Neil Cole writes ::
We must transition from seeing church as a once-a-week worship event to an ongoing spiritual family on mission together. Then people will see church as something worth giving your life for. Honestly, people need one another more then they need another inspiring message. You would be surprised what people will do for Jesus, or for a brother or sister, that they will not do for a vision statement and a capital giving campaign.
(HT @emergentvillage)
Marketing guru Seth Godin gave an interview to StreamingFaith.com. They naturally talked church and social media/marketing ::
Faith matters. A lot. Religion often gets in the way of faith. Religion, the scolding, rules-based part of religion, the part used as a lever in life or politics to insist that people follow a certain person or a certain idea… that’s not spreading so fast online.
But faith, faith is the salve we’ve always wanted and still want. Barack Obama offers a lot of people a different kind of faith, and we can see how it resonates. People want to believe, they want to be surrounded by people who believe and they want to feel good about it. What an opportunity.
(HT @stewartcutler – btw you can hear @stewartcutler and @headphonaught chat about advent on this week’s @sbpodcast)
Kingdom Coming from Shaun Groves on Vimeo.
Thoughts? Many great things here.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Download Shaun’s free song :: www.shaungroves.com/freemusic
Posed this question via Twitter (and Facebook) today.
Q of the day :: (140 characters or less) what would your ideal church/community of faith look like?
Here are the responses thus far…
Jess_Hays @jdblundell a gathering together of christ-followers accepting of each others brokeness united to worship our savior. Small and intimate.
darrinreeves @jdblundell it would look like a festival I was at this summer…no one batted an eyelid about what you looked like etc…it had all sorts
truckerfrank @jdblundell A Scottish pub
truckerfrank @Jess_Hays Drat your answer is better than mine. I’m going to pout.
robgt2 @jdblundell re qotd – church would be in/own a community center and serve the community. Or in St. Arbucks! And like @truckerfrank’s.
What would you add?
Happy Reformation Day?
Some of you are thinking “What the heck?! It’s halloween! Or maybe at least All Saint’s Eve or All Hallow’s Eve.”
And yes that’s true – but you can find out about that other holiday somewhere else.
Instead – we’ll celebrate Reformation Day around this here blog. Reformation Day is the celebration of the anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 Thesis on the church doors of the Whittenberg in Germany.
What was initially posted as a Luther’s hope to start a debate in the things he was learning and reading about as a Biblical professor, started a revolution (reformation) in the church – leading to his excommunication from the church and the protestant movement.
Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light,
the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg,
under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther,
Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in
Ordinary on the same at that place. Wherefore he requests that
those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us,
may do so by letter.
I doubt Luther had any idea that his 95 Thesis, posted on Oct. 31, 1517, would end up being spread so rapidly to “the people” with the help of a recent invention of Johann Gutenberg, known as the “printing press.”
Who would have thought that the masses would begin reading, thinking about and debating these “high level theological thoughts” like sacramental penance vs inward repentance, the fallacy of the pope, the remittance of sin by the pope and indulgences used to build sanctuaries for the church? I mean seriously, ordinary folks can debate these kind of things?! “That’s heracy!” — or so the church thought at the time (and many continue to think today).
Imagine what might happen if folks started talking about God and debating theology in the bars and pubs of today? Imagine if there was some sort of medium that might spread these ideas and discussions around the world? Imagine if suddenly our theology stopped coming from trained pastors and priests who study for years at schools of higher education and suddenly started coming from Joe Six Pack at your local pub and was shared with folks via Twitter or Wikipedia or other emerging websites to Joe Plumber who lives in Russia or Idaho? Imagine if theology was debating and discussed and lived out in community rather than simply handed down by one central source?
Yeah we wouldn’t want that to happen today. Far from it.
I heard a couple great thoughts today while listening to some of Martin Luther’s bio today via Tripp Fuller and Craig Atwood (hint – you should listen to this great podcast as well and these are loose quotes from memory) ::
“I came to see Christ as my Savior rather than the hangman.”
“Folks got real nervous when Martin Luther began to take his faith seriously.”
“The priests and religious leaders start to get real nervous when people get excited about religion.”
So today I celebrate Reformation Day. Today I celebrate Priests in the Hood (aka the Priesthood of the believers) and hope you do too.
Here are Martin Luther’s 95 Thesis translated to English (and in the original intention of these thesis, your debate, comments and discussions are welcome here) ::
Here are the notes I took from Matt Chandlers message “Vision of a church planter”
a church on mission ::
understands the centrality of the Gospel
committed to the authoritative, infallible, inherent, inspired all sufficient Scriptures
embraces the calling of God as sent missionaries into our own surroundings
– we’re where we are – to engage the world where we are for the purposes of God
actively seeking to be trained and equipped as missionaries
– doesn’t work programmatically
– how do you reach 20-30 year olds? – get the 50 year olds
dependent upon the Holy Spirit to use us to evangelize the entire world
develops relationships with the lost for the purpose of incarnating the lost for Christ
– leaders in missional church must be willing to die. die to self. die to stuff.
humbly helps others to find Jesus in their own timing rather than forcing them to make superficial decisions for their own glory
is committed to practicing faith in community
worships God in a relational, personal authentic way
– “worship is the enemy of evangelism” is not true
a church on mission is a theologically formed, Gospel centered, Spirit led fellowship who seeks to faithfully incarnate the purposes of Christ
the mission of the church is found in the mission of God who passionately invites us participate in Gods redemption of the world
what are you thinking? listen and see what notes you take and then share them. let’s continue the conversation.