Att präglas av Jesus

I ett nyhetsmail från CMA Resources skriver Neil Cole (författaren till bland annat Organic Church) några riktigt tänkvärda tankar om att präglas (imprint) av Jesus…

We want people to imprint on Christ from day one. Imprinting is a term from ornithology, the study of birds. When a baby gosling hatches, it imprints on the first moving object it sees. That object becomes its mother, and the gosling expects to be fed and protected by it.

When a person comes to faith in Christ, most churches tell them to just sit back and receive. They’re spoon fed by the church. And what happens? They imprint on the church or the pastor. They expect the church to do everything. And we wonder why there are so many passive Christians.

There is an alternative.  Christ immediately deployed people. Matthew was back with his friends. The Samaritan woman went back to her village. When a brand new Christian is thrust into a hostile environment with a mission, they’re going to pray like crazy. That makes them imprint on Christ immediately. – Neil Cole

Mycket tänkvärt enligt min mening.

Neil Cole ska för övrigt komma till Norge i vår (tror det är något som DAWN Norge arrangerar), hoppas att kunna åka dit och lyssna på honom.

Ett citat till…

Just nu behöver jag lägga ner mycket tid på min avhandling samt diverse undervisningsuppdrag så det finns inte mycket tid över till bloggande och dylika aktiviteter… Här kommer i alla fall ytterligare ett citat, något att fundera på och meditera över. Angående skillnaden mellan “believe” och “faith”…

We can believe something to be true without it making much difference to us, but we place our faith only in something that is vital for the way we live. – Harvey Cox

HT: theresurgence.com

Ett citat…

“The work of Jesus was not a new set of ideals or principles for reforming or even revolutionizing society, but the establishment of a new community, a people that embodied forgiveness, sharing, and self-sacrificing love in its rituals and discipline. In that sense, the visable church is not to be the bearer of Christ’s message, but to be the message.”
                                                              – John Howard Yoder

Happy Easter everyone!

God is a God who sends himself out to heal his creation that is broken.
God is a God who becomes one of us so that we can become more like him and be his children.
God is a God who suffers so that we may live.
God is a God who breaks the chains of sin and death and brokenness and sets us free from oppression and slavery.
God is a God who sets us free to follow him.
God is a God who invites you and me to be part of his adventure, to follow him out into the world to give to others as a gift that which he has given to us: Freedom, forgiveness, love, hope and new life.

Happy Easter everyone!
/Mattias

The role of leadership…

Alan Hirsch quoting Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk in the book The Forgotten Ways: 

The role of leadership within the church is to cultivate environments wherein the Spirit of God might call forth and unleash the missional imagination of the people of God.

This inspires me. I want to become that kind of a leader.

What business am I in?

Received the Shapevine newsletter this morning and  got a welcomed reminder. I’m not in the church business. I’m not even in the church planting business! Lance Ford writes: 

The late John Wimber, of Vineyard fame, frequently reminded the guys and gals he was training that there are two questions we should always be asking ourselves in regard to leading others in the journey of faith. The two questions are, “How’s business?” and “What business are we in?” The problem is that you cannot answer the first question properly if you don’t remind yourself of the last question. With over 20 years of pastoring and planting churches I am more than familiar with the vortex that distorts our true “business” as leaders in the church. Especially in the times we are living today, where everything is being shaken and leaders are genuinely afraid because of the economic uncertainty that is affecting their churches, it is vital that we cling to the hem of His garment and follow the agenda of Jesus with all fervency. 

So, what business are we in? Well, we are not in the church business. If you think you are, or are leading like you are, here is a suggestion: stop it! We are not in the leadership business or the church business or the preaching business. We are in the Father’s business of making disciples to Jesus and there is probably no more neglected task or activity taking place in the Western church today than disciple-making. For instance, when is the last time you attended a conference on making disciples; not a church planting or leadership conference, just a conference that is all about making disciples? This really is the Father’s Business.

I’m not in the church planting business. Its an important thing for me to remind myself of now and then, because its easy (at least for me) to get caught up in the technicalities and strategies of church planting stuff. But this is really what it all boils down to – doing what Jesus did and making disciples. Quite simple, really. And difficult at the same time.

Related post: Church planting or planting the gospel?

Alan Hirsch on being missional

Alan Hirsch has written an article for Leadership Journal on what it means to be missional (you find it here). The term missional risks facing the same fate as the term emerging church, as it has become the latest buzz word. Who doesn’t want to be missional these days, or as Alan asks: “Can you think of a single pastor who is proudly anti-missional?” I haven’t met anyone so far myself, but maybe I haven’t asked enough pastors. Or I hang around the wrong circles, I don’t know. I agree with Alan on almost all accounts, but I must say that the relationship between missional and emerging church is closer than he would say. In my opinion missional is one of the streams that has affected the whole conversation in profound ways. But missional church and emerging church isn’t the same thing, that I agree with. Here’s some quotes from the article:

A proper understanding of missional begins with recovering a missionary understanding of God. By his very nature God is a “sent one” who takes the initiative to redeem his creation. This doctrine, known as missio Dei—the sending of God—is causing many to redefine their understanding of the church. Because we are the “sent” people of God, the church is the instrument of God’s mission in the world. As things stand, many people see it the other way around. They believe mission is an instrument of the church; a means by which the church is grown. Although we frequently say “the church has a mission,” according to missional theology a more correct statement would be “the mission has a church.”

Missional represents a significant shift in the way we think about the church. As the people of a missionary God, we ought to engage the world the same way he does—by going out rather than just reaching out. To obstruct this movement is to block God’s purposes in and through his people. When the church is in mission, it is the true church.

Leadership Journal has also produced a sort of family tree of the missional church. Not sure how correct it is, but in any events it may serve as a good reading list if you want to catch up with all things missional.

 

 

 

 

HT : The Forgotten Ways

Mike Frost on ReJesus

The Forgotten Ways features an interview with Mike Frost about the newly published book ReJesus: A wild Messiah for the Missional Church (co-written with Alan Hirsch). I haven’t read the book yet, but it is on my wish-list. Here’s a quote from the interview…

In our first book together, The Shaping of Things to Come, we presented a little maxim that I’ve seen repeated in a variety of places that goes: our christology should lead to our missiology which in turn will lead to our ecclesiology. In other words, the way we understand the gospels and the character of God revealed to us in Jesus will affect our way of thinking about our mission in the world. If we get our christology right, it will lead to a right missiology. If we engage missionally in a godly fashion, issues such as how to ‘do’ church (ecclesiology) will take care of themselves. In Shaping, we argued that a great many church leaders want to start with questions about how to ‘do’ church. We argued strongly that we need to go back to the gospels and let Jesus give rise to our missiology. ‘Doing’ church then kinda falls out the back of a biblical missiology. So it makes sense that our second book together should focus on a missional christology.

I like it. Back to Jesus, back to the gospels. Back to the basics. Interestingly, most of the church planting training and resources I’ve come across seem to start in some other end – ecclesiology, how to form a church planting team, how to raise funding, or whatever. Rarely they start with who Jesus is and what it means to follow him.

A quote about planting the Gospel

In his post about planting the Gospel (rather than planting churches), Alan Hirsch quotes Dr D T Niles from Sri Lanka. Planting the Gospel implies having the specific context in mind that I’m sent to and in that process being open to whatever form of Christian community that may be able to grow in that context, rather than planting a specific model of church. Here’s the quote:

The Gospel is like a seed, and you have to sow it.  When you sow the seed of the Gospel in Israel, a plant that can be called Jewish Christianity grows.  When you sow it in Rome, a plant of Roman Christianity grows.  You sow the Gospel in Great Britain and you get British Christianity.  The seed of the Gospel is later brought to America, and a plant grows of American Christianity.  Now, when missionaries come to our lands they brought not only the seed of the Gospel, but their own plant of Christianity, flower pot included!  So, what we have to do is to break the flowerpot, take out the seed of the Gospel, sow it in our own cultural soil, and let our own version of Christianity grow.

A good quote

I’m sure that many of you seen this quote already, but I like it. I know it arguably can be accused of being a bit too “Europe-North American”-centered (I mean, what happened to Asia, Africa, Latin America…), but that doesn’t diminish Priscilla Shirer’s very apt observation:

In the first century in Palestine Christianity was a community of believers. Then Christianity moved to Greece and became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome and became an institution. Then it moved to Europe and became a culture. And then it moved to America and became a business. We need to get back to being a healthy, vibrant community of true followers of Jesus.