Emergent Brethren

As I mentioned a few blog posts ago I am reading Live Sent by Jason C. Dukes. I am a part of the Ooze Viral Bloggers and received this book the other week to read and write blogs about the book.

Jason’s overarching metaphor for the idea of living missionally or as he calls it Living Sent, is the metaphor of a letter. Being a letter to the culture, your family, your neighborhood, and the world. I have to say I loved the metaphor and how it also changes the metaphor for church.

In Chapter 2 entitled “Rethinking Church” he works on redefining the metaphor of the church from being a fueling station to a Post office. Here is what he says, “But Sunday mornings cannot be viewed as just “fueling stations” any longer. They must be viewed as Post Offices, gathering and sorting mail in order to send out those letters into daily culture.”

I am not quite finished with the book, but there has been much in this book that has encouraged me in the midst of planting Veritas. There has been much to challenge me. There has been much to remind me.

I think the two biggest statements that has helped me, and are worth the price of the book (I would actually buy this book with my own money, if I hadn’t got it for free) are these:

“But, because of our emphasis on “going to church” and trying to “grow the church” (something Paul wrote that only God does)……” This statement has helped me to cut myself some slack regarding the growth of Veritas. Not that I just sit around and do nothing, but that ultimately it is God who will grow HIS Church.

“The question may not be ‘what do I need to do to live sent everyday. The question may be this- what do I need to stop doing so that I can live sent everyday.” So often in these books it’s like, “Now what am I going to have to add to my life to fully live this out. What he is getting at with this question is the idea that maybe we need to drop something from our calendar so that we can be more fully sent into the world. In another place he said this, “Maybe a bit less ‘church activity’ on their schedule and a lot more of ‘being the church’ in the midst of whatever their schedule already is. Why add ‘church’ to what you do when you can be the church in all you do…..People go to church too much and are not being the church enough!!!”

I have a lot more thoughts on this book, and I will write another blog in the next few days of some other thoughts, quotes, and comments I have regarding this book. One of these thoughts revolve around the being sent to my family, and not just seeing this “missional” life as being sent to others outside my family (which it is also that).

So until I write that post, I will contine to try to Live Sent, to my family, to my neighbors, my friends, my enemies, my community, my world, and on the net as well. May you go and do likewise.

Live Sent is a new book by Jason Dukes that i just got from the Ooze Viral Bloggers. I am excited to begin reading it, gleaning insight about what it means to live sent, and see how this book might help as we explore the Missional Life of Jesus at Veritas.

Jason lays out 4 elements that are utmost importance to the mission of being the hands and feet of Christ and the blessing that we are to be as Christ followers. The 4 elements are:

1. In order to live sent, there may be some things we need to rethink.

2. Living sent is all about trusting your value.

3. Living sent is all about doing life together.

4. Living sent is all about giving ourselves away intentionally.

I think these 4 elements are crucial to a life of a missional follower of Jesus, and they are ones that I have, and will continue to unpack and wrestle with. I look forward to wrestling with and unpacking these 4 elements as I read the book and use this blog space to record my thoughts. After I am done, if anyone wants to borrow the book, let me know.

Also I recently found something that really relates to living a sent life. While working my AM shift at Starbucks the other morning, I was reading a paper that includes reports of good customer service and bad customer service. Each paper includes a thought provoking quote. The quote that was on the one paper struck me and resonates deeply within me, but also connects with our new sermon series “The Missional LIfe of Jesus”

It is by the writer Frederick Buechner. “The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.”

We all need to remember that as we seek to live out the kingdom in tangible ways. We might never really see the impact that we might have on someone this side of heaven. So let’s all work on being the hands and feet of Jesus, seeking to bless others.

Found this interesting article in Leadership online from Dan Kimball about using buildings missionally.

They can be outposts of mission, not just a drain on resources.
Dan Kimball

Sunday, November 29, 2009

If you had asked me eight years ago what I thought about church buildings, I would have said, “Who needs a building? The early church didn’t have buildings, and we don’t need them either!” But I was wrong.

My anti-building phase was a reaction to having seen so much money spent on church facilities, often for non-essential, luxury items. I was also reacting to a philosophy of ministry that treated church buildings like Disneyland; a place consumers gather for entertainment. But these abuses had caused me to unfairly dismiss the potential blessing of buildings as well.

Consider the building occupied by Compassion International in Colorado Springs. It has a well-groomed lawn with sprinkler system, an attractive sign, and an expansive parking lot. It’s a nice facility. But it’s more than just a building—it is the headquarters and training center for a ministry that brings physical and spiritual nourishment to more than one million children in 25 countries. The Compassion building is used for a missional purpose, not simply as a place for Christians to gather and consume religious services.

When we planted our church in 2004, we needed a place to meet. We found a very traditional church building that had a sizable “fellowship hall” originally used only for donuts and coffee on Sundays. Wanting to use the building differently, we converted the fellowship hall into a public coffee lounge featuring music and art from the outside community. The Abbey, as it’s now called, is open seven days a week and offers free internet access.

Just yesterday I was in The Abbey and saw about 20 people, not part of our congregation, studying and hanging out. (During finals week I counted 90 students packed into the place.) While there I talked to a brand new Christian who has been coming to our gatherings. He found out about our church from a Buddhist friend. His friend loves coming to The Abbey and recommended our church because he trusted us.

We’ve also used our building to serve our community in times of crisis. When wildfires forced nearby residents to flee their homes, our building became an overnight refuge for those without a place to stay.

These missional opportunities would not be possible without a building.

What about the sanctuary? When we first got the building, one person said the sanctuary “looked like a funeral parlor.” We sought to remake the worship space to express our congregation’s values of community, worship, and service.

First, we removed the pews. Looking at the back of peoples’ heads simply didn’t communicate our values of community and participation.

We also invited local artists to create images during our worship gatherings. These were then displayed in the space.

The only cross in the building was very small, so we brought in a huge iron cross as the visual focus of our worship space. This clearly communicated that Christ was at the center of our mission.

We lowered the large wooden pulpit in order to facilitate more relational teaching, and we added a prayer shawl over the podium to reinforce our frequent talks about the importance of prayer in changing lives.

Little by little the space that had been powerfully missional in the 1930s and ’40s was transformed to reflect missional values of the 21st century. In 20 years I’m sure the way these values are expressed will have changed again, and I hope the design of the sanctuary and fellowship hall will change accordingly.

What’s important is that our mission drives our aesthetics and our use of space.

Today I am incredibly thankful we have a building. It allows us meet in larger groups for worship, and it allows for training classes that equip people for mission. We also use our space all week and welcome the public into it.

So, I have recanted from my earlier belief that buildings drain resources and create consumer Christians. I was wrong. Now I see them as missionary centers to impact lives for the gospel.

So here is my question and assignment for you. If you had the opportunity to have a building or you already own a building, what types of things could you or do you do to use the building missionally and to not be a drain on resources? If you could design a building anyway you want to be a missional center, what would you do? What creative ways could you fund the designing of the space? Let me know your thoughts about the article and the questions.

I just finished reading “The Justice Project” edited by Brian McLaren and others. I received the book a few weeks ago from the Ooze Viral Bloggers and it took me a while to work through it because of my schedule over the last few weeks, with work for Veritas, my job at Starbucks, and watching the kids while Kim has been working more hours. So it has taken me some time to get around to blogging about this book.

The book is divided into five sections. The five sections are: The God of Justice, The Book of Justice, Justice in the USA, A Just World, and a Just Church. Each section then is broken down into a number of chapters each written by a different person, each writing about a different aspect of justice.

The first section regarding the God of Justice is all around God’s heart for the needy, the poor, and the oppressed. The second section revolves around how the theme of justice runs throughout all of Scripture, from the prophets, to the Gospels, and the rest of the New Testament. The third section revolves around issues of Justice in the USA, including Racial issues, elections, liberals, conservatives, family values, and border issues. A Just world revolves around issues that are broader than just the USA and includes chapters on becoming just global citizens, business of justice, just ecology, just religion, just cities, justice in the slums, and justice in the suburbs. The final section deals with Justice in the church and includes evangelicals awakening to the justice issue, planting justice churches, parenting and justice, and some other issues.

It was a great read and opened my eyes to some justice issues that I hadn’t thought about before. It also helped formulate some other things that I have been thinking about for awhile. One chapter that stood out to me was the chapter on parenting and justice. I have thought about how can Kim and I parent Kaiden and Trinity in such a way that they have a heart to work for peace and justice in the world. That is alot of the reason that we do service projects at Veritas with whole families, so the kids can realize that they bring a real contribution to the church and the world.

Here are some quotes that stood out to me throughout the book:

“The practice of justice is at the center of God’s purpose for human life. It is so closely related to the worship of the living God as the only ture God that no act of worship is acceptable to him unless it is accompanied by concrete acts of justice on the human level.”

“In The Politics of Jesus, Dr. Obery Hendricks underscores this point by putting the Lord’s Prayer in the political context of Caesar’s empire in order to shed new light on its seditious and subversive nature.”

“Jesus inaugurates God’s realm of justice on and for the earth. His entire life, death and resurrection unveil for all people in all times a true portrait of God’s justice. Justice empowers the wronged by making wrongs right. Jesus’ teaching and ministry shows us waht justice looks like in every dimension of human life- individual, social and economic.”

“Christ’s peaceable kingdom will only materialize in the Americas as emerging Christian communities disrupt the logics of racism, nationalism, materialism, and militarism and form counter-imperial communities of justice and hope.”

Probably the one quote that stood out to me in the entire book was this one, and I end this blog with this one, “Too many Bible readers have been trained, as I was, to approach the biblical text through the priestly lens, not the prophetic one. That is, they look at the priestly theme of personal justification and ignore the prophetic theme of social justice. They’re concerned about pleasing God with personal piety rather than public policy. They are more interested in being blessed than in being a blessing, quicker to bomb their enemies than to love and serve them, more preoccupied with evading justice than with seeking it first.”

Over the last 8 weeks, since we officially launched Veritas back on September 13, there have been so many things that have been exciting. The launch day, people visiting, new people becoming part of Veritas, alot of interest from various places, and the freedom to pursue missional kingdom life in a new way. One of the upcoming things that has me super excited is our Advent series called Advent Conspiracy.

Last year at Hempfield COB, I wrote an article for their newsletter about Advent Conspiracy. I knew then that our first Advent as Veritas, the church plant, that we would undertake our own Advent Conspiracy. And now that Advent will be here in a few short weeks, we are working on various plans for how Veritas will live out its own Advent Conspiracy.

Some of the ways we are going to live it out include:

Worship Gatherings: Over the course of 4 weeks (November 29-December 20) we will be covering 4 themes. The four themes are Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, Love All. Next week a few of us are getting together to plan our worship gatherings for those 4 sundays and I trust that this group will come up with awesome ideas to make our worship times interactive, experiential, visual, and meaningful.

Offering: The other week during our Leadership Team meeting our group decided that we will be giving 100% of our offerings for the 4 weeks to 2 different organizations: one local and one international. So each organization will receive 50% of our offerings from 4 weeks. The international ministry that we will be supporting is Living Water International (www.water.cc) and works on getting clean water for villages in third world countries. The local organization is still being decided but will either be Music For Everyone or possibly The Gathering Place, a local HIV/AIDS ministry in downtown Lancaster.

Interview: Just yesterday I received an e-mail from a reporter from CNN wanting to talk with me about Advent Conspiracy and what we as a church plant will be doing during those 4 weeks. I’m not sure where she got my information, but I am super-excited to talk with her about Veritas and our Advent Conspiracy plans. I called her this morning, and am waiting a return call. So if something happens with an article on CNN.com, I will post it here for all to read.

Anyway, may we all live out the Conspiracy to take Advent/Christmas back from the consumer holiday it has become and put it back to focusing on the infant King Jesus, who says, “Why do you go into debt to celebrate my birthday?”