SimpleChurch Journal

Into Africa

My wife and I will be in Africa for the next few weeks.  We surely appreciate your prayers.  We will be working with some leaders from the Congo in what we call "level one training" and some leaders in Kenya in what we call "level three training."

For information on our strategies there, you can read this article if you are interested.

In Case Your Bookshelf is Getting Empty (ReJesus and Bones)

I have been reading (not yet finished) two books that I thought were worth mentioning:

ReJesus: a Wild Messiah for a Missional Church by Frost & Hirsch

"Following Jesus involves more than simply accepting him as your Savior via some prayer of commitment, no matter how sincere that prayer might be.  In order to follow Jesus you must also emulate him, using his life as a pattern for your own.  We call this emulation becoming a little Jesus."

Hirsch and Frost challenge their readers to put Jesus and the personal following of this "wild Messiah" back into the center of their life.  As Blaise Pascal says, "Jesus is the center of all, the object of all, whoever does not know him, knows nothing aright, either of the world or of himself."

The authors assert that putting Jesus in the center of our life will cause us to wrestle with the nature of a  missional God, one who "sends himself to us rather than waiting for us to come to him."  This will also stir us to view the church as the "sent people of God.  A church is not a building or an organization.  It is an organic collection of believers, centered on Jesus and sent out into the world to serve others in his name."

This final quote captures the essence of this book for me: "Therefore we propose that church should be recalibrated around its founder, Jesus.  But what would that look like?  Jesus didn't found any churches.  He unleashed an army of little Jesuses who went forth and founded faith-communities across the known world."

You See Bones, I See an Army by Floyd McClung

"The best way, in fact the only way, to renew the church is for a fresh imagination to be unleashed in the church."

McClung breathes some imagination of his own into the conversation around simple, reproducible church.  Former missionary and mega-church pastor, he is now seeking to facilitate church planting movements, primarily in Africa, by training leaders in these principles.

"Interestingly, we have to train people from traditional and institutional church backgrounds out of the old way of doing church, and orient them to the new paradigm of simple church.  It is this way of doing church that makes it possible for Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus--and increasingly, postmodern Western youth--to experience church like we read about in the book of Acts."

McClung's writing displays both his love for the church as God's people and his passion for the "3.3 billion people who have never heard the name of Jesus one time."  He believes that there must be a fundamental change in the way we think about church and the world, or these people will never know the power of the Gospel.

McClung suggests the following paradigm shifts are essential:

1. Holistic versus dualistic spirituality
2. Apostolic versus hierarchical leadership
3. Incarnational vesus attractional mission
4. Simple versus complicated church
5. Inclusive versus exclusive membership

Perhaps it is because I spend so much time, myself, working with leaders in Africa that I resonate so much with McClung's writing.  I also appreciate the passion that he carries and challenges others to carry for God and for the world: "There is a spiritual battle raging for your passions... The way our culture influences us, you don't even have to choose to be worldly; just go with the flow.  Just be a person who merges with the crowd, and before long you will have nothing inside you to motivate you to live passionately for God."

Chapter 3 of the SC Rev Book Can Be Posted Or Shared

Someone asked me for a direct way to share with others or post part of the Simple/House Church Revolution Book.

So I prepared the following pdf download of chapter three that, in this form, can be downloaded, shared, emailed or posted anywhere:

Download SCRevChapter3

What Are You Passionate About?

I just spent the weekend hanging out with some LK10.com folks talking about the importance of unwrapping one's design and passions.  I think this is highly relevant to stepping out of clone-like religiosity into the freedom of every member of Christ's Body expressing His presence uniquely and powerfully.

I remember that Steve Taylor song from long ago:

I'm grateful that they showed the way,
Cause I could never know the way,
To serve him on my own, I want to be a clone.

How powerful it is to step out of "clonely" religion into the freedom of fully unlocking our passions and God-longings.  How powerful can it be for the kingdom of God when every member of His Body displays His glory and beauty in the way He made us.

During this weekend, we took a look at times in our life when we were fully alive, and thoroughly engaged spiritually in something that was "us."  For example, Hugh talked about the five years he spent incarnating himself as a teacher living among a small African village.  Another person might consider this to be purgatory, but Hugh came fully alive in that setting as he taught, loved, learned the language, and became part of a cross-cultural community sharing Christ.  Mickey, on the other hand, recalled how much he loved imagining a project that needed to be built, putting the plans together in his head, and then seeing the reality come together.  He employed this same passion, over the years, creating projects that cared for people in need or that brought the Body of Christ together.  Katie loved to come alongside people to disciple and prepare them for greater spiritual influence in a way that did not draw attention to herself.

Sometimes our experiences shape our passions. One story was shared of a family in Mexico who became passionate about dealing with diabetes in their country because of their own daughter's struggle with the disease.  Out of their work in this area, they have had a large kingdom influence in the lives of others with similar struggles.

It was very encouraging to listen to the stories of others, to share our own, and to affirm the unique way that God has designed and uses each one.
If you want to walk through this exercise yourself or with others, here are the questions that we used for this exercise.

In case you are wondering what brings me alive... I shared with the group an experience from last year when I was training missionaries in Madagascar.  This brought together several elements in my life that God has built into me:

• My enjoyment of other cultures
• My many years of church planting
• My longing to see young leaders encouraged, prepared, and fathered (probably due in large part to the lack of fathering I experienced both as a child and in my early "church" years)
• My love of interactive, discovery-style learning

Do "peak experiences" define our calling?  I don't think so. We still have to listen and follow where and how God leads. But it surely provides some strong clues as to the nature of our true spiritual destiny.

Most importantly, how much has the Body of Christ been held back because we try to shape people into forms that best fit our organizations and institutions instead of supporting them in becoming who they truly are in Christ?

Posted via email from rogerthoman's posterous