• Archive of "LOV" Category

    Discipleship in a Missional Context

    September 3, 2010 // 4 Comments »

    I’m excited to be gathering tonight and tomorrow with some pastors and leaders from around the Chicagoland area and a bit beyond to talk about discipleship in a missional context.  We’re gathering in Hyde Park where some friends from Life on the Vine are in the process of moving into and exploring how the Kingdom might take shape.

    I think this is a topic that a great number of us have at the front of our minds, but aren’t always able to speak to as directly as we’d like so I am looking forward to the conversation and stuff the Spirit surfaces.

    So, since everyone has been so gracious in offering input on my doctoral considerations,

    I’m wondering what you might want to say or ask related to this issue of discipleship in a missional context – ie. how do we think of and go about discipling people to participate in God’s mission in the world.

    I’ll chance in periodically and add your comments and questions to our discussion.

    We’ll also be trying to pound out some of the details for the next Missional Learning Commons.  Stay tuned for more details on that.

    Posted in chicago, church, conference, culture, discipleship, LOV, missional, missional learning commons, post-christendom

    Missional Preaching Part 3: Preaching as a Call for Response

    February 21, 2010 // 8 Comments »

    This is the third and final post in a brief series on the practice of preaching in missional communities.  I’ve already argued that preaching in missional churches is a communal activity and that it aims at the proclamation of biblical truth.  Lastly, I want to suggest that missional preaching calls for and invites a real response from its hearers.

    It is a travesty of (quite literally) biblical proportions that we would gather as the Body of Christ, hear from the Scriptures, and not be called – in a meaningful and accountable way – to respond. This is where the theological rubber meets the ecclesial road.  When the theological vision of a church is adapted to meet an individualistic and consumer-driven society, the practice of preaching is bound to the fate illustrated by the cartoon above.  However, where and when a church embraces a missional theology, it sees little point in the practice of preaching if it doesn’t lead to a meaningful and accountable means of response. By this I don’t mean that we have some nugget of wisdom to try and apply to our lives once we leave, I mean right then and there, we respond.  All of us.  Not, “Respond if you want to get saved,” but “Here’s God’s truth for all of us to which we are all called to respond.  Do it!

    Typically, at Life on the Vine, we do this through spoken prayer.  The preacher will guide us in a way to respond to the truth and everyone has an opportunity to do so.  For instance, this summer I preached from Genesis 49 and proclaimed the truth that, “Our hope in the promises of God rests on God’s character, not ours.  We all responded to this by praying, “Lord, though I am/have _________, you are/have ___________ and so I pray, __________.”  Those who pray conclude with the words, “Lord, in your mercy,” and the entire congregation, if they can, affirms the prayer by saying, “Amen!”

    Because our community is an accessible and sustainable size, these responses are quite public, making them all the more meaningful.

    Responding to the truth of the text for the morning doesn’t end on Sunday.  At the center of our community are what we call “Missional Orders,” groups of couples and singles who are trying to share life and serve together.  These missional orders carry the truth with them throughout the week and when we gather we continue to respond to one another by noting the effect the sermon is having on us.

    Any thoughts on this?  Are there aspects to the way preaching is practices in your church community that get at this vision or embody something different?  Are there implications of a missional theology/ecclesiology for preaching that you’re thinking of that I haven’t mentioned here?

    Posted in church, community, corporate worship, liturgy, LOV, post-christendom, preaching/teaching, theology

    2010 Ecclesia National Gathering Reflections

    February 20, 2010 // 7 Comments »

    UPDATE: Be sure to check out what other bloggers are saying about their experience at this gathering.

    Dave Fitch here and here, Ben Sternke, J.R. Briggs, Todd Hiestand, Drew Hart, and Geoff Holsclaw (not quite real).  I’ll add more as I become aware of them.

    John Chandler is in.

    Here’s Geoff Holsclaw’s real one.

    Bob Hyatt provides his reflections here.

    Jason Salamun, new to Eclclesia, reviews his time here.

    ——————————————–

    The missional community Amy and I are a part of, Life on the Vine, is a part of Ecclesia,

    a relational network of churches, leaders and movements that seek to equip, partner and multiply missional churches and movements.

    Before I offer some reflections on the national gathering that just concluded, I wanted to mention a few of the unique features of Ecclesia that compel me to appreciate this network more than others.

    The Kingdom of God.  As opposed to one particular understanding of the gospel, Eccelsia finds unity in Jesus’ message of the Kingdom thus making room for those who articulate the good news in different ways.

    Relationships/Partnerships.  Through and through, Ecclesia is relationally driven. They exhibit no desire for the network to be central, but rather labor to facilitate relationships and partnerships between leaders and churches.

    Affirmation of Women.  We still have work to do in this area, but especially at this years gathering which featured a husband wife team as keynote presenters, we put on display what I hope continues to emerge as as a stated value for the importance of men and women partnering in ministry.

    I could probably add more, but on to the reflections I go.

    Dallas Willard and Bob & Mary Hopkins were the speakers for the main sessions. Todd Hunter was supposed to be there as well, but needed to cancel for personal and understandable reasons.

    Dallas was brilliant.  Wisdom seemed to pour out of this man as he spoke.  His main theme through the week was “knowledge.”  He wasn’t speaking of the intellectual/factual sort of knowledge, but the relational/experiential sort. His aim seemed to be that we would be known not just for what we do, but what we deeply, personally, and powerfully know to be true about God and life in God’s Kingdom.

    One of the topics Dallas took up in a break out session was that of religious pluralism.  Central to that conversation was the issue of homosexuality.  As he so often does Dallas reframed the trajectory of the conversation by commenting,

    I think homosexuality is a disastrous lifestyle, but heterosexuality ain’t doing so good either. And if it weren’t for the failings of heterosexuality, homosexuality may not be such a huge issue.

    This is what Dallas does best.  He brings a frame of reference that just isn’t on the radar for so many people.  For Dallas, the main issue is always is our nuanced journey into Christlike character as opposed to simple doctrinal statements or moral judgments.

    Bob & Mary Hopkins were equally excellent. Mainly they talked about the functioning of teams and incarnational/contextual issues of church planting and ministry.

    They shared from their years of experience with church planting and equipping church leaders and teams in the UK.

    Everything that Willard and the Hopkins’ had to say was insightful and helpful, but I don’t think it was my favorite part of the week.  My favorite part of the week was the consistency and pervasiveness of voices from within the network.  A big part of this was the size of the gathering – capped at 200.  But more than that, the structure of the gathering featured panel sessions, extended Q&A sessions, and specific opportunities for us to hear, both as a large group and via breakout sessions, from those who are leading local churches within the network.

    I may have some more thoughts that surface later, but for now, here’s the twitter stream (#eng2010) from the conference as well as the live blog we used.  The audio from the conference should be available soon and I’ll be sure to let you know when it is.

    Posted in church planting, conference, Ecclesia Network, kingdom, leadership, LOV

    Missional Preaching Part 2: Preaching as the Proclamation of Biblical Truth

    February 12, 2010 // No Comments »

    In my last post I was making the claim that given a missional ecclesiology, the practice of preaching is a communal activity.  On top of this, I would like to suggest that preaching in missional churches seeks to proclaim biblical truth.

    Now, don’t miss this. I don’t mean “proclaim biblical truth” in the fundamentalist, “The Bible says it, so that’s the end of discussion and you’re stupid if you don’t see it” sort of way that’s maddeningly common, but in the, “In faith, we proclaim this to be true about God and life in God’s Kingdom,” sort of way.

    Because missional churches seek to shape a people for mission in a Post-Christendom world, every activity of the community, including preaching, is meant to be a formative practice in this regard.  As Stutzman says in the paper mentioned previously,

    Missional preaching deliberately draws contrasts between the gospel message and the practices and values of American civil religion, aiming for conversion from habits shaped by participation in American democracy to habits formed through Christian discipleship.

    In preaching, missional churches seek to proclaim the truth of the reality of God’s Kingdom in the midst of every other competing reality.  The point of preaching for missional churches is not anthropocentric/therapeutic - meant to make people feel emotionally better.  Nor does it seek primarily to be relevant in order to captivate or entertain an audience.  It is not even so concerned with being exegetical or expository – patently cerebral types of communication.  Missional preaching is theocentric – it is a practice in which we look for God’s reality to intersect with ours and DO something in us and in our midst.

    So, for instance, each and every sermon preached at Life on the Vine features a rhetorical phrase of some sort.  This is a simple way to articulate the truth that is being proclaimed from the morning’s text.  The rest of the sermon, normally about 20-25 minutes since it’s not seen as more central than any other part of the liturgy, is spent, not unpacking a text, but proclaiming a biblical truth from that text that addresses us and calls us all to some response.

    For instance, this summer I preached from Genesis 49 and proclaimed the truth that,

    Our hope in the promises of God rests on God’s character, not ours.

    The aim in my preaching of this sermon wasn’t mainly to explain the text so that people could understand and try to apply it to their lives, but to proclaim the truthfulness of the text by calling out what it was DOING, namely, calling its hearers to believe, not believe by intellectual assent, but believe by ordering their lives around, this biblical truth.

    And the only way to get at this, is to call for a real response.  That’s our topic for next time.

    Posted in church, community, corporate worship, liturgy, LOV, missional, post-christendom, preaching/teaching, theology, truth

    Missional Preaching Part 1: Preaching as a Communal Activity

    February 9, 2010 // 10 Comments »

    Not too long ago I offered a post on, “Preaching in the Missional Church.”  Basically it was an excuse to pimp this awesome paper by Ervin Stutzman.  Apparently that wasn’t enough for my good friend Wess, who asked what missional preaching looks like ;)

    To try and do justice to Wess’ question, the importance of the topic and to make space for better discussion, I’ve decided to divy this up into three posts.  I’ve got in mind to describe three unique attributes of preaching in missional churches and then illustrating them by way of examples from Life on the Vine, the missional community Amy and I are a part of. (Dave Fitch, one of the co-pastors of LOV, offers some reflections on this same topic here.)

    In missional communities, preaching is a communal activity which seeks to proclaim biblical truth that calls for and invites a real response.

    In most churches, the task of preaching is the responsibility of one individual – 9 times out of 10, a man.  Not only does the task of preaching often remain unshared, but the scope of preaching does as well.  This reality conflicts with the communal nature of missional theology and ecclesiology.

    In missional communities, one of the central aims would be for a team of teachers, whose giftedness is affirmed by the congregation, to share responsibility not only for preaching and teaching, but for giving their time and attention to identifying and equipping other gifted teachers in the body.

    Life on the Vine is shepherded by a 3-person team of bi-vocational pastors.  Not only do they share teaching and preaching responsibilities, but they also facilitate what we call a “College of Preachers,” every summer.  This gives those who have (or at least want to discover if they have) the gift of teaching, the opportunity to use and explore this gift in a guided way.

    In addition, we follow the church calendar.  This means that we are all aware, well ahead of time, of those texts which will be preached each Sunday.  Whoever is responsible for the preaching portion of our liturgical service also facilitates a time of teaching and dialogue for an hour or so before the worship service.  This time gives the entire body the opportunity to speak to the text for the morning and it gives the preacher the opportunity to (re)shape their sermon in light of the insights, questions, and concerns of the body.

    I’ll speak to the issue of missional preaching proclaiming biblical truth next time.  For now, what are your thoughts on preaching as a communal activity?  Is this important to you?  Why or why not?  What might be other ways to achieve the same goal in different ways?

    Posted in church, community, corporate worship, liturgy, LOV, missional, post-christendom, preaching/teaching, theology, truth

    Reflections on the Missional Learning Commons

    January 18, 2010 // 1 Comment »

    Amy and I had a great time at the Missional Learning Commons in Ft. Wayne two weekends ago.

    The theme of the weekend was,”Deeper Church.”  Essentially what that meant was having discussions about certain topics which surface when we stop thinking about church as a worship service with a host of corresponding programs and begin to embrace church as a way of life in which we are joining God in his mission of reconciliation and the restoration of all things.  Some may want to try and explain how these are really two ways of saying the same thing, but for the vast majority of people who have been involved in this conversation for any length of time, the differences are too real and too important to dismiss with semantic gymnastics.

    On Friday night there were maybe 30 people in attendance to discuss Soong-chan Rah’s book, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity.  This conversation was continued as the topic of the final session on Saturday.  Both conversations were engaging and helpful.  While the book had clear shortcomings and oversights, it served as a springboard for us to ask the question, “Why are missional congregations so white?”  We see this as a problem because implicit in missional theology is the value for listening to voices from the margins of society – something which should be a no-brainer to those of us who regard Scripture (a book authored by those speaking from the margins of society!) as our guiding text.  Those who live on the margins of society have much to teach those of us who don’t and the longer our congregations remain socio-economically and culturally homogeneous, the more the Body of Christ, and by implication, the world to which we testify of an alternative reality, suffers.

    In light of that, we had discussions about the practices of deeper churches, what sharing the gospel means and looks like for deeper churches, and whether or not these deeper churches should have paid staff.  This session was led by a 3-person panel: Matt Tebbe one of the pastors of Life on the Vine who is bi-vocational, JR Woodward, who raises all of his support, and Bob Havenor, who was advocating for an up-paid approach to church leadership.

    Thanks to Ben Sternke who put the missional commons site together, you can find audio from all of the sessions here.

    If you are in the midwest and interested in the missional conversation, I hope you’ll consider joining us next year – details TBD.

    Posted in bi-vocational, books, christendom, conference, LOV, midwest, missional

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