Thanks to you, 2013 has been an amazing year for Growth and Mission! Posts have ranged from exploring the missional church to little lifehacks. Hopefully, you’ve been encouraged and challenged.
In 2014 you can look forward to more of these helpful discussions. There are also plans underway for a “best of missional” ebook, a cleaner interface and more!
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The music the church needs will grow out of artists embedded in the church, who are compelled to tell their own story, and dream of God’s kingdom. It will be honest about our fallen nature and the messiness of the world. It will transcend the love songs of the radio and the praise chants of the last generation. It won’t always be clean, and it won’t always sound like something a good Christian should say.
Rachel Held Evans recently pointed out on CNN that Millenials are leaving the church like crazy. It doesn’t have to be this way! How do I know? For the past four years, I’ve been involved in a mostly-millennial church. While we have our share of short comings, I’ve learned at least seven lessons about how to be the church in the millennial generation.
First, the Missional Church is simply the human expression of the Missio Dei. This is the idea that throughout the trajectory of history, God has been on a mission. This is most clearly articulated by Jesus when he says “as the Father has sent me, so I send you.” God sent Noah to preach, Moses to form, Israel to model, the prophets to witness, Jesus to save (among other things), and the Apostle to establish. Now God sends his church.
Like John the Baptist said, judge a tree by its fruit. You can’t have a relationship with “the person I think you could become someday.” You can only have a relationship with the person she is today. The best predictor of future behavior is past performance.
I miss the Emergent Church. I miss it’s punk rock sensibility and its intellectual fortitude. But for me, it was only an introduction to something bigger.
There is a dirty secret behind my criticisms: they often have more to do with my personal, yes, hipster taste. This leads me to believe that a lot of our arguments as a larger church have very little to do with theology and the mission of God, and more to do with personal preference and the desire to “be on a team.”
We need that guy who got people excited about church planting. We need the guy who preached entire sermons for single people because that is who lives in his city. We need what we thought he was back when Alan Hirsch quoted him for about how many candles they used in the early days of Mars Hill.
Sometimes, life is tough. You aren’t going to solve all your problems over night. There are small problems you can address, which immediately help you feel better about the world. They won’t fix your marriage or get you a job, but they might clear your head enough to deal with the real issues.
Getting your life back on track will likely take much longer than you would like. You have huge decisions to make here, and you don’t want them to be ruled by a shrinking bank account. You may have to find a part time job, a roommate or a tighter budget. Do whatever you have to do to make sure you are stable enough to dream.
The first ever Missio Alliance gathering took place past week. I’ve felt like this had enormous potential since I first heard Chris Backert of Ecclesia Network describe the concept of a theological gathering for “the rest of us.”
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