I get this question all the time: "So, ... how do I become like Christ?"
Thoughts?
What do you do? Where do you go? How do you engage in the process?
Keywords: change, christllikeness, Jesus, spiritual formation, transformation
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August 28, 2008
Posted by Damian Gerke @ Spiritual Formation | 0 comment(s)
August 04, 2008
For some it is always easier to through money at a need or mission rather then actually becoming physically involved with the issues at hand.
In what ways do we as leaders encourage people to take part and "do/live" mission rather then simply bankrolling it?
Posted by Erik Freiburger @ Leadership | 3 comment(s)
June 09, 2008
A person reads an ad in the newpaper about a church that offers the full meal of Christ in their services. By meal, I mean it's promised to be filling and satisfiying in every way. To meet all their needs. They arrive and are greeted in a friendly manner, taken to a place where they see slides advertising the meal, and they hear people talk about the meal, then we powerpoint the meal and send them on their way. Unfulfilled, still hungry for the real thing. Another analogy would be the wine and wineskin. We have great looking skins, ornate in their appearance and beautiful to the eye, but the wine inside is not sweet and does not taste as wine should. And people know when it doesn't. Is the wine in the Church the true wine of Jesus.
All the things in the Bible are important, but we would agree that the things that Jesus said are most important. He boiled all the commandments and the law down to loving God and loving others. Then He gave us a single command, in the spirit of the Shamah, whatever you are doing, wherever you are going, make disciples. This is the irreducible core of the faith. You can do more than this and follow Jesus, but not less. Our churches can vary the wineskin. But this is the wine. It has to be there.
Thoughts?
Reference: Howard Snyder: The Problem of Wineskins, Church Structure in a Technological Age
Posted by Phil McConnell @ Church Planting | 2 comment(s)
May 02, 2008
I have been trying to understand how Biblical leadership works. I have grown up in the evangelical church in the USA and made many asumptions about church leadership based on how I saw it lived out as a child. I have spent the last 6-7 years unlearning some of what I grew up understanding. I know that some of us are called to function as leaders. But how do i lead? How do I identify other leaders? and what roles do leaders play in the forming and functioning of the church? Ephesians 4 seems to layout Biblical leadership the best i have seen it. Do you have other thoughts about leadership and how it works?
Keywords: APEST, Biblical, Leadership
Posted by tim hoeksema @ Leadership | 2 comment(s)
April 12, 2008
For quick thoughts and responses, come here to the Shapevine General Forum.
Posted by Shapevine @ Shapevine General Community | 2 comment(s)
Tell us about an important talking point that came up in a previous Shapevine webcast. Perhaps we can extend the discussion here.
Keywords: discussion, talking points, webcast
Posted by Shapevine @ Shapevine Webcasts | 0 comment(s)
April 02, 2008
...of all leaders, launchers most need interventional help
I didn’t grow up going to church. If I were a contestant on Jeopardy and the category popped onto “Roman Catholic Tradition” I’d lose my shirt. But in recent years I have received a crash course on the RC teaching regarding saints.
I now understand the saint arrangement at least to the degree that I no longer offend the daylights out of Roman Catholics with conversational quips (those long delays that follow what I thought was clever).
I have gotten to the point in my slim reading about RC saints that I even have a favorite saint. If you are a launcher / planter or are highly involved in a launch, get ready to have your world rocked with what I’m about to share (you just might do a Google search for a bookmark bearing this guy’s likeness as a reminder).
Drumroll please...
Jude, the brother of Jesus, was an amazing risk taker. You can call him ‘St. Jude’ if you wish. You are probably familiar with ‘St. Jude’s Medical Center’ in Memphis, the cause championed by many celebs that fights diseases thought to be incurable. Why the name ‘St. Jude’ in that case? It’s the perfect name for that center. St. Jude was the champion of impossible causes. Since the early days of the Church’s history when some began to think of exemplary believers as ‘saints’, Jude was early on identified as...
The Stand Up Guy for ‘Lost Causes’
The more I ponder this amazing guy’s life and example, the more I relate to him as a planter-launcher for the past thirty years. Janie and I have been either the point leaders or part of small lead teams that have essentially parachuted into five cities around the world with little more than a wing and a prayer to launch new works.
The Jude in reference here was Jesus’ half brother. That is, he was a son of Mary and Joseph. He was initially a skeptic who became a Jesus follower in time as he pondered what was going on. My guess is Jude jumped into this whole Jesus following thing with questions yet to be answered. Skeptics are like that. I know - I think that way myself. C.S. Lewis never had all his questions answered. Point is - skeptics often make the best leaders. Why? They don’t typically ponder, scratch their chin scruff and then do nothing. These are the ones who walked away from opportunity. These are the ones who were in the middle of something - life interrupted to do this other life.
The Power of A Magnificent Loss(es)
Anyone who hasn’t lost something GREAT in order to do the Jesus thing as a leader - that’s a leader I don’t have a huge regard for. That is a faux leader. That is a leader who is working their way up the opportunity ladder. They are now at the top of their game! ‘Big fish - little pond.’
I sometimes am maligned for making light of ‘leaders’ in the church world - for hurting their feelings... The exact line most recently was, “No one knows who you are. You are living in an orbit the size of a Cheerio. No one will ever know who you are. Give up on it. Start washing windows. Find satisfaction in becoming a nobody from nowhere - a knucklehead...”
The stories I love have a lot of the implication to ‘Walked away from’ or ‘Couldn’t afford to waste my time making money’ any longer because there were greater things at stake.
I am a lost cause
Until I realized that though there are gifts deposited in me... that God has invested greatly in me / us... he has gone out of his way to get us to this point in the journey...
None of that will begin to kick into gear until I realize I am all that is focused upon in Luke 15 - the lost coin, lost sheep, the lost son. I am only an asset as I realize how much of a liability I am unless Jesus lives his life through me.
Every city I have planted in has been antithetical to a place that has potential
Demographics... Schmemographics. If Jesus has made an invitation clear, then all is well. My previous invitation was to a city that had been widely known as the most unfriendly city in the U.S. - and took pride in that ranking. Fifty church launches later things are different - or at least beginning to change the spiritual atmosphere of a city of two million - and beyond. The invitation is what matters.
The people we attract are nearly all lost causes
Though this is our fifth launch some things never change. We draw people who are very un-alike from one another. Ranging from sexually confused folks to families who listen to Dobson and home school with long hair, denim jumpers and are boycotting all Disney films now for whatever reason. The wealthy and the ones I cannot figure out how in the world they get here every week.
Janie and I are up to our gills in this all over again in Tampa.
We realize our lives are meant to be be spent starting parties and parades. Jesus has filled our pockets with an unending supply of seeds to do just that. We will spend all our days flinging seeds abundantly - without hesitation, no need for perfect preparation.
Keywords: church planting, leadership, steve sjogren
Posted by Lance Ford @ Steve Sjogren | 0 comment(s)
April 01, 2008
My personal rhythm flows out of having faced some deep questions over the last several years.
While I think my days as a church pastor, where our church mission statement was to lead everyone to full life development in Christ, caused me to face many purpose type questions, nothing has transformed me like the following battery.
• Who are you? Not as self but as Self?
• Why are you here? What is your Work not work.
• How are you unique? Confluence of all the stuff that makes up you.
• How can you make a dramatic difference? Best contribution.
• Who cares? Do you?
These questions come from a combination of questions asked from a consultant and a professor.
I wonder how often we operate aligned with well thought through answers to these types of questions and how often we are on autopilot doing whatever it is we think we are supposed to be doing…doing the daily grind so to speak.
The problem of course with these questions is a very egoic construction of self if you aren’t careful. If our ego is a container for all of our background, experiences, upbringing, geography, education and vocation, there are good chances that if we aren’t careful we will simply build our lives around a thinness that is self and not a richness rooted in Self. When that happens self tends to do work(s). The richness and depth of Self found in imago dei gravitates toward Work.
My sense is that in my life self and work lead me deeper into ego, whereas Self and Work lead me deeper into the pure sense of Being and I Am-ness placed at my core by the Creator God.
Maybe this is a function of personal maturity, vocational transition, personal pain, stage of life, wisdom, great coaching by those around me, or simply convergence of a number of factors, but my journey the last several years is that Self and Work, when they converge, lead to a deep sense of wholeness and shalom in me that naturally leaks out to others. It seems my life and ministry is deeper and richer these days. I have a sense of deep gratitude because of it.
Keywords: life, missional, missional church
Posted by Lance Ford @ Ron S. Martoia | 0 comment(s)
Keywords: church planting, leadership, steve sjogren
Posted by Lance Ford @ Steve Sjogren | 0 comment(s)
February 19, 2008
We discussed this on Sunday in our Worship Service, It brought about some very interesting and thought provoking discussions, thought it might be a good one here.
Posted by Terry McGuire @ Mentoring Ministers | 2 comment(s)
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