Yeah, But…

This is post #6 in a series on developing a new missiology. Some of you, upon reading my last post, Callsourcing the Mission, might have disagreed with my proposal that we use a crowdsourced report of God’s calling, rather than people group taxonomies, as a foundation for our missiology. You may have seen some shortcomings [...]

Tags: Callsourcing, Missiology, Unreached People Groups

Callsourcing the Mission

This is post #5 in a series on developing a new missiology. Human-sized hamster ball. Dunkin’ Donuts locations. Double Rainbow.  At any given point in time, web analytics can show us what topics are “trending” in social media. An uptick in Google searches might indicate breaking news or a YouTube video going viral. Twitter trends [...]

Tags: Callsourcing, Missiology, Unreached People Groups

Missiospeak

This is post #4 in a series on developing a new missiology. In my last post, I summarized the origins of the current popular understanding of missions. People group thinking, as I call it, hasn’t been all bad. But neither has it been all good. This, I suspect, is due in large part to the [...]

Tags: Missiology, Mom-and-Pop, terminology, Unreached People Groups

Missional… Missionaries?

This is post #2 in a series on developing a new missiology. Over the course of about ten years, the church has seen a huge shift in thinking. As western culture moved away from identifying itself as “christian,” young(er) leaders started to explore new, more appropriate expressions of church in a post-everything context. Some questioned [...]

Tags: Culture, Missiology, missional, soaicl action

Missional Missiology

I’m calling for a new missiology. The current popular one is neither biblical nor helpful. So let’s work through a new one. Of course, by “new” here I mean “old” in the sense of directly founded in scripture, but “new” in that it makes sense for today’s globalized experience. To that end, I’m starting a [...]

Tags: Missiology, Taxonomy, terminology

The Church, On Mission

This the the third in what I didn’t realize was going to become a series on the relationship between missiology and ecclesiology. I believe this is an extremely helpful conversation. One that needs to happen more and more. Missiologically-driven folks need to hear more about the centrality of the church in the Great Commission. Many [...]

Tags: Church, Missiology, sending church

The Mission Has A Church

There has been an ongoing discussion among Christian leaders about the relationship of the church and the mission of God. On one side, you’ve got those who say that ecclesiology (theology of church) should come before our missiology (theology of mission). In other words, the church is the most important thing in terms of how [...]

Tags: Church, Missiology, sending church

I Double-Dog-Dare You

Nobody likes a bully.  Ours was Brian Whipple, a red-headed sixth-grader with a beard and anger management issues. “The Whip,” as we called him, loved to challenge us, in front of the most popular guys and prettiest girls in school, to do things that one would not normally want to do. Dangerous things. Embarrassing things. [...]

Tags: Bullying, Mobilization

Mission Short Sale

Anyone who’s been following the housing market in the current economy is familiar with the term “short sale.” Basically, a short sale is when a borrower can’t pay the mortgage, so and the lender sells the property for leas than it’s owed in order to cut its losses. Sure, a house may be worth more, [...]

Tags: Preaching, Short Sale

Who Is the Missionary?

Most churches actually require unbelievers to be the missionaries. In order for them understand the gospel and its effect on their lives, they have to enter our church culture and extrapolate for themselves what a relationships with Jesus would mean for them. They have to learn a new language in order to hear the gospel. [...]