GO
August 28, 2009
1 The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. (Gen 12:1)
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (Matthew 28:19)
The Bible is full of wild stories that encourage us to live differently. One word, however, stands as a clarion call to God’s work of transformation in the world. The word is “Go.” It may take some adjustment on our part to realize this, but nothing of God’s Kingdom happens unless someone is willing to Go.
Sometimes GOING will require a 30-second e-mail to encourage a friend, a five-minutes walk across the street to help a neighbor, or the willingness to give up a quiet evening with your spouse in exchange for inviting some friends over who don’t know Christ. Other times, GOING may require a week-long commitment, a large chuck of money, or even a lifelong commitment to leave your city or country to serve God.
Whatever the case, the word GO will cost you something. It will require that you creatively look for the opportunities that God provides you to leave what’s natural and self-serving in order to extend his love to others. From The Tangible Kingdom Primer
Where may God want to send you today? What would it cost you to GO? What adjustments may need to be made? Is it possible to follow Jesus without GOING?
Missio Dei 13
July 9, 2009
The mission of God and the people of God go together as glove and hand. It is true that God sent individual missionaries to other nations to preach repentance and righteousness and the love of God. However, the missionary was the representative of God and the people of God on mission to the nations (i.e. Jonah). Individuals who are sent are always part of the larger community of God. The community witnesses to its “sentness” by inviting, blessing, and harvesting the nations for inclusion in the kingdom of God. Behind the bringer of good news, the “blesser”, are two communities: The Trinitarian community of love and the church community the trinity inhabits. The people of God in the New Testament are represented by the church gathered/scattered as apprentices of Jesus who adopt the mission of Jesus to be grace, love, and light unto the nations, their communities, and their neighbors.
The church that does not see itself and acts as a sent people to the nations, to the peoples that surround it is not a missional church no matter what it claims. By being sent, I mean what I said above: inviting, blessing, and harvesting those who decide to obey Jesus’ invitation. Inviting the community by grace (doing for the community what the community cannot do for itself, to turn to God), blessing the community through generous self-sacrifcing actions, and harvesting winsomely those who obey and enter the kindgom.
A good indication of whether a church is actively seeking the missional posture is to see what it has budgeted of its collected resources (people, money, time, and space) to accomplish its part of the mission of God.
Prayer: Jesus, make us at missional order a community that truly lives the mission of God in whatever community we belong to. Amen. Christ, have mercy.
Missio Dei 12
July 2, 2009
In these posts I am seeking to understand the mission of God in the world and asking God to clarify for us what it means to live this mission in a daily sacred rhythm of life.
The mission is God’s. It is only our mission in the sense that we are commissioned by God to engage the world as he does. Moses, for example, was on the mission of God to soften the heart of Pharaoh toward God and his people. Our sending into the world is his mission. If we possess it selfishly it ceases to be his mission. We strike the rock in our own strength and it yields nothing.
God is at work, his mission of having all people have the right heart toward him through his son, is also our daily engagement. When we program it or institutionalize it, it becomes ours to manage, to handle. God’s mission is always his mission. It never ceased to be his mission even when he gave us the responsibility to take it on as our mission also. It is in his name. If it is not it is not his mission but only ours, stubble and hay are plenty.
Peter in dealing with Cornelius understood that the mission he is on is God’s mission. Look at what he says to him: “You prayer has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God” (Acts 10:31). And “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (34-35). All this was happening to Cornelius before Peter showed up. God was at work. Peter was brought by God into that work.
How then do we engage this truth daily in the local and ordinary hustle and bustle of life? We live with open eyes to see where God’s mission is going on. We jump on the opportunity where we see it going on. If we don’ recognize it, it’s not because it’s not going on, but because there is a veil over our eyes.
Prayer: So open our eyes, dear Lord, that we may see glimpses of the Missio Dei in the lives of others. Give us the will and stoke the desire in us to engage in it as we see it. Amen. Christ, have mercy.
Missio Dei 11
June 24, 2009
Missional Living is no special activity. Like spirituality (as per Eugene Peterson) it is local and ordinary. It is the normal Christian life (to borrow from Watchman Nee).
Local: Wherever I am. Whatever the patterns of my day-to-day life. Home, work, shop, church, club, bus, gas station, wherever. I am awake to the reality that I am an ambassador of Christ for kingdom living. Whoever is with me, before me, next to me are who I am sent to. The kingdom of God or the heavens is at hand. It is around us, it surrounds us, it is there for the taking, for the giving. I invite others into the Jesus life, which I am living. I behave in such a way that my life is inviting. I speak in such a way that my life is inviting. I enter the conversations that God has prepared for me.
Ordinary: Not special technique. No new methodology. The weather, the season, the sandwich I am eating, the book I am reading, the last mile I am jogging, whatever. It is not Tuesday night visitation, it is in the daily routines of life. The door opens. Serendipity. I act shrewdly as a serpent. I act harmlessly as a dove. I am awake to my surroundings. I pray for opportunity. I pray for God to make himself known in every situation. Didn’t our hearts get warmer when he spoke to us?
Normal. Not heroic. Not extra effort. Not extraordinary. It’s the way to live the dailiness of life as I live in Christ. Normal, open, genuine, unpretentious, always pointing upward. Take cookies to new neighbors, invite kids to come in for milk and cookies, baby sit for the couple next door, water their plants when they’re gone. Do it tenderly, do it without a care expecting nothing in return. Don’t manipulate, don’t have hidden motives. Love needs no reason.
This is missional living: local, ordinary, normal Christian living.
Being the Presence of Jesus
May 22, 2009
I’ve been reading God in the Alley by Greg Paul. It has really been messing with my heart and head. Early in the book he tells Neil’s Story. Neil has AIDS. Greg, the author of the book tells how he signed up to be a “buddy and gofer” for Neil. Over time the relationship moves from being cold and formal to being warm and genuine. In short, they become friends. Then one morning Greg stops by to visit Neil. As he enters the hot and humid room he discovers Neil “writhing in a soundless panic, half sitting up, his pajama bottoms and the bed sheets wound around his ankles, his spindly arms flailing in a futile effort to free himself, a look of sheer terror on his face. He had soiled himself, and it was everywhere. He was disoriented, uncertain where he was or what was happening to him.”
Once Greg is able to free Neil from the tangled mess, he begins to calm down. Greg then carries Neil to the tub. While Neil soaks Greg proceeds to change the soiled sheets before coming back to dress Neil in clean pajamas and carry him back to his bed. Greg comments, “He seemed almost weightless, just bones shrink-wrapped with grayish skin. His temples were hollow, and his teeth seemed too large for his face.”
As Greg begins to tuck Neils feet into the bed, he notices that one of Neils feet was not completely clean. Greg grabs a wash cloth and begins to wipe that foot. In his own word’s Greg describes what happens next, “As I did so, I was struck by what I can only describe as a powerful revelation, two streams of thought converging, and both seeming to me to be the voice of God. Cradling his foot in my hands, my mind was filed with the image of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper, a towel around his waist, determinedly taking the servant’s role. I had been meditating on the story from John’s gospel just the day before, and now I could almost see Jesus hunched over Peter’s foot, his hair hanging forward and obscuring his face, quietly insisting against Peter’s protestations that those feet, but only the feet, needed to be washed. This moment was what my whole time with Neil had been for! This was what it meant to be the presence of Christ. I had been looking for opportunities to preach, wanting to effect a clear and possibly dramatic conversion. I realized in that moment that my longing for those things was as much or more an indication of my desire to be successful as they were of my passion for Neils’ soul. It became clear that, being Jesus to Neil, while it certainly included praying for him, and announcing the good news to him, was most perfectly summed up by the mundane and even odious task of gently wiping excrement from his foot.”
Missio Dei 10
May 13, 2009
Did Jesus live missionally? What counts in the life of Jesus as missional activity besides the incarnation, death and resurrection?
The answer to the question is yes if by living missionally we mean that Jesus both lived and died for his mission (Romans 5:10 says that Jesus’ life and death are salvific). Jesus did indeed live missionally and thus he lived and died 1) to rescue humanity and the cosmos from utter lostness, 2) to restore everything on earth and in the universe to its original created order because it is cracked, 3) to create a covenant community (the church) that lives and breathes his life, and 4) to instill in us an active hopefulness that at his coming he will consummate his mission in the world and with his bride, the church, by making all things new.
Corporately and individually, Christ followers cannot simply be satisfied by random acts of kindness, periodic fores into the community, or going overseas to build a church building, or prayerwalk. That’s a good start. But our mission is full participation in the comprehensive plan of God to put the world back to rights and everything in it. We do it not only periodically but “second-naturally.” Whatever we do we do to the glory of God. We buy missionally (1-4 above), we vote missionally, we eat missionnally, we play missionally, we engage in our work life or leisurely life missionally.
Missio Dei 9
May 7, 2009
From the Road to Peace comes this quote of Henri Nouwen about the connection between prayer and serving others.
You must make the connection between prayer and life. The closer you are to the heart of God, the closer you come to the heart of the world, the closer you come to others. God is a demanding God, but when you give your heart to God, you find your heart’s desires. You will also find (unto the least of these, unto me) your brother and sister right there. We’re called always to action, but that action must not be driven, obsessive, or guilt-ridden. Basically, it’s action that comes out of knowing God’s love. You want to be with the poor because with them you’re not trying to please the world and be accepted….
Our spirituality should come from living deeply with the poor [perfect integration of prayer and action]. A spirituality of being with vulnerable people and of being vulnerable to them–that’s the great journey!
Also from Nouwen come these nuggets: What real and gutsy praying does is to move us to the center of all life and all love Prayer and action … can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive.
Missional living is a combination of action and contemplation. What do you think of the term “Contemplaction?”
Missio Dei 7
April 9, 2009
What does solitude have to do with being missional?
It seems, I am not sure, that many of the missional activities of Christ were preceded by times of solitude. Some seem sandwiched between times of solitude. Before choosing the disciples for their mission of representing his rule in this world we find him alone with God, his Abba. Before engaging in ministries of healing, feeding, teaching about the reign of God, he goes off into some solitary place to reflect and be. Between the last supper and the greatest of the missional acts ever known, dying for us, we see him in solitude, leaving all his life in the hands of the Father.
Being missional happens in the rhythm between activity and a soul nourishing solitude.
This week, a friend of the family I have been directing to Jesus to become his disciple, coming to church with our family, and just starting to read the Bible for the first time in his life, popped these questions in an email: How do I know I have found Jesus, and how do I accept him? One of my daughters had told him about accepting Jesus. Wow, I said to myself? After only a short time, a couple of outings together doing life with me, and without any religious background, this friend knows to ask these questions? How do I good news him without trivializing the experience by the premature saying of a prayer? My tendency, for this is how I was evangelized, was to quote him a few verses from that famous road tract to logically prove he was a sinner, repeat the sinner’s prayer after me, and pronounce him a Christian ready for heaven on the next train.
Instead, I retreated into my closet for a couple of days to ask Jesus how to gospel my friend. And so we did get together, talked at length about the will of God, and debriefed what he was experiencing, turned his questions around: How do you know that Jesus found you, and has accepted you? Answered those questions. He was experiencing the proof and results of these questions by reading Scripture that were getting his attention about his condition in life. I confirmed and affirmed his questions and experience. I encouraged him to continue reading and asking, knocking, and seeking. I also told him about the way I used to do this kind of thing and encouraged him to continue on the never ending path of becoming Christian. We talked about the conversion of Ruth and how it was about adopting a new way of life, God, a community, for life.
That was a lot to think about and we left it there, after prayer of thanksgiving, and for God to continue to draw him unto himself. I am in constant contact with this friend and our relationship allows for ease of back and forth with questions.
The funny thing is: I kept thinking during our discussion that I got to seal this deal by asking him to pray the sinner’s prayer. What use is my EE training if I don’t do it the prescribed way? Finally the other way prevailed. My wife who was listening in with our grandson, thought it was a most natural way of doing things like this. I can hardly wait for him to ask about baptism. Then I’ll have to go into solitude again and see what Jesus would say to him. Meanwhile, we will do a few things together, invite him to our house at every opportunity, etc…
Being missional is a way of life, part of the rhythm of life, that is lived between solitude and “gospeling” others. Until it becomes that, it remains shallow.
What do you think?
Missio Dei 6
April 1, 2009
10 ways NOT to live missionally.
1. Live as if the only soul that matters to God is your own.
2. Busy yourself with what matters very little in the kingdom of God.
3. Seek all the things that you need first, then seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
4. Believe that the power of God resides in the Gospel, but evangelize and disciple others as if that were not true by using consumerist means.
5. Don’t pray for neighbors.
6. Use the Scripture as an instrument to judge rather than to motivate loving actions and good works toward neighbors.
7. Model a lone ranger approach to evangelize without connection to a close knit community.
8. Depend on the preacher to get it done. After all we’re not all learned and gifted to live missional lives.
9. Promise heaven to motivate acceptance of the claims of Christ rather than a life with God in the here and now that looks forward to eternal life with God.
10. Believe as if God bypasses the believing community in drawing the non-believing community unto himself.
Let’s make it 20 ways not to live missionally. What would you add?
Missio Dei 5
March 26, 2009
I have borrowed this quote from my friend, Brad Brisco at Missional Church Network.
“The first step in maintaining or getting a sense of mission for oneself is to feel the sweep and power of Jesus’ own sense of mission.”
– Albert Curry Winn in “A Sense of Mission: Guidance from the Gospel of John”
Now reflect on the Apostle’s Creed’s missional ethos: What speaks to you of the missio dei in the Apostle’s Creed?
I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth:
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, dead and buried:
He ascended into hell;
The Third day He rose from the dead;
And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit:
The holy catholic church,
The communion of the saints:
The forgiveness of sins:
The resurrection of the body,
And the life everlasting. Amen.
I think this Creed (what the early Christians believed) is passionately missional. It has a “for the sake of others” in every word, sentence, and section. Whether it is the fatherhood of God (the begetting of children in the likeness of His Son), or the “Sentness” of Jesus which translates in incarnational realities, or the actions of the Holy Spirit in his world, everything here speaks of the mission God is on: Restoring his creation, and everything in it, down to the last one of us into a loving relationshiop with himself. The earliest Christians were not only articulating their “beliefs” or mental assents to the truth they thought about. They were fleshing out their drivenness by the Holy Spirit to go to the whole world, with the passion of knowing the purposes of God for it in Christ, in the Holy Spirit.
Missio Dei 4
March 18, 2009
A couple of days ago, Brad Brisco at Missional Church Network listed passages from the Gospel of John that concern the sending of Jesus. I would like to reflect on a couple of passages today. Hopefully a missional mandate may result.
John 3:16-17: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” It is obvious from this that our Messiah is a missional Christ. Jesus is sent, and Jesus willingly came as the sent one in order to save humanity. It is also obvious to me that this passage is descriptive of the actions of God, and the actions of Jesus with the resultant effects.
In John 20:21 the resurrected Jesus says to his disciples again: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” Then Jesus breathes his sending breath on them saying: “receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.”
This sending of the disciples for the purpose of forgiveness is a power pack. It packs all the punch that the Holy Spirit can pack. The power of the Holy Spirit, the accompanying breath of Christ and of God, is present when forgiveness is happening as the peace of God, which is brought in the sending and going, is released. This passage is descriptive to a point but there is prescription here too. The prescription is to go in response to the sending Christ and his Breath. In other words, there is expectation on the mind of Christ that we imitate his actions as the sent one. The everlasting life and the forgiveness are of the same genre of spiritual realities. The one is described as Jesus’ action, the other as our action.
Being missional happens in that imitative action. He brings salvation, we proclaim the promise of forgiveness and its actuality. That’s imitative action. Anytime we extend the promise of forgiveness we are being missionally imitative.
Prayer: May this missional community bring the promise of forgiveness to many today.
What other missional actions of Christ are also to be imitated to a missional end by us?
Missio Dei 3
March 5, 2009
Mark D. Roberts has this entry on his blog today. Enjoy the simplicity yet profound understanding of missional.
Daily Reflection
by Mark D. Roberts, Laity Lodge Senior Director and Scholar-in-Residence
The Missional Church
And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, “How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news!” [Romans 10:15]
We hear a lot about the “missional church” these days. New missional churches are springing up while established churches are now proclaiming a renewed missional consciousness. Is this just some trendy new label, the latest thing for churches? Or is there something substantial in the missional designation? What does it mean to be a missional church? How might we live our lives as “missional” people?
Tomorrow I’ll comment on how you and I can be missional people in our individual lives. Today I want to say a word about the missional church. The word “missional” comes from a Latin root that means “to be sent.” A missional church acknowledges that it has been sent by God in a certain time and to a certain place to represent him and do his work. Central to this work, as Romans 10:15 reminds us, is proclaiming the good news of what God has done through Jesus Christ. Yet proclamation alone is hollow. A truly missional church both proclaims and lives this good news: loving neighbors, healing the sick, binding up the brokenhearted, feeding the poor, and doing justice for the oppressed.
Scripture teaches us that every church should be a missional church. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy for Christian communities to get wrapped up in their own needs and desires, forgetting that they have been sent by God to reach their neighbors. Yet when a church lives out its missional calling, we can echo the scripture in saying, “How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news!”
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: Does your church see itself as sent by God to do his kingdom work in your community? Do you think of your church in this way? How might churches become less self-absorbed and more committed to reach their neighbors with the gospel?
PRAYER: Dear Lord, today I want to pray for your church, and for each individual church, and, indeed, for my church, that we would be truly missional. To be sure the label doesn’t really matter. We can call ourselves missional without really reaching out to our neighbors. And we can genuinely live and speak the gospel without using the word “missional.” But the truth is that you have sent us, Lord, to do your work right where we are. We have been sent on a mission by you. In a very real sense, we are to be “missionaries” in our communities.
Help your church, dear Lord, to be less concerned about ourselves and more committed to reaching out to our neighbors. May we boldly and kindly bear witness to you, and may our lives reflect the truth of the gospel. Amen.
Missio Dei 3
February 26, 2009
A favorite and simple definition of spiritual formation comes from the heart of Robert Mulholland. Spiritual Formation is the process of becoming conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others. The words “for the sake of others” are missional words. Spirituality is about change, personal change that spills out into the world. Christianity is the movement of people who gather and scatter in participation with the work God is doing in and out of the church to expand his kingdom.
What I am concerned with here is to build a life around this principle of living that includes a “for the sake of others.” What will it take to become the kind of person who sees himself as sent by God? How do I change to become aware all the time that I am a missio dei tool in the hand of God? Last week I began to tackle the question of time. So I have made a commitment to “unbusy my life.” Now what? What goes, what stays? What do I do? That’s too big to tackle all at once. So what goes this week, what stays this week, what do I do this week? Too big still. Today?
I will walk up and down the street I live on twice, east and west sides. I will pray for each home’s residents. I will ask my life group to join me so we are doing it in community.
My prayer will be simple: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on the people of this home. Open their eyes that they may see and enter the kingdom of God. I am a tool in the hands of God.
The imitation of Christ
February 20, 2009
To be truly redeemed by Christ is, therefore, to impose on oneself the task of imitating him; As man Jesus is my model because as God he is my Redeemer; Christianity can be defined as a faith together with a corresponding way of life. - Kierkegaard
I for one, find it extremely difficult to live the way Jesus lived. I continually fall short. I am a sinner. I am completely dependent upon God’s grace in my quest to love others the way Jesus does. But that is my hope, that I would become more and more like Jesus and because of that hope I continue to work and strive (1 Timothy 4:10)….
I am part of faith community committed to three basic rhythm’s (”rules” for you Benedictines out there). Our desire is to be an intensive fellowship of friends ignited by the missio Dei. Together we are seeking to live our lives in the way of Jesus by…
- Listening to the Father
- Loving one another and
- Living as agents of redemption in the world.
These three basic practices are our attempt at working and striving because of the hope we have in God.
What are some of the common rhythm’s or rules of your faith community?
What practices do you find most helpful in your “training” to become more like Jesus?
Rule of Benedict 1
February 8, 2009
Many evangelicals are discovering the Rule of St Benedict (RB). I have only read bits and pieces of it. For the next while I would like to take portions of it and discover for myself what’s helpful in seeking sacred, transformed, and missional lives.
My pattern will be to take a small passage, say a couple of things about it, and offer a prayer or a response. I am using as a guide the wonderful book by Norvene Vest entitled Preferring Christ by Morehouse Publishers. I am not in any way an expert on the Rule. Au contraire, I am a novice looking at what the Father of Monasticism can teach us today with our three common commitments.
Prologue: verses 1-2. Listen, O my son to the precepts of the master, and incline the ear of your heart: willingly receive and faithfully fulfill the admonition of your loving father; that you may return by the labor of obedience to him from whom you had departed through the sloth of disobedience.
It is obvious that RB (Rule of Benedict) is using a biblical formula we find in the book of Proverbs, and the Psalms (see Psalms 95, 34:12; 15:1. It is said that RB is in harmony with Scripture. My experience is that it is very biblical in its content.
I notice that listening and obedience go hand in hand in RB for those who are willing to receive the call to follow God. Listening without obedience is a waste of time, and energy for all.
Prayer: Jesus, you battled hard the hard of hearing people throughout your minsitry. You had harsh words for those who could hear but refused to hear. Much of what I hear from your word is slow to make it to my inner ear and out into obedient actions. Help me to labor hard after obedience to what I hear and to bless you by it. Amen. Lord, have mercy.
Canticle 2
December 29, 2008
Missional Order is engaged in three interrelated commitments or vows. First we are committed to live in a sacred way in chronological time and the special moments of worship. The second vow is continuous spiritual formation. We believe our initial conversion into Christ is just that initial. We want to spend the rest of our lives learning and training to be conformed to the image of Christ. The third commitment that unifies our vision for the Christian life is missio dei. It is not enough to worship and train. We must also do the work of God in this world as we participate in the establishment of the Kingdom of God. By making these three commitments we declare our Christian lifestyle not just our beliefs.
We take seriously time set aside for worship, and special moments of encounter with God. As an aid to worship we are using as our guide Celtic Daily Prayer, which is accessible from this site’s menu. Celtic simply means Irish in this case. This prayer book we use was composed by a community of Christ followers in a place in Ireland called Northumbria. Each morning time of worship we sing with them this song or canticle toward the end of the worship time. Last week I wrote a few comments on the first two lines. This week a few comments on the following two lines are in order: Christ, as a shield overshadow me.
Notice again that the form of this line is petitionary, in other words, we are asking Christ to be our shield and as a shield to overshadow us or protect us. I don’t know about you but as for me I need Christ’s protection for he knows how to protect his own as promised “I will never leave or forsake you, and no one will pluck you out of my hand.”
What do you need to be protected from in your life?
For me it is mostly my heart, soul, mind, and body. These are the components of my self and what they are like is the sum total of what my character is like. Proverbs 4:23 says that we must protect our hearts because out of them flows life. Our heart, soul, mind, or inner existence needs protection. It is susceptible to all kinds of attacks from the evil side. These are the areas of susceptibility many of us deal with and need the overshasowing by Christ’s shield: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. If you guessed or recognized that these are the 7 deadly sins the early church gave us, you would be right.
And so the petition: Christ as a shield overshadow me gains in significance for me as I reflect on the presence of these categories of sin in my life. We are predisposed to all of them; perhaps not always, but periodically. Confession and repentance follow and forgiveness is received. Then we can ask Christ the shield to overshadow us with the 7 virtues, which are also the gift of the early church to us: courage, faith, hope, justice, love, prudence, and restraint.
Do You Hear What God Says?
November 9, 2008
Listening to the voice of God joins our 3 common commitments at missional order into one way of doing life with God and with others. I am in the middle of reading Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read The Bible (Scot McKnight) and got to thinking about his 3 levels of listening to the voice of God.
Level one is attention grabbing speaking and attention paying listening. We hear the message and we bring our spiritual faculties to attend to it. We hear the voice of God and the voice arrests us.
Level two, Scot calls absorbing the voice. This is the level where the heart takes what it hears and drives it deep, deep, deep into the self. Make no mistake about it, listening by heart is not about self-feeding, or self absorption. It is rather absorbing the voice in a life transforming way but for the sake of others. It’s like Solomon prayed: God, give me a hearing heart. It’s like the famous Behold, I stand at the door and knock and if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, we will have intimate absorption.
The third level of listening is to practice or act on what we hear. It’s like Jesus said if anyone, any community, hears my message and acts on it, he will be a wise builder (Matt 7:24).
Listening to the voice of God helps us personally but the goal of listening cannot stop there. Christian spirituality is not about personally gorging ourselves on spiritual practices or disciplines. Our common commitments at missional order of prayer, formation, and serving God and others demand all three levels of listening. Our order is no self-feeding trough. We are an order that is Other-focused, i.e. loving God and loving others as expressed in missio dei. Our common commitments are the vehicles to get us at constantly experiencing loving God and others.
The multi-level listening to the voice of God is a good way of understanding the goals we have set for ourselves in missional order. It’s a good way of integrating our three common commitments. Sacred Rhythm is our attention getter. Continuous formation (level two listening) occurs as we give ourselves to the Holy Spirit through our praying, reading, serving one another, and our world.
CDP is our common way of listening to the Voice of God or to pay regular, daily, and frequent attention to our lives with God. Once our attention is grabbed we are open to formative and transformative listening. The readings, prayers, and Scriptures CDP provides are not artificially consumed. They are full listening courses ready for absorption. We savor them and properly absorb them into our lives so we can practice what we hear. Let the sacredness of the four times of prayer in the day become brief labs of listening to the Voice that speaks. If we let them, if we take time to be with God through them, we will be transformed, and get to act out our transformation. We will then carry paralyzed friends and dig roofs. We will tally the amount of money we don’t need at the end of the month and give it to the poor, or feed the hungry. We would take time out of our busy schedules to visit widows, minister in jails, and spiritually guide a friend. Our hands, our minds, our wallets, if we listen well, will be extensions of his love and our way of loving God and others.
There is a danger in any order to be about self-improvement and doing it for our own sake in our common commitments. It is also dangerous for our spirituality if we adopt a posture of non-listening. Another danger is to get stuck at the first level and listen informationally rather than formationally. Our order is not the point. The point is to live a life of loving God and loving others as ourselves. We see our common commitments as a way to get at that goal. We will stop at nothing in order to get to do our goal.
Do you see any danger (s) in missional order becoming self-focused versus God and others focused? How have you moved from a spirituality of self-improvement into one of serving and loving God and others?
Road Runner Christianity
September 28, 2008
The first cartoon I ever saw (no cartoons in Lebanon where I grew up) was Road Runner frustrating the living Acme out of the Coyote who tried heroically to out speed him for a few ounces of meat on spindly bones. Road Runner always outsmarted Coyote and “out sped him. These two did life with dizzying speed. Road Runner could put it in overdrive anytime he saw danger approaching from Coyote. I was impressed with the cartoon. I watched it every Saturday morning. But then I was only 19 years old. Overexposure worked!
Richard Foster was interviewing John Ortberg on a series they were doing on the disciplines of the Christian life. Ortberg answered one of Richard’s questions about how to devote some time to the practice of the disciplines. Ortberg remembered Dallas Willard’s best advise to him: “Be ruthless with eliminating hurry from your life.” Ortberg swears by this advice as one which saved his life as he stepped out of the boat of hurry!
Is yours a Road Runner life in Christ? If inventory were taken of your schedule would there be any need to declare a missing road runner mentality from your life? At missional order we are committed to a slower life. We will struggle together with you in eliminating hurry from our lives. All of us are succeptible to hurry and eliminating it from our lives, if desirable, must be done intentionally. There will times of concentrated road runner hurry in our lives. Too much of it and danger lurks in the shadows of our paths.
The last 24 hour road runner schedule I’ve been guilty of (they say confession is good for the soul).
Saturday: 5:30 drive to Kansas City from Topeka to speak at a newly formed Arabic Congregation (70 miles). The preacher was long winded and the meeting which started at 7 didn’t get out until 9:30 or so. Home by 10:30 or so (70 miles). I gained three minutes of time by setting the cruise at 75 miles an hour. From about 10:30 till midnight I prepared for preaching the following day. I did some reading in Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care (a great resource, by the way) and prayed through many of the issues I was reading about. Copmline followed.
Sunday morning I finished a sermon I was going to preach later in the day on Sunday. Hurried through morning prayer. I pricelined a hotel room in Wichita for the night. Went to Sunday School at 9:30, left to preach in Topeka at 10:30. Came home at 12:30, ate lunch, and packed to go to Wichita to preach at a great international church at 4:00. Got out by 6. Supper at PF Chang in Wichita. Read through a couple of articles while eating on a topic I am writing about for a counseling course I am taking (OK, if you must know it’s about religious obsession or scrupulosity). Now I am writing this post about how not to hurry life from my hotel room! Will do compline just before bed.
OK, don’t cry for me people. No one to blame but hurry itself. The tyranny of the urgent is a disease and we need help with the remedy. I admit that there are seasons of life when hurry seems inevitable. God gives grace and mercy. But let’s not play with fire. Can a man hide fire in his bosom and not be burned?
So here are my top 5 quick tips (just kidding with the quick) on how to eliminate hurry from your life:
1…
2…
3…
4…
5…
Help! Should I call the ACME for a package of 5, add water and see what sprouts up? Or do you have any suggestions on how you have eliminated hurry from your life?
If you find you have to squeeze a sacred rhythm in, need time to focus on continuous spiritual formation, live missionally daily, and hold a full time job, you should call Willard and demand a recant on his advice to Ortberg!
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