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Genesis 1–11 is the prologue to the story of God’s mission to redeem a lost humanity and heal a broken world. It provides the backstory. It describes the world as God originally crafted it. Gen 3–11 explains poignantly why the world into which we were born is not the world of God’s dreams. The tragedy of sin’s infestation of creation is evident on the pages of Gen 3–11, but in it we already have seen seeds of hope, not because of humanity but because of the goodness of the Creator God. The Creator God is also the God who in these same texts begins works to be the God of reconciliation and redemption. This good news will climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth millennia later.

After Babel, we left the human story in alienation, ambiguity and puzzlement. On a positive note, the earth is again teeming with men and women. By dispersing people across the globe, God has partially fulfilled his creational intentions for humanity of 1:26-31. If God’s plan had been for the earth to be full of His visible representatives, the negative is that women and men are lost. Though the possibility of functioning as the imago dei remains, their brokenness and rebellion testifies to something other than the character of God. They have filled the earth, but by there actions they are embodying the wrong mission.

But human life goes on. We encounter a new genealogy in 11:10-26. This genealogy ends with the report of Terah’s sons: Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Provocatively, Abram is the 10th generation from Noah. Noah had been the tenth generation from Adam. The careful reader is bound to ask this question: Will God again move to judge the earth and start anew as He did in the days of Noah?

The answer is “No.” God does not move to destroy the earth as he did in the days of Noah. God remains faithful to his covenant cut with Noah and all living creatures. A new story does begin in 11:27 but it emerges from the preceding history and genealogy. For reasons that our text does not make explicit, Terah takes his son Abram and grandson Lot and begins a journey from their home in Ur in southern Mesopotamia with the land of Canaan as his intended destination. This is an interesting report full of possibility. Most of us think of Abram as from the land of Ur. This is true, but Ur was not the place where Abram was called by God. Abram under the leadership of his father was already on the way to Canaan. But for reasons unknown, Terah stopped in Haran, a town hundreds of miles north of Ur located in the upper regions of the Euphrates river. Terah, Abram, and Lot settled in Haran without reaching Terah’s intended goal of Canaan. 11:32 reports that Terah died in Haran at the age of 250. This brief historical note serves as the backdrop to one of the most significant texts in the Scriptures: Gen 12:1-9. In Genesis 12, God calls Abram to resume the journey started by Terah, but this time, God ups the ante by inviting Abram to become the point person of a new movement of God.

What do you think?

© 2010 Brian D. Russell
missional hermenenutic
missional hermeneutics
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Some more snippets from the draft of chapt 3 of (re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for the Church and the World. This will be a book on applied missional hermeneutics. This is an approach to Scripture that privileges God’s mission as the lens for understanding the Word.

Human rebellion and transgression reemerges in 11:1-9. Humanity did not obediently move out to fill the earth as 10:1-32 seemed to suggest. The scattering of humanity was the result of judgment by God. 11:4 is the key passage—“Come let us construct for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches up to the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” Humanity initiates actions that move against God’s desires for humanity (cf. 1:26-31). God made a clear separation between the heavens and the earth at Creation and also placed humanity on the earth as its stewards. Humanity’s mission was to represent God before creation and to serve creation by building on the “very goodness” of its foundations. Humanity was to fulfill its mission in part by spreading out across the globe so that there would be images of the invisible and holy God everywhere. Thus, gathering on plains of Shinar in resistance to filling the earth already represents rebellion. Humanity compounds this affront to God’s mission by attempting to erect a tower to the heavens. This represents another clear challenge to the God-desired limits on humanity. Moreover the desire to “make a name for ourselves” is self-serving and stands in contrast to the one name to which humanity may call (4:26). Humanity was created for relationship with God and to serve as God’s missional community for the sake of all creation. The desire to gain power and to resist scattering is an explicit attempt to thwart God’s intentions for humanity to populate the earth and serve as God’s ambassadors.

Ironically, our narrative describes God’s action as “going down” to see what the humans are up to. No matter the human capacity for ingenuity and creativity—humanity is still part of the creation and is finite in its abilities. God alone is transcendent and set apart from creation. Men and women may attempt to live as though they are sovereign. People may try to push the God-imposed boundaries. But nevertheless God alone reigns and freely interacts in his creation with his creatures. Against this reality, it is profound that the transcendent Creator God chooses to interact freely in our world.

The tower of Babel is not the story of individuals acting alone. It is vital to reflect on the communal dimension. Babel is the story of humanity conspiring as a community to accomplish a new mission. If Genesis 1:26-31 describes the original creation of humanity as the creation of a mission community that reflects God’s character to/for/in the World, then 11:1-9 portrays the opposite—a community acting apart from its Creator to serve on a mission counter to God’s and reflecting a self-centered, self-aggrandizing ideology.

What is God to do? Time and time again in Genesis 3–11, humanity goes its own way and thwarts God’s purposes for creation. God has already hit the reset button with the great flood. He then promised to never again destroy the earth. Remarkably, in terms of Gen 1–11, God has achieved part of his creational intentions. Due to his scattering of humanity following Babel, there are now women and men bearing God’s image across the globe. But there is a profound problem—they are in no way reflecting his character and instead have demonstrated a penchant for mischief of history altering proportions.

What do you think?

© 2010 Brian D Russell

What does a missional hermeneutic or a missional approach to reading Scripture look like? Here are a few thoughts about how one may profitably read Genesis 1:1 through the lens of missional hermeneutics.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.” So reads the opening sentence of the First Testament. The first two chapters of the Bible unfold God’s creative activity and offer a snapshot of God’s plans and intentions for Creation. Genesis 1:1 is crucial for a couple of reasons. First, it affirms that there is an active personal deity behind all that is. The creation is not the result of an impersonal force or forces. It is not an accident or the result of some cosmic battle between gods. God (Heb elohim) will later be identified specifically as Israel’s covenant God known as the LORD (Heb Yhwh). Second, though Genesis 1:1-2:3 explicitly challenges the theology of the creation stories of Israel’s neighbors, it remains staunchly international in focus and in scope. It is vital to make the simple observation that Israel’s Scripture opens with its more generic name for God (Heb elohim). In Hebrew, this noun is ambiguous in form and referent. It is a plural noun and can be translated “gods.” But in the context of the Scriptures of Israel, the plural form is deployed with Israel’s god as the clear referent. It is not until Genesis 2:4 that the reader of the Bible encounters God’s personal and relational name—Yahweh (typically rendered LORD in our English translations). There the form is Yahweh Elohim (the LORD God). In other words, Genesis 2:4 links explicitly elohim of Genesis 1:1 with the personal name of Israel’s God that was revealed to Moses at the time of the Exodus (Exodus 3 and 6). Why is this important? I think that it points to the missional intent of the Scriptures. If the Bible opened “In the beginning Yahweh created the heaven and the earth”, this claim (though completely true) forces the reader to react to Israel’s claim that its god Yahweh is the Creator. Instead, the Bible opens with 35 recurrences of elohim before one encounters Yhwh in 2:4. Notice the power and wisdom of this word selection. Genesis 1:1-2:3 audaciously argues for a solitary and powerful Creator, but refuses to name the deity. The opening of the Bible demands only a belief in God or gods as the precondition for reading its pages. It allows the narrative to shape the reader’s understanding of God. Last, it affirms that the created world, all that is, is separate from God. Rocks and trees are not divine. Dogs and cats are not divine. Women and men are not divine. The environment may be beautiful but it is not god. From the opening verse of the Bible, the reader encounters a transcendent deity who stands over creation as Lord and King of Creation. This is all present in merely the opening verse.

What do you think?

© 2010 Brian D. Russell

Here is a draft of an essay trying to answer this question: What is a Missional Hermeneutic? (Updates 9/7/2010)

A missional hermeneutic (MH) is an interpretive approach that privileges mission as the key to reading the Scriptures. MH works across the spectrum of approaches to the biblical text. It takes seriously the historical situation of the text (“behind the text”). It recognizes the influence of the reader’s social location (“in front of the text”). Yet it is fundamentally rooted in a close reading of the text (“the world of the text”). MH seeks to hear the Scriptures as an authoritative guide to God’s mission in the world so that communities of faith can participate fully in God’s mission.

At the 2008 meeting of AAR/SBL, George R. Hunsberger (“Proposals for a Missional Hermeneutic: Mapping the Conversation”) reviewed current proposals on missional hermeneutics and organized them into four categories: The Missional Direction of the Story, The Missional Locatedness of the Readers, The Missional Engagement with Cultures, and The Missional Purpose of the Writings. I have adopted Hunsberger’s categories for the purposes of this essay.

The Missional Direction of the Story

A missional hermeneutic recognizes that the biblical canon tells the story of God’s mission (missio dei) in and for creation. The story of God’s mission can be summarized as Creation, Fall, Israel, Jesus the Messiah, Church, and New Creation.

The Bible opens with the creation of the heavens and earth by God. The human community is crafted in God’s image as the pinnacle of God’s handiwork. Men and women function equally as the image of God for the sake of the rest of Creation. From the beginning, humanity was created for God’s missional purposes to represent God before Creation by reflecting God’s character in community with God, with one another, and with the world.

Genesis 3-11 function in the story to explain the fundamental problem in the world. The “very good” Creation of Genesis 1-2 is shattered by human sinfulness. Sin infests every human person and institution as well as fractures creation itself. The stories and genealogies of Gen 3-11 describe the world in which we find ourselves this side of God’s New Creation. Yet in the midst of the chaos of sin and brokenness, Gen 3-11 presents a God who does more than pass the expected judgment—the God of the Scriptures begins to act to redeem a fallen world.

In Genesis 12, God calls a new humanity into being with a series of promises to Abram and his descendents. This people exist to serve as the agents of God’s blessings for the nations (Gen 12:3). The narrative of God’s new humanity runs uninterrupted through the Protestant canon from Gen 12 – Esther. God’s new humanity becomes the nation of Israel. It is decisively shaped through God’s liberation of Israel from Egyptian bondage and through the forging of a covenant at Sinai. Israel’s deliverance from Egypt is purposeful and is undertaken for the sake of the world. At Sinai, Israel is called to serve as God’s missional people, a holy community for the nations (Exod 19:4-6). The remaining books of the Pentateuch establish a polity for God’s people as they prepare to live faithfully in the Promised Land as a witness to the nations. Joshua to Esther narrate the potential and pitfalls of God’s people living in Canaan including the devastation of the Exile due to disobedience and the resilience of God’s faithful love shown through God’s restoration of Judah from Exile.

A large portion of the Old Testament is not set within a narrative framework. How do the Psalms, the Wisdom Literature, and the Prophets fit in the story?

The book of Psalms serves as the prayer and worship book for God’s people. The psalms reverberate with themes of God’s reign over the nations. Through lament, thanksgiving, and praise, the psalms encourage an expansive vision of the worship of God that ultimately climaxes in the concluding exhortation: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! (150:6). The psalms root God’s people in a vital worshipping relationship with the Lord, the Creator of the World and Deliverer of Israel.
Israel’s Wisdom traditions serve God’s story by offering serious reflection on the God’s creation and the good life. Wisdom deals with questions that engage all of humanity. Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs have much in common with the wisdom of Israel’s neighbors. Wisdom is interested in navigating successfully through life. Since God created all that is, the wise can observe life astutely and deduce principles for living in God’s world. This focus on the human side of life makes it easy to connect Israel’s wisdom to culture. Yet, Israel’s unique contribution to the lore of the ancients is profoundly missional: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov 1:7). The implication is this: careful attention to the human condition may prepare persons for the truth about God (cf. Ecc 12:12-14).

The Prophets (Isaiah – Malachi) contribute to the Israel’s story in three ways. First, Israel’s prophets continually call God’s people back to their roots as a missional community that embodies God’s holiness before the nations. The Prophets take Israel to task for failing to live as God’s people. Second, the Prophets maintain an international focus. The God of Israel is the Lord of the nations and as such the prophets speak words of both judgment and salvation to the nations. Provocatively Jonah audaciously announces God’s love for even the most committed opponents of God’s people. Last, the Prophets envision a new future work of God’s salvation (e.g., Jer 31:31-34, etc.).

It is against the backdrop of Israel’s Scriptures that Jesus the Messiah enters the story. Jesus lives as the ultimate human being who fulfills in his life, death, and resurrection God’s Creational intentions for humanity and everything that God had envisioned for Israel as God’s new humanity. Jesus’ death is for the totality of the Fall and his resurrection declares the ultimate victory of God. The Gospels narrate Jesus’ life and ministry to teach future generations of disciples what it means to follow Jesus. The core of Jesus’ message is the announcement of the arrival of God’s kingdom and his call to realign our lives in light of this reality (Matt 4:17, Mark 1:15 cf. Luke 4:16-21).

In the aftermath of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the Risen Jesus sends out the Church to announce and extends God’s salvation to the nations. The Church is unleashed in the power of the Holy Spirit. The New Testament witnesses to the spread of the Gospel across the 1st century Mediterranean world. The Scriptural story goes forth from the land of Israel to the nations in fulfillment of the Israel’s mission. The New Testament epistles serve as teaching documents for fledgling missional communities around the Mediterranean world.

The Scriptural story ends with Revelation’s portrait of God’s future New Creation (Rev 20-21).
Learning to understand the big story of the Scriptures is more than a descriptive task. The story of the Scriptures seeks to convert its readers/hearers to its perspective. The Scriptural story invites its readers to understand their lives as part of its narrative.

The Missional Locatedness of the Readers
An interpreter’s social location serves a crucial role in the reading process. It may provide a fresh perspective for reading a text or it may distort a text’s meaning. Michael Barram (“The Bible, mission, and social location: Toward a missional hermeneutic.” Interpretation 61 (2007): 42-58) has argued that readers must locate themselves in mission. The biblical texts were written in a missional context. Participating in God’s mission enables contemporary readers to find common ground with the ancient text’s perspective.

Moreover, engaging in missional activity in the world creates new questions with which to engage the Bible and is crucial for learning to hear the text for both church and world. A practitioner of MH learns to listen to a text on behalf of the people to whom s/he serves as a witness. Missional engagement unleashes the interpreter to read a text through the eyes both of Christ followers and of unreached persons. The wise interpreter learns through missional praxis the sorts of questions that an outsider to the faith may raise when hearing a biblical text. Thus, the practice of reading the Bible from a missional locatedness trains us to read and hear the Scripture from contested spheres in the marketplace and not only in the realm of the sanctuary where we “preach to the choir.”

The Missional Engagement with Cultures
A third line of inquiry in the field of MH is the manner in which the biblical materials themselves model engagement with culture. We gain new insights about 21st century incarnational ministry by studying the ways in which biblical texts communicate to their context. For example, how do the Creation stories of Genesis engage and subvert the dominant worldviews of Israel’s neighbors? How do the similarities between the narrative structure of Exodus 15:1b-18 and the Baal Epic serve to promote Israel’s understanding of reality to their Canaanite context? How does Paul use existing modes of communication in the Greco-Roman world to enhance the persuasiveness of his writing?

The Missional Purpose of the Writings

MH recognizes that the Scriptures exist to convert and shape their hearers. Most of us have been trained to read the Bible as the basis for doctrine and individual piety. MH reminds us that Scripture is concerned with shaping communities of God’s people into outposts for the advancement of the Gospel.

Darrell Guder has been on the forefront of emphasizing this aspect. He writes concerning the New Testament documents (“Missional Pastors in Maintenance Churches” Catalyst: Contemporary Evangelical Perspectives for United Methodist Seminarians 31.3 (2005): 4.):

… NT communities were all founded in order to continue the apostolic witness that brought them into being. Every NT congregation understood itself under the mandate of our Lord at his ascension: “You shall be my witnesses.” …To that end, the NT documents were all, in some way, written to continue the process of formation for that kind of witness. They intended the continuing conversion of these communities to their calling—and that is how the Spirit used (and still uses!) these written testimonies.

Thus, we need to ask specifically how each text was intended to form God’s people into a missional community. Moreover this is not merely a NT perspective. As shown above, the thread of mission runs across the biblical canon. Both OT and NT texts can be read profitably in terms of how they seek to form the people of God for the sake of God’s mission to all Creation.

In his recent essay “Prophet to the Nations: Missional Reflections on the Book of Jeremiah,” Christopher Wright raised a related question: What does this text teach about the missional cost to the messenger?

Wright expands the dimension of a biblical text’s teaching. Wright shows that the book of Jeremiah explicitly displays the personal cost to the prophet of participation in God’s mission. Raising the issue of missional cost is crucial as we seek to create a missional ethos in our congregations.

The Potential of a Missional Hermeneutic for Preachers and Teachers

1) MH provides a context and direction for preaching/teaching. Learning to read discrete texts within the grand narrative of God’s mission as described in Scripture provides a crucial angle for communicating the Gospel. The interpreter recognizes that every text in the Bible helps to shape the people of God to serve as a missional community that embodies the character of God in/to/for the world.

In preparation for preaching and teaching, ask questions such as these:
How does this text help us to understand God’s mission in the world?
How do we need to change in order to live out this text corporately and individually?
How does this passage serve as an invitation to the world to join God’s mission?
What kind of persons does this text call us to become?

2) MH connects worship explicitly with life in the world by establishing a missional ethos for the community of faith. Learning to read the Scriptures through MH keeps God’s mission on the front burner for all aspects of the community. Most profoundly it keeps the worship of the Triune God grounded in God’s missional intentions for humanity and all creation. Biblical worship at its core is profoundly missional. The aim of God’s mission is worship. Humanity was created to serve as God’s missional community before creation. As God’s new humanity, the Church worships as a bold and daring testimony to the world of the greatness of God and as an invitation to unreached persons to become part of God’s new humanity for the sake of the world.

3) MH establishes a new framework for learning. As communities of faith struggle to break the grips of the paradigm of serving as inward-focused dispensers of religious goods and services to serving as outposts for the sake of God’s Kingdom, MH provides a different outcome for learning. “Christian education” is no longer merely learning facts about the stories of the Scriptures or grasping the basics of the historical creeds of the church. The goal of learning in the Church now becomes a constant conversion to the message of Scripture so that each disciple can be shaped into the sort of person that s/he needs to become in order to participate fully in God’s mission in the world. All learning can now be set in the context of the missional reality of the 21st century Church.

Suggested Reading:
Barram, Michael. “The Bible, mission, and social location: Toward a missional hermeneutic.” Interpretation 61 (2007): 42-58.

Bauckham, Richard. The Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004.

Beeby, Harry D. Canon and Mission. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999.

Bosch, David J. “Towards a Hermeneutic for ‘Biblical Studies and Mission’” Mission Studies 3.2 (1986): 65-79.

Brownson, James. Speaking the Truth in Love: New Testament Resources for a Missional Hermeneutic. Christian Mission and Modern Culture. Continuum, 1998.

Guder, Darrell C. (ed). Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America. Gospel and Culture Network. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

Guder, Darrell C. “Missional Pastors in Maintenance Churches” Catalyst: Contemporary Evangelical Perspectives for United Methodist Seminarians 31.3 (2005): 4.

Hunsberger, George R. “Proposals for a Missional Hermeneutic: Mapping the Conversation” Gospel and Our Culture Network Newsletter eseries 2 (2009): cn.org/resources/newsletters/2009/01/gospel-and-our-culture

Russell, Brian D. “Missional Hermeneutics” http://realmealministries.org/WordPress/?page_id=753

Wright, Christopher J.H. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006.

Here is the link to the published form of the essay “What is a Missional Hermeneutic?”

Brian D. Russell (Ph.D.) is Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary-Florida Dunnam Campus and a John Wesley Fellow. He is currently writing a book on missional hermeneutics that will be published in late 2010 by Wipf and Stock.

A missional hermeneutic recognizes that the biblical canon tells the story fundamentally of God’s mission (missio dei) in and for creation. The story of God’s mission can be described broadly via the rubric of Creation, Fall, Israel, Jesus the Messiah, Church, and New Creation.

The Bible opens with the creation of the heavens and earth by God. The human community is crafted in God’s image as the pinnacle of God’s handiwork. Men and women equally function as the image of God for the sake of rest of Creation. From the beginning, humanity was created for God’s missional purposes to represent God before Creation by reflecting God’s character in community with God, with one another, and with the world. Implicit in the creation of humanity are three core themes: mission, holiness, and community. As we will see these themes are important for reading the Bible missionally.

Genesis 3-11 broadly function in the story to explain the fundamental problem in the world. The “very good” Creation of Genesis 1-2 is shattered by human sinfulness. Sin infests every human person and institution as well as fractures creation itself. The stories and genealogies of Gen 3-11 describe the world in which we find ourselves living this side of God’s New Creation. Yet in the midst of the chaos of sin and brokenness, Gen 3-11 presents a God who does more than pass the expected judgment—the God of the Scriptures begins to act to redeem a fallen world.

In Genesis 12, God calls a new humanity into being with a series of promises to Abram and his descendents. The narrative thread of God’s new humanity runs uninterrupted through the Protestant canon from Gen 12 – Esther. God’s new humanity becomes the nation of Israel. It is decisively shaped through God’s liberation of Israel from Egyptian bondage and through the forging of a covenant at Sinai. Israel’s deliverance from Egypt is purposeful and is undertaken for the sake of the world. At Sinai, Israel is called to serve as God’s missional people, a holy community for the nations (Exod 19:4-6). The remaining books of the Pentateuch establish a polity for God’s people as they seek to live faithfully in the Promised Land as a witness to the nations. Joshua to Esther narrate the potential and pitfalls of God’s people living in Canaan including the devastation of the Exile due to disobedience and the resilience of God’s faithful love shown through God’s restoration of Judah post-Exile.

A large portion of the Old Testament is not set in the Genesis – Esther narrative framework. How do the Psalms, the Wisdom Literature, and the Prophets fit in the story of the Scriptures?

The book of Psalms serves as the prayer and worship book for God’s people. The psalms reverberate with themes of God’s reign over the nations. Through lament, thanksgiving, and praise, the psalms encourage an expansive vision of the worship of God that ultimately issues for in the concluding exhortation: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! (150:6). The psalms root God’s people in a vital worshiping relationship with the Lord, the Creator of the World and Deliverer of Israel.

Israel’s Wisdom traditions serve God’s story by offering serious reflection on the God’s creation and the good life. Wisdom deals with questions that engage all of humanity. In fact, Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes have much in common with the wisdom of Israel’s neighbors. Wisdom is interested in navigating successfully through life. Israel’s wisdom is profoundly practical and relevant to culture because it is rooted in Creation. Since God created all that is, the wise can observe life astutely and deduce principles for living in God’s world. This focus on the human side of life makes it easy to connect Israel’s wisdom to culture. Yet, Israel’s unique contribution to the wit and maxim of the world is profoundly missional: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” The implication is this: careful attention to the human condition may prepare persons for the truth about God (Ecc 12:12-14).

The Prophets (Isaiah – Malachi) serve as a bulwark for the mission of God. They contribute to the Israel’s story in three ways. First, Israel’s prophets continually call God’s people back to their roots as a missional community that embodies God’s holiness before the nations. The Prophets take Israel to task for failing to live as God’s people. Second, the Prophets maintain an international focus. The God of Israel is the Lord of the nations and as such the prophets speak words of both judgment and salvation to the nations. Provocatively Jonah audaciously announces God’s love for even the most committed opponents of God’s people. Last, the Prophets envision a new future work of God’s salvation (e.g., Jer 31:31-34, etc)

It is against the backdrop of Israel that Jesus the Messiah enters the story. Jesus lives as the ultimate human being who fulfills in his life, death, and resurrection God’s Creational intentions for humanity and everything that God had envisioned for Israel. Jesus’ death is for the totality of the Fall and his resurrection declares the ultimate victory of God. The Gospels narrate Jesus’ life and ministry to teach future generations of disciples what it means to follow Jesus. The core of Jesus’ message is the announcement of the arrival of God’s kingdom and his call to realign our lives in light of this reality (Matt 4:17, Mark 1:15 cf Luke 4).

In the aftermath of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the Risen Jesus sends out the Church to announce and extends God’s salvation to the nations. The Church is unleashed in the power of the Holy Spirit. The New Testament witnesses to the spread of the Gospel around the 1st century Mediterranean world. The Scriptural story moves from the land of Israel to the nations as Jesus’ followers take the Gospel to all people in fulfillment of the Israel’s mission.

The Scriptural story ends with Revelation’s portrait of God’s future that ends with New Creation (Rev 20-21).

Learning to understand the big story of the Scriptures is more than a descriptive task. The story of the Scriptures seeks to convert its readers/hearers to its perspective. The key is to discover that in the Scriptural story we find the only true narrative for our lives.

© 2009 Brian D. Russell
All rights reserved.

This is a draft of an essay that will appear in an upcoming edition of Asbury’s Alumni Link:

I love the Scriptures. In offering my Top Ten Bible passages, I am sharing texts that continue to shape and transform me as I seek to follow the Risen Christ into the world for the sake of God’s mission. I have included a question or two that I find myself pondering as I read these passages.

Gen 1:26-31
God created humanity as the pinnacle of his creative work. Such a statement was audacious in its original Ancient Near Eastern setting and it remains compelling today. God crafted humanity for profound purposes. Women and men exist to serve as God’s visible representatives before Creation by reflecting God’s character through their communal lives together. People exist for mission, community, and holiness. The rest of the biblical story narrates the loss of this reality and God’s redemptive work to restore our true humanity.

Am I living as the person whom God created me to be? Am I part of a missional community that reflects God’s character before a watching world?

Gen 3:1-9
Gen 3:1-9 is a disarming reminder of the tragedy of human existence and of the root cause of our lostness apart from God’s grace. It narrates humanity’s substitution of self-rule for a moment-by-moment relationship of faithful obedience with the Creator. The issue is trust. The dialogue between Eve and the serpent moves God from the subject of Adam and Eve’s life in the garden to the mere object of a theological conversation in which the serpent sows seeds of doubt in the heart of Eve and invites her to rely on her own judgment rather than a relationship with God built on trust. Both Adam and Eve chose self-rule over trust.

Do I trust that God has my best interests at heart as well as those of whom I love?

Exodus 19:3-6
These are God’s initial words to Israel at Sinai. They interpret the meaning of Israel’s redemption from Egyptian bondage. The salvation of God is more than liberation from Egypt; it is liberation for the mission of God. The redeemed people of God exist to serve as a missional community that reflects and embodies the character of God in/for/to the nations (cf. 1 Pet 2:9). We must grapple with this text as we seek to inculcate a biblical DNA in our communities.

How do I embody God’s call to mission, holiness, and community? How well does my community of faith reflect the vision of this passage?

Deuteronomy 6:4-9
The Shema marks the foundation for life as God intended. Our relationship with God is first order in importance. This text reminds us of the vital necessity of a fully committed life. Note that this commandment is lived out and nurtured within community. E. Stanley Jones once wrote, “Christianity that doesn’t begin with the individual doesn’t being; Christianity that ends with the individual ends.”

Is my life marked by a moment-by-moment relationship with God rooted in faithful obedience manifested in a whole being love for God? Am I “all in” for God? How well am I nurturing others in this first-order commitment?

Josh 1:1-9
Courage is the key that opens the door to the life of God’s dreams. Courage is determination to live out our faith commitments to accomplish God’s will. Joshua is God’s choice to take the mantle of leadership for God’s people. God appears to Joshua and casts a large vision for the future of God’s people. Joshua’s role is to live courageously by leading Israel into the Promised Land. The courage described in this passage is rooted in a journey shaped and formed by the Scriptures.

Do I live courageously to advance God’s Kingdom, or am I content to live in the “safety” of the status quo?

Psalm 73
Psalm 73 is a poignant psalm that narrates the psalmist’s struggle with life in the world. It captures a period of despair in which the psalmist’s perceived experience of God does not match his theological expectations. Yet it the midst of this dark time the psalmist enters God’s sanctuary and recognizes the ever present reality of God and God’s goodness. The psalmist moves from a faith rooted in external circumstances to one centered on the psalmist’s relationship with God.

What keeps me grounded when my faith experience does not match my theological understanding?

Jonah
Jonah sits among the Prophets as a nagging reminder to God’s people of God’s radical love for the nations. God is at work in the nations – even in those places that ostensibly stand the most opposed to God’s work in the world. God’s holy love extends far beyond the boundaries that we may be tempted to establish for it.

Do I love the lost as much as God does? In particular, what is my attitude toward those whom I consider my enemies?

Matt 4:17-22
Jesus begins his public ministry with a comprehensive call to (re)align continually with the ethos of God’s Kingdom that he is announcing has come near in him. Don’t miss the initial response to Jesus’ announcement: the creation of a missional community to serve as the vanguard for God’s age of salvation. The call to the kingdom is an invitation to mission and community.
In what ways have I separated following Jesus from following Jesus into the world on mission?

Philippians 3:7-16
This has been my favorite passage in the Scriptures since my teenage years. Paul recognizes that the ultimate value involves knowing Messiah Jesus as LORD. In response to this, Paul reorders his understanding of gain and privilege. Paul had boasted of his credentials in 3:1-6. He now advocates a radical reorientation of his past in light of Jesus. All that he once considered reasons for boasting are now reassessed as loss. This is not merely a pious display self-deprecation, but a deep rooted understanding that our gifts and talents become idols if we glory in them apart from a life centered on knowing Christ Jesus.

Have I surrendered to God my main thing so that it can become God’s thing?

There are countless other passages that I may well have chosen, but these are the one’s that have impacted me deeply in recent years as I seek to be continually realigned with and recast in the story that God is writing in the 21st century.

© 2009 Brian D. Russell