ie:missional

Prolific author, missiologist and all around good guy, Ed Stetzer, has teamed with Georgia pastor and all around really good guy, Philip Nation, to author the WMU theme book for 2008, Compelled by Love: The Most Excellent Way to Missional Living. As part of their “Blog Tour” the authors have graciously agreed to an interview at ie:missional.

The word “missional” is being used by many people. What is your brief definition?
Ed: You are right. And for most people, it does not sound like a real word. For the purposes of this book, we use a very simple definition: missional is to live sent—living like a missionary and focused on the Kingdom. To the average Christian, they know that missionaries go places to tell the Good News of Christ’s redemption and serve a place to show the effects of Christ’s redemption. They live for Jesus and his mission. For a more extensive conversation on the word, check out my blog at http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/meaningsofmissional.html

Give us a sense of what biblical love looks like to you.
Philip: Biblical love is much more sacrificial than I previous admitted. Like most, I had grown accustomed to romantic-comedies giving the definition of love: boy meets girl, happily ever after stories. The Bible gives the sense that love has a purpose and a cost. God wants to glorify himself and one way he chooses to do it is through the death of his Son.

How do you want people to be changed after reading this book?
Philip: Changing perspectives is one of the big changes I hope people experience. I want the people who read this book to look at their neighbors with a new mindset that is birthed out of their kingdom citizenship.
Ed: My hope is that people will engage their communities with a deeper passion and at a more rapid pace. From all that we know, the church is not impacting culture as it once did. Being missional will mean that Christians seek to immediately get in the middle of their community to make a difference through serving the hurting, showing Christ, and communicating the Gospel.

With so much being written about the missional idea, how is this book different?
Ed: This book is for everyday believers – not only pastors. It will be helpful to pastors in their own lives, but our focus is people, not just leaders. Hopefully, the book will give the “why” behind much of the “what” pastors are asking their people to do.

Both of you have varied backgrounds but church planting is the common denominator. How did church planting prepare you for writing this book?
Philip: I’ve always been around traditional churches. And I entered the ministry as a teenager. But planting a church has taken me way outside of the church sub-culture I had grown accustomed to in my life. Church planting widened my perspective of just how far most of my neighbors are from God. Planting has also made me more patient with the “sinners and tax collectors” Christ was so fond of hanging with – whereas before, they scared/offended me.

If churches and denominations do not adopt a missional understanding of the church, how long will it be before they are not merely philosophically irrelevant but functionally so?
Philip: As you have here, we all normally think of relevancy as an issue of how we engage culture. So the short answer is–not long. Speaking in and working in understandable ways is critical to any work we assign a missionary sent to foreign fields. It is equally important for all Christians who “stay at home” to work on our own turf. Without speaking in the koine language of our setting, it is a bit silly even to speak.

Additionally, let me set my answer in another-and I think more important-direction. A church without an understanding of God’s mission is already irrelevant to God’s purposes. So, as in our book, I would point people’s attention to be in step with the heart of God first and then his work through our lives will be a more naturally outworking.

Compelled by Love is available through amazon.com and at Lifeway stores.

The late minister and poet Thomas John Carlisle penned a series of poems based on the prophet Jonah, whose story is recorded in the biblical book of the same name. Writing from Jonah’s actions, attitudes and perceptions, this short volume of poems is as insightful as its poems are brief. The book, You! Jonah!, included poems that Carlisle had published in various newspapers and magazines both sacred and secular, as well as previously unpublished poems on the same subject matter. The book was first published in 1968, but has been out of print for 35 years.

Here are four of my favorites:

Coming and Going
The word came
and he went
in the other
direction.

God said: Cry
tears of compassion
tears of repentance;
cry against
the reek
of unrighteousness;
cry for
the right turn
the contrite spirit.

And Jonah rose
and fled
in tearless
silence.

Reprimand to a Naive Deity
I will not advertise
this crazy scheme
of Yours.

God, what a farce
that men should sin and find
escape.

I mean, of course,
not me
but all our mutual

antagonists.
Dear God, kind God, don’t listen
to their prayers.

Sunk
A man overboard
gasping and drowning,
does he actually look
at his own disappearing
identity?

Jonah could see
only an admirable
ambassador of God
sunk by his own
superior
opinions.

Personnel Problem
Jonah cherished chips
on both his shoulders.
He was in the wrong
business. On the accounts
he clamored to handle
he was calculating
to liquidate
the customers.
However, his Employer
computed profits
on another basis
and kept the dynamite
too readily
defusable.

About a month ago, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper advertised for the opportunity to participate in a book discussion for Douglas A. Blackmon’s provocative work of history entitled, Slavery by Another Name. Those who desired to attend the discussion were to send a 100 word email describing themselves and why they would like to be a part. I sent mine and was pleasantly surprised two weeks later, with no acknowledgment or other response, to find a complimentary copy of the book in my mailbox with an explanatory letter. I began reading the book immediately (I had about 10 days to read the 400+ pages not including the notes section) and attended the discussion Wednesday night hosted by the AJC’s Richard Halicks, moderated by editor Jay Bookman and attended by the book’s author and around 13 other readers.

Sub-titled, “The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II,” the volume deals with a little remembered period in the southern US that followed emancipation and continued into the first decades of the Jim Crow era during which “separate but equal” led inevitably to “colored” water fountains, back of the bus riding, serving African Americans out of the back of restaurants, turning a blind eye to crimes against African Americans, etc. Having lived in the south my entire life this book was intriguing on its face, but I had no idea just how ignorant I was about the history of the places of my raising. The essence of the book is that slavery in the US did not end in the 1860’s as we have believed, but in the mid 1940’s. The argument is bulletproof. Slavery did not disappear; it simply changed names.

Immediately following Lincoln’s Proclamation that granted freedom to all slaves in the US there was confusion in the South. Was it really freedom? Where would these millions of freed slaves live and work? Could they really vote? What would happen to the land belonging to whites? Would there be an occupying army from the North for months or years? How would the economy, which had become substantial in steel and cotton production, be rebuilt without slaves? It would not take long for these questions to be answered in the most horrifying way-a way that would make some antebellum plantations and the sipping of mint juleps while black hands deftly cleared cotton bolls under the threat of the lash pale by comparison. Blackmon writes, “By 1900, the South’s judicial system had been wholly reconfigured to make one of its primary purposes the coercion of African Americans to comply with the social customs and labor demands of whites.”

The core essential to the re-enslavement was the “convict lease” program entered into by many corporations and plantation owners. In order to provide cheap labor for the burgeoning mining industry, lumber yards, mills, and turpentine production, businesses as large as U. S. Steel (via its subsidiary Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co.) would “lease” convicts for labor–convicts that could not pay off the fines and debts charged to them in court. The problem was that the legal system that grew from this arrangement had a single purpose: the arrest and conviction of African American men who had no means of paying the fines and fees assigned to them so that they could be “leased” to a corporate entity for a period of time (say, 100 days) after which time they would supposedly be freed.

Across the “Black Belt” of the old South, small town governments gave wide latitude to local sheriffs, constables and justices of the peace to arrest, on the flimsiest of evidence, convict, sentence and lease prisoners. The laws that were passed and enforced were, primarily, those of which African-Americans would be found “guilty”: vagrancy (vaguely defined as not being able to prove at a given moment that one has a job), making a pass at a white woman, leaving employment without permission from the employer (creating permanent servitude). At sentencing a “friend” or corporation would pay the fine and associated fees thereby taking possession of the prisoner until the debt was paid or lease the prisoner from the controlling government. The “convict” would then be taken to a place such as the Pratt Mines in Birmingham, the Chattahoochee Brick Company in Atlanta or one of any number of plantations or forests across the south. Once in the system, any person could be sub-leased any number of times making it almost impossible for concerned family members to ever find them. Powerful Atlanta families as well known and honored in memory as the Woodruffs and the Hurts were involved in this chicanery to various degrees.

Additionally, once leased, any infraction could add days, weeks, months or years to a sentence that might have been as short as 30 days. Broken tools, stolen food, lack of productivity and others infractions real and imagined could and did accumulate at the time of impending freedom for many, if they were blessed enough to live that long. Because of the endless supply of African Americans to be arrested, there was little to no incentive for the corporations or landowners to take care of those they had leased. In the slavery era, each slave represented a capital investment from which the slave owner expected a return. To kill a slave was akin to throwing money in the wind. The convict lease program removed all need for such “compassion.” At the Slope No. 12 mine outside Birmingham, AL, men were daily loosed from their barrack shackles at 3:00 AM, taken into a labyrinth of tunnels underground, worked all day in excrement fouled waters, brought back above ground after nightfall only seeing the sun on Sunday. That, of course, was the Lord’s Day and the white folks did not work.

Murder, contagion, rape and intentional sickness from drinking the defiled tunnel water were common. Those who died were dumped unceremoniously into unmarked graves at the edges of the massive compound. The call would then go out for more workers. Which meant more trumped up charges. More arrests. More money changing hands. In a single year, 25% of the income for the State of Alabama came from the convict lease program.

With the exception of an extended investigation under President Teddy Roosevelt and a tenacious, heroic effort by an Assistant U. S. Attorney named Warren Reese, virtually nothing was done to stop, as the author phrased it during our discussion, this “malevolent exclusion of justice.” In the aftermath of the Civil War and the still tenuous relationship between North and South, the investigations ended in minor penalties on some very guilty men with most sentences being suspended. Had he been supported with a little backbone from those in Washington, DC, Reese may well have gone down in history as the William Wilberforce of his generation. But it was not to be.

Anyone raised in the south should read this book. Anyone interested in racial understanding or reconciliation issues should read this book. IMO, it will set a standard for understanding this period of American history. It is a deep and profound work.

On Wednesday evening last the selected readers gather at the AJC building on Marietta Street in Atlanta. What was to be a two hour discussion lasted a little over three and I did not get the sense that anyone was really ready to leave. If my memory holds, the group consisted of nine African Americans and five of anglo heritage, among us a judge, state representative, community activist, grad student and college dean all of whom spoke openly and passionately about how the book made us feel and the issues that it raised. While the subject matter was limited to the substance of the book itself, I could not shake the feeling that another two hours and we would have begun making progress on how these issues affect each of us personally. It would have been time well spent.

Today’s AJC featured a summary of the meeting which can be found here.

From The Existence and Attributes of God:

A carnal worship, whether under the law or gospel, is, when we are busied about external rites, without an inward compliance of soul. God demands the heart; ‘My son, give me thy heart;’ not give me thy tongue, or thy lips, or thy hands; these may be given without the heart, but the heart can never be bestowed without these as its attendants. A heap of services can be no more welcome to God, without our spirits, than all Jacob’s sons could be to Joseph, without the Benjamin he desired to see. God is not taken with the cabinet, but the jewel; he first respected Abel’s faith and sincerity, and then his sacrifice; he disrespected Cain’s infidelity and hypocrisy, and then his offering. For this cause he rejected the offerings of the Jews, the prayers of the Pharisees, and the alms of Ananias and Sapphira, because their hearts and their duties were at a distance from one another. In all spiritual sacrifices, our spirits are God’s portion. Under the law, the reins were to be consumed by the fire on the altar, because the secret intentions of the heart were signified by them, (Psalm 7:9), ‘The Lord tries the heart and the reins’…Sincerity is the salt which seasons every sacrifice. The heart is most like to the object; and a spiritual soul is the spring of all spiritual actions. How can we imagine God can delight in mere service of the body, any more than we can delight in converse with a carcass? Without the heart it is no worship; it is a stage play; an acting a part without being that person really which is acted by us.

Missional Press, the publisher of JOURNEYS (see below), has informed us that we are beyond the 500 mark in sales as of today, not including orders through Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com. We also learned yesterday afternoon that LifeWay has decided to stock JOURNEYS in their stores nationwide! That was very exciting news for Todd and me. We are hopeful that Family Christian Stores will pick it up as well in the next few weeks.

Interestingly, in all this good news we have a need that no new orders be placed online until Tuesday, March 4. Here is the reason: The first edition had a couple of typeset mistakes that have been fixed and the updated edition is almost ready to go with the printer. However, the printer is contractually obligated to fill all orders within a 48 hour period so our update has not been substituted since orders have continued to come in at a steady pace. We need for no online orders to be placed until Tuesday to allow the printer to make the substitution necessary, so that retailers and online orders can all begin getting the updated edition.

We are grateful beyond words for everyone who has already purchased this book and are hopeful for many more orders. Thanks for your patience in this our first endeavor and we trust that whether you already have it, are waiting for it to arrive or are still contemplating a purchase you will be blessed in your life and ministry.

One eighth of the GBC Evangelism Conference is today at Midway-Macedonia Church in Villa Rica. LifeWay research guru Ed Stetzer co-author of Breaking the Missional Code and the soon to be released Compelled by Love (co-authored with Philip Nation) will be speaking this afternoon.

Check the GBC site for times.

Thanks to everyone who took advantage of the pre-publication special for JOURNEYS: Transitioning Churches to Relevance. Our publisher says that printing has started and shipping of those orders should take place by Tuesday meaning that most of you should have them by mid- to late next week. (Take heart CB Scott; there is no conspiracy against you.)

Todd and I are hopeful that our effort will encourage the hearts of pastors and leaders everywhere and even help some church members understand what a pastor goes through in making momentous decisions and why those decisions are necessary.

Those of you who are waiting to take advantage of your Amazon Prime membership before ordering (and I don’t blame you) should find it available there in a week or two. Everyone else will be able to order it from your local brick-and-mortar bookstore around the same time.

Readers who live in west Georgia will find it available on the campus of Midway on Monday evening and Tuesday of next week. Unless we sell out very quickly (which would not bother us at all) it will be available beginning March 3 in the office at New Bethany which would be convenient for folks in North Gwinnett and South and West Hall counties. I have an appointment with my local LifeWay Mall of Georgia store about placing it in the “Local Pastors” section there. If that goes well, it will be available there in the next two weeks.

JOURNEYS is available for the publisher’s online price of $12.99 plus s&h at Missional Press.

And soon, we hope, available in airports koisks around the world…

I’ll be posting reviews for my book, JOURNEYS: Transitioning Churches To Relevance, here and adding them as they become available. I’m grateful for each person taking the time to do this.

Art Rogers @ Twelve Witnesses

Kevin Bussey @ Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

Micah Fries @ micahfries.com

Geoff Baggett @ SBC Impact

Emily Hunter McGowin @ Think. Laugh. Weep. Worship.

I’m very happy to announce the publication of my first book, JOURNEYS: Transitioning Churches To Relevance, co-authored with Todd Wright, pastor of Midway Church in Villa Rica, GA.

From the back cover:

When did the church become our refuge from the world? How did it happen that the church became the place we went when trying to get away from those we are supposed to be trying to reach? How did we ever become convinced that lost people remain lost because they will not come to church, rather than because followers of Christ refuse to live the gospel while sharing the gospel with them?For various reasons, many church leaders today have a tendency to ignore the value of understanding the changing times. Others simply preach against the changing seasons, as if by doing so they will prevent the times from coming.

In JOURNEYS: Transitioning Churches to Relevance, Pastors Todd Wright and Marty Duren share candidly about the road they each traveled as they labored to bring their churches to a place of significance and cultural relevance. Wright and Duren speak candidly about their struggles and their own pharisaical attitudes that for years kept them from experiencing lives lived on mission with Jesus Christ.

JOURNEYS is about seeing every encounter as a divine appointment to somehow bring Jesus to the surface of life. It is a challenge issued to the church to intentionally find areas of need in their communities to be the eyes, ears, heart, and hands of Jesus.

Below you can read what some leaders have said:

This new book by Duren and Wright is a book which will challenge, encourage, and even disturb readers. It is a brutally honest story of the struggle of two young pastors who yearn to see their churches impact culture for the cause of Christ in a way that is truly effective. Their struggles can be identified with most who have diligently sought to break out of traditional patterns and make a unique and powerful difference in reaching people for Christ. They desperately wanted to “be the church that God was calling us to be in our context and in our time.” The struggles that they faced are honestly included. The lessons learned truly point to God’s ongoing ministry to His servants.

It is a call to have a Kingdom philosophy of ministry as well as a missional approach to life. I commend this book to you. It is one that will help the next generation as they struggle in a less than easy environment in seeking to reach an ever increasing secular culture.

Dr. Frank Page

This book personifies the amazing persistence of God to graciously shape and effectively use us in His ongoing and always relevant work of restoring relationships with the highest order of His creation-people-of every tribe, tongue and nation. From a missionary point of view, it is a joy to learn of American pastors who are doing the same things that they would expect from foreign missionaries, namely to make whatever transitions are necessary in order to, in a culturally relevant way, faithfully communicate the fullness of God’s love to the people of the host culture. Consider this book as a compelling, educational and transparent missionary journal of two pastors who have led their congregations to become both local and global missionaries to the current generations of unreached people living in the United States’ Southeast and beyond. May their tribe increase!

Jim Capaldo, Russia Field Director, InterAct Ministries

Lots of people can tell you what to do. Some can do so through research, others through personal observation, and still others through their intuition. In JOURNEYS: Transitioning Churches To Relevance, Marty and Todd take us on a journey and tell us a story—and it is a worthwhile journey and a moving story. Instead of telling you what to do, Marty and Todd tell their journey from religious role-playing to personal transformation…and from personal transformation to fresh expressions of mission and ministry in their churches. I found myself engaged and challenged and believe you will as well.

Ed Stetzer, co-author of Comeback Churches and Compelled by Love

When it comes to writing books about leading transition in the church, there are three types of pastors. There are those who have led change and do not take the time to write about it. There are those who have not led change but write about how to do it anyway. And there are those that have actually done it well and written it down. Todd Wright and Marty Duren are definitely in the right category.

This book rocks! It is the actual story of how they did it - and provides big insights and big ideas. If your church is in transition, this is a must read!

Dan Southerland, author, Transitioning

JOURNEYS is tremendous; it is compelling, inspiring, challenging…all rolled up in one. I literally could not put it down. All of our staff and elders will be expected to read it as we pray through transitions of our own.

Micah Fries

For the next week or so, you can order JOURNEYS at a pre-publication price of $11.99, from the regular retail price of $14.99 through our publisher, Missional Press, where you can also read the publication press release. Soon, it will be available through Amazon.com and, we hope, at brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Please order a copy for yourself, pastoral staff, leaders in your church, denominational leaders, friends and neighbors, enemies, third cousins and anyone I’ve overlooked. Thanks for considering an order and we pray that these stories will encourage and bless your ministries.

Like many pastors, I try to read a wide variety of books in a good variety of disciplines.   I enjoy the growth that the variety brings and the “cross pollination” of ideas.  It seems that it makes for better preaching…but that’s just me.

This month, though, I made a decision to only read the Bible.  I still read a little news each day, but it has been cut way back and at times I would normally reach for another book it is the Word instead.

By the end of this evening, I should finish Exodus.  It seems that all 66 books might be within reach in 29 days, but I’ll let you know.