Tag: mission
Protected: A 7 Step Discernment Process
An Inmate’s Mission (dispatches from Prison Ministry)
As some of you know, I’m ministering at the Federal Prison: FCI Schuylkill.
1,330 male inmates. Our class has 31.
I gain so many insights from my brothers there. So, it seems a terrible waste not to share some of them here.
We just finished up on lesson on Finding Your Mission.
We talked about what Jesus’ mission was. We talked about our own missions.
Some of them hadn’t thought of the concept and surely didn’t like it apply to them behind bars.
… if you are in prison, it’s really high time you find your mission…
But, that’s true for all of us.
I’m learning right along with them. The pressure is higher to learn lessons to help and heal you when you live behind bars, but the lessons themselves tend to be quite the same.
So far, the ground is fertile and the spiritual thirst is fervent!
The hearts of the those who choose to come on Monday’s is “the good soil”!
(If it was half of this at church the world WOULD be on fire with it!)
MISSION for inmates?
In reading the verse that is essentially Jesus’ mission statement (and also a prophecy from Isaiah) I realized that I have the same mission. It came into sharp focus.
“I’m setting literal captives free with the Good News.”
Jesus came, taught, brought and lived the Good News, died, rose, and then…left.
He didn’t stay where everyone would surely try to force him to be king (or pope, or whatever). Everyone still wanted to be free of the Romans. Except for a few of his students and friends and a few family members, everyone would be missing the point.
The Jews were captives of the Romans. That didn’t change when Jesus was here or after he left.
The Kingdom of God doesn’t free you in that way.
The invitation was (and is) to be free from the captivity of sin and death and the mindsets that keep us imprisoned (or in the case of my brothers…it puts you in an actual prison).
The Good News was and is the hope, the reality, the plan fulfilled: that God came to reconcile us to him, forgive us, and make things right. Little by little we carry it out and remake the world.
Little by little we provide the impact of authentic justice in the world.
It starts, for me, in jail along side my brothers. As these men transform, so will their world and the world, at large.
What a joy it was to tell my brothers that they are truly missionaries with a genuine mission behind the bars!
They are light in a dark place.
No time is wasted.
They are NOT just doing their time; The are making up for wasting it.
Their mission has begun, and no one can stop it. Once you’ve been set free, you are free indeed!
Jesus is our model and so is his mission.
Are you doing time too? Or are you on your mission?
Luke 4:14
Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Reports about him spread quickly through the whole region.
15 He taught regularly in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures.
17 The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, 19 and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.[f]”
20 He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently.
21 Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!”
If you can help us, we need it. Badly. Monday nights 6-8:30. Let me know!
How Story is Trumping Word: Len Sweet
I got the pleasure of hearing Leonard Sweet in person at Evangelical Seminary yesterday. It was a free event, and that was surprising in itself.
Len talked about some important things. Some of them were already clear in my mind, but for the audience they felt shocking.
I will unwrap a few of his main points and add a few of my own over the next few posts.
He spoke about the power of image and story trumping words and books (which are essentially an anti-social and individualistic experience).
Len showed this video:
(It’s for a hotel. Their tag line is THERE’S NO GREATER ACT OF HOSPITALITY THAN TO EMBRACE A STRANGER AS ONE’S OWN.
IT’S IN OUR NATURE.) The (French) language barrier is overcome by using just a soundtrack and story that gets to the heart of something we all want.
“The world is stealing our best lines (as Christians) because we don’t know we have them.” -Len Sweet
(I would add that the Story is gone too–left to marketers and cheapened to sell goods and services, yet failing (of course) to truly deliver on its promise.)
It only takes a generation to lose a Story. Instead of mission statements maybe we need stories, or The Story.
How can we bring it to a new age and generation that has move “from Gutenburg to Google” ?
The arts may have a new renaissance if we properly apprehend the shift.
(Check back soon for the next in this series on “The Tyranny of the Left Brain”. Or get it sent to you directly by signing up in t he sidebar for delivery.)
Anabaptists leading missional change?
Chris Morton got my attention with his summary insights from the recent Missio Alliance conference.
He made 8 key observations, but this one really struck me.
6. Anabaptists
Many of those at Missio fall into what I once heard referred to as “the Hauerwas mafia.” That is, those inspired by the writing of Hauerwas, Yoder and others, to think of themselves as neo-Anabaptist. Historically, anabaptists have either been persecuted by other churches, or have disengaged from the world (Amish).However, Anabaptism has one key tennent which is suddenly very valuable: it has never excepted the claims of Christendom, Christendom (culturally and governmentally enforced Christianity) and thinks of the church as a local, incarnational, counter society. As Christendom crumbles around North America and Western Europe, the Anabaptist tradition offers a posture for understanding the church’s place in the world.
(emphasis mine)
Loyalties
If Anabaptists have sort of weathered the storm that is Christian enmeshment in the over-influencial cultural siren of political involvement–and I think they have–we have a lot to learn from them moving forward. The Anabaptist tradition challenges us, in a most important way, to question some of our misplaced loyalties.
Issues of social justice come to the fore as well in this outlook because we begin to identify with and reach out to the people that Jesus did: the underdogs, the powerless, and those without a voice in the power games.
Is the shift obvious yet?
The U.S. cultural climate has changed drastically in the last 10 years. Is this reality evading us? It is.
Especially in Bible Belt areas that primary operate in a Christian biosphere. “Christian Land” happens in the places of profitable enterprises, power, influence, and a whole world dedicated to a kind of Christian sub-culture that, sadly, makes too little impact on the non-churched population.
Nashville comes to mind, for one. But there are plenty of less obvious locations that don’t have the sheen of Nash-Vagas. It’s the insular world (sometimes accompanied with chic hairdos and great pedicures) were folks really think their sorts of movies like Courageous deserve an Academy Award….and maybe woulda gotten one if it weren’t for them Hollywood liberals!
Yet, in most places in the U.S. the post-Christian era is here. Fully. To the unchurched, in many areas of the country, Christians and their silly churchy ways are impotent charicatures suitable for mocking. To those outside the bubble, they aren’t making a difference too much in the world, and not making progress in the spiritual depth of their own cliché either.
This means a reevaluation of what it means to be Christian and living a Kingdom life is crucial.
We need to once again ask, as we must in every generation:
• “What are our core values and mission as Kingdom people?”
• “Are our ways the upside down Kingdom ways?”
• If not, what should we learn? What is most meaningful moving forward?
The sifting begins!
Want my best guess? Millenials are the key to traction for the Kingdom now.
You can read Chris’ 7 other insights here.