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.”

My friend Andrew Jones has a great article about self supporting missions.  Several suprising things here:

• Andrew blogs as Tall Skinny Kiwi for a good reason… he’s tall, extremely skinny and from New Zealand (Kiwiland) 
• Andrew and his family live in Scotland.  I first “met” Andrew via the internet while he and his family lived in Prague and we lived in Nicosia.
• Andrew has lived all over the blooming world - including San Francisco - and has been involved in organic church planting, etc. everywhere he’s been.
• Andrew and I were last together at Seabeck, WA last October.
• His article quotes CMS (Anglican Church Mission Society) secretary Henry Venn regarding indiginazation and “3-self churches” from the 1850’s!  Very cool.  And sad.  Since he reflects a totally non-19th nor 20th century approach to Church planting (CP).

It’s worth the read.  Short, sweet, to the point.  As we continue to look at ways to plant churches, it’s good to look over our shoulders at the wisdom of others.

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?

I’ve been reading Ed Stetzer’s blog regarding the meanings of “missional.”  You can read them here.   And I never though there was so much baggage attached to “missional” and “missio dei!” 

Where have I been?  What have I been doing?  Oh yeah, I’ve been out there  trying to join God in His mission to redeem the whole wide world and establish His Kingdom rule in the hearts an minds of everybody!  And thinking that missio dei was a cool way of saying it!  Missed  the fireworks - some happened before I was born! - but happy to use the words!  I think they’re appropriate and carry the right meaning in the way most folks I know are using them today!  (Although there are some serious co-opters out there who have shanghied the word “missional” to serve as a cool new word for attractional church stuff.  It ain’t!  It’s more tha that!)

Also, my new friend Rick Meigs (we met at Seabeck) over at Friends of Missional does a tremendous post (I know this is old stuff, but I’m just catching up, right?) about what it means to be missional.

And BTW, Len over at Next Reformation is no longer looking for community!  A pretty powerful post.  But then Len is a deep, deep guy with great heart.

Brad, my new Seabeck front porch rocking-chair buddy, has tagged me to do the 30-20-10 history gig.  He wants me to blog my history in decade increments.  So that requires that I think back, so here goes…

30 years ago… that would make it 1977… I was a just a mere twinkle in my daddy’s eye - gone bad.  By about 26 years!  Yikes!  Phyllis - my college sweetheart - and I had been married about 5 years and have no children.  We are living in a small South Georgia hamlet called Hahira - 2000 people, cats and dogs.  I am the controller and personnel manager of a small private hospital and part of the leadership in a cell-church store-front plant.  We don’t know anything about church planting, cell churches or anything really.  We’re just newly filled with the Spirit, coming from a background that taught (by neglect) that gifts ceased with the Apostles and that speaking in tongues indicated that the person was “one brick short of a load” (or as one friend prefers, “one sandwich short of a picnic”).  We are surrounded by a host of great people (many of whom still remain our friends and supporters!) who have input into our lives and for whom we are accountable.  It is a great time.  We as a church reach out to the widows and young people of the town.  We ran a Friday night movie and popcorn for the kids (mostly black) who could not afford to go out and get in trouble in the bigger towns.   (Unfortunately, everything imploded about 5 years later through difficulties in the leadership.  There was - I might add - no sexual misconduct or financial impropriety.  We lost much of our missional vision and things began to be about command and control… so along with a small band of followers, we left.)

Fast forward… 20 years ago (1987)… (Please hum along) …it was twenty years ago today; Sgt Pepper taught the band to play… Now we are living in Valdosta, Georgia, the “big city” of our South Georgia world.  Zachary is seven years old, driving his mother crazy because he’s so smart and stubborn.  And Jane our blue-eyed girl is a newborn. We live between the fraternity houses at Valdosta State College so at night there is always a bass-beat somehow permeating the air.  On campus and in our home, I do numerous Bible studies and teaching events and travel to three other colleges in Georgia.  Our emphasis is on making disciple-making disciples, teaching them to believe and do.  Although our campus ministry is independent and contributor-supported, we are part of a dynamic charismatic church family.  The pastor and I are great friends.  We are seeing good things happen on all fronts.  The church has a great vision for missions, church-planting, worship and discipleship.  It is balanced and growing.  Our campus ministry is about community and the Word.  We have two Koinonia houses around campus and Kingship Groups on-campus.

Another decade… Yikes!  10 years ago (1997)… Phyllis, Zach, Jane and I are now living in Nairobi, Kenya.  We are “faith missionaries” (that means we raise our own support) with Globe International.  I travel all over East Africa (and beginning this year - I think - into Egypt) teaching in leadership seminars mainly among indigenous churches and denominations.  I also oversee Manna Bible School in the hills outside the city.  Manna is a three-year interrupted-service school, bringing pastors and church leaders in for classes three times per year.  My children attend Rosslyn Academy.  Phyllis is active on-campus with Mom’s In Touch.  I work with a tremendous Kenyan team at Manna.  The school has grown from twelve students to around 125; from three times a year to a 12 month school.  We are seeing great success.  Our biggest struggle is financial not so much spiritual or relational.

So, Brad et al, this is the Hatcher History lesson.  Somehow we’ve always been about  discipleship and preparing the next generation.

I’m reminded of the quote offered at Seabeck by Pete from Northumbria…

“The restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ. I think it is time to gather people together to do this.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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…