Right now, over at MissioScapes, you can read an article from Marty Duren that is the beginning of a series entitled, “If we were the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force.” It’s Marty being Marty on the SBC and I know some of you have missed that stuff. My article will be there in a few weeks.  There are a few scheduled to drop between now and then, but all will be worth your while, I think.

Oh, and please remember that the MissioScapes blog is ideological, not political, and not focused on the SBC.  Rather, since the SBC has made the move to further its ability to fulfill the Missio Dei, it seems that we are focused on the same things at the moment.  No, I don’t think we are always focused on the same things as the SBC, if that question crossed your mind.

Not to ignore my postings here at 12 Witnesses, I’ll be dropping an article this week about Christians intentionally partnering with the unholy.

I hope to pique your interest by saying that I think we should do it.  Alot.

So a few weeks ago, as I was at my in-law’s house about to head with them to a family reunion vacation for the week, I got a call from Alan Cross.

He started with the line, “I’m trying to get the band back together.”

Flattered that he thought me essential, but wary of being drawn back into a political melee, I was initially non-commital.  I told him I was happy trying to advance the Kingdom from my church and blogging my ideas of the Missio Dei (Mission of God) from 12 Witnesses.  I was not going back “there.”

It was a longer conversation than just that, but I ranted about the foolishness of some and the impure motives of others alongside the personal regrets that I had for my own follies.

Patiently allowing me to disgorge all my emotions, when I was done, Alan simply agreed and said that everyone pretty much felt the same way.

So I said I was “open” to the idea.

Shortly thereafter, during a video conference, Todd Littleton argued that we were Southern Baptists and that, unless we were willing to walk away completely from the SBC, then we had an obligation to stay engaged – at least ideologically.  After all, we are sending part of the tithes and offerings of our church members to the SBC.  We at least owe it to our churches to stay connected.

I had to agree.

Therefore, Paul and Todd Littleton, Marty Duren, David Phillips, John Elam, Alan Cross and I agreed to launch MissioScapes.com where we address the Missio Dei from a Southern Baptist context in several expressions (from rural to urban), but also with an eye toward things beyond our denomination.

It launched today, and we hope to bring you some great ideas alongside some that just won’t fly, but all of which we hope will spur you to think about fulfilling God’s mission to our world.  You’ll be reading interviews, book reviews and original articles from the the 7 editors and beyond.

Just for clarification, this effort is ideological and not political.  We will be addressing SBC related issues, among other things, but nobody needs or wants “a seat at the table” and we have no intention of sponsoring motions or resolutions.  Nor do we have any intent of being drawn into petty side discussions with those that do desire to dwell in the world of political mechanizations.

Oh, and 12 Witnesses is going nowhere.  I’ll still be posting here in the same vein that I have for the last couple of years and there may even be an occasion when I’ll post an article in both places.

I hope to see you around.

You know that I think we need to transition American church culture into a something far more effective in engaging the world around us.

The problem most often faced in the attempt to accomplish this goal is an adherence to individual preferences by those not wishing to change.

The attitude of those desiring to be agents of change, when confronted with this obstacle, is that of disdain, convinced of our own accuracy.

It is common among those pursuing change to decry the attachments to these biases as selfish and sinful when they stand in the way of our goals.

The hypocrisy of it is that many times we are pursuing our own preferences rather than that which will be best received by those to whom we are sent; for whom we claim to lobby.

When moving a church, we need to be honest about our own preferences and be as willing to lay them aside as we expect others to be when it comes to their comforts.

What matters is what communicates.  We can’t use one mindset’s failure to communicate as leverage to replace it with another mindset that is equally unable.

It is disingenuous.  The result will be a spiralling loss of relevance that makes our current failures look tame in comparison.

There are three neighborhoods that I believe are the responsibility of every believer:  The one in which you live, the one in which you work (wherever you do what you do, be that a spread out “neighborhood” like clients of a landscaper or salesperson, or a close “neighborhood” like a cubical based office design, or anything in between) and the one in which you worship.

In The Connecting Church, Randy Frazee gives a list of “Rules to Being a Good Neighbor” that might allow us to build relationships in a way in order to make a difference.  I found them to be fairly significant and I’d like to synopsize them for you here.  Obviously this was written for the neighborhood in which you live, but it seems easy enough to adapt the majority of the list to the other two as well.  You can find the full list on pages 146 & 147.

• Take care of your property.
• Visit your neighbors spontaneously. If they are working on something, pitch in and help.
• If your dog barking is an annoyance, solve it. (Or for the office, if you listen to music in your cubical, get earbuds and wear one in and one out so you can hear your music and the office chatter, for example)
• Borrow stuff from your neighbors, giving you common grounds for a conversation. Return what you borrowed promptly and in better condition.  If it breaks replace it quickly. It would also seem to me that you should be a generous lender as a part of this principle.
• Use common sense.
• “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.”

Any others you might add?

The chair of our Missions Team sent me an email last night asking what we would have to do to get the individuals of our church starting their own engagement opportunities rather than the team creating centralized opportunities that most will not engage.

This was my answer:

The missional mindset within the individual will never come from an institution. It is caught like a virus from close contact with one who already has the “disease.” This is the biggest point of small groups.

Missional interaction as a small group and the group holding the individuals accountable to be missional is the key to allowing the Missional mindset to make its way down to the smallest level – the individual.

The great problem we have is the baggage we all bring by way of expectations of what the church is and how it should work.

We are so used to the centralized institution doing everything, organizing everything and allowing the few to do the work of the whole, that even good Godly men and women with a heart for service think that changing the church is “wrong” because it is not what they always have known.

What we have to understand in this process is that the only reason for the change is that it is more effective at getting individuals to grow as disciples and engage the world with the message.

From Acts 17.

1. Paul was sensitive to the spiritual surroundings (vv. 10-17). He did not go there of his own intention, but was directed there by circumstance at the direction of Providence. He could have viewed the situation from a self centered worldview that would have led him to consider himself stranded and in need of support, possibly leading to a timid response to his surroundings. Instead, he responded to the vast number of idols by immediately proclaiming the Gospel.

2. Paul sought to help them understand (vv. 17-31). He did not expect those not exposed to the culture of Early Christianity to understand the Gospel, so he used the connections he had available. He walked the common pathway of Jewish heritage with the Jews in the local synagogue and marketplace. When the Greeks brought him to the Areopagus, he pointed to their acknowledgment of a God they didn’t know and drew upon some of their commonly held beliefs, quoting several local poets/philosophers.

Not mincing words or being timid, he communicated the truth through values they already held in common. For the Jews, the OT Scripture. For the Greeks, the belief they were all children of God.

3. The results were not Paul’s to govern (vv. 32-34). Paul proclaimed, many rejected, some were still open and a handful believed. Whether you believe that faith begins in man’s move towards God or in God’s move toward man, Paul is responsible for neither – only to faithfully offer the opportunity and allow God and man forge the result. Too often we concern ourselves with whether or not someone will respond and allow that to govern how we share or if we dare to offer the message at all. This is not our concern, but is between God and our friends.

We must be faithful to share.

Because if you wait to be healthy enough to start a new church, you will never be healthy enough.

You become a healthier church by doing what healthy churches do.

If it is the responsibility of the church to participate in the Mission of God, and it is the responsibility of the church to do just that, then we need to act redemptively toward the people around us.

Keeping in mind that every Christian is the church, the body of Christ, then before we can effectively act redemptively to the people around us as a corporate body, we need to be doing so as individuals.

But we haven’t.

To those apart from God, we have engaged them with programmed sales pitches with pamphlets and intrusive knocks on strangers’ doors.  When they say they are uninterested in being invaded, we shake the dust off our sandals and move on, saying to ourselves that they have rejected the Gospel. They really just rejected our failure to live redemptively in a poor imitation of the Gospel.

To those apart from the body, Christians who have been burned or burdened by church and choose to separate themselves, we have no programmed response.  We simply call them names (“backsliders”) and give them the attitude that they know better and should be in church.

To those actively participating in the body, we’ll teach them to death and call it discipleship.  Sunday School, Sunday morning worship, Sunday night worship and Wednesday night “Prayer Meeting” where we actually pray very little, but at which we are expecting yet another lesson.  Accountability?  Mission?  Ministry?  Service?  Intercessory Prayer?  Mentoring in parenting?  Etc?  …  That all comes with special programs in which few participate.  Fellowship.  We do that really well within the body.

In short, individually and corporately, we’ve not been very redemptive.

We short-circuit the actual responsibility of the church and substitute the by product as our goal.  Translation: Instead of working hard to be redemptive, we work hard to get big.  The downside of that is that we can cheat our way to big.

You don’t have to be redemptive to be big.

Our goal is neither to be busy or big.  Our goal is to be redemptive.

If we are that, then no matter what else happens, we will stand before God unashamed.

Reframing Success: Redefining Success in Evangelism

Are we interested in sharing Christ for the sake of the other person or for ourselves?

Great question.

As reggie McNeal says, if we want to change the way we do church, we have to change the way we measure success.