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Missional theology in a rap song. Great stuff.

‘Send Me’ - Live at MHC | Ballard from Mars Hill Church on Vimeo.

One of my favorite metaphors for Christian spirituality is the race. These verses reveal that we should run with gutsy, audacious, self-denial–and with trusting, child-like, dependence. We should move as fast as we can, while realizing that the fact that we can remain on our feet is entirely in the hands of Another.

1 Corinthians 9:23-24:

I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.

Psalm 37:23-24:

The steps of a man are established by the LORD,
when he delights in his way;
though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong,
for the LORD upholds his hand.

Every so often, there’s a question that crops up when I’m reading/thinking about church planting. This is especially true when church planting gets slotted under the heading of “apostolic ministry.” Here’s a quote from N.T. Wright that assesses, accurately, I believe, the priority of first century apostles:

The heart of the apostles’ reasoning in all this was the priority of the word of God and prayer. Only when a crisis emerges do we see what is really important. We noted earlier that ‘the apostles’ teaching’ was top of the list of the defining marks of the church (2:42), and that the apostles, faced with persecution, were instructed by the angel to ‘go and speak the words of this Life’ (5:20)… The early apostolic testimony stands solidly: the task of an apostle is the word of God and prayer.

Based on what we find in the New Testament–that apostolic ministers, the men God uses to begin new gospel movements, are first and foremost preachers and prayers–how do we reconcile the massive amounts of time that church planters today typically pour into fund raising, advertising campaigns, and infrastructure?

I’m not saying that any of those latter things are extraneous. Just wondering how to keep first things first and how to go about explaining this apparent dichotomy… If anyone else wants to take a shot at this, I’m all ears.

Steve McCoy has developed the “Missional Triad,” an ecclesiological model that emphasizes–surprise–missional living. He also reveals that he’s a decent draftsman. I like models that emphasize gospel initiative while allowing that the church can also exert an attractional influence on culture.

This comes from N.T. Wright’s Acts for Everyone Part One, but it reads like a paragraph out of a novel. A historically-true, gospel-centered, heart-thumping novel that reflects the kind of “education” a seminary grad can only pray for and aspire to.

Peter and John had a secret–a secret that enabled them to run rings round the book-learning of the authorities. They had been with Jesus. They had been with him night and day. They had seen and heard him pray. They knew how he read the scriptures, in his fresh, creative way, drawing out their inner message and finding his own vocation in the middle of it.

Now that he had died and had then been astonishingly raised, and had then been exalted into the heavenly realm, all Peter and John had to do to explain what they were about was to develop the lines of thought they had heard him use over and over again.

This didn’t just give them “boldness” in the sense of courage to stand up and say what they thought. Sometimes people can be bold even when they’re muddled. It gave them something more: a clarity, a sharp edge, a definite point at which to stand. And the authorities knew it.