Kindle Notes & Highlights
It is one of my deepest held beliefs that all of Jesus’ people contain the potential for world transformation in them.
domesticated, non-missional manifestations of Christianity.
Contrary to many of the images of church as a defensive fortress suffering the terrible, relentless onslaughts of hell, the movement that Jesus set in motion is designed to be an advancing, untamed, and untamable revolutionary force created to transform the world.
The other equally vital (and much harder to galvanize) aspect is what I call the mission of the whole people of God (MPOG), which involves activating the whole people of God and empowering every believer to be active agents of God’s kingdom in every sphere of life.
It’s going to take both missional church plus missional disciples to make a missional movement.
Church is not simply a building or a formal community meeting, it is who we are—a people who have been formed out of a direct encounter with God in Jesus Christ. If this is true, then general practice in church planting, which simply amounts to “service planting,” actually activates only one side of the movement equation—namely, apostolic mission—but it leaves the MPOG undervalued and almost totally passive and unengaged. This is a fatal error.
A missional movement must apply the gospel to all spheres of life (business, family, art, education, science, politics, etc.)—it cannot be limited simply to “coming to church” or participating in building-based programs.
What is needed is a few people who have been personally transformed and are committed enough to the cause to be willing to in some way or another put their lives in the service of extending it into every domain of life. It is the personal commitment levels that make all the difference—that’s
One of the most basic assumptions of the incarnational missionary is to assume God is already involved in every person’s life and is calling them to himself through his Son. Our mindset should not be the prevalent one of taking God with us wherever we might go. It must be, instead, that we join God in his mission.
the priesthood of all believers. In Untamed, Deb and I suggest that unlocking this is one of the most potent things we can do to allow God to work through all of his people. A priest is essentially someone who mediates the knowledge of God. Our priestly role therefore is to introduce people to Jesus and Jesus to people, and as far as we can, make sure that it is a right understanding of Jesus that we are mediating, and then step out of the way—let Jesus do his thing with people. He knows exactly how to deal with them.
missionary is essentially a messenger obligated to somehow deliver the message in a way it can be received.
It is interesting that our Lord is called Jesus of Nazareth. So it’s clear that Jesus got into Nazareth, but I have often found myself wondering how much of Nazareth got into Jesus.
We used the idea of being the priest in the hood above. Well, just like a local gang, we should have a “turf.” When seeking to touch a people, an urban tribe, it is no good simply visiting their area and then traveling over half an hour to get home. You should live where you want to serve. You should be able to bump into the tribe in the local shops and supermarket. This allows for what I call three practices of incarnational engagement: proximity, frequency, and spontaneity.10
Christians should know how to be the best friends a person can have, because friendship (in the truest sense of discipleship) lies at the heart of the biblical commission.
if every Christian family in the world simply offered good conversational hospitality around a table once a week to neighbors, we would eat our way into the kingdom of God.
In other words, the church doesn’t have a social strategy, the church is the social strategy. Here we get to show the world a certain type of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. When the church gets its act together, it is the most potent force for the transformation of the world.
there is no doubt that over time, our idea of the church has shrunk to unbiblical proportions—so
The traditional marks all orbit around the practice of the sacraments. The Reformers argued about whether it was two, three, or seven (the Catholics), but they all agreed that the church is the place where the sacraments are administered and experienced. The problem with all these formulations, however, is that they effectively “institutionalize” grace by making it something that only the priests can handle, usually in “churchly” contexts.
Credibility is a major source of currency for any organization, but especially for the church that Jesus built, and its loss will almost definitely result in a proportionate loss of missional influence on those around about us.
Let’s face it, if we are not fundamentally different from anyone else (and statistics indicate that this is the case in almost every sphere of morality: money, sex, and power), then why would anyone want to take on the “yoke” of the kingdom of God?
the greatest factor in the growth of early Christianity was the example of ordinary Christians living out their faith in their communities.
marginalized Christians stunned the pagan peoples of that time because such Christlike compassion and service was unknown to them. It was the sheer goodness of the Christian church that established the moral credibility of its message and laid the grounds for the spiritual transformation of the Roman Empire. The early church did not seem to have the credibility gap that we so struggle with. The medium was the message! Jesus was alive and real in, and to, the people.
the only way for Christians to overcome our credibility gap, after centuries of Christianity, is by reactivating an authentic discipleship.
God knows, the world certainly doesn’t need more “religion”; but it can certainly do with a whole lot more Jesus-like people around the place.
