Been thinking about the questions my life seeks to answer and I came across these two questions in a little book I’m reading by Jan Johnson, When the Soul Listens: Finding Rest and Direction in Contemplative Prayer. The words jumped off the page and stuck to the inside of my heart – God’s been incubating them in me since: 1. What must I do to be loved? 2. What must I do to be valued? How we answer these two questions will drive our decisions and shape our affections. Our answer to these questions determine the person we are and are becoming.

What must I do to be loved? What must I do to be valued?

Is love something you have, or something you lack? At the core of who you are – the deepest reality of ‘you’ – what is your belief about love? What makes you valuable? Do you have a scarcity or an abundance? Many of us feel chronically deficient in this area – so our fundamental posture is one of “I must find love; I must prove my worth” Others of us (for various reasons) don’t question that we are loved and valued. We live and move out of a deep, full awareness that love is at home in us and we are valued and have worth. We are loved.

Where are you? Below are some questions I ask to get at the core of how I’m living. Am I living from God’s love, or out of a lack of it? Am I trying to prove or assert my worth rather than rest in the reality that I am (and have) value(d):

1. Am I trying to please God and others? Doing things to receive admiration and accolades? Am I a people pleaser?
2.  Do I avoid things that I’m bad at because my value is tied to what I’m good at or produce? Am I a performer?
3. Does being wrong or having to ask forgiveness scare me? Am I avoiding difficult conversations and living with unreconciled relationships because I can’t risk being wrong or a failure? Am I a do-gooder?
4. When I sin, do I beat myself up? Do I tell myself I am someone other than who God says I am? Am I able to be gentle with my faults? Am I a critic?
5. Do I feel “safe” to come out of hiding with God and others and authentically reveal who I am? Am I an escaper?

Love – God’s love in Jesus Christ, the love that pursues us through the pages of scripture in the OT and becomes flesh in the NT – changes everything. Love is so high and deep and wide and long that it completely fills us with all God’s fullness (Eph 3.18-19) Love answers the above questions like this:

1.  Am I trying to please God and others? Doing things to receive admiration and accolades? Am I a people pleaser?“You please me because I love you – I am already pleased with you before you obey or disobey. Will you trust that love today?” (Heb 11.6)
2. Do I avoid things that I’m bad at because I can’t handle failure? Am I a performer? “My love for you isn’t compromised by failure – when you fail I will use it to teach you to trust my love – my success on your behalf – even more.” (1 Cor 12.8-10)
3. Does being wrong or having to ask forgiveness scare me? Am I avoiding difficult conversations and living with unreconciled relationships because I can’t risk being wrong? Am I a do-gooder? “It is now safe for you to be wrong because with me there is forgiveness of sins. In fact, the only way to rest and remain in my love is to give up your prideful pursuit to always be right, to win, and to justify yourself.” (1 John 4.18)
4. When I sin, do I beat myself up? Do I tell myself I am someone other than who God says I am? Am I able to be gentle with my faults? Am I a critic? “I was wounded for your transgressions, my beloved. By my wounds you are healed – why do you treat yourself in a way that denies the reality that I have paid your penalty in full? Your sin is another opportunity to surrender to my love.” (Rom 7.14-8.2) “There is an Accuser who is always pointing out your faults to me – when you beat yourself up and practice self-condemnation you sound a lot like him. And – I went to great pains to defeat his power in your life. Won’t you trust me in this? You will never be able to hate yourself enough to not sin – but if you trust my love, you may be able to love yourself and others enough to not sin.” (Rom 8.31-39)
5. Do I feel “safe” to come out of hiding with God and others and authentically reveal who I am? Am I an escape artist?“My love is only accessible through honest, open, unpretentious living. The more you pretend you’re someone you’re not, the less access you have to the love available to you right in the midst of who you really are.” (1 John 1.8-9; 4.9-10)

How we answer these two questions - What must I do to be loved? What must I do to be valued? - will determine our choices and shape our affections. Friends – in Jesus Christ the good news of God is that we are loved and of infinite worth. Yes, we sin. Yes, we’ve rebelled against God’s good created order. But we are a “splendid ruin” (as Dallas Willard says) that God seeks to save by demonstrating his love for – and redeeming his OWN precious image in – us. Our loveliness and value are relational gifts we receive through surrender and trust in Jesus

How do you know you are loved and of worth? 

Do these above questions help you assess where your heart lies? 

Of the following: People-pleaser, Performer, Critic, Escape Artist, Do-gooder – how do you most often live outside of God’s love and value? 

What sorts of practices demonstrate we believe who God says we are? How do we bear fruit in keeping with repentance in these areas? What’s that look like for you?

Hey all, I’m heading for Cleveland for Cleveland’s first ever Missional Round Table. We’ll be there all day tomorrow. We’ll be talking the nitty gritty of church leadership/church planting in a society that is no longer culturally Christian. Church and Mission!The gathering will be small conversational and free! So, all the good peeps of Cleveland, join us if you can. Here’s a link to all the info.

Geoff Holsclaw and I are pleased our book Prodigal Christianity finally arrived these past few months. Now that there has been enough time for people to read and digest it, we’re launching a blog tour that will feature people’s reflections, engagements, and criticism of all 10 of our Signposts, beginning next Monday. Below is the schedule and then the biographies of those on the tour. If you are reading the book, won’t you join us in the discussion Geoff and I hope to be interacting with with every post!

Tim Stidham is the pastor of NewHope Community Church (NW Indiana). He is the adjunct professor of Homiletics at Olivet Nazarene University. He received his D.Min in Preaching from Association of Chicago Theological Schools (ACTS) and blogs at http://hdnazarene.com.

Robert Martin, by day, is a middle-aged software validation analyst in a small software company in Southeastern Pennsylvania. By night (or rather always), he is the Abnormally Anabaptist, trying his best to humbly follow God, examine life (his own especially), and seek to help others find and follow the King of Kings. He blogs at http://abnormalanabaptist.wordpress.com/.

Fred Liggins is a husband, father, friend, activist, coffee-drinker, beard-promoter, comma-lover, and bi-vocational pastor with Williamsburg Christian Church. He blogs at www.fredsforehead.com.

JR Woodward is the co-founder of Ecclesia Network and Missio Alliance, Director of Church Planting - V3, Author of Creating a Missional Culture, and Phd Student at the University of Manchester.  He blogs at jrwoodward.net.

Wende Lance, after seven years in ministry at a traditional church in Ashland, Ohio, resigned her position to pursue a more missional lifestyle. Currently, she co-leads a missional community, continues her DMin studies at Northern Seminary, works as a realtor, and blogs sporadically at www.wjlance.com.

Kevin Scott is co-pastor of a sustainable church plant in Noblesville, Indiana, acquisitions editor for Wesleyan Publishing House, and a frequent speaker on how God brings redemption and healing in pockets of the kingdom. Kevin writes about sustainable Christianity at kevinscottwrites.com and is author of the forthcoming book, ReCreatable: How God Heals the Brokenness of Life (Kregel, March 2014).

Seth Richardson is an Anglican with anabaptist proclivities. His home base is St. Andrew’s Church in Little Rock, Arkansas where he oversees discipleship-related things. Seth has also been an adjunct instructor of hermeneutics at Ouachita Baptist University, and sometimes he explores lived theology on his blog, This Place.

Joshua Lee Henry is a missional leadership coach and also leads several ministries with Pathway Community Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He blogs at joshualeehenry.com.

Kevin Williams is the Minister of Evangelism at The Branch Church in Farmers Branch, Texas. He has two degrees from Abilene Christian University, a BA and MA in Christian Ministry, and most recently an MRE in Missional Leadership from Rochester College. Kevin and his wife, Jill, live in Dallas, TX and he blogs at www.hipstianity.wordpress.com.

Josh Rowley is a pastor (teaching elder) in the Presbyterian Church (USA). For the past nine and a half years he has been serving with a church in San Carlos, California, and in June he will begin a new call in Vancouver, Washington (First Presbyterian). He have degrees from the University of Colorado, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Fuller Theological Seminary (where he studied missional leadership under Al Roxburgh and Mark Lau Branson). I blog atwww.postyesterday.com.

Scott is an avid reader of both theology and culture who has been taught more by his special needs students than he is aware. He has been attempting to cultivate communities of Jesus-followers in his hometown of Syracuse alongside his wife and three daughters. Blog: https://scottemery.wordpress.com/

This is an old post from 2008 I was recently revisiting. 5 years later, I think the logic has been proven. The way to begin something new in a given context is start with (at least ) 3 leaders living, praying operating in relation to each other out of their gifts. Then comes 12 who come alongside to learn and live out what God is doing. Then each of these 12 join with 10 or so people in their neighborhood. This group becomes a powderkeg for Kingdom activity in the neighborhood. At which point we start all over again. Send out 3, and the 12, all over again. Read this old post (slightly revised) and see if it makes sense to you? What questions do you have. Have these principles been proven in your experience of church planting?

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We are inclined to think that the way to impact the world for Christ is to do something “big.” It’s the American way: Do Something Big! In American church life, the churches that have the most influence are the largest churches in attendance on Sunday mornings – 10,000 or more. These are the churches that get the most attention – whether it be the front page of the newspaper, CNN or the denominational conferences. I do not wish to deny the “successes” of these churches. Something has clicked, a “wave has been caught,” the tipping point has tipped and some work for God’s Kingdom has gone forth. But often what happens is people seek to “model” the success evident here at the exact time the movement has already peaked. I am not trying to do a sociological analysis of church strategists (I hate the very idea of church strategist). I just wish to offer some observations from my own sight lines. From my point of view, once a church hits what many perceive as “success,” what has already happened is that this same church has lost its ability to critique and engage culture. Specifically, it cannot even see how it has itself become a reflection of the culture. Worse yet, this church now has to maintain itself and in some cases go into survival mode. The large successful churches therefore lose their maneuverability in and among a culture. They lose their ability to be incarnational in the sense of actively engaging and being present in the newly evolving context they find themselves in.

All this to say, the church best suited to make the most impact for Christ and His Kingdom both in terms of individual peoples’ lives and culturally for justice, is the smaller incarnational community embedded in the surrounding geographical community. Here there is cultural maneuverability sufficient to engage one’s surrounding cultural issues. Here, most of all, there is relationality. There is the wherewithal of a community to understand the social issues and get traction and do some “culture-making” – culture redeeming.

I believe there is a social logic to this way of incarnating Christ culturally as a church in the surrounding community. It is no where better displayed than in Andy Crouch’s description of the 3,the 12 and the 120 in his book Culture-Making. Let me briefly summarize it.

Andy says all “culture-making” is local. Certainly there are many cultural goods that have made a global impact. Think McDonalds, Facebook, even Ford Motor Company at the turn of the last century. Nonetheless, Crouch makes the argument that all of these global culturally transforming organizations began with 3 people, who then had 12 around them , who then had 120 people as the third layer of concentric circles where the impact is spread deeply into nooks and crannies of the surrounding cultural geography. Andy shows how many of the biggest cultural innovations of the century started with the logic of 3 core people committed together to a vision, purpose, idea or understanding of how to engage a problem, need or innovation. They then gathered 12 people who could explain it, understand it and carry it out further. They then gathered 120 more – these people I suggest are a sufficient mass of people who can know the 3 and the 12, build sufficient trust and coordination to coalese around the idea, vision or mission and birth it as a reality among themselves – make it visible in a community large enough so the world can see, taste and understand the revolution being brought forth.

Andy Crouch says:

The essential insight of the 3: 12: 120 is that every cultural innovation, no matter how far reaching its consequences, is based on personal relationships and personal commitment. Culture making is hard. It simply doesn’t happen without the deep investment of absolutely and relatively small groups of people. In culture making, size matters – in reverse. Only a small group can sustain the attention, energy and perseverance to create something that genuinely moves the horizons of possibility – because to create the good requires an ability to suspend, at least for a time, the very horizons within which everyone is operating. Such “suspension of impossibility” is tiring and taxing. The only thing strong enough to sustain it is a community of people… p.243

This above paragraph describes something of what must happen in the founding of a missional community which seeks to make an impact in its immediate surrounding culture for the gospel. This also resonates with my own experience of planting missional communities. It was NOT until we arrived at enough co-inherence between myself and (at least) two other leaders that we could then go further. Then we needed twelve more. Now we must learn how to find trust and share the vision/understanding with one hundred and twenty Christians (or people becoming Christians invited into the Mission) so that together – under the Holy Spirit – a living breathing manifestation of God’s salvation in Christ breaks forth authentically and in real terms AMONG US. Then the church as a force for God’s salvation becomes unstoppable in our surrounding geography, as in Acts 2:42-47 unstoppable. This is the social logic of the 3,12,120.

From there, it might be that, every one of the twelve, if God so gifts, finds and develops their own triad of leaders from which another twelve are gathered .. and the next one hundred and twenty. We send out, and send out, and send out more and more communities. Of course none of this brilliant exposition by Andy Crouch would mean anything to me if the 3,12,120 was not in fact modeled by Jesus himself in the beginning of His church (as Andy points out), Jesus called his 3, Peter, James and John. They became his closest confidents and sharers of the vision. Then was the rest of the 12 that surrounded them from which came the 120 up in that upper room that day. This is what we see in essence gathered that day in that room (Acts 1:13-15): the 3, the 12 (er 11), and the 120. And of course God used this to change the world.

Following this 3:12:120 pattern in planting communities requires adjustments to the way we think about church. It will require multiple bi-vocational leadership using the APEPT model (the 3 or it could be 4 or 5) not a single senior entrepreneurial leader. These 3,4 or maybe 5 leaders are in mutual submission to the one Christ and Lord of the church. This is where I suggest all missional planters start. From here, we will all be challenged continually to “suspend the impossible” so that God can work in profound and miraculous ways. Cultivating this first among the 12 and then the 120 will take much nurturing and significant community. It will be organic and take time over many years. Growth will not be linear. It will require that we think success differently for it will be cultural success not just numeric success. Above all, we must understand that this has been the way God has in such profound ways changed the world and He can do it again, through starting small, the 3, 12, 120.

I think we have just begun to see what is possible in this way of thinking about the church at Life on the Vine and our various communities. What about you? Has anyone else seen the logic of the 3,12 and 120 at work in your churches?

In keeping with the format of reclaimingthemission.com, here’s a second post for the week from Geoff Holsclaw, a pastor at Life on the Vine Christian Community, and co-author with me on the book Prodigal Christianity. Read about him here. I’ll get to my post for this week in a couple days!

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Like many of us, I’ve been longing for something beyond the “bridge illustration” to share the gospel (with others, and my children).  Something short, visual, clear, explaining the gospel in an appropriate way.  But of course, the more I learn and grow in the Kingdom the more difficult it is to summarize, especially when you have all these old, truncated ‘gospels’ bouncing around in your brain that you are trying to overcome (the gospel of sin management, the gospel of health and wealth, the gospel of going to heaven, etc).

But then Soren (8 years old) comes home from a church basketball camp yesterday super amped about the ‘bridge illustration.’  It’s all he can talk about.  He pulls out our white board and insists on drawing it out for us and explaining it to us (of course as a seasoned evangelical I’m filling in some of the forgotten steps and verses…).  So I had to step back and rethink my loathing for the ‘bridge illustration.’ (If you are not familiar with the ‘bridge illustration’ check it out here).

Making Peace

I guess this is something that I have know for awhile, but haven’t wanted to admit very loudly (or publicly).  The ‘bridge illustration’ really is a good presentation of the gospel, even if it is just part of the gospel.  I have seen the light come on for children and adults where they begin to understand what God has done for them in a deeper way.

And especially for children who are in the black and white stage of moral development, the ‘bridge illustration’ makes sense.  “We are over hear because of sin.  God is over there because he is perfect.  But in Jesus we can be with God again.”  It makes sense.  It is simple.  It helps them put in place a piece of their spiritual puzzle.

And it fits especially the intellectual development of children Soren’s age.  They haven’t yet reached the world of complexity and abstraction which causes the ‘bridge illustration’ to breakdown or be known as incomplete.

For Now

But the whole point is that children would grow up, and their faith along with them.  Too often we have adults who have prayed a prayer after hearing the ‘bridge illustration’ and 20 years later their faith is still at the same stage.  The problem isn’t in the ‘bridge illustration’ itself but the underlying theology of atonement which is exhausted in the illustration. Certain understandings of the gospel see the bridge not merely as an illustration, but the entire reality.  This leads to the spiritual immaturity and stunted grow of so many believers (which has led to my own discomfort with the illustration).

It is one thing to say that for “now” the bridge is a helpful and, dare I say, true explanation of the gospel.  But only for now.  Not for always.  At the beginning it is true, but faith must grow here and now, and not merely wait for heaven.  We can’t remain stuck on the level of the ‘bridge’ for our entire spiritual lives, just like Soren isn’t going to remain stuck as an 8 year old.

Bridge to the Kingdom, not merely Heaven

Well for “now” I’m very pleased that Soren is excited about the bridge, that it has helped him organize some of the biblical stories and ideas that we have been brainwashing him with (ha).  But are already laying the ground work for that spiritual development.  After Soren explained about crossing the bridge in Christ and receiving eternal life (which that church of course links with ‘going to heaven’), I started to redirect from ‘going to heaven’ to ‘life in the kingdom’ here and now.  And I reminded him of the Lord’s Prayer, which we prayer everyday, and how it talks about God’s Kingdom coming to earth from heaven.  The goal is that Soren would come to know all that all those who cross the bridge in faith enter Christ’s Kingdom, which is now!

But filling that all out will come later, and through example, and prayer, day by day, year by year.  But for “now” the bridge will do.

For now.

Each year 3 million books are published while 550,000 people finish a marathon. Maybe this is why I admire people who finish a marathon more than people who write a book. As I said on FB this morning, you could probably write a book with a 1/4 of the discipline it takes to run a marathon. That discipline towards writing is becoming more common. Yet it is a peculiar discipline. In the age of A.D.D. it takes presence before the key board to write clearly, concisely and contribute within an arena of ideas.

You need discipline but you also need a sense of confidence that your ideas mean something. That confidence comes from testing your ideas in submission to a real community. (much better than a virtual community if you ask me). Most academic writers gain their confidence within the academy. But I believe, writing birthed within the depths of church life is more powerful, impactful and in the end theologically rich. These days finding a church community to journey with is more difficult. Nonetheless, it is so important to life, thinking, being grounded, and yes, good theological writing.

Some writers start well, writing vibrantly within a community. And then they migrate to writing for a living or becoming a professional conference speaker. They sometimes lose their connection with a vibrant community. Much like the pastor whose sermons lose their connection to any people struggling with Christian existence, their writing is dulled over time. In the same way academic writers, writing within and only for the academy, become “academic” (to be redundant). Their writing is of interest now only to specialists and their wider impact wanes.

So to my many good friends who think writing a book will change your life, I urge you to slow down a bit and think about running a marathon. Gain some discipline. Then, out of your everyday life, test your ideas in the midst of a real community. Then out of your experience and wealth of dialogues, write this book as an act of integration that comes from your life. Let go of what happens with it. You know, send it to some publishers, etc etc, but let your daily life in mission drive your life. Let what happens with the book be inconsequential to your life. And for sure you can manufacture a platform. But I would advise you let that platform happen organically, out of what you do in your everyday life.

Have I done this? Not always. Nonetheless, this is what I aspire to. Blessings to everybody who does NOT desire to write the next big book unless it comes out of their everyday lives, God forces it out of them, and it comes as a great surprise.

Warning theological post coming.

Is the Kingdom a.) contained within the boundaries of “the church?” the people who have already submitted to the Lordship of Christ?

Or is the Kingdom b.) outside the church where God is already working irrespective of where the church is or isn’t,

or c.) is there a combination where in effect God’s rule is already at work, but indeed the Kingdom becomes manifest materially wherever His people gather to submit to His presence in that time and location?

The relationship between church and Kingdom is a key issue for missional church. How we discern it determines whether a church turns internal and even triumphalist (option a.?), or whether a church becomes so dispersed it loses the wherewithal to recognize God’s Kingdom in the world (option b.?). I believe Matt 25:31-46 holds the key for understanding this dynamic.

In Matt 25 Jesus tells the story of the final judgment of the Son of Man sitting on the throne separating the sheep from the goats, the righteous from the unrighteous (vs 31ff). After welcoming the righteous into the Kingdom who were “with the least of the brothers” by giving food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and those in prison, these righteous ones say to the Son of Man “when was it we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, when was it …etc etc.?” The Son of Man answers (vs 40), “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”

There are two common interpretations of the “least of these my brothers” in verse 40 (and 45). One interpretation (the “particularist” interpretation) understands “least of these my brothers” to refer to Jesus’ disciples and judgment is based upon how the world receives them and their mission.  Here for many reasons, including a desire to avoid turning work with the poor into a works-righteousness, the Kingdom (and indeed the presence of Christ) is located exclusively with the church. “The least of these my brothers” are the disciples of Christ and the righteous are those who receive them well. To see this argument in full I recommend looking at Martin Tripole’s “A Church for the Poor and the World: At Issue with Motlmann’s Ecclesiology” Theological Studies v. 42, p. 645-659.

The other interpretation (the “non-restrictive” interpretation) says that “the least of these” refers to all of those who are in need wherever they be found. Therefore the righteous are those who spend time/ ministering among them. The poor is where the very presence of Christ is (for it was I –the Son of Man- who was hungry and you gave food to eat etc etc. ). Moltmann argues that, since the Church is wherever Christ is, and Christ is to be found present with “the least of these,” the church is to be found outside the church proper (of already believing Christians). The church is to found wherever the poor are.   p126-130 Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit. See Klyne Snodgrass’s Stories With Intent p543ff. for exegetical comments that support this interpretation.

And so what we have here is a standoff where the “least ones” are either a.) the disciples in the world and therefore the presence of Christ/the church is located with the believers, or b.) the poor who are encountered in the world by the disciples, and here, the church is located in and with the poor. Option a.) some worry succumbs to colonialism. Option b.) some worry succumbs to dispersing the church/Kingdom with a loss of discrimination.

Over against these two options, I propose the Kingdom /the presence of Jesus becomes manifest in the dynamic of the disciple (or the church) becoming present with the “least of these” bringing love, reconciliation and renewal, wherever that occurs. I contend by being “with” the least of these in everyday life, not in worldly power but in service, the church opens the space for the dynamic of the Kingdom. Jesus’ very presence is made manifest.  The Kingdom literally takes on material reality as a foretaste of where the rest of the world is already going but not there yet.

This interpretation expands the boundaries of God’s work both in the church and beyond. It takes the borders of church beyond the ones who believe (the particularist position). Yet it provides the material means to discern the Kingdom in concrete circumstances (something lost in the non-restrictivist position) via the church, for it is when the church extends itself into the neighborhood, submitting to Christ as King in act of presence with the poor, that the Kingdom is discerned.

What this interpretation unfolds is this marvelous Kingdom missional dynamic that takes place when the church’s practices being “with” the least of these.

This dynamic is set loose when we are “present” with the least of these, with no pretention, out of everyday life, with no worldly power or mammon. Just as the “righteous” in Matt 25 come expecting NO reward (“when were we doing this?” they ask), so we also are “with” the least of these simply as part of our lives. The unawareness of the disciples in Matt 25 indicates they were doing nothing special. It was all just part of who they were, their everyday life. And out of this genuine presence, the relational space becomes the site for the authority of Christ to break in, his very presence to be made manifest, and the social relationships to be realigned. The Kingdom breaks in as we followers of Christ submit to His Rule and invite others to join in with us in this place.

For me Matt 25:31-46 testifies to the Kingdom dynamic set loose in this practice of “being with.” There is KIngdom happening here. The words in Matt 25:40 “when you did it to the least of these, you did it to me” are similar to the words “whoever welcomes this child welcomes me” (Matt 18:1-5 ) and “whoever listens to you listens to me” (Luke 10:16) where in each case there is a correlation with the idea of the Kingdom coming into our midst (Luke 10.9,10; Matt 18:4). This Kingdom coming is associated in each case with Christ’s presence. “It was I myself who is present in that space.” So one should read the words of the Son of Man in Matt 25 as referring to actions that were signs of the Kingdom breaking in.  The Son of Man in verse 32 is “judging” the people who are in and out of the Kingdom. But it is a reflective looking back kind of discernment. When you were doing this, you were already in the Kingdom, because I was present there, the Kingdom was breaking in. A such, being “with” the “least of these” should be read as a practice of the church which makes space for the Kingdom to break in.

I believe there are at least seven practices that function like this, given to us by Christ, that when we as disciples practice them in submission to one another and Christ as King, we become the means by which a site is opened for the Kingdom in our churches and in our neighborhoods. In essence these practices bleed into the world from our life together under His rule. These practices are reconciliation (Matt 18:15-20), the gifts of authority for leadership Eph 4:7-13,  the Eucharist (Luke 22:24-30), proclamation (Luke 10:1-17), Being with children (Matt 18:1-5) , Kingdom prayer and of course “being with” the poor, here in Matt 25: 31-46. In each case, Christ promises his presence, “that was me,” “I was there,” “there am I,” “he who receives you receives me.” In each case there is an authority set loose that is of another Kingdom, Christ’s Kingdom. I contend these practices are not just for the church proper, but are the means by which we participate in Kingdom inbreaking activity everywhere as we go in the neighborhood, work and everyday life, by inviting others to join in. This is the basis of a new book I am writing

I have come to see in my own life that being present with the poor is an incredible dynamic when done in prayer, simplicity and out of the patterns of everyday life. Out of this “being with” space is opened up for reconciliation in Christ, gospel proclamation, healing and renewal, discernment and the gifts, prayer, and transformation to come in through the Spirit. Our lives become transported into the arena of the work of the Spirit, the very presence of Christ, and His rule breaking in. But for many reasons in our society we have lost these ways. And we must begin to lead people again into this incredibly simple practice, which should not be a burden, but a transforming way of living life in the Kingdom

What do you think? How do you see Matthew 25? How does Matt 25 help you in understanding the dynamic of the Kingdom, the poor and the church’s presence in the world? Thanks to Ty Grigg for dialoguing.

In keeping with the format of reclaimingthemission.com, here’s this week’s second post from Ty Grigg, a pastor at Life on the Vine Christian Community. Read about him here. In this post, Ty is posting a reflection to the feedback he received from his last poston the APEST model of minsiytry (here). Remember, Ty wrote that post as a letter to the website Release The APE critiquing the concept of APEST as a leadership hermeneutic in line with Scripture. He wanted a chance (being the sensitive man that he is) to repent for his arrogance… er I mean (just kidding)… offer some further reflections as to what the discussion about APEST taught him. So here goes. Join in with Ty via the comments. Won’t you?

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As I have processed the comments and feedback from the “Pushback on APEST” post from last month, and the ensuing dialogue with Beau over at Release The APE, I find myself asking whether the APEST model is symptomatic of larger trends, approaches, and practices in our missional camp.  Here are two questions I have after reflecting on that post. I’d be interested to know your thoughts.

1.  What is the relationship between practitioners and academia in the missional movement?  Outside of missional theology, our approach seems driven by pragmatism undergirded by pseudo-scholarship.  In other words, we’ve already come to our conclusion through experience and then we seek to back it up with biblical scholarship.  (Is that fair?  Is there traces of anti-intellectualism in this approach?)  In regards to APEST, there seems to be a disconnect between what commentaries/bible scholars/church historians have said in regards to Eph. 4 and what practitioners are saying.  How do we bridge this gap and have these two groups in closer dialogue?

2.  What are we saying about how leadership/authority functions in the church?  In regards to the APEST, there are some that say “this is just for leaders” and others that say “this is for every Christian” and then others who have various hybrid models of leaders/everyone.  Of course, we believe in the priesthood of all believers.  We’ve mostly said ‘yes’ to some form of distributed leadership that involves a plurality of pastors, mutually submissive, and polycentric according to Spirit-gifting.  We believe that Jesus is the head of the church and the Spirit is the one who gathers, guides, and sends us into God’s mission.  We’ve mostly said ‘no’ to the CEO-type, one authoritative senior pastor who helms the rudder of the ship.  But I wonder in our efforts to be humble, non-hierarchical, submissive, and inclusive (and to avoid the abuse of power at all costs), are we in danger of throwing out spiritual authority altogether?  Our relationship with leadership and authority is complicated and we need more healthy discussion about the place of leadership and authority.

A clarification:  My critique was not about APEST as a model of leadership like Dave’s title suggested, but a critique of APEST on the whole.  If anything, I’m more comfortable talking about it in terms of leaders because I read Eph. 4:11 being about people who have been given spiritual authority by Christ to minister the Word of God among a community of believers.

A regret:  It probably was not fair that Release the APE was singled out as the recipient of the critique.  Beau and I have communicated back and forth and I look forward to connecting with him more in the future.  My intention was to simply offer a peer review on the theory of the APEST as it is being presented at Release the APE but also, before RTA, in Hirsch and Catchim’s Permanent Revolution with Mike Breen from 3DM assisting with the exegesis there and J.R. Woodward’s Creating a Missional Culture.  These are all excellent practitioners and writers who God is using in mighty ways for the Kingdom.  My respect greatly outweighs the critique.  My hope is that the discussion will help all of us to keep discerning the Spirit’s leading in our church communities.

Normally I do all my announcements about conferences, book deals etc. on Friday’s on this blog. But since Frank Viola is releasing his book today, I thought I’d squeeze a personal word in about his new book today.

I’ll admit it, Frank Viola is an enigma to me (I mean that in the most flattering of terms). His writings have significant influence in worlds I intersect with. They often provoke on issues of the church that I resonate with. He says things I would say but with more friendly prose. He says them provocatively and knows how to get the message out. Like notice how many reviews there on Amazon for his book Pagan Christainity. I have friends who hate a book he writes one year, and love a book he writes the next. He writes on many topics close to my theological agenda. I was particularly curious with what he was trying to say with Beyond Evangelical. How does he do this? Provoke yet charm? Speak into such huge issues and get people to listen to him? (I wish I could do this!). And you never know what he’s going to do next. So when he asked me to blurb his book God’s Favorite Place on Earth I go “cool” let me take a look. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting. This is what I mean when I say Frank is an enigma: unpredictable in his writing.

This book is a “trip” back to the village of Bethany, the town of Lazarus. It’s an encounter with Jesus in the neighborhood (I wish I had used that line in the blurb). It’s a devotional but it also takes pains to be historical. The premise of the book is simple: when Jesus was on the earth, He was rejected everywhere He went . . . from Bethlehem, to Nazareth, to Jerusalem. The only exception was this little village of Bethany. Frank unfolds how Jesus walks and becomes known (and loved) in Bethany beginning with Lazarus death. We find ourselves in the middle of the story. And within each little piece of the story, Christians are led through the struggles we all face in our everyday lives.

I so appreciated the book I wrote the following blurb for it:

More than a devotional, better than an academic study, God’s Favorite Place on Earth is a deeply moving pastoral book that will build your faith. Turn its pages slowly, pause between chapters and allow yourself to be immersed into the world of the New Testament. Prepare yourself for an encounter with Jesus the Galilean yet the very Son of God.

David Fitch, B R Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology, Northern Seminary, author of Prodigal Christianity

Frank tells me that if you get the book between May 1^st to May 7^th, you will also get 25 FREE GIFTS from 15 different authors including Leonard Sweet, Jeff Goins, Andrew Farley, Steve McVey, DeVern Fromke, Pete Briscoe, Frank Viola himself, and many others. You can find out all you need to know about the book and that offer by going here.

Warning: theological post forthcoming.

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Within the missional conversation there is a common mantra: “God is at work already in the world, we are called to join in with what He is already doing.”

I have always found this missional mantra helpful as a corrective to evangelicalism’s patterns of engaging the surrounding community. The evangelicalism of my youth saw engagement with those outside the church primarily through what we called one-on-one evangelism. Christians were sent out into the neighborhood as individuals armed with the truth. We were sent to proclaim the truth which usually meant giving a presentation of a particular gospel one on one to a lost person seeking a moment of conversion. There was little room for God’s work of restoring all things in that gospel presentation. And it always felt like the Christian carried the truth as his/her possession to those who didn’t have it. Once they received it, they would then be expected to come to our church. For many reasons (which I can’t go into here now) this approach is built on the back of a Christian society. It makes little to no sense for those worlds that are now post- Christendom culture.

And yet I remain unsatisfied with what has become the alternative approach to cultural engagement. This “missional mantra” of “joining in with what God is already doing” seems to imply that Christians bring nothing with them into the context to which he/she has been sent.  What then does it mean to be sent? As a result, we are left wandering looking for God assuming He is at work in anything in the world named justice. We end up exhausting ourselves in mission/social work/ good deeds because we have no theology as to how God’s reign/power/authority works in and around us (in a way that is not us).  We have become so worried, it seems, about colonialist imperialism, that we shy away from owning that Christians bring something with us into our neighborhoods and places of mission(society/culture /world etc.).

All of which leads me to the very dangerous but stunningly important point of this entire post: Sentness extends the authority of the Kingdom.  In “being sent” by God through Jesus by the Spirit into the neighborhood, we bring the authority of the Kingdom with us. Yet this does not deny that God is already at work and indeed Lord of the world. And this does not deny that this inbreaking authority is not ours and we can never be in control of it. In essence, when we accept our identity as being sent, we become carriers of the authority of the Kingdom. But this authority of Jesus Kingdom only becomes present when we as subjects submit to His rule and authority and let Him reign. The minute we pretend to be in control or own it or get coercive with it, it is gone. Nonetheless, our entry into a neighborhood, as people already in submission to His Lordship/Kingdom sets loose a dynamic in which God’s Kingdom can become materially manifest in a way in which it wasn’t before. This dynamic overcomes both colonialist pretension and accomodationist passivity.

Luke 10, John 20

There is a stunning array of passages in the New Testament which reference this dynamic. But let me just offer two. Luke 10 is a foundational missional text detailing Jesus’ “sending” of the seventy to every town and place (10.1). They are “sent” and told God is already working (“the harvest is plentiful – ready to be picked” 10.2). Yet they are told that when they proclaim the “Kingdom has come nigh” (10.9) that they speak in the authority of Jesus (10.16). When they return from the mission they are stunned at the authority of the Kingdom that has been let loose in and through them.  “Lord even the demons submit to us in your name” (v. 17). Jesus says he saw the powers of Satan fall in the midst of the gospel proclaimed. “See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes, and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy.” The power and authority of the Kingdom has been set loose in the sending. Yet Jesus says “don’t rejoice that the spirits submit to you, rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” In other words, it’s not your authority, rejoice that the authority of heaven was set loose through your participation in it as members.  The dynamic is brilliantly illustrated: even though God was at work already in these towns and villages, it was the presence of the sent ones in submission to his name(authority) that became the space for the inbreaking Kingdom to become manifest.

Likewise, in John 20:21 Jesus says, as his disciples are being deputized as the first apostles – the sent ones , “As the Father has sent me, so send I you.” Then he breathes upon them the Holy Spirit and says “receive ye the Holy Spirit, if you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven, and if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” This “binding and loosing” is the sign that indeed the authority of the Kingdom of heaven is being released with this sending. They are the keys to the kingdom (Matt 16.19). They are the sign that the Kingdom of God is breaking in (Matt 18.18).  “Binding and loosing” is the very authority of the King becoming manifest among flesh.

This manifest authority, the presence of Jesus via the Spirit, breaks in wherever space is cleared for his work or hospitality, with-ness, Kingdom prayer, reconciliation, the gifts of the Spirit and the contextual proclamation of the gospel.  We spent ch. 7 of Prodigal Christianity talking about this a little. I have a full book coming out on these practices and the dynamics surrounding them in 2014. But the point here is, God is surely already working there in this context, but the kingdom actually becomes visible when God’s people meet together submitting to it in time, place and context, i..e the neighborhood.

Some may say this domesticates the power of the Kingdom. It puts the Kingdom at our disposal and makes the church the keepers of the Kingdom. Not true. Because a.) God is already working in the world (outside the church), and b.) wherever God’s people come together to submit to his rule in time place or context, it becomes visible. BUt it only happens in a posture of submission. Once we do not submit, there is no more inbreaking Kingdom. The kingdom of God can never be controlled or possessed by God’s people (this is what triumphalism looks like). When we seek to control it God’s power leaves. An example of this loss is when the disciples failed to heal the epileptic in Mar 9 14ff. When the disciples asked “why could we not cast it out?” they correctly articulated that they had sought to take control of the authority as if it was theirs. Instead Jesus says (Mark 9:29) “this kind comes out only by prayer:” by submission to God, His Kingdom and His will.

And so the dynamic of entering the context as sent one does not merely entail that God is already working and all we have to do is join in, although that is true. It is not that we bring something that we control. No we enter a context as God’s people humbly contextually to submit to God’s power as His subjects to become the space and to clear the space in which God’s Kingdom can break in. In the process we become witnesses by which the rest of the neighborhood can see and join in.  In this marvelous dynamic, the manifestations of the Kingdom break out ahead of the time when the whole world shall see the culmination of all things in Gods Kingdom.

This then is what I mean when I say “Sentness extends authority.”

Next week I want to explore this dynamic at work in Matthew 25. Til then, how do you see this dynamic at work or not at work in your contexts as missional communities at work in the neighborhoods.