Emergent Brethren

So this week was a fairly full week and I didn’t get around to posting a second reflection on the book “Live Sent” by Jason C. Dukes. But here are some more “random” thoughts about the book and some quotes that I especially resonated with.

First off, I would say that one of the best chapters in the book relates to discipling, or “discipleship”. This chapter was a much needed part of the book, and a much need part as we think about Veritas and our future. Rethinking the idea of Discipleship being individualistic, cognitive-only, and done in a class with a beginning and end point. Afterwards you are a disciple and you have your certificate to prove it. He says that “Discipling is learning and living the ways of Jesus so that others learn and live His ways, too, so that others learn and live His ways, too, and so on.” Jason says that discipling is a “process, a multi-tasking kind of process that has as its core value the necessity of doing life together.” He frames discipling around 3 elements:

1. A first element I would suggest for the discipling process is relationship.

2. A second element I would suggest for the discipling process is discernment

3. A third element of discipling I would suggest is release. (this third part to me is so needed and follows Jesus model of sending out the 12 and the 72.) Jason expands on this by saying, “Church leaders must be willing to measure success not by how many people they can draw and manage, but by how many they can release and relate with and coach to be discipling far beyond their influence and control.” And one way to do that is by watching the calendar of the church, “We will not busy you with church activities, but rather we will equip and release you to be the church within yoru daily and weekly activities.”

Here are some other quotes from other parts of the book in regards to living a sent/missional life:

“You were made to know life abundantly, and life abundant happens when you live beyond yourself.”

“If we rethink our ‘live’ and embrace wholeheartedly a life lived beyond ourselves rooted in the ways of Jesus, then it will influence the way we define success in life.”

“He trusts you with the responsibility of sharing His love with the world and being a significant part of His restoring humanity.”

“Getting to know the people of the culture we have been sent into and knowing the effective ways to connect with and communicate with them is called “contextualization”…..”Unless you are befriending them, eating with them, drinking coffee with them, encouraging them, learning from them, and giving yourself away to the people of yoru culture, you are not contextualizing.”

“The health of a local church is actually not based on the number who ‘attend’ but rather the way in which people love one another and are walking relationally in life.”

Another great section of the book in my opinion was chapter 7 entitled “Stay on the postal route (or wireless travel. Our spheres of influence in daily living.) In this chapter he lays out the spheres of influence that you have in your daily life and how to live sent in the midst of those spheres. His spheres of influence include: family, Neighborhood, Marketplace, World, and the Web. Ths is a great reminder, especially the family and Web part, as sometimes I forget about living sent to my wife and children, and extended family, and I almost have never thought about living sent on the web.

I’m sure there are more quotes that I could write about. More thoughts I could write about. More ways of Living Sent, but I think these are enough for now. I have finished Live Sent and will be moving to the book “Thy Kingdom Connected:What the Church can learn from Facebook, the Internet, and Other Networks” by Dwight J. Friesen. I will be blogging about this book in the near future as I read it.

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.

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?”