Reality

Heh Heh. I can't believe that I am writing a post on reality.

I think it is very hard for most Americans, including American Christians, to accept the reality of reality. It is much more fun to create our own.

Calvin, from the Calvin & Hobbes comic series, said, "Reality continues to ruin my life."

Adam Savage, of Myth Busters fame, said, "I reject your reality, and substitute it for my own."

That pretty much sums up the view of reality for most people I know. Instead of dealing with reality we seem bent on creating our own. And we do it with utmost seriousness at times.

I recently watched a news report that told the story of a Somali family who walked 24 miles to reach help at a famine relief camp in Kenya. The mom died on the way and the father and children were very weak when they arrived. That is the reality of the world we live in. That's some serious stuff. Funny how we can turn a lot of other aspects of our life and elevate them to "most serious" status.

Sometimes I hear Christians saying that the end of the world is near because of the bad things they are reading about in their communities. I used to go to church with a guy in Africa who didn't have any ears. They had been cut off by rebel soldiers. I bet he thought the end of the world was long past due. We probably would have given up on church if that happened to us. I guess "How bad things are" is relative.

I don't mean this post to be a downer because we have so much to be thankful for. But I think the more we truly grasp reality the more thankful we become. A book title that really helps me (You can tell I am a deep thinker, can't you?) is Eugene Peterson's "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction." Now there is a dose of reality I can relate to.

Complaints Blessings

Well, it is really hot. I usually don't run air conditioners in the church sanctuary unless there is an event taking place but I did turn it on this week to try and keep some of gear from melting. I don't worry about the electronics since it's all turned off but I do worry about drums and guitars and other stuff made of wood. It's hot.

My son will be going off to college this fall and he happened to be lucky enough to get stuck in one of the few dorms that has no air conditioning. He complained to me about it the other day. Big mistake. I grew up in Africa and went to boarding school where air conditioning was just a dream. I don't think he appreciated my lesson on evaporative cooling. You sweat for a reason, you know. But it is hot.

It just so happens that the assignment for our small group this week is to list all of the blessings we have been blessed with. All of them. No matter how small. That list gets pretty big in a big hurry and after awhile complaining seems kind of ridiculous. I guess that was the point of the exercise.

So it doesn't matter how hot it is, how stupid the politicians in Washington are being, what the terror threat level might be, how bad my tomatoes are suffering from Blossom End Rot, or how worried I might be about how my kids might turn out (My brother says his biggest fear is that one of his daughters will be the next Lady Gaga.) I won't complain because I am blessed.

Defining Missional

I still haven't gotten my head around this topic so here it is again. If I wanted to get in touch with a group of people around a common interest I would need to define that interest so that people would know if they fit in the group or not. We see this on the web all the time. Some people start groups based on a particular sport. Others refine that even more and create groups around a specific team. And still others start groups that revolve around a specific cause regarding their specific team. (Fire The Coach!)But it gets a lot more difficult when the group is based on a word that has several meanings. This problem is not new.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/march/16.56.html

http://www.friendofmissional.org/

http://futuristguy.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/frank-violas-three-questions-on-the-meaning-of-missional/

http://subversiveinfluence.com/2008/07/50-ways-to-define-%E2%80%9Cmissional%E2%80%9D-ix/

So how would I define "missional" if I wanted to create a group of leaders who wanted to encourage each other along that path? What would I throw out that would help people know what I was talking about and what kind of a group I was looking for?

As I look through the notes I have from listening to Reggie McNeil I come up with a lot of ideas.

"The People of God...partnering with Him...in His redemptive mission in the world."

"Moving from church as a "what" to church as a "who"."

"Moving from a noun to a verb. i.e. 'I church at work.'"

"Inward focused to outward focused."

"From program development to people development."

"From church centric to Kingdom focused."

All are good thoughts but how do you put them together in a definition that makes sense? I was at our denominations national conference recently and I heard a guy talking about establishing missional communities. I had a conversation with him afterwards to try to determine exactly what he was talking about. I think he is on a similar path but who knows.

Maybe it is best not to worry about it. My guess it wouldn't take long for people to discover if they were thinking along the same lines or not. Then they could decide if they were in or out. Maybe it should be a word that covers a lot of ground and can't be defined in a sentence or two.