DashHouse

Missional Stuff

Two new great missional resources are online today.

One is Missional Tribe, a site that looks to be full of great resources from missional practitioners. Bill Kinnon and some other friends are behind this initiative. Bill describes some of the history behind the site here. It's easy to sign up and participate.

ALso, J.D. Greear is beginning a new series of posts on mission to postmoderns:

The most difficult culture for which to contextualize the Gospel is your own...Modern Western culture is the most rapidly changing culture ever in history, with new trends emerging every eight to ten years. Those who do Christian ministry the same way their childhood churches did it may find themselves wielding decreasing influence in a culture now foreign to them.

Worth checking out.

Moved

I've made the move to TypePad:

• 6 blogs
• 3,382 posts
• 7,022 comments

Things are still pretty new. It's like moving into a new home. It's builder's white, and some stuff has not yet found its place, but it's clean. I'm hoping this will outsource some of the technical details of running a blog so I can focus on other stuff, like writing. We'll see how things go.

That was crazy

I'm trying to move to Typepad. You may have noticed that moving the domain didn't go so well, at least yet. So I'm back here for now until I can figure things out a bit better. Who knows, maybe I'll keep things here. Maybe Movable Type isn't so bad after all.

Sometimes our efforts to simplify can make like complex.

The right theme for starting a new year

I read these a couple of nights ago. They're helping me hope for something different in the coming year.

We tend to value the "confident, competent, and successful." These verses challenge me to want to be something completely different: "someone who has been broken by the knowledge of his or her sin, and even greater knowledge of Jesus' costly grace" (Tim Keller).

His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his delight in the power of human legs;
the LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.
(Psalm 147:10-11)

These are the ones I look on with favor:
those who are humble and contrite in spirit,
and who tremble at my word.
(Isaiah 66:2)

Something completely different to hope for. I want it.

Favorite things from 2008

No, I'm not Oprah, although we may be in the same weight class. Because I'm not Oprah, I won't be giving away free stuff. But I can tell you some of what I've enjoyed the most in 2008.

Books - My favorite book of the year is actually an old one: The Heart of a Servant Leader by Jack Miller. It's a compilation of letters written by Jack Miller, pastor of New Life Presbyterian and founder of World Harvest Mission. They're so full of gospel that I keep a copy on my desk so I can read a letter or two when I need to be re-centered. An excellent book.

I didn't reach my reading goals this year, but I thoroughly enjoyed Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor (a must-read if you are an ordinary pastor), Why We're Not Emergent (strikes a good tone in its critique), volumes one and two of Iain Murray's biography of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (which reminded me that most of the issues we deal with really aren't new), and Tim Keller's new books The Prodigal God and The Reason for God (the gospel for believers and unbelievers). Unpacking Forgiveness by Chris Brauns was also a highlight from the year.

Blogs - I read way too many blogs, but three of my favorites are newer. Trevin Wax is an awesome book reviewer and an insightful blogger. I love his stuff. Tullian Tchividjian is a must-read. Another newish one is Ed Stetzer's blog. The more I read him, the more I like him. I could probably list about fifty that I really appreciate, but these three would be at the top of the list.

By the way, I keep seeing my friend Bill Kinnon's blog making the list of people's favorites, and he deserves it.

Blog Post - For some reason, this post by Steve McCoy called "How I hit REFRESH" stands out as the most helpful post I read all year.

Sermon Downloads - When I have a Tim Keller sermon and a Matt Chandler sermon on my iPod, I never know which one to listen to first. But I usually go with Keller. Both are excellent and help me a lot.

Podcast - I'm really becoming a fan of Stuart McLean's The Vinyl Cafe. He's Canada's answer to Garrison Keillor. I started listening to him to learn how to tell stories better, but now I just listen to him for the sheer pleasure.

These are just a few of my favorite things from the past year.

Merry Christmas from the Dashes

Our family pictures aren't quite as creative as Steve McCoy's, but it's no small feat to get Josiah to smile for a picture. We had a little help from our dog on this one. The dog is in the picture, although you may not spot him at first.

Have a blessed Christmas!

Driscoll and Carson

If you recognize the names Mark Driscoll and D.A. Carson, you probably have strong feelings about both of them, positive or negative. But even if you're not a fan, I found Carson's book Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor one of my favorite reads from the past year. I've also come to appreciate Carson as more than an academic. I've become increasingly impressed as I've heard more about him beyond his scholarly work. He is the real deal.

I listened to an interview between Carson and Driscoll today, and found it to be good. You get a sense of Carson as a person. You can download it on iTunes or watch the video here.

Evangelicals and the Reformed

Michael F. Bird on the soft underbelly of those who call ourselves Reformed:

There is a group of the "reformed" out there who have basically decided to go and sit in their room, lock the door, and do nothing but than rant and moan about how everybody in the evangelical hallway is a theologically defficient turnip and only those in the room with them are among the doctrinally righteous elect. This group is typified by several traits: (1) They are more excited about all the things that they are against than anything that they are for; (2) They preach justification by faith, but in actuality practice justification by polemics; (3) They appear to believe in the inerrancy of a confession over the suffiency of the gospel; (4) They believe in the doctrines of grace, but do not treat others with grace; (5) They believe that unity is overrated; (6) They like doctrines about Jesus more than Jesus himself (and always defer to the Epistles over the Gospels); (7) mission means importing their debates and factions to other churches; and (8) The word "adiaphora" is considered an almost expletive...

A little harsh? Perhaps. Certainly not true of many of the Reformed people I know. Every group has its weaknesses, and Bird may be right in some of what he says. Reformed theology teaches us that we shouldn't be surprised by our own shortcomings, and gives us the resources to deal with them through repentance and the gospel. Definitely worth thinking about.

Bird also warns North American evangelicals of their blind spots (although he seems to mean American more than North American):

There are also some things about North American evangelicals that Christians outside of North American cannot comprehend: 1. Only North American evangelicals oppose measures to stem global warming, 2. Only North American evangelicals oppose universal health care, and 3. Only North American evangelicals support the Iraq War. Now, to Christians in the rest of the world this is somewhere between strange, funny, and frightening. Why is it that only North American evangelicals support these things? Are the rest of us stupid? It makes many of us suspicious that our North American evangelical friends have merged their theology with GOP economic policy, raised patriotism to an almost idolatrous level, and have a naive belief in the divinely given right of American hegemony. North Americans would do well to take the North-Americanism out of their evangelicalism and try to see Jesus through the eyes of Christians in other lands.

This is a word that needs to be heard in every culture, which is why we can benefit from those from other cultures and other eras. It helps us see our cultural blind spots.

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Updating our understanding of the gospel

The other day I referred to a post by J.D. Greear called "I don't want to be new and innovative." Greear writes, "My goal each week is not to give what the people in front of me will perceive as a 'new approach' to the Gospel, but simply to explain the really old Gospel in as clear a way as possible to them."

It's a good reminder, but it's possible to take Greear's advice too far. Faithfulness to the gospel involves both continuity and change. That's why I like what Michael Wittmer says in Don't Stop Believing:

A former teacher reminded me that Christianity is like a living faith, and all living things must grow. Like a child who reaches adolescence and then matures into an adult, so our understanding of God develops across time. As there is both continuity and change as a boy grows into a man, so our present proclamation of the gospel must be rooted in church tradition even as it surpasses what came before.

My teacher warned that if we stop growing - if we merely repeat what we have said in the past - then we will eventually lose the gospel. I did not understand what he meant, for I was young enough to have known only one kind of world. The faith that I had learned from my parents still seemed pretty relevant. Why must I change?

I must be getting older, for I am now experiencing the first widespread cultural change of my life. My students are asking new and interesting questions...In my student's defense, most are merely applying my mentor's theological rule: to remain faithful to the gospel we must regularly update our understanding of it. We can't merely repeat the old, old story in the same old way. To say the same thing we have always said is not being faithful to the gospel; it is to fossilize it.

How much do you have to hate somebody not to proselytize?

Penn of Penn and Teller is an atheist. His response to being evangelized after a show may surprise you.

"I don't respect people who don't proselytize. If you believe that there's a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, and you think, 'Well, it's not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward'...How much do you have to hate somebody not to proselytize?"

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