Without This There Is No Church

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church, church planting, conversion, crucifixion, gospel, jesus, new testament, old testament, paul, salvation, theology

In the last post we highlighted the importance of defining the church properly by exploring the claim that what we believe about the church determines how we coordinate its life together. Today we’re going to dig further into the definition of the church rooted in teachings by the fine folks at Missio: The church is a networked family of gospel communities on mission. 

This definition requires further definition if it’s going to be helpful. What is the gospel? What is community? What is mission? Today we start with the gospel.

Contours of Paul’s Ministry

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church, colossians, conversion, discipleship, gospel, jesus, ministry, paul

I’ll flesh this out further in a future post as part of an upcoming series on Colossians, but I wanted to share a few things from Colossians 1.24-29. In this passage Paul cracks a window and gives us a glimpse of how he understood his own calling and ministry. I see eight contours of Paul’s (co)mission. It is:

• Thoroughly centered on Christ. In keeping with the rest of the letter, nothing derails Paul from his singular focus on Christ. Here he is the word of God in its fulness, the content of God’s now-revealed-mystery and therefore of Paul’s proclamation, the hope of glory, and both the context and definition of maturity.

• Marked by a willingness to suffer for others. Whatever else we can say about Paul’s strange words about filling up what is lacking of Christ’s afflictions, this much is clear: Paul has no problem suffering on behalf of the people he’s serving. He may even believe that his suffering somehow lessens the chance that they’ll experience their own. This extreme selflessness puts me to shame!

• Accomplished by teaching and admonishing. Teaching is clearly articulating the truth about Jesus, and admonishing is the followup task of straightening out fuzzy thinking and setting things in proper order. Both are crucial.

• Oriented by apocalyptic imagination. This section drips with apocalyptic hints and clues, which (among other things) means that in Christ God has revealed the meaning of history and brought his story to its dramatic climactic moment. Speaking of which…

• Grounded in the (hi)story of God. Paul never loses sight of the ways in which Christ is the one in whom God has brought all his past action and promises to fulfillment. Yes this story has entered its universal stage where all of us are invited to become a part, but this must be intentionally remembered for us to know what becoming a part actually means and looks like.

• Aimed toward full maturity. Paul here shows no contentment for mere conversion, and while no one would doubt his “evangelistic passion,” here we see that Paul rises above our silly debates about evangelism vs discipleship. Paul wants everyone to come to maturity, and he won’t rest until he’s done everything he can to that end.

• Attentive to every individual. Paul is communal to the core, but his passion for community does not hinder his commitment to the individual parts that make up the body. No person gets forgotten or let off the hook; all are intended and expected to grow into maturity.

• Fueled by the energy of Christ. Paul works his tail off (that’s a loose translation), not by his own power but by the energy of Christ at work in him.

Does it need to be stated that these markers provide a wonderful grid for thinking about our own ministries? This may not be a definitive guide, but it’s a pretty good start!

Introduction to my new book “Jesus in 3D”

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crucifixion, gospel, Gospels, jesus, Jesus in 3D, new testament, real life church

The following is the introduction from my book Jesus in 3D which came out this past month. (The Amazon search feature only gives half of the intro, so I figured I’d offer it here in full.) Of course I’d love for you to buy it, read it, and let me know what you think. (And if you like it, post a favorable review there on Amazon!)

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My Favorite Books on Christian Pacifism / Nonviolence / Peacemaking

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christendom, discipleship, gospel, jesus, new testament, nonviolence, pacifism, politics, quakers

The following are my favorite books on Christian pacifism. As always, I don’t (and couldn’t) agree with everything in them but I have found them supremely helpful. Labels are a bit overrated, but I do consider myself a Christian pacifist, which means that I believe discipleship to Jesus means renouncing killing and violence and seeking to overcome conflict (even in the form of attack) using peaceful means. Two clarifications are needed: (1) Pacifism is not the same as being passive. That the two words are so similar is an accident of the English language. Pacifism is about “pacifying” situations of conflict without resorting to violence. (2) There is a huge difference between Christian pacifism and what we might call “liberal” pacifism. The latter argues on the basis of effectiveness: We refuse to kill because that will work better to resolve conflicts than killing. Many also claim that liberal pacifism is based on a naive optimism regarding human nature. Whether this or the opposite is true, I can’t say (because I don’t know and I’m sure it depends on the person). But Christian pacifism is rooted in the good news of salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the call to follow him as Lord in life or in death in anticipation of the resurrection to come. Obviously most Christians — many of whom are more faithful than me! — don’t hold to this position, but all of us would agree that we cannot ignore Jesus’ commands to love our enemies and “turn the other cheek,” even if those directives need to be interpreted for specific situations. Anyhow, in this post I’m not trying to convince anyone to agree with me, but merely pointing to some resources that will help one think through the many complex related issues and questions.

My Favorite Books on Jesus

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Gospels, jesus, new testament

Sometimes, to the amusement of my wife, I just decide to “do” things, such as make lists of my favorite books on a given subject. No idea why I’ve been doing this lately, except that it’s fun for me and I find it very helpful when others do it (like here). So I’m making four such lists, and this is the first. I hope you’ll not only benefit from this but make your own list on whatever you like to read about!! I decided to start with my list of books on Jesus. Now this shouldn’t need to be said, but I certainly don’t (actually, I couldn’t) agree with all of what these authors say, but these are the ones I have found most helpful. I’ll try to put them in an order in which I’d suggest reading them.

Ephesians 1.3 – Blessed be the God…

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ephesians, eschatology, jesus, new testmanet, paul, prayer, spirit, trinity, worship

Here is the TNIV translation of Ephesians 1.3: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

And here is mine: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the King, the one who has blessed us in the King with every Spirit-blessing in the heavenly realms.

With this verse we start the longest single sentence in the New Testament, one that begins here and doesn’t stop until the end of verse 14. Although in our English translations it is broken up into four or five sentences at least, in Greek it is all one. Which is crazy. It’s as if Paul wants to begin by overwhelming us with all that God has done in Jesus. As a matter of fact, Paul may be employing a literary tactic Aristotle called oratio perpetua or “perpetual speech,” the aim of which is just as we suspected: to overwhelm us with the ginormousness of the subject. Or maybe he’s just going off.

Today I want to make an observation about what Paul is doing and offer three thoughts about how he does it.

Ephesians 1.1 – Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus…

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church, discipleship, ephesians, jesus, new testament, paul, politics

Okay, so I’m not making any promises but I’m going to start blogging through the book of Ephesians verse-by-verse. I’ve actually been thinking about doing this for over a year now and started studying Ephesians in depth earlier this year. Then in his Wheaton Chapel Message, N. T. Wright challenged the students to memorize Ephesians by studying and committing to memory one verse a day. The idea is that if you learn what a verse means it will be easier to memorize, and if you memorize and meditate on it, what it means will actually take root in your life. Well, I’m going for it and we’ll see. Each day I’ll provide the TNIV translation of the verse, walk through it bit-by-bit (with moderate attention to detail), and then I’ll offer my own translation (which is meant to work alongside, never to replace, other translations).

Ephesians 1.1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (TNIV)

There is so much packed into this little verse. A year ago I decided to start blogging through Ephesians but when I approached this verse and saw how much would need to be said, I gave up!

Purposes of the Church

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church, church planting, discipleship, gospel, jesus

Every time I come back to work after a semi-long break (like the one I just enjoyed celebrating the birth of our daughter Claire!), I always need reminders about what it is I’m / we’re doing with the whole business called “church.” I confess that one of the questions I most often ask myself is, So what the heck are we doing anyway? So I usually revisit some list about aims or purposes of the church. No list is perfect or complete, but I spent about half of 2009 working on this and I figured it was finally time to share…

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1. To celebrate, embody, and proclaim the gospel of God’s saving reign inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.
2. To exclusively worship the God who is faithfully revealed in the story of Scripture as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
3. To form new creation communities of mutual care and sharing, friendship and hospitality, accountability and reconciliation.
4. To teach and train one another to take up our cross and follow Jesus in the way of cruciform faith, hope, love, joy, and peace.
5. To share the joys and burdens of ministry by exercising our Spiritual gifts under the guidance of consultative leadership.
6. To resist the forces of evil and death by exposing idolatrous lies and refusing conformity to the patterns of this world.
7. To suffer with and seek justice and healing for the physically, socially, economically, politically, and emotionally vulnerable and poor.
8. To reflect God’s image by cultivating creation’s fruitfulness in family, work, rest, play, art, poetry, and care for earth.
9. To honor but not idolize our children and to intentionally raise them to be radically faithful disciples of Jesus.
10. To practice the historic disciplines of prayer, fasting, meditation, study, simplicity, service, confession, submission, & direction.

C&C 001.5 // Live Impossibly (repost)

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discipleship, jesus, new testament

In the last post I wrote about Justin’s conversion as part of our quest to investigate the nature of conversion in the early church. Our suspicion is that things have drastically changed over time – the church today doesn’t look a whole lot like the church then – and we’re asking why. One of the details of Justin’s story that stuck out to me was how he dealt with the seeming impossibility of Jesus’ teachings. For the sake of being specific, let’s think of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. It’s no secret that there are some very hard teachings here. (It’s kind of funny that we make the OT out to be tough and Jesus soft, because Jesus actually raises the bar here rather than lowering it.) In fact, through much of the church’s history, and in much of the church today, people claim that Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 5-7 are not meant to be fully obeyed today.

Retelling Stories, Rethinking Christmas (Rev 12)

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atonement, crucifixion, jesus, Revelation

Reflecting on the text (Revelation 12)

If one thing has consistently characterized human beings from the dawn of time up to our own day, it is our love of stories. We love to tell, hear, write, make up, and act out stories.

We tell stories about tiny experiences as well as huge events, about things that matter greatly and things that are just plain silly. Without stories none of us would be able to make sense of the world.

Entire cultures and societies often revolve around a few central stories, and in our own society those stories are repeatedly celebrated in print and on the silver screen. In the Ancient World (as in our own), many such stories concerned how the world came into being. Other stories have to do with what god (or the gods) are up to.

One of the most popular myths in John’s day supposedly took place on an island called Delos, which was not far from Patmos (where John was in exile when he wrote Revelation).

This story is about Zeus, the king of the gods, who had a son with a woman named Leto.