Competing Lordships in Galatians (Tim Gombis)

Tim Gombis' comment on Galatians is perceptive.

"He wonderfully captures Paul’s apocalyptic vision, framing the issues in terms of competing realms and competing sovereignties.  The Galatians must decide which realm they will inhabit—the present evil age, dominated by the cosmic powers of Sin and Death, or the realm of God’s new creation in Christ, animated by God’s own Spirit.  Their community life of destruction and division or of unity and cruciform love says much about who has a rightful claim to cosmic lordship."

Click here for Gombis' blog post for more.

A biblical scholar participating in an urban neighbourhood (Tim Gombis)

Tim Gombis wrote a challenging blog post entitled "Evangelical Resistance to the Gospels: How & Why". (26th April 2012)

Here is one provocative thought from his post.

"We strip away the “husk” of Jesus’ clear words to find the spiritual “kernel” that we apply to our hearts and motives. 

This is a reading strategy whereby we keep Jesus safely tucked away in our hearts, self-satisfied with our piety.  But we intentionally avoid doing what he says with our bodies, social practices, and community dynamics.

It’s too threatening.  If we actually did the things Jesus says to do, we’d have to change, and we just don’t want to."

The post has attracted a robust discussion in the comments. I find the following story of Tim Gombis really helpful. I am always encouraged when a biblical scholar engages in the life of those living with poverty. This means that the scholar is not just teaching from some theories worked out in an comfortable library. Instead, she/he engages with both the Scripture and God's world at the same time, which enriches her/his own understanding of the Bible and the people whom God loves dearly.

Here is Tim's story.

"In the 90′s, my wife and I were in a doctrinally oriented church in which being Christian meant having the right mental furniture, having our doctrine sorted out right, and getting others to think the way we did.

During my doctoral studies in the early 00′s, we became convinced that being Christian was communally-oriented and needed to be lived out through service to one another and others. When we moved back to the States in ’04, we looked for a church that exalted Christ and reached out the poor and marginalized to absorb them into a thriving community life of flourishing. We found that church, an urban church plant that served a community hammered by poverty. We read the Gospels and sought to put many of these challenging texts into practice–learning to forgive one another, invite poor people to our homes, receive invitations to enter their homes (not easy for middle class people!), share the ministry load with “others” who didn’t do it like we did, etc. Those were wonderful years–hard, but so rich. Lots of other things to add here, but that’s just a sampling…

We recently moved to Grand Rapids and participate in a ministry that provides shelter for homeless people. We take up concrete service opportunities to participate in the ways our church proclaims the gospel and participates in it."

The following is an excerpt of a separate correspondence I had with Tim. I really like what he says here.

"What changed everything for me was the day-in, day-out exposure to what it meant to live in poverty.  We recognized the power-differentials in our relationships when we just handed out money.  We invited others to minister alongside us in relationships of reciprocity and mutuality rather than top-down relationships of power-inequality.  It was tough, but it completely transformed us.

So many other lessons, too, but our eyes need to be opened through the actual experience--incarnational experience." (Used with permission.)

(Click here for Tim Gombis' blog post. His story above is dated 30th April 2012.)

Interview about Tim Gombis' The Drama of Ephesians

Matthew Montonini did an interview with Tim Gombis about his book The Drama of Ephesians. Read the interview and you will know why the book is such a treasure. Here is one of the questions in the interview.

"Matthew Montonini: Could you talk a bit about Paul’s cruciform role in Ephesians 3.1-14, and how as actors in the gospel drama what are some of the ways we are to model ‘power in weakness’?

Tim Gombis: This was the most powerfully transformative passage for me personally. It is so utterly counter-cultural and counter-intuitive. We imagine that we will succeed personally and professionally through self-assertion and will advance in our careers (or in ministry!) through power-accumulation and the exercise of power over others.

But throughout Ephesians (and everywhere in Paul), the manner in which God triumphs in Christ sets the normative pattern for Christian discipleship. God triumphs through the death of Christ, he wins by losing. The victory of the powers was their defeat and the defeat of Christ was his victory. Paul draws the clear implication that if God triumphs through the cross, then cruciformity thoroughly shapes Christian communities and Christian lives.

I believe this is what Paul is getting at in Ephesians 3. His imprisonment is not a set-back, but the perfect place for God to magnify his triumph over the powers. God builds his church through the preaching of this shamed prisoner, this ‘least of all the saints’, rather than through someone with loads of social or political capital. For Paul, this makes perfect cruciform sense, and it is one of a number of passages that sets the normative ethical pattern for Christian existence.

How do we model that? By cultivating postures of servant-hood and humility in relationships, never exercising power over others nor relating manipulatively. For those who are well-practiced in (self-)destructive relational modes, our repentance is a bit more painful! But the way of life is the way of the cross."

Click here for the full interview.

Prayer by Tim Gombis - Grant us the grace to take up the cross

Here is a beautiful prayer written by Tim Gombis on the weekend.

"Father, grant us grace to take up our crosses and follow Jesus in the way of suffering and death.  We know that the only way to resurrection and victory is through suffering and the cross, but it is difficult.  We love our pleasures.  We love the trivial pursuits that take up our time and fill up our days.  We also love our sinful practices, those secret sins to which we return again and again, even though we know that they are the way of death.  Give us wisdom and discernment to understand that we need to give ourselves over to death in order to experience life.  Help us to put to death our sin that we may share in the life of Christ by the power of the Spirit.  Amen."

(Click here for the original blog post by Tim Gombis.)

Our call and our mission (something from Tim Gombis)

I found the following from Tim Gombis' recent blog post. I couldn't agree more with him. (I will highlight a few things in blue.)

"We are called to find places in God’s good world where there is brokenness and pain, and we are called to pray for God to heal.  We are called to provide help to those in need, a glass of water for those who are thirsty.  We are called to rejoice with those who rejoice, and to grieve with those who grieve. 

We are called to sit and give ourselves to the stranger who needs a listening ear, and see her turn into a friend.  We are called to give ourselves to be loved, and to love others, because God has made us one, joining us together as family.

Our mission is to be a community that loves, a community that welcomes, a community that serves, not a community that dazzles and amazes.  Thankfully, a broken, tired, worn-out, and weary bunch of people is exactly what God is looking for to be the hands and feet of his mission to love the world for the glory of the name of Jesus."

Cruciformity and being leaders - Part 4 (Tim Gombis)

In his fourth blog post on Christianity and Christian Leadership, Tim Gombis has the following to say.

Cruciform leaders do not view people as the means to achieve other goals.  The people to whom we minister are the goal.  The whole point of Jesus-shaped leadership is to take the initiative to see that God’s grace and love arrive into the lives of others.

Christian leaders are servants of others on behalf of God, so people are the point—not my goals, plans, vision, or ambitions.

This may be obvious, but there is a vocabulary set used among ministry leaders that very subtly perverts and corrupts our vision for cruciform ministry.

We talk about “results,” or we want our ministries to be “effective.”  We look for ministry strategies that “work.”

When we talk like this, we reveal that we are envisioning something bigger than or beyond the people to whom we minister.  We subtly become the servants of that other thing and we look at the people as the means to get there.

This is one way that pastors’ hearts function as idol factories.

He says it so well.

Click here for Tim Gombis' entire blog post.

Jesus-shaped leadership and today's trend in the Christian circle

His his second post on Cruciformity and Christian Leadership, Tim Gombis suggests that we should take a look at Mark 10:42-45 and Deuteronomy 17:14-20, and says,

Taking a cue from these texts, I will discuss cruciform Christian leadership by contrasting it with worldly leadership practices.  This may help us discern how perverted ambitions, hidden idolatries, and destructive practices subtly affect how leadership works in Christian communities.

And then he says that a Jesus-shaped leadership looks like this:

An unrelenting commitment to the delivery of the love and grace of God into the lives of others (or, the life of another), and taking the initiative to see to it that this happens.

For many years I have had the privilege of working with Christian leaders in churches, Christian organizations and even Christian ministry training colleges. What is disturbing is the increasing trend of importing leadership skills and methods in the corporate world into the Christian community.

What happens in practice is not the outright unrestrained pursuit of self-promotion or self-interest. Rather, the issue is the lack of an “unrelenting commitment to the delivery of the love and grace of God into the lives of others (or, the life of another), and taking the initiative to see to it that this happens.”

This is the trend I observe in recent years: Instead of treating people with grace and love, Christian leaders resort to policies and procedures – and all too often, statistics and numbers (which are used to measure the so-called “performance”). The rationale is that policies and procedures – and numbers – are not wrong. The Bible is not against them, they say. So, as long as they work for the “greater good” (e.g. more people to come to church, or more money to give to the poor), it is okay to use them, even though in the process love and grace are missing.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that all Christian leaders act like this. Not at all. I love the church, and I hold nothing against those who have ill-treated me. There is no unforgiveness. My concern is the health of the church, and where we are heading.

Gombis says it so well, and is worth repeating. Jesus-shaped leadership is about

An unrelenting commitment to the delivery of the love and grace of God into the lives of others (or, the life of another), and taking the initiative to see to it that this happens.

(By the way, Dr Christopher Wright has something really good to say about Deut 17:14-20 in his commentary.)

Click here for Tim Gombis' entire blog post.

Cruciformity and being leaders (Tim Gombis)

For many years I have not been able to convince people in Christian leadership that to be a Christian and to be a Christian leader one has to start with following the Crucified Christ, so that we might experience the power of resurrection. But more than often people reject this notion, because they think it doesn't work in practice.

I am, therefore, glad that Tim Gombis is writing something in his blog about this. Here are some excerpts from his first post on this matter.

"By cruciformity I mean having every aspect of our lives and church communities oriented by the cross-shaped life of Jesus."

"Cruciformity is a powerful notion because it is the only way to gain access to the resurrection power of God.  When we shape our lives according to the life of Jesus, we experience his presence by the Spirit, and God floods our lives, relationships, and communities with resurrection power."

"When I talk to people training for Christian leadership about cruciformity, however, I discover the assumption that it isn’t easily practiced in ministry."

"I wonder if this is because our imaginations are shaped by worldly conceptions of power.  We assume that at some point cruciform leadership would fail."

Click here for the entire blog post from Tim Gombis.

What Is the Mission of the Church? (Tim Gombis's interactions with De Young and Gilbert)

My previous post referred to Joel Willitts' review on the book What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert. Here I will provide links to the various posts in Tim Gombis' blog, where Gombis interacts with the book. Gombis sometimes interacts with the book directly, and sometimes indirectly. I will try to list both types of posts below.

First post.
Second post.
Third post.
Fourth post.
Fifth post.
Sixth post.
God's Love for Creation.
Seventh post.
Receiving Service to the Poor and Needy.
Eighth post.
Ninth post.
Stetzer's review.

(This list is not meant to be exhaustive. I may have missed some of Gombis' posts here.)

Embracing both victory in Christ and his cruciform life (Tim Gombis)

Tim Gombis' recent post in his blog is again insightful. Here is an excerpt.

"God has come in triumph and Scripture expresses this reality with the rhetoric of victory.  But there’s something wrong about triumphalism.

On the other hand, we are saved by the cross of Christ and our existence as Christian people is cruciform.  Our lives are patterned after the cross-shaped life of Jesus.  But there’s something wrong about extreme asceticism and self-loathing.

So, which is it?  What mode of life should the church adopt?  Is it okay to celebrate creation and enjoy life without feeling guilty?  Alternatively, should we really seek out suffering and be purposeful about lament in light of God’s deliverance in Christ?

It seems to me that the church’s task is manifold because of the complex character of creation and especially its current condition of brokenness.  It’s the global church’s task to understand, live into, and speak truthfully about the character of the world in all its facets."

Click here for the entire blog post.

A comprehensive understanding of sin (Tim Gombis)

Sin manifests itself in many ways at many levels, resulting in a web of evils that destroy humanity and God’s good creation.

Here are some excerpts from Tim Gombis' blog (8th November 2011) about what sin is. Very helpful.

"Personal idolatries and ambition drive people to sin, which often draws others into participating in the destruction and self-destruction.  Others who find out about wrongdoing have their own motivations for responding rightly or wrongly, choosing either to participate in cover-up and denial or to exploit the situation to their advantage.  The multiplication of these motivations and decisions results in a bewildering web of deception and staggering personal, inter-personal, and institutional destruction."

"Personal, inter-personal, and systemic dynamics of corruption are all involved."

"The brilliant horror of the cosmic power of Sin is that sin begets sin on a massive scale and pervades everything. Sin invites and provokes sin. Sin runs down social networks and multiplies exponentially, destroying lives, reputations, and institutions, without respect for reputation or past credentials of honor."

Click here for Tim Gombis entire blog post.

Serving the poor through incarnational love (Tim Gombis)

Tim Gombis recently posted an excellent post in his blog (on 2nd November 2011). Here I cite from his post some profound insights about serving the poor. I will highlight a few things in this colour.

If we seek to help others motivated by guilt or emotion, we will typically seek to pacify our own immediate feelings rather than seek to do what’s in the long-term best interest of others. 

Doing good that ultimately helps is something radically different.  It requires incarnational love and boldness to get involved personally with difficult situations.  It may also take long periods of time to build trust and establish healthy relationships of mutuality.  Further, most ministry situations will require that we relate from our weaknesses rather than our strengths. That can be very disorienting.

Perhaps most difficult—and why guilt and sentiment hinder rather than help—doing good challenges us to discern when and how to act in ways that benefit others in the long run.  We may have to fight our impulses and resist the manipulations of others in the interests of avoiding doing immediate and long-term damage.

Beyond all this, Scripture doesn’t motivate service to the poor and needy out of guilt.  Solidarity with the suffering and service to the poor and needy are motivated eschatologically and sacramentally.  That is, we are motivated by a future-orientation toward the day of Christ and by an awareness of where we have access to the life-giving and sustaining presence of Jesus.

We could look at a number of texts, but I’ll just point to John 12:25-26:

Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

If you grasp too tightly to stuff and give yourself to lustful accumulation, you will lose your life.  But if you let it go in service to Jesus, you will honored by God himself!  That’s the eschatological orientation.

But Jesus goes on to say that “whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be.”

Where is Jesus?  Read the Gospels.  Where is he? 

Jesus spent his days on earth with the poor, the outcast, the shamed woman in the Samaritan village, the despised and traitorous Zaccheus, the single mother from the red-light district in Syro-Phoenicia.  Jesus goes on to say in John 15 that when we serve others we are sustained by Jesus’ own joy.  There’s a “sacramental” character to serving those in need.  That is, those actions and patterns of life are encounters on earth with the very presence of Jesus.

We serve others, especially those in need, because that’s a pattern of life that is sustained by the life-giving and joy-generating presence of Jesus.  And we serve because that’s the mode of life that has its end in exaltation with Jesus himself at the final day.

....... Christian leaders would do well to cultivate language that expresses these motivations, shaping the imagination of God’s people to serve the world joyfully in the name of Jesus.

Click here for the entire post by Tim Gombis.

Performing the divine warrior - Tim Gombis

In his book The Drama of Ephesians, Tim Gombis says the following in a chapter entitled "Performing the Divine Warrior" (page 156). I will highlight a few things in this colour in italics.

"According to Ephesians, the church performs the cosmically significant role of divine warfare through mundane embodiments of God's life on earth. Cosmic conflict does not involve defiant chest thumping in the face of the defeated powers. On the contrary, we are called to purposeful, humble, cruciform faithfulness as we perform Jesus for the good of the world. As we will see, the church participates in this transformative process, it harnesses and radiates God's resurrection power, which has a transformative effect on outsiders. This is how the people of God transform their surrounding cultures. This is in direct contrast to the church's long tradition of aggressive coercion and harsh denunciation. Such strategies are surrenders in divine warfare, since they are capitulations to worldly community dynamics. The church must also be a community of wisdom and discernment. And finally, the church must be a culture of justice. When the people of God cultivate these patterns of life, the church performs the role of divine warrior in the world." (Emphasis added)

Gombis goes on to say that Ephesians 6:10-18 has more to do with Isaiah 59:15-19 than the armour of a Roman soldier. (pages 157-8)

Then Gombis says,

"The enemy in the church's warfare is not the world or people in the world but the powers. And, as we will see, the strategy is not militant. In fact, Paul's instructions for engaging the spiritual conflict are quite subversive, upending notions of militancy. But we should expect such a move by this point. Throughout the Old Testament, human actors in divine warfare episodes subvert expectations by taking on postures of weakness. Paul performs his role in continuity with this theme through cruciformity; he imitates the earthly performance of Jesus by inhabiting a role of humility, self-sacrifice and weakness. Paul purposefully performs a cruciform role so that God's triumph might be seen clearly by the powers he has defeated in Christ." (Page 159; emphasis added)

"Our warfare involves resisting the corrupting influences of the powers. The same pressures that produce practices of exploitation, injustice and oppression in the world are at work on church communities. The church's warfare involves resisting such influences, transforming corrupted practices and replacing them with life-giving patterns of conduct that draw on and radiate the resurrection power of God. Our warfare, then, involves purposefully growing into communities that become more faithful corporate performances of Jesus on earth." (Pages 159-160; emphasis added)

Identity formation (by Tim Gombis)

Tim Gombis posted a post entitled "Identity Formation" in his post yesterday. Here is an excerpt. I really like it.

"Jesus is God’s solution to the brokenness of the world, and he redeems and saves by becoming brokenness, by going to those that are broken and beaten-down, by becoming the outcast and the stranger, by dying.

God shouted a resounding “YES” to what Jesus did by raising him from the dead and installing him as King over all creation.  When Jesus sat down on his heavenly throne, he sent his Spirit to dwell among us.  Not someone else or something else, but Christ’s own Spirit—Christ Jesus himself is here among us."

(Click here for the entire blog post by Tim Gombis.)

The "grammar of the gospel" (Tim Gombis)

In a recent post in his blog, Tim Gombis says something profound about the gospel. He makes six points in his post, I am citing the first three here (and I will highlight a few things in this colour).

"First, because the gospel is the announcement of the arrival of the Kingdom of God, talk about any part of that multi-faceted redemptive and world-altering reality is “the gospel.”  All of these, then, are proclamations of the gospel: forgiveness in Christ for the guilty; a warm welcome among the body of Christ for the lonely and alienated; God’s defeat of Sin and Death in Christ; a satisfying meal among God’s people for the hungry; liberation from bondage through God’s Spirit and God’s people; reconciliation in Christ for formerly alienated groups.  These concrete realities, and so many others, are instantiations of God’s Kingdom as it invades and begins to transform an enslaved cosmos.

Talking about any of them is talking about the gospel.

Second, the “call” of the gospel is the call to turn from sin, selfishness, and idolatry, and to take on Kingdom practices that enact, embody, activate, and participate in that reality.  The call of the gospel, then, is exhorting all people to receive forgiveness in Christ, to forgive others in Christ, to serve the poor in Christ, to reconcile with former enemies in Christ, to stop oppressing and manipulating others in Christ, to receive others as gifts in Christ, to celebrate redemption in Christ, to give thanks to God in Christ.  Concrete practices such as these are embodiments of Kingdom participation that draw upon and radiate God’s presence and power by God’s Spirit.

To do any of them is to respond to the gospel.

As I said previously, the gospel speaks with a variety of voices depending on the situation.  To those oppressing others, the gospel will speak a word of rebuke and a call to inhabit the life-giving Kingdom of God along with others.  To those trapped in despair, the gospel sounds a note of sweet grace, relief, and comfort.  Christian people must inhabit and explore the richness of the gospel to learn how it overwhelms and transforms any and all situations for the glory of God and the good of the world.

Third, to respond to the gospel is to be compelled by this Kingdom reality and to begin enacting Kingdom behaviors among God’s people in Christ."

Tim Gombis refers to Scot McKnight's new book, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited. It seems that there are points of contact between his and McKnight's understanding of the gospel. I have previously blogged about McKnight's new book, which can be found here and here.

(Click here for Tim Gombis' entire blog post.)

Tim Gombis on the pre- and post-conversion Paul

Tim Gombis has written some really good posts in his blog. Yesterday he posted something on "Paul the Pharisee", which says some very good stuff on the pre- and post-conversion Paul. Really worth reading. Here are some excerpts. (The "blue" highlights are emphases added by me.)

"Before his conversion, then, Paul was part of an effort to bring about a renewed nation, to present to God a purified people, zealous, like Paul, for the “traditions of the fathers” (Gal. 1:14).  He was likely convinced that once the nation was pure and obedient, God would be moved to send Messiah who would bring God’s salvation.

Further, this was done through violence, coercion, and persecution of sinners among the people.  This explains Paul’s persecution of the early Jesus-followers.  Because they were worshiping the one whom God had cursed (Gal. 3:13/Deut. 21:23), they were standing in the way of God fulfilling his promises.

After his conversion, of course, Paul’s ultimate aims don’t change.  He is still passionate about the resurrection of the dead and God fulfilling his promises to the fathers (Acts 26:6-7).  It’s just that now Paul knows that this eschatological orientation involves suffering with the persecuted, multi-national people of God, praying and longing for Christ’s return, and participating with the Spirit’s project of producing cruciform, non-violent love among the people of Jesus.
.............

But the contrast between pre- and post-conversion Paul is not that he once was a legalist and is no longer.  The contrast had to do with the manner in which he conceived of God fulfilling his promises to Israel.  How would this come about?  Does God act to restore his people by his own grace?  Or can you violently coerce conformity to the Law to produce a people that will move God to act?

The contrast is between coercive and manipulative treatment of God and others, on one hand, and self-giving love for God and others, on the other.

Previously, Paul violently coerced others and sought to manipulate God to act.  He now loves others, suffering on their behalf and praying for their good.  And his posture toward God is one of deference, praying for and longing for the day of Christ, knowing that God in his wisdom will come to save in his own time."

Click here for the entire blog post.

"Lament for a Neighbourhood" by Tim Gombis

Here is a profound prayer by Tim Gombis in his blog on 3rd September 2011. (Click here for the post.)

"Father, we hate that your world is broken,

and we confess that we are broken, too.
Our hearts break at the brokenness of this neighborhood,
and at our own inadequacy to fix any of it.
How long, O Lord, will you let your people suffer,
and let those created in your image languish in poverty,
fear, rejection, abuse, imprisonment, addiction, relentless sorrow?
Come and save; come and restore;
heal our hearts; without you we are completely lost."

Forgiveness is powerful, beautiful, messy, and risky - Tim Gombis

Tim Gombis has written a really good blog post about forgiveness.

Everything in the post is good. Here are some excerpts.

"Forgiveness is so profoundly powerful and beautiful... Forgiveness doesn’t ask for guarantees... Forgiveness takes the risk... Forgiveness doesn’t fix everything... Forgiveness doesn’t guarantee a Disney ending... Forgiveness doesn’t clean up the whole mess... Forgiveness remains difficult, complicated, risky, and profoundly beautiful."

Click here for the entire post.

Let the gospel overwhelm and transform - Tim Gombis

Here are some excerpts from Tim Gombis's recent post in his blog. I think they are excellent.

"It seems to me that the New Testament assumes the constant rehearsal of the story of Scripture in order to shape the identity of God’s people.  We get to know God and his ways with his people as we have our imaginations shaped by the narrative of Scripture.  That’s the resurrection-powered world we inhabit, with all its possibilities, its dynamics, and its causes and effects."

"God works in power only through communities of the cross.  God unleashes resurrection power only among cruciform communities of humility and weakness.  God’s people, therefore, can adopt postures of humility toward one another and call out to God for wisdom to find a way forward through any challenge.  They then put their heads together and commit to the hard work of discussing and listening to one another in order to creatively come up with a way to deal with whatever challenge they face."

"It seems to me that here is where churches sometimes fail.  They imagine that the problem is the problem.  After all, churches aren’t supposed to have problems or challenges, just as individual Christians are supposed to have perfect lives.  If there’s something wrong, then there’s something wrong!"

"I hate Christian clichés, but I’ve never forgotten this one: “the end is the process.”"

"The goal is not simply to get rid of the problem or to get past the obstacle as quickly as possible.  The goal is to go through the hard work of discussing and listening in order to strengthen the bonds of community through that whole messy process.  Get people involved, let people give advice and counsel.  Cultivate openness, honesty, and vulnerability.  Giving people opportunities just might allow them to discover their gifts and capacities to contribute to a community.  It will allow a church to actually do the “one-anothers” of church life."

"[Y]ou only lose when you try to win.  God has already pledged his allegiance to us in Jesus, so we can’t lose.  We’re already loved by God despite our failures, sins, and shameful pasts, so there’s no way we can fail.  If working through a difficulty as a community takes more time than we thought, that’s okay.  If we think we’re going to miss out on great opportunities because we’re doing the hard work of making sure everyone is unified, that’s okay, too.  Like I said, the whole point is the process, and we win when we remain unified and grow in love for one another."

Click here to read the full blog post.

Timothy Gombis on "God's Missional Sustenance for God's people"

Timothy Gombis has posted something really nice in his blog. It's his reflection after a number of posts on John 4. It ends with Gombis' own experience in his church. For years I have been thinking about what the Christian community should be like, and I am really glad to find that Gombis is saying something very similar to what I have in mind (and he articulates it so much better). Here are some excerpts from his blog post.

"I’ve been thinking about this in relation to divine election as the identity of the people of God.  So often we shrink back from this notion because it seems to imply an “insiders only” mentality.  “We’re God’s elect and they aren’t.”  We may have seen a doctrine of election put to use to endorse a lack of redemptive involvement in the wider culture."

"Jesus indicates, however, that it is only when the church encounters outsiders in open-ended relationships that we are sustained."

"First, we do not encounter the other—or, the world—with a posture of condescension, arrogance, or even in order to set anyone right.  Just as Jesus asked the woman for a drink, taking on a posture of mutuality and even need, we ought to cultivate friendships and relationships of mutuality with others."

"There are countless ways that churches can relate to outsiders and to surrounding culture(s) that follow the pattern of Jesus, but so many of these are unexplored.  We tend only to imagine manipulative relationships, ones that will “get results.”"

"Churches can offer to clean up local neighborhoods, care for town parks, staff after-school services for kids from low-income homes,... And we can serve the world in these ways with no interest in “the bottom line,” but simply with hopes of faithfully embodying our identity as followers of Jesus."

"We tend to imagine that we need to have all the right tools, get all the right teaching, and only then do we go out and get involved in our communities.  I wonder if we think this way because we want to have some sort of guarantee that we’ll get results.  Or, maybe to pacify our fear of failure."

"About a year into our urban missional church experience, I was walking with my friend John Mortensen in our church’s local neighborhood.  We had imagined that God was going to do amazing things through our church.  After all, we were sent there as their salvation.  Or so we imagined."

"The on-the-ground realities slowly dissolved our romantic notions and our big dreams.  Rather than seeing lots of change in the neighborhood, we began seeing changes in ourselves.  That conversation made all of this make sense to me.  John and I came to the realization that we weren’t the salvation of that neighborhood.  God had us there in that neighborhood to save us."

"God was sustaining us and giving us life as we enjoyed conversations with people over a meal, as we shared about our lives and listened to their stories, and as we developed friendships of giving and receiving."

Click here for the original blog post.