Archive for February 2007
Seeing with the eyes of an artist
Written in my journal on February 3, 2007 at Pasadena, California, 9:30 am –
My protestant, reformation, modernist, Baptist, evangelical approach to scripture has been to look at scripture as information or proposition. But I am now convinced that we must look at God and His story as we look at a painting — by standing before it and letting ourselves be drawn into its beauty, its power, its color, its movement.
We do not look at a painting and ask, "What is the outline?" or "What 3 points can I get from this?" or "What is the meaning?" Rather, when we look at a painting we are overwhelmed. We begin to see its details — we see how the paint is applied, we see the brush strokes that indicate intensity, the place where color joins color, and then something amazing happens inside us because of the power of the artist before us.
The reason for the church
"The church is the people of God
for the life of the world –
not for the life of the church." – Amicus Dei
More on church camp
Mark Kuznicki at remarkk.com posted some of my comments on transit camp as the inspiration for church camp.
Mark also has an excellent post on this whole idea of open creative community, as does David Crow at his The Future of Communities blog. Plus, he has a great reading list on this whole systems theory idea of communities. And, these aren’t church guys, they’re culture creators, civic architects. This, my friends, is the wave of the future for all groups, churches included. Pay attention.
The Isaiah Vision
For those of you who found The Mission of God too daunting at 581 pages, I have a shorter recommendation for you. At 55 pages, The Isaiah Vision is the most powerful book on evangelism I have ever read. And, it’s a different kind of evangelism, but one we need. Raymond Fung, formerly with the WCC, wrote The Isaiah Vision based on Isaiah 65:17-25. Here’s the heart of Fung’s book:
The Mission of God
Christopher J. H. Wright’s 2006 book, The Mission of God: Unlocking The Bible’s Grand Narrative, ought to be on every missional thinker’s bookshelf. An IVP Academic imprint, the book runs 581 pages, so it’s not light reading. But Wright does a comprehensive job of covering the missio dei including sections devoted to missional hermeneutic, the God of mission, the people of mission, and the arena of mission. Listen to what Wright says about the relationship between Old and New Testaments for God’s missional people:
Communities of practice and the missional conversation
In their book, Cultivating Communities of Practice, published by Harvard Business School Press, the authors ask –
"What if this book were simply giving voice to a broader groundswell? What if communities of practice transformed the ways we think about organizing? What if they became the core building blocks of organizations in the future? What if businesses started to organized their suppliers and their markets as communities? What if shared practice became the foundation of civic communities? And what if citizens started to design their world on the model of fractal communities, linking local and global practice development?" – Cultivating Communities of Practice, pg 219
Missional church goes to transit camp
Isn’t the internet wonderful? So today I’m running down my blogline, checking in on feeds I haven’t read yet and I click on Amber Mac, a feed about tech stuff. Then I click on Transit Camp because I am curious about what Transit Camp means. Bingo, big payoff for missional church and culture! "What," you ask, "is transit camp?" Read on…
The church as abbey and the economy
I had not intended for the church-as-abbey to be a series of posts, but I keep thinking of things I left out of the original post. Debbie reminded me today that the church could encourage the planting and cultivation of a community vegetable garden or flower garden. We had read in Outreach magazine of a church in the midwest that facilitated a community vegetable garden in their economically-depressed town. The vegetable garden provided an opportunity for neighbors to work together, and provided food for the community. The seed cost the church about $200, but the pay off was far greater.
The church as abbey and the arts
Yesterday I posted The Church As Abbey, about how the missional church can act as abbey to its community. The idea of church-as-abbey is based on the ancient Celtic Christian orders and the ways Celtic monks interacted with their pagan neighbors. The abbey became the center of the community for worship, trade and commerce, refuge, advice, peace-making, and hospitality. But, the abbey was also the community center for arts.
The church as abbey
A couple of weeks ago, several of us in the Fuller DMin Missional Leadership program had dinner with Alan Roxburgh one evening. Alan is one of our DMin professors, and author of The Sky Is Falling, co-author of The Missional Leader, and contributor to Missional Church, edited by Darrell Guder, the book that started this whole missional conversation.
Since reading about the early Celtic Christians, I have had the idea that a local church could function like the old Celtic abbey. So, I asked Alan about this concept of church as abbey at dinner.
