I changed to a sleeker template tonight. Those who read the blog through an RSS feeder, please drop by and tell me what you think. I’ll probably be doing some work on the bloated right column as well in the next few weeks.

I have heard a few teachings I have heard from Ron Martoia, enjoyed his book, and have regularly visited his website. I know he left his church last summer, and apparently is making a go of it as a leadership consultant as far as I can tell. His new website, Vortex appears to be some sort of content subscription site, with a free trial this month. $12/month seems kind of steep for a 30 minute mp3 and five page pdf, but I’ll at least give the free content from this month a go…

U2 have announced their US tour dates. April 24 in Seattle…who’s in?

Spiritual maturity isn’t always easy to define. This past week, we were in San Diego at church planting training. While there, I became aware of the variety of definitions that seem to exist for spiritual maturity. I also realized that I think many of them fall short. Too often, we spiritual maturty simply as someone who has good morals and a regular quiet time. Or, perhaps it is someone who has gone through the steps that we put in our church programming (101 classes, etc.). Neither of these is an adequate definition.

One of the helpful exercises they gave us was to define what spiritual maturity looks like, so that we can figure out how to help people move toward that. Not wanting to simply create a few steps, I put together this picture:

I see spiritual maturity as the overlap of three areas of life: life perspective, personal growth, and social action.

Life perspective is our worldview, our understanding of who God is, and how this world works. It is the need for an orthodoxy.

Personal growth is our understanding of who we are, and how we can better fit in with the kingdom of God. It is knowing our gifts and how they contribute to the greater good. It means that we connect with the leading of the Spirit in our lives through disciplines.

Social action is what happens when we put our faith to work. It is using whatever we have available to us to make this world a better place. It is not simply serving in the church, but joining alongside the community of Jesus followers as we serve the world.

The beauty I see in this is that it doesn’t limit maturity to just good morals, serving, or doctrine. It gives a more holistic view of maturity. If your worldview doesn’t cause you to grow or love, you aren’t mature. And so on…

I’d love some feedback…are there holes in this that you see?

Being in an extended season of rest, this quote from Heaven is Not My Home seemed particularly relevant. I post it here for your benefit, and hoping that I won’t forget it when this season ends.

Rest means letting the world pass us by for a time. Genuine rest requires acknowledging that God and our brothers and sisters can survive without us. It requires recognizing our own insufficiency and handing over responsibility. It is truly surrendering to the ways of God. It is a moment of celebration, when we acknowledge that blessing comes only from the hand of God. This is why rest requires faith.

Since our family is on the move, we’ve started a new blog to help friends in family keep in touch with what is going on with us: ChandlerFamily.info

Though I haven’t found much discussion about this elsewhere, I think there is a pretty clear link between the so-called Creative Class and those who are thinking about new ways of being the church. For those of you interested in exploring this more, Richard Florida, who wrote The Rise of the Creative Class, has a great website called CreativeClass.org. This has a lot of interest for me personally, since Seattle and Austin, two cities which figure into our future, rank pretty highly as creative cities.

I read Missional Church by Darrell Guder this past week. Lots of great thinking going on in this book. It’s mildly disjointed to read, because it has six different authors, but actually flows pretty well in light of that. Below are a few highlights from the book in italics, along with some of my own thoughts.

Describing the danger of a people approaching church from the consumer mentality that pervades North American culture: At the very least, this producer-consumer model separates its notion of church (a religious firm producing and marketing religious products and services) from its members (potential and hopefully committed customers consuming those products and services). Members are ultimately distanced in this model from their own communal calling to be a body of people sent on a mission. (pg 85)

The most likely location for an answer to these questions in the mission of Jesus. His mission, after all, represents the most direct and complete expression of God’s mission in the world. Therefore the church’s own mission must take its cues from the way God’s mission unfolded in the sending of Jesus into the world for its salvation. (pg 102) — Along the same lines as what I described here, we must understand fully the work of Jesus in his context to understand the calling we have in ours.

The more accurately the church locates the key points of difference between its surrounding culture and that culture called for by the reign of God, the more faithfully the church lives a distinctively holy life in its place. And the more the church lives such distinctive faithfulness, the more visible the reign of God will be for all to see. … In like manner, churches that listen to sermons deploring crime may be faithful in attending to God’s call for right relationships among humanity. But the church that sets up victim-offender reconciliation programs and promotes equitable economic opportunities for communities where crime is the main escape route from financial despair is not only faithful but a remarkable light to the world, a city on a hill. (pg 129)

The church’s task of announcing the reign of God will mean moving beyond the four walls of the church building, out of the safe group of people who know and love each other, into the public square. The missional church will be in the world with good news. (pg 137) Few would disagree with this, but few churches are doing it effectively. Can the church best do this as a community, or does it need to be a community that equips those within it to go out? Does it have to be either/or? Along these lines, this book mentioned Journey Inward, Journey Outward and the work of Church of the Savior several times.

Many people within North America view the Christian life from an individualistic or, at best, an organizational perspective. Yet to be true to its divine mission to embody and proclaim God’s reign, the communal body called the church is the central and foundational unit of societal life for Christians. (pg 158) … The church is not simply a gathering of well-meaning individuals who have entered into a contract to meet their privately defined self-interests. It is, instead, an intentional and disciplined community witnessing to the power and the presence of God’s reign. (pg 159) — I am coming to believe that the church places too much emphasis on community. Because of the hunger for it in our culture, churches have made it a goal. In reality, however, community is not something that we should try to create, but rather, it is a natural by-product as the church goes about doing it’s work in the world.

Missional leaders must understand their context and interpret that context to the church so that a faithful and relevant witness emerges. (pg 189) It is far too easy for us to simply react to symptoms of what we see in culture. Missional leaders must dig deep into what is causing those symptons to fully understand what is going on in the culture around us so that we can expose it in light of the gospel.

We are back from the cruise and happy to be on solid ground. That ship was a rockin’ and not just when we were celebrating ten years of marriage!

Since I’m unemployed, I decided not to buy gifts for all of you. However, I do offer up the Rob Bell MP3s available here for all you Rob Bell junkies.

I’ve set all comments to be approved while we are away so the spammers don’t get the best of us. You can leave a comment, but it won’t appear until I return and approve it.

From the Gower Street interview with NT Wright: (part 7 of 6…figure that out!)

Lots of the stuff is just a Christian version of the self-help section. I remember somebody sending me a bookstore catalog, I won’t say which publisher it was in America, a year or two ago, and after having flipped through it, I remember saying to my wife, ‘page one, how to be a happy Christian, page two, how to be a good Christian, page three how to be a good and happy Christian, page four, how to be a good, happy and successful Christian, just on and on and on.’ And really, we’ve had rather a lot of those books over the last thirty years. I have a sense that we’re missing something.

Not much time to think, read, or post entries right now. This weekend, we finished moving out of our house into temporary quarters with a friend for the next few months. Tomorrow, we leave for a few weeks. The first week will be on a cruise celebrating our 10th anniversary (which was last summer), and then after that it’s off to church planting boot camp with Dean and Leslie.

We’re looking forward to take some time to decompress on the cruise and then begin to gear up again at boot camp.

These pictures leave me speechless.

If you watch my reading list at all, you saw this one up there for quite a while. I just finished it tonight. It’s a fascinating book about the origins and the make-up of the cosmos itself. It’s very well written and translated into laymen’s terms. Even so, I don’t recommend it unless you are very interested in this topic. I was interested enough, but there are concepts splattered all over the wall behind me because they flew right over my head.

It would be too much to go into all the theories he presents in this blog, but here is one quote of interest from the beginning of the last chapter: Physicists spend a large part of their lives in a state of confusion. It’s an occupational hazard. To excel in physics is to embrace doubt while walking the winding road to clarity.

Shouldn’t we be able say this of pastors and theologians as well? Sometimes we are so concerned about having our faith just right that we don’t like any blurry lines. It gets dangerous when we think we have everything laid out just right.

For example, I’m fairly convinced that neither Calvinism nor Arminianism is right. I’ve yet to find a clear stance in the middle ground. However, I’m pretty comfortable with the mystery of that.

Can we say the same things about pastors that Greene says about physicists? Pastors spend a large part of their lives in a state of confusion. It’s an occupational hazard. To excel in theology is to embrace doubt while walking the winding road to clarity. It is not our firm answers that we lead us to a deeper understanding of who God is. Instead, it is the questions that arise out of our uncertainties that drive us forward into the mystery.

Moving to Seattle means a lot of hot drinks, and no money to buy them because rent is a gazillion dollars up there. So, I splurged on a $5.50 espresso maker on ebay, and got advice from many of my Starbuck’s friends on how to make my favorite drink — Caramel Macchiato! It’s not too bad — a little stronger than I’m used to because I used two shots in a small mug.

Thanks to all those who provided the know-how and the beans!