Godgrown

Updates from April, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  Mark 8:16 pm on April 13, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  SAFE Tragedy 

  I’m currently reading The Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay.  It’s been a great book for making practical the esoteric writings of many missional church and emerging church authors.  When you hear “embeded incarnational communitas,” what do you think?  If you’re like most, your head is full of static.  But these guys do a good job of offering simple pracitces to live into.  Right now I’m reading four chapters that each divulge 4 rhythms of missional living – they are:

  “Leaving” – leaving your place of comfort to be “out there” where people gather.
  

  “Listening” – allowing others to truly feel heard by asking good questions and genuinely finding interest in the lives of others.

  “Living Among” – enlarging your view of discipleship to include behave like Jesus would with the types of people Jesus would hang around (celebrate with “sinners”)

  “Loving without Strings” – PLEASE don’t equate evangelism with sleazy outdoor sales.

  Toward the end of the chapter, the authors mention there is an internal resistance to each of these four rhythms.  They are:

  Selfishness is the enemy of “leaving”

  Arrogance is the enemy of “listening”

  Fear is the enemy of “living among”

  Expectations are the enemy of “loving”
  

  They actually didn’t spell out “SAFE” in their book – but I just noticed that it so happened to include these four letters.  How do you resist the 4 rhythms?  For me – “leaving” is the hardest part of missional living.  Just getting out of my head, or my home and getting out there with others.  Its tough as a family man, and I don’t even have kids!

  For me, the SAFE resistances is what has kept millions of Americans from truly hearing/seeing the Kingdom of God.  This is tragic.

  

  Kevin Bowman, Mark, Dottie and 2 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    miller 8:33 am on April 14, 2009 Permalink

    great thoughts man…

    they sound right on the money because they hit a little too close to home for comfort.

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    Chadd 11:37 am on April 14, 2009 Permalink

    Mark – I’ve been thinking of you all this week…always enjoy reading your thoughts!

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    Dottie 1:19 pm on April 14, 2009 Permalink

    Mark-
    Our young adult leadership team at E91 is going to be going through this book soon, so I’m really glad you posted about it! We just finished The Forgotten Way by Alan Hirsch. Good stuff. I can’t wait to dig into this one and see how God transforms our community. Take care!
    -Dottie

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    Mark 1:21 pm on April 14, 2009 Permalink

    Forgotten Ways is a fantastic book! I’m glad you guys are reading it – it resembles in many ways the work we’re up to here in Chicago. Tangible Kingdom is like the best “baby steps” book toward what you read about in the Forgotten Ways. Missing you guys!

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    Kevin Bowman 10:37 am on April 17, 2009 Permalink

    As we tell people our plans, and having three kids as we pursue them. People seem to want to accuse us of not wanting our children to be safe. I think your acronym is a great starting point for fleshing out those ideas.

    Please know you have my thanks when I plagiarize the idea, and work it out more in our families context on my own blog.

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    Mark 10:45 am on April 17, 2009 Permalink

    Yo doode. Where did the term “safety first” even come from? Why not, “safety THIRD?”

    BTW – I’ve tried a few times to subscribe to your blog, but it says there is no feed. I’d love to keep up with your blog, but admittedly I only read ones I can subscribe to. Can you help me out here?

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    Kevin Bowman 11:08 am on April 17, 2009 Permalink

    http://www.kevinjbowman.com/atom.xml is my RSS feed address. I don’t know why it is not showing up on the page. I’ll have to fix that this weekend.

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  Mark 8:32 am on April 12, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Easter ( 2 ), events   

  Planted Life Event Reflections and Photos 

  He is RISEN!

  We had an amazing time yesterday at the Planted Life event on Montrose Beach with a gorgeous sunshine and chilly lake breeze.  The city skyline views were stunning.

  Almost 50 people representing a dozen different faith community came to celebrate new baptisms (8 in the past 3 months!) and 4 new churches planted!  Tons of kids were running around, we thanked Jesus for his new life by YELLING at the top of our lungs to the big blue sky above.

  But it was mainly a reminder that death always comes before new birth – that unless we are able to let go of the grain of wheat and plant it in the ground, new, fresh, organic life will never come from it.  Death and reproduction are always intertwined.  Check out this post for on more on that.

  We prayed, played games, made new friends, and more.

  
   
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  Mark 9:18 am on April 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: afterlife, book review ( 2 ), moody   

  Book Review – Who Goes There? 

  Who Goes There? by Rebecca Price Janney is a tumbling book on how cultures throughout history have viewed heaven and hell.  Here’s an excerpt.  The book was sent to me by Michael Morrell as part of the Viral Bloggers portion of the OOZE e-zine. This is a report on the book.

  Much of the book is the America’s relationship with a Christian theology of heaven and hell.  Janney walks us through the earliest days of America, as it was finding its footing, and through grissling wars that forced people to question the fate of loved ones lost in combat.  The later chapters are full of quotes and analysis of some of the most culturally famous (or infamous) who passed away in the public spotlight.  Janney considers the public reaction in newspapers, or radio and TV broadcasts to be indicative of the broader culture’s position on heaven and hell.

  While it was great to walk through America’s history again, I found the book fairly predictable with nothing interesting to really catch or keep my attention.  Janney appropriately stays out of the realm of theology and instead reports on the historical events.  This makes for a great history lesson, but does little for a practical theologian.  Where are we today in our conversation about heaven and hell?  How does culture use or misuse the Bible to assume life after death?  Surprisingly little is unpacked on contemporary times, and it was disappointing.

  While there is little to take away from this book for those wanting to integrate it into their ministry or life, there was one point she made in the last chapter.  Quoting C.S. Lewis, she writes, “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.”  If the whole book had been a history on the lives of such people and their understanding of heaven and hell  (Martin Luther King Jr., St. Francis of Assisi, etc) I would have devoured this book.  I chose this book because I believe that what we believe about our final destination helps our trajectory through this life.  I regret to say this book doesn’t do much for me.

  There was a pretty neat video Moody Publishers put out to promote the book.

  We do have wildly diverse beliefs about heaven and hell.  Mostly, we just believe whatever we want to, or let our theology slide when good things are said about ‘bad people.’  “He’s up there looking down on me.”

  But why not stop assuming people are one place or another?  What good does that do?  Why not begin to join Jesus in bringing heaven to earth, and send hell off in a hand basket?  Maybe I’ve been in too many conversations of guesswork, trying to figure out who the heretic was – my life will not be defined by judging “who goes where” but rather “where am I helping this world go?”

  

  Sean is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Sean 12:36 am on April 8, 2009 Permalink

    two things came to mind as I read this, your comment, “I believe that what we believe about our final destination helps our trajectory through this life.” Is an incredibly amazing statement. It says something about how we view human nature, and our individual persons as well. I don’t know the origins of this conversation but I think its probably from the beginning of time.

    I’ve always felt like the fire and brimstone argument negates the purpose behind Jesus description of heaven and hell. I think Jesus descriptions are about where you are in relationship with God. Fire and brimstone creates a selfishness that I’m afraid may push even honest intentioned people in the wrong direction. Its not about saving your ass! Its about enjoying and loving God.

    The other thing I got here is more of a question. I remember reading somewhere when “centered” was being worked on about the difference between a bounded set and spheres of influence. Does that sound familiar? Anyway it sounds to me like you have fleshed out that theology into a little praxis here.