The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch - Ch 3

"Jesus is Lord."

This was the statement that got the early church in so much trouble with the Roman government. This was the statement that got the Chinese church in so much trouble with the Communists. This is the statement that will get us in trouble if we really believe it and act it out.

Jesus is Lord of all. There is no sacred/secular split. All of life is under His authority, and anything we do which obscures that truth does harm to our witness. It's muddies our claim that Jesus is Lord of all.

I want to operate with a persecuted mindset. I want to see myself as an insurgent in a hostile system. I want to need my brother and sisters in the faith. I want dynamic relationships. I want to be co-conspirators in a movement to establish Christ's reign underneath a hostile system.

I want to be part of a better story. The story we've been told - Christ died on the cross for your sins to save you from hell, so give your life to Him - is a poor story. I want to be part of the story that says Christ is Lord of everything, and He's redeeming everything, and we all get to be a part of His universal takeover of the realm of sin and death.

Jesus is Lord.

The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch - Ch 2

We no longer live under Christendom.

The time has passed in which Christianity is the major formational force of society. Neither is the state at the helm of culture's ship. Largely, we identify ourselves in subcultures - vocational fields, sports teams, sexualities, causes, food preferences, etc. Christianity has become just another subculture, and we so often seek to pull people out of their subculture and adhere to ours. That's not what Jesus did. That's not the incarnation.

The post-Christendom church must embrace the way of the early church, not out of nostalgia, but out of a realization that the world we live in is ideologically much like the early church's world. Christianity isn't in power anymore. We need to:

1. Let go of our infatuation with buildings as churches.
2. Embrace five-fold church leadership (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers)
3. Become grassroots movements without centralized leadership.
4. Re-sacramentalize the sacraments (baptism and communion)
5. Admit we are on the margins, and embrace our situation.
6. Be incarnational in our culture.

The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch - Ch 1

This book is an examination of the ways the Church does mission in the (post)modern world. It is a book on post(modern) missiology. Missiology is simply the study of the ways we extend the Gospel to those who don't know it.

In chapter one, Hirsch details his own journey from coming to faith and beginning church work during the Jesus Movement of the 70s to coming to grips with the failure of their work in their church in Melbourne to truly effect change in people's lives and then to how what they have come to now that they think is the best way to do mission now.

Hirsch details three things a church must do:

1. Engage missionally in the world - be involved with what God is doing

2. Develop deep, broad, and authentic worship

3. Make disciples, which are people who are learning how to live Christ-like lives

Hirsch says that if you succeed on the last point the other two will follow.

Class Reflection - 10/29/09

Today we discussed in groups our dream for a church plant - what it would look like and what it would accomplish. Then we talked about why we want a church to look that way and why we want the church to accomplish that.

I need to do a lot more talking and writing and thinking about these things. The more I listed to others' dreams and motivations, and the more I try to express my own, the more I recognize the nuances and driving forces behind my own dreams. Now it's just a matter of figuring out which of those are good and which need to be left behind.

Class Reflection - 10/27/09

We talked a lot today about the context of the early church, and why they lived the way they lived. We discussed Christendom - the time when Christianity was the dominant culture-shaping force in the West - and whether or not we are living in a post-Christendom West. We also talked about the powers that the early churches stood in opposition of. I realized today that the Roman Empire-like power in our world isn't the state. It may be Capitalism. It may be consumerism. It may be greed. In any case, that's the power we need to make angry. That's the power we need to be persecuted for defying.

Class Reflection - 10/22/09

Today in class, we were visited by Nick Warnes who is part of a church planting team in the North East LA area.

I really appreciated hearing Nick's story today in class, though the kind of church they are planting is not what I want to plant. I do greatly appreciate that they have thought through what they are doing, and their thoroughness challenges me to be as thorough in my thinking.

Someone asked Nick today what would happen if he left, implying that if the church would struggle without him at the helm, then something perhaps isn't right, as if a more successful plant would be one in which he could leave without the church suffering.

I disagree with that. I think if a person, any person, leaves a church, the church should feel it. The church shouldn't be able to continue as normal if a person is suddenly gone. Imagine you lose a foot or a finger. The body would feel it and have to change. I'm antisympathetic to organizations, and especially churches, that can perpetuate without the people who make them up.

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger - Ch 11

Emerging churches draw from the whole palate of Christian spiritual practice in their worship. They employ ancient and modern disciplines, and they try to reimagine them in contemporary ways. This is in keeping with the post-modern destruction of the sacred/secular split. Emerging churches see ancient disciplines as a way to make all of life spiritual and not just the things done in church. Disciplines are a way of constantly refocusing on God and a way of connecting to a pre-modern faith.

I also surmise that because most emerging Christians were raised in charismatic and fundamentalist churches, the more traditional and monastic practices seem particularly fresh. I don't say that as a way of invalidating their expression. There's nothing wrong with being fresh. It's just an observation not mentioned in the book.

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger - Ch 10

Many emerging churches have a very open leadership style. There is a great emphasis on making sure there isn't an autocratic leader up front. This concern has a variety of motivations, but the key motivation seems to be the desire to make sure everyone is involved.

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger - Ch 9

Emerging churches are marked by being very creative. They celebrate and encourage creativity from all members of the congregation. They do this because as created beings, they believe it is our privilege and duty to create. They also value the giftedness of all believers, and they believe that giftedness extends to more than preaching and playing the guitar.

They also believe that giftedness includes more than painting and graphic design too though. They try to incorporate all sorts of gifts - any gifts and talents that the world celebrates in any arena, including organizing, building business, and engineering. It's not about being artistic; it's about making space for everyone to be involved in worship. It's about bringing all our gifts to God in worship. It's about being playful and experimenting and celebrating not excellence, but intent.

I love that.

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger - Ch 8

I've quoted this before on my other blog, but this quote leads off this chapter, and I want to post it again here.

Sitting in pews; standing up, sitting down; the same format each week. It just wasn't working for us. As artists, writers, creative people, the single, fixed configuration of soft-rock worship and three-point linear preaching was a body we not only felt uncomfortable in, but that was dying around us. We were frustrated.

We sat each week surrounded by some of the brightest talents in film, TV, theater, art, social work and politics...but made to watch in virtual silence because we didn't play guitar and didn't "preach." These were the only two gifts that were acceptable as worship. It just seemed such a waste.

We just thought it was outrageous that we had all these gifts that were being used in the corporate world, in the market economy, and were being snubbed for poorly done soft-rock and 2-bit oratory in church. We saw that if worship was about gift, then what we brought to worship had to be integral to us, something meaningful from who we were.

Kester Brewin, Vaux, London

Emerging churches value participating by everyone in the worship of the church. They strive to ensure that everyone is a producer and not just a consumer. Everyone brings what gifts and talents they have to the table. Worship isn't band+preacher. It's particular to each congregation because each congregation is made up of different people.

This is one of my favorite aspects of emerging worship. I love the idea that worship is highly participative. I come from a church that celebrates the gifts that each person has to bring to the body. My home church believes that God speaks to and through everyone, and so we have made room for that to happen. I see this as a step further down that road.

Class Reflection - 10/20/09

Today in class we broke up into fake church plant teams and began working through the process of planning a church plant. I found this experience very edifying.

I love listening to personal stories. When someone tells their history I feel like they're telling about who they are, what's driving them, and where they're headed. A person's story is the surfboard, the wave, and the shoreline. People are fascinating.

As everyone told their stories today, I saw that I needed to spend more time probing my own history to figure out more about exactly why I feel so drawn to the kind of community I feel compelled to be part of.

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger - Ch 7

Emerging congregations (conglomerations?) and traditional churches seem to agree for the most part on the subject of service and generosity. Emergent Christians may say that the traditional church seems too insistent on preaching as opposed to acting, but this has not been my experience. I've always seen Christians as being very involved, for the most part, in acts of compassion and justice in the world.

Emerging churches don't tend to give a lot of money to the church for the church to spend on itself. They keep things small and give their money to organizations and social causes instead. That's probably the only difference, btu I feel the emerging critique of the traditional church's giving and serving to be a bit misfocused. I think they're reacting against a straw man.

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger - Ch 6

Well, it was in the chapter on hospitality of all things that I found grounds for real disagreement with the practices of many emerging communities. I find this surprising, because hospitality is the discipline that has catalyzed a lot of my thinking about what a Christian community might best look like in a post-modern context.

I agree that hospitality is the practice of welcoming in the outsider, but I do not agree with the mental leap that makes the outsider simply one who is different than you, and I do not accept that we should allow worship of other gods within the context of our Christ-centered community.

Yes, it is important to welcome in people from other faiths. We need to be hospitable toward them. I do not like evangelism that seeks to force anything on anyone. I resonate deeply with the emerging custom of being soft to non-Christians, of letting ones life do the evangelizing. However, in our gentleness, I do not think we should be weak. Jesus is Lord and no other stands beside Him. He is all the hope we have and all the hope we have to offer.

Hospitality is welcoming in the stranger, the marginalized, the alien. It is giving them a seat at the table. It is being patient and kind to them. It is being Christ to them and allowing them to come to Christ, to enter His kingdom advancing all around them to include them. But it is not suggesting to them that the world they are welcomed in from is the real world. It is not celebrating this-earth practices. To do so is to be unfaithful to our guests and our God.

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger - Ch 5

Emerging churches would rarely be considered churches by many people. They are more like groups of people who are connected relationally to each other without any weekly program or service to create and facilitate that connection. Christians in these communities aren't interested in event as church; they are interested in people loving one another and loving the world as church.

That's not to say there isn't a place in their practice for gatherings. They gather to worship together, but the gatherings take many forms, from barbecues to liturgies to art galleries to going out for coffee.

Christians in these communities also aren't concerned with size. Being big isn't the goal; being close is. Big isn't necessarily bad, and small isn't inherently good. It's faithfulness to Christ and to each other that matters.

Often, Christians in these communities are involved in a number of different realms including workplaces, community organizations, and even local traditional congregations, but they are also serious about being Church together relationally. To say they are friends with one another sounds trite, but it is actually a very profound statement.

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger - Ch 4

Before I continue, I want to briefly explain a semantic change I think is necessary.

I no longer want to write about "emerging churches," because the word "church" for most people implies a group of people gathered together for a church service, like what we see across the country largely on Sunday mornings. "Church" implies program. In my thinking and reflecting on the material in this book, I'm not considering programs; I'm meditating on a way of life.

That being said...

In chapter 3, we read about emerging Christians' refusal to allow a sacred/secular split. There is no inherently holy or unholy realm of society. Instead, emerging Christians seek to find ways to sacri-lize everything, that is, to make everything sacred. Is that not the incarnation, after all? Didn't Christ indwell the very thing most separated from God - mankind?

What is particularly challenging is to consider ways of worshiping with all of our lives, with everything we encounter, and not just "church" things.

The chapter goes on to describe how British Christians redeemed the club culture and found a way to turn a rave into a worship service. This is neat, but it still misses the point of worshiping God in every aspect of the Christian's life.

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger - Ch 3

"Emerging churches seek first the kingdom. They do not seek to start churches per se but to foster communities that embody the kingdom. Whether a community explicitly becomes a church is not the immediate goal. The priority is that the kingdom is expressed." - Emerging Churches, p. 61

For emerging churches, the life of Jesus, more than His death and resurrection, is the focus of the mission. Emerging churches tend to strive for ways to establish here and now the perfection God will one day bring to completeness on the earth. They're not about "getting people saved"; they're about proclaiming salvation to all creation - natural, political, institutional, and individual.

I think this is why I find it difficult to talk about the kind of community I want to form. I don't want to start a church; I want to encourage myself and others to live as if heaven is here and to work to bring heaven here. I don't even want to start another form of church. I want the local congregation to continue. I just want to be part of a group of people who are trying to live like Jesus.

Class Reflection - 10/15/09

On Tuesday evening, I had a friend over for dinner. He is an MDIV student with the intent of working in academia. Over Fat Tires, wild rice, and shrimp, we discussed the struggle we foresee of taking what we are learning back to our communities. Personally, I wondered aloud how to explain what I want to do, which will look very different from what I grew up in, to the people and church that raised me.

I think Ryan just answered my question.

Perhaps learning to put theology and practice into dialogue with each other will make those conversations possible. Perhaps then I would be able to express the reasons behind the differences and even understand it all better myself.
____________________________________

We started going through the process of starting a new church movement.

I think the first three steps to Ryan's process - figuring out who we are, laying out what baggage we're bringing, laying those things down, and letting God rebuild us into a cohesive whole - could take a long time. Maybe it is an ongoing process though. Dying to self and surrendering ones will to Christ, as individuals and as a group, is a daily pursuit. At what point then do you begin step four - experimentation? I guess that's why Ryan calls it a discernment process.

(I think it's awesome, by the way, that I go to school in a place that talks about listening to God and discernment. Those are such spiritual, otherworldly things. It's neat to talk about them so matter-of-factly.)

I also think that it would probably be best if the group which gathers to start the movement aren't bound together by the movement, or at least that shouldn't be their only connection. They should be bound to each other apart from the thing they are creating.

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger - Ch 2

What is the Emerging Church?

It seems few people are willing to say.

Those within "emerging churches" are hesitant to define themselves, because to do so seems to require contrasting their communities with other, older communities. They don't want to be defined by what they're not, because they formed their churches to be something, not to not be something.

Are emerging churches post-evangelical? Are they post-Protestant? Are they post-anything? No. They are evangelical and mainline and Catholic and protestant and charismatic and whatever adjective you want to add to this list. Emerging churches are just communities trying to practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures. They are not simply "relevant" churches trying to attract young people. A deeper change has taken place than simply updating the music, preaching like a stand-up comedian, and adding candles and canvasses to the worship service. Emerging communities see their world and practice their faith differently.

Gibbs and Bolger offer these nine marks of an emerging community:

1) They identify with and focus on the life of Christ more than His death and resurrection.
2) They live in and transform what Modernist thought calls the secular realm.
3) They live highly communal lives.
4) They welcome in the stranger.
5) They serve generously.
6) They participate in the worship community as producers not consumers.
7) They create out of recognition that they are created beings.
8) They lead as a body. (There is no main leader.)
9) They take part in historic spiritual disciplines.

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger - Ch 1

The book begins by explaining why Christians must be aware of culture if they want to be missional in our day and age. We must study culture because:

Jesus was incarnational, and so must we be.
Cultural understanding is key to missional practice.
Christendom (a society in which the Church has a key voice) and Modernism is in rapid decline.
Many modern church practices appeal to a culture that no longer exists.
The West's communication styles and forms have changed.
The Boomers were the last generation happy with Modern churches.
People are as spiritual as ever bu distrust institutional Christianity.
People no longer simply follow the religion of their parents.

In other words, the world has changed, and our churches have failed to change with it. Our churches largely look just like they did a hundred years ago. Sure, there have been some cosmetic changes - Power Point instead of hymnals and t-shirts instead of suits - but we haven't changed our communication styles or structures.

The chapter ends by discussion some of the key differences between UK and US culture, notably, the prevalence of dance club culture in the UK. 60% of people in their 20s and 30s are part of the UK club scene on the weekend while less than 5% attend church. There is nothing like that in the US.

Class Reflection - 10/13/09

Many emerging churches have abandoned practices that don't seem to fit culturally. For instance, some churches don't have a sermon because there is nowhere in their culture where someone stands up in front of a group and talks for twenty minutes. Instead, they'll host an art exhibition and stand around with glasses of wine and talk about how the art affects them, how it points them to God.

And that's what works for those people. We shouldn't take their wine glass and canvass approach and force it on our cultures. That would be making the same mistake those people are trying to avoid. Instead, we must do the hard work of discerning how our cultures might best worship. There are times to be counter-cultural (prophetic), but we should be very deliberate about when we perform a very different cultural practice.

A good way to do this, I think, is to allow the worship to come from the people. Don't dictate; enable.
__________________________________

Place - the physical area in which we are, such as a room
Space - the arena of communication between people

In the past, place and space were the same thing. You could only interact with someone whom you shared place with. Beginning with letter writing in a small way, but exponentially moreso today in our digital Twitter and Facebook-ified world, space is a much more fluid thing. We communicate almost completely divorced from place.

How can we bring Christ to every space? What voice does the Church have in these spaces? What should the Church's interaction be? What might God be speaking to these spaces?

I don't think we should jettison the physical place in preference for the extended spaces, but I do think we should be intentional about our interactions.

Class Reflection - 10/8/09

"The studies show that after two years of coming into church, new believers do not lead others to Christ because by that time they have severed all ties with the non-Christian world."

"[The leaders of alternative worship communities] didn't want Christians who were having their 'fun night out of naughtiness' in the pubs. They wanted Christians who were already there, whose lives already revolved around pubs."

"The reason other Christians go [to the pubs] is to support those who are already there."

Welcome to my internal struggle...

McGavran, in The Bridges of God, discusses what he sees as the proper end of the mission station. He says they should be shut down and their resources extended to support People Movements. He says the missionaries should build their own homes, get jobs in the country, and humbly help the indigenous movements flourish.

He says they should do this because the mission station and the missionaries who work there are ineffective in spreading the gospel.

Modern church movements like to espouse the benefits of "being the church" where people are. They don't seek to pull people out of their societies; they seek instead to be Christians among their community, the same community they were a part of before they became Christians. For instance, if a person comes to Christ whose life pre-Christ revolved around hanging out on a street corner with a drug dealer, the other Christians encourage the new convert to keep hanging out on the street corner with the drug dealer, much like McGavran celebrated evangelization by family members to family members.

What then am I do to?

I have been raised in the church. My friends, past and present, are mostly all Christians. I attend seminary; it's the reason I moved to California. I work at the seminary; it's how I afford to stay in California. I am also involved in ministry in my church. My life revolves around church and Church related people and things.

And I love my friends.
And I love my coworkers.
And I love where I am in life.

But I am not in community with non-Christians. By virtue of the family I was born into, the orbits of my family's life, and the orbit of my life now, I live in a "Christian" world. Separate. Sequestered. Set apart.

Have I become a mission station?

Is the only hope for me to be "shut down," my resources funneled-off to support "indigenous" movements? Am I precluded from leading Peoples to Christ because I was raised Christian? Can I only function in an ancillary role? Am I the greatest which must become the least, and if so, how do I do that?

Do I need to settle down, build a house, get a job, and learn to be part of the non-Christian society around me? Do I need to strip away all that has formed me, all that has made me who I am? What of my seminary training? What of my (oftentimes fought against) urge to minister, to pastor, to lead people in worship? Does that pursuit, and the aquarium I've entered into to be trained for that end, disqualify me from ministering, from pastoring, from leading people in worship?

I hope not, but what am I to do?

A Quick Disclaimer...

As I said on my blog post about blogging on Wednesday on Wish You Were Here, my intent is to write my class and chapter reflections in a manner that will allow you who do not know the technical language to understand what I'm writing about. I want these notes and reflections to edify you as well as me.

I've not written like this before, so I'm going to get better at it as I go, but if you have any questions at any time about a what a term means or what I'm talking about of if a concept doesn't quite make sense, please, ask questions.

You'll be doing me a favor because your questions will force me to think through these things better, I will be forced to become a better writer, and maybe you'll learn something as well.

The Bridges of God by Donald McGavran - Ch. 12

This is McGavran's wrap up/pump you up chapter. He encourages once again the pursuit of People Movements over mission stations, and calls for the Western Church to get behind him. I like his Exodus metaphor, likening the gathered households during the Passover to whole-family conversions.

Interestingly, maybe McGavran's work succeeded in halting the mission station approach, but I'm not sure People Movements were sparked in its place. If there are great People Movements happening around the globe, they need better publicity.

The Bridges of God by Donald McGavran - Ch. 11

McGavran finally address some of the questions I've had while reading his book: Are People Movements happening? How can they be supported? What would be the effects of a switch in mission strategy?

And, as I expected, he offers no answers. He simply says research must be done.

And we know now that he started the School of World Mission here at Fuller for just such a purpose. Neat.

The Bridges of God by Donald McGavran - Ch. 10

Supporting People Movements has a greater return on investment than supporting mission stations, says McGavran. I suppose this may be true, though I have no basis for understanding organizational mission of that sort.

The Bridges of God by Donald McGavran - Ch. 9

In chapter 8, McGavran describes what he feels the role of the mission should be among People Movements. He thinks the missionaries and mission energy should support the local congregations. Interestingly, he feels that the mission station should continue to do what it has been doing - school, health care, etc. - but he states that it should do these things in and among the growing churches instead of in and amongst itself. He also feels that we should let mission stations die and remold them into supporting agencies. That is a bold statement.

I really wish McGavran would offer some evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that his plan works. If there are as many People Movements going on in the world as he says, surely someone is supporting them well.

The Bridges of God by Donald McGavran - Ch. 8

McGavran's belief is that all missions support should be poured into encouraging and strengthening local peoples movements. We should help what happening from within the population of the native peoples. I disagree with his focus on finances, but I agree with him in principle.

The Bridges of God by Donald McGavran - Ch. 7

As I read McGavran's negative critique of Missions Stations and their focus on social programs and bettering society, I can't help but think of churches and Christians whose sole focus is "social justice." Now, I'm not against social justice. In fact, McGavran admits that the Mission Station approach works best in places hostile to Christianity. Is that what we have in the West? Maybe. Among some segments of our population? Absolutely.

The Bridges of God by Donald McGavran - Ch. 6

McGavran goes to great lengths in chapter 5 to describe People Movements and to argue for why People Movements are better than Mission Stations.

People Movements are when whole families come to Christ led by the family's head. He's not talking about individuals making decisions for Christ; he's talking about father's making decisions for their families. He's talking about those families evangelizing their extended families until whole peoples come to Christ.

I see where he's coming from, and I understand why he thinks this is the best model for Church growth. He is very preoccupied with proving that People Movements are acceptable forms of mission work. Ok. I agree, McGavran, now give me something more. Tell me how these People Movements start, and tell me how this might apply in the hyper-individualized West, because right now it seems to be a thing that only works in more communal societies.

The Bridges of God by Donald McGavran - Ch. 5

McGavran's discussion of the pros and cons of Mission Stations is fascinating. I saw many correlations between both attraction-oriented congregations and in-the-world congregations. Perhaps the American Church follows McGavran's sequence of the life of a Mission Station. The American Church began as this bastion of Christianity certain to transform the world. Then, over time, as that didn't happen, the American Church has become more socially focused, be that politically, with regards to matters of justice, or otherwise, just as the Mission Stations built schools and hospitals and farms.

And now, the American Church is facing the same ineffectiveness of the 19th century mission station. What's next?

The Bridges of God by Donald McGavran - Ch. 4

"Some reflection will show that a people always has its own pre-Christian religion around which the life of its members revolves."

Perhaps the "pre-Christian religion" of our people is consumerism or materialism or the like.

I also very much like McGavran's distinction between discipling and perfecting. I think he has the order right, and I think we'd do well to remember it, especially as we think about Peoples coming to Christ.

His points about leaders choosing to convert and nations following is a valid one as well.

The Bridges of God by Donald McGavran - Ch. 3

McGavran seems to make quite the supposition in this chapter. He postulates that Jews in one city corresponded with their relatives in another city so that when Paul showed up in Corinth, he had a ready audience. McGavran never really gives any evidence for this from scripture except to say that Paul saw conversions, and because Peoples are converted via familial connections, McGavran states, this must have been the case for Paul. I'm not so sure about this. I feel like McGavran is reaching to give a Biblical support to his conjecture about the proper way to do missions in the non-Western world.

The Bridges of God by Donald McGavran - Ch. 2

So, is this book then a meditation on non-Western mission only? If the West is characterized by individualism as McGavran asserts as opposed to the group-think of the rest of the world, and if this book is about evangelizing those who group-think, then will this book offer anything to me. (Doesn't that sound individualistic?)

I think so, because while I do not argue that the West isn't overwhelmingly individualistic, I do think that more and more, we are finding our individual meaning in community. I think we are moving toward a less individualistic society, or rather, a society of individuals all tied up in community.

The Bridges of God by Donald McGavran - Ch. 1

McGavran's desire for a People Movement to begin in a given area resonates with me. I long to see my generation here in the United States turn to Christ as a whole. I want everyone to know Christ. I want my generation to be known as a generation that fears the Lord.

But, I am wary of McGavran's myopic focus on large groups. It is as if he is saying that a missional effort that only results in a few souls coming to Christ is a failure. I disagree with that. Christ himself was all but alone as He hung on the cross. My point is this, we don't always see the fruits of our labor. We must be faithful to what God has called us to, even if He calls us to failure.

I am interested to see how McGavran works this out though.

Class Reflection - 10/6/09

At the end of the day, aren't we always imposing something on the culture and the people? Isn't Christ an imposition? Yes, His "yoke is easy," but He also calls His disciples to leave father and mother, to lose their lives, to call Him "Lord." Lordship is an imposition when one isn't under authority. Now, once one makes Christ Lord, one finds freedom, but at the onset, Christ is an imposition.

As a person who adores group-leadership and local expression, I love the idea of a community of people figuring out worship together. I'd love to be able to get together with whomever in my church and talk about and practice and dream about worship and how our church could best worship together. We have a monthly "worship community meeting," during which we discuss worship and worship leading. I think this is good, but it still presupposes that a certain group gets to lead worship for everyone else. It's essentially a closed group. I know that we have to start somewhere, but I'd like to see us taking steps toward a more communal expression of worship.

Class Reflection - 10/1/09

Today in class we began by hearing from each class member why they are in the class, in seminary, and why they think they are in the world. I have learned over the past year that one's fellow classmates contribute to the overall experience of the course as much as the readings, professor, and work. I think this will be a good group.

In discussing the "mission" of a particular church body, Ryan spoke briefly about hospitality and how he found that many of the on-the-edge congregations he studied considered hospitality to be the gospel, not just a means to share the gospel with people. Inviting people into one's home, eating with them, and loving them is the gospel acted out. Learning about the historical, I would say prophetic, practice of hospitality is one of the things that catalyzed my thinking on vibrant, Kingdom-establishing community.