Kingdom Come!

Well Peggy (whom I met a the Allelon gathering at Seabeck) read my yesterday blog about time and had (her words) a “bit of a blog storm.”  Seems she did double-duty after reading super-blogger Scot McKnight over at Jesus Creed.

Well, I’m humbled.  Peggy is a blogging, thinking “contemplative practitioner” in the Pacific Northwest .  (“Contemplative practitioner” is a phrase Bill Taylor used to describe the kind of missionary needed in the 21^st century.  We met in a North Africa Partnership conference in Malta some years back.  I’ve used the phrase often since then, cause I like it!)

It’s been a whirlwind week.  The Globe Missions Conference was amazing.  A great time but very tiring.  So the office is closed today and I’m spending a day with my Honey (AKA Phyllis).

I had a great time with a bunch of folks.  I especially liked the time with Josh and Akiko Jones.  They are an awesome young couple doing a church plant in Japan . 

Andreas and Marion Pestke - our German friends on their way to Nicaragua - are out of our house for a few days.  They’re travelling with Brad and Jan Thurston in Alabama and then back next week for the Globe Summit.  The house is quiet without them.

And now a word from our sponsor…

Someone asked me how we do what we do, and I answered that it’s through “missionary support.”  That is a code word for donors and contributors.  So just in case someone out there cyberspace wanted to help us continue doing what we do, you can click here and give all day long!  Any amount is ok!  However many zeros you want to include on the end of the number is fine!  We’ll use it to keep ourselves fed, clothed, housed and healthy so that we can do the stuff God has for us to do.  Enough said…  Thanks.

And now back to the show…

I believe in missions done well.  I believe in men and women taking Jesus’ words serous enough to sacrificially lay aside the “good life” and the American Dream to serve a bigger Dream and see the Kingdom of God – His loving rule and reign – established in the lives of men and women around the world. 

I don’t like “missions” being delegated to an underfunded and neglected department of the church or relegated to an annual offering or Missions Sunday.  I don’t like missionaries relegated to super-hero status nor left out in the cold when they limp home with stories so out of the zone that people’s eyes glaze over.  I don’t like missionaries belittled by uber-pastors who feel superior having 500 spectators, when missionaries labor in primitive conditions and have 12 disciples. 

And I don’t like the sacrifice of traveling zillions of miles, living on a shoestring while learning languages and starting from scratch equated to a youth group making a two week pre-planned safe and solid missions trip.

I believe in missions done well; with sacrifice, patience, wisdom and hope.  I believe in missions done well that results in disciples being made and churches being planted.  Whether in New York or New Delhi, Nairobi or Newark, Seattle, Sarasota or Katmandu . 

As Sandy Carter (a Globe Missionary who herself can be quite a rock star) once said, “Missions isn’t glamorous – if it’s done right.”

Over at Allelon they’ve posted a great talk from a David Fitch regarding missional orders.  It’s a great little chat and echos the meeting at Seabeck back in October.  I’m so glad that I was able to do the Seabeck gig!  It was an amazing time with some amazing folks.  And frankly, I’m not sure where it will go!  But I’m in for the long haul!

Allelon has a new video regarding the Seabeck meetings and the formation of a missional order.  Some cool folks say some cool things!  I’m amazed at how articulate some people are… and then there’s me.  I say “cool” several times in the video (just like I’ve done here), obviously indicating that I have a highly developed vocabulary and sense of purpose in life… Cool, huh?

Peggy is blogging like a wild woman about the Allelon un-conference, non-retreat we attended last week.  She’s unpacking what we actually did in such a great way, I’m not going to try.  I’m processing so much anyway that my head seems to spin.

I keep thinking and reflecting on how we can implement what we (this diverse group of lame dogs, brilliant thinkers, reflective practitioners, bloggers and pranksters) discovered together.  For me it was sometimes holy and spiritual and sometimes overwhelmingly cerebral!  YIKES!

One of the things I keep thinking through was an Alan Roxburgh’s chat regarding “making do.”  He discusses this here in great detail. 

I’m reminded that the early Charismatic movement of the ’70’s (at least where I was involved) was about “making do” in small intimate groups with no real impact or influence.  It was about meeting in clandestine groups for intimate worship, Bible exploration, food and camaraderie.   We had discovered something wonderful and dynamic and life-changing.  But we weren’t welcome to practice these things in the “organized” church.  These groups eventually became dynamic “organized” churches themselves influencing thousands over many years as they shared what they had found “making do.” 

And I think of some new friends: disenfranchised people - beat up, hurt, injured - by the Christendom system.  (The Machine, as they call it.)  These folks are just “making do,” meeting together, eating together.  Sometimes critical; sometimes bitter; sometimes hurting.  But in their “making do” there is a gentle subversion and erosion going on in the whole system.

YIKES!  That’s what was happening at Seabeck.

I am committed to being part of the solution, however subversive it might be.  Phyllis and I want to see people transformed and empowered to live out their destiny with joy and koinonia. 

I’ve said way too much…

I’ve spent a few days recently in Seabeck, a tiny hamlet on Hood Canal in Washington State .  I was with a wonderful group of people from all over the place.  It was a terrific time of conversation, contemplation, worship and joy.

We were there to talk about forming a Missional Order.  And I was there because of my great desire to see the Church be the Church!  To see men and women empowered and activated to fulfill their destiny in God and see Jesus made famous because of and through His People.  (My definition of “destiny” is: a non-transferable assignment from God!  Not sure it’s original, but it’s a good definition!)
 

A missional order – if I understand it, and I’m processing a lot! – is a band of people committed to bringing the church back to it’s partnership with God in His Mission!  From Consumers to Companions!

I met great people there who are famous on the web and in their blogs:  Andrew Jones,  Blind Beggar, Brother Maynard (whose real name is not really Maynard), Len Hjalmarson, and Bill Kinnon among others who are not blog-famous.  It was amazing to just hang out with these guys and talk about the Kingdom stuff.  Yikes!  these are big-name people! (Me, myself, I’m mostly famous in my own mind…)

I guess as I think this through and do research there are several things I need to note (and hey! I’m just thinking out-loud here, so give me some grace, okay…):

• We live in a post-Christian – or at least post-Christendom – world.  Where in the past we had (especially in the USA ) enjoyed a privileged position in society where many Christian “virtues” and morals were protected and encouraged by government, we no longer have them.  Now my experience in returning to live in the USA after fifteen years living overseas is that the church has lost its “home-field advantage.”  It’s no longer the favored religion.  It no longer sets the moral compass for the community.  It no longer has an understood-by-the-community prophetic voice.  And most church leaders are just angry.  Mad.  Wanting to go to Washington and get it fixed.  Get laws enacted.  Get back to our privileged position.  Ahhh, the good old days.
• The Church has become about consumers and consumption.  We have developed a church-culture where people come to receive (consume) what’s served up by the system (paid people + programs + entertainment + rhetoric).  They are no committed to actually participating personally in God’s Mission as much as they are committed to being consumers of what God has done.
• A “missional order” has a precedent.  During the Middle Ages, when the Church found itself in trouble – acculturated, encumbered and ineffective – for what ever reasons, religious orders committed to God’s Mission came into being.  I’ve been reading David Bosch’s Transforming Mission (pp 230-238) and I can see the power of the missional monastic orders that came into being.
• A “missional order” is a sodality in the church, not something para-church.  The order is there not compete, but to enhance and instruct.

So, if indeed we are moving into a new world (actually we’re already there!), we need something like a missional order to help preserve and promote God’s Mission .

I can see it.  I can somehow feel it.  I taste it.  But I’m working on getting my head around it all.  After all, hey! I’m just a recovering redneck fundamentalist boy from Georgia .  What do I know about any of this?

More later…