Len Hjalmarson thinks he’s got a bead on the #1 issue in making the missional shift: spiritual formation. And, he says, the #1 issue in spiritual formation is this: “Where do you find your identity?” “Unless our identity is rooted in Christ, we will always be subject to the pressures of the crowd. We will measure success by performance, or by the things we achieve, or the stuff we own. And we will subtly use people to achieve these ends:... Read more
Here’s a recap of last week’s major highlights from the missional conversation: The Nation’s First Non-Profit Pub was surprisingly the “big story” here on the blog last week. A lot of you were excited about the notion of “pub church,” which is great. Lots of fun ideas to explore there. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out! Rick Warren and Ed Stetzer had a little missional humor moment on Twitter that I shared with all of you. God... Read more
In his new book American Dream 2.0: A Christian Way Out of the Great Recession, Dr. Frank A. Thomas delivers a compelling argument for why we need a new “American Dream.” By giving a historical perspective on where our current version of the “American Dream” has come from and its implications for our future, Thomas deconstructs and proposes an alternative built on Jesus’ Gospel of the reign of God and Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision of “The Beloved Community.” Along... Read more
Tony Jones recently issued a challenge to his fellow progressive theo-bloggers to “write one post about God between now and August 15.” OK so I missed the August 15 deadline. I’m still going to write this anyway. It’s already been said many times in the missional church conversation that God is a missional God, that there is something in the very nature of God’s being that is missional, which is evidenced in Scripture by God sending Jesus Christ and God... Read more
Posted without further comment. Except this … 🙂 Read more
I’m headed out to Portland in a couple of weeks for Wild Goose Festival West, where I’m excited to be MCing some of the talks and handling PR for the festival (in lieu of the fantastic Sarah Cunningham who is currently on maternity leave — congrats, Sarah!). There’s still time to join me! The fest is still looking for volunteers, so you could even get in free. Well, here’s an interesting news story passed along to me by JC Mitchell,... Read more
Here’s a recap of last week’s major highlights from the missional conversation: Create Missional Communities, Not Disciples — Well, truthfully, it was a slow blog week for me last week, but I did manage to crank out a pretty thought-provoking post that generated some great discussion in the comments. In you haven’t seen it, go check it out and join in! Mustard Seed Associates Breaking New Ground — I passed along an exciting opportunity to support some true pioneers of... Read more
Christine Sine of Mustard Seed Associates announced on Tuesday, “This morning was a momentous one for Tom and I. We left home at 5:30 am to drive out to the future site of the Mustard Seed Village on Camano Island. We were so excited because the poles for our first building — the pole barn classroom were arriving. This may not sound very momentous to some of you but for us it is huge.” Paul Sparks of the Parish Collective... Read more
I haven’t posted a tech startup analogy for missional community formation recently, so here’s one. Here’s a big one. And to be perfectly clear: I’m intentionally trying to be provocative here, so hold on! Author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (The Earth Is Flat) recently spoke to the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and his message was this: “Create companies, not jobs.” “Please don’t start a social network for people with six toes. Take on something really... Read more
Here’s a recap of last week’s major highlights from the missional conversation: Another Week, Another Mass Killing this time near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at a Sikh gurdwara. I didn’t think I’d be referring to my earlier post on processing missional theology in the aftermath of tragedy so soon after the Aurora shooting, but we’ve experienced another national tragedy, this time with a shooter who was apparently part of a white supremacist group and clearly targeted these Sikh believers for being “other.”... Read more
Missional Shift
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In