To Own A Volvo

Donald Miller spoke at Mars Hill Bible Church near Grand Rapids last month. Miller is, of course, the author of Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What, Through Painted Deserts and To Own a Dragon.
I like Miller’s stuff because, well, he thinks like a writer. He’s deals with some pretty heady theology, but he [...]

Percolating Stories

Abraham Piper has a great post about the role of art (specifically fiction) in post-evangelical society:
“Fiction and poetry provide authors a unique way to glorify Christ that more overtly intellectual genres, like theology, simply can’t. These genres that aim directly for the heart and soul—rather than aiming at the heart through the mind—do not argue for [...]

Admirer or Follower?

I was recently reading from STORY, a book by Steven James. He said this:
“By the way, Jesus approached evangelism quite differently than most churches today. Too many twenty-first century churches treat sharing Jesus’s story like a marketing campaign. They try to make Christianity seem as appealing, plausible, relevant, and easy to digest as possible by [...]

Missional Code Breaking: Twelve

Stetzer and Putman deal with church planting in chapters 11 and 12 of Breaking the Missional Code. Since the authors deal with this topic more completely elsewhere, I’ll skip those chapters for now and move to a summary of chapter 13, dealing with the dangers of compromise.
In a previous summary, we looked at the idea [...]

Missional Code Breaking: Eleven

The third part of the summary of Stetzer and Putman’s Breaking the Missional Code deals with the question, "What does Jesus mean by ‘all nations’?"
The authors define this idea within a contemporary situation by looking at three divisions:

people groups
population segments
cultural environments

Stetzer and Puman maintain that churches must "contextualize the disciple-making process to each specific group." [...]

Missional Code Breaking: Ten

Continuing on with a summary of Stetzer and Putman’s Breaking the Missional Code:
Yesterday, we went through the first question that they pose in their chapter on spiritual formation. Today, we’ll take a cursory look at their second question, “What does it mean to ‘make disciples’?”
The authors see people as moving through various stages of development [...]

Missional Code Breaking: Nine

Chapter 9 in Stetzer and Putman’s Breaking the Missional Code is one of the more interesting and important chapters in the whole book. I will skip summaries of some later chapters to devote a bit more time with this material.
Jesus said,
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and [...]

Missional Code Breaking: Eight

Stetzer and Putman, in Breaking the Missional Code, mention that interest in church planting in North America is increasing. Only two books were published on this subject between 1996 and 2002. Between 2002 and 2005, at least eight books were published, with more slated for publication in the near future. They point out that the [...]

Missional Code Breaking: Seven

Chapter 7 of Stetzer and Putman’s Breaking the Missional Code is about translating the gospel by using  communication methods that are understood by the people you are attempting to reach. It is also making sure that the ideas conveyed are moved from the head to the heart, from just knowledge to knowledge and action (or [...]

Missional Code Breaking: Six

In chapter six of Breaking the Missional Code, Stetzer and Putman spend some time on what leaders should be thinking about.
For leaders in code-breaking churches, these values are preeminent:
Spiritual FormationLeaders should first be concerned about their own spiritual formation. Stetzer and Putman identified that 71% of over 500 listed barriers that decrease the ability [...]

Missional Code Breaking: Five

Stetzer and Putman start chapter 5 of Breaking the Missional Code this way:
Change always happens, and most change is out of our control. What we can control is our response to a changing culture. The response by the missional congregation to change has prodcued emerging transitional patterns. As churches seek to break the code, they [...]

Missional Code Breaking: Four

Stetzer and Putman believe that the church growth movement, when it first began, was a good thing. Very little was written about the idea of “reaching” people before then. The church growth movement, however, became bogged down in “technique” (sometimes contradictory techniques) and pastors became frustrated.
Pastoral frustration led pastors away from books written by academicians [...]

Missional Code Breaking: Three

Do you and the people in your church set your minds and hearts on fulfilling the Great Commission?
If your answer is yes, then how much of the Great Commission do you try to fulfill? All of it? 25%? 50%? 75%?
Do you think these questions are a tad ridiculous? You might ask, “How can we know [...]

Missional Code Breaking: Two

Where culture is a strong influence on a person who first comes to know Christ, it is difficult for that person to become assimilated into a local church because there are times when that church’s culture is so foreign to what the new believer knows as normal. Sometimes cultural questions are simply matters of preference, [...]

Missional Code Breaking: One

Ed Stetzer and David Putman have written a fine book called Breaking The Missional Code. For the next however many weeks, I will be posting summaries and thoughts about the book’s main theme—that the culture has changed and churches will also need to change to maintain an effective ministry in their respective communities.
Stetzer and Putman [...]

Anchored in Story

I’ve been thinking about this quote lately:
This is what Eugene Peterson says about spirituality:
“Spirituality is the attention we give to our souls, to the invisible interior of our lives that is the core of our identity, these image-of-God souls that comprise our uniqueness and glory. Spirituality is the concern we have for the invisibility that [...]

Ancient Memory

It seems, then, that ancient cultures regarded the function of memory much differently than we do today. Memory, for us, is a psychological intervention, a series of pictures and feelings and smells deposited into our brains in the past to be used now. These memories are mashed up and fragmented. Our present is either augmented [...]

Staying in the Old Shop

How many times have I tried to “set up my own shop?”
“Within this large, capacious context of the bilbical story we learn to think accurately, behave morally, preach passionately, sing joyfully, pray honestly, obey faithfully. But we dare not abandon the story as we go off and do any or all of these things, for [...]

What’s in the Name? Part 2: Freedom

Q: We talked about the idea of "New" in the name of your blog. Now it's time to turn to the idea of "Freedom" in The New Freedom Sanction. This is a loaded word, with many connotations. What do you intend for it to mean?
A: It is a loaded word. And, for Americans, it's a [...]

To A Tiny Audience

Seth Godin writes 9 points about "How to tell a Great Story" in Ode Issue 32.
This point made me think:
Great stories are rarely aimed at everyone. Average people are good at ignoring you. Average people have too many different points of view about life and average people are by and large satisfied. If you need [...]