One of my students sent me a link to this video.
“Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.
How on target is the satire? What are the lessons? How is the video being unfair?
I began surfing at age 38. It was the result of a longtime interest and the realization that the older I grew the less likely it was that I would ever attempt to learn its art. As a family, the Russells enjoy participating in activities together. When I learned to surf, my young daughters (8 and 7) at the time joined me enthusiastically.
We purchased two boards: a 6’ 2” for the girls and a 9’ 6” for me.
I remember our first attempts at catching waves in the Spring of 2008. I feel off of my board dozens of times without successfully making it to my feet. But both of my girls leaped to their feet on their various first wave! It would take me several additional trips to the beach and probably close to 100 falls before I finally caught and rode my first wave.
As we think and dream about following Jesus in the 21st century and (re)engaging our world with the Gospel, we talk much about a missional ethos and a missional dna, but let’s think about this in relationship with my initial experience with surfing.
1) Old dogs can learn new tricks, but it takes effort and persistence. There are thousands of existing churches with millions of faithful Christ followers who need retooling in light of the changes in Western culture during their lifetimes. It is foolhardy to write off these followers due to their age. If I can learn to surf at almost 40, I suspect that longtime Christ followers can learn to retool for the sake of God’s mission in the 21st century.
2) Unleash the Groms early and often. In surfer jargon, a grom is a young surfer. In the Church, it is vital to recognize the importance of new Christ followers and immediately engage them in God’s mission. If mission is the reason for the existence of the church, we must embed a missional dna and ethos in new persons at the earliest possible moment. My girls learned to surf quickly precisely because they were open to new learning and experiences due to their youth. If the present and future of our Churches is mission, then must be taught and caught by the newest and youngest members of our communities.
What do you think?
© 2009 Brian D. Russell
The core message of Jesus is the announcement of the arrival of God’s Kingdom in his person.
The Kingdom of heaven is a synonym for kingdom of God used in the other Gospels.
What is the Kingdom? It is the realm or sphere of God’s eternal reign. God’s kingdom is present wherever the will of the Father is present (“Your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” [Matt 6:10]). The kingdom is good news or Gospel (4:23). In short, it is the long awaited creation renewing dynamic rule of God. As Jesus embodies it in his life, death, and resurrection, we can see that the Kingdom brings salvation and a radical commitment to extend God’s grace to outsiders.
This announcement requires a radical and ongoing response. There is only one-way to react adequately to the declaration of the Kingdom’s arrival: realignment. Jesus calls those who hear his proclamation to align and/or realign themselves continually in light of the realities of the Good News. This is not a one-time action.
Realigning with Jesus’ announcement involves breaking with past for sake of what God is doing now—creating and raising up a new humanity.
Understanding that an encounter with Jesus is a commission to engage fully in God’s mission to bring healing, hope, and reconciliation to the nations
Gospel comes to us on the way to someone else. Jesus will shape his movement to replicate.
Focus of response is personal and relational. The response of the first disciples is a commitment to Jesus involving following him.
The Christ-following movement is communal and familial. There is never a solitary Christ follower. From the beginning, Jesus called two. Moreover by calling brothers Jesus is pointing to the creation of a new family of God’s people.
Following Jesus involves embracing a new mission in life: God’s mission. But notice that Jesus calls the initial disciples contextually. They are trained fishermen, but now Jesus will teach them to fish for women and men so that they may announce to them the good news of the Kingdom (4:23).
If we want to understand the ethos of the Kingdom, we need to continue reading Matthew’s Gospel. In particular 4:23-9:35 offers a summary of Jesus’ ministry of word and deed.
Responding to Jesus involves new allegiances: the first disciples leave jobs and families for the opportunity to follow Jesus.
© 2009 Brian D. Russell
Here is the latest information on Asbury Theological Seminary - Florida’s new Doctor of Ministry (DMin) degree:
Since the application deadline is fast approaching, Asbury is permitting applicants for the initial cohort beginning in July 2009 to substitute a sample research paper for the Miller Analogies Test. Take advantage of this opportunity to be part of the initial cohort.
I am teaching the first course: Biblical Interpretation for Life and Ministry (pdf of syllabus) We will explore reading the Scriptures from a missional perspective and discuss means of unleashing the Scriptures into the Church and World to do their transforming work as we seek to (re)align with God’s mission for the 21st century.
Let me know if you have questions.
What does a missional leader do?
I have always been drawn to the concise yet profound definition by John Maxwell-”Leadership is influence. Nothing more. Nothing less.” Influence is a potent term. It captures the essence of leadership. Influence is the ability to persuade or move people or institutions to adopt a certain course of action or to believe certain things to be true. It is also, as Erwin McManus suggests, the ability to change the things that a person cares about.
In our context as followers of Jesus, missional relates to those things that resonate with the will of God. It involves participation in God’s actions in creation. To be missional is to be in tune with and acting upon God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven.” Thus, missional leadership is influence that unleashes others to participate in God’s overarching mission for His Creation.
Men and women who serve as missional leaders work to shape and create a mission-centered ethos within their communities. Such an ethos is shaped through language, environment, and actions. We will explore these three elements in the remainder of this essay.
LANGUAGE
Secular leaders have long recognized the power of language. Bart Nanus in Visionary Leadership, wrote, “There is no more powerful engine driving an organization toward excellence and long-range success than an attractive, worthwhile, and achievable vision of the future, widely shared.”
Missional leaders deploy the power of language to invite people to live in a new land-a land that evokes God-sized dreams and is permeated with the love and hope that God unleashed through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and through the subsequent outpouring of the Spirit on Jesus’ followers. We, of course, are not describing mere rhetoric-as if human language alone has intrinsic power apart from God. The Bible as the Word of God invites us into this new world as the Scriptures announce to us God’s mission.
I am convinced that as interpreters of Scripture we need to think about the overarching story of the Bible. Too often we have a tendency to read the Bible as a collection of fragments whose imagery we can capture for a sermon or time of teaching. Yet, the Scriptures focus on the mission of God (missio dei).
Humanity plays a vital role in God’s mission. In God’s original plan, humanity was created to serve as a missional community to reflect God’s character to all creation. Human rebellion (described most poignantly in the narratives of Genesis 3-11 and in Paul’s letter to Rom (Romans 1-3) created the need for God work profoundly for the reconciliation of humanity. This involved the creation of a new people-Israel through whom God would work to bring salvation to the end of the earth. God’s plan of salvation for humanity reached its climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. Jesus fulfilled all that Israel was to be and unleashed his followers to into the world to share the good news of God’s salvation through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Scriptural story ends where it began-New Creation. Ostensibly, life in the New Creation will be a renewal of the original purposes for humanity-living as a missional community for all Creation by reflecting God’s character to it.
Thus we may outline the Bible as a whole in this manner:
Creation — Fall — Israel — Jesus Christ — Church — New Creation
The missional leader understands, breathes, and lives for this narrative. She or he uses the power of language to help others to catch a glimpse of what God is doing. The goal of this deployment of language is simple: conversion. The missional leader seeks to establish a missional ethos through language so that followers of Jesus the Messiah may be (re)converted and (re)ignited to God’s mission and so that those non-Christ followers may be invited to live for God’s mission receiving the gift of life that God offers through trusting Jesus Christ.
ENVIRONMENT
Designers of missional worship services need to maneuver skillfully between two false temptations. The first temptation is a stodgy allegiance to a traditional liturgical service. Traditionalists tend to forget that every tradition began as a contemporary and fresh expression of worship in some context. It is simply wrong-headed to think that an orthodox theology will translate only into one type of worship. The second temptation is to overemphasize “edginess” as evidence of missional zeal. It is a fine line between seeking to speak clearly and relevantly to a target audience (or as I like to say “to speak human”) and losing the essence of the Gospel.
Here are a couple of thoughts about shaping environment.
1. Prayer-Never underestimate the importance and power of prayer. Missional communities resonate with God through prayer. Leaders must lead from their knees. The creation of environments must be birth in prayer and sustained by the prayers of the missional leaders and their communities of faith. There is no substitute for this step.
2. Scripture-The Bible offers to its readers a new world. It is an invitation to experience a new life and to live the reality of New Creation in the present. Missional leaders understand that communities of faith need to be saturated with Scripture. The Bible is the most profound book that humanity possesses. Missional communites need to rediscover its power and its ability to shape and create ethos.
3. Deploy Gifts Openly-Missional leaders push their communities to grow in grace and Christlikeness by celebrating and deploying the gifts of the body. Many emerging Churches have rediscovered the power of art in worship. Dance, music, painting, video, and drama are becoming increasingly common in worship gatherings in missional communities in the Western world. These features push followers of Christ to use their own gifts. For too long, Christian artists have been held at arm’s length by the Church. This has harmed the Christ following movement because it has stifled the creativity of community as the whole. Any time that a person’s gifts and talents are squelched the body of Christ is harmed. Missional communities need every single Christ follower functioning fully. Deploying gifts in the context of worship encourages others to use their own gifts for the good of the whole.
ACTIONS
Missional leaders must learn to sculpt the ethos of their communities of faith. We have already looked at the potential of deploying language and creating environments that reflect a biblical ethos. The missional leader can also shape ethos through his or her actions. This may ultimately be the greatest shaper of ethos.
There are at least four areas in which our actions can model a biblical ethos for our communities to embrace and embody:
1. The missional leader can shape ethos through a commitment to a missional lifestyle. Mission must be modeled from the top down. Our communities will only be missional to the extent that the community’s leaders embrace mission as a core value and live their lives in light of God’s mission. Our modus operandi must resonate with Paul’s poignant declaration in 1 Corinthians 9:22-”I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.”
2. The missional leader can shape ethos through the practice of a radically inclusive ministry. All people on earth regardless of race, sex, color, nationality, religion, or socio-economic class have been forged in the image of God. This is the message of Genesis 1:26-31. All oppression and divisions among these groups is traceable to the pervasive and persistent presence of sin in every individual, group, and culture (Genesis 3-11). Sadly, the Church has for too long perpetuated these divisions even within the community of faith. Yet, in Jesus Christ, there is a radical newness. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the possibility of living the life that God created us to live is a reality. The old divisions are gone. There is new creation (2 Corinthians 5). Paul words in Galatians 3:26-28 are profound-”for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
What does a radically inclusive ministry look like?
a) It empowers women for leadership roles. I fully understand that the evangelical world is divided over this issue, but I am convinced that the biblical witness supports the full inclusion of women in leadership roles within the Christ-following movement. This is not the place for a full defense of this position, but I am convinced that this needs to be part of our witness to the culture.
b) It rejects divisions along socio-economic lines. Missional leaders are willing to pay the price to allow the active participation of poor and rich alike within their communities. James 2 gives stern warnings about acting otherwise. As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, we will continue to witness extreme poverty. If the Christ-following movement is to ever have a global impact, it needs to begin serving the poor in their own geographic locales.
c) It develops cross cultural and interracial friendships as the presupposition for the creation of multi-cultural communities that give the world a taste of the diversity of Kingdom of God. Too many leaders lament the segregation of communities of faith, but miss the irony that the basis for desegration is not lament but the active embrace of persons different from ourselves. We need to cultivate friendships and relationships with persons from backgrounds unfamiliar to us.
An inclusive ministry is the pathway to unleashing followers of Christ to deploy fully their giftedness.
3. The missional leader can shape ethos by empowering others to serve according to their giftedness. The biblical portraits of gifts (e.g., Romans 12 or 1 Corinthians 12-14) suggest that the body of Christ is a living organism in which each member has a crucial role to play. The people of God need one another. Biblical community occurs when each believer deploys his or her gifts, talents, and passions within the community. The missional leader will work to shape the ethos of the community by (re)implementing a biblical vision of the God’s people by empowering followers of Christ to unleash the full range of their giftedness and the natural result of their relationship with Jesus Christ. Missional leaders rather than being the driving force of every discrete ministry within a community will serve as coaches who train, empower, and encourage followers of Christ in their Kingdom work.
4. The missional leader can shape ethos by a commitment to living a whole and balanced life as a follower of Jesus Christ. Human beings were created to live in authentic community in which they reflect God’s character to the world. Community, holiness, and mission are the essence of the imago dei in humanity. Missional leaders need to reflect these aspects in their own lives. The persons who listen to us and watch us will be persuaded most readily by a life that they would want to live. Following Jesus Christ is not about prosperity or material happiness, but it comes with a joy and fulfillment that cannot be attained by any other means. If we are to shape a biblical ethos for our communities, we ourselves as missional leaders must live whole and balanced lives before our communities.
Copyright 2009 Brian D. Russell
I teach a mission-centered approach to Scripture and try to engage the missional imagination of every student who walks into my classroom at Asbury Theological Seminary. This creates a disconnect with the reality of most communities of faith that are inward-focused and rooted in a past that no longer exists.
Here is a question that I have received too often from my students. This arrived in my inbox this week, but I have read it many times before:
This doesn’t actually pertain to class, but I would really appreciate your advice. I’m really questioning my place of ministry right now. I pastor a small [denomination linked] congregation in the suburbs of ______ [middle America]. I’ve been here about [less than 3] years. I pastored bi-vocationally for [several] years prior to moving here. This is my first full-time pastorate. I’ve changed a great deal during that time. I’ve gone from believing that if we just keep doing the same things we’ve been doing that the church will be fine, to now realizing that the American church is sinking and must change. I’ve tried to introduce some of those needed changes very slowly and with as much grace as possible. Yet, I am finding that the majority of my church doesn’t really care if the church outlasts them. I’m sure I could continue in this place for years to come, but I am increasingly dissatisfied with perpetuating a ministry that is not missional and is only interested in preserving a tradition.
I know my situation is not uncommon. But I’m beginning to wonder if I should remain here. I guess my question to you is: How feasible is it to lead a church to a revitalized commitment to the mission of God? Can it be done in our society? I see so much energy and vibrancy within new experimental churches, I can’t help but wonder if I should consider that.
How would you answer these questions? What advice do you have for this pastor?