What is a Missional Church anyway?

I've been posting a lot about Missional Church lately. Here's a little bit of clarification about this model I'm strongly resonating with.

Are we welcome?

This past Sunday we had a service where our youth sent in questions via text message and our team took turns answering them. I was struck by one of the questions, "My parents and I used to be Jehovah's Witness and now we've made up our own religion. Are we welcome at Shoreline?" Most of my thoughts were drawn from Shaping of Things to Come, The: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church

• First off, I posted about our predominant culture's posture towards 'do it yourself' religion and was not surprised to see it show up in our youth meeting. 
• I also spoke to her about our Church's philosophy. Shoreline wishes to engage Austin's culture and to say that they were not welcome to attend our services based on their beliefs of behavior wouldn't sit well with our leadership. We don't make attendance about belief and behavior, however we make no apology for teaching very specific things about how we believe and how our church family should behave. 
• Then, there was almost sadness in the question. "Are we welcome?" That part of the text, as it was read aloud broke my heart. In it I heard a longing for community, for belonging, and for connection. This is so prevalent in our culture, regardless of age. 

How about your experience with church communities? What is your experience with church community?  Are there things that people do or believe that would make them unwelcome?

Is there one way to Heaven?

In a service on Christmas day, our worship pastor made a comment about Jesus being the only way to Heaven. The claim was a little more direct than we usually make, but I thought it was well in the appropriate bounds for a Christian worship gathering. I knew there was a Muslim man attending our service to watch his son perform in our service. I remember glancing his way to see his reaction and I was surprised to see him clapping. Even more so, he came up to me after service to tell me how much he enjoyed worshipping with us and to thank me for mentoring his son.

That's not the first surprise. The people who were offended by the claim were from our congregation. This week, these two youtube videos are assigned viewing in my Contemporary Cultures class at Fuller. 

What do you think of these? Is there one way to Heaven or are there multiple ways? Has Oprah gone off the deep end here? How would you respond to these women?

I'm pretty conservative in my beliefs, but I'd like to know what you think. 

I want to be missional.

I've been a way a while because of work and school, but I have been reading a lot and I'm ready to start posting again. This one is longer than usual, but it encapsulates what I've been chewing on and wrestling with in my life and calling. I hope you enjoy!


The missional church is incarnational, not attractional, in its ecclesiology. By incarnational we mean it does not create sanctified spaces into which unbelievers must come to encounter the gospel. Rather, the missional church disassembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society in order to be Christ to those who don’t yet know him.

The missional church is messianic, not dualistic, in its spirituality. That is, it adopts the worldview of Jesus the Messiah, rather than that of the Greco-Roman empire. Instead of seeing the world as divided between the sacred (religious) and profane (nonreligious), like Christ it sees the world and God’s place in it as more holistic and integrated.

The missional church adopts an apostolic, rather than a hierarchical, mode of leadership. By apostolic we mean a mode of leadership that recognizes the fivefold model detailed by Paul in Ephesians 4. It abandons the triangular hierarchies of the traditional church and embraces a biblical, flat-leadership community that unleashes the gifts of evangelism, apostleship, and prophecy, as well as the currently popular pastoral and teaching gifts.

Frost, Michael; Hirsch, Alan (2001-01-01). Shaping of Things to Come, The (Kindle Locations 346-356). Baker Book Group. Kindle Edition.

New Audio Link

Last fall I participated in a discussion hosted by Dave Brown who writes the agnostic pentecostal blog. Here's the LINK for the audio portion. I honestly spent most of the night listening to all the smart people talk and added very little, but I left feeling very encouraged by the discussion.

Random thoughts from around the house.

The New Neighbors

   A while ago construction began on a new house in our neighborhood. Most of the houses were built in the early to mid 1990's, so we curiously watched the frame go up. Marie and I were surprised to see architecture not common to our area of Texas. We've  often laughed at how different this house looks than all the others in our neighborhood. 

After a couple of months of wondering, I finally saw what seemed to be the owners of this new property leaving their home. The man driving the car had a very long beard and was wearing a cap. From his dress and beard he might be muslim. After observing those things I put  that information in my back pocket and proceeded with my jog around the neighborhood. I didn't think much of it. On my way back home I decided to jog by the new structure for a closer look and what I found disturbed me. 

From the street I could see that a couple of windows were broken from what looks like things thrown at them from the street. Any act of vandalism in my neighborhood troubles me, but if it is because the family's religion, race, or architectural choice, then I'm even more disturbed.  At best, I'm hoping it was just mischievous teens or something like that.

Either way, this broken window reminds me that it is supposed to be good news for my neighborhood that my family lives there. Our presence should be good news for muslim families, hindu families, and immigrants from all over. If the Collins' home is an embassy of another kingdom, what creative ways can Marie, Ella, and me be a light to dark places? For now I will pray for this new home and the people that will live in it. I pray for their peace, their wholeness and for God's love to be continually unveiled to them. I will pray for opportunities to serve them and to show them that they matter to God and others.

The Grill

 In other neighborhood news, I finally got the courage to open the lid of a grill that the previous owners of our house left in our back yard, nearly three years ago. Clearly it was in bad shape from the way it looked on the outside and our house was in such bad shape when we bought it, I just didn't have the energy to fiddle around with the grill or throw it away. It sat outside our back window until a few weeks ago. 

Finally, I opened it up and realized that it was not a lost cause after all. After a trip to the hardware wasn't store, some elbow greese and about $35 we had a really nice new grill to cook on! I actually replaced the burner (pictured above). It's probably not a big deal for most, but it was for me. It felt a little silly realizing the treasure we had sitting right under our nose! "Surely God was in this place and I did not know it." For me this was bigger than just a gas grill but an example of how I face some problems in life. Sometimes, I think they are a bigger deal than they really are.

What are you intimidated by? Are there relationships or problems that seem too rusted, dilapidated, and unfixable? Don't write off people, obstacles, or brokenness in your world. You may have a treasure or an opportunity for God to help you right under your nose too!

Walking the Bible: Part I

      The second time through this book is even better than the first! I also own the DVD documentary that Bruce Feiler made about his experience tracing the story of the first five books of the bible. His adventure greatly inspired me along my own journey of faith. Last night I was reading about Bruce's inquiries into Biblical Archeology.

     He was talking to Gabi Barkay, an accomplished Archeologist. Gabi is also a great resource when it comes to the Bible's relationship to historical fact.He guided Bruce through this tricky relationship.


     "I'm a local Jew," he said. "I don't care whether this or that detail is incorrect in the Bible. It doesn't change my attitude toward the Bible, toward religion, toward God. Or toward myself. But In America, there was an idea that the Bible is a kind of machine; if you prove that two of the screws really existed, then the whole machine existed, and if you take out two of the screws, the whole thing collapses. But the Bible is not a machine. It doesn't have screws."

   Gabi switched on a light for me in many ways. First of all, I noticed how my western mind and cultural influence effected the way I look at the Bible. I had to ask some tough questions about what I believe, which I think strengthened my faith in the end. Lastly, he taught me that the writers of the first testament (most Christians call it the Old Testament) did not have an interest in recording history as we know it today. I can't expect the writers of these texts to anticipate what people thousands of years in the future would be interested in. They recorded a magnificent story about land, people, creation, and redemption.

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Book Flood

I've been going through a dry spell when it comes to reading. Part of me really misses the time I had in Japan to absorb so many ideas from books and pod casts. My grandmother gave me some book money, so I went wild on Amazon's used books. Thanks MIMI!!!!!! I've eyeballed most of these since Rob Bell's Poets//Prophets//Preachers conference in 2004. It's taken me since then to get through his suggested reading list. I'm a little more than 3/4 through it.

Here's what I bought.

If Grace is True: Why God Will Save Every Person by Phillip Gulley

Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel by Brian McLaren

Exodus: The Traditional Hebrew Text With the New Jps Translation

Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler

Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill

Sketches of Jewish Social Life by Alfred Edersheim

Where God Was Born

I'll wind up talking about this book quite a bit, but some history is required before I begin. This is my fourth Feiler book. His first book Walking The Bible awakened my interest in the Jewish roots of the Christian faith. I tore through the huge volume in one sitting and grew very attached to Bruce Feiler's writing style. Then, I was introduced to Learning to Bow (his story about teaching English in Japan) just before my wife and I moved to Japan to teach English for a year. His book was an ESL bible for us that year and was like looking into our future. We were prepared in advance for the culture shock we'd face. The Third book was Abraham: A Journey into the Heart of Three Faiths. It was an excellent follow up effort to Walking Through the bible and it got me through many tough days in Japan. Over the years I've really grown to enjoy his writing. It has inspired me to get to know G-d better and to lean as much as I can about the roots of my faith.
In his latest book, he picks up where Walking the bible left off and goes on a journey that stopped at the end of the Torah, and he continues through the end of the Hebrew Bible. I've been chewing on this book in my head for the past few months. I read it before bed and meditate on the biblical insight Feiler gives. I've 99 more pages to go, but some of the posts in the cooker are on David as a rogue mercenary, the importance of exile to Jewish and Christian faith, and Cyrus G-d's anointed.

Looking forward...