Read an Excerpt from "Godspeed"

But we need to remember two things.

When it comes to God's kingdom and His gospel going forth, we first need to believe that God is bigger than our blunders. Nowhere do we see this more potently than in the history of the church. If you've ever studied church history, you know the church is probably the messiest thing ever to happen to the world. The fact that it still exists and that people are still a part of this worldwide community is concrete proof that God is bigger than our human blunders.

We have to grasp this truth in our daily lives, because the fact is, we are going to blow it. As people, we're deeply flawed; yet throughout history God has chosen to work through people rather than independent of people.

When we fail, we have an opportunity to model forgiveness and show what the redeeming power of Christ looks like. We can reveal how sweet it is to find our identity in Christ and His work on our behalf because of God's love for us, rather than basing our sense of self-worth on our own performance.

The second thing we have to lay hold of is the power of the gospel. The Christian's good deeds, so to speak, are not merely good deeds. They are purposeful and powerful partnership with God.

That's what it means to be sent: to do the will and the work and to speak the words of the Sender. When we think about speaking and living out the gospel, we're not to see it as a competing ideology or a philosophy in the world. It's the power of God unto salvation, and it works in men and women for transformation.

When we engage in the work of Christ in the world around us—as messy as it is and as bad as we are at it—it yields a different effect in the spiritual realm. If we truly hear what the Spirit is saying and engage in it, there is an impact on the spirits of men and women. The power of God is behind it.

You and I are call driven, not need driven, because Jesus calls us into the work He's already begun—the work that He is faithful to bring to completion. It's Missio Christi.

Whatever Christ does through mission has the power of Christ behind it. The church must rekindle a confidence that the power of the gospel can be communicated through ordinary means: service, sacrifice, kindness, love, and good deeds. Not apart from proclamation but in partnership with it.

The purpose of Ephesians 2:10, the "good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them," is to explain our God to the world. And the fact that God already prepared good works for us frees us from having to come up with good ideas and, rather, to seek His ideas.

GOOD POSTMODERN NEWS

The incarnation denotes culture and context. Christ came as a Jew into Jewish culture and participated in Jewish customs with other Jews. If we're going to do incarnational mission and ministry, we've got to understand some culture and context.

The twenty-first-century American church lives in a postmodern culture. This can be a daunting term, so I want to say a few things about what it means for us.

First, where the modern mind-set was much more concerned with concrete evidence, the postmodern mind-set has shifted. The postmodern mind-set is less concerned with "prove it to me" and much more concerned with "be it to me."

Second, from a postmodern perspective, truth claims are often interpreted as political strategies promoting self-interest. The church must be aware of this distinction, because we make (and need to make) truth claims all the time. Today people have a general suspicion of political maneuvering by those who claim to have the truth, and 75 percent of young, not-yet Christians (ages 16 to 29) see Christians as too political.

Third, postmodernism brings with it a kind of pluralism, the general acknowledgment of diversity. In a rejection of modernism, our pluralistic culture is one where the diversity of racial, religious, ethnic, and cultural groups is not only tolerated but also celebrated. Have you seen the bumper sticker that uses the religious symbols from several different world religions to write the word coexist? That's a postmodern, pluralistic perspective. Subsequently four out of five young, not-yet Christians believe Christianity teaches the same basic ideas as the other world religions.

The postmodern mind-set is less concerned with proof and more concerned with fruit; it is suspicious of truth claims as maneuvers for self-interest; it values diversity in all areas of life, including religion. It rejects exclusiveness and embraces inclusiveness. This mind-set is a rejection of absolute truth, and 76 percent of not-yet Christians in America do not believe absolute truth exists.

This is very bad news for a church that wants to do Christianity as usual. If we're going to be known just for what we are against instead of what we are for, postmodernism is a scary thing.