In the event that the three people reading this blog have any interest, I’m working hard on my dissertation. This is the convenient reason for my lack of posting. Please pray for steady progress. I hope to finish the first draft in Jan 09.
I’ll post occasionally. But if I do, it will indicate that I’m procrastinating on the dissertation…like I am at the moment.
Geoff
My friend Jason Coker over at twoshirts.org posted a few thoughts on consumerism. With the whole Advent Conspiracy, and my readings in Brueggeman, I’ve really been challenged in my thinking. I’m beginning to realize just how deep my assumptions and beliefs on money run. It is easy to call myself a consumer and somehow limit that label to some kind of economic understanding. I’m now realizing how much my orientation toward consumption actually reaches into and shapes my soul.
What sorts of existential needs are being met with we head to the mall? What are we seeking? Is a trip to the mall a bit of retail therapy?
My friends Rex and Connie Kennemer will be participating in a fundraising walk for Survivors of Suicide Loss (SOSL) and the Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program. They lost their son Todd to bipolar and have since been doing a wonderful job of helping raise awareness regarding mental health issues. They do this through the Community Alliance for Healthy Minds (CAHM).
SOSL and the Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program are great organizations providing a wonderful services in educating the community about suicide and the prevention of suicide. Together they host monthly support groups, maintain a call-in help-line, publish a newsletter as well as a speaker’s bureau.
Consider sponsoring Rex and Connie as they walk to raise funds.
I ran across a site called Movement Builders. It is sort of an online space where “movement builder” Shane Walton shares his wisdom and offers his consulting services. I like much of what he has studied regarding movements. His work is fairly broad and general and he is able to speak to both political campaigns, viral product launches as well as I would say, Kingdom movements. Topics include:
This is thought provoking for me since I’m very interested in helping to facilitate a Jesus movement that will transform San Diego with the gospel of his Kingdom. Come join us (That is the evangelist speaking.)
I ran across what must be a comprehensive list of resources, articles and interviews of Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. I’m posting it here because I think everyone will benefit from his teaching on the gospel and how to live missionally in the world.
UPDATE 10/8/08: I found another huge library of Tim Keller mp3’s that include such delights as his series on City, Frodo as a Christ figure, and my favorite on the Prodigal Son.
I think he leads the N. American church in the conversation about cities, transforming culture, and church planting in urban contexts. While all these concerns are precisely the sorts of things that I’m thinking about as well in ministry, I listen to his weekly sermons because they feed my understanding of the gospel and deepen my walk with Jesus.
If you are an mp3 listener, turn your attention to the Audio/Visual section and listen away.
Have you been wrestling with how to think about border and immigration issues through the lens of God’s Kingdom? Is the border fence a good or bad thing? Is this an issue between two cities, two countries, or perhaps two kingdoms? Where should our allegiances lie?
This month, we have invited Marcos Mujica to help us navigate this conversation. From NAFTA to tariffs, citizenship to resistance, we will be covering a lot of ground. Marcos is a graduate of Pt. Loma Nazarene University and is a thoughtful authority on Kingdom and its implications for us today.
Join us on October 25th from 9am to 12noon for our usual Saturday morning of network and learning. Meet other kingdom-minded missional leaders and hear about what God is doing in the city. We will also celebrate communion together.
We’ll be meeting at Border Field State Park, right up against the border fence and overlooking the beach. Bring a lawn chair and dress for an outdoor meeting. There is plenty of parking as well as restroom facilities.
Let me know if you are coming: geoff[a]thehsus[dot]com, or the better option is to join the U40 Facebook group and RSVP at the event page.
Important logistics stuff:
- If it rains the day before, the park may be closed due to flooding/sedimentation/runoff from Tijuana. If so, keep an eye on your inbox. You can check the park website about closings.
- Entrance to the park will cost $5 per car, so go green and carpool.
- Occasionally there is an immigration checkpoint upon leaving the park. Bring valid U.S. identification.
Directions:
From I-5 Exit West on Dairy Mart Road / Dairy Mart Road turns into Monument Road / Follow Monument Road to Border Field State Park Entrance / Follow road to Friendship Park, overlooking the beach. Here is a map.
Deliver Me, Jesus from the desire to be praised,
honored, glorified, preferred, consulted, or approved.
Deliver me, Jesus, from the fear of being humiliated,
criticized, forgotten, ridiculed, maltreated, and
from the fear of what others will think.
O Jesus, give me the grace to desire: that others
would be loved and esteemed ahead of me,
that in the eyes of the world they would increase
while I decrease, and praised while I pass by
unnoticed; that others would be preferred in
all situations; that others would become more
than myself — in order that I would be as holy
as You want me to be. — Charles de Foucauld
The Great Omission
by Dallas Willard
Harper One (2006)
The subtitle of this book gives a hint toward its central message, “Reclaiming Jesus’ Essential Teachings on Discipleship.” Willard argues that the greatest need today is to simply help “Christians” to become disciples of Jesus – those who are actually learning to live as Jesus has taught us to live. It is an interactive relationship with God that will allow people to live in the fullness of his benevolent rule and reign. The book is a collection of essays and messages that attempt to teach us how to live in this sort of discipleship.
The book begins with an attempt to make the case for a life of discipleship. Christianity doesn’t work they way it should when we come to God like a “vampire Christian.” “One in effect says to Jesus, ‘I’d like a little of your blood, please. But I don’t care to be your student or have your character…” (p. 14). The picture, while humorous, is exactly the outcome of our contemporary understanding of the gospel that is primarily occupied with the forgiveness of sins and a future life in heaven, but neglecting the reality of the gospel for our lives here and now.
For Willard, the notion of discipleship has lost its meaning through misuse. For the “theological right” – with the reduced gospel mentioned above — discipleship is about preparing people to win souls. For the “left,” “discipleship has come to mean some form of social activity or social service.” (p. 53). Discipleship should be understood as a whole life process where “the inmost being of the individual takes on the quality or character of Jesus himself.” (p. 54). Spiritual formation is the word that captures this process of inward transformation today, but this inner formation is precisely the center of a life of discipleship to Jesus.
Learning to live like Jesus is not a process of merely learning to imitate his life in our own feeble power. Nor are we to try to identify a new law that will legislate our behaviors. “Instead, you have to be transformed in the functions of the soul so that the deeds of the law are a natural outflow of who you have become.” (P. 152) In contemporary church parlance, we might say our focus is on our “being” and not our “doing.”
Willard has hit the nail on the head in describing the paucity of discipleship today. With regard to contemporary church movements, particularly in North America, we must recover the spiritual practices and the posture of the contemplative life. We must realize and wean ourselves from dependence on reductionistic methodologies of discipleship that have been formed in modernity. In turn we must return to the ancient disciplines that God’s people have used for millennia to be transformed within and without.
Central to any re-imagining of the church for the coming generation must be a centrally deliberate pursuit of inner transformation.
Bethel Seminary is hosting Dallas Willard for a few days of meetings and lectures. If you haven’t had the chance to listen to his teachings in the realm of spiritual formation… well, you need to. I’ve been enjoying his books with a group of guys on Monday mornings. Through the combination of the people, the material studied, and God’s grace, we have been having a life transforming couple of years.
The Spiritual Renewal Conference is running from Oct 9-11. Details and registration information can be found at the Bethel website.
Almost all the meetings are free. Only the Pastor’s lunch has a cost of $25.
See you there.
I clearly don’t have enough time to surf the web as much as I should. I found an old post by Ed Stetzer on the history (and I suppose the development) of the term “missional.” It is worth reading as worthwhile summary of the development of this critical terminology.
Like many others today, I’m still concerned that the phrase is being co-opted by well-intentioned people to mean both “more” and “less” than it should mean. Rather than come up with a different term, I think we need understand and use it well.
This article will help. Happy reading.