The Call: Seekers Sought

I'm blogging some of my favorite quotes from The Call by Os Guinness. These come from chapter 2, Seekers Sought.

"Love seeks out the seeker - not because the seeker is worthy of love but simply because love's nature is to love regardless of the worthiness or merit of the one loved.""

"First, the way of agape says, 'By all means desire, but think carefully about what you love and what you desire.' Those who follow eros are not wrong to desire happiness but wrong to think that happiness is to be found where they seek it. Incomplete in ourselves, we desire what we think is beckoning to complete us."

"Second, the way of agape parts company with the way of eros over the means of the search. We cannot find God without God. Our seeking will always fall short unless God's grace initiates the search and unless God's call draws us to him and completes the search."

"If we are to desire the highest good, the highest good must come down and draw us so that it may become a reality we desire. From this perspective, there is no merit in seeking or finding. All is grace. The secret of seeking is not in our human ascent to God, but in God's descent to us."

"We start out searching, but we end up being discovered. We think we are looking for something; we realize we are found by Someone.What brings us home is not our discovery of the way home but the call of the Father who has been waiting there for us all along, whose presence there makes home home."

The Call: The Ultimate Why

I'm blogging some of my favorite quotes from The Call by Os Guinness. These come from chapter 1, The Ultimate Why.

"Out of more than a score of great civilizations in human history, modern Western civilization is the very first to have no agreed-on answer to the question of the purpose of life. Thus more ignorance, confusion - and longing - surround this topic now than at almost any time in history. The trouble is that, as modern people, we have too much to live with and too little to live for. Some feel that they have time but not enough money; others feel that they have money but not enough time. But for most of us, in the midst of material plenty, we have spiritual poverty."

"Answering the call of our Creator is 'the ultimate why' for living, the highest source of purpose in human existence."

"Calling begins and ends such ages, and lives, of faith by placing the final aim of life beyond the world where it was meant to be. Answering the call is the way to find and fulfill the central purpose of your life."

The Call

The Call by Os Guinness is an incredible book. I read it about seven years ago and have recommended it to many people. I have said that The Call should be must reading for every young adult.

This summer Jon is living at home while he works on partner development in preparation for going on staff with The Navigators. We have decided to read the book and discuss it together. Sharon even ordered her own copy so as to not miss out on any of the fun!

I plan to blog some of the content from each chapter as we move through the book. The Call has 26 chapters so it will take a while.

Here is a quote from the Introduction:

"From this perspective, the final reality is neither chance nor an impersonal ground of being but an infinite personal God who has created us in his image and calls you into relationship with himself. Our life-purpose therefore comes from two sources at once - who we are created to be and who we are called to be.

Count the cost, consider the risks, and set out each day on a venture to multiply your gifts and opportunities and bring glory to God and add value to our world. Answering the call is the road to purpose and fulfillment in your life."

MissionShift - Part 1

I'm reviewing the first section of the book MissionShift: Global Mission Issues In The Third Millennium. Ed Stetzer tweeted several weeks ago that he would give a copy of the book to anyone who would agree to review the book and join an online conversation on his blog. Never one to pass up a free book, I jumped at the offer. 

I was intrigued by the topic of mission and missiology. The first thing I noticed is that the book is published by B&H Academic. This is an academic work. I probably wouldn't have picked this book up to read on my own. However, if you willing to wade through the sometimes lengthy and complex discourse, this is a very informative and useful book. It speaks directly to the issues facing the church today and can act as a framework to help us interact, adapt, confront and transform culture.

The book is designed around three essays and then a series of responses to each:

1. Mission Defined and Described by Charles Van Engen describes Mission in the Past
2. The Gospel in Human Contexts by Paul Hiebert describes Mission in the Present
3. The Future of Evangelicals in Mission by Ralph Winter describes Mission in the Future

My assignment this week is to respond and reflect on the first essay, including the responses by Keith Eitel, Enoch Wan, Darrell Guder, Andreas Kostenberger, Ed Stetzer and David Hesselgrave. Quite a task for guy who has never studied missiology! I will try to keep my comments concise and to the point.

As Proverbs 17:27-28 says: Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.

Being a history major, I enjoyed Van Engen's comments about how mission has been defined differently over the years. He quotes Sidney Rooy: "If, like David Bosch, we define mission as missio Dei ["the mission of God"], we can say that this signifies the revelation of God as the One who love the world God has created, who is concerned for this world, and who has formed the church to be a subject called to participate in the historical project of establishing the kingdom of God....Truly, each generation must define mission anew."

I enjoyed the section on the Biblical meaning of the word mission. The word mission is rarely used in either the Old or New Testaments. "What is emphasized regularly is the concept of being sent, with an emphasis on the authority and purpose of the sender."

• The church is sent by her Lord.
• The covenant people of God are sent by God to the nations who are not yet part of the people of God.
• Jesus refers to Himself as the one who is sent: "I must proclaim the good news about the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because I was sent for this purpose." (Luke 4:43)
• The followers of Jesus are also sent to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God, to invite all peoples to become Jesus' disciples and responsible members of His church. (Matthew 28:18-20)
• We need to continually remember that sending is an integral part of mission. Jesus Christ is the Sender, "whose authority defines, circumscribes, limits, and propels Christian mission."

During the Constantinian era, the concept of Christian mission changed drastically.

• The Decree of Milan in 313 AD recognized Christianity as an officially permitted religion
• In 325 Christianity became the favored religion
• In 380 Christianity became the official religion
• By 392 Christianity became the only tolerated religion [in the Holy Roman Empire]
• "In a brief span of eighty years, Christianity went from being a persecuted religion to the persecuting religion." In addition to the church, the empire [nation-state] became an agent of mission represented by persons designated by the emperor.
• In this era the mission of the church was extended through conquest, forcible imposition of the faith, destroying pagan religions, and mass baptisms.
• In the Constantinian model of mission, there was confusion between the temporal and spiritual. The Emperor represented the "kingdom of God" which led to a confusion of church and state.

In the late 1700s William Carey suggested a different way of understanding mission. His approach was rooted in the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20 and assumed the following:

• Salvation was individualistic, primarily concerned with a spiritual and personal relationship with Jesus Christ
• The primary calling of the church's mission was geographic. Christians were called to go.
• New converts should be gathered into churches resembling the sending churches and missions
• New individual converts should be extracted from their non-Christian contexts, gathered into Christian mission stations, and taught culture and civilization of the missionaries.

 The World Council of Churces was founded in 1948 in response to the "disastrous consequences of the church's silence and irrelevance in the crisis of Western Europe during the 1930's and the early 1940's." The WCC wanted to find a more relevant missiology and crystallized around the phrase missio Dei, "the mission of God." The WCC became characterized by:

• Radical secularization of mission
• A deep pessimism about the church as a viable agent of God's mission
• An emphasis on God's mission oriented toward, and centered in, the kingdom of God and the world rather than the church
• The world set the agenda for the church

This radical secularization of mission and caused S Neill to say, "When everything is mission, nothing is mission."

Reacting against the redefinition of mission by the WCC, Evangelical leaders came together in two major mission conferences in 1966 and later in Lausanne in 1974, Pattaya

• Calling people to mission for" unreached people groups" in places where they saw no viable church present. This led to many missionaries being sent to the former Soviet-bloc countries.
• An emphasis on the "10-40 Window", the least-evangelized area of the world where the greatest number of poor live.
• Evangelicals struggling to bring together evangelism and social action

 Van Engen concludes by calling for missional churches who are contextual, intentional, proclaiming, reconciling, sanctifying, unifying, and transforming. Van Engen footnotes Scherer at this point:

"Mission happens wherever the church is; it is how the church exists. Mission is the church preaching Christ for the first time; it is the act of Christians struggling against injustice and oppression; it is the binding of wounds in reconciliation; it the church learning from other religious ways and being challenged by the world's cultures....Mission is the local church focusing not on its own, internal problems, but on other human beings, focusing elsewhere, in a world that calls and challenges it."

I like that! Mission happens wherever the church is; it is how the church exists! I want to be that kind of church! I want to pray, trust, and work to create that kind of community here in Cedar Rapids. I want to be the church on the move that lives out the gospel and extends it to all people.

Drive

You gotta love this presentation by Daniel Pink. It's worth watching just for the animation. Daniel Pink wrote the book, A Whole New Mind, which I enjoyed. And I have purchase his next book titled Drive.

Research indicates that there are three factors that contribute to better performance and satisfaction:

1. Autonomy
2. Mastery
3. Purpose

So what do you think? Does autonomy, mastery and purpose in your work motivate you? What is most important to you?

You Made Me Want To Be A Better Person

leg·a·cy: something handed down from an ancestor or a predecessor or from the past.

I've been thinking about legacy. In Mens Fraternity this past year we developed a list called, Before I Die I Want To. We listed things in six categories - be, do, have, help, enjoy, and leave.

So, what do I want to leave? How much time do I have to work with? Certainly it's not my stuff that my family will want. As a matter of fact, we're in a pitch mode right now. We are shedding things so that the stuff of life doesn't hinder us or get in the way of the new things God has for us.

I like what James Kouzes and Barry Posner have to say in their book, A Leader's Legacy.

"By asking ourselves how we want to be remembered, we plant the seeds for living our lives as if we matter."

"When we move on, people do not remember us for what we do for ourselves. They remember us for what we do for them. Exemplary leaders are interested more in others’ success than in their own. Their greatest achievements are the triumphs of those they serve."

"What if all leaders started each day asking themselves, “In every interaction today, considering all the people I interact with, what one thing can I do to make them better?’ When the time comes for them to speak of your legacy, is there anything better to be remembered for than “You made me want to be a better person”?

"Our challenge is to stay focused on the difference we want to make, why we think it’s essential to be moving in that direction, and on the people who will come after us to inherit what we leave. If we stay focused on the difference and the people, the legacy will take care of itself. When we choose to lead every day, we choose to serve. Leading is not about what we gain from others but about what others gain from us"

"Legacies aren’t the result of wishful thinking. They’re the result of determined doing. The legacy you leave is the life you lead. We lead our lives daily. We leave our legacy daily. The people you see, the decisions you make, the actions you take – they are what tell your story. It’s the sum of everything you do that matters, not one large bequest at the end of you tenure."

I like that. Legacies are the result of determined doing. If I stay focused on the difference and people, my legacy will take care of itself. So tomorrow I have the opportunity to do good, to serve others and to write another chapter in my legacy story. What will I write? And at the end of the day, will anyone say, "You made me want to be a better person?"