The Relational Mission

I have many fond memories of the church of my childhood, Foote Baptist Church, located in McKinney, Texas, in what was then a rural setting north of Dallas about 30 miles. One of the most significant memories was the altar call, the time at the end of the three weekly services when the pastor would extend an invitation to make decision for Christ. This decision time was the culmination of the entire service. It was a call to walk the aisle and make a public demonstration that a person was “getting saved.” Later, I was a part of a charismatic church in Houston. At the end of our services, we too emphasized an altar call, though the invitation was not as focused on people making decisions for salvation as much as making decisions to come and get a touch from God’s presence. However, both focused on the importance of making a decision. This practice of making a decision has been shaped historically by the revivalist experiences of the American church. The first and second Great Awaken...

I grew up in small church in rural North Texas called Foote Baptist Church. The pictures below depict the actual building restored back to it's early 20th century look. When I say "I grew up" I mean that. I spent a ton of time in that old school house church building. It was just part of my childhood. And listening to sermons was part of my childhood. There was not children's church. That was the day when we sat with the adults. As I've reflected on the sermonizing of my childhood, I realized that there was a basic pattern to them. It went like this: Part 1: The Passage and What it Said—In this part, the pastor would identify the passage and explain what it was about. Part 2: The Meaning of the Passage—Here would come the interpretation. Part 3: Application—Here is where we were challenged to implement the passage to our lives. This approach to sermons was based upon something called decision-based ethics, which assumes that when we hear the truth that we ...

In my previous post , I offered three different ways that people commonly "imagine" the missional conversation. Our imagination works as a kind of interpretive grid or pre-understanding that we bring to the subject. So when we hear a word like "missional" we see what we expect. Here is a quick summary of the three common interpretive grids that I've observed are: A Redeemed Society-The church possesses truth that outsiders need and the mission is conceived as getting outsiders to become insiders. In some ways this is a bit like an enclave that could be escapist , where insiders have truth and outsiders are welcome, as long as they believe and behave like the insiders. A Redeeming Society-The church on mission is primarily viewed as action, what we do for the sake of the world. This imagination is characterized by energy , expressiveness, and enterprise. It's about getting the mission done and making an impact. A Redemptive Society-The mission is viewed ...

In yesterday's post , I asked the question related to why it is so hard for people to enter into community. Most of the time, we look for ways to fix this problem.  They usually come in the form of "6 Ideas for Taking Your Group to the Next Level" or "3 Sure-Fire Ways to Turn Your Group Around." Posts like that are needed. But this is not one of those. Sometimes I think we try to fix the problems in our groups without going deeply enough to identify the real issues. So we medicate the lack of community, while we become numb to what the Spirit of God really wants to do. The problem though is that the Spirit of God usually does not work as fast as we want him to. We want to "get over" the problem of the lack of community. While God wants to lead us into the painful reality that we are not very good at living in community. He wants to reveal show us that we don't know how to love others very well. That "considering others as more important th...

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'...

"One dark night, fired with love's urgent longings —ah, the sheer grace!— I went out unseen, my house being now all stilled." These words comprise the opening stanza of The Dark Night by Saint John of the Cross. For years, I've heard about the experience of the dark night of the soul. And I've tried my best to avoid the dark night experience and this book because I had no desire for anything that looked like a dark night. I guess that's because I associated "dark night" with depression and I went through that once and I don't ever want to go back there. However, the dark night experience is a bit different. In describing this stanza, John commented "The soul speaks of the way it followed in its departure from love of both self and all things. Through a method of true mortification, it died to all these things and to itself. It did this so as to reach the sweet and delightful life of love of God." I've come about a dark nig...

"I have come to see how I am not the protagonist of God's story. In fact, I am not even a main character. This does not diminish my importance or value in God's eyes. It is simply a confession of the fact that God acts and initiates, and our part is simply a response to his initiation. But so often, we focus way too much upon our initiation and too little on what God does." This is a paragraph from a book manuscript that I'm writing. Anyway, a friend has read an early draft of the book and found this paragraph to be helpful. I am been meditating on it over the last few days to see if it is really saying what I want it to say. Here I want to experiment with a few expanded thoughts. Scot McKnight's book, The King Jesus Gospel, helps us to see that in order to understand what the Bible means by the word "gospel" that we need to think in four big ideas: The Story of Israel/the Bible The Story of Jesus The Plan of Salvation The Method of Persu...

I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:14) Whenever we use the word "training" in the church world, we think about conferences, seminars, classes, webinars and written resources. All of these depend upon an expert giving us information, as if information should be classified as "training." Contrast that with training in the sport's world. Athletic training does not require athletes to sit and listen to experts. In fact it can be done with very little input or direction. When my 7th grade football coach gave us instructions about how to prepare over the summer for 8th grade football, he handed out one piece of paper and told us to go do it. Now if you walk into a bookstore, you will find hundreds of magical plans for getting in shape, but the biggest part of the training is just doing it. I wonder if we have made Christian training as difficult and complex as it seems like physical training has become. ...

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...

After communist regimes tumbled down in Eastern Europe, stories about life under various dictators came out. One of the most poignant was one from Romania. Under the rule of Ceauşescu, the leaders had determined that it was in the best interest of the country to raise children in an institution instead of a home with their parents. The results were shocking. Even though the children were provided all the means to meet their physical need, they were undersized, slow to develop in motor functions and behind in their communications skills. There were so many kids in these institutions that those hired to care for them could only feed and clothe them. They had no time to hold them, care for them when they were crying or simply play with as kids long to do. How often we do this with our soul. In our busy world, we treat our emotions, mind and spirit as if they are children who only need a bed and three square meals. Maybe we think that since we went to church on Sunday or we read our Bib...

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...

This is the second installment of my weekly Missional Reflections where I quote a theologian and then reflect on how that might challenge our common understanding of being missional. This quote from Stanley Hauwerwas. "To emphasize the idea of character is to recognize that our actions are also acts of self-determination; in them we not only reaffirm what we have been but also determine what we will be in the future. By our actions we not only shape a particular situation, we also form ourselves to meet future situations in a particular way. Thus the concept of character implies that moral goodness is primarily a prediction of persons and not acts, and that this goodness of persons is not automatic but must be acquired and cultivated."(Hauerwas, Vision and Virtue, 49.) There is such a thing as missional character. This idea challenges us to go beyond questions of what can we do to be better at doing missional acts. It calls us to think about missional community as somethi...

Last week, I was in a conversation about implementing some new ideas in a church. A leader stated, "Well, let's just do it and figure it out along the way." And while on the job training is always going to happen, I realized in that moment just how much we do this in the church. I want to return to the baseball theme that I have been using as an analogy over the last couple of months. The equivalent in baseball would be the coaches and players showing up on opening day and not doing any preparation beforehand. No coaches meetings. Now Spring Training. The assumption is what really matters is what happens each night during the game. I'd like to suggest that most of the success on the field of baseball has more to do with what happens behind the scenes than what happens during the games. I'm not just talking about practicing either. I'm talking about the coaches' meetings, the front office meetings, and the position player meetings. I'm referring to ...

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 ...

Last Friday night I took my five-year-old to his t-ball game. The first 30 minutes is set aside for practice. While a light rain fell, my son traipsed through the wet grass and tried in vain to climb the soccer goal frame. Then he came back to the car. I told him that he needed to go through the ball with his team. He said to me "It's just practice. I don't need to practice. I'm already good." His comments remind me of how we often live our faith. We tend to emphasize action, radical choices and public declaration. In other words, we prioritize our faith when it's measurable. But no sport works that way. Games are won or lost on the practice field long before the games begin. But this is the way it is with anything worth doing. I've heard stories about how Jim Carrey would practice his facial contortions and unusual noises for hours in front of a mirror. Monet painted over more paintings than we will ever know. Doctors call their daily work "pract...

Have you ever heard about baseball hitters "being in a slump." It refers to an extended time when a player is not hitting the ball well. Unlike basketball or football where the way to break out of a period of below average performance is to either get more aggressive or to rest your body so that you can return with more vigor and effort, the approach in baseball is slightly different. Aggression actually works against you in baseball. Hitting a ball consistently is about allowing your mind and body to relax so that you can swing in a fluid motion that naturally connects with a ball in an unforced manner. The times when I have hit the ball the hardest were the times when I was not trying to swing the hardest. Every time a hitter tries to over-swing he misses the chance to actually apply the restful force that results in a hard hit ball. So to break out of a slump, one has to train the mind and body to exert effort in a restful manner. It sounds counter-intuitive, but that is...

Last night I was teaching a class about how we have to practice church in order to be the church. I was challenging the notion that the practice of church life is primary shaped by our public meetings. I then began to reflect on my years of playing baseball and I realized how many of the drills that we would do don't actually look much like what we did on the field. While there was a resemblance, we would do things with a bat and ball which would be absolutely absurd to do in a game. I'll just site one example: multi-million dollar super-star players will hit a ball off a tee into a net, the same kind of tee my six year old uses in his games. Now if you saw a 250 pound slugger hitting a ball off a tee in a game, that would be just weird, but that is exactly what they do in practice. The way we practice when no no one is looking shapes how we live as the church when people can see us. This goes so far beyond things like having a personal quiet time or being morally upright w...

I love reading the vast literature that has been published over the last ten years on spiritual practices or spiritual disciplines. But I get troubled by the consistent use of language that assumes the reader has a college education. I guess this assumption is made because most resources seem to use a lot of Latin words. They talk about things like "lectio divina", "purgation", "solitude", "Psalms of lament", and "the daily office". Who talks like that? Why can't we use words so that we all know what we are talking about, like "dwelling in the Word", "purging", "alone with God", Psalms of sorrow", and ... well I've not come up with a good term to replace "the daily office" yet. Any ideas? I grew up on the farm, and while I have read more than my fair share of 500 page books that use lots of "five-dollar words," I still talk language that my friends from high school could u...

I am teaching a 13-week class on Spiritual Practices. I think I am doing it for myself as much as anyone else. But I'm also doing it for the normal people in our church who are not mystics or don't care to learn about spiritual disciplines by reading a book that uses Latin and is over 200 pages long. I don't understand why something so simple as developing consistent rhythms of connecting to God has to be so difficult. Tonight's session is about how our personality type affects the disciplines that we practice. I grew up thinking that there was a one-size-fits all approach to how I practiced my relationship with God. It was called a Quiet Time and it was supposed to happen when you first get up in the morning. After all, this is what the spiritual giants of history have done. In college I heard about the radical prayer life of Luther and then I later learned about how Pastor Cho in Korea prays three hours per day. In the late 1990s a popular book came out encouraging pe...