Miroslav Volf (born 1956) is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale University Divinity School and Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.

I heard Dr. Volf lecture at Trinity Western University a few years ago.  Always provocative and challenging.

A couple days ago I read a blog post about approaches people use to grow their congregations.  Alas,  I can’t find where I read it. (If someone knows, please leave a comment so I can give credit.)

The gist of it was a question:

What’s the difference between trying to attract people to come to a worship service by offering a free car wash, a Harvest Festival, or an oil change; and offering to pay a family $1000 per week to attend worship services for a year?

Only the price, I suppose.  Reminds me of the old joke about the multimillionaire offering $10,000,000 to a young starlet to sleep with him once.  After coyly agreeing to the deal, the rich guy immediately asks, “Would you do it for $100?”  Incensed, she replies, “What do you think I am, a whore?”  His rejoinder, “We have already established what you are, now we are negotiating the price…

Then today I stumbled on this (thank @RJayr for helping me find this again)

(Original here)

At Lighthouse Church of All Nations in Alsip, the congregation can get more than just prayer at the Sunday worship services.

If a lucky — or “blessed and highly favored” — churchgoer is in the right seat, they can also receive a cash prize.

At each of the three Sunday services, the Rev. Dan Willis pulls a number of one seat from a bag and the worshiper in that seat wins a cash prize. Two of the churchgoers win $250 and the third gets $500. The church gives away $1,000 each Sunday, Willis said.

Only in America.  Or among the Canaanites. Or Babylonians.

In contrast, this post from Bob Thune:

When we first set out to plant a missional church, we had some lively debates over what exactly it meant to live missionally. Does it mean moving into a disadvantaged neighborhood and working for renewal? Does it mean living in the same zip code so we can truly be a missional community? Does it mean deepening already-existing relationships with co-workers? Does it mean deliberately changing my patterns of life to bring me into contact with non-Christians “on their turf” (bars, music shows, nightclubs, etc)? Our conversations about these matters seemed easily to slide toward people moralizing their preferences and looking down on others who didn’t think like them. (Which is one reason why we consistently need to be reminded of the gospel!)

Tim Keller helps to answer this question by observing that the standard pattern of evangelism in the New Testament centered around the oikos (Greek for household). But the word household in NT times was much broader than we tend to think of it. “In the Bible, evangelism does not happen primarily through programs… it happens naturally through one’s oikos, or household… A household was not just your family, but… a fairly tight-knit, close set of colleagues, kin, friends, neighbors. It was understood that when you became a Christian, you had been called to be a steward, evangelistically speaking, of your oikos.”*

In our day, Keller suggests that the biblical term oikos applies to at least five networks: your kinship network (family and relatives), your neighborhood (those who live near you geographically), your colleagues (co-workers or co-students), your affinity network (people with a shared special interest), and your friends (those from the other 4 networks whom you develop a close relationship with). The relative strength or weakness of these five networks varies based on your context.

What it means to live missionally, then, is to have authentic friendship with people in these networks. That’s it. If Jesus is truly important to you, and if you have real friendships with people, then Jesus is going to come up sooner or later in the natural course of sharing life. You shouldn’t have to artificially shoehorn Jesus into every conversation, nor should you feel the need to hide or downplay your affection for him. Those in your oikos will get to know Jesus as they get to know you.

So – is missional living primarily about your neighborhood, your co-workers, your hunting buddies, or your non-Christian family members? The answer is: yes.

[*Quoted from "Evangelism and the Steward Leader," mp3 audio from Redeemer Presbyterian Church.]

In the early days of the Recovery Movement the Bible
was the primary text and the God of the Bible was
the source of power that made all things possible.

Interested in connecting with your historical roots
in a modern setting?

Looking to “go deeper” and know more about the
Higher Power named Father, Son, Spirit?

Come join us every Saturday evening @ 7 p.m. beginning
November 14, 2009 and see where this experience
fits into your recovery.

LOCATION: Peace Community Church Worship Center
WHO: All are welcome
WHEN: 7pm

(Not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. This is a ministry of Peace Community Church)

Reposted from peacecommunitychurch.org

Check my first post.

But by the knowledge of the gospel we are made

children of God,
brothers of Jesus Christ,
fellow townsmen with the saints,
citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven,
heirs of God with Jesus Christ, by whom

the poor are made rich,
the weak strong,
the fools wise,
the sinner justified,
the desolate comforted,
the doubting sure,
and slaves free.

See the full post here:

Calvin on the Gospel – Justin Taylor

I met Phil Keaggy in 1982 or 1983 when he came to my alma mater to do a Pro-Life benefit concert. I had the privilege of transporting Phil to his hotel after the concert. Besides being one gnarly guitar player, he is a gentleman and genuinely humble guy. Play that thang, Phil!

Scot McKnight writes about connecting with “iGens,”  who “like Jesus, but not the church.”

If this generation likes Jesus, and if iGens have the chutzpah to think they are like Jesus, then let’s start with Jesus. We sometimes forget that the earliest Christian gospeling was telling the story of Israel’s history (Peter on Pentecost) or acknowledging God’s presence in the world (Paul in Athens) so that it led to the story of Jesus. Sometimes we forget that the first four books of the New Testament are called “gospels” because they are just that. The earliest Christian preaching, the early narratives about Jesus, grew and grew until they became the four Gospels.

Sometimes I think we forget that no where in the pages of the New Testament do we find what many of us heard when we were gospeled: God loves us, we are sinners, God still loves us and sent us his Son to die for our sins, and if we receive God’s plan we will spend eternity with him and be empowered by grace for a new life now. I believe every line in that gospel to be true, but no one said it quite that way in the New Testament.

The whole article is well worth reading.  I find McKnight’s take on iGens fits my experience of  “gospeling” people in other generations, too.  Start out reading through one of the gospels  and pretty soon it starts to dawn on you that there is a lot more to Jesus than you might have thought!

Several weeks back I posed a thought problem about the relationship between debt and the economy (trust me, it wasn’t terribly profound!).

This morning my twitter friend @PaulVanderKlay tweeted a link to a Salon.com article about the documentary film “No Impact Man.”

Here’s the paragraph that caught my attention:

If any significant number of Americans downscale their consumption to any significant degree (setting aside the Beavan model) we would see a widespread economic collapse that would make the current downturn look like a glamorous European vacation. If some of those people actually decided, as the Conlin-Beavan household genuinely seems to do, that they were happier with a low-stress, low-consumption existence — that working all the time and buying more junk did not correlate with happiness — well, then we’d be forced to deal with a massive restructuring of our social and economic lives. But isn’t that day of reckoning coming, one way or another?

Hmm, a “massive restructuring of our social and economic lives.”   What would that look like?

By the way, “No Impact Man” is scheduled to open in Houston on October 23rd.

Hmm, doesn’t look like too much like a radical socialist agenda here in the President’s speech to me!

Sounds pretty much like Apple Pie, Motherhood, and Yankee Can-Do hard work.

It’s possible that this line -

Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn.

- could be interpreted just a tad socialistically, though.  Or maybe a tad like the Old Testament prophets and Jesus himself…

I hope by now somebody is feeling a little embarrassed about all the paranoia…

Well, I’m sure everyone and their brother-in-law has commented in the blogosphere about  President Obama’s upcoming speech to schoolchildren on Tuesday, September 8.

Here in Texas there are public school districts which are refusing to allow students to see the speech live during school.  I’m sure this is the case in many other jurisdictions as well.

I suppose it could be argued that the president’s speech interrupts the school day, may not fit into pre-defined curricular goals, etc.  And these, I imagine, are some of the reasons which school districts and superintendents will give as rationales for not allowing students to view the speech live.  Others will not require students to listen, or will provide alternative activities for students whose parents will not give permission to listen to the speech.

I am not really all that surprised that public schools would be mired in controversy about this.  As I see it, the public schools are essentially organs of the State.  Their primary purposes are (a) to produce good (productive, responsible, etc) citizens of city, state, and nation; and (b) to maximize the self-fulfillment and self-realization of their students.

The uproar in Texas (and other places) suggests that the latter purpose is predominant in the minds of some parents.  The President has “no right” to “indoctrinate” Johnny and Susie.  Fair enough, I suppose if purposes (a) and (b) are what you think school is all about.

However, it is more surprising (and disappointing) to me that some Christian schools are unwilling to allow students to listen to the president’s speech live.

What an opportunity is being missed!

• An opportunity to compare the State’s view of education (as no doubt will be eloquently articulated by Mr. Obama) with a distinctly Christian vision of education for service in the ideology-transcending reign of God.
• An opportunity to actually model “honoring those in authority” (Romans 13:1-7) – rather than merely giving lip service to the notion of doing so.
• An opportunity to see history in the making.  This hasn’t been done since 1991.
• An opportunity for students to actually know what is going on “real-time” instead of digesting it through media coverage after the fact.
• And finally, an opportunity to demonstrate courage.  Should the people of God be afraid of dealing with modern political and social realities?

So, there you have it, at least in this man’s opinion.  Tell me what you think in the comments below!