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Less is More

While perusing lifehacker the other day I came across this great piece by Greg McKeown on how our unrelenting desire for success is often the very thing that fuels our failure. For McKeown the process looks something like this.

Clarity of Purpose—>Success–>Options & Opportunities–>Diffused Efforts–>Undermining of Clarity.

We are a society and a people addicted to activity; to the pursuit and acquisition of more. While this is easily seen in the accumulation of material goods,it has now filtered into our energy and efforts as well. Instead of focusing in on what we are most passionate about, well equipped, gifted and enabled for and making a dogged commitment to those few things; we have instead become a culture and people obsessed with diversification, becoming jacks of all trades and masters of none.

Think of this as it relates to areas of personal growth and church life?  How easily do we allow competing vision, value and activity to undermine or sidetrack our original direction?

How often do we agree to take on a new project or opportunity without considering the potential cost to other areas of focus?

With a little focused effort we can begin to recover the clarity of purpose that led to our initial success. McKeown offers some questions to help guide our thinking.

…ask three questions: “What am I deeply passionate about?” and “What taps my talent?” and “What meets a significant need in the world?”…We aren’t looking for a plethora of good things to do. We are looking for our absolute highest point of contribution.

 

Read the whole thing here.

Missing in Missional

A while back my twitter friend Chris Chappotin asked a great question about what is missing from the Missional Conversation. In response to that he asked if I would be willing to be one of many who responded in a blog post, briefly detailing my thoughts.

While their is certainly much room for conversation about what is missing; in my context as both a church planting pastor and a church planter strategist, their are two areas where we could stand to do a bit more thinking. The first is how the missional conversation/movement engages in a rural setting and the second is, what is the place of theological education in the missional conversation/movement. Since each of these warrants their own attention in a separate post, we will begin in reverse order.

The Place of Theological Education

I had the privilege of attending and graduating from Midwestern Seminary here in Kansas City. The professors, by and large, at Midwestern are top notch scholars, each of whom care deeply about their field of study and communicate with a passion and clarity that is second to none. I could spend the next several hundred words waxing eloquent about how each class I took, with very small exception, instilled in me not only a greater understanding of God and His Word, but also a more reverent humility. To be completely honest, of all the classes I completed there were only 1 or 2 I would consider not worth the time or effort. Yet, while my time at Midwestern did many many things for me, both as a follower of Jesus and one who serves the local and regional church in a vocational way, I can say without hesitation that it did not prepare me adequately to be a missionary into culture. Rather, the bulk of my theological education focused on preparing me to be the CEO or manager of a multi-tiered religious organization.

Mission was presented as an arm of the church, rather than its organizing principle. Disciple making was discussed in terms of program and curricula and not apprenticeship in the way of Jesus. Little time, if any, was given to how it is that this Gospel we believe and proclaim should change the communities in which we live, other than in the strictest evangelistic sense of personal conversion.

The remedy for this predicament in my opinion is two fold. First, their needs to be a re-purposing of sorts on behalf of schools of theological education. Too often our Christian culture is prone to reaction rather than pro-action, and our schools are no different. While there are some exceptions to this, namely Northern Seminary and their offerings in Missional Leadership, most of our schools are continuing to offer the same course of study they have for decades. While the doctrines of our faith and the confessions we hold should remain for the most part unchanged, the way we prepare to impact the vast lost-ness into which we are called should always be evolving in response to and anticipation of the culture milieu we encounter on a daily basis. How can we expect the people we shepherd and share life with to live as the sent ones of God if we as their leaders don’t have a framework for this ourselves?

Secondly, their needs to be a realistic expectation on behalf of those choosing to attend a seminary or Bible college of what they are getting themselves in to. Many of the men, and women, I sat beside in class viewed seminary as their meal ticket to an inside job with air conditioning  instead of a trade school meant to provide them with skills and tools to fulfill their calling more effectively.

So in conclusion, what place does theological education have in the missional movement and conversation? My hope is a prominent one! As schools of higher learning commit to devoting more of their required courses towards preparing students to be missionaries into culture; and as more students view the time spent in study as vocational training in the best sense of the word, then another great era of mission sending could be upon us. However, if schools continue on the same path, and students with the same attitude, my fear is we will continue our trend of becoming more and more monolithic and more and more in danger of losing our voice and potential for lasting and meaningful change.

Regular Hospitality

My good friend and mentor Brad Brisco, along with his wife Mischelle and their two boys have spent the last year providing foster care in our community. During that time they have housed over 40 different kids and in this post he shares a little bit about what he and his family have experienced and learned. Just a taste…

I can’t fully articulate how we have been blessed over the past year. That is the funny thing about biblical hospitality, just when you think it is about welcoming the stranger, for their benefit, you realize that it is you who is being blessed by the presence of the “stranger.”

My first reaction when reading Brad’s account is how absolutely radical this is! Yet upon further review, Hospitality of this kind should be the most normal action of the follower of Jesus. Instead of this hospitality being radical for us, it should be regular.

As Jessica and I consider adoption in the future as part of God’s plan for our family, I encourage you to join me in prayerfully considering how God is calling you to look after the orphans and widows in your community.

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