Why Does the Church Ignore Jesus?

If you missed part one in this series, check out “How to Ignore Jesus While Accepting Your Christianity.” We ignore Jesus because discipling takes a long time and it is very hard to measure. We’ve become a people who care more about measuring things rather than the hearts of Image Bearers.   We have become a church that looks more like American Business, than the church found in Acts 2.

American business has to count things because that’s how we get more business. We count profits, employees, customers, etc. If I showed you everything I measured in my business it’d make you dizzy. I don’t see much difference in the American Church.

The church has a CEO (which isn’t Jesus) that puts out the vision and directives then has the employees carry that vision out. If the employees start to question those things or the CEO, or if they get in the way, or they are struggling in certain areas of their lives, they are sidelined. Why? Because we have things we must count—attendance to our events, the amount of services we have, money in our coffers, and the size of our staff and buildings. If these things are growing, we are a success; if these things are stagnant or going backwards, then we are failing.

The problem is discipleship is very difficult to measure. Not only that, but many of those things that can be measured within discipleship will take years to measure their effectiveness and don’t fit nicely on a spreadsheet.  Because of this, many churches have taken discipleship from the mission of the church to a program of the church. That way, we can measure it in the way that makes the church in the West more comfortable.

Think of it . . . if you have a 12 week discipleship class, you can measure how many people are going through that class. You can determine success or failure.

Actual discipleship takes a lot of time and moves very slowly. Not only that, but people’s muck rises to the surface and might make the church look bad to many because of all the actual issues that are being dealt with. But, because the church is more like a business than the New Testament church, we don’t delve into those issues. We cover them up or just keep our church people at a surface level so that when you ask “How are you doing?” everyone answers, “Good.” Now we can move on to more important things . . . things that can be measured. This is why most churches like to count baptisms. Again. What’s interesting is that Jesus says, “Make disciples of all nations . . . baptizing them.” Baptizing is a byproduct of discipleship, not the other way around.

How Do We Change?

We are talking about a paradigm shift. We’ve been caught in this business mentality in church life for far too long. We are now attempting to u-turn the titanic, not a speed boat.

We must ask ourselves, “Is making disciples our very reason for being on this earth?”

Not only that, we must also ask, “Are we willing to be the first one to say ‘I need to be discipled’ and make our ‘Up’ relationship the primary in our lives and the lives of others?”

If we truly desire to make disciples who make disciples, then we have to . . . let me say this again . . . WE HAVE TO make it primary, no matter the cost, time, or sacrifice.

Are we willing to make everything else secondary to making disciples of selves, our family, our church, our neighborhood, our city, our nation, and our world?

To do this, we have to start asking, “What do I need to change to make this happen in my own life?” I need to lead change, not merely talk about it.

What in our lives, our churches should be kept, changed, or dropped for the sake of making disciples who make disciples?

For me. I have stopped putting multiplication first. I have stopped trying to put a timeline on when my missional community will multiply. Instead, I have decided to focus on a few and live a deep life with them until the Spirit releases them with his power to start another missional community.

I believe by doing this, I’ll be setting up a blueprint for what church life looks like and can say as Paul did, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.”

By no means will I do it perfectly, but I’ll be doing it relentlessly asking how can I effectively be a disciple who’s primary reason to live on this earth is to make more disciples of Jesus. Period.

New Measurements

My friend Ben Hardman recently reminded me of this: What gets celebrated is what gets repeated. If we are going to try and change a paradigm so that discipleship is the central reason the church exists we have to change how we measure our “wins.”

I’ll give you one example that I’ve given before, in my article “Why I’m Tired of Church Planting.” Many of us know the parameters of success – the three B’s: butts, budgets, and buildings. If you measure the success of the church based on the fruit that only can be provided by the Spirit you will kill your church and its leaders. What do I mean? I think we should measure what we can actually control, standing amazed at the greatness of our God and the indwelling Spirit when we are blessed with witnessing the fruit that God allows us to see with our own eyes.

What if we measured the success of our churches by asking this question: How many people’s stories in your context do you know so intimately that you know exactly where they need the good news?

The reason that this is such a good measurement tool is that this gives everyone a fighting chance. This kind of measurement would require your people to be doing the work we’ve been called to do: to shepherd people to the only hope we have. It requires us to be involved with people. It requires us to invest deeply into a few people instead of too many on a surface level. In the end, if we have this as our measurement tool, we can see people being discipled instead of merely “making a decision” or just showing up to a church service.

We might see them actively bringing all areas of their lives under the lordship of Jesus by the power of the Spirit through the good news. This is discipleship! After this, you baptize. After that, you teach them everything that Jesus has commanded, but not before they have entered into a deep discipleship relationship with you.

The church could feel freed to do the ministry to which we’ve been called if we didn’t measure success through programs, conversions, attendance, and baptisms. These might all come, and we should be thrilled when they do, but statistics are not what we are primarily called to do. We are called to make disciples.

The Question

Here’s the question to end all this: How would you define yourself? What is your primary identity?

No matter how you answer this, anyone who is reading this needs to know, your primary identity that will never fail you is simply this: You are a son/daughter of the Creator God.

Whether you believe this or not is another question.

But, if we are sons and daughters of the perfect Creator God who loves us, is patient with us and has literally done everything in his power to show off who he is then there is only one thing we are left with: We GET TO show off who Dad is like to others around us. In other words . . . we GET TO disciple others.

That’s what we get to give our lives to. Everything else in our lives should pale in comparison. What in your life is above your identity as a son or daughter of God?

What do you need to start/stop believing about God so that you can be freed into the life of discipleship?

What needs to be added to/taken away/enhanced in your life so that you can make disciples who make disciples?

Who is discipling you and who are you discipling? Meaning . . . who are you living with so closely you know exactly where their idols are and where they need to hear the good news of redemption? And they know the exact same things about you . . . and you both speak up in these regards and are actively pursuing the power of the Spirit to bring these under the Lordship of Christ so you can be freed of them into the good news of Jesus.

—

Seth McBee is the adopted son of God, husband of one wife, and father of three. He’s a graduate of Seattle Pacific University with a finance degree. By trade. Seth is an investment portfolio manager, serving as President of McBee Advisors, Inc. He is also a MC leader/trainer/coach and executive team member of the GCM Collective. Seth currently lives in Phoenix, AZ with his wife Stacy and their three children: Caleb, Coleman, and Madelynn. He is also the artist and co-author of the wildly popular (and free!) eBook, Be The Church: Discipleship & Mission Made Simple. Twitter: @sdmcbee.

How to Ignore Jesus While Accepting Your Christianity

Jesus was straightforward with his mission when he left. And he gave us the Spirit to accomplish it. He didn’t mince words; he didn’t hide it in the book of Numbers (knowing most of us wouldn’t dare read that). He was and is clear on our mission: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. If it is that clear, why do we ignore Jesus and pursue other things so far down the list of “to-dos”?

Bottom line: we don’t know how to make a disciple and/or we ignore how Jesus made disciples.

I haven’t written an article in a long while. I’ve been honestly rethinking everything I know about the missional “movement” and asking why aren’t we seeing more missional community churches multiplying missional communities to saturate a city? To ask this question though, I couldn’t just point fingers. I had to ask this of myself. I have multiplied missional communities and trained many leaders to do so, but the number of disciples made now making disciples is embarrassing low in my life.

However, I have found a way to surround myself with some pretty smart dudes that don’t mind me ranting and being honest about the missional community movement and my own lack of disciple making. But, now, I think I’ve figured out in my head and heart why this is and am starting the process of working it out with my hands.

The Cart Before the Horse

Think about that saying for a second. How stupid. Why would anyone put the cart before the horse? The reality is that most don’t know that is what they have done, because (I hope) they wouldn’t purposely put a cart before the horse. I know I didn’t, but that is exactly what I did for the past 8 years in this missional life.

For me, the cart was multiplication. For others it could be a church building, a church service, prayer groups, budgets, people showing up to an event or some sort of service, etc.

Let me focus on my cart. Multiplication. Like most of the things listed above, multiplication is healthy and a good thing . . . but it’s not the ultimate thing. With discipleship you will get multiplication, but just because you multiply doesn’t mean you necessarily get discipleship.

If the focus is on multiplication, we will do whatever we must to raise up new leaders and send them out. The focus becomes on what they do, instead of who they are and what they believe. This is a huge distinction for discipleship.

Training and our lives becomes: “How can I quickly give information to someone so that they can go do this themselves?” instead of “How can I disciple people so that they are bringing every area of life under the Lordship of Jesus and go to show off how great our Dad is?”

What’s even more crazy is when we put the mindset of multiplication first. When that happens the one thing that will really irritate you is when people don’t get it, or when they question things. When multiplication is made ultimate what happens when major, deep issues that are lording over people’s lives come up that need you to stop and take time to work through? In reality, when multiplication (and many other things) become our primary priority, then people aren’t seen as the Imago Dei, but a tool that helps you “win.” When it’s not primariy, discipleship gets in the way. Some discipleship may still happen, but becomes shallow instead of deep and life transforming submitting every area of life to the Good News.

I believe this is exactly why we see Peter and the other disciples saying some very stupid things while living with Jesus. Jesus desired discipleship over all other things, knowing this is exactly how others would see who his Dad truly was. They knew they could say whatever they desired to Jesus. He was with them, one of them and desired the best for them. They didn’t feel like a tool to be used or a project to be converted. They felt they were a person to be loved.  A person to be believed in. A person to be discipled. A person to be more like Jesus, so they could taste and see that the Lord is good.

Breakfast with a Beard

As I was downloading some of this information with a good friend of mine, Zac Gandara, over breakfast, he started to drop some knowledge on my head.

We’ve both learned a lot through our relationships with 3DM. Zach drew the familiar triangle with UP, IN, and OUT listed at the points:

He told me, the following. Seth, you will never have issues making friends with outsiders. You naturally have many relationships with many who are not yet believers. You will naturally have the “in” relationships found in community with like minded people who desire to make disciples . . . but what I don’t hear from your mouth is much of Jesus or Dad. Because you are so focused on the OUT portion of the triangle, you have really started to ignore the most important part of the triangle and the one that Jesus focused on primarily: the UP relationship with Dad. When that part is missing, true discipleship will not happen. Something is happening because you’ll always have many relationships, but the good news will not be at the center of these relationships. If that is missing . . . so is discipleship.

He then went on to show me the life of Jesus and how Jesus continually concentrated on his relationship with Dad (which informed his identity as God’s Son), which then informed his relationships with his disciples and the world.

Nailed it.

When we focus on our identity in Christ (the “Up” relationship), the “In” and “Out” will be informed and formed by the gospel . . . the good news.  If our “In” and “Out” relationships are informed by our “Up” relationship then discipleship will flow out of that.

Jesus’ Discipling Culture

Jesus wanted to fill the world with disciples who would show off his Dad in heaven. He did this by gathering twelve of the weirdest people he could have. Notice that he didn’t gather the smartest people, the ones with the most competency, but he gathered those that would actually follow him. He gathered the ones that would show up (a whole book could be written on this). What did he do with those twelve? He lived with them for three years before he ever released them on their own to multiply. Jesus knew that if multiplication was going to happen that would be like the original group, he would have to go deep with a few, instead of shallow with a lot.

To go deep with a few, Jesus knew the only way this was going to happen was to live life with his disciples and to teach them holistically where the gospel was hitting every area of their lives. In essence, Jesus knew he’d have to teach them head knowledge, heart knowledge, and hand knowledge . . . they’d have to know what Jesus was teaching, believe in what Jesus was teaching, and do what Jesus was teaching.

Jesus refused to put anything ahead of discipleship. He wanted those twelve men to have full access to him so they could see what he required of them. This meant these men were allowed into Jesus life at a very deep level, every day, and completely unchained. We see this was happening because of how comfortable these men became with Jesus. They yelled at Jesus on the boat when the winds and waves came. Peter said many things that got him in trouble. James and John asked their mom to make sure they could sit next Jesus in heaven. I could go on. Why do we see this? Because they were being discipled and when this happens all our muck and crap comes to the surface where the good news needs to be applied so we believe the good news and its power to set us free instead of being chained and enslaved to sin and guilt and shame.

Through 3DM and Launch, I’ve learned four stages of leadership development.

• I do you watch
• I do you help
• You do I help
• You do I watch

You can also use the MAWL method

• Model
• Assist
• Watch
• Leave

Here’s the big difference between us and Jesus. Jesus was willing to spend three years of life with the few in stages 1 and 2. He knew if he did when the disciples were sent out they’d look a lot like him instead of a muddy image of the original.

We want to hurry through the first two stages so we can send out more people, or we want to spend all our time in stage 1 so that we become a functional savior for people and they are never released.

David Rhodes showed me that if you look in the book of Acts you notice something pretty awesome. Look at what the dispcles are doing. They are preaching, taking care of the poor, praying, healing, being family, and suffering. What you’ll notice is when you cover up who is actually doing it you’d assume it’s Jesus. The “copy” or the multiplication that happened, looks almost identical to the original.

Why? Because Jesus actually discipled deep with a few, instead of shoveling information down the throat of many.

To be continued . . .

—

Seth McBee is the adopted son of God, husband of one wife, and father of three. He’s a graduate of Seattle Pacific University with a finance degree. By trade. Seth is an investment portfolio manager, serving as President of McBee Advisors, Inc. He is also a MC leader/trainer/coach and executive team member of the GCM Collective. Seth currently lives in Phoenix, AZ with his wife Stacy and their three children: Caleb, Coleman, and Madelynn. He is also the artist and co-author of the wildly popular (and free!) eBook, Be The Church: Discipleship & Mission Made Simple. Twitter: @sdmcbee.

Anticipating the Infinite Good News of Good Friday

In anticipation of Good Friday and in remembrance of the Giver of the gospel, we offer this simple liturgy. God bless you and keep you all. May you live out the good news of God’s infinite love to those around you this Easter.

The Last Supper

The sun sank over the olive groves in the west, and across Jerusalem the doorways were smeared with sacrificial blood. This was Passover, the culmination of high holy week, and though the city was ruled by Rome—occupied by soldiers under the command of procurator Pontius Pilate—families gathered to remember how Jehovah had liberated their ancestors.

When the table had been set and all of His followers had assembled, Jesus—who had been their Rabbi, their Lord—took a towel and a basin of water and washed the feet of his followers. They questioned this: it was a chore for a servant.

But, Jesus continued the task, saying, “You are right to call me Rabbi and Lord, but I tell you a servant is not greater than his master. A messenger is not greater than the one who sent him.”

Then the group took their places at the table, and as they passed the matzo, the unleavened bread, Jesus said, “One of you will betray me.”

His followers were horrified. It confirmed their fears. Hadn’t they heard rumors in Jerusalem? Weren’t the religious leaders conspiring in the temple? But, betrayal by a follower—this was unthinkable. Each questioned him, saying, “Not me, Rabbi. Tell me it’s not me.”

Jesus looked at Judas, who had already received his blood money from the conspirators.

He said, “Go. Buy what we need for the feast.”

And, Judas went out into the night.

Then Jesus took the matzo and blessed it and broke it and gave it to each of his followers, saying, “This is my body, broken for you. Take it and eat.”

He took the Passover cup of new wine and gave thanks to Jehovah God and offered it to His followers, saying, “This is my blood—the blood of the covenant, which is shed in atonement for many, for the forgiveness of sins.”

His followers did as he instructed, and Jesus said, “I will not eat or drink with you again until we meet in my Father’s house. After I’m gone, you will have each other. Continue to offer this bread and this wine in remembrance of me. You must love one another just as I have loved you. By this simple act, the whole world will know you are my followers.”

Prayer

Jesus, unite us in fellowship as we draw closer to you Unite us in communion by the power of your Holy Spirit.

Jesus, blessed is your name on high. Your love for us is infinite. Jesus, let us love one another as we know you love us.

To know this love, Jesus, to know the love of Your Father, to know Your Holy Spirit here among us now. This is eternal life. Hallelujah. Amen.

The Trial

That night Jesus walked with his followers through the olive groves of the Kidron Valley. Many of them were worried, and Peter approached him to say, “Rabbi, I will stay with you through any difficulty.”

But, Jesus told him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you’ll deny me three times.”

The hour was late. They rested in a garden outside the temple walls. Jesus often came to this spot to pray, and this was where Judas led the mob. They found Jesus, surrounded by a group of drowsy followers who all fled when they saw the swords and clubs of the crowd. Only Jesus remained.

Judas walked up to him, saying, “Rabbi,” and kissed Jesus on the cheek.

Then the mob seized him and brought Jesus to the religious conspirators. They proceeded to accuse him without due process of the law. Jesus listened to the accusations but said nothing.

Caiaphas, the High Priest, asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed?”

Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.”

Caiaphas tore his garments and screamed, “What further witnesses do we need? You have heard his blasphemy.”

At the first light of day, they hauled him to the Roman court. Pilate questioned Jesus and found him blameless, but the crowd began chanting, “Crucify him. Crucify him.”

To avoid a riot, Pilate washed his hands of the business and sentenced Jesus to death.

Jesus’ trial is troubling from a legal standpoint. Jewish law prohibited the opening of a trial at night. Jesus was assigned no defender. The allegation of blasphemy was not a capital offense, and trials for capital offenses required at least two days. Under Roman law, Jesus was found innocent, and yet he was sentenced with the most extreme penalty of the law simply to keep the peace. In other words, these proceedings were not merely unjust—the trial was illegal. Worse still, Jesus was abandoned by his closest followers. Even Peter denied him three times, cursing and insisting that he didn’t know Jesus.

Prayer

Jesus, You were a laughing stock to people who did not know you. Jesus, you were outlawed from human company. You were accused like a common thief.

Jesus, we have betrayed you to mockery, injustice, and disbelief. Jesus, we have belittled you. We have made much of ourselves.

We cry out to you, Lord Jesus. You understand our suffering and sorrow. Give us strength to remain in you Even in our own final dreadful trial. Amen.

The Execution

Following Pilate’s orders, the Roman troops took Jesus into the praetorium, stripped him naked, and forced a crown of thorns onto his head. They beat him with a barbed whip, flaying the skin off his back. As he stood there bleeding and trembling in shock, the soldiers laughed, bowing and calling him your majesty.

Once they were bored with this sport, the soldiers forced Jesus to march through the city streets, dragging the cross on which they would execute him. He was weakened by the beating. So the soldiers forced a passerby to carry the cross. In this way, they went to a rock quarry east of the city, a place called Golgotha because it looked like a human skull. There the soldiers tied Jesus’ arms to the cross and drove long metal spikes between the two bones of his forearms. His feet they pinned together with a single metal spike through bones of his ankles. Then they lifted the cross into the air, dropping the base into a hole, and left him there to die.

Death by crucifixion is slow. The body gradually suffocates. In order to draw breath, Jesus had to lift himself by the nails piercing his arms and legs.

A crowd gathered to mock him, shouting, “You’re the Son of God. Come down off that cross.” The carrion birds circled overhead. Dogs waited beneath.

After several hours of agony, Jesus said, “It is finished,” and bowed his head and gave up his Spirit. The soldiers thrust a spear through his abdomen into his heart and lungs, and he was officially declared dead.

Prayer

Jesus, You are the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For you Jesus all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, all things have been created through you and for you.

Jesus, you are before all things, and in you all things hold together. You are the head of the body, the church. You are the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead.

Jesus, God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in you. Through you we are reconciled. You made peace through your blood, shed on the cross. Jesus, in our sin, we were once your enemies. In your grace, we are now your Brothers and Sisters.

By your atonement alone we are holy in God’s sight. In you alone, we are without blemish, free from accusation. Lord let us continue in faith, established and firm, Lord Jesus, give us strength to remain forever in the hope held out in the gospel. Hallelujah. Amen.

—

Ben Roberts is a member of Austin City Life, and a follower of Christ. He rents in amazingly ugly house in Windsor Park where he lives with his wife (Jessica), son (Solomon), dog (Charles Bronson II), and two very angry chickens. A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers, he is currently working on a novel.

How to Multiply Disciples Like Jesus

Although mentorship is meaningful, we can’t expect for it to change lives the way Jesus did with his disciples. The disciples walked with Jesus through crowded streets, witnessing people be healed, abandoning their comfortable lives to learn from Jesus. They learned from Jesus so that they could continue his mission. That is a true disciple. And it is the model we should follow. Meeting once a week for a life update doesn’t lend itself to trust and accountability. We can discuss theology and talk through our struggles and heartaches without ever really experiencing life together. My prayer is that we would disciple by inviting people into our daily lives, schedules, meetings, marriages, and families—like Jesus did. Discipleship must push people towards their calling and mission.

Often the older generation doesn’t trust the younger generation because we have a very independent, entrepreneurial reputation. This reputation implies, “We don’t need you.” The reputation, assumptions, and demoralization is easier to look down upon than correct. Instead, the younger generation needs to be shepherded and empowered. The older generation can do this by opening up their lives as an example, and they should say, “Follow us as we follow Christ.” In this relationship, we are responsible to hold one another accountable to live in a manner worthy of the gospel.

Paul Disciples Timothy

1 Timothy 4:11-16 deepened my understanding of Paul and Timothy’s relationship. Paul approached Timothy with trust, allowing Paul to disciple him with boldness. Paul trusted Timothy because he witnessed the prophecy of Timothy’s gifting; he witnessed Timothy stewarding that gift; and observed the elders laying hands on and praying over Timothy. He knew God had plans for Timothy, so in their relationship, Paul drove him toward his calling and the Lord

Also, Paul’s trust in Timothy affected his approach to teaching. He trusted Timothy to follow him as he followed Christ (1 Cor. 11:1). He treated Timothy as a fellow pastor capable of sharing the gospel with the same passion and conviction he had. For example, Paul wrote this in his second letter, “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2). Paul had faith in Timothy’s gift to teach because he trusted his character, conviction, and passion to share the gospel.

Not only this, but Paul labored in prayer for his disciple.

I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. —2 Timothy 1:3-7

We experience abundant life when we walk as the beloved bride of Christ, and we see the riches of his grace in this intimate place. In my own life, God has used discipleship as a way to reveal the great depth of my purpose and worth. The women who disciple me know my gifts and my calling, and they train me to live in a way that fulfills this calling. If they notice me failing to use my God-given ability, then they admonish me to examine myself and reprioritize. Most importantly, they fervently pray for me asking for the favor of God to be upon me. These women trust me, and they invest in me because they believe God has gifted and called me with special purpose.

From the Bible, Into Our Lives

This kind of discipleship is not normal, expected, or comfortable. I invite one of the girls I disciple to spend time with me in my workplace, with my friends, and in my home. I ask her to partake in more than a coffee date (although we have those, too). I’m not responsible for the fruit she bears or her rate of growth, but I am confident that God will work faithfully as we seek to make disciples like he did.

If you have a family, ask your disciple to help you cook dinner for your family. If you are a businessman, ask your disciple to help you prepare for a meeting. If you’re a student, ask your disciple to help you study for your next exam. The opportunities for mission, instruction, and purpose are endless when we’re doing life on life discipleship. Trust that the person you disciple has been gifted and called by God in a unique and intentional way. Pray like Paul, and receive wisdom concerning how to best steward your relationships.

This kind of discipleship will shift a demoralized younger generation into mature disciples of Jesus Christ who will go out to make, mature, and multiply more disciples. I eagerly expect a revival through the restoration of prayer and discipleship. May we boldly disciple the younger generation in faith—just as Paul did Timothy (2 Tim. 3:10-16). May we boldly ask God to fan the flame of our gifts, through prayer and devoted discipleship.

—

Chelsea Vaughn (@chelsea725) is a graduating senior at DBU and the executive director for Internal Relations at INITIATIVE. Chelsea spent her childhood overseas in Thailand, and her parents currently live in Australia. She knew God during these formative years, but truly grew into her Christ-given identity as a senior in High School. The influence of diversity and rich culture in her life has been transformational and a beautiful launching pad for her ministry in Dallas with INITIATIVE and Movement Day. She does freelance writing and editing for various non-profits, and hopes to spend her life using her gift for communication to reach culture and communities with the love of Jesus.

How the Gospel Comes to the City Through Community

Our cities remain the gathering place of culture, human capital, and change. Suburban flight is a reality as young educated creatives flock to cities for the opportunities and lifestyle they offer. All this comes on the heals of the American church surrendering property and influence in the urban core while finding its place as the religion of the suburbs. Evangelical Christianity doesn’t have a literal or cultural place in the city, we gave it up decades ago. Now, we’re trying to reengage in a context divergent from the orderly and homogeneous context of the suburbs the church has made its home. Cities need both worship gatherings and missional communities to intersect the people and needs of the city. This article will focus on the need for missional communities in the city. The gospel shines brightly, speaks clearly, and welcomes sojourners with questions and doubts in the context of relationships.

Good News in the City

Oddly, the first step forward isn’t toward cutting edge strategies or culturally relevant events. It’s pressing into the gospel—the thing of first importance. The gospel is the good news that Jesus has defeated sin, death, and evil through his own death and resurrection and is making all things new, even us. This is good news in the city and for the city.

The city is where death, evil, and destruction is obvious to all. The affects of sin, whether it is acknowledged as sin or not, is exposed in every neighborhood. The city is where the abused gather together. Where the enslaved, broken, and downtrodden end up. It’s where schools fail to keep kids safe. The city is where injustice is present on almost every corner. Where isolation from community, family, and others is rampant. Cities are settling grounds for fugitives and refugees. They gather orphans.

The city is also a place for hope. It’s where we hope in our humanity, ingenuity, non-profits, and creative solutions. The city is a place of beautiful artwork, music, and cuisine. Cities gather ideas. The city is where humans, created in God’s image, thrive in expressing some of God’s most beautiful attributes: compassion, mercy, creativity, and justice.

Despite the high volume of humans, each made in God’s image, our hopes and solutions always fall short. Despite the population density, we need loving community. Despite the creative capital, we need justice and healing. Despite the plethora of opportunities, we need lasting satisfaction, joy.

The gospel of Jesus is good news in the city. He defeats sin, death, and evil through the cross and empty tomb. Jesus isn’t just defeating he is recreating, making all things new. This is good news in cities of unfulfilled promise and expectation of complete restoration. This good news is what every mayoral candidate promises, but only Jesus delivers—not only a new city, but a new humanity. The gospel offers redemption, restoration, and renewal.

Community and Mission in the City

The gospel saves us from sin and death toward something: unity with God, unity with his people, and the ministry of reconciliation the gospel of Jesus offers. In other words, Jesus calls us to himself, to his community, and to his restorative mission. The gospel is the starting place. The cause for the gathering and scattering of his people on mission.

I’ve never been around a community that was centered on the gospel that wasn’t on mission. A gospel-centered people is a missional people. I’ve never been around a community that loves one another, that doesn’t have Jesus at the middle of everything they do. A gospel-focused people is a missional community. If the truth of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection isn’t woven into the fabric of everything a community does, it has no purpose outside of its own will to make their cities better. Without the gospel at the center, the community has no reason to endure and bare all things together other than its consumeristic pursuit of ideal community. This is no different in the city.

Our cities need the gospel to be made visible and audible. This is certainly accomplished on Sunday mornings in worship service throughout the city. However, the gospel must pervade the city through God’s scattered people. The city needs gospel communities on mission nestled into every crack of the city.

What is a missional community? The space of this article does not allow me to get into the depths and nuances of a missional community. But simply put, gospel communities are a group of people learning to follow Jesus together in a way that renews their city, town, village, hamlet, or other space. They aren’t fancy. In fact, they are almost always a messy community of everyday citizens who are devoted to Jesus, one another, their neighbors, and their city. This means they invest in each others’ lives, calling one another to repent and behold Christ daily. A missional community reorients their activity to center not on themselves, but on Christ. They struggle forward as in process sinners redeemed by the unconditional and infinite grace of God. They share meals, step humbly into the injustice in their city, welcome others into community, and take care of each other.

How to Become a Missional Community

Every missional community has three natural ingredients: qualified and called leaders, a clear purpose, and committed participants. These three elements are where you must begin as a leader. After these components are brought together your first task is laying a biblical foundation for missional community.

Qualified and Called Leaders

As you dream about starting a community, you must ask these important questions about leadership and prayerfully consider them:

• Am I qualified and called to lead a missional community? Do I have capacity to be a leader? (See this article on leadership roles and calling)
• How do I need to grow as a follower of Jesus? (See this template of personal development as a leader)
• Who will lead alongside you? How will you invite them into leadership? How do they compliment your gifts?

The Purpose of Your Community

Before you start making phone calls and sending out invitations to start a missional community, take some time to think about why missional community. Why do you want to start one? Be honest with yourself. How would you describe a missional community in your own words? It’s important you describe it well as you invite people to participate. Your definition of a missional community should include: shared life, the gospel, care for the city and neighbors, and making disciples.

Think through what you are passionate about and who you are passionate about. Is it a neighborhood, a group of people, or the specific names and faces you interact with everyday? What would a community that proclaims and promotes the gospel to them look like? What would it look like to welcome your neighbors into that kind of community?

A Committed Core

Begin to pray for the people God will bring into that community. Pray for people to come alongside you and help. Pray for co-leaders and for God to connect you with others who have a similar passion. Pray for God to bring names to mind. Think through the specific people in your life you want to join your new missional community. They’ll need to live or work close to you since its hard to commute to community. You aren’t looking for all-stars or elite Christians—they don’t exist. Instead, you are praying for people who will commit to the process of becoming a community. Who will be teachable, humble, and honest in faith and repentance?

As you invite people, give them a picture of gospel-shaped community alive in God’s mission. As you describe what you are prayerfully starting, avoid making your invitation tailor-made to each person, where you sacrifice your convictions. For example, you really want your friends who are struggling in marriage to join, so you tell them it will be a group that fixes marriages. Invite people into a community that isn’t centered on their needs, hobbies, or passions but the gospel of Jesus and his mission.

Start by Laying a Foundation on the Gospel, Community, and Mission

Spend the first chunk of your time as a missional community growing in biblical understanding of what these large topics are. You cannot move forward without laying this foundation. However, your community’s foundation will be the composite assumptions and ideals of each individual member. It is painfully difficult to lead a community that doesn’t have a biblical foundation on the essentials. You can do this a variety of ways.

• Study a book of the Bible by asking these questions: what does this teach us about who God is, what he has done, who we are, and how we ought to live in our city? I would recommend Ephesians, Colossians, or 1 Peter. This helps a group of people see the connections between the gospel, community, mission while developing an understanding of the Scriptures.
• Go through an oral telling of the grand narrative of Scripture. This gives your community an understanding of the gospel and God’s mission for his people. It helps root a community in the big picture. An excellent version of this has been put together by Soma Communities.
• Use a Missional Community primer or curriculum. There are several options out there by the various missional community tribes. Jonathan Dodson and I recently released our eight week guide that spends considerable time unpacking the gospel, community, and mission.

Be Committed to the Process and Your City

Missional community is a mess and a process. A community leaning into this process is the ideal missional community on this side of new creation. A community that engages the journey of being conformed into the image of Christ is a dynamic picture of the gospel the city needs. Your calling is to start where you are and take steps forward, through prayer, study, shared meals, showing up to serve, inviting others in, and becoming increasingly present in your city. A great missional community is one that regularly asks: how are we allowing the gospel to shape us? What is God calling us to? How is God challenging us to be conformed into the image of Christ? This is the whole deal.

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Brad Watson (@bradawatson) serves as a pastor of Bread&Wine Communities where he develops and teaches leaders how to form communities that love God and serve the city. Brad is the author of Raised? and Called Together: A Guide to Forming Missional Communities. He lives in southeast Portland with his wife and their two daughters. You can read more from Brad at www.bradawatson.com

Why Create Disciple Multiplying Movements

Historically, movements stop because they were primarily leader-led information dumps. Information isn’t a bad thing, but information-driven movements are limited in influence. Why should we create disciple multiplying movements? How can we create them?

It's What We Were Made For

In the garden of Eden, we see image bearers of God made to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:22, 26-28). By issuing his first great commission, God did not merely intend for us to have more people over for Thanksgiving dinner. Rather, he wanted his beautiful image to fill the entire earth through the multiplication of his image bearers. But through Adam, we sinned and were separated from God.

In the attempt to author our own story, we sought center stage—pushing God's goals for us aside. We sought to multiply our image for the sake of our own fame rather than God's fame.

When someone repents and turns to God, we must show them their new mission by pointing back to the garden. We must show how their mission is all about multiplying for the sake of God's glory, not multiplying a life all about them and their legacy.

Most small groups in churches believe their goal is to get to know each other or form a close bond. If this is the goal, multiplication will never be desired. Drawing close to one another is not the goal of missional community, but making disciples who make disciples is (being fruitful and multiplying images of Jesus). Drawing close to one another happens because Jesus has given us the same Father, and we are a part of the same family. So, forming a close bond is a bi-product rather than the goal of living together on mission as family.

This Must be on Our Lips

If our goal is to make disciples who make disciples (to be fruitful and multiply), then multiplication must be on our lips constantly. I tell those who aren’t even followers of Jesus yet, that we desire to see communities like ours across the world doing the same thing. So, when they join our community as a follower of Jesus, they’ve already been discipled to know that we desire multiplication.

But it doesn’t stop there. We continue to talk about it as a group and continue to seek to hear from the Spirit on his timing and his power to send us out. The best way I can describe this is by relating it to your child. Do you desire to see your child stay in your house until they die? Or do you desire to see them leave the house and have a family of their own? Do you then wait until they are eighteen and spring this on them and then kick them out? Or, do you continue talking to them about it, train them and seek for them to be ready when the day comes to leave your house and go and be fruitful and multiply with their new family? This is the same thing we need to be doing with our church families. We need to seek to see them grow in maturity and grow in the gospel so that they too can lead a family of missionary servants to live out the effects of the gospel with those around them.

People often ask me how I make it easy for our groups to multiply. I say the same thing every time—You must regularly talk about multiplication and train the next group for its certainty. It must always be on your lips and prayers, and always on your people’s lips and prayers. If it’s not, then it will be very difficult when it happens—like kicking out your unsuspecting child and telling them it’s healthy.

Transforming and Transferable

You will do well by building the foundation of multiplication. You will also do well by regularly talking about it and listening to the Spirit in the process. But what happens if you have no leaders to lead the multiplication? This is where many groups and movements fail. The reason is that people in the group look at the leader and think, “There’s no way I can do what he’s doing. This takes too much time and too much theological knowledge.” Not only that, but you’ve merely spoken about multiplication without transforming people’s hearts to seek it out.

Merely talking about making disciples is sometimes fun and it’s a great theological exercise for the mind. But mere talk and theologizing rarely inspire people to make disciples.

If you desire to see others gripped to make disciples, you must not only penetrate their intellect. You must also aim at their hearts. If you merely aim at their heads with theological reasons why it’s good to make disciples, people will always come up with reasons why they are not convinced of its realities.

I think of Jonathan Edwards when he spoke of God’s holiness and grace and compared it to honey.¹

In this way, he says, there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes; but a man cannot have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. The former may be obtained by hearsay, but the latter only by seeing the countenance. When the heart is sensible of the beauty and amiableness of a thing, it necessarily feels pleasure in the apprehension. It is implied in a person's being heartily sensible of the loveliness of a thing, that the idea of it is sweet and pleasant to his soul; which is a far different thing from having a rational opinion that it is excellent.

So, we must, as leaders, show others what it means to make disciples. When a follower of Jesus sees new disciples being made, and they are a part of it, their heart will rejoice. And like honey on the lips, they will desire more honey instead of merely talking about honey. Jesus did the same with the blind man in John 9. He healed him, so that the blind man would taste and see that the Lord was good. Then he supported that heart-transforming act, to theologically tackle the implications of who Jesus was afterward in John 9:35-41. Notice the way the blind man desired others to taste and see that the Lord Jesus was good—because his heart was transformed.

Not only do we seek to transform, but we must also make sure what we do is transferable. I have many things I can share from experience that are transferable for my people, but you must ask yourself these types of questions:

• Do I need a theological degree to lead the community like I do? Remember, not all people like to read and study as much as many of us pastors do. If we want to create a movement of disciple-making, then we have to move away from leading from a position of “trained” men, into leading like “untrained” men. (By the way, I’ve never been to seminary, nor am I paid by the church.)

• Do I need to be paid by the church to have the time to do what I do? See above.

• What resources are available to give future leaders so that they don’t feel like they have to think of new topics to discuss and study in their Missional Community? I do not do any book studies in the Bible that cause me to do an immeasurable amount of study and reading on my own. If I do, then people will see the group as one that can only be led by someone with my capacity. Instead, I use easily transferable studies (e.g., check out www.bild.org)

• How can I model all of this, so that I am going to be able to transfer leadership, instead of being the functional savior for our groups? Make sure you lead as you want others to lead. Don’t do studies that can only be led by a seminarian. Don’t do so many activities that can only be done by those with a job inside the church. Remember, as you lead, you are discipling those in your group on what it looks like to lead a group of disciple-makers. You can’t say one thing and model another. They’ll see right through that.

Because I have worked hard to hear the Spirit’s leading in this, 80% of those that are a part of the Missional Communities in my expression within Soma Communities desire to lead MCs at some point. When I baptized a new disciple, he first desired to lead a group of disciple-makers. He saw this as the only option for someone who was a follower of Jesus and, that it wasn’t anything special. In spite of being a new disciple, he didn’t see this as some high calling only for a few.

Since we want to lay the foundation of multiplication, we regularly talk about making disciples who make disciples. We seek to do this by modeling it for them in ways easily transferable. New disciples often can’t wait to lead others in the making of disciples who multiply to make more disciples.

So, go! Be fruitful disciples of Jesus by multiplying his beautiful image everywhere.

^{1. Mongerism.com. “A Divine and Supernatural Light.” ↩}

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Seth McBee is the adopted son of God, husband of one wife, and father of three. He’s a graduate of Seattle Pacific University with a finance degree. By trade. Seth is an investment portfolio manager, serving as President of McBee Advisors, Inc. He is also a MC leader/trainer/coach and executive team member of the GCM Collective. Seth currently lives in Phoenix, AZ with his wife Stacy and their three children: Caleb, Coleman, and Madelynn. He is also the artist and co-author of the wildly popular (and free!) eBook, Be The Church: Discipleship & Mission Made Simple. Twitter: @sdmcbee.

Delegating Authority for Mission

The floor was remarkably dirty. And with the closet door opening and electrical outlet plugged, I was ready to rectify the situation. The colloquialism for all aboard in the Torrey House is everyone on the couch and our more agile child deftly made her escape from harm’s way. Judah is less deft and his poor legs could not get him to the couch’s safety. Without looking I started the vacuum and heard the emanation of cries from my little son. It is funny how things that should not be scary can be terrifying.

As I began to clean up the mess, the terror in Judah’s voice was matched by facial expressions and leg stomping tension. His eyes locked onto the vacuum moving seemingly on its own in conquest of the floor. His gaze was set. It took a stern “Judah!” to snap him out of his gaze and set his eyes upon me. Trying to be brief, I simply say “trust dad.” This is a little different from “trust me” but I’ll get to the importance of this distinction after a brief Biblical excurse.

Immediately upon seeing Judah’s face and hearing my words the text of Jesus walking on water struck me afresh (Matthew 14; Mark 6; John 6). Many people have latched onto Matthew’s version of the story because of the added details concerned with Peter,

24 but the boat by this time was a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. 25 And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. 26 But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. 27 But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” 28 And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” 29 He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” 31 Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” 32 And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. 33 And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” (Matthew 14:24-33)

More ink than could ever be necessary has been spilt on Peter’s behavior in this passage. Ranging from “getting out of the boat,” “keep your eyes on Jesus,” to “keep the faith,” pastors wax moralistically about the only character to which church members can seemingly relate. However, that focus loses sight of what actually occurrs in the text. In this text, Christ is relating to Peter. He does this by establishing his authority over the water, passing it to Peter, and doing it all merely with His voice (an important emphasis of Matthew’s marking Jesus as the new Moses).

In Judah’s case, my stern rebuke was meant to drive his attention from the vacuum to my hand which was guiding the vacuum. I was in control of the vacuum and no harm would come to him. In Peter’s case Christ had spoken peace to everyone in the boat. Peter seeking proof of the person before him requested from Christ a thing only Jesus could deliver—control of the water. Peter had faith in Christ. He had it before he stepped out of the boat and he had it when he asked Christ to save him. So why does Christ say that Peter doubts? Peter’s doubt was with respect to what Christ has bestowed upon him. Peter’s lack of faith was a smudge on Christ’s authority to delegate authority (something that gets addressed with finality in the Great Commission).

Judah responded much the same way as Peter. He looked at me and heard my words. He saw my hand pushing the vacuum. And then he ran away as fast as possible in fear of the vacuum attacking him in its conquest of the floor. Judah had misunderstood that when I said “trust dad” I was communicating to him assured protection and implied authority. Peter knew the identity of Jesus but was unconvinced about his ability to relate His authority.

The book of Matthew does not leave Peter here however. Throughout the Gospel Jesus is committed to delegating His authority. It is in Matthew’s gospel that the infamous “on this rock I will build my church” (Matt 16:13-20) is stated to Peter. Though debated across many lines, Christ here bestows upon Peter the authority and ability to accomplish the spread of the gospel in the book of Acts (not a permanent “vicar of Christ” role). Yet, Christ is not done with delegating the authority of His church. In the Great Commission Christ echoes 2 Chronicles 36:23 (the conclusion of the Jewish Scriptures) in delegating authority to his disciples over the entire earth. This authority has trickled down throughout the church age. The delegation of Christ’s authority remains with Christians today. Like Judah and Peter, the church is called to acknowledge the authority it has been given. This is the way we relate to Peter walking on the water of Galilee. We go out on mission with authority.

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Joshua Torrey is a New Mexico boy in an Austin, TX world. He is husband to Alaina and father to Kenzie & Judah and spends his free time studying for the edification of his household. These studies include the intricacies of hockey, football, curling, beer, and theology. You can follow him @benNuwn and read his theological musings and running commentary of the Scriptures at The Torrey Gazette.

How to Shine the Light of the Gospel Into Public Schools

I’ve had the honor of writing a lot on evangelism, gospel-centered ministry, and spiritual awakenings. I’ve probably never been more excited about a project than a book that just released called Get Out: Student Ministry in the Real World (Rainer Publishing). Why? Because I wrote it with our son Josh, himself a student pastor now. It's a follow-up to my missional, gospel-centered student ministry book As You Go (NavPress). Filled with real-life examples from effective student ministers, this book challenges the church to get outside the church building into the community, and particular to impact the public schools with the gospel. The following is adapted from the Introduction to the book. The Western Church faces a significant change in culture in our time. Student ministry is in the heart of the vortex of change. “The combined impact of the Information Age, postmodern thought, globalization, and racial-ethnic pluralism that has seen the demise of the grand American story also has displaced the historic role the church has played in that story,” Researcher Mike Regele observed, continuing: “As a result, we are seeing the marginalization of the institutional church.”¹ Just because your student ministry has been effective in the past featuring events and personalities does not mean it stands ready to face the challenges to the gospel in our time.

Christianity in the West has been increasingly marginalized in our culture; many of us simply refuse to see it. We certainly have not lost all our influence, but on many issues that were once in the center of American society (protecting the unborn, the sanctity of marriage, heterosexual marriage only, to name a few) have now been pushed out of the mainstream of cultural norms. How do we respond? We must think less like Christians enjoying a home field advantage and more like Christians living as missionaries. In their excellent book Everyday Church, Chester and Timmis argue for a shift in ministry focus to meet the challenges of our time, and this shift especially relates to the front line of student ministry: “Our marginal status is an opportunity to rediscover the missionary call of the people of God. We can recover witness to Christ unmuddied by nominal Christianity.”²

Student Pastor Spencer Barnard summarizes how things have changed in student ministry on most public school campuses today:

I'm the Lead Student Pastor at The Church at Battle in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Campus Ministry is a huge part of what we do on all of our campuses. In my 16 years of doing student ministry my strategy has changed a lot. Just in the last five years things have drastically changed. The days of showing up at lunch with pizza for students are over in most places. You have to earn the right to be on a campus. There needs to be a reason for you to be on a campus. Where a lot of student pastors go wrong is that we show up and say we are there to hang out with students. We could do that in the past, but when 30-year-olds or even 20-year-olds show up on a junior high or high school campus, it’s just weird in this culture today.  It worked 10 years ago, but in most places it just doesn’t work any more. There needs to be a reason we are there: we should be there to serve and support the administration. Our role is to be there for the school, and not expect the school to be there for us. With that in mind we have to be careful to follow all the school’s rules and present ourselves in a respectful way.

Here are some of the ways we serve schools:

• We take food to the teacher’s lounges and teacher in-service days. One of the best things that has happened for us is the government cutting funds for the schools, because it gave us the opportunity to meet their needs first hand.
• We make our facilities available to them for meetings and banquets. We hosted 10 different sporting banquets this last year and it has earned us a great reputation with our schools and also showcased our facilities to students and parents.
• We talk with coaches and teachers about leadership training or become Chaplains for sporting teams. We found out that many coaches loved the extra help.
• We take drinks to the band, cheerleaders, and sporting teams.
• We are on the Substitute Teacher list. Also, some schools need volunteers to monitor testing.

Getting to know the Principal and the office staff has been huge as well.  We will take with us some Starbucks gift cards or Chick Fila cards to give away as we meet teachers, coaches, or administration.

The final thing we do, and probably one of the biggest connecting points for us with schools, is FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes.) FCA has a great reputation on all of our campuses. We have developed a great relationship with them and because of it they have allowed our staff to become huddle leaders at eight different campuses around our city. This gives us a huge opportunity to connect with students who normally don't attend church at all. We have seen our student ministry grow by about 50% over the last eight months and I would attribute it to how our team has shifted our work regarding campus ministry.

The public school campus is arguably the greatest mission field in America. With so many challenges to the Christian faith in the West today, we need to be reminded that the best way to respond to darkness is to turn on the light: the Light of the Gospel!

^{1. Cited in Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Everyday Church: Gospel Communities on Mission (Crossway, Re:Lit: 2013) Kindle Edition, 14.↩}

^{2. Chester and Timmis, Everyday Church, 10. Italics added.↩}

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Alvin L. Reid is husband to Michelle and father to Josh and Hannah. He is a professor of evangelism and student ministry at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, as well as a popular speaker and author. He has written numerous books on student ministry, evangelism, missional Christianity, and spiritual awakenings. Follow him on Twitter: @AlvinReid.

Alvin L. Reid and Josh Reid, Get Out: Student Ministry in the Real World Rainer Publishing, ©2015. Used by permission. http://rainerpublishing.com/

Confessions of a Recovering Missionary Hipster

We had just moved from a place far, far away. Our life was anything but ordinary, or at least, so it seemed. Temperatures didn't get above the 0 degree mark in the winter, and most people in America (particularly people in American churches) that we talked with thought we were either crazy or some sort of modern day super hero. The accolades were nice, honestly. I was pretty good with the humble response.

"It's a calling"

"We're just being obedient"

But the fact remained, it was an unusual life and I more or less liked it.

The Unconventional Life

The word hipster has been rebirthed in the past few years. Hipster used to refer to someone who was into jazz music. Now (at least from what can I gather from today's kids), a hipster is someone who is intentionally unconventional and aloof from the popular and the ordinary. I think the modern idea mostly involves odd beards and indie music. I'm not 100% on that though. It does seem that the term still has a a lot to do with music. Apparently, a hipster (as defined by this generation) can't listen to the same music everyone else does. As soon as a band gets too popular, they're finished in the hipster community. Sell-outs. Mumford and Sons used to be a hipster band, until they won a Grammy. I used to boast to my kids that I was listening to U2 in the early 80's when they were still an underground, post-punk band from Ireland that no one had ever heard of. Unimpressed, I was promptly dubbed a U2-hipster and we moved on. The things we learn from the kids these days.

Hear what I'm saying. I loved my work in Ulaanbaatar. College students crammed into my living room every week, sharing the Kingdom of Jesus with young people who had never heard about Jesus in that way before, late night discussions with young men about life, family, girls, and the future: I lived for this. I still miss the work, and deeply, deeply miss the Mongolian people who had become such a part of my unconventional life in Central Asia.

We’re the Missionary Hipsters

Unconventional. That's an American living someplace other than America. There's something strangely appealing about unconventional. To me, the original U2 hipster, anyway. Dealing with time zones and talking about travel plans and concerning one's self with language and culture and lamenting the lack of peanut butter. There's something appealing to the human ego about that. Any expatriated person would admit it, in an honest moment. There's an embraced identity. We're not the norm or the ordinary. We're the missionary hipsters.

Last year was the year our life as Americans abroad ceased. We are no longer recognized as missionaries. It was a tough year at many levels, and the culmination of difficulty and displacement hit me one morning last summer. We had moved back to America and were house-sitting for a friend. I was taking my coffee on the front porch early, before the South Carolina summer sun could gain too much heat and intensity. I watched home after home come to life that day. Little white sedans leaving cookie cutter houses going to 9-5 jobs somewhere in Greenville. I had this sinking feeling that this was now my life. Normal. Ordinary. American.

I didn't want that. I liked my life before.

Wait . . . I take that sentence back. I liked my identity before.

Grace in the Ordinary

That moment of sinking into a sea of ordinariness was over six months ago. I've learned something really important since then. Grace is the water that makes up this sea. In reality, Grace is demonstrated in the ordinary much more than it ever is in what we call extraordinary. I'm finding it astounding, really.

I shouldn't be surprised. The Bible gives illustrious examples of grace in the everyday. From an ordinary man like Abraham and an ordinary public speaker like Moses to an ordinary young lady like Mary and an ordinary fisherman like Peter. There is remarkable beauty in the things we see every day, no matter where one lives. I'm learning to look for it, to see it and to celebrate it. The best stories, the one's that carry real meaning and have real impact, are the one's that celebrate ordinary people doing ordinary things, demonstrating amazing grace and beauty. It's there. It's really there.

I am seeing that now.

Small white sedans and cookie-cutter suburban houses contain a thousand flashes of grace and when looked at from just the right angle, breath-taking beauty is there.

My eyes are now wide-open to this. I'm looking. The great thing is that I don't have to look far to see.

I still miss my old life and ministry—and painfully miss my Mongolian friends and colleagues. But, I no longer want to be aloof from the ordinary. I don't need to be unconventional. Embracing the everyday and the stuff of earth and life is a better way to live. God is in the ordinary. Grace is in the ordinary. Our lives are a series of simple stories with simple beginnings that a sovereign, wise and good God is moving toward a glorious end.

That's not ordinary or cookie-cutter at all. That's magnificent.

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Bernie Anderson and his wife Renee’ have been married for 25 years, and have two grown children. After serving in the pastorate for 13 years, the Andersons moved to Mongolia, where they served college students and did leadership development for 8 years. Currently they are living in South Carolina and Bernie works with World Relief, as a director for church partnership. Bernie regularly blogs, posts photographs and tweets at branderson.me and @mongolman.

Originally posted Branderson.me. Used with permission.

Jesus is Better Than Kingdom Building

One of my favorite quotes comes from Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, who was a catalyst for the 100-year long Moravian prayer movement. It’s reported he said, “Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.” However, that’s only half true. I mean, I want it to be one of my favorite quotes, at least the principle behind it: embracing the obscurity of my vocation—which in my case, is pastoral ministry—and being content with my name not being recognized, except by the people I shepherd. What if I never write a book or even another article? What if I never get to speak at a conference or have the type of “ministry success” that seminary students only dream of? I come back repeatedly to these questions as I continue to battle this one nagging temptation: I want my name to be great.

Feeding the Monster

As a seminary student, the battle is often subtle. However, between the several thousand pages of reading and the many writing assignments, not to mention conversations with those clearly more brilliant, reflective, and academically gifted than myself, there’s a dullness that builds, a frustration if you will. Instead of seeking to celebrate how these fellow brothers and sisters of mine are truly gifts to God’s church, I find a discontented soul.

I find myself asking God, “Why do they have that much influence? Why can’t I do things like that? After all, I’m more educated than they are and more thoughtful than they are.” However, the opposite is true as well, which can be even more paralyzing: “Why am I not as smart as them? Why do the original languages have to be so hard for me? Why can’t they come naturally? Man, I can’t look stupid in front of them. I want them to approve of me and think I have something to offer to the conversation.” It haunts me. In fact, just like all idolatry (at least, at some point), it’s debilitating. Too often, I let my heart drift away from the reality of the gospel in my life and I seek to find contentment and identity in other places, building my own kingdom one lie and unmet expectation at a time.

As a millennial, I am often burdened by the implied expectations (or perceived expectations) that much of this radical, go-go-go, social justice-y, don’t slow down until you’re dead, type of Christianity that seems to be so common with Christians my age. Because I see what other Christians my age are doing, how much influence God has given them, I often try to one-up them, overcommitting myself, neglecting rest, and feeling guilty when I have to say, “No.” I’ve become perpetually exhausted and overworked. I put too much on my plate because I don’t want to disappoint anyone. The most ludicrous thing about seeking to make my name great is trying to please people I don’t see on a regular basis. It’s as if I am trying to please the idea of that person. I’m paralyzed by an abstract, hypothetical person. I can’t really please what isn’t really real, yet I try often.

It is these temptations, fears, insecurities, and atmosphere that many current ministry leaders, seminary students, and future pastors and church planters find themselves in. With all the gospel-centered, missional living talk, we can easily go from trying to proclaim the gospel in a culturally sensitive and relevant way to trying to build an empire, complete with full-blown PR campaigns and speaking engagements. We may even launch a new website or two. None of this alone is bad, of course. I have seen these used well and I have seen these go terribly, terribly wrong. Nonetheless, it should give us pause as we are about to tweet that pithy theological reflection, sign that book contract, build that blog, or speak at that big event to ask ourselves the pointed question, “If Jesus was not glorified and I got all the credit for this, would I be okay with that? Is this platform about the gospel or about me?” That’s a painful question to ask because if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll find many messy things in our hearts, stuff we would rather leave alone. We’ll come across mixed motives and unchecked pride. We may find a love for theological systems or projects rather than people. We may discover that all our efforts are spent in building and maintaining a platform, a name, which seeks to make much of us—but belittles Christ. This kind of honesty, it hurts. It’s painful, but it’s good. It’s good because the more we admit our brokenness, the more we admit we don’t have it together, that we have limits, that we truly are human and that means something, we will be able to more confidently proclaim the joy of the Christian life—Jesus is better.

Free Delight Forever

In Jesus, we are free. In fact, the greatest truth we can ever experience as believers is that of our union with Christ. As ministry leaders, we must daily come back to this well and drink deeply from it. We must not neglect to see this truth deeply hidden in our hearts and change the way we “live humanly in Jesus.”¹ In other words, we must cease to depersonalize the cross and understand what it means to be “in Christ.” As Marcus Peter Johnson writes, “Christ is our salvation and that we are the recipients of his saving work precisely and only because we are recipients of the living Christ. Our union with the living Christ is, in other words, what it means to be saved.”² This is the greatest news in the world and between all the blogs, sermons, office work, hospital visits, and dying saints, our weary hearts must come back to this repeatedly. Christ is our salvation. Christ is our salvation.³ Let it echo.

Otherwise, the daily “long obedience in the same direction” will become less important to us because platforms seem to offer more excitement than what we’re living. Deep down, we would rather be remembered than remain faithful. It’s a bad trade. Don’t fall for it. As we become experientially aware of our union with Christ as we are cognitively aware, we begin to live less and less for platforms and people-pleasing. We recognize that while being made in God’s image, we possess dignity and value, that reality never trumps the preciousness and worth of Jesus Christ. It gives us perspective and helps us to live rightly and serve in our ministries in a health, sustainable way. We can be content with being finite and having limitations, knowing fully that we have Christ, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).

In God’s grace, he may give some of us platforms for which to speak from, names for which people will know us, and ministries that will outlast us. These are good gifts from the Father and we can accept them as such. However, we must never seek the gifts themselves and ignore the Giver. Jesus is better than our names being great and that may mean we will simply “preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.”

^{1. This phrase comes from Zac Eswine’s excellent book Sensing Jesus: Life and Ministry as a Human Being (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2012).↩}

^{2. Marcus Peter Johnson, One With Christ: An Evangelical Theology of Salvation (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2013), 18.↩}

^{3. Johnson rightly recognizes that within the Pauline and Johannine corpus, there are a plethora of verses that describe the believers union with Christ in such terms as “possessors of eternal life in Christ” (Rom. 6:23), “created in Christ” (Eph. 2:10), “crucified with him” (Gal. 2:20), “buried with him and baptized into him and his death” (Col. 2:12; Rom. 6:3), “united with him in his resurrection and seated with him in the heavenly places” (Rom. 6:5; Eph. 2:6), among others. See Ibid., 19-20. ↩}

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Chris Crane serves as High School Small Group Leader at Lake Highlands Baptist Church in Dallas, TX. He holds a B.A. in Biblical Studies from Dallas Baptist University and is currently pursuing a Th.M. at Dallas Seminary. He has previously written for Gospel-Centered Discipleship, as well as The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Occasionally, he writes at chriscrane.net. You can follow him on Twitter: @cmcrane87

Re-Narration Takes Practice

“Through worship God trains his people to take the right things for granted.” —Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells

Let’s return to where we began: Christian worship and Christian education both have the same end. Both the church and the Christian university are institutions caught up in the missio Dei, recruiting the hearts and minds of the people of God into the very life of God so that we can once again take up our creational and re-creational calling—to bear God’s image for and to all of creation. The church and the Christian college (and Christian schools) are sites of formation that culminate in sending: to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord” by taking up our cross along with our commission to cultivate the earth. Christian worship and formation, as practices of divine action, culminate in Christian action—being sent as ambassadors of another “city,” as witnesses to kingdom come, to live and act communally as a people who embody a foretaste of God’s shalom. This is not to “instrumentalize” worship as merely a means to an end, nor is it to reduce worship to a strategy for moral formation; neither should it be confused with an activism that sees Christian action as some Pelagian expression of our abilities. Worship and the practices of Christian formation are first and foremost the way the Spirit invites us into union with the Triune God. Worship is the arena in which we encounter God and are formed by God in and through the practices in which the Spirit is present—centering rituals to which God makes a promise (the sacraments). As Boulton observes, while John Calvin persistently emphasized a “preferred suite of formative practices” as “disciplines of regeneration,” he also constantly emphasized that these were not routines of spiritual self-assertion or human accomplishment:

Disciples may and do perform these sanctifying practices, but their performances are themselves divine gifts, and they take place properly and fruitfully—that is, in ways that produce genuine humility and insight for them and others—only by way of divine accompaniment and power. . . . Thus following Calvin, we may reframe “spiritual practices” as in the first place works of the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, the sanctifying, regenerating, restorative labor of God with us and in us. . . . Each of the church’s key practices is still something human beings do, but they do it neither alone nor as the act’s primary agent. Rather, in and through the practice, they participate in divine work.

So in the practices of Christian worship, and in related spiritual disciplines, we encounter the Lover of our souls. We are drawn into the life of the One our hearts were made for, the Lord of heaven and earth.

And it is that creating and re-creating God who tells us to go even as he goes with us, “even to the end of the age.” Christian worship culminates with a sending (“Go!”) accompanied by a promise (“And as you go, you go with his blessing”)—the benediction that is both a blessing and a charge, a co-mission-ing accompanied by the promise of the Spirit’s presence. So while we are sent to act, to labor in love for God and neighbor, the Spirit of Christ goes with us so that even “our” Christian action, undertaken as we are recruited into the missio Dei, is never merely “ours”; we “act in communion with God.” Worship is not merely time with a deistic god who winds us up and then sends us out on our own; we don’t enter worship for “top up” refueling to then leave as self-sufficient, autonomous actors. “In the conception of Christian praxis,” Ward notes, “there is no room for such a modern notion of self-sufficiency.” Instead, the biblical vision is one of co-abiding presence and participation (“I in you and you in me”). In other words, our Christian action is bound up with the dynamics of incorporation. “By the act of receiving the Eucharist,” for example, “I place myself in Christ—rather than simply placing Christ within me. I consume but I do not absorb Christ without being absorbed into Christ. Only in this complex co-abiding are there life, nourishment, and nurture because of, through, or by means of this feeding; there is both participation of human life in God’s life and participation of God’s life in human life.” So our action is not merely motivated by worship of the Triune God; rather, it is in worship that we are caught up into the life of God, drawn into union with Christ, and thus recruited into this participation that generates Christian action as we “go.” “The Christian act,” Ward continues, “has to be understood in terms not just of the church but also of the church’s participation in Christ, the church as the body of Christ. That is, the Christian act is integral to the church’s participation in the operations of the Triune God within realms created in and through Christ as God’s Word. Discipleship is thus not simply following the example of Christ; it is formation within Christ, so that we become Christlike. And the context of this formation is the church in all its concrete locatedness and eschatological significance.”

To emphasize the s/ending of Christian worship is not to reduce worship to moral formation or to treat the presence of God as a tool for our self-improvement. Rather, the centrifugal end of Christian worship is integral to the Story we rehearse in Christian worship; sending is internal to the logic of the practice. To emphasize that Christian action is the end or telos of Christian worship is not to instrumentalize worship but is rather to “get” the Story that is enacted in the drama of worship—the “true story of the whole world” in which we are called to play our part as God’s image-bearers by cultivating creation. Integral to that Story, and to the practice of Christian worship, is the sense that we are now enabled and empowered to take up this mission precisely because of the gift of the Spirit (Rom. 8:1–17). At the same time, the Spirit meets us where we are as liturgical animals, as embodied agents, inviting us into that “suite” of disciplines and practices that are conduits of transformative, empowering grace. So even if there is a centrifugal telos to Christian worship and formation, there is also a regular centripetal invitation to recenter ourselves in the Story, to continually pursue and deepen our incorporation. It’s not a matter of choosing between worship or mission; nor are we faced with the false dichotomy of church or world, cathedral or city. To the contrary, we worship for mission; we gather for sending; we center ourselves in the practices of the body of Christ for the sake of the world; we are reformed in the cathedral to undertake our image-bearing commission to reform the city. So it is precisely an expansive sense of mission that requires formation. It is the missional telos of Christian action that requires us to be intentional about the formative power of Christian practices.

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James K. A. Smith (PhD, Villanova University) is professor of philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he also holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. He is the editor of Comment magazine. Smith has authored or edited many books, including Imagining the Kingdom and the Christianity Today Book Award winners Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? and Desiring the Kingdom. He is also editor of the well-received The Church and Postmodern Culture series (www.churchandpomo.org).

James K. A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, ©2009. Used by permission. http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

The Guest List

My daughters received an invitation to attend a birthday party for our neighbors recently. If you’ve ever wondered how screams could be collected for energy (see Monsters Inc.), you’ve never been in the same room when young girls receive soul-thrilling news in the form of an invitation. My daughters’ hearts could have burst and their shrieks could have powered a small village—easily. Ecstatic joy flowed out of my daughters so naturally, I felt like I was being let in on something. We like to be invited to things. It makes us feel loved. It makes us feel like we belong. Jesus once told a parable about an invitation. It was an invitation, not to a birthday, but to a dinner—and at its core, it was a very unusual invitation.

The Parable of the Great Banquet

In Luke 14, Jesus first tells the Pharisees that when you give a banquet or a dinner, don’t invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors so they will invite you in return. Jesus instead says when you give a feast, invite the typically uninvited—the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

Now, this is counter-intuitive because the Pharisees and scribes felt a sense of supremacy in their separation from those on the fringes. When the Pharisees and scribes would throw a party, they would only invite the people who could invite them back. In other words, the Pharisees manipulated hospitality for their own self-glory and reputation. Parties were about raising your social capital. Only those who could further that agenda were welcomed.

But the marginalized—those on the outside looking into the cultural upper echelon—had no way of doing this. In fact, if they were invited, they wouldn’t accept the gesture because they knew they would be required to repay the courtesy and they knew they couldn’t do that. It would be too humiliating to accept that type of invitation because they did not have the means to reciprocate, so they would refuse.

To further make his point, Jesus launches into a story to illustrate his teaching with the opening line, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many.” This was going to be a huge event thrown by a very wealthy man. The Jews would have understood this. To be at this party would be the height of social recognition. In fact, when you were invited to a large dinner like this, you would typically get two invitations. The first invitation acknowledged you as an honored guest. The second invitation would come to alert you that the party was about to officially begin.

Now, when the second invitation comes in this parable, we go from the invitation to excuses. Every single person highlighted in this passage says, “I can’t come.” All of them. The Pharisees would have said, “Nobody would do that. This is disrespectful. This is uncivilized.” But in Jesus’ story, they all decline. So the wealthy man does the unthinkable. He tells his servant to go out and seek another group of people. He tells him to bid the outcasts to come to the banquet—the poor and crippled and blind and lame.

In the minds of the Pharisees, the first group wouldn’t turn down the invitation and the second group would never have been invited. But in this story, the master says go and bring them in. In Greek, the verb bring in highlights that they would have to be taken in because they would resist. They knew the etiquette—they would have to pay the master back with an even greater feast. And that would be impossible.

Pursue the Cast Outs and Marginalized

Then, Jesus introduces another wrinkle in his story. Seats at the banquet table are still vacant. So the master tells the servants to go out into “the highways, along the hedges and compel them to come in.” The master was saying to his servant that their venture out into the surrounding city was going to be a unique challenge.

Those they were now going after didn’t even have homes. They were not permitted in the city. They lived in places like brothels and inns and along the road and in the trees and in the bushes. That would be like us going to the overpasses, the Section 8 housing, the massage parlors, the meth houses, the gangs, and to the prisons to bring people to Thanksgiving dinner at our home. It would have been a scandalous request. Essentially, Jesus has the master say, “I had you seek the outcasts. Now, go find the outcasts of the outcasts and bring them to my party. We have open seats!”

Now, why did Jesus share this parable? Like the master, we must be willing to go out and find the people who are broken and hungry—those who know they don’t belong at the banquet of God because of their wretchedness. We must be willing to go find the untouchables—those who are spiritually aware of their other ineptness, desperateness and unworthiness. And when we do, we invite the broken and famished to share their lives with us and in turn, we share our mutual, spiritual jaggedness.

In a way, Jesus is showing us here that the real banquet table is our hearts and we must be generous with the guest list of our lives, regardless of the social capital we may lose or the hope we may receive something in return. Jesus says inviting people into your life who have nothing to repay you is the way of Christ. It really is the biblical doctrine of hospitality—the idea of welcoming the stranger. They may not have social prestige. They may not have prosperity. They may not have influence. Many will not have possessions. They may not have anyway to pay you back. But they do have one thing they can give and it is a priceless gift.

Reaching out to the marginalized will remind you how God went out in the person and work of Jesus to find you in the gutter of your sin and invite you into the banquet of his stunning salvation. It will remind you that God sought you when you did not have a spiritual “home”—when you were spiritually unaware of your unworthiness—and he said “You’re worthy now because I love you.” It’s the only invitation that really matters. An invitation into feasting on the inexpressible hope that comes from belonging to the High Holy One. And it just might make your heart burst with joy.

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Brad Andrews is a husband of one, a father of seven, and an advocate for grace. He serves as pastor for preaching, vision, and missional leadership at Mercyview. in Tulsa, OK. He blogs at graceuntamed.com and his articles can also be found on Gospel-Centered Discipleship and Grace For Sinners. He served as a religion columnist for the former Urban Tulsa Weekly and was also one of the ten framers of The Missional Manifesto, alongside Tim Keller, Ed Stetzer, Alan Hirsch, Eric Mason, J.D. Greear, Dan Kimball, Linda Berquist, Craig Ott, and Philip Nation.


4 Ways to Serve a School

One of the simplest ways to love a city is to serve its schools. Education, among other structures, is one of the main components on which a city thrives, creates culture, and builds the wellbeing of the population. We are called to seek the welfare of a city (Jer. 29:7), and you can do no better than to invest your time and energy into a local school. The school that my wife and I serve needs a fair amount of help. We have been serving there for the last seven years. We enjoy serving there, because of the relationships we get to build with normal everyday people, and the opportunities we get to bless them. More than just the practical and social reasons, though, there are theological reasons. We get to serve there, because we have a great Lord and Savior who served us perfectly, laying down his life and dying for us while we were still sinful and rebellious. We would confess, however, that often our reasons for serving the school do not always fall in line with this truth. Sure we want to see the people of the school come to know Jesus; sure we want to see people’s lives changed and we want God to be glorified through us—all good evangelical notions.  Sometimes we might have other practical or quasi-selfish reasons for serving the school, such as for the betterment of the school, or that our kids will benefit from our time there. Those are not bad reasons. However, in the gospel we need to remember that all our motivation, strength, and the resources we need to serve, come from how Jesus served us. This is the truth by which we are often convicted and what causes us to repent and seek the best reason.

With the gospel in mind, then, here are four ways to serve and bless a school. These simple methods are transferable for any school context in any city.

1. Pray for the school 

We share this first, because it is the most important. Prayer works, because God works. It is not a magic formula, but a command and reality that God has called us to. Our family does not have a systematic way of doing this; mostly we pray when the Holy Spirit reminds us. When we take my kids and our neighborhood friends to school, we pray for them, their teachers, and the school as whole. It is an encouragement for us to just pray, because we are being reminded of how much we need his power and grace to work in and through us at the school.

2. Ask how to help and show up

We began to realize the significance of this when we first moved to our city and began serving. Derek had called around to a few schools asking how we could help. One of them had a laundry list of ways that we could serve, so we decided to show up and help there. At the time, they were doing these monthly Family Fun Night events, so we showed up to serve the meal and clean up afterward. This was a good, tangible way to serve and meet people. Also, it came with the by-product of giving us and our kids a context and familiarity for where they would eventually attend school.

Also, extracurricular clubs and organizations are great places to show up at. Our school has a unicycling club led by a family in the school. We decided to team up with the family to try it out. Initially, we knew nothing about unicycling except that you sit on one wheel and try to stay on the thing. Our oldest daughter picked it up quickly and our other two younger kids are still learning. These kinds of clubs and activities are such great ways to serve and build relationships with people. Being a part of the unicycle club as a family has been so good for us to share in outreach together (Plus, if everything else in life falls through, we can always run off and join the circus!)

Another good way to show up and help is to serve in a classroom. Colleen makes time once a week, outside of her work schedule, to serve in one of our kids’ classes. Derek has been able to come a few times to serve, and it has been a great way to connect with some of the boys. Colleen has served on the PTA board in the past. Derek currently serves on the Site Council. There are so many ways that you can show up and serve—in the classroom, extracurricular events, committees, fundraisers. Schools have so many needs and just showing up and asking, “How can I help?” will be your first step in real palpable service.

3. Give generously of your time and resources

Another way to serve a school is to give generously. Generosity is part of the definition of grace—giving extravagantly to someone who doesn’t deserve or expect it. You might bring high-quality and generous portions of food or other items to bless the students and staff. If you have kids at the school, you can send them with the best snacks or cupcakes on their birthday, or send extra money with your kids to give to other kids to enjoy using during PTA fundraisers. Bless the teachers and staff with donuts and coffee. Give them coffee gift-cards as an expression of thanks for their hard work. Or, instead of just giving material items, you can give generously of your time and energy. Spend a whole day at the school, and get to know the life of the school. Eat lunch with some of the kids. Hang out at recess and help monitor the activities there. Often it seems we give according to cultural standards of what is assumed to be expected and appropriate, which often can translate to just giving the bare minimum. However, to bless someone is to go above and beyond the normal expectation. Honestly, this is something we are still growing in. Practicing generosity is difficult, because our default mode is to give minimally, not extravagantly. We need to remember how much we’ve been given in Christ, so that we might be convicted to give generously.

4. Practice hospitality

Finally, a good way to serve a school is to practice hospitality outside of the school. Besides being a practical tool to reach out to people, it is also a command from Scripture (Heb. 13:2). You can invite kids and families into your home for the purpose of building community, shared life, and celebration together.  You might plan a fun event centered on a season, or a rhythm in the calendar year like the beginning or end of school. Our kids’ school celebrates “100 days of school,” which is a great time to celebrate with a party. At the beginning of the school year, we hosted a “Back to School Bash” party for some of our kids’ friends. It was awesome! It gave us the opportunity to meet some of the kids’ parents, and it was a great way to help bring momentum to the school year. We hope to continue with more fun events throughout the year.

In reality, our ministry at the school can feel long and slow. We often don’t get to see the fruit that Jesus is growing in people’s lives. There are some things we’ve done in the past that haven’t worked as well, but there are things we are doing now that seem to work.  Either way, we are benefiting from the maturation of disciples, as we learn to more fully pour out our lives, share our resources, and give time and energy to the school. And as we enjoy the goodness and grace of Jesus poured out for us generously, we get to funnel some of that grace to others at the school, in order that the school might enjoy the grace and presence of Jesus.

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Derek (@derekhiebert) and Colleen Hiebert and their three kids live in Parkland WA. Derek works as the Director of the Western Seminary Seattle Teaching Site, while Colleen works part-time as a nurse. They both serve bi-vocationally with Soma as missional leaders and take pride in their kids’ school.

Telling the Same Story a Thousand Ways

“He’s got one trick to last a lifetime, but that’s all a pony needs.” — Paul Simon

In preaching the gospel, we are essentially telling the same story a thousand different ways. Movie-maker Wes Anderson seems to understand this concept.

Moonrise Kingdom, one of Anderson’s most recent movies, tells a beautiful story. It’s a story of very different people who, oddly enough, have something central in common—they are all broken people who feel cast off, confused, and unwanted. The privileged 12-year-old Suzie Bishop, who lives in an idyllic New England home with her attorney parents and three younger brothers, would seem to have nothing in common with Sam Shakusky, an orphan and recently resigned Khaki Scout, who has been traipsed from one boys home to another many times over the course of his young life.

Suzie’s attorney parents—Walt and Laura Bishop—far from feeling grounded and accomplished with their giant home, boat, four children, and successful law practice, are painfully aware that they don’t have what it takes to be the parents their kids need them to be, nor the spouses they need to be for one another.

Laura is having an affair with Captain Sharp. As upset as her husband is when he finds out, he can barely react because he knows their marriage is not working. Scout Master Ward, whose job it is to keep all of his Khaki Scouts safe and productive, is shocked to discover Sam has run away, and even more surprised to find out he’s an orphan. Why hadn’t Sam said anything?

The gnawing uncertainties of life are lifted in the unifying pursuit of bringing Suzy and Sam back to where they belong safely. It is not perfect—people get stabbed with left-handed scissors and dogs get impaled with arrows. But this is not to be judged, just accepted.

“Was he a good dog?” runaway Suzie asks her companion, Sam, as they stand over the corpse of Snoopy, the accidentally arrow-pierced pooch.

“Who’s to say,” Sam intones, with the detached timber of a yogi.

The Story of Hope

As characters begin to bear with one another and learn to rely on one another, things change. Families are created or reunited. Couples form meaningful relationships. Kids learn to help other kids and bullies are overthrown. Each finds a sense of purpose and community when they accept themselves and one another.

The baseline plot won’t come as a surprise if you are a Wes Anderson fan. He has the same message in almost every film. It’s in the Tenebaum household, among the brothers seeking to mend a family in Darjeeling Ltd., and among the animals Anderson takes on in Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

It is a message that resonates with me. In a broken world, where things aren’t right, love somehow makes it beautiful. People are still broken and, at times, outlandish—but beautiful.

The Gospel Story and the Church

The reason the gospel story can be told a thousand different ways is because of its depth. The gospel tells us the core of orthodoxy, the kerygma of Jesus, the fundamentals of the faith, the statements of the Apostle’s Creed—it is the eternality of the gospel. When Peter declares that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt:16), Jesus responds, “Blessed are you, Peter son of John, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father in Heaven.” The Divine mysteriously interacts with creation and that which is eternal and unseen is made known to mere humans.

The gospel also tells the story of pilgrimage. It speaks of how we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling. But God doesn’t leave us alone in this. First, he is with us. God works within us both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil 2:12-13). We have God himself with us, but we also have his reflections—his people. The other pilgrims are with us.

A pilgrim differs from a hermit. The hermit isolates, while the pilgrim triangulates. The pilgrim heads to a fixed point—namely Jesus—and finds along the way more pilgrims. They come from different places, but join their journeys because they have a common destination. The Church is the gathering of broken people who have encountered Jesus and are journeying together with him towards home.

The gospel also tells the story of ambassadors from another kingdom. It tells of how we have become a people unique to God among all the peoples on the earth. It tells us we are a royal priesthood. We are to serve the world around us. The gospel, through the revelation of God, transforms us so that we demonstrate life in Christ—in word and deed—to the community around us. Mission and evangelism are part of the story of this same gospel.

An Eternal Story

We tell this story.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

We tell it in pulpits, at our family table, where we work. It is in how we work, why we work. We tell it in our leisure time. We tell it to our spouse. We tell it to ourselves.

Take time to hear the gospel again. Tell the story so well that you want to hear it again and again. A good message lives in many constructs and has many iterations. As we live and breath, the gospel continues. We tell the same gospel story in a thousand ways.

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Ed Marcelle (@emarcelle) is Lead Pastor of Terra Nova Church in Troy, N.Y., and Northeast Regional Coordinator for the Acts 29 Network. Marcelle holds a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from Dallas Theological Seminary. He and his wife Diane have four children: Alfonso, Isaiah, Bethany, and Abigail. 

Missional Lessons for the Holidays

GOD CREATED HOLIDAYS

Cultural celebrations are not man-made institutions. Like much of God’s creation, holidays can be—and have been—distorted for all sorts of less-than-holy purposes. But what if “Santa” really isn’t an anagram for “Satan”? What if we can we redeem this holiday season, and use it for God’s work?

Seen throughout the Old Testament, and most clearly in Leviticus 23, God commanded His people to pause several times each year, simply to feast and celebrate. Here are far-too-brief summaries of Old Testament Israel’s national holidays:

• The Festival of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah) kicked off the Jewish New Year with the blast of a ram’s horn. God’s people gathered as one, as Israel kicked off each year with ten days of feasting, celebrating God, and ceasing work to rest in Him.
• The Day of Atonement was an annual reminder of Israel’s sin and God’s forgiveness. In a solemn service on the most important day of the Jewish year, one ram was killed as a symbol of appeasing God’s wrath, as another symbolized  God’s removal of sin, being sent into the wilderness never to return.
• The Feast of Booths saw Israel praying for her upcoming harvest. To visibly recall God’s past deliverance from Egypt, they lived in tents for a week. As they then returned to their homes—seventeen days in total after gathering for Rosh Hashanah—they celebrated God’s gift of their permanent dwellings, symbolic of His giving them the Promised Land.
• Passover remembers the biggest event in Israel’s history: God’s original rescue of His people, in His plaguing power over Egypt. Israel sacrificed and roasted a lamb, and still tangibly recall God’s work through readings, foods, and glasses of wine.
• Passover kicked off the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days, Israel recalled the speed with which their ancestors fled Egypt the night of the original Passover.
• The First Fruits Offering marked the beginning of the harvest. A day of thanksgiving, the celebration included offering Israel’s best produce to God, and recalling God’s power and grace in sustaining and providing for His people.
• The Feast of Weeks (called Pentecost) again pointed to God’s provision. Another offering made; more feasts occurred; more thanks shared—this time at the end of the wheat harvest.

LESSONS FROM THE STORY OF ISRAEL

This is more than a bit of Jewish history. Each feast foreshadows God’s work in Jesus’ death and resurrection. These celebrations were celebrated by Jews for centuries and by Jesus Himself. And they inform our own celebrations:

First, Leviticus shows that God instituted intentional celebration into the annual rhythm of His people. God’s people ceased from work and partied. They cooked meat—a luxury in those days—and enjoyed good drink. They made music, relaxed, and played together. They laughed and grieved together. Celebrations are right and good.

Celebrations also cut to the heart of mission: God’s people didn’t celebrate by themselves. They included those around them. Even people with different beliefs. Consider this instruction: “You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns.” This idea echoes through the Old Testament Law: “sojourners” were foreigners in Israel who joined the feasts; “servants” from various nations celebrated with God’s people; “strangers” and “aliens” weren’t Israelites but joined their events.

A final Levitical lesson is that people, events, and even milestones themselves were never the focus of Israel’s celebrations. Israel celebrated one thing, in many ways throughout each year: God. They didn’t celebrate grain; they celebrated the Giver of that grain. They didn’t celebrate their power over Pharaoh; they had no such power! They celebrated God’s power. These lessons combine to show us not only that not-yet-believers were invited to Israel’s feasts; they observed—and in ways, even participated—as God’s people celebrated God, on days God created for just that occasion.

REDEEMING THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

If Israel—geographically set apart from the rest of the world—publicly celebrated God in the midst of strangers, foreigners, and sojourners, there’s hope for us as we consider holidays. Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25, and God didn’t invent Halloween or Thanksgiving. But these and other annual days have been carved into our culture, to cease work, celebrate, and engage others. Gifts abound in December, giving us an easy chance to surprise coworkers and classmates with cookies or a brief note. And the world still rings in the New Year with gatherings and far more pomp than Israel’s trumpet blast.

Instead of celebrating this Christmas season, New Years Eve, and other occasions alone or with just-Christian friends—and instead of creating “Christian” versions of special events already happening in our city and neighborhood— let’s celebrate these occasions on mission. Let’s display the gospel through generosity, grace, conversation, and joy. And let’s declare the gospel through stories, toasts, and prayers. Sure, many cultural celebrations have long forgotten God. But we haven’t, and we’ve been sent to those who have. God is sovereign, even the fact that someone declared certain days holidays. God uses even the most broken things—and days—for His mission. How can we do the same?

—

Ben Connelly, his wife Jess, and their daughters Charlotte and Maggie live in Fort Worth, TX. He started and now co-pastors The City Church, part of the Acts29 network and Soma family of churches. Ben is also co-author of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody Publishers, 2014). With degrees from Baylor University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Ben teaches public speaking at TCU, writes for various publications, trains folks across the country, and blogs in spurts at benconnelly.net. Twitter: @connellyben.

(Editor’s Note: Used with permission from the authors. This is adapted from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers. )

The Prodigal Dad

I was recently with a father who has been through the ringer with his son over the past few years. Suffice it to say that he has run into the wall just beyond the line of God’s sovereign will and the common grace of parenting. Or perhaps more illustrative, he’s living in the tension of “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” This man is a great dad. His heart’s desire is that all of his children would, like the apostle Paul, “be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” (Philippians 3:9)

As we discussed God’s sovereignty, man’s depravity, and the life lessons therein, I was reminded about something my own dad has always told me. “Never be afraid to come home.”

Six simple words that meant so much more. They meant that I will always have a home under my father’s roof. They meant that my dad would be the first person I call (save perhaps my wife nowadays) if I found myself in real trouble. They meant that there is literally nothing I could do to lose my right to be a part of my father’s family. I always knew this. And so do the kids of my friend above.

But as I drove away from our meeting, a distant realization caught up with me all too quickly. It was as if I had walked out my front door into a maelstrom of reality dragging me deeper into its grasp. You see, as I have often written about, I have a great dad. And my friend is a great dad. But many in our own church cannot say the same thing.

The fatherhood deficiency in American society is nothing new. In fact, the worldwide phenomenon has been pandemic for years. I was recently in Nicaragua. They have the same problem. I’ve been to 3 or 4 other Latin American nations that are in the same boat. It’s not a new thing.

But the striking reality is this. As the trend grows, fewer and fewer children will hear the words “Never be afraid to come home.”

Now, why are those words so important?

Because of all the things they tell us. “Never be afraid to come home” is a clear picture of the reality that God searches for his prodigal children. It’s the declaration that there is literally nothing a child of God can do to lose the right to be called his son or daughter. It means that, for the Christian, our first response when we sin is to run to our Father, rather than away from him. And that is a true mark of maturity.

But I’m fearful that without our earthly dads to tell us that, we will have a difficult time learning it about our Heavenly Father. My dad—his actions, his love, and his words—were instrumental in my regeneration experience. And what’s more, my dad was a father figure for some of my closest friends when we all lived in a house together. They may not have called him dad. But a good father is a father in the same way a good athlete is an athlete. It just comes natural.

Don’t think that I’m attempting to take the supernatural away from God, as if he couldn’t possibly regenerate hearts to faith without the example of good earthly fathers. The truth is, God has ordained fatherhood to be a vivid illustration of his relationship to us. Why else would he call us sons and daughters?  So, for Christian fathers, the office of fatherhood carries a grace-filled weight that is unlike any other office that men can occupy.

But the problem is we have too many prodigal dads. Fulfilling their own destinies through achievement. Chasing a different woman every night at the local dive bar to escape chronic loneliness. Exploring “feminization” and “metrosexuality” simply because they are the latest trends on their news feeds. Searching for the kind of identity that is only to be found within the scope of God’s good design.

So, this is a plea to the prodigal dads. It’s not too late. My dad’s not perfect. Far from it. But he was, is, and will always be—first and foremost—my dad.

If God can heal the most fractured relationship that has ever existed—the one between you and him—he can surely reconcile your relationship with your wife and kids by his grace. He can certainly bring you under the fountain of joy that comes from renewal in Him. He can put you back together.

Prodigal dad, “Never be afraid to come home.”

—

Alex Dean (@AlexMartinDean) is a pastor in Lakeland, Florida. Holding an undergraduate degree from Dallas Baptist University, Alex is currently completing his graduate work at Reformed Theological Seminary. His book, Gospel Regeneration: A story of death, life, and sleeping in a van, is available on Amazon, iBooks, and other online retailers. Follow his blog at www.GospelRegeneration.com and follow him on Twitter.

Used with permission. Originally posted at GospelRegeneration.com.

What Do We Mean By “Missional Living”?

When we look at the missional life of the disciples, it’s tempting to think the work they did in proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and engaging in the works of the kingdom were only done with Jesus. And while there is truth in the with, there was a much greater reality present in their time with the Rabbi. More accurately, the apostles were being led into mission. Jesus said as much, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19). Following Jesus was prerequisite to mission with him. And while the disciples ministered alongside Jesus in many settings, all the while, they had actually been led into God-­appointed missional ventures by the God­man.

While missional living could be described as something the church does with Jesus as well, it is more appropriately something the church follows him into. As we step out in faith to be a “city on a hill,” we must remind ourselves that Jesus is already at work and we are to join him in the work he has already begun to do in our cities. And in the times we live, we need to take special care to discern the time as “men of Issachar” so that the mission we are being led into is at its most potent.

Here are four ways that the local church can follow Jesus into missional living in the twenty-first century:

1. Following Jesus Into (And Out From) Worship

All missional living starts with worship and leads to more worship, both personally and corporately. Just as faith without works is dead, good works separated from active trust in the person and work of Jesus, is also dead. Entering into the mission of Jesus requires that we first enter into his rest . . . receiving his easy yoke and light burden of grace. To help cultivate this mindset, we will:

• Encourage our people to see that the only way to become like Jesus is to prioritize being with Jesus daily. Ordinary, common spiritual practices like Bible reading, prayer, and “one-anothering” community are at the center of this. Apart from (Jesus) we can do nothing.
• Emphasize worshiping God with God’s other daughters and sons each Lord’s Day—encouraging our people to order the rest of their lives around worship, versus the other way around. Do not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encourage one another.

2. Following Jesus Into The World Through Public Faith

We are called by Jesus to follow him into the world as an expression of our worship. As carriers of heaven’s DNA and the aroma of Jesus in his world, we want to carry his grace, truth, and beauty into all the places where we live, work, and play–primarily through:

• Public forums and conversations (some church sponsored and others in living rooms and public spaces) about things that matter to us and to friends and neighbors who do not believe as we do. Subjects like sexuality, race and class issues, family-related concerns, the arts, politics, and loneliness are a few examples of subject matter. As some of your own poets have said . . .
• Loving friends and neighbors well. Being intentional, thoughtful, and creative about being the “first responders” wherever opportunities to extend the kindness, love, support, and hope that Jesus did to people who were hurting, lonely and alone, and feeling ashamed. Love your neighbor as yourself.
• Parties. Showing hospitality and giving life away by opening up our church, our homes, and our lives in order to turn strangers into friends, and friends into family. We have to celebrate.

3. Following Jesus Into The World Through The Integration Of Faith and Work

Because so many people spend the majority of their waking hours working—whether as a volunteer or for hire—it is important to see vocation as a calling from God and the workplace as a primary realm for following Jesus and loving the world. We express these truths by:

• Affirming that all creative work–work that takes raw material and makes something new for the benefit of the world and the human community—is an expression of God’s creativity through people who bear his image. God created . . . and it was good.
• Affirming that all redemptive work—work that fights decay and seeks restoration of people, places, and things—is an expression of God’s redeeming grace, also through people who bear his image. All creation groans . . . eagerly awaiting freedom. Jesus is making all things new.

4. Following Jesus Into The World Through Mercy and Justice

Because the poor in spirit are called “blessed,” and because Jesus gave special attention to the poor, the weak, the under-served, the overlooked, and those living on the margins, the church must dedicate her time, energy, service, and a significant portion of her financial resources to mercy and justice efforts. We will do this by:

• Emphasizing in our public ministry the importance of the poor, the weak, the overlooked, and the under-served in the economy of God’s kingdom.
• Creating intentional, supportive space in our community for children and adults with special needs.
• Forming partnerships and providing financial support to our cities “best in class” mercy and justice organizations.

* * * *

While there are many ways to live missional in our cities, these in particular have an eye and ear towards the age we live in. They place the onus on our churches to collaborate with culture rather than cede from it. The hope is that as we pursue this kind of missional living, our churches will, in the power of the Spirit, make Jesus, as Ray Ortlund has said, “non-­ignorable in our cities.”

—

Scott Sauls, a graduate of Furman University and Covenant Seminary, is foremost a son of God and the husband of one beautiful wife (Patti), the father of two fabulous daughters (Abby and Ellie), and the primary source of love and affection for a small dog (Lulu). Professionally, Scott serves as the Senior Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Prior to Nashville, Scott was a Lead and Preaching Pastor, as well as the writer of small group studies, for Redeemer Presbyterian of New York City. Twitter: @scottsauls.

Brad Andrews serves as pastor for preaching, vision, and missional leadership at Mercyview in Tulsa, OK and as a religion columnist for the former Urban Tulsa Weekly. He also was one of the ten framers of The Missional Manifesto, alongside Tim Keller, Ed Stetzer, Alan Hirsch, Eric Mason, J.D. Greear, Dan Kimball, Linda Berquist, Craig Ott, and Philip Nation. He blogs often at mercyview.com/blog.

Adapted from www.scottsauls.com. Used with permission. Brad Andrews contributed the introduction and conclusion.

Making the Most of Turkey Time: Thanksgiving on Mission

What if God had more for our kin this Thanksgiving than the Macy’s parade, tryptophan-induced naps, and NFL football? What if we saw our gatherings with extended family not as a chance to check out, but as an opportunity for Christian mission? It should be good news to us that we don’t have to be Jedi-master evangelists to be agents of gospel advance among those whom we know best. In fact, it may be better if we’re not.

So before bellying up to this year’s turkey feast, here’s a few thoughts from a fellow bungler to help us think ahead and pray about how we might grow in being proxies for the gospel, in word and deed, among our families this Thanksgiving. These are some practical ideas for what it might mean to see ourselves as sent among our relatives. These suggestions are inspired by Randy Newman’s excellent book Bringing the Gospel Home: Witnessing to Family Members, Close Friends, and Others Who Know You Well.

Sent on Thanksgiving

1) Pray ahead.

Begin praying for your part in gospel advance among extended family several days before gathering. And let’s not just pray for changes in them, but also pray for the needed heart changes in us — whether it’s for love or courage or patience or kindness or fresh hope, or all of the above.

2) Listen and ask questions.

Listen, listen, listen. Perhaps more good evangelism than we realize starts not with speaking but with good listening. Getting to know someone well, and specifically applying the gospel to them, is huge in witness. Relationship matters.

Ask questions to draw them out. People like to talk about themselves — and we should capitalize on this. And most people only enjoy talking about themselves for so long. At some point, they’ll ask us questions. And that’s our golden chance to speak, upon request.

One of the best times to tell the gospel with clarity and particularity is when someone has just asked us a question. They want to hear from us. So let’s share ourselves, and Jesus in us. Not artificially, but in genuine answer to their asking about our lives. And remember it’s a conversation. Be careful not to rabbit on for too long, but try to keep a sense of equilibrium in the dialogue.

3) Raise the gospel flag early.

Let’s not wait to get to know them “well enough” to start clearly identifying with Jesus. Depending on how extended our family is, or how long it’s been since we married in, they may already plainly know that we are Christians. But if they don’t know that, or don’t know how important Jesus is to our everyday lives, we should realize now that there isn’t any good strategy in being coy about such vital information. It will backfire. Even if we don’t put on the evangelistic full-court press right away (which is not typically advised), wisdom is to identify with Jesus early and often, and articulate the gospel with clarity (and kindness) as soon as possible.

No one’s impressed to discover years into a relationship that we’ve withheld from them the most important things in our lives.

4) Take the long view and cultivate patience.

With family especially, we should consider the long arc. Randy Newman is not afraid to say to Christians in general, “You need a longer-term perspective when it comes to family.” Chances are we do. And so he challenges us to think in terms of an alphabet chart, seeing our family members positioned at some point from letters A to Z. These 26 steps/letters along the way from distant unbelief (A) to great nearness to Jesus (Z) and fledgling faith help us remember that evangelism is usually a process, and often a long one.

It is helpful to recognize that not everyone is near the end of the alphabet waiting for our pointed gospel pitch to tip them into the kingdom. Frequently there is much spadework to be done. Without losing the sense of urgency, let’s consider how we can move them a letter, or two or three, at a time and not jerk them toward Z in a way that may actually make them regress.

5) Beware the self-righteous older brother in you.

For those who grew up in nonbelieving or in shallow or nominal Christian families, it can be too easy to slide into playing the role of the self-righteous older brother when we return to be around our families. Let’s ask God that he would enable us to speak with humility and patience and grace. Let’s remember that we’re sinners daily in need of his grace, and not gallop through the family gathering on our high horse as if we’ve arrived or just came back from the third heaven. Newman’s advice: “use the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ far more than ‘you’” (65).

6) Tell it slant.

Some extended family contexts may be so far from spiritual that we need to till the soil of conversation before making many direct spiritual claims. It’s not that the statements aren’t true or desperately needed, but that our audience may not yet be ready to hear it. The gospel may seem so foreign that wisdom would have us take another approach. One strategy is to “tell it slant,” to borrow from the poem of the same name — to get at the gospel from an angle.

“If your family has a long history of negativity and sarcasm,” writes Newman, “the intermediate step of speaking positively about a good meal or a great film may pave the way for ‘blinding’ talk of God’s grace and mercy” (67). Don’t “blind” them by rushing to say loads more than they’re ready for. As Emily Dickinson says, “The truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind.”

7) Be real about the gospel.

As we dialogue with family about the gospel, let’s not default to quoting Bible verses that don’t really answer the questions being asked. Let’s take up the gospel in its accompanying worldview and engage their questions as much as possible in the terms in which they asked them. Newman says, “We need to find ways to articulate the internally consistent logic of the gospel’s claims and not resort to anti-intellectual punch lines like, ‘The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.’”

Yes, let’s do quote Bible when appropriate — we are Christians owing ultimately to revelation, not to reason. But let’s not make the Bible into an excuse for not really engaging with their queries in all their difficulty. (And let’s not be afraid to say we don’t know when we don’t!)

8) Consider the conversational context.

Context matters. It doesn’t have to be face to face across the table to be significant. “Many people told me their best conversations occurred in a car — where both people faced forward, rather than toward each other,” says Newman. “Perhaps the indirect eye contact posed less of a threat” (91). Maybe even sofas and recliners during a Thanksgiving Day football game, if the volume’s not ridiculous. Be mindful of the context, and seek to make yourself available for conversation while at family gatherings, rather than retreating always into activities or situations that are not conducive to substantive talk.

9) Know your particular family situation.

In some families, the gospel has been spoken time and again in the past to hard hearts, perhaps there has been a lack of grace in the speaking, and what is most needed is some unexpected relational rebuilding. Or maybe you’ve built and built and built the relationship and have never (or only rarely) clearly spoken the message of the gospel.

Let’s think and pray ahead of time as to what the need of hour is in our family, and as the gathering approaches pray toward what little steps we might take. And then let’s trust Jesus to give us the grace our hearts need, whether it’s grace for humbling ourselves enough to connect relationally or whether it’s courage enough to speak with grace and clarity.

10) Be hopeful.

God loves to convert the people we think are the least likely. Jesus is able to melt the hardest of hearts. Some who finished their lives among the greatest saints started as the worst of sinners.

Realistically, there could have been some cousin of the apostle Paul sitting around some prayer meeting centuries ago telling his fellow believers, “Hey, would you guys pray for my cousin Saul? I can’t think of anyone more lost. He hunts down followers of The Way and arrests them. Just last week, he was the guy who stood guard over the clothes of the people who killed our brother Stephen.” (53)

With God, all things are possible. Jesus has a history of conquering those most hostile to him. We have great reason to have great hope about gospel advance in our families, despite how dire and dark it may seem.

When We Fail

And when we fail — not if, but when — the place to return is Calvary’s tree. Our solace in failing to adequately share the gospel is the very gospel we seek to share. It is good to ache over our failures to love our families in gospel word and deed. But let’s not miss that as we reflect on our failures, we have all the more reason to marvel at God’s love for us.

Be astonished that his love is so lavish that he does not fail to love us, like we fail to love him and our families, and that he does so despite our recurrent flops in representing him well to our kin.

—

David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor at desiringGod.org and an elder at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis. He has edited several books, including Thinking. Loving. Doing., Finish the Mission, and Acting the Miracle, and is co-author of How to Stay Christian in Seminary.

Originally posted at DesiringGod.org. Used with permission.

Redeeming Our Offices

Today, we’re re-releasing Jeremy Writebol’s everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present via Kindle on Amazon.com. You can buy your digital copy with one click $6.49.

A Bad Day at the Office

Why is it that we so deeply despise going to work? What is it about the office that causes us to prefer calling in sick, staying in bed, or hiding out for months on end rather than be doing the very thing that God called us to do with his good creation in the first place? Maybe going into the office really was the curse of our dislocation. It seems that work really was the result of our crimes.

Scripture makes it plain in Genesis 2 that work was given to humanity and work was right. But instead of work as we know it, work initially was not about providing for our essential needs like food and shelter. For our first parents, work was art. It was labor to design, cultivate, and express dominion over the established place of God. It was an effort to put decorations and details on the first place of God.

Occasionally, there are projects that I get to spend time working on that are sheer pleasure. They do not provide food for my table or pay off the mortgage. Instead they are labors of love. Tonight my daughter interrupted my writing and asked me to assemble her new LEGO stables. Some 2,000 pieces (and many of them very tiny) and two hours later, we were done. It wasn't anything I was paid to do, but it was still work. And I loved it. This is what going to the office was originally about: forming, cultivating, and managing creatively what God had made. It was art.

Then came the dislocating break of our rebellion. We didn't want to be artists painting on God's canvas. We wanted to make our own canvas. With it came the curse that now plagues our work. Instead of having everything we needed for life, we had to labor to stay alive. Where we were once amply supplied by God, now we were forced to have our cake and eat it, too. We wanted to work independently from God and he allowed it. We have to work to stay alive. This is the daily reality of our rebellion and the curse.

The office lost all of its delight. We found productivity flittered away by thorns and thistles. The soil we needed to survive was dry, hard, and unyielding. Making an existence from day-to-day, paycheck-to-paycheck became our work, and that was where work lost all its art.

Maybe this is why no one feels like going to work in the morning. Mondays are synonymous with the death of our freedom, independence, and life. Work is death and no one likes it. We spend our youth preparing to work, our best years working away, and then end up dying from our work. As the preacher of Ecclesiastes wonders, "What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?" (Ecc. 1:3). This is the blatant effect of our sin and the curse. The office is a den of death.

This is why my friends Bonnie and Brandon don't see the progress of patients recovering to complete health. It's the reason why the hours and hours Eric spends designing aircraft feel fruitless. It's why Andy works a job he doesn’t really desire so that he can put food on the table. It is why, although we seem to see developments in technology, science, politics, economics and the like, nothing seems to be getting better.

Work as Role or Identity?

Is there redemption for our offices? Although we believe in a gospel that saves our souls, could we imagine Christ redeeming our workplaces as well? Could there be salvation for the office too? Yes, but only if we look to the work of Christ. For so many, our work has transitioned itself from a role we were given to an identity we possess. Work became who we are instead of something we do.

The proof of this is found when you meet someone new. Introduce yourself to someone you don't know and the likelihood of you identifying yourself by what you do is very high. Usually we start with our name (“I'm Jeremy”) followed by what we do (“I'm a pastor”). We weigh the value of our lives by our work. The important people are the ones with the great jobs, the large incomes, the high-yield, high-capacity productions. Those who achieve their vocational dreams are the great ones. Those who fail at attaining those degrees are just "working for the man." We live and die by our jobs and their perceived successes and failures.

That's why we need a relocation. Our identity must be shifted away from what we do to who we are. We must be redeemed from perverting our role as workers into our identity as workers.

I find it wonderful that Jesus didn't come with an identity-issue about his work. He knew who he was, the Son of God. He knew what his job was, to give his life as a ransom for many (Mk. 10:45). He didn't have the two confused. And so he came, reminded of his identity by his Father (1:11) to do the work he was sent to do (1:15). He came to do the work we could not do. In substituting himself for us, he worked to fulfilled the Law at every point and win perfect righteousness for us. By standing in our place, he did the work of satisfying God's wrath and removing our sin by dying on the cross for us. In such, he glorified his father and accomplished the work he was sent to do (Jn. 17:5).

Jesus didn't take work away from us. He redeemed us from a life of finding our identity in our work. He didn't live, die, and rise to life again so that we could skip out on the office or marketplace. He lived, died, and arose to life again so that we would glorify him at our office, not worship our office. Instead of living to fulfill the identities we find in our work, Jesus gives us a new identity, his brothers and sisters, so that we can go to work, not to earn an identity but to rest from identity seeking. We go into the office as kingdom citizens to create, cultivate, develop, and design all that the King owns for the King's glory.

Who Are You Working For?

One of the most frustrating aspects of work, beyond the inefficiencies and futility of fruitless work, is the people we work for. Just as we struggle with deep authority issues in relationship with God, we continue to struggle with the authority issues we have with our employers and supervisors. Our bosses can be tyrants, ogres, and despots all in one eight-hour shift. For those of us who are fortunate enough to have a decent boss, we still buckle, from time to time, under the difficulty of not always seeing eye-to-eye. We all have bad days with our superiors.

For Kingdom citizens, the presence of the King in our workplaces deeply alters the way we see our bosses. Paul calls Kingdom citizens to see their work in this light by calling servants to be obedient and submissive to their superiors as if they were serving the King himself (Col. 3:22-24). The renovated heart goes beyond just obedience as a people-pleaser, or giving appearance as such, and calls the citizens of the Kingdom to obey with sincerity while fearing the Lord.

My fighter-jet-engineering friend Randy told me one day of a meeting with his superiors. In the meeting over the design of the jet, his boss became rather irate and excessively direct about a particular portion of the jet's design. Randy was given clear directions that the design of the jet should in every way be "from scratch." It was as if his company wanted to be the Wright brothers all over again and invent flight, this time on the scale of a fighter jet. As Randy debated for particular design similarities, his boss became more and more indignant about the uniqueness of the design. As Randy listened and considered, he knew that he had a responsibility to obey his boss and honor Christ. It didn't make sense, but it was right. It was only later that he discovered his boss’s reasons and Randy ended up benefiting his company and business by his obedience.

This is the kind of renovating work the King does. He transforms his people from rebellious people-pleasers to sincere Kingdom-servants. Work is transformed by the way we work for the ones set in authority over us (1 Pt. 2:13-25).

Working Hard, Working Well

While obedience to our superiors is a kingdom value, is this all that a renovation of our work places brings about? Are we to just be dutiful drones at the jobs in which we take no delight? Does the gospel speak to what we spend our working lives doing? Is there a Kingdom renovation to be done with regard to occupations and vocations? Can a kingdom citizen find the art in their work once again?

Like the false dichotomy of the material and spiritual, bad religion created another dichotomy with regard to our work; sacred and secular. Those that worked jobs in the sacred realms of the church were the ones who worked within a higher calling. They had the blessing of God, treasure in heaven, and a trophy of accomplishing something that lasts for eternity to put on their mantle. For the bankers, butchers, and builders (also known as secular workers), there was the glib promise that one day they could go to heaven and maybe be a worship leader and really please God. However, their vocations and their work were sub-eternal and a less than great calling. What does God need with someone who can carve meat anyway? To this day, it's not too hard to find churches and Christians who still practically affirm this position.

But the Scriptures never affirm a sacred/secular vocational divide. Rather, the word of the King is that "whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord" (Col 3:23). Those three words, "whatever you do," are a major blow to any scared/secular mentality. In those words, the King affirms the unique occupations of Kingdom citizens. Whether it's banking, broadcasting, auto sales, brewing coffee, serving tables, or working at homemaking, the King authorizes his citizens to work well in what they do. He affirms the value of every occupation that cultivates, develops, and advances his authority in his Kingdom. This includes building bridges, teaching children, accounting financial assets, diagnosing physical diseases, and baking pies.

How is this so? How does the bakery become a Kingdom place? First, by the way in which we work. Paul says "whatever you do, do it heartily." There is a way in which Kingdom citizens work for the King. They, by their presence at their work, demonstrate God's nature. They reveal the God who worked hard at the creating of all things; a God who put his full wisdom and glory and creativity into play as he made all things. By the way they work, they show an industrious, productive, intelligent God. They show a God who didn't take short-cuts, who didn't get lazy on the job, and who didn't "phone it in" in his work of creation and redemption.

Second, they also show a Kingdom value in the trajectory of their work. They work "as for the Lord." Their work is aimed at pleasing the King himself. How does an aerospace engineer design planes for the Lord? By making the best planes he can. By using the wisdom and understanding and knowledge the King has gifted him with to understand the laws of nature and develop means by which the creation can be advanced to serve people. How does a baker make pies for the Lord? By baking in such a way that the King himself would enjoy her pies. By baking with a mind to serve her fellow humanity as they delight in the excellent tastes of the pie. They both please the Lord by being creative, honest, diligent, and excellent in their various occupations.

There is a further implication of the resurrection of Jesus here for us in our work. The resurrection of Jesus was his coronation and enthronement as King over all kings. Everything is being brought under subjection to him as King (Ps. 8:6, 1 Cor. 15:27). Our work, done in the name of the King and for the King is participating with him in bringing all things under his authority. The way we develop technology, or manage resources, or develop business strategies, or cook meals, or build houses, or any innumerable sorts of occupations are bringing all things under subjection to Christ. The computer programmer who develops software to advance communication can see himself as utilizing technology for the sake of the King and the advancement of his Kingdom. The doctor who develops wise and resourceful medical practices is bringing the field of medicine under the realm of the King when she does so to keep, preserve and enhance life. The teacher who works with fourth graders is bringing a classroom of students under the dominion of Christ, but educating her class about the physical and moral laws that govern the world in which we live in. All things are brought to rest under the Lordship of Christ as the resurrected King.

As such, the renovating work of the King brings us to our offices (or classrooms or kitchens or laboratories, or whatever we call the space we work in) to work hard and to work for him. He calls us into every sphere of life and vocation to develop and deploy our gifts to show His authority and dominion over all things. He must have workers in every vocation to demonstrate all things are for his glory, even the offices that we spend our days working in. By our work we display an ever-present King in every place.

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Jeremy Writebol(@jwritebol) has been training leaders in the church for over thirteen years. He is the author of everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present (GCD Books, 2014) and writes at jwritebol.net. He lives and works in Plymouth, MI as the Campus Pastor of Woodside Bible Church.

Sent into the Harvest: Halloween on Mission

What if a crisp October wind blew through “the way we’ve always done things” at Halloween? What if the Spirit stirred in us a new perspective on October 31? What if dads led their households in a fresh approach to Halloween as Christians on mission? What if spreading a passion for God’s supremacy in all things included Halloween — that amalgamation of wickedness now the second-largest commercial holiday in the West?

Loving Others and Extending Grace

What if we didn’t think of ourselves as “in the world, but not of it,” but rather, as Jesus says in John 17, “not of the world, but sent into it”?

And what if that led us to move beyond our squabbles about whether or not we’re free to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve, and the main issue became whether our enjoyment of Jesus and his victory over Satan and the powers of darkness might incline us to think less about our private enjoyments and more about how we might love others? What if we took Halloween captive — along with “every thought” (2 Corinthians 10:5) — as an opportunity for gospel advance and bringing true joy to the unbelieving?

And what if those of us taking this fresh approach to Halloween recognized that Christians hold a variety of views about Halloween, and we gave grace to those who see the day differently than we do?

Without Naiveté or Retreat

What if we didn’t merely go with the societal flow and unwittingly float with the cultural tide into and out of yet another Halloween? What if we didn’t observe the day with the same naïveté as our unbelieving neighbors and coworkers?

And what if we didn’t overreact to such nonchalance by simply withdrawing? What if Halloween wasn’t a night when Christians retreated in disapproval, but an occasion for storming the gates of hell?

The Gospel Trick

What if we ran Halloween through the grid of the gospel and pondered whether there might be a third path beyond naïveté and retreat? What if we took the perspective that all of life, Halloween included, is an opportunity for gospel advance? What if we saw Halloween not as a retreat but as a kind of gospel trick — an occasion to extend Christ’s cause on precisely the night when Satan may feel his strongest?

What if we took to the offensive on Halloween? Isn’t this how our God loves to show himself mighty? Just when the devil has a good head of steam, God, like a skilled ninja, uses the adversary’s body weight against him. It’s Satan’s own inertia that drives the stake into his heart. Just like the cross. It’s a kind of divine “trick”: Precisely when the demonic community thinks for sure they have Jesus cornered, he delivers the deathblow. Wasn’t it a Halloween-like gathering of darkness and demonic festival at Golgotha, the place of the Skull, when the God-man “disarmed the powers and authorities [and] made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them” at the cross (Colossians 2:15)?

Marching on Hell

What if we were reminded that Jesus, our invincible hero, will soon crush Satan under our feet (Romans 16:20)? What if we really believed deep down that our Jesus has promised with absolute certainty, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). What if we realized that the gates-of-hell thing isn’t a picture of a defensive church straining to hold back the progressing Satanic legions, but rather an offensive church, on the move, advancing against the cowering, cornered kingdom of darkness? What if the church is the side building the siegeworks? What if the church is marching forward, and Jesus is leading his church on an aggressive campaign against the stationary and soon-to-collapse gates of hell? What if we didn’t let Halloween convince us for a minute that it’s otherwise?

What if Ephesians 6:12 reminded us that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic power over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places”? What if we remembered that it’s not our increasingly post-Christian society’s Halloween revelers who are our enemies, but that our real adversary is the one who has blinded them, and that we spite Satan as we rescue unbelievers with the word of the cross?

Resisting the Devil

What posture would Jesus have us take when we are told that our “adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8)? Naïveté? Retreat? Rather: “Resist him, firm in your faith” (verse 9). What if we had the gospel gall to trust Jesus for this promise: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7)? And what if resistance meant not only holding our ground, but taking his?

What if we hallowed Jesus at Halloween by pursuing gospel advance and going lovingly on the attack? What if, like Martin Luther, we didn’t cower in fear, but saw October 31 as a chance to serve notice to the threshold of evil? What if we didn’t turn out our lights as if hiding, but left a flaming bag on the very doorstep of the King of Darkness himself?

Orienting on Others

What if we saw October 31 not merely as an occasion for asking self-oriented questions about our participation (whether we should or shouldn’t dress the kids up or carve pumpkins), but for pursuing others-oriented acts of love? What if we capitalized on the opportunity to take a step forward in an ongoing process of witnessing to our neighbors, co-workers, and extended families about who Jesus is and what he accomplished at Calvary for the wicked like us?

What if we resolved not to join the darkness by keeping our porch lights off? What if we didn’t deadbolt our doors, but handed out the best treats in the neighborhood as a faint echo of the kind of grace our Father extends to us sinners?

Giving the Good Candy

What if thinking evangelistically about Halloween didn’t mean dropping tracts into children’s bags, but the good candy — and seeing the evening as an opportunity to cultivate relationships with the unbelieving as part of an ongoing process in which we plainly identify with Jesus, get to know them well, and personally speak the good news of our Savior into their lives?

And what if we made sure to keep reminding ourselves that our supreme treasure isn’t our subjective zeal for the mission, but our Jesus and his objective accomplishment for us?

The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. – Jesus in Matthew 9:37–38

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David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor at desiringGod.org and an elder at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis. He has edited several books, including Thinking. Loving. Doing., Finish the Mission, and Acting the Miracle, and is co-author of How to Stay Christian in Seminary.

Originally posted at DesiringGod.org. Used with permission.