Feed on
Posts
Comments

Archive for the 'missional' Category

the thing about being poor (2)

Middle class folks LOVE getting free stuff. I mean, who doesn’t right? So when we give generously to the poor, we think “O man, we just made their day! What great people we are!” And so this is what a lot of good people do or aspire to do… and we don’t understand when people [...]

Read Full Post »

Helping people find Jesus…

…is something EVERY Jesus-follower should wind up doing.  I don’t like the word “evangelist” sometimes because it implies that only certain people do this stuff.  Yes, some people are better at it than others, but helping people come to know Jesus is something EVERY Jesus-follower does or will do.  So here are 10 simple steps [...]

Read Full Post »

I finally bought socks!

I’ve needed tube socks for ages.  And I see people selling socks on the street by the 59th St bridge and Union Square and at Home Depot – and just random people selling socks from a cart… I even see them at street fairs with tables and tables full of socks. Once a couple of [...]

Read Full Post »

Allow me to borrow the title from Pete Scazzero’s book, and ask the question: What would the Church here in the U.S. look like if it were emotionally healthy?  If instead of dwelling in emotional fusion it was able to imitate God’s patient, humble, self differentiated love?  First, pastors and church leaders would stop making an [...]

Read Full Post »

The way to missions today…

This doesn’t apply to everyone and every situation – and both secular atheists and staunchly conservative Christians will dislike this…  but if you have a desire to be a missionary and serve God by “adopting a culture and influencing (from the inside) with Jesus’ Gospel” – then my advice is: come here and do it… [...]

Read Full Post »

You make it look good…

A few of my early teachers said the same thing (although CSL said it first): that the main problem with following Jesus isn’t “understanding,” it’s “imagination.”  Many times people refuse to believe something, not because they can’t understand that it might be true, but rather because they can’t imagine it!  And from years of talking [...]

Read Full Post »

Everyone is a minister…right?

It stabs me in the heart whenever Christians don’t seem to believe this…  One of the common (responsibility dodging) attitudes is “I didn’t know, they don’t tell me these things…” If people need my help they should just come up and ask… Well, just the way it’s sort of a nurse’ job to know if [...]

Read Full Post »

More than just plausibility…

Almost every Filipino I know is Catholic, this was once true for my Irish friends too.  Almost every Korean American I know went to a Presbyterian or Methodist church as a child.  And almost every older African American woman I know goes to church as well.  What does this mean for us?  It means it’s [...]

Read Full Post »

The power of plausibility…

Studies have shown that people find it harder to believe someone when they are culturally different from you… So when someone from a foreign country who speaks and looks and sounds strange to you tells you something, it’s harder to believe even if everything they’re saying is true. I bring this up because if only [...]

Read Full Post »

Sacrifices…

Doing it differently – doing it for real – is going to require sacrifices.  Anything extraordinary is going to require sacrifices.  What’s a sacrifice?  It’s anything beyond what you would normally do, and therefore it costs you… in effort, time, complexity, bandwidth, friends, enemies, emotional energy…  If you want to do “what you would normally [...]

Read Full Post »

Next »