The Jesus Manifesto

I was lucky today to recieve an a not so advanced copy of Len Sweet and Frank Violas latest book Jesus  Manifesto (it came out on the 1st in the State). Following through with the publishers desire, I will blog a few thoughts every few days on the chapter.

The Jesus Manifesto's writers conviction is that Christology is the central to our modus operundi as communities of faith. Sweet and Viola's beleif is for communites of faith to rediscover thier purpose, they must rediscover Jesus. Sweet and Viola state that "to faithfully represent  Jesus in our time requires re-presenting him."

This idea follows through a conviction I hold dear, from some hard learned experience - for us to be faithful to the message of Jesus we must know Jesus and continue to dive into knowing who Jesus is. For us to do this, we often have to cut through layers of filth and grime, put in place by religiousity and past christianese. We often have to become like archeologists cleaning away the grime, to rediscover the beauty beneath. This is often painful. Through the expereince of trying to follow Jesus - I have learned what my prejudices are, where my selfishness plays out, and how far I will really go to care for my neighbour (often not far enough.) I have learned that I continually try to domesticate Jesus, so that I can continue living my blase life.

I am looking forward to reading the rest of this book. Should be interesting

The happendedness of the Christ Event

All the world religions have been developed through history in a continuing tradition of rational argument. No religion exists apart from such a historical tradition. And all religions appeal to the authority of great teachers in the past. Nevertheless the distiction is real. The truths which Buddhism teaches would (as Buddhists understand them) be true whether or not Gautama had discovered and promulgated them. But the whole of Christian teaching would fall to the ground if it were the case that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus were not events in real history but stories told to illustrate truths which are a valid apart from these happening....

... The issue is this: Is this relationship with God seperate from your involvement in the ongoing life of the world, your family, your neighbourhood, your nation in the family of nations. Or is your relationship with God necessary bound up with your acceptance of the part God assigns for you in his purpose for his world? If the latter is the case, then your relationship with God cannot be seperated from those acts in which God has revealed and effected his purpose for for the world. Your devotion to God will be expressed in and through your involvement with history as you are now part of it. You will understand your own life as part of a story which is not a story made up by you, not just the story of your decisions and actions, but the story which is being enacted under God's creative and providential control in the events of contemporary history.

Lesslie Newbigan - The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society

Unrelenting love

I could sense very deeply that God wanted a relationship with Laura. Ultimately, I beleive that God wants a relationship with every human being, but with Laura I could feel Gods urgency. Laura, however wanted little to do with it. She never brought up the idea of God, so I didn't either. - Donald Millar - Blue Like Jazz.

I read these words today with a strong sense of conviction. Lying on the ground, soaking in the sun, these words went off like a bomb in my soul. It shocked me to my very core again. God is unrelentently seeking relationship with us. God is seeking to know you, to dance in the dance of life with you once again.

You and I are broken, we seek to live good lives, but our fear, of lack of conviction holds. We seek to be great, but when we look back at the successes they often feel hollow. But, there is a greater plan.

God has been recklessly seeking out humanity. He came into human history 2000 years ago, as a man, Jesus Christ. Lived amongst us, us broken eikons, eating, living, serving, joking, caring, being with Humainity. He showed what it means to be truly human, to be truly love through and through. He would do anything to show that what we thought was living the good life was really not the good life but was just a bad imitation, a scribble compared to the great movie in vivid colours that we were meant to live in. He showed that we are to love and serve everyone, no matter thier convictions, no matter thier past actions. He showed that God loves everyone, no matter thier convictions, no matter thier action and wants to know them know matter what the cost.

Jesus showed that God loves all, and is passionately wanting to know you by going through severe beating, being spat on, becoming the most despised, and slowing aspixiating on a Cross so that you may come to know him and live a life of joy, grace, peace, wholeness.

God loves you, what are you going to do about it? God loves you, what am I going to do about it?

Alive and Kicking

This post is to let you all know that I'm still alive and well and give an update of my day to day life.

Work
I have just started work in my first permanent job in a Government department here in Wellington. I am really enjoying the variety, also know that I'm having to learn a whole lot more about Government, working with people and everything else. It is really exciting work and I can't beleive that I'm where I am now.

What am I reading
I've just started reading the Presidents by Stephen Grauband, this book goes through from the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt to George W.Bush. I have just started it, so I will be preoccupied with it for a while yet (especially since I don't seem to have much time. I'm enjoying it, especially with the American election up and coming (Congratulations Obama!) It brings me back to my old politics days!

Seth Godens - "The Dip"

I went into town for the day yesterday and caught up with a couple of mates and had my haircut (you should see how different it looks.) I caught up with Benn Crawford at Supreme Coffee to get some Ethiopian Yergechaffe Coffee and we had a long talk about our favourite subjects of sociology, marketing, human potential and life. He recommended that I go off and read “The Dip” by Seth Goden. Benn would say that Goden is a mentor of his, I can see why, Goden can get his points across in clear and concise ways, and like any good marketer he can sell you his idea.

The Dip
The Dip is a book about assessing when is the right time to quit. Goden argues in his book that one of the major aspects of the human psyche is to quit when we begin to feel a sense of pain. When we pick up an instrument and start playing for the first time, the baby steps are real easy and we find that we receive affirmation for the little work we put in, we hear that we are a natural, then it goes into a dip, where we put in lots and lots of energy with little or no return. Those are successful are those who can go through the dip then see the rewards at the other end.

One key idea that came out of this book is that we should strive to be the best in our own sphere of influence and where we are working. Striving to be the best rather than being average is the key to success and gaining worth in ourselves and the world around us.

Goden looks at three different curves, one being to the dip and another being the cul de sac curve. The Cul de sac is a curve where you are putting in energy and constantly receiving the same results. This is the case in which you work in a dead end job, the energy you put in gets you know where, you are being offered no ways forward and there is no chance of further success. At this point you should quit. Goden argues that even when it seems you have been in a successful roles, at times you should quit because the development that you can get from moving on into another sphere of influence is greater.

Value Systems
Godens work contains a lot of truth for how we should move into success. One issue I would see with a few ways Godens ideas work is the value systems that we are driven off. I do think it is important to quit at times, I’ve done this in my own life, particularly quiting from jobs which were bringing me no where so I could focus on the bigger picture, those that would allow me to achieve in my sphere of influence. But if we go out of a “whats best for me” strategy of quitting, our quitting can be ultimately destructive to individuals and friends around us. This particularly can occur when we put our economic or personal security above others. I have a view that how we view success needs to be put in light of what is best for the whole and how we can better society and humanity. There will be positive benefits that come from this for the person, actually there will be a deep sense of worth and value from this as well. By playing to our strengths and learning when to not quit we can benefit society a lot more. We are allowed to quit things that don’t bring substantial benefit to the whole.

Intention, Church and Life

The ideas contained in “The Dip” flow into one of my favourite principles of life; “The Principle of Intentionality”. The principle of intentionality is that we should live in view of fulfilling our values and letting our strengths as individuals shine. For me the central values that drive me have to be to love the lord with all my heart mind and strength and to love those around me, these are my central values – the driving value the comes off this is that I intentionally live in a way that makes the world a better place, then comes off these are my strengths/personality.

At the moment I’m personally going through a period of self-discovery, rediscovering and discovering the skills, talents, personality that God has given me so I can best play to my strengths in the environments that I serve and work in. I am trying new things and not trying to box myself in, but also wanting to become aware of who I am as a person.

The Cul De Sac and Individuals

I want to come back to the Cul De Sac again and talk about it. I believe like Seth that when you realise you are in a Cul De Sac you need to quit and quit fast. I have come to a conclusion recently in my own journey that the worst place to be is just existing. This is not what God intended. Existing is a place where you just do things because that’s what you have always done, with no value, with no reason. You just do it because you feel you have to, even though there are no benefits at all from doing it. I have seen this with friends in jobs which they should know are dead end and they should have quit a long time ago. They have so much more potential that working in the dead end job, but they stay there for security and safety. I did this for a long period in one organisation, staying there and not risking going out on a limb. What I have learned is when you trust your strengths you can risk a lot more that you thought. There is a truth, we have to come to know ourselves, become self aware of our own values and our own strengths, otherwise we are going to be shaped by the culture around us – for good or for ill.

I know I am being humanistic here, but I do not think this goes against the heart of God, God wants to see us be courageous in who we are and our sphere of influence for the benefit of the whole of humanity, God wants us to be wholly aware of who we are (that is, who he created us to be), and he wants us to be whole. By allowing ourselves to use our strengths and becoming what God intended us to be, we honour God and give him room to make us whole.

The Church and the Cul De Sac
The dip also is about the success of organisations. Organisations themselves can get to dead ends in what they are doing. I believe this is one of the issues at the heart of the decline of the church in the west. Though I think its worse than this, some churches are in decline because they have lost their value system, or they are watering down their value system and are being led into syncretism, but many Churches are focusing their energy and talents in the wrong way, into a model of church which leads to few results for lots of capital and energy.

Where Mosaic and the Missional Church is
Mosaic Wellington is probably lying somewhere in the Dip and not in the upward point, we are still small and having to put in a lot of energy to find out our talents and form and value systems and what we are about. The good thing is we have some organisational savy, we are definitely playing to our strengths (particularly in the area of good food) and the desire to be hospitable and living it out is rubbing off on our guests. These are early steps in the journey. Mike Brantley mentioned on his blog that it takes an average of five years to journey with someone for them to come to know God, so our dip may be five to seven years before we see the size of mosaic grow exponentially and then multiply (probably 10 years, though I could be wrong on this point as well.) We have to quit the things that are not working (for example, we had to quit the loft as we were putting to much energy into it at the time), we have to be intentional on the things we put our energy into and realise what may actually limit our potential to grow and reach those around us (so for us this means that we don’t see having a church building is an ultimate aim, there are benefits to having a building, but a building constrains you and the mission then becomes about upkeep on the building rather than the mission of God in this world.

We are a young part of a larger movement; we can see Mosaic LA which is past the dip (for it the dip was when Erwin took the church on Bradey. Even though the church on Bradey was a successful large Church, it was at the end of its growth and had lost its “edge.” It had got itself near to a Cul de Sac situation. Erwin came in and had to change the mindset of the church members – meaning that they lost a huge number of once committed people and he had to build the ethos of Mosaic from the ground up. This period was painful for the Church, but has meant that Mosaic is much larger than what it was in the past, having a global reach into the world and reaching many lost people within the city of LA. Seeing Mosaic past the dip gives us hope of what we can be, if we play of our strengths and keep to our ethos. I love Wellington and want it to be an even greater place to live, where dreams are lived and fulfilled lives. Where people know they belong and know they have worth. I want people to come to know Jesus because he can bring wholeness to our once broken selves and lives. I want my life to be a source of faith love and hope to those around me.

Books of Influence

I have read alot of books over the last couple of years. These are numerous and have had major influence on my spiritual journey. They have challenged my faith and while I do not agree with everything in them, they are influential and challenging and highly recommended reading.

Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy: This was one of the first books I read when I was introduced to the "Emerging Conversation", this book is an interesting take on the Christian journey. It is a worthwhile read. A disclaimer though is that it should be read with discernment. I do not agree with all his points and I'm worried that Brian may have emerged too closely with culture and "gone native" (I have to talk about this term some time!) in some areas. But it is a good book to read if you want to look at what faith may look like in postmodern terms.

Michael Frost, Exiles: This is one of my favourite books on my shelf when it comes to talking about the posture and shape of a missional christian engaging with a postmodern world. It is essential reading for anyone wanting to engage with a post-christian west. It talks about getting back to the Jesus of the bible, rediscovering true christology, then reforging a missional imputus of both christians and the church. It essentially flows out from the idea that first we have to know Jesus, then we are sent, then we create and form communities of faith - these communities are there to strengthen beleivers (an essential of good community) but also sent to change the world (the other important issue.) Frost says that we should be missional not attractional. Attractional was related to the late modern seeker sensitive services and while they are good tools, they have thier limitations (as do post-modern modes of community I will add!)

Alan Hirsh, The Forgotten Ways: Hirsh is a friend and co-conspirator with Michael frost - he is part of Forge. The book of Hirsh comes from his experience creating missional faith communities and church plants. He reminesces and offers both hard lessons and theory on what that missional church should look like. His work is built on looking both historically at the church (what led to massive church growth in the early church and the in Chinese churches in the last fifty years), he creates a model that he calls "the apostolic genius." In his book he argues that if the church gets back to the "apostolic genius" we will see more people come to know the living God. His work is also rooted in chaos theory and organic models of organisation (something that as a person who has looked at more modern mechanistic heirarchical models of organization is very compelling!)

I enjoyed this book, something though that I find difficult with both Hirsh and Frost is that they seem to write to the educated, middle class. They seem to assume that all thier readers would have a strong understanding of church and church models of leadership. I wonder, is there a way to write thier views in a way that is simpler, so that the ideas can be got from the bottom up, rather than a way that seems to be top down approach (change the opinions of the educated leader, then that leader will change the opinions of the church laity)

John B. Hayes: Submerge: Maybe this was a stage of my thinking where I thought I might be sent in this area and into a point where I would minister to the poor, but this book has been of major influence on me as well. This book is written by a guy similar to Shane Claiborne (though not as young and hippy looking!) John B. Hayes has been sent to live with the poorest of th poor in america and in countries like cambodia, he is the director of Innerchange a mission order which is tasked to serving the poor. You will never look at the world the same way again after reading this book. He challenges us to take the red pill, to realise that the world is not as rosy as we think and to act on the facts he passes out.. It is challenging, hard-hitting reading. It mixes John B. Hayes story of ministry with a call to be actively being christ to the poor, we need to sent people out to the poor, incarnating into that environment, enjoying celebrating, weeping, laughing, being apart of the life and sharing christ with those who are lost. Read this book, it will challenge your worldview of what it means to be a follower of Christ in the world today.

Dan Kimball, The Emerging Church: To tell you the truth I'm only half way through this book. Its worth the read, especially if you are looking at how and why church should engage with post-christian culture. Kimball writes strongly from personal experience. I have found Kimballs work the most graceful work that I've read so far. One of the strengths is that he has allowed the comments of other church leaders, such as Brian McLaren but also Rick Warren from Saddleback. The first half of the book had loads of comments that I wanted to underline and take and put on this blog, plus I just read a really good paragrath on Paul and his engagement with the greeks at Mars Hill, which goes further than my posts on this subject.
One thing about Kimball is he is strongly evangelical in his roots - he engages scripture, puts Christ at centre and explains how we fall short and why we need Jesus! I like Kimball alot for this.

MyLibraryThing

I finally figured out how to put up a widget for MyLibrarything. This is a cool website which allows you to catalog your books online and display them proudly for the rest of the world to see. Its really quite fun.

Revolution In World Mission

Revolution in world mission is written by Dr KP. Yohannan. The Book was first published in 1986, but has been updated regularly so its observations are still rather worthwhile and contemporary. The main argument of this book is that the tide in missions has changed. Once upon a time, those who did missions were white middle class men, sent during the 1800s, many a times with a joint mission to bring the gospel Jesus Christ with western imperialism. With the nationalist movements of the mid 19th century, and the overthrow of western imperialism, many Asian nations were closed to western missions as western missionaries were linked to imperialistic goals. The result was that Native missionaries took over where the western Christians left off. There has been massive conversion within countries such as China and India, but western churches have neither know of these developments or have supported the churches. The western church became introverted and selfish. Missions that were sent to developing nations in Asia could only focus on social justice issues without evangelism. The hope for missions in Asia, asserted by KP. Yohannan is the native missionary movement. This is because they can adapt to the cultures and are accepted within the cultures they minister to, and the cost of sending them is only a fraction of the cost ($2000 at most, compared to $50,000)

I came to this book with a critical mind and believe that this book has a lot to offer – it is a goldmine for good missiology, and for training missionaries. There are several important points that I got out of this book

1) The western church and western Christians are so well off. We have a responsibility to support our less well off Christian brothers and sisters in developing nations.
2) In the past, western churches have become selfish, focusing introspectively, not using their resources to build the church of Christ, but to fund buildings and other other projects that have no real impact (other than aesthetics!)
3) We need to allow these Christians to develop and minister in ways which are acceptable to the context they preach to. We should not be pushing a certain denomination or line – we should allow Christians go into cultures and allow them to contextualise the gospel.
4) “Contextaulisation” – this means preaching and teaching the gospel in the language of the people. Taking on the cultural dress of the group, preaching the gospel in a way that the people group will understand. For example if you go to a group of African Americans living in the Bronx you wouldn’t give them a soapbox sermon – the likelihood is you’ll get beaten up and your money taken and left in a trash can half alive or with a gun to your head if you are unlucky. No, you would come dressed up in the cultural costume and speak in the language (Baggy Jeans and speak in Snoop.)
5) The Focus of missions should marry both evangelism and social justice together. In the context of missions to countries such as India it can be seen the spiritual blindness that people live in worsens their poverty. K.P Yohannon tells that because Rats are sacred to Hindus and cannot be killed, plagues of rats go and eat the crops in India, meaning there is a lack of food. K.P Yohannan tells of how the ministry of Gospel for Asia has focused a lot on the untouchables, the lowest of low castes within Indian society. This caste has been created as a result of the religious worldview of the Hindu people. Gospel for Asia offers education where untouchable children can learn to read and write and also get told the gospel of Jesus Christ. As a result the families are changed, they get given spiritual freedom as the familty comes to know christ and economic freedom through the children getting an education.


I have some criticisms with this book though.
1) Yohannan only gets the rationale for missions half-right. Yes we are called to mission but we are called to mission so that people will come to worship God once again
Again I sight my good friend John Piper on missiology.
“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the Church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship does not”
Worship is the Fuel and goal for missions. It's the goal of missions because in worship we simply aim to bring the nations into the white hot enjoyment of God's glory”
(John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad)
The whole purpose is to see all humanity give him the glory he deserves and enjoy the freedom that Christ offers.
2) Short Term and Long Term western missions are still important . They are important as it gives a stakehold for western Christians in the whole church. Western missionaries provide information and reconnaissance in a way that pieces of paper and articles cannot offer. They provide an eyewitness and encouragement for further mission worldwide and locally. Missions trips also challenge also challenge peoples mindsets on the way we do things. They provide an intensive environment for Christians to grow and change and get out of their comfort zone. They give western Christians a means to grow and develop and to come to rely on God fully. They expand peoples views of the world and the way God works and the fact that God doesn’t work in the same way everywhere. They usually ignite Christians to find ways to engage with their own cultures back home and ways to change the world around them back home. They are also a real witness to people back time. How many times have I been able to talk about what I did in Siberia and share what my faith means to my friends because of the missions trip.
The “Mystical” nature of missions to other countries or places.
I have blogged about this before, because this has been an important moment in my life and journey I will go continue on about this. There is something really special when you worship with a whole group of people from another country and place. You speak entirely different languages but you can connect at a deeper level that what you could. Also it feels like you an enacting a scene from what heaven will be like – where people from thousands of different cultures, backgrounds, ages, all worshipping and praising the same God who saved them and made them whole. It is really special, and something that I’m happy that I have been able to share in.

3)Yohannan comments only on the bad that has happened within western missions.
I can name on the top of my head numbers of cases where western missionaries are doing awesome jobs in nations around the world and seeing peoples lives changed because of the ministry they are involved in. It’s not all bad news, but the need for balance between western missionaries and National missionaries. I totally agree that native missionaries are more affective, more adaptive on their mission field and that more funding and support should be given to these missionaries than what is given to western missionaries – but the approach should be balanced. It must also be remembered that we cannot stop the call of God. If someone is called to be a missionary into a culture by the spirit of God we cannot stop them from doing this and we must trust in the faith of God that he will enable them to reach out to that culture. Some may be given the missional gifting of tongues to reach out to a particular culture (this is quite an amazing gift when you see it at work!)


All in all, I enjoyed this book. It was a real challenge. Particularly on my priorities in giving and how selfish I can be at times. I want Gods will fulfilled on earth. Many times this will be costly to myself. Am I willing to listen to the call of God and sacrifice those things that I want for what God wants?

Another thing I saw was the dedication many non-western Christians have to God. Many of these missionaries pray and spend real time with God for hours and pray for the people they minister to for hours as well. As a result they develop hearts for those people. Am I willing to lose sleep over the lost sheep in my cultural context? The suffering I endure for the Gospel seems so little compared to the floggings, stonnings and electric baterns that Christians receive in other countries, but many a time I go quite, saying nothing about God, why is that?

All in all, this way a really challenging book. I enjoyed it. Have a read, I’m sure you will be challenged too!