Essays
Faithful Presence: The Intro
We get going proper into our discussion of “Faithful Presence - Seven Disciplines That Shape the Church for Mission” by David Fitch. Dan gives a general overview of where we are headed over the next few weeks. We hope you will join us in the conversation!
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Happiness Is...
There is a great picture floating around on social media. It’s a photo of two kids on a medal platform. The kid in first place has a sour look on his face. The kid in third place is rejoicing! The caption typically reads something like this, “Happiness is all about your perspective.”
I dig that sentiment.
My Kids!
Are you a parent? I am and I struggle daily with being a parent. It’s really hard and scary work. Parenting is not for the faint of heart.
In America we organize everything around our kids. Over the last few years there have been helicopter parents and now lawn mower parents (I’ll let you hit the Duck Duck Go Machine if you don’t know what those are).
Joy in the Memory
A conversation…
“I could never be a pastor. I don’t know how you do it."
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You have to walk through all the terrible stuff in people’s lives. You’re face to face with all the bad stuff all the time. I guess, I don’t understand how a pastor could ever stay a Christian. It seems like it would be really hard to keep the faith when you see all the times that God doesn’t do what you want."
Who Are You?
Where do you find your roots? Is your identity rooted somewhere? How do you know who you are?
As we walk through this life I think that this might be one of the most important questions that we face. The world comes at us pretty fast and more times than not the knowledge of who we are helps us to know what to do.
Be Honest
There are times when we feel like nobody cares about us. Sometimes, we feel all alone. That sense of being alone in the world is brutal. It lays us bare. It can feel like a million pounds is weighing us down.
This sense of being alone in the world and that nobody cares is not something new. It is common to the human experience.
Grateful To Live Here
Some Bible passages make us super uncomfortable in the modern era. It’s often because we don’t take time to think about what they’re saying and what they’re not saying.
The Scriptures were not written in a vacuum, culturally or otherwise. Neither should we interpret them that way. Nor are all passages written in the same genre and so we must take the time to understand what is happening in a particular passage.
Psalm 122 is one of those kinds of passages.
We Gather for Peace
Why do we need to gather together in community? Have you ever thought about it? Seriously, why?
To gather in community is not something that only Christians do. People from all kinds of religions meet together. Non-religious people gather in community, why? What is it about gathering together that we feel the necessity to do so?
A Faithful Presence: Missional Community
Today, I launch a new podcast series on #LoveWell called, “A Faithful Presence." I will be walking through David Fitch’s Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape the Church for Mission and discussing how we are living these disciplines out in our Missional Communities.
Before I dive in though, I wanted to talk about what I mean by Missional Community. I riffed off a nice little article by Brad Brisco where he defines “Missional Community."
Grace To You and Peace
There are few passages in the Scriptures that have impacted me more than 2 Corinthians 5. The whole chapter is amazing as it centers on the reality of the one who seeks to follow Jesus is a “new creation.” The ultimate result of this new reality is that the follower of Jesus is called an “ambassador” and is entrusted with the “ministry of reconciliation.”
Help Us!
As you might imagine a pastor is connected with a lot of people and accounts online about religion. My feeds are filled with other religious people and with people critical of religious people. If there is one particular kind of thread that I see often it goes like this:
>Christians only care about getting folks “saved.” The rampant hypocrisy of >the Christian is overwhelming. I love Christ but despise Christians.
To be clear, the particulars of this thread change, but that’s the heart of it. I see it from Christians and non-Christians. I see it from theists and atheists.
Uncle Ben, Spiderman, and Puritans
One of my favorite lines in any comic book or movie is the one from Uncle Ben, Peter Parker’s uncle in Spiderman. He said to his nephew, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
That line is memorable because I think we know that it is inherently true. We live in a world where so often we see the opposite. People with great power in our culture tend to abuse it. The powerful, with many exceptions, often use their power to amass more power. The wealthy, with many exceptions, use their wealth to amass more wealth.
When Grace Lays You Bare
There’s a line in a prayer that I reflected on this morning that says,
>Let us bless thee at all times and forget not how thou hast >forgiven our iniquities, >healed our diseases, >redeemed our lives from destruction, >crowned us with lovingkindness and tender mercies, >satisfied our mouths with good things, >renewed our youth like the eagles. (Valley of Vision, 382)
There are two responses this that run through my heart and mind to this and they are intertwined. I think that they feed into one another.
A Social Media Rule
Introduction
In the long history of Christianity there have been many “rules.” These treatises of living have had profound impact in the life and ministry of the faith. From Benedict to Francis to the modern day, the “Rule” has been a means by which to order one’s life.
Over the past number of months I have been thinking a great deal about my social media and how I use it. I have listened to and taken in the reactions of people in my life to how I use social media. Their responses and perceptions have helped to shape this rule.
Beyond that I took some time to read through my “activity” on Facebook, approximately 13 years of social media usage. What I saw there has also significantly shaped this rule.
Finally, I hope by writing this out and publishing it publicly, I will learn to live by it. My desire is to live life to the full and to #LoveWell.
Go Into The World and Be Not Offended
This week I grew frustrated with the “my faith is ridiculed” crowd. The “persecution complex” of the American Christian has gotten to a point where I felt like it needed to be addressed.
For those of you who don’t or can’t listen to podcasts, I am working on finding a transcription solution.
About Your Retirement...
Anytime I watch live TV I’m struck by the vast numbers of retirement commercials. They run constantly. It is non-stop. It seems like every other commercial is trying to make sure you will live comfortably in your retirement. The amassing of personal wealth for retirement seems to be the goal of every American.
The Avengers, Wheat, and Weeds
I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As a kid, I watched the cartoons on Saturdays and after school, I bought comic books, I even collected (and played with) action figures. Yup, I dig the whole thing. The movies are enjoyable and very entertaining. Do you know what else? They ask some really hard questions.
It Doesn’t Take Much
There’s the famous story about the boy walking the beach covered in starfish. He was stopping and throwing them back into the water. An old man walked up to him and said, “Son, there are thousands of starfish. You can’t possibly save them all.” The little boy replied, “But sir, I can save this one and that matters.”
It’s a story that we hear and often roll our eyes at. It sounds so nice. But we all know that the boy is just being silly. I mean, seriously, what a waste of time. Right?
What is the Kingdom of God Like?
I’m a pastor. I invite people to follow Jesus. It’s my vocation, calling, and passion. Before becoming a pastor, I was a missionary on the college campus. I invited people to follow Jesus. There is nothing I want more than people to follow Jesus.
Introduction
Over the last few years there is something that has significantly changed in the way I think about this calling and vocation. Not so long ago I would have said that I’m primarily concerned about people believing in Jesus. Getting folks to believe was the key step. I spent countless hours trying to convince people to place their faith in Jesus.
Belief and faith were the primary and central requirements that I was completely focused on.
Get folks saved, this was the key. There was nothing more important than that. Sure, I wanted people to grow in their faith and all the like, but seeing folks get saved was what mattered most.
I am someone who holds to what is known as “Reformed Theology.” One of the key beliefs we hold is that God is sovereign. Those of us who hold this theological system are what’s known as “monergists.” That’s a fancy way of saying that we believe that God is the one who does the saving of people.
It’s confession time: For most of my life in ministry I didn’t really believe any of that.
I would have said that I believed it. Often, I would argue for that position as being “biblical.” However, the way that I carried out ministry proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I believed that I was absolutely responsible for getting people saved. I didn’t trust that God could do it without me. God needed me.
Something has significantly shifted in me over the last few years. I believe more deeply than ever in the mystery, magnitude, and greatness of God. I am more convinced than ever that God is more gracious, merciful, and good than we can even imagine. I am also convinced that I am not responsible for saving anyone. God indeed does that. He saves people. He changes people. In his radical grace and mercy he moves in people’s lives.
So, if I don’t have the responsibility to save people, what is my job as pastor? It is to help people follow Jesus. It is to make disciples.
To follow Jesus is exactly what it sounds like. We are to live like him. His life marked by grace, kindness, truth-telling, sacrifice, suffering, and joy is to be the life that we live. In his wisdom he commissioned his first disciples to make other disciples. In his wisdom he gifted some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. The responsibility of us all working together is to bring his people to maturity. What is a mature faith? It is a person who looks like Jesus.
Could you imagine a world where all the Christians lived like Jesus? Engaged the world like Jesus? What if people were living lives that were different enough from the rest of the world that people knew we were Christians by our love?
What if those of us who are pastors focused all of our attention on helping people actually live like Jesus? If that’s the case, where do we turn for help in doing this? I think we can look to Jesus and what he’s recorded as saying in the gospels.
So What?
I write all of this as an introduction and invitation to a new series of blogs on the parables. I have been spending quite a bit of time in them recently because they are fascinating and they are life giving.
The parables almost always seek to answer one question: What is the kingdom of God/heaven like? I’m beginning to see that they are also almost always pointing to how one is to live into the narrow way. I have been surprised to see an emphasis on living and acting in the parables as opposed to faith and belief. So often I expect Jesus to say, “Believe…” but he instead calls people to a lived a life. (This is not to devalue the need for faith. Jesus often says, “Your faith has healed/saved you.”)
What is the kingdom of God like? It is like a narrow way that leads to life.
Over the next few weeks we will explore that narrow way in the parables.
Originally published at danielmrose.com on April 4, 2019.
Community, You Keep Using That Word. I Don't Think It Means What You Think It Means.
We live in a time where everyone talks about “community.”
“Community” this. “Community” that. “Community” “Community” “Community”
I have a secret to tell you.
A lot of people who are throwing around this word, “community,” have zero idea what it means or how it is supposed to work itself out in real life.
True community requires a few things.
Just like Vizzini from the Princess Bride, I have a feeling people don’t really know what community means.
We Can Be Church Together
Both/and not either/or
I wrote yesterday about problems. Problems with he building centric model of being church and problems with the neighborhood missional approach to being the church.
It’s so very easy to point out problems.
The hard part is coming up with some solutions.
What could it look like to be the church in a fresh way as we move into the next age of the church?
I think in some ways we must go back to move forward. From the outset I want to stipulate something: There will always be church buildings. There will always be large gatherings of Christians meeting together for worship, study, and fellowship. There will always be gatherings of Christians who want to eschew those types of gatherings. They will be drawn to the hyper local and intimate and happily trade off the larger corporate gathering. This has been the case from the beginning and it will continue to be that way. There is no wrong way to be the church. There will always be different expressions for different people, cultures, and communities.
With that as our starting point, I want to suggest an idea that has been floating in my mind for a few years.
I think that the problems that the building-centric church model faces is corrected by the missional neighborhood model and vice versa.
These different approaches of being the church need one another. If we could figure out a way to bring these two approaches together we could, I think, begin to make a significant shift in the west towards becoming a living, breathing, movement again.
I dream of the day when missional pastors in neighborhoods can leverage their expertise and train pastors in the building to help them understand the needs, attitudes, and concerns of the average person. I hope for a day when missional pastors can be mentored and cared for by a team of pastors in the building centric church.
Could you imagine?
What if the building centric church mobilized its considerable resources to be dispersed by the missional pastors in the neighborhoods?
What is the missional pastors in the neighborhoods could connect people who they are reaching out to with the kind of programming and broader Christian community that the building centric church offers?
In my mind’s eye, I can see a new way forward of the old model of cathedral and parish.
The missional communities in the neighborhoods would be the parishes. The building would be the cathedral and both would work in symbiotic relationship with one another. The cathedral church building could become the hub of ecclesiastical training, a sending agency, and a sacred space for the significant ceremonies that we carry out in the life of our faith (weddings, funerals, baptisms, celebrations, feasts, etc…).
What if, because of the cathedral, every pastor would be part of a pastoral cohort? What if because of every neighborhood missional community the cathedral would be constantly pulled out from its four walls?
The working together of these two valid and important types of being church could allow the Church to stay focused on what it needs to in mission and yet also provide the stability of the institution.
This all sounds nice. But something deep within the leaders of these two approaches will need to change for it to become a reality. They will both need to humble themselves and determine together to serve one another. The building centric model will need to let go of expecting the neighborhood pastors to be at meetings and teaching Sunday school classes. The neighborhood pastor will need to let go of their unlimited freedom. The building centric model will need to see the missional communities in the neighborhoods as extensions and not as drains. The missional communities will need to embrace the building centric as a sacred space and be willing to help care for it.
Both leaders and communities will need to embrace the messiness of loving one another.
It is possible. It is doable. But the both/and requires humility and respect and conflict and grace and mercy and listening and learning. The question is, are we willing?
Originally published at danielmrose.com on February 22, 2019.