I’m excited this week to be participating in the Sex and the Soul Blogathon at the Faith ON Campus Blog.
In an article connecting Christian sexual ethics and mission, I ask: is not having sex the most important thing about being a Christian? And what does sex have to do with mission?
Hit the link to read the entire article: http://faithoncampus.com/missional-sexuality/
Today is Halloween, and once again the interwebs are filled with ideas about how Christians should appropriately approach Halloween. Should we boycott, offer alternative celebrations, ignore the holiday, or hand out bibles to everyone who rings our doorbell?
I’ve decided the most missional way to engage halloween is to participate in my neighborhood’s trick-or-treat.
I open my door and hand out candy to neighbors, both friend and stranger.
I walk the neighborhood with my kids, talking with neighbors.
Halloween is the only night many of my neighbors will open their houses and engage in life together.
In most of our neighborhoods, it is just not normal to ring doorbells and meet neighbors.
Halloween offers us a culturally approved way to do exactly this: ring doorbells and say hello.
Why wouldn’t we take advantage of this?
So, on Halloween night, you won’t find me at an alternative non-Halloween festival. You won’t find me locked in the house with all the lights off. I’ll be out in the neighborhood, talking with neighbors, making connections.
It is the simplest and most effective way of being missional this week.
When Jesus prays, we should pay attention. The prayer of Jesus in John 17 invites all of Jesus’ disciples into a missional spirituality marked by radical intimacy with the Triune God, authentic community with the members of the church, and mission in the world in the way of Jesus. Click the headline above to read the rest of my article “Listening In As Jesus Prays” at the Faith ON Campus blog.
We were not created to live without margin in our lives. We need margin. Yet what if living with margin is ultimately not for us, but for others?
Everyone must answer this question: Is what you have only for you, or is it also for the good of others?
Sermon presented by Dr. Pat Hannon at Indiana Wesleyan Chapel April 15, 2011.
I’m focusing all my writing energies on completing the Professional Project for my Doctor of Ministry Degree (similar to a dissertation for a PhD). I hope to complete it in the next couple of weeks, then I’ve got all kinds of fun writing projects in mind for this blog.
In the meantime, here’s a preview paragraph from my DMIN Poroject.
— Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, 22-23
— Reggie McNeal, Missional Renaissance
— Emil Bruner, The Word and the World (1931)
— John F. Hoffmeyer, “The Missional Trinity”
In So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church
If there were “just one word” the church needs to hear today, it is the one you will hear in a variety of ways throughout this book. Mission. …. The ultimate story of the Bible, the metanarrative that unlocks the whole story, is that God is on a mission, and we are summoned to participate with God in that mission.
The shift from APC church to MRI church is a change from merely growing larger churches to joining in the mission of God, no matter the size of our church. Attractional church creates members; missional church creates missionaries. Propositional church creates believers; relational church creates disciples. Colonial church creates consumers; incarnational church creates world changers.
After providing sections on each of the three elements in an MRI church, Sweet ends with an epilogue that sketches some ideas for measuring the success of an MRI church. What do we measure besides attendance, buildings, and cash?
In So Beautiful, Sweet has written a book that is both useful to the expert and open to the novice. This is no easy task! I was especially delighted by the 50 pages of footnotes that make this book a springboard into other useful books and articles.
I will be keeping my very marked up copy of So Beautiful as a great resource.
