The Relational Mission

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...

Yesterday, I wrote about the challenge to live beyond functional atheism in our personal lives as we go about our day-to-day activities. ( See post here. ) It is so easy to go about life and work, even work that is supposedly "the work of the Lord" in the church, completely unaware that God is near, that God is speaking and leading. God fully surrounds my every move. This makes me think about a few lines from St. Patrick's morning prayer:    Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me,    Christ beneath me, Christ above me,    Christ on my right, Christ on my left,    Christ in breadth, Christ in length, Christ in height,    Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,    Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,    Christ in every eye that sees me,    Christ in every ear that hears me. This makes me think about how we do small groups. Do we have the imagination...

I've been reflecting lately on the fact that I walk through too much of each day as if God does not exist. In other words, I go through the daily stuff of life with a totally secular point of view. I'm not beating myself up about this. It's just the reality of the world we live in. It's the air we breath. We live in a scientific age, a logical world that we can explain life according to the principle that if we do a certain set of activities that we will get a certain set of results. It's a world that tells us that we are in control. And if we feel out of control, we need to attain more information so that we can get back to that place of control. This is called a disenchanted world. Before the development of events of the last 300 years in the West, to walk through a day as a functional atheist was unheard of. The world was full of mysteries that could not be explained. But now we know everything and if we don't know it all we have to do is find out on our sm...

Reflections and comments on Ephesians 1:1b from a missional perspective. "of Jesus Christ" Paul is a "sent one" of someone else. To be sent requires someone to do the sending. An apostle does not send oneself. An apostle is one who represents the one who sent him and he represents him not only in words, but also in the way he conducts his life. Paul was an apostle of Jesus Christ. This is an important distinction. He was sent in the same way that Jesus was sent. An apostle of Jesus is sent to live as a representative of the life of Jesus, the kind of life that led to his death. We can see this in the words of Paul in Philippians 2:1-11. We are all to have the same mind as that of Christ Jesus. Let me use the words of Deitrich Bonhoeffer in his Ethics to go deeper into this: "Jesus Christ is the very embodiment of the person who lives responsibly ... His entire life, action and suffering is vicarious representative action ... All human responsibility ...

Years ago, I took a class from Eugene Peterson called Spiritual Theology. At one point he said, "The most spiritual thing to do might be simply changing your wife's tire on her car." I've never forgotten his words. In his lectures, he had a way of tearing down the pomp and circumstance of ambitious dreams and root life in God in the reality of everyday life. Irenaeus of Lyon was a church leader from the second century who spoke of the Father's two hands, the Son and the Spirit, as the mediating presence of God with us. The Bible speaks of the Son as the Word of God and the Spirit as the Wisdom of God. But it is interesting to me how the Son and the Spirit have come and continue to come not in abstract ways, which is how we usually think of word and wisdom. Instead they come through faithful presence, as hands extended in agape love from the Father. I think of the story of John 13 where Jesus washed the feet. I think of the fruit of the Spirit with agape listed...

What would it take for your small group to work together as a team? Most small groups in North America are simply weekly gatherings of individualists who come together one per week for a Bible discussion. It just a meeting for disparate individuals. Aristotle once said, "The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts." Doesn't this resemble the wisdom of Solomon? "A cord of three strands is not quickly broken" (Ecclesiastes 4:12). Watch this video: Here are some questions you could use in a small group discussion: What does it take for a group of people to work together in this way? Have you ever experienced anything like this? If so, what was the impact of that experience on your life? What keeps our group from operating more like a team? What are some things in your own life that might keep you from participating as a effective member of a team? What are some small things that we could do differently to help this group move toward the visi...