I had planned to write about this topic at some point, but I just read an article by Tim Keel of Jacob's Well that frames this question much better than I ever could. I highly recommend it and hope that it will stir conversation about what how we may have unwittingly reduced the scope of the gospel.
The questions an article like this raises can be both provocative and challenging. My hope is that it will get us thinking about God, and God's mission, in much broader terms than we typically understand it.
Please feel free to post comments here regarding the article. I'd like to know what you think (either good or bad).
http://www.christianvisionproject.com/2008/02/an_efficient_gospel.html
Friday, March 28, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Asking better questions
This is where a missional approach to scripture has revolutionized the way I interact with Living Word. As Darryl Guder points out, “Our engagement with the Bible is always defined by the questions we bring to it” (Treasure in Clay Jars, p. 69). Therefore if we ask better questions, (i.e. questions that get at the heart of God and his mission on earth) the answers we find should transform us into the kind of people, individually and communally, that are in tune with the Spirit’s working among us. My greatest critique of the “me-centered” Bible study model mentioned above is that it makes it possible to be a diligent student of scripture and yet miss entirely what God is up to throughout the canon. In that sense we are reading the Bible without ever allowing it to read us. The result is Christian who struggles to see God in her story, rather than seeing her life as an extension of God’s story to the world, a kingdom of which she is a participant and a benefactor. In such a time as this when so many feel disconnected and alienated, a missional approach to reading the Bible is an attractive one in deed.
So what are the better questions to ask in order to read the Bible Missionally? The Gospel and Our Culture Network has put together a helpful list of questions to be used in group study that I have been using lately to engage scripture. They are as follows:
How does this text read us and our world?
How does this text evangelize us with good news?
How does this text convert us in personal and corporate life?
How does this text send us and equip our witness?
How does this text orient us to the coming reign of God?
Friday, February 29, 2008
Identification Please
"We suprisingly get our identities more from our jobs than our life in a Christian community pursuing God's kingdom on earth." David Fitch The Great Giveaway, p.171
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This quote from Dave Fitch was shared during my class on missional church as an introduction to what a "missional" community looks like and acts like in the world. What Fitch is getting at in his book the Great Giveaway is that we as Christians in America in the 21st century have been shaped more by capitalism (i.e. our jobs) than by a deep connection to our identity as image-bearers of God who are called into a community that represents his Kingdom here on Earth.
Using this quote as a springboard, I want to reflect on:
1) What should our conscious identity as a community of Christians be?
2) In what ways does that rub against the grain of the culture we find ourselves in?
3) What difference does knowing our identity in Christ make for ourselves and the places where God has sent us?
I'll tackle the first now and the other two in later posts.
One of the callings of a Christian is to grow into becoming more like the Savior whom we serve. Its not enough just to pray a prayer and never have intentions for being transformed. The Christian faith is on that expects transformation, specifically transformation into Christ-likeness. The more we become like Jesus, the more we fulfill our first purpose on the Earth, which is to be image bearers of God (Gen. 1_27-28).
But the question that is being raised more and more is, "what does it mean to look like Jesus?" Over the past 200 years in this country, being like Jesus has been equated with trying not to sin, trying to live a holy life, and being as nice to everyone as you possibly can. But is this what Paul means when he says, "we are... being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory" (2 Cor. 3:18)?
Many leaders under the umbrella of "missional" are reimagining what it means to be in Christ's likeness by examining why Jesus was incarnated here on earth. As we behold Jesus from the perspective of his mission, we as his torch-bearers (so to speak) will be reformed.
The Jesus we see in the gospels saw himself primarily as a missionary ambassador. He considered himself sent by the Father to earth as a representative of the kingdom of heaven. He left his culture in heaven to become one of us: speaking our language, eating our food, wearing our clothes. His incarnation wasn't just of flesh, but of culture. As John Calvin puts it, he condescends himself the way a parent does in order to communicate with a child. He spoke "baby talk" so that we could understand.
But as much as he was relevant to the culture he was sent to, he also challenged that culture in big ways. He never forgot that the culture he was sent to wasn't his own. In the same way that the US ambassador in France doesn't forget that he is an American, so Jesus never forgot his "heavenness" and his mission.
Keeping those two aspects in mind, consider what Jesus tells his followers in John 20:21, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." This is the key indentifying marker of a follower of Christ. He or she one who is sent by Jesus into the cultures they find themselves. What this means for us is that we are not first and foremost Americans, we are missionaries sent from heaven to America.
My deeply convicting question for all of us (myself included) is, "do we see ourselves as a people sent by Jesus into the world for the purpose of representing him to the nations (US included)? Or do we tend to forget our true citizenship in heaven and allow ourselves to be defined more by our jobs, families, sports, bank accounts, denominations, good deeds, (fill in the blank)?
More to come...
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Individual Trees or a Collected Vineyard?
Being that it's been about 5 months since my last blog, I figured that it's about time I give this thing another shot. I like the idea of blogging in general, but being consistent at it will be a challenge for me.
In high school I was a half-way decent sprinter, but a terrible long-distance runner. I could never pace myself over a longer period time, and so I would exhaust myself in the first half of the race and have nothing left in the tank at the end. Hopefully that won't be indicative of my blogging experience. The way I see it, the fear of inconsistency should never be reason enough not to experiment with something.
Anyway, the name of this blog comes from Jesus' teaching on the vine and the branches, specifically John 15:8 "This is to my father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."
The underlying question I hope to wrestle with in this blog (and all of life) is what does the fruit look like that Jesus expects of his disciples? In what way does it bring the Father glory? What does it mean to be a collection of people (the church) bearing fruit together such that the Father is pleased to dwell amongst our vineyard? OK, that was more than one question. But they all fall under the umbrella of wanting come to some understanding of what it means to be a part of God's mission in the world (more on "mission" later).
The only thing I'll mention here is that Jesus talks about fruit in the context of community. I'm convinced that we're so individualized in America that we can read "I" into just about anything. Part of what I'm coming to grips with is that God calls a people to reflect his presence to the world because an individual is incapable of that task alone. How could we expect to represent God to the world as individuals when God himself is a community of 3 in 1?
Whatever it is that he's calling us to (the kind of fruit), he's calling us to produce it together. The "you" in "you bear fruit" is plural in Greek, suggesting that the disciples identity as fruit-bearers of the kingdom was bound to each other as much as it was bound to Jesus. Their unity, together under Christ, is what was going to tell the world about the kind of God they served.
In high school I was a half-way decent sprinter, but a terrible long-distance runner. I could never pace myself over a longer period time, and so I would exhaust myself in the first half of the race and have nothing left in the tank at the end. Hopefully that won't be indicative of my blogging experience. The way I see it, the fear of inconsistency should never be reason enough not to experiment with something.
Anyway, the name of this blog comes from Jesus' teaching on the vine and the branches, specifically John 15:8 "This is to my father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."
The underlying question I hope to wrestle with in this blog (and all of life) is what does the fruit look like that Jesus expects of his disciples? In what way does it bring the Father glory? What does it mean to be a collection of people (the church) bearing fruit together such that the Father is pleased to dwell amongst our vineyard? OK, that was more than one question. But they all fall under the umbrella of wanting come to some understanding of what it means to be a part of God's mission in the world (more on "mission" later).
The only thing I'll mention here is that Jesus talks about fruit in the context of community. I'm convinced that we're so individualized in America that we can read "I" into just about anything. Part of what I'm coming to grips with is that God calls a people to reflect his presence to the world because an individual is incapable of that task alone. How could we expect to represent God to the world as individuals when God himself is a community of 3 in 1?
Whatever it is that he's calling us to (the kind of fruit), he's calling us to produce it together. The "you" in "you bear fruit" is plural in Greek, suggesting that the disciples identity as fruit-bearers of the kingdom was bound to each other as much as it was bound to Jesus. Their unity, together under Christ, is what was going to tell the world about the kind of God they served.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Thoughts on Psalm 137
Psalm 137
7 Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
"Tear it down," they cried,
"tear it down to its foundations!"
Let’s face it; there are certain passages of scripture that are more essential to the Christian life than others. Pastors and teachers rightly emphasize some books and chapters of the Bible over others because they offer the audience hope and frame God’s character in light of his love and mercy, traits we find comforting in a God whom we entrust our very lives to. However, it is a difficult task to emphasize a particular group of passages without deemphasizing other parts of the Bible. In fact, sometimes we fall into the trap of not only deemphasizing, but avoiding difficult passages because they tend to irritate our finely tuned theology.
One such passage is found in the 137th Psalm, which speaks of the happiness of those who smash children on rocks. At first glance it is easy to understand why such a passage would be minimized in a faith that upholds the preciousness of human life. After all, Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, to bind up the broken-hearted, and to heal the sick. He implored his followers to be like children, not to smash them on rocks! Still, the passage remains in the canon of scripture, so somehow we have to deal with difficult texts like this if we truly affirm that the Bible and all that is contained in it is God’s Word. To avoid a particular passage of scripture because of its difficulty is to say that there are certain characteristics of God and chapters in his story we just shouldn’t speak of. So how do we justify teaching on a text like Psalm 137?
As a human being living in a culture with other humans, I recognize that life is messy. The issues we encounter on a daily basis are complex and seldom come with easy answers. Although much of our church culture persuades us to look the other way when the messiness of life bubbles to the surface, God certainly does not. In the pages of scripture, God is intimately involved in the affairs of mankind and so is the word he spoke into the world. Among the concerns dealt with in the Bible are jealousy, adultery, sex, slavery, genocide, incest, polygamy, greed, and revenge. It shows the human heart for what it is and shows God as one who is big enough for man’s rawest emotions. The Bible doesn’t sugar coat life.
Now bring that understanding into the aforementioned passage. Psalm 137 is written from the perspective of the Jewish community living in Babylonian exile. With everything they once knew destroyed or taken, the author laments life under the mockery of his new captors. Their holiest city burned, the place of their God’s dwelling destroyed, all their anger and grief is poured out on the empire responsible for their situation. The author pleads with God to repay them with the same kind of horror that they have had to endure. Was he right in doing so? The psalm doesn’t offer us the answer to that question. What it does do is demonstrate how unjust the world can be and how the prayers of God’s people have made their way to him, even ones calling for the infanticide of their enemies.
7 Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
"Tear it down," they cried,
"tear it down to its foundations!"
8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-
9 he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
Let’s face it; there are certain passages of scripture that are more essential to the Christian life than others. Pastors and teachers rightly emphasize some books and chapters of the Bible over others because they offer the audience hope and frame God’s character in light of his love and mercy, traits we find comforting in a God whom we entrust our very lives to. However, it is a difficult task to emphasize a particular group of passages without deemphasizing other parts of the Bible. In fact, sometimes we fall into the trap of not only deemphasizing, but avoiding difficult passages because they tend to irritate our finely tuned theology.
One such passage is found in the 137th Psalm, which speaks of the happiness of those who smash children on rocks. At first glance it is easy to understand why such a passage would be minimized in a faith that upholds the preciousness of human life. After all, Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, to bind up the broken-hearted, and to heal the sick. He implored his followers to be like children, not to smash them on rocks! Still, the passage remains in the canon of scripture, so somehow we have to deal with difficult texts like this if we truly affirm that the Bible and all that is contained in it is God’s Word. To avoid a particular passage of scripture because of its difficulty is to say that there are certain characteristics of God and chapters in his story we just shouldn’t speak of. So how do we justify teaching on a text like Psalm 137?
As a human being living in a culture with other humans, I recognize that life is messy. The issues we encounter on a daily basis are complex and seldom come with easy answers. Although much of our church culture persuades us to look the other way when the messiness of life bubbles to the surface, God certainly does not. In the pages of scripture, God is intimately involved in the affairs of mankind and so is the word he spoke into the world. Among the concerns dealt with in the Bible are jealousy, adultery, sex, slavery, genocide, incest, polygamy, greed, and revenge. It shows the human heart for what it is and shows God as one who is big enough for man’s rawest emotions. The Bible doesn’t sugar coat life.
Now bring that understanding into the aforementioned passage. Psalm 137 is written from the perspective of the Jewish community living in Babylonian exile. With everything they once knew destroyed or taken, the author laments life under the mockery of his new captors. Their holiest city burned, the place of their God’s dwelling destroyed, all their anger and grief is poured out on the empire responsible for their situation. The author pleads with God to repay them with the same kind of horror that they have had to endure. Was he right in doing so? The psalm doesn’t offer us the answer to that question. What it does do is demonstrate how unjust the world can be and how the prayers of God’s people have made their way to him, even ones calling for the infanticide of their enemies.
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