November 20, 2009 • 12:14 pm
I am at the front end of preparation for a seminar/workshop I will be presenting at the upcoming Great Commission Ministries’ IGNITE Conference in Columbus, Ohio. The theme of this year’s event is Deeper, Wider, Higher: The Outward Call of the Kingdom of God. If you are interested in attending, you can find out more information here.
I will be teaming up with an old friend, one of the pastors at h2o Church at BGSU, Bryan Wiles, to lead a seminar titled (something like) “The Gospel Rediscovered.” Here is our vision: We can’t do evangelism unless we know the message we speak and embody. So what is the message? What was Jesus’ message? How does it connect with the larger narrative of the Bible? Does our message look like his? Does it connect with the grand narrative of God?
As I gather resources and formulate the concepts/stories of the seminar, I will post them here. Today I am including the best concise resource I’ve ever found. It is an article by Scot McKnight for the Christian Vision Project at Christianity Today magazine. It is titled 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel. I will include the 8 marks here and am also linking the entire article here.
- A robust gospel is a story.
- The robust gospel places transactions in the context of persons.
- The robust gospel deals with a robust problem.
- A robust gospel has a grand vision.
- A robust gospel includes the life of Jesus as well as his resurrection, and the gift of the Spirit alongside Good Friday.
- A robust gospel demands not only faith but everything.
- A robust gospel includes the robust Spirit of God.
- A robust gospel emerges from and leads others to the church.
Filed under: Spirituality, Theology
November 1, 2009 • 6:25 pm
Since starting seminary over a year ago, I have often wrestled with this question: How do I merge the scholarly world of intellect and information with the “real world” of faith and discipleship? In some traditions, talk of seminary and intellect has such negative connotations that anyone taking an interest in such things is deemed suspect. Destined to fall into the abyss of cerebral knowledge absent of authentic worship. In other circles, knowledge and intellect are so revered that church leadership is withheld until certain academic standards have been met. And Christian discipleship can, in this scene, be relegated to a secondary place after the pinnacle passion of knowledge.
But does it have to be this way? Does there need to be such extremes? Can the worlds of knowledge and discipleship collide in such a way that each speaks a word into the other? On the long drives home from school, I pray that this “collision” of sorts would happen in my life. I dream of becoming a man whose discipleship is inescapably fueled by his academic pursuits, and whose academic pursuits are tempered by and understood entirely in the context of discipleship.
I think T. F. Torrance hits the nail on the head in this struggle to balance the two:
“The transformation of the human mind and its renewal through assimilation to the mind of Christ is something that has to go on throughout the whole of our life—it is a never-ending discipleship in repentant rethinking as we take up the cross and follow Christ. That is why we cannot be theologians without the incessant prayer in offering ourselves daily to God through the reconciling and atoning mediation of Christ; and that is also why we cannot be evangelists without being theologians whose minds are constantly schooled in obedience to Christ.”
Filed under: Life, School, Spirituality
October 23, 2009 • 10:57 am
I found this great prayer in a book on prayer I am presently reading.
The arms of Christ be around my shoulders,
The touch of the Holy Spirit upon my head,
The sign of Christ’s cross upon my forehead,
The sound of the Holy Spirit in my ears,
The fragrance of the Holy Spirit in my nostrils,
The vision of heaven’s company on my lips,
The work of God’s church in my hands,
The service of God and the neighbor in my feet,
A home for God in my heart,
And to God, the father of all, my entire being.
Amen.
Filed under: Spirituality
October 7, 2009 • 12:50 pm
“Prayer is the breath of the soul, the organ by which we receive Christ into our parched and withered hearts.”
Ole Hallesby
Filed under: Spirituality
September 4, 2009 • 5:55 pm
What if you could sit down across your desk with some of the best leaders in today’s church and hear what they would say to you? That’s the idea behind THE NINES. It is a free one-day event that will take place totally online.
Leadership Network asked some of the church’s greatest communicators: “If you had nine minutes to talk one-on-one with thousands of church leaders, what is the one thing that you would tell them?” The result is a series of passionate and personal messages that will help you and your church navigate into the future.
It looks like my blog-world friend Noel Heikkinen from Rivervew Church in Holt, MI is going to be one of the speakers! You must pre-register in order to participate for free that day! To do so, check out the site here.
Filed under: Church
August 25, 2009 • 2:04 pm
In two days thousands of students will arrive on campus here at Kent State. Members of our church will be creatively introducing ourselves to these students and seeking to be the church on mission during this crazy yet fun season of year. In preparation for some long days, I took a little break today to simply sit in silence, prayer, and thought before the Lord. This practice of retreating just before a busy season of ministry helps me avoid the great danger of ministry, namely doing for the Lord before simply being with Him. There is such a strong pull for church people (like me) to worship ministry rather than the God who calls us into ministry. Embedded in this temptation is a more dangerous belief that we workers own the mission and are ultimately responsible for it. I’ve been in that place before. I never want to go back.
But is it even right to say that we do ministry for the Lord? The mission belongs to God. Redemption belongs to God. The pursuit of the hurting and confused belongs to God. The maturation of the Christian belongs to God. And yet (here is the best part), he invites us to join with Him. He knows that we will never experience much of the life of Christ if we do not enlist in His work of renewal. We’ll never fully grasp Christ-likeness (what we’re called to) unless we make our mission His mission.
I don’t want a life of basking in the goodness of my own redemption. I don’t want to spend my days reminding myself that I’ve correctly understood a few basic principles of the faith that lead to my salvation. I want so much more than that. Don’t you? So, what’s the “so much more?” It’s the missio Dei, God’s ongoing work of renewing His creation and inviting humanity into the Kingdom where He reigns supreme. Here everything is different than what we see in our broken world. Some say it’s heaven on earth. Here and now. And we are asked to participate with God in bringing this reality of His reign to the world we find ourselves in. That vision I can give my life to. Can you?
This quote from Mortimer Arias, bishop of the Methodist Church in Bolivia, says it perfectly:
We need to recover the capacity to dream. The reign of God is God’s own dream, his project for his world and for humanity! He made us dreamers, and he wants us to be seduced by his dream and to dream with him.
I want to be with God so that I can join with God in His work of realigning my life and my church community’s life to His mission.
Filed under: Life, Mission
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