybreak in Toronto, Canada which was a commu...

The path to hearing the voice of God’s love for us often starts with our own voice. We must begin with what we have in our heart and learn to express it to God. We must learn to express our true voice, even when what is true within us falls short of what we think it should be. It’s called “simple prayer,” the kind of praying that reveals all of who we are, without the need to be someone else. Simple prayer grants us the freedom from having to get prayer “right.” It allows us to actually be the beloved to the point of being honest with ourselves and with God and foregoing any need to pray according to some kind of plan or formula. For some expressing their true voice is not a big challenge. I have encountered a few who freely expressed themselves to God no matter their circumstances. Whether out of a sense of desperation or because that have a great confidence that God has loved them, they seem to be free to be themselves before and with God. However, I have found a lot more people—both...

Henri Nouwen spent a lifetime praying and writing about prayer. He was a Catholic priest and taught theology at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard. Then for the last season of his life, he was the pastor at l’Arch Daybreak in Toronto, Canada which was a community where the mentally disabled shared life with those who cared for them. In one of his last publications before his death, he stated, “Prayer, then, is listening to that voice—to the One who calls you the Beloved. It is to constantly go back to the truth of who we are and claim it for ourselves. I’m not what I do. I’m not what people say about me. I’m not what I have. Although there is nothing wrong with success, there is nothing wrong with popularity, there is nothing wrong with being powerful, finally my spiritual identity is not rooted in the world, the things the world gives me. My life is rooted in my spiritual identity. Whatever we do, we have to go back regularly to that place of core identity.” Those who knew this man viewe...

"We have never seen anything like this." —Mark 2:12 This was the response of the people after Jesus healed the paralyzed man in Capernaum. You know the one where the four men lowered down the man through the hole they made in the roof.   I wonder to what degree authentic encounters with Jesus are marked by "our not having seen anything like it." I wonder if knowing God is really about encountering the unexpected. I wonder this because so little that we do in the church seems to be marked by this. How rarely do we respond with "We have never seen anything like this." We all have our ways of doing things, our patterns that are established. I'm not knocking traditions or even liturgies and promoting some kind of free-flowing anti-structure approach. (That argument does not hold water because even those who embrace some kind of "anti-structure" approach to church life actually develop a tradition. They just refuse to see that.) No I'm...

"My judgment is that the cultural temptation to triumphalism that has beset the church was powerfully reinforced by the scholastic catechism tradition that took God as 'omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.' Thus, self-sufficient selves in communion with an all-managing God has no room for lament, and that theological premise is now powerfully replicated in so-called praise hymns, in which 'never is heard a discouraging word." (Walter Brueggemann, Disruptive Grace , 180). I quote this with some trepidation, knowing that I risk being misunderstood. But I'll risk it anyway. The point is that we have a limited ability to practice "lament" according the biblical tradition because we believe in an all-controlling, triumphalistic God. And because he is managing everything from on high, any attempt to cry out to God in lament does no good. In other words, God intended for human trafficking to happen. Or he intended for people in our neighborhoods to be...

I just read a one of the early books  by N. T. Wright, Bringing the Church to the World . In the epilogue, he writes about praying the thesis of the book into reality. He introduces the Jesus prayer that has become popular over the last decade which goes like this: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me." The goal of this prayer is to make it such a regular part of one's thoughts and expression that it naturally flows out like breathing. Therefore it is often referred to as breath praying. Wright expands upon this in a way that expands our imagination about God. Most people people in the church are shaped by a Christological imagination, but it is a truncated view of Christology. A New Testament view of Christ requires a trinitarian imagination. It is so easy for people today to have a high Chistology, but only apply it to their private spirituality in such a way that it has nothing to do with daily life. We need a way to pray that expands this so that train...

Missional Reflection #8 in a series where I quote a theologian and reflect on how it might shape a missional imagination. This quote is from Henri Nouwen.   "To pray is to unite ourselves with Jesus and lift up the whole world through him to God in a cry for forgiveness, reconciliation, healing and mercy. To pray, therefore, is to connect whatever human struggle or pain we encounter—whether starvation, torture, displacement of peoples, or any form of physical and mental anguish—with the gentle and humble heart of Jesus. ...   Prayer is leading every sorrow to the source of all healing; it is letting the warmth of Jesus' love melt away the cold anger of resentment; it is opening a space where joy replaces sadness, mercy supplants bitterness, love displaces fear, gentleness and care overcome hatred and indifference. But most of all, prayer is the way to become and remain part of Jesus' mission to draw all people to the intimacy of God's love." (Henri Nouwen, The O...

Everyone is a prayer novice. With that in mind, take a deep breath and relax. Yes. I mean just that. Take a deep breath and let any pressure you feel about prayer or being spiritual roll off of you. It does not matter if you are a brand new Jesus follower or if you have seen God work great miracles through your prayers. The difference between the two is microscopic when compared to the vastness of God. It’s like a grasshopper comparing itself with an ant. However when you set both next to an elephant, the differences in size fall away. Sometimes, we compare our prayers with those of others. Some seem so comfortable with prayer. They say the right words. They refer to scriptures. They might even express passion as they pray. I remember praying with a few people years ago and voiced a short, somewhat tentative request. After we said our “amens” a guy in the group corrected my theology regarding my prayers. He told me that my prayers did not quite get what God was all about. I guess...

If you want to tap into the power of missional praying, how do you do it? At first it can feel intimidating because some assume that they need to have a very well developed sense of communion with God before they can show others what it means to walk with God. But that is a misnomer. We only need a genuine, honest relationship with God. People need to see us struggling to relate to God, which will be the reality for the rest of our lives. People don't need to see some form of dishonest perfectionism. They need to see saints who know how to walk with God through the ups and downs of relating to him. That being said, here are a few ways to make prayer missional: 1. Seek God's presence in your group meetings. Bible studies are good. Working through video curriculum can be helpful. But if you are settling for a focus on these things and missing out on God's living presence in the midst of a group, then you are settling for less than the best. (I will have a post soon on how ...