missional living Category

Implementing the Resurrection

Saturday, April 3rd, 2010

Often, as evangelicals, we struggle to verbalize the real meaning of the resurrection. We know it was important to the authors of the New Testament, but sometimes default to talk that diminishes it to simply being the “happy ending” of the gospel.

Below are a handful of quotes by N.T. Wright on the meaning, power, and importance of the resurrection (both Jesus’s and ours). All of these are taken from his excellent book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.

“If the promised final future is simply that immortal souls leave behind their mortal bodies, then death still rules.”

“To preach the Resurrection is to announce the fact that the world is a different place, and that we have to live in that “different-ness.” The Resurrection is not just God doing a wacky miracle at one time… this was the turning point in world history.”

“Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.”

“With Easter, God’s new creation is launched upon a surprised world, pointing ahead to the renewal, the redemption, the rebirth of the entire creation.”

“Instead of talking vaguely of heaven and then trying to fit the language of resurrection into that, we should talk with biblical precision about the resurrection and reorganize our language about heaven around that.”

“Every act of love, every deed done in Christ and by the Spirit, every work of true creativity – doing justice, making peace, healing families, resisting temptation, seeking and winning true freedom – is an earthly event in a long history of things that implement Jesus’s own resurrection and anticipate the final new creation and act as signposts of hope, pointing back to the first and on to the second.”

He is alive – and He is making all things new. Praise Him!

Love the City In Front of You

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Midtown MemphisPart of my recent decision to plant a new church in Memphis included the destruction of a personal idol.

I call this “idealized city idolatry.”

You know the people that have an ideal version of some church in their head? They keep waiting for this perfect church that suits them just perfectly in all the perfect ways. They keep waiting for this church that does not exist and so they never commit. They church hop all their days.

I don’t do that. At least not with churches. I do that with cities.

In the past, in processing a call to start a church, I have idolized the idea of what city I would plant in. It’s hard to explain, but if you know me, you might understand that I was waiting for that perfect city. In recent months God has broken me of this.

Hebrews 11 paints a picture of Abraham also yearning for a city – but his city was designed and built by God (v. 10).  That is what gave him and all those saints who faced tremendous difficulties the power to follow God on mission – they hoped for (and in) a lasting city – a city with “foundations.”  Abraham’s city was the new City to come.

Why don’t you (and I and all urban lovers out there) make a decision to stop looking for an idealized city here on earth (London! San Fran! Boston! Wherever You Last Visited!) and instead love the city right in front of you, plain as the nose on your face? It’s not going to be the perfect city.  In fact, isn’t that the point?  The real city (not the idealized one in your head) is most likely extremely broken.

But you and I are called, through the work of the gospel, to love that city, to help shape that city. Are you working, living, shopping, building relationships, doing justice, loving mercy, creating culture, and planting churches in such a way that the city right in front of you increasingly resembles that new City to come?

What We See Today

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Can Be Changed Tomorrow

This is a short video of my friend, Josh Wilson and his team from Mission St. Louis. This is a picture of the way one church or group of churches can impact their city, neighborhood by neighborhood.

What are ways your team is working for change in your city? I’d love to hear.

Christians Trying to Convert Non-Christians

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

I asked my close friend, Aaron, to do a video interview as part of a teaching series we were doing last year at The Journey. After he answered my questions, Aaron turned to me and said, “I’d like to say something about Christians trying to convert non-Christians.”

The rest, well… the rest amazed me.

What do you think?