In today’s American culture, in order to give our kids what we feel they need, we send our kids to specialized trainers all the time. Our kids have piano teachers, math tutors, basketball coaches, dance instructors, and the list goes on and on. Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with our children specializing in a particular skill by being trained by someone with expertise in that field. There’s no way that I can be an expert in everything! (Not even close!) However,... Read more
Hangin’ With Scot McKnight in Akron Last year, Scot McKnight spoke to some pastors and ministry leaders in Akron, and we benefited from his wisdom on reading the Bible. His contention is that the only way to properly read the Bible is to see it as a story. It has a plotline, looking something like this: We were created as the Eikons (image) of God (Genesis 1-2) We became cracked Eikons (Genesis 3) The cracked Eikons make a mess of things (Genesis... Read more
A Christian Interacts with Viva La Vida, Or Death and All His Friends Fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams chuckle when we hear the number 42.In Adams’ Galaxy, a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the answer to the Ultimate Question of “Life, the Universe, and Everything” from the supercomputer, Deep Thought. It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be…42.But, ironically, even though the answer is found, the question for... Read more
The second biggest hit from Coldplay’s 2008 mega-hit album, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, was the single Lost! In this song, Chris Martin writes of a character who laments that his efforts often are frustrated by the world around him. In the first chorus, he sings, I just got lost! Every river that I tried to cross Every door I ever tried was locked Oh and I’m just waiting ‘til the shine wears off What a... Read more
People were shocked. How could Andrew Luck, quarterback for Stanford and the presumed first pick in the 2011 NFL draft if he left college early, decide to forgo around $50 million and stay in school? In Western culture, we have warped view of college education. We think it is for the purpose of learning skills so that we can be a marketable commodity on the job market. We think that the telos (final goal) is to graduate into a money-making career so... Read more
Even The New York Times notices The evangelical church is finally turning the corner. For most of the 20th Century, we were embroiled in the fundamentalist/liberal fight, in which “real” evangelicals were defined by those who repudiated the “social gospel” and concentrated exclusively on the saving of souls.But from within the movement, leading evangelicals called into question this false dichotomy. Thanks to the likes of Lesslie Newbigin, Ron Sider, and many missionary agency leaders within evangelicalism, we now understand that we are not actually living the gospel... Read more
A look at the Abrahamic Paradigm of “Called and Sent” In his book, The Word That Redescribes the World: The Bible and Discipleship, Walter Brueggemann does an excellent job articulating that the God that calls people to follow him also sends them on mission. God calls individuals and communities to love him and to obey his governance over all things, and then sends these individuals and communities to proclaim the Kingdom of God. As I reflect on what Brueggemann has written, I am... Read more
God’s Mission and Our Mission of Reconciliation In light of the mission of God (to reconcile all things to himself, i.e., to usher in the Kingdom of God), new missional leaders must be willing to shape local congregations into missional training outposts for incarnational ministry, equipping believers to infiltrate all of society with the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Ministry leaders in the 21st Century will need to reshape their thinking as to the nature of their calling. We must concentrate on training... Read more
A Christian Interacts with Viva La Vida, Or Death and All His Friends Coldplay’s previous album was one of my top ten albums of 2008. In it, lyricist Chris Martin explores the subject of death from different angles. As I listen to this wonderful album, I wish Chris was sitting next to me. I’d love to understand what he would think of my opining about his lyrics. In future posts, I’m going to do that, with you, here in the vanguard. In... Read more
Individuals helping individuals get into heaven is not enough. Mike Metzger and John Seel have written about the problem with evangelical Christian efforts to live out the gospel. We fail to see how the gospel is meant to impact systems as well as individuals. Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame, found that evangelicals are drawn to missions of mercy to the poor, the homeless, and the addicted. “Worthy as these projects may be,” Smith warns, “none of them attempt to... Read more
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