Single or In a Relationship?

So over at at Soma we are in the middle of a sermon series titled “Relationship Status: Its Complicated.” As the title implies its a series on relationships. I’m up this week, after Brandon did a great job talking about Christ centered friendships its my turn to bring the word on singleness. There is an interesting story about how this message came about… I’ll spare you the details but God has put this message on my heart in a very heavy way. The topic of singleness s a topic  I don’t want to tackle, mainly because its so cheesy. The church is constantly talking about “the gift of singleness.” I really wonder if that is biblical at all. 1 Corinthians doesn’t seem to say so to me, but maybe I’m just reading it wrong. Anyway I think I found the interpretive key to the topics addressed in 1 Corinthians 7. The key is Paul’s discussion of circumcision. Circumcision and Singleness…that would be a great sermon title haha. In 1 Corinthians 7:19 Paul says:

Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing….

Why talk about circumcision in the middle of a diatribe about marriage? That is a great question.

When I read this verse I remembered that Paul had said this same phrase somewhere else…Galatians 6:15:

For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything.

The context of this Galatians verse is Paul’s final admonition to the Galatians. He says he doesn’t boast in anything….ANYTHING except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why circumcision or uncircumcision doesn’t matter. Neither justify us. Neither give us identity. They can’t! So they don’t matter. They are nothing! What matters is what Jesus did and where we are in him. Outside of that there is complete freedom. And that freedom is to be used to expand his kingdom. To be on mission. To be the light that God has called us to be. The same holds true for relationships. Single or married… it doesn’t matter. Neither justify you. Neither make you a better Christian. Neither give you your identity. So there is freedom. Be single, be in a relationship, But use that freedom to what God has called you to, namely to expand his kingdom and to be living in light of the eschatalogical reality of new creation.

Those are just some of my thoughts for this weekend.

The Poetry of George Herbert: “The Sacrifice” (Pt. 3)

We continue to dive deeper into George Herbert’s poem “The Sacrifice.” Today we come one step closer to the end… one step closer to the point where Jesus lets out his final breath of desperation “now all is finished.” But we aren’t quite there yet. Today we find ourselves staring at Jesus on the cross. More specifically where are at the point where Jesus is being taunted to come down if indeed he is the Son of God. Drawing from another part from the Gospels, Herbert puts a well know quote in Jesus’ mouth which sheds new light upon the significance of the cross:

Now heal thyself, Physician; now come down.
Alas! I did so, when I left my crown
And father’s smile for you, to feel his frown:
Was ever grief like mine?

Once again we see Herbert’s use of irony shining through the poem. “Now come down” they taunt Jesus… ah but if only they new He has come down! Jesus has left his crown, he has left his riches! And it is all for our sake! “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9)

As Paul further elaborates upon this fact in his epistle to the Philippians:

5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very natureof a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:6-11)

Once again Herbert shows us the gravity of what Christ has done for us. His coming down… his leaving the crown. It is all for our sake. Christ has felt the Father’s frown upon himself so that the Father might smile upon us. Jesus has substituted himself in our place. He has taken what we have deserved upon himself so that we might experience the joy of the Father upon us! This is no mere legal exchange. This isn’t mechanistic. This isn’t just our slate wiped clean. No this is the Father rejoicing in us! We are the apple of our Father’s eye! He sings songs over us because he is so pleased with us:

The Lord your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)

Yet this is no mere penal substitution, it has a healing element to it as well. The irony shows this. Physician heal thyself, come down! The great physician has come down and he has brought healing….yet the healing is not for himself. The healing is for the same people who taunt him, who turn their back on him. The healing is for the broken and sinful. Its for us…

So today rejoice! He has come down! Yet its not in the way anyone expected. He has come down so that the Father might rejoice in us and so that we would be healed from this disease that afflicts us that we call sin.

The Poetry of George Herbert: “The Sacrifice” (Pt. 2)

Last time I began to write about George Herbert’s poem “The Sacrifice.” As you now know, its a sort of Lament put into the mouth of Jesus. Herbert shows us the grief and agony, not simply the physical agony, but the emotional agony which Jesus suffered on his way to the cross. Herbert does this in order to lead us into a moment of worship. Its a moment in which we say “Christ did this for me! He suffered for me! He was ashamed and betrayed for my sake!” In seeing the agony that Christ endured we see the depths and length of his love for us.

Today I want to dive a little deeper into two of the stanzas of this poem. Check out the following:

Then on my head a crown of thorns I wear:

For these are all the grapes Sion doth bear,

Through I my vine planted and wat’red there:

                    Was ever grief like mine?

So sits the earth’s cure in Adam’s fall

Upon my head: so I remove it all

From th’ earth unto my brows, and bear the thrall;

                    Was ever a grief like mine?

The second stanza is an explicit reference to Genesis 3 in which God curses Adam

17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”

The irony in this set of stanzas is stunning. Its a prime example of historic-salvation hermeneutics. Herbert sees the crown of thorns upon Christ’s head as a fulfillment of Adam’s curse. Adam was cursed with thorns and thistles that would prick him as he toils to provide food. Yet it is Jesus who takes those thorns and lets them prick him, all for our sake! His body is broken for us as food (think Eucharist) for our souls. But Herbert’s vision for what Christ’s work on the cross accomplishes is so much bigger than our individual salvation. Herbert envisions a cosmic restoration! Adam’s fall caused the earth to be cursed, thus causing creation to groan in pain (e.g. thorns), yet it is this same curse which falls upon Jesus. The curse of creation falls upon Jesus! But the curse which creation is under is the same thing which leads to its cure. In other words the effects of the curse upon creation fall in all their weight upon Jesus and lead to a cure for creation. Metaphysically I don’t know if it really works this way, but there is something moving in Herbert’s imagery. Jesus endures the grief an agony of a cursed creation upon himself, which leads him to cry “Was ever a grief like mine.” Yet it is this same grief which leads to the restoration, joy, and, shalom of all of creation, not just us human beings.

The Poetry of George Herbert: “The Sacrifice” (Pt. 1)

Last night I spent some time reading some of the poetry of George Herbert. It was sort of a devotional for me; sort of like spending some time listening to worship songs. As I was reading I came across one of his longer poems: “The Sacrifice.”

Situated right after “The Altar” (you know the poem, the one you read in your High School English class that is shaped like an actual altar), which shows that a broken and contrite heart is the only heart fit for offering sacrifice to God, this poem is about another broken and contrite heart that is offers sacrifice to God: Jesus.

“The Sacrifice” is written from the point of view of Jesus. It serves as a lament of sorts, with the refrain being “Was ever grief like mine?” As Jesus goes about his Passion he keeps saying those words “Was ever grief like mine?” As people are blind to see him as their savior he says “Was ever grief like mine?” As Judas, his friend, betrays him he says “Was ever grief like mine?” As his disciples fall asleep around him in Gethsemane and leave him alone he says “Was ever grief like mine?” As his own people accuse him of blasphemy he says “Was ever grief like mine?” A rhetorical move Herbert makes is that after each refrain the cadence increases slightly, that is each stanza gets read quicker and quicker. As the cadence of each stanza increases so does the gravity and pain of each betrayal. And as the gravity and pain increase so does the graphic nature of this poem. Consider the following; we almost expect Judas to betray Jesus, thus the cadence is slow and the imagery is a bit dull, but the poem moves on and climaxes (in cadence and graphic imagery) when the most unexpected betrayal occurs, the betrayal at the hands of the Father.

Over the next few days I will be taking an in depth look at a few of these stanzas, examining how they display the excellencies of Christ and the excellencies of the gospel, thus leading the reader into worship, and thus into offering a sacrifice of his own.  In my humble opinion (I am no literary critic by any means), this is exactly the response that Herbert wants to invoke. Consider this:

  1. “The Altar” tells us that only a broken and contrite heart can offer sacrifice to God.
  2. “The Sacrifice” shows us that Christ had a broken heart.
  3. “The Sacrifice” shows us that Christ’s heart is broken (grieved) because of our rejection of him.
  4. “The Sacrifice” shows us that Christ grieved for our sake.
  5. Thus Christ can offer a fitting sacrifice to God.
  6. The fact that we have grieved Christ, the one who died for our sake, should lead us to have a broken and contrite.
  7. When our heart is broken and contrite, we can and do offer sacrifice to God.

Herbert tells us what worship is, shows us the glory of Jesus’ passion, and moves us to respond by offering a pleasing sacrifice to God.

This pattern, of seeing Jesus’ grief, grieving because I put him there, and worshiping God because he sent his son is what I was doing as I was reading this poem. In that sense it was devotional. It opened up the cross in a new way for me. Seeing it from Christ’s point of view helped me to understand the love he had for me. A love that took him to the cross, for me!

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. – Galatians 2:20

Is the Gospel Offensive?

Yes…yes it is.

In a few days I will be writing a review of Andy Stanley’s Deep and Wide, until then check out this quote from the book. It illustrates the tension between “going deep” and “going wide,” and it shows that you don’t have to sacrifice one for the other. You can go Deep and Wide.

We don’t mind offending people with the gospel. We assume we will offend people with the gospel. As a preacher, it’s my responsibility to offend people with the gospel. That’s one reason we work so hard not to offend them in the parking lot, the hallway, at the check-in, or in the early portions of our service.

Deep and Wide

Reformed Ragamuffins – The Promises of God: Part 2

Here is a sample of a blog post I wrote for Reformed Ragamuffins for their series “The promises of God.” Check out their blog!

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Dallas and His Dad
I have a Golden Retriever named Dallas, he’s a little over three years old now so he is kind of still a puppy. I remember the day that I got him, it was a Wednesday morning and we were getting him from a friend. My family wanted a boy dog and not a girl dog and he was the only one left, so we walked into their backyard to check the puppies out. I remember walking over to the dog run and seeing an explosion of puppies. As soon as the puppies heard me walking they exploded out of the dog house and ran over to the gate. They all seemed pretty excited, then all of a sudden another puppy runs out of the dog house and jumps on top of all the other puppies. He starts climbing all over the other one, even standing on top of them trying to climb over the fence. This was Dallas. Dallas showed his cards before we even took him, he would be trouble. So after playing with the puppies a little bit we took home the only boy puppy, Dallas. We got home set him up in the kitchen, gave him some water, some toys, and a training pad then put a puppy fence around his area. I walk out of the room and 2 minutes later I hear a loud crash. Somehow this little puppy knocked over a fence made for 75-100 pound dogs. I put the fence back up and lo and behold a few minutes later he is climbing it and has gotten stuck, now Dallas is crying. After that incident we decided fences couldn’t contain Dallas. Then we tried to teach him to go on walks… this too was a disaster. Actually it wasn’t a disaster, Dallas ended up taking us for walks instead. To tell you the truth his dad was actually like this. His dad was an outside dog, but when he got in he wrecked the house. His dad would knock over kids and old people. His dad was impossible to walk. All this to say that Dallas much like his dad is a trainwreck. Two rambunctious Golden Retrievers…. like father like son. I guess its family resemblance. I believe that understanding the concept of family resemblance can help shed light on the nature of our promises especially in light of our Father’s promises to us.

Let what you say say be simply “yes” or “no”; anything more than this comes from evil. -Matthew 5:27

Here Jesus says it quite simply. Let your “yes” be “yes” or your “no” be “no.” Don’t swear falsely. Say what you mean. Keep your promises. If you say you will do something for someone do it. Don’t say you will do it then not follow through. Don’t be flaky. Okay you get the point, keep your promises!

The Righteousness of God
There is much discussion over what the term “the righteousness of God” is, two that jump out at me are the following:

  • God’s commitment to get his glory
  • God’s covenantal faithfulness

Either way you go, you must admit that at least a part of The Righteousness of God is his covenantal faithfulness. God makes covenants and he keeps them. God makes a covenant with Abraham to fulfill three promises 1-Land, 2-Progeny, 3-Blessings to the nations. This covenant runs throughout the Bible (see Exodus 1, 2 Samuel 7, Jeremiah 29, Colossians 1); and its all about God’s attempts to rescue and redeem the world through Abraham’s descendants, specifically through the one who embodies and represents Abraham’s descendants, Jesus Christ himself. The point is God has a commitment to restore and redeem this world, and the Abrahamic covenant is a means to this end. This commitment to his purposes finds a very articulate expression in the fifth chapter of 2nd Corinthians where Paul says that “in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Within a context of the ministry of reconciliation this passage shows that God reconciled us to himself in the Messiah and that God has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation; As Wright has argued “in the Messiah, we embody God’s faithfulness, God’s covenantal faithfulness, God’s actions in reconciling the world to himself.”

All this to say:

God has made a commitment to restore and redeem this universe and he has called us to work alongside of him.

Family Resemblance
Why does this matter? Its called family resemblance. Like Father like Sons and Daughters. The God who asks us to keep our promises is the God who is faithful to keep his promises, especially his promise to restore all of restoration. Our “promise keeping” at a horizontal level is grounded on God’s “promise keeping” (God’s Righteousness) at a vertical level. It is because God has promised to rescue and restore us that we even have the power to obey his command to make our “yes” be “yes” and our “no” be “no.” When we are adopted into the Family of God we take on a family resemblance; we start to look a lot like our Dad. Just like Dallas took on some of the characteristics of his dad we begin to take on the characteristics of our Dad. And our Dad is fundamentally one who keeps his promises (his covenant to the human race). So as you go about making promises this week, make sure you stick to them because your Father has kept his promise to rescue and redeem you.

An Introduction to the Poetry of George Herbert

Many will disagree with this statement but…. The Church of England is basically Reformed. Or at least it is rooted in Reformed theology. Take for instance the 39 Articles. Although they are trying to forge a via media between Catholicism and Puritan theology, they end up looking a lot like standard Reformed theology. For example article XVII which is on predestination and election, XIX which is on the Church sounds a lot like Calvin, and XXVII which is on the Lord’s Supper is plainly Calvinist repudiating both Anabaptist beliefs and Roman Catholic doctrines; and Lutheran doctrine isn’t even on the table (in case you don’t catch it, that’s a pun). However if you don’t believe me, there is another confession that “proves” my point. Many Reformed people use this confession and don’t even know where it comes from. It’s the ever so dear Westminster Confession of Faith. Written in 1646 it was created for use in the Anglican Church. The history goes back to 1643 when the English Parliament called upon “learned, godly and judicious Divines”, to meet at Westminster Abbey in order to provide advice on issues of worship, doctrine, government and discipline of the Church of England. (Side Note: The original confession contains some embarrassing stuff like calling the Pope the Anti-Christ!) What ended up happening was that this confession was eventually adopted by the Church of Scotland, many Presbyterian Churches, and it even formed the basis for the Second London Baptist Confession of faith. So my point is, Reformed theology has a special place in the history of the Church of England, even though it might not play a prominent role in it today.

Herbert is a sort of paradox, even by Anglican standards. If the Anglican church is a via media then Herbert walks another via media  within this via media this time between High Church Anglicanism and Low Church Anglicanism; between Laudian Anglicanism and Puritan Anglicanism. Herbert preferred ceremony over bareness, was quite often drawn in his poetry to Eucharistic though, and at times displayed a preference to a “catholic” image of Christ’s suffering. Yet Herbert also shows his hands as a Calvinist, this is especially prominent in his use of doctrines like election and his insistence on justification independent of human merit. However even within his Reformed orthodoxy he vacillates on Assurance, at times it seems as though he does indeed deny the doctrine yet ultimately it seems (at least to me) that it is simply an existential angst after all, all of us are susceptible to these sort of worries. In the end, despite worries, doubts, and anxieties regarding his own salvation he displays an deep certainty in an assurance of God’s faithfulness and love, and ultimately his forgiveness. This is all to say that George Herbert was an interesting character, worthy of some reflection in this blog.

Over the next few days, weeks (years!), I will be reflecting upon some of his poetry but for now I leave you with this (an-unreflected-upon) poem by George Herbert.

 

 The Dedication

Lord, my first fruits present themselves to thee;

Yet not mine neither: for from thee they came,

And must return. Accept of them and me,

And make us strive, who shall sing best they name.

      Turn their eyes hither, who shall make a gain:

      Theirs, who shall hurt themselves or me, refrain.

Missiology Book Review: Creating a Missional Culture (Part 2)

So last time I did what any book review is supposed to do, I summarized the contents of the book. This time I want to talk about the book’s strengths and weaknesses.

Positives

  • A good understanding of Culture and how culture works. Its evident that he draws quite a bit of his understanding of culture from Andy Crouch.  Andy Crouch’s famous maxim is “Culture is what we make of the world.” But its also what the world makes of us. Crouch’s understanding of culture is dynamic and not static.  As we make and interpret the world we form culture, but the things we make and how we interpret the world in light of these very things re shape us as well. Woodward captured this dynamic back and forth between shaping and being shaped well, especially in his chapter about culture and the neighborhood church. Also, the Six elements of culture are a good way to understand our Church’s culture ad how it shapes our faith. Yet the dynamic nature of culture leaves hope for change and growth in our church’s culture. In other word’s just because culture shapes us, that doesn’t mean we are stuck. We can break the mold and reshape culture.
  • Five Equippers (APTEPT). Although I am not from a background that uses APTEPT or APTEST in any way I am pretty convinced by Woodward that most churches have cut out the APE and are functioning with the TS or at best TES (or at worst one person with multiple giftings). [See http://www.releasetheape.com/release/ ] For those of us who aren’t used to thinking in terms of the Ephesians giftings, this part of the book was extremely helpful. I have been recently exposed to this way of thinking in bits and pieces but Woodward clearly lays out each one and explains them very well. I’m already starting to think of leadership in terms of these 5 equippers, especially in our large group gathering but also in our small groups.
  • Extremely Practical. This is the type of book I can pick up and immediately start discussing with other leaders. I can pretty much pick out any section of the book and find easy discussion points. Also there are parts where he lays out some questions, these are very helpful and very adaptable to (almost) any context. For example I was able to take pages 144-145 which are about “Proclaiming the Gospel by Being Witnesses” and take one of my leaders through it. Later that week I gathered some of our small group leaders for worship, prayer, and communion to discern together what the answers to these questions are for us as a ministry. So I guess the point is that you can really put this book and its concepts to work quickly (not as a quick fix solution but as a point of discussion that will help you shape your culture).

Negatives

  • Polycentric Leadership. I don’t believe that polycentric leadership is bad, in fact I think its what the Western church desperately needs in this moment. Theologically I agree with Woodward because if God has indeed given the church five equippers then it doesn’t make sense that any one person would dominate the congregation. Also I agree with him because I see the Bible as teaching that leadership is centered around Christ. Leadership is centered around Christ and it is empowered by the Spirit. However my critique is that Woodward’s understanding of polycentric leadership is too culturally conditioned, and it can come off as dogmatic. Let me explain, but first a little bit of background. Several years ago IBM did some research into the differences in cultural attitudes that their employees around the world had. They had a team of anthropologists doing this work and one of their anthropologists, Geert Hofstede, came up with a list of national cultural values. Among these values was perception of leadership. This perception is cashed out in terms of high and low power distances. High power distances are more hierarchical and low power distances spread power and leadership out. The US has a low power distance but the global south tends to have a high power distance. This is not limited to the business world, it also applies to churches! That means churches in the global south won’t gravitate towards polycentric leadership. This matches up with what I have seen, growing up in a Hispanic church and doing work in the global south I can speak from first hand experience. The point is, I don’t see polycentric leadership in churches in the global south. But we see them blowing up anyway! They are very often better at meeting tangible needs, better at being on mission, and better at letting the spirit move freely than the western church is. Which is paradoxical because the western church is less hierarchical.  My point is, that leadership arrangements are culturally conditioned. Western leadership can and should be missionally sensitive, thus it should move towards polycentric leadership. Leadership in the global south should also be missionally sensitive, thus they should lead in such a way (even if its not polycentric) that gets the mission done.

Wrapping Things Up

I want to end this review by saying that I really believe in this book. As I said above, its very practical. But practical is not always a good thing, practical can often mean 5 easy steps to x or the 7 healthy habits of x, practical often means quick fix solutions. However this book is practical in a different way. Its practical in the sense that it is theory that leads to action, its focus is praxis. This book opens up new lines of thought and asks tough questions that will get practioners thinking in ways that they might not have thought of in the past. As I said above, I was able to take some of these questions and pose them to my fellow leaders. The result was not a new “missional” program, but an ongoing discussion of how we as a congregation can be more missional. The people in our congregation are now thinking in terms of God’s mission. They are forming missional communities, blessing their schools and workplaces, and sharing the gospel. In my opinion, if a book can help generate a shift towards a missional culture like this then it deserves to be read, especially since the book itself is about creating a missional culture.

Go read this book!

Creating a Missional Culture

Missiology Book Review: Creating a Missional Culture (Part 1)

A few months ago I had lunch with the author of Creating a Missional Culture, we ended up going to eat at a Thai place near my church. Being from East Hollywood, JR Woodward was used to some really good authentic Thai food, so walking into the restaurant we were having lunch at I could tell that he wasn’t expecting much; however he was pleasantly surprised.

That’s my experience with this book. “Missional” books have flooded the market, and its no longer easy to tell (by the book’s cover) whether or not the book is going to be good. Anyway I picked this book up, not expecting much; however I was very pleasantly surprised.

This is a book written by someone who is not only a theoretician, but a practitioner. He is a church planter, he knows what its like to get a missional church off the ground. He knows what its like to see a church die and to see a church thrive. He knows that a thriving church will e a blessing to the neighborhood it finds itself in. And through all of this he has discovered that “effective church planting requires thinking about the culture of the congregation.”[1] But this book is not only about planting, its about doing church missionally. Church plant’s aren’t the only ones who can do church missionally. However if a church is going to be missional it must understand that “more than a strategy, vision, or plan, the unseen culture of a church powerfully shapes her ability to grow, mature, and live missionally.”[2] Shaping the unseen culture of your church is what this book is all about.

This book is broken down into four different parts. Part one is about the “Power of Culture.” In the four chapters in this section JR explains several things, first he explains what missional culture is. Missional culture is more than just programs, its about our ecclesial identity. Its grounded in the fact that mission exists because God is a missionary God. However, to get to a “missional culture” we need to begin by understanding what culture is and how culture is shaped. Woodward lays out six elements of culture that he calls the “cultural web:” 1-Language, 2-Artifacts, 3-Narratives, 4-Rituals, 5-Institutions, and 6-ethics. These six elements make up our culture but they also shape our culture. Culture and culture making is a dynamic back and forth process. Having laid out some basic ground work for culture he asks us to examine the culture of the church we serve in. Is it primarily a learning environment? A healing environment? A welcoming environment? A liberating environment? Or is it a thriving environment? A missional church needs all five. He ends this part with a discussion of polycentric leadership. In essence polycentric leadership is an understanding of leadership in which there is a community of leaders rather than a “center” of leadership. In other words there are many centers of leadership rather than one. JR believes that scripture encourages a polycentric understanding of leadership and he appeals to Ephesians, especially Ephesians 4.

Part two is about the type of “Leadership Imagination that Shapes Missional Culture.” He begins by discussion different shifts in attitudes towards leadership over that last 500 years, beginning with the Print Age and moving forward into our current Digital Age. Leadrs in this age are primarily “impartational,” that is they are equippers. He then goes on to study what the Bible says about leadership and concludes that the primary model of leadership in scripture is the model which understands God at the center, and elders around him “leading in the round serving at the periphery to activate the entire people of God.”[3]  Finally he goes on to make a Theological case for polycentric, communal, impartational leadership. He concludes this section by giving some practical steps towards embracing this type of leadership over hierarchical leadership. His most important piece of advice towards this end is that the leader needs to be able to relinquish the need to control.

Part three, in my opinion, is the heart of the book: “The Five Culture Creators.” Basing this section off Ephesians four, he beings by showing that Jesus embodies all of the Ephesians 4 gifts. Jesus is the Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, Teacher. He is the only human to have all four gifts perfectly, but the Spirit does give people with these gifts to the church. Each of these people  are there to move the congregation towards God’s end of having a church that is mature in Christ. JR then spends the rest of this section by explaining the “focal concern” and the “telos” for each of these equippers. For instance the focal concern of the Evangelist  is “incarnating the good news”  and the Telos is “proclaiming the good news by being witness and being redemptive agents.” The Evangelist equipper helps the community to do these things.  These Ephesians 4 gifts, are the gifts that shape the culture of the congregation.

The fourth part of this book takes the three previous sections and puts them to work. The fourth section is about “Embodying a Missional Culture.” Embodying a missional culture begins by understanding and listening to the community in which the church finds itself. Then the church asks itself “What is God’s calling for our church? What are our core practices? How will we fulfill our calling? What does it mean for us to be faithful?  These four questions are just elaborations of the six elements of culture. The church then has to figure out how to live this vision. It must learn how to cultivate missional environments. This is where the Ephesians 4 equippers come in. Apostles cultivate thriving environments, prophets cultivate liberating environments, Evangelists cultivate welcoming environments, Pastors cultivate healing environments, and teachers cultivate learning environments.  But they don’t stop there, they don’t only cultivate these environments; they create a culture of equipping where others are equipped to do the same things. These Ephesians 4 “gifts” are people who are player-coaches. They play the game and they coach, but they don’t only coach they have the goal of multiplying leaders. Multiply, Multiply, Multiply! This happens through apprenticeship. But this way of doing church only happens under a polycentric model of leadership. Multiplication cannot occur under hierarchical leadership.

So we have taken a look at the overall flow of the book… next time I will present what I think are some of its strengths and weaknesses.  I must be upfront and say that this book received an honorable mention on my Top Books of 2012 list, so my opinion is a bit biased.

Creating a Missional Culture

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[1] Creating a Missional Culture, 19.

[2] Creating a Missional Culture, 19.

[3] Creating a Missional Culture, 87.

St. Augustine Encourages You to Stick to Your New Year’s Resolution…

I’m sticking with the New Year’s Resolution theme this week, so its fitting that I talk to you about weight loss. Weight loss probably is at the top of most people’s New Year’s resolutions, so if you resolved to lose weight this year you are not alone! I was watching the Today show this morning and they put out some interesting statistics. 45% of Americans make New Year’s Resolutions but only 8% of those Americans can say that they kept it by the end of the year! So if you are a “45 percenter” chances are not so good that you will keep your resolution. If you resolved to lose weight this year I’m sorry to say but your chances of doing it are not so good.

However my good friend St. Augustine has some words of encouragement for you! Its from his book Enchridion on Faith, Hope, and Love which was written to an educated Roman layman as a brief but comprehensive introduction to Christian teaching and doctrine. In case the title throws you off, Enchridion is a term that comes from the Greek for handbook. But don’t get too caught up on how intense the title sounds, it’s an enjoyable read and I suggest that you pick it up! Anyway, here is what St. Augustine has to say:

Nor does it necessarily follow that there shall be differences of stature among those who rise again, because they were of different statures during life, nor is it certain that the lean shall rise again in their former leanness, and the fat in their former fatness.

At this point it looks like Augustine is saying that it does not necessarily follow that we will have the same body-type in the resurrected state. In the new creation the lean (skinny) might no longer be skinny! The fat might no longer be fat! So you can look forward to looking like what you want to look like (or what God wants you to look like) in the New Creation! Ah but not so fast…

But if it is part of the Creator’s design that each should preserve his own peculiarities of feature, and retain a recognizable likeness to his former self, while in regard to other bodily advantages all should be equal, then the material of which each is composed may be so modified that none of it shall be lost…

It seems as though Augustine is saying that it is possible that God gives us resurrected bodies that preserve our features, that retain a recognizable likeness to our former selves. Yes we will be healthy and yes will be able to perform the same tasks as our other resurrected brothers and sisters will be able to do, so none will be superior to another but God might recreate us in such a way that none of the material that we are composed of will be lost. That is just a fancy way of saying, what you’ve got now is what you’ll have later. If you have some junk in your trunk God might make sure that you have junk in your trunk in your resurrected body. That means, If you don’t want junk in your trunk for the rest of eternity then you better get to work now, and literally work your butt off.

So be encouraged! According to St. Augustine your New Year’s Resolution might have eternal consequences!