• Our hope-filled future is bound up in sharing the story of Jesus, in discipling others, in bringing those disciples together into communities of believers, and in developing and releasing those believers to create other communities... till Jesus the King comes again!

Lessons Learned❸

Posted on November 10, 2010 by wtdavid

Number❶ take-away: Preach, proclaim, and share the Gospel fearlessly. 

Number❷ take-away: Recognize that we are living in the 21st century. 

So then, my number ❸ take-away would be: Live out our identity.  The biggest challenge for Christians, for the global body of Christ, is to live what we say we believe and hold to.  When those who are not part of the community of believers accuse the church of hypocrisy, there is a large element of truth in that criticism.  Jesus called us out to be “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that we might proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9)

That should mean that Jesus, and our being united to Him, changes not only the way we lead our spiritual lives, but the way we live out our everyday life in this world whether in the marketplace, the school, the home, the neighborhood or the community.  If we say that “God transforms lives”, then how does our life demonstrate that transformation?  And how does the church bear witness to that transformation in the ministries it is involved in?

Watch this video presentation from Day 2 of the Lausanne Congress: http://conversation.lausanne.org/en/conversations/detail/11415

As I said in a previous post, I am not saying that we should shift all of our focus from establishing communities of believers to issues of social justice, but the communities we establish must engage the world around them.  The Gospel, by its very nature, seeks to transform lives in all aspects of what it means to be human, created in God’s image.

It starts from a daily remembering of who we are in Christ because of what He has done on the cross. 

What has God been teaching you today about your sin and His great love?  And how has that “transformed” your life today?

Filed under: Cape Town 2010, Community | 2 Comments »

Asking Deeper Questions

Posted on October 16, 2010 by wtdavid

The third Lausanne conference is about once again asking deeper questions of how we will work together to see the church established around the world.  The theme verse describes this vision: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.  And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”  (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).  However, the desire is not simply to go deeper in discussion of theological and missiological issues, but to share deeply with one another as brothers and sisters in the global Church so as to better partner together.

To this end, the entire conference delegation (4500 participants) has been broken down into small table groups of six people.  I am one of the many table group facilitators.  Today during the training that was provided, we walked through the questions each table group member will consider as they share a part of their story with the rest of us. Certain questions are straightforward such as telling us your name or something about your country and your work.  But then the focus changes with subsequent questions:

  1. What is one hope for your experience at Cape Town 2010 this week?
  2. What is one strength (natural ability or gift) God has given you?
  3. What is one limit, weakness or hardship that is in your life?
  4. What is one prayer request you have for this week?

As we “practiced” sharing our stories in response to these questions with other table group leaders, I realized my (our) great need for God’s grace again today.  How can one demonstrate such vulnerability if he/she is not secure in who he/she is in Christ?  And isn’t that the thrust of that beginning chapter of Ephesians? 

What a day.  I am amazed by the people I have already met and their stories.  May our relationships be characterized by deep missiological reflection together, but also by deep sharing of our stories with each other.

Filed under: Cape Town 2010, Community | Leave a comment »

On The Way To Cape Town

Posted on October 14, 2010 by wtdavid

I leave tonight for Cape Town (23h20 Paris time), and would appreciate your prayers for traveling mercies as well as for what I shared in a previous post: that I would have a posture of “humble listening”; that I would listen well to others and discern what God is saying to me and to us as a mission community through these brothers and sisters in Christ from so many different nations and people groups. 

Thanks for the ongoing conversation.  I’ll talk to you from Cape Town.

Filed under: Community, Mission, Prayer | Leave a comment »

Feedback needed

Posted on September 2, 2010 by wtdavid

Somehow that matrix didn’t copy real well to Tuesday’s post, so I’ve re-printed it below in a better format.

Comments by both Ed and David D got me thinking about another matrix which might help us in “re-ordering” our priorities.  This matrix is found in James Lawrence’s work, Growing Leaders, and underlines, for one, the need for feedback from others.

“Feedback,” as Lawrence writes, “helps open up the blind self.  In every context, inviting feedback from those who know us, love us and want the best for us helps combat delusion and develop character, but we’ll often need to invite it.”  Such feedback would be valuable in honestly assessing how to better “use” or prioritize our time.

Filed under: Community, Reflection | 5 Comments »

Am I Really Thinking?

Posted on August 30, 2010 by wtdavid

We’ve asked the question in some recent posts: “Am I really listening?”  However, I think it’s also worth asking the question about our capacity to really think, and to think theologically about a host of issues.

It’s a standard line to say that things move at a much faster pace these days. And yet it is true.  We used to get upset standing in line for more than 15 minutes. Now we wonder where the problem is when the webpage we’re trying to access doesn’t open up within 2 seconds.  In that context, we may be tempted to settle for expediency rather than depth of thought; to immediately download and try a new concept or idea without asking some harder questions.

The biblical model that comes quickly to mind of those who thought well, who thought deeply is that of the Bereans (Acts 17:10-15).  They are described as those who “received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily, to see whether these things were so.”  Now here’s the thing that struck me.  Nowhere in the text does it give us a time frame for that process of “thinking”.  Rather, the emphasis is on a “grid” or a “framework” through which the Bereans ran all new ideas or concepts daily.  And that framework was the Scriptures.

Could we say that it’s not the amount of time that is to key, but giving time to think more deeply more theologically about ideas, issues and concepts?

Filed under: Community, Reflection | 4 Comments »

Self-forgetfulness

Posted on July 12, 2010 by wtdavid

One indicator of a “closing mind” is addressed through active listening to others or demonstrating “intense interest” in another’s journey (James 1:19). A second indicator which I described as “an unhealthy confidence in my own cultural (and spiritual) journey that would keep me from looking at new ideas, new perspectives,” is more difficult for us to address.  Put another way, this indicator points us to the need to deal with our very own pride.

Now this is where it gets sticky.  We are well aware of the statement that James makes a little later in his letter where he says: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (4:6). We know then that the ultimate objective is humility rather than pride.  Yet, how does one become more humble?  The moment that you think you are making progress in becoming more humble, you have immediately become prideful about that very progress.

C.S. Lewis in his witty yet insightful work, The Screwtape Letters, struggles with this very question. It is the fictional story of Screwtape, “a self-described under-secretary of the department of temptation,” and his nephew Wormwood a “junior tempter.”  Though this quote is extended, I think it is worth the read:

“All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is especially true of humility.  Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, “By jove!  I’m being humble,” and almost immediately pride – pride at his own humility – will appear … But there are other profitable ways of fixing his [the Christian] attention on the virtue of Humility.  By this virtue, as by all the others, our Enemy [God] wants to turn the man’s attention away from self to Him, and to the man’s neighbors.  All the abjection and self-hatred are designed, in the long run, solely for this end; unless they attain this end they do us little harm; and they may even do us good if they keep the man concerned with himself, and, above all, if self-contempt can be made the starting point for contempt of other selves, and thus for gloom, cynicism, and cruelty. 

You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility.  Let him think of it, not as self-forgetfulness, but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character …

To anticipate the Enemy’s strategy, we must consider His aims.  The  Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another.  The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents … For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; he really loves the hairless bipeds He has created.”

A “closing mind” is addressed by a certain “self forgetfulness.”  As one friend put it, not thinking less of oneself, but thinking of oneself less.  So one way this can happen, or can begin to happen, is when God becomes so BIG, so major in our lives that other pieces of our lives truly become secondary.  It happens when we are overwhelmed by Him and His love (read Psalm 136 for example) to the point that it actually influences how we relate to others, how we do ministry.  

 

Filed under: Community, Humility | 3 Comments »

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