What did God teach you today?

We're continuing in Exodus this week. It will probably be posted here (click media and launch the sermon player) tomorrow or Tuesday. I was going to direct you to a new place besides our church each week, but I don’t listen to enough online preaching to do that so we’ll call this Mosaic month.

With all that out of the way, if you went to a worship service today, what did God teach you/challenge you with?

“Surely God was in this place and I did not know it.”

I love getting my Leadership Journal each quarter. Preaching is the primary theme this time and I was reading an interview with Rob Bell of Mars Hill Bible Church (in Michigan, I think). It was an interesting interview on creativity and leadership and preaching, but there’s one question, early in the interview that I thought was a wonderful reminder and challenge.

Leadership Journal: “Your sermons are known for pulling from unexpected sources – everything from art history to quantum physics. Why?”

Bell: “When Jacob woke up after his vision of angels ascending and descending on the ladder, he declared, ‘Surely God was in this place and I did not know it.’ And Jesus says, ‘My Father is always at work even to this very day.’ Jesus lives with an awareness, an assumption that God is here and he’s at work. Dallas Willard calls this ‘the God-bathed world.’ This has deeply shaped me.”

There was more to the interview, but this just grabbed me. God is at work all around us in the lives of people in ways you could never imagine. I’m encouraged to pray for eyes to see God at work and how I can play a part in it.

Book Club Friday: Church Unique, Chapters 3-4

I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, so go ahead and frame the discussion in the comments below. I hope to get some thoughts down this evening or tomorrow some time.

Hump Day History: St. Augustine’s City of God

I think actually finishing The City of God will be one of my greatest reading accomplishments. It’s long and, to be honest, not always riveting. I’m no literary critic and, since so many have found it so valuable for so long, I assume the problem’s with me, not the good saint’s work. Despite plodding through this book with one ‘book’ per week (his books are 40-60 pages each), there are some fantastic nuggets that are worthy of thought, or are at the very least, inspiring.

I’ve been tagging pages of note throughout the book. We’ll hit one of those each week, but there’s going to be a little bit of context needed for each one. So, instead of starting at the beginning (probably more like the middle since I was lost for the first half of the volume), I’m going to start where I’m reading (book XX of XXII – that’s 20 of 22 for you Arabic numeral-types). We’ll go back and hit the other stuff, but the context will be more fresh for me if we start where I am. And, honestly, that saves me some work. I’m all about that.

Again, I’m an Augustine novice so if you actually know something about him, your input is coveted.

Today I’m reading in Book 20, which is dealing with God’s judgment and this quote, regarding Satan’s 1000 year binding before his final loosening and defeat (see Rev. 20, I believe). For those wondering why God would bind Satan and then loose him for one last brouhaha, here’s what St. Augustine says,

“…if he were never loosed, his malicious power would be less patent, and less proof would be given of the steadfast fortitude of the holy city: it would, in short, be less manifest what good use the Almighty makes of his great evil. For the Almighty does not absolutely seclude the saints from his temptation, but shelters only their inner man, where faith resides, that by outward temptation they may grow in grace. And He binds him that he may not, in the free and eager exercise of his malice, hinder or destroy the faith fo those countless weak persons, already believing or yet to believe, from whom the Church must be increased and completed; and he will in the end loose him, that the city of God may see how mighty an adversary it has conquered, to the great glory of its Redeemer, Helper, Deliverer” (pp. 722-723).

Theodicy (answering the problem of evil) is one of the profound challenges of theism and this isn’t intended to be a full explanation by Augustine, but it does seem to be one angle on the issue. Great heroes need great villains. By releasing Satan, God’s greatness is highlighted. This leads to other problems, I suppose (like why create Satan if he’s going to fall, etc…), but in a theo-centric theology (it’s funny that there’d be any other kind) the highlighting of God’s goodness and greatness is a good reason for Satan to be bound, unleashed, and finally abolished from the earth.

Prayer Help

A vital discipline for the Christian life is prayer. Some people have natural, thriving prayer lives. I’m not one of them. It’s work for me. Sometimes I work hard at it; other times I’m pretty lame. But our senior pastor gave a message two Sundays ago that had some helpful tools for prayer highlighted. Check it out here. Click the media tab. It’s the 2/14 message.

A great element (that we should really put online) was the videos of some people sharing some practical tips for prayer. One shared an iPhone app, another shared their journaling technique (I use something similar), but the one that I’ve hooked on to from the message is Echo Prayer. It is a service where you type in your requests and you’re sent reminders – whenever you schedule them – via text, email, or both.

I figured the site out by myself and it has been a helpful reminder, and challenge, to pray more regularly for those requests that I asked to be reminded of. If I can figure it out, anyone can.

Check it out: www.echoprayer.com

Mission(al) Monday: Missional Renaissance, Shift from Internal to External, Part 1

McNeal starts this chapter by noting a young church that posted their community service hours on their website to indicate their value of serving the community. They wanted to be a community who loved their community and this was an indicator. Becoming externally focused is more than just a program that includes community service. McNeal discusses several shifts that need to happen to actually shift from Internal to External Focus.

From Church-centric to Kindom-focused.
The church-centered world is when life revolves around the church and the church becomes a ‘full-service’ parallel universe alongside the world. The missional church doesn’t look at the kingdom through church lenses (where Jesus returns to make the world church-friendly). Rather, it looks at the church through kingdom lenses. Jesus is always at work and the church is catching up to Jesus and His work. The church is people, not a place. Wherever God’s people are, the church is there.

From Destination to Connector.
The church should not be a destination, but connecting people to the lives God has called them in the workforce, in their families, in their communities. Having the church as a destination is like saying an airport is the destination.

From Thinking We Are the Point to Being Absolutely the Point.
A question McNeal likes to ask when he speaks is this: “What’s the point of being the people of God if the people of God are not the point?” He’s getting at the fact that God has chosen us to be a blessing (check out this article from Christianity Today on Lesslie Newbigin for similar ideas). Since we are to be a blessing people, McNeal challenges churches to change from an evangelism strategy to a ‘blessing strategy,’ which people want to do (since they don’t want to do evangelism). The results seem to be better in our culture – and I know it is my personal preference.

From Attractional to Incarnational.
In many ways the church has sought to be a full-service community where success is measured by participation in church activities. An incarnational church sees the church as dispersed to bless the community so the influence of a church-member teacher would be taken into consideration in an incarnational church, not just the size of the children’s ministry. The ultimate measurement in an incarnational community is the quality of disciple and how they influence the culture – celebrate incarnational ministry, commission people as missionaries to apartment complexes, etc…, and adopt schools to get into the community.

From Member Culture to Missionary Culture.
The attractional church is about members, the missional church is about the congregation seeing themselves as missionaries in their culture. The church needs to avoid being a parallel culture. Instead, it needs it’s ‘members’ to engage all over the place as ‘missionaries’ if it is to be a missional church.

What did God teach you today?

We started a new series going through the first half of Exodus this week. The series is called Life Giving Worship and this week covers Exodus chapters 1-2. It will probably be posted tomorrow or Tuesday. I was going to direct you to a new place besides our church each week, but I don’t listen to enough online preaching to do that so we’ll call this Mosaic month.

With all that out of the way, if you went to a worship service today, what did God teach you/challenge you with?