Yesterday, Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary released an interview with former Duke professor and self proclaimed “High-Church-Mennonite” Stanley Hauerwas. It was akin to watching Captain America interview Batman, they might look like they do the same thing, but they come from completely different universes. You can listen to the entire strange and charming exchange on Mohler’s website.
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The night it felt like Church to me happened in the Summer of 2002. I was a sophomore in college and I had given my summer to working with Dry Bones: Denver, a newly launched ministry to the homeless youth that congregate to panhandle and roughhouse on Denver’s 16th Street Mall.
My reasons for being there weren’t completely altruistic, evangelistic or justice driven. That was a part of it, but the main reason I wanted to be there was because it seemed pretty cool.
There was a thing that happened on the internet, in DC and in the poorest countries on earth last week.
A lot of people were hurt. A lot of people felt the need to draw line in sand. There are a few dead bodies on mountain tops.
I’m not one of them.
There are two reasons I’m not overwhelmed by this:
Worldvision does some incredible work, changing and saving lives of children around the world. Many parachurch organizations are doing incredible work. They are, however, subtle limitations on any group that tries to call itself a “Christian ________.”
Parachurch ministries are, at their best, a tool for focusing passion. Some people have a passion working with students, others have a passion for providing clean water. These are good works that not only help people, but they bring glory to God.
My only significant experience with a parachurch organization was attending a Christian University for undergrad. It was there when I started noticing some subtle limitations that parachurches had to deal navigate. Continue Reading…
The missional church is more than a passing fad or a new idea. As is often repeated, it’s not so much that the church has a mission but that God’s mission has a church. The Bible and church history should be read as a series of hits and misses trying of people trying to join up with what God is doing.
Scattered throughout history you occasionally encounter a story like St. Francis or Dirk Willems that sound like scripture itself. These are women and men who could say alongside Paul “Follow me as I follow Christ.”
The situation of the church is shifting in the West from a people of cultural power to a people on mission. Patrick’s legend offers five rules for those who are ready to join.
1. Persecution can lead to passion
At age 16, Patrick was a carefree teenager who had the bad luck to be kidnapped by pirates. He was sold into slavery, where he worked as a shepherd. Six years later, he heard a voice tell him to flee, and he escaped back to Britain. He spent years studying Christianity until he had a vision of a man begging him to return to Ireland.
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