Let's consider what a missional small group could look like....Its members love the city and talk positively about it; they speak a language that is not filled with pious tribal or technical terms and phrases, nor do they use disdainful or combative language. In their Bible study, they apply the gospel to the core concerns and stories of the people in their culture. This is a group obviously interested in and engaged with the literature, art, and thought of the surrounding culture, and they can discuss it appreciatively and yet critically. They exhibit deep concern for the poor, are generous with their money, model purity and respect toward the opposite sex, and show humility toward people of other races and cultures, as well as toward other Christians and churches.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
What an "On-Mission" Small Group Should Be
Posted with Blogsy
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Winning Ways: What It Takes to Teach the World to Sing
Duane Stanford for Businessweek reported that Coke plans to spend $12 billion on the continent of Africa this decade, more than twice as much as the previous decade. It is already the continent's largest employer, but Stanford says Coke is now in "a street-by-street campaign to win drinkers, trying to increase per-capita annual consumption of its beverages in countries not yet used to guzzling Coke by the gallon."
Current CEO, Muhtar Kent, said, "There's nowhere in Africa that we don't go. Being in a country is very easy, you can go and set up a depot in every capital city. That's not what we're about. We go to every town, every village, every community, every township."
It won't be easy. The region suffers from poverty, war, and shortages of fresh water. Political instability makes investment in factories risky, and transportation is notoriously unreliable.
But those things are just complications to work through on the way to Coke's destination, according to Nathan Kalumbu, president of the company's East & Central Africa Business Unit. He keeps a photo of a pride of lions above his desk in Nairobi as a reminder to stay aggressive. "You gotta get hungry," he says.
Maybe you remember Coke's most famous commercial, featuring sincere young people on a hillside singing--
After reading the Businessweek article, you'll see that it apparently takes a lot of sweat and coin to teach the world to sing to Coke's tune.I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.
I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.
I wonder how well we Christians match that passion when it comes to our own mission. Jesus commissioned us to make disciples within every people group in the world. So, even as we're on mission within our own neighborhoods, we send and support missionaries to other parts of the world.
The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering is one way we do that. The collection is a huge part of the funding for our International Mission Board, which provides for 5,000 missionaries around the world.
Join your church family in contributing to this Christmas offering. I challenge you to make your missions gift match the largest gift you're planning for others. Let's teach the world to sing a new song!
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Surprising Potential--For Disappointment and For Progress
"The reality of sin that remains in believers means that the church is never nearly as good and distinctive as its right beliefs should make it; common grace in nonbelievers means that the world is never as bad as its wrong beliefs should make it."
Tim Keller, Center Church, 226
Links to Your World, Tuesday November 27
"The youngsters think it is very cool to be Christian....Very soon, Christians will become the majority of university students." Mary Tan, in an article in the Guardian about the rapid growth of Christianity--conservative, Calvinistic Christianity--in China.
After a religious awakening, Angus T. Jones, the "half" in Two and A Half Men, tells everyone his show is "filth" and to stop watching it. Story.
Seven principles in thinking/praying about the "Holy Land" dispute.
Carol of the Bells, NBA-style. Fun:
"A gardener who tramples his rose bed"
From Thabiti Anyabwile's letter to an abusive husband in his church. Good post. Read it here.If Jill were my daughter, I’m afraid I’d be writing this letter from my prison to your hospital room. I know: pastors aren’t supposed to say stuff like that. But I can’t think of a better way to communicate how horrible and dark your treatment of Jill has been, and how sudden and violent God’s judgment would be as He looks on Jill, His daughter, and considers your abuse of her. I know my anger would be a pale and sinful picture of God’s. But that’s what’s most frightening: God’s anger would be perfect, just, and omnipotent. I fear that for you just as I fear the welfare of someone who would harm my girls. My girls are 14 and 12. They’re bright, energetic, funny, quick to serve, curious and outgoing. I imagine those are some of the things you’ve admired in Jill. As a father, I want my girls to be with a man who multiplies and nourishes those qualities in them. To do otherwise would be to slowly tread these beautiful creatures under foot, it would be to kill them slowly. The husband who does that is a gardener who tramples his rose bed with heavy work boots. I wouldn’t want such a husband for my daughters, and God doesn’t want that for His.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Winning Ways: From Gratitude to God
"I want to know who to thank."
My class is called The Anchor Course, based on the class textbook I wrote with the same name. As we get acquainted with each other during the first week, one of the questions I ask is what drew them to the study. Most people express their desire to find something what will give meaning to life, but I remember one woman who gave me a unique answer.
"I have a different reason to be part of this study," she said. "I just had a baby and my life is filled with so much joy. I want to know who to thank."
What a profound statement! This young woman recognized that much of the wonder and joy in her life could not be attributed to anything she had earned. Perhaps for the first time in her life, she felt an overwhelming sense of what could only be described as gratitude, and for her that implied a Giver. It led her on a search for someone to thank.
We can be like pigs that came upon apples on the ground: we can enjoy the sweet things of life without ever looking up to see where they came from.
It’s true that a lot of people experience unfair pain and disappointment, but we are not looking at all the facts if we simply point to the undeserved heartbreaks of life and conclude that an attentive God doesn’t exist. We have to take into account the undeserved joys of life, too. When we do, like the young woman with her new baby, we will ask, “I want to know if there’s someone to thank for all this.”
David, the beloved poet-king of the Old Testament, had someone to thank. In one of his poems, overwhelmed with a sense of wonder and gratitude, he said to himself--
This Thanksgiving season, let a heart of gratitude lead you to the Someone you can thank!Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget none of His benefits.”
(Psalms 103:2 NASB)
(For more information on The Anchor Course, go here: www.lulu.com/spotlight/anchorcourse)
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Links to Your World, Tuesday November 20
Facebook posts lead to church discipline. Well duh.
The Gerber Baby turns 85:
The most troubling violation of human rights? Conversion, says the U.N.
"Baby-boom Americans who remember the student protests of the 1960s tend to assume that U.S. colleges are still some of the freest places on earth. But that idealized university no longer exists. It was wiped out in the 1990s by administrators, diversity hustlers and liability-management professionals, who were often abetted by professors committed to political agendas....[And] if you're going to get in trouble for an opinion on campus, it's more likely for a socially conservative opinion." (story)
Is second grade the right time for a public school to talk with your kids about homosexual household arrangements? AISD rightly decided this was a subject to be raised by parents, not the school district.
The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being (homo), and it is almost a monstrous crime to rob it of life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man’s house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.
Tim Keller, from his absolutely essential book, Counterfeit Gods:
If our counterfeit god is threatened in any way, our response is complete panic. We do not say, ‘What a shame, how difficult,’ but rather ‘This is the end! There’s no hope!’ This may be a reason why so many people now respond to U.S. political trends in such an extreme way. When either party wins an election, a certain percentage of the losing side talks openly about leaving the country. They become agitated and fearful for the future. They have put the kind of hope in their political leaders and policies that once was reserved for God and the work of the gospel. When their political leaders are out of power, they experience a death.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
"...and you will live and die a happier and better man"
In the summer of 1864, Lincoln invited his Kentucky friend Joshua Speed to spend an evening with him. When Speed arrived, he found Lincoln reading the Bible. Speed said, "I am glad to see you profitably engaged." "Yes," replied Lincoln, "I am profitably engaged." "Well," Speed continued, "If you have recovered from your skepticism, I am sorry to say that I have not." Lincoln rose, placed his hand on Speed's shoulder, and said, "You are wrong, Speed. Take all of this book upon reason that you can and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier and better man."
Ronald C White Jr. I recommend his A. Lincoln : A Biography
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
"Some rather partisan decisions"
From a critique of Ross Douthat's Bad Religion in the Houston Baptist University publication, The City.Though it in no way deserves unquestioning allegiance, the Republican Party--and the conservative movement more broadly--is at least principally on the right side of many issues according to a biblical worldview....Politics involves parties, and factions, and necessary choices must be made by the faithful within this framework....When one side consistently stands for life and permanent, God-ordained institutions, while the other wants the legal right to crush the skulls of fetuses with forceps and tear down traditional marriage, even Christians who are not professional politicians will have to make some rather partisan decisions.
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Winning Ways: Vague Commands?
That's what a Canadian university professor tried to argue in a 2002 traffic case. Rod Yellon, a University of Manitoba assistant professor was fighting a ticket he got for allegedly rolling through a stop sign. He actually challenged the very constitutionality of stop signs, claiming that without "standards and frequencies of calibration, performance and testing" they are simply too vague.
The judge brought a conviction before Yellon could get too far. Which is too bad, because Yellon's planned strategy included calling a "perceptual psychologist" to testify that police could not have judged that he rolled the stop sign because they were also moving at the time. I bet I'm not the only one who would have liked to have seen the court transcript on that.
We might chuckle at Yellon's absurd claim that the word "stop" is too vague. Then again, how often do we try that one with God? In his 10 Commandments, he says, "Stop!" but the way we behave its as if we're saying, "God, you really haven't defined your expectations clearly enough."
Someone has said, "Countless people who claim to follow the Ten Commandments just never seem to catch up with the Ten Commandments." We're finding out just how hard that is to do in our Fall study. The deeper we take each commandment, and the more thoroughly we apply each one to every aspect of life, the more we realize we need the Son's forgiveness and the Spirit's power. Otherwise, we don't stand a chance!
It's certainly true with the Ninth Word, which we'll look at this Sunday. God prohibits the fabricated report, the too-quick assumption, the elaborated story. He says, "When it comes to false witness against your neighbor--stop!" There's nothing vague about it, but, oh, we're more clever than Yellon at trying to wiggle out of this one! I've been both victim and perpetrator of exaggerated accusations, and you have, too.
Let's join together this Sunday and seek God's help with overcoming this crippling flaw. As usual, we meet for worship @ 10am, followed by small-group gatherings @ 11am. These last 3 weeks of November we have 2 more commandments to examine, and then a Sunday to wrap up the whole Fall study. Do your part to help us end this unified church study with a strong attendance! See you Sunday!
_____
Each Wednesday I post the devotional from my enewsletter, Winning Ways. To subscribe, click here.
Challenges to Contextualization
The subject of contextualization is particularly hard to grasp for members of socially dominant groups. Because ethnic minorities must live in two cultures--the dominant culture and their own subculture--they frequently become aware of how deeply culture affects the way we perceive things....
In the United States..., Anglo Christians sometimes find talk of contextualization troubling. They don't see any part of how they express or live the gospel to be 'Anglo'--it is just the way things are. They feel that any change in how they preach, worship, or minister is somehow a compromise of the gospel. In this they may be doing what Jesus warns against--elevating the 'traditions of men' to the same level as biblical truth (Mark 7:8).
What Churches Must Adapt and Why
From his book, Center ChurchContextualization is not--as is often argued--'giving people what they want to hear.' Rather, it is giving people the Bible's answers, which they may not at all want to hear, to questions about life that people in their particular time and place are asking, in language and forms they can comprehend, and through appeals and arguments with force they can feel, even if they reject them.
Tuesday, November 06, 2012
Links to Your World, Election Day, Tuesday November 6
A calculator that determines how much Obama and Romney are spending on you to get your vote.
5 Ways Presidents Affect the Prolife Cause
"Peter Jackson's "Hobbit" movie is on its way, and with it will come the resurrection of the vile dragon Smaug. With fiery breath, razor-sharp claws, scales as hard as shields and a vast underground lair, Smaug is portrayed in J.R.R. Tolkien's text as a merciless killer. But where did the idea for such a bizarre beast—with such an odd mixture of traits—come from in the first place?" Matt Kaplan explains.
Air New Zeland has a new safety video for their flights. Its based on Tolkien characters, of course:
"In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Atlantic City officials warned Friday that it could take weeks or even months for the storm-ravaged gambling hub to fully repair its infrastructure and get back to utterly and completely ruining people’s lives." The Onion