daily bible readings

Monday: Isaiah 66:10-14
Tuesday: Psalm 66:1-8
Wednesday: Galatians 6:1-16
Thursday: Luke 10:1-11,16-20
Friday: Pray for an opportunity to learn more about the way of Jesus

apostolic community

“After this the Lord appointed 70 others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.”
After what? After Jesus healed and taught and called followers. After the twelve were with him and women supported him. After Pharisees confronted him and teachers of the law questioned his authority. After he traveled from town to town and house to house sharing the good news that God was in their midst overcoming evil with good, through the compassionate love of this man from Nazareth. After he set his face toward Jerusalem.
Before the church can be the church, Jesus teaches. Jesus’ life, his words and actions, are they not the raw materials for what it means to be the church? Nobody practiced apostolic ministry until Jesus showed them what it meant to enflesh the love of God in human relationship. 70 people. Sent ahead with a mission and a practice. Notice that the church’s mission is carried out by an entire community! What if every Sunday morning worshipper at Zion had a real sense that what they were about to become and do on Monday was apostolic ministry---the ministry of Jesus? Bring peace and healing to a house, a town, a village. Reside there. Live among “the wolves”, aka the spiritually hungry. Whenever you serve generously, say “the kingdom of God has come near to you.” Essentially, be the church where you are everyday! Because your actions on behalf of others point to God’s incarnate love for all people. People will experience God, as we live like Jesus. We live like Jesus when we embrace the missio dei, the mission of God as a kind of corporate sent-ness. We are apostles, sent out by Jesus, to teach what He taught. Followers of Jesus are not pew sitters. They are disciples and apostles and workers.

To whom are we sent?
How do we begin to embody Jesus’ message and mission?
Who needs healed? Who needs peace? Who needs our compassion? Who needs our presence? Who needs our help?
If you are not already part of a learning experience that will prepare you to be sent, then get into one. 7 am on Wednesdays and 9 am on Sundays are two such learning times. A church that is not apostolic, sending out workers to make Christ known, is not a disciple-making church. A church that is not making disciples is not following Jesus. A church that is not following Jesus is not the church.

ramble on

i'm exploring again. i just picked up 'emerging churches' by eddie gibbs and ryan bolger. i haven't yet finished 'shaping of things to come" by Alan Hirsch and michael frost. i am well aware that postmodernity is a massive cultural shift ans that modern churches are not responding to the shift in ways that actually cross cultures with the hope message of the gospel. i am well aware that the last generation to be satisfied with modern institutional church are the baby boomers. i am sensitive to the spiritual needs of people udner the age of forty who seek a connection to an authentic, Jesus-centered, kingdom-building, missional community of friends. i am one of them. maybe part of the struggle is that i am not exactly a part of a friendship circle that embraces the cross cultural missional stance of church in postmodernity. i have found some guys in lancaster. and we talk monthly. it seems to be yielding some fruit.

i'm wondering how to get connected with the non-church community. is there some project or place i should be connecting with here? i spent an hour at barnes and noble sort of watching people and browsing books. where is community-making happening here? what i need to offer is some kind of a book club or something. or find my own. what might the library have to offer?
why am i wondering these things? why can;t i be satisfied doing what i'm doing. what am i doing? i guess that's just it. i'm not sure what to do with myself. i should be meeting with people and asking them questions about thier spiritual lives, their journeys, their hopes and needs. i guess i could do that.
what if i identified a few people with whom i could do that...and just did it. in whatever venue they saw fit. i think i'll do that now.

Pastor as Physician

Say you go to a doctor, a specialist, for diagnosis and treatment for something you can't understand that won't go away on its own.The doctor offers a diagnosis that is hard for you to hear, because it means you will have a lifestyle change. The doctor prescribes a course of meds and lifestyle changes that will increase your health. What do you do? Do you embrace the diagnosis and the treatment in order to get healthy or do you forget what the doctor said?

I sometimes feel like that. Like the diagnosis and treatment I prescribe is being rejected. Am I not convincing enough? Or are people unwilling to get healthy? Sometimes getting healthy means giving up something you love, like alcohol or cigarettes or basketball. Sometimes it means taking up some new habit like walking or drinking water or yoga. One thing it never means is stay where you are...unless terminal, most doctors I suspect will treat an illness by attempting to affect some change in the unhealthy system. By introducing a drug, a new body part, or a lifestyle change, the unhealthy system can sometimes be treated. The same is true of church life---the body of Christ---change in the system is sometimes needed for health and vitality. Maintenance is not an option when you are sick. A treatment that guarantees you will remain unhealthy is not treatment.

Now I am aware that when it comes to spirituality and faith people do not like to be judged or criticized. They like to be left alone, especially church people. They like to believe, "It is well with my soul." They don't like to realize the brokenness within and its fruit. Without a healthy connection to the root, the branch will bear no fruit. Unceasing Prayer, inspiring worship, active serving---these are the things that promote health.