Emergent Brethren

Just finished reading a book called “Whole Church: Leading from Fragmentation to Engagement” by Mel Lawrenz. I can’t recommend the book except that the framework he sets forth I find really helpful and provocative! The book is just lots of ink on paper. The framework is on page 11 and the rest works at supporting the framework, but not very well, in my opinion.

The framework Mel sets forth is a helpful way to think about God’s work in the world and the work that God has called us to do in the world as well.

Mel defines engagement as “Bringing together God’s supply and human need.

And then he further talks about four kinds of engagement that every church is called to do.

1. Engaging with God (the life of worship and personal devotion)
2. Engaging with God’s people (real koinonia {Community} through small groups and other means)
3. Engaging with your community (imaginative ways to distribute Christian witness that is decentralized, grass roots, salt and light.)
4. Engaging with the world (developing an awareness of and involvement in global mission)

When Jesus announced, what I call his mission to the world, he said he was sent to engage the world. He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” That’s engagement!

It is also what he calls us to do!

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.

This month marks an anniversary since the start of this blog site. Here are some numbers to show its activity:

166 Posts, including the section on Brian McLaren’s book
13 Authors who contributed the posts
13 The most number of comments to a post (see the 3/15/08 post by Michael Salerno called, “My money, my mouth”)
11 Number of countries with readers who have visited this site.
5 Number of pages visited by a new visitor in Saudi Arabia.
3 Number of years this site has existed.

Thanks to everyone who’s written a post or left a comment! Your writing is a blessing to many people (even if they don’t leave comments)!

With much appreciation,

Jeff Glass
Site Administrator

I have been doing lots of reading on vacation. Working my way through a books series (3 in number) Called the Apprentice Series. The first one is called The Good and Beautiful God, the second (which I am reading now) is called The Good and Beautiful Life. They are books designed to be used in a spiritual formation group and in 2010, I will probably attempt doing just that. I wanted to read them through first to see if they were worthy of that. They are! (At least the first two are – the third one is not yet printed!)

They are written by James Bryan Smith, who is a theology professor at Friends University in Kansas and the Director of the Spiritual Formation Institute there and is a founding member of Renovare (Richard Foster’s spiritual growth group). One of the things that caught my eye was Dallas Willard’s praise of the book… “The best practice I have seen in Christian spiritual formation.”

In a chapter I was reading today, James writes this about the Beattitudes…”The people mentioned in the Beattitudes are not blessed because they are in those conditions. They are blessed because of Jesus. They have hope because the kingdom is available to even them…. People are not blessed merely because they are poor in spirit. The condition is not important. What is important is that these people are not cut off from God. Their life situation does not prevent them from entering the kingdom of God.”

And he concludes that out of that blessing they are to bless the world!

Neat way to think about the beattitudes! We ARE blessed because of Jesus (not because of the condition we find ourselves in) and the blessing we have is the invitation to be part of God’s kingdom and that blessing is for us to share – to invite others into God’s kingdom where they will find love, forgiveness, healing, peace, and blessing!

I just finished reading my advance copy of Mark Batterson’s about to be released book “Primal: The Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity.” Having already read Mark’s previous books, I came to this book with HIGH expectations. He didn’t let me down. It is a good read and I found it very helpful. In many ways, Mark has put into writing some ideas that I have had for a number of years now.

The book’s guiding image of peeling back the layers of all that Christianity has evolved into to get back to the “primal” nature of Christianity is a helpful image. The book is designed to take an indepth look at what was most important to Jesus…. the great commandment. Mark writes, “we have a tendency to complicate Christianity. Jesus simplified it: Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. If we are to live out the essence of Christianity, we must commit to being great at this Great Commandment.”

And then Mark devotes the chapters in the book to taking a look at what each of those four ways we are to Love God might look like in our world and lives today.

I HIGHLY recommend reading this book and look forward to Mark’s next.