I was sent a copy of Breaking the Missional Code by the authors for review on this blog. As a lover of books and gifts, this immediately endears me to both of these men. My feelings about the book are mixed.

On one hand, I really liked the general premise of the book. A major focus of the book is that we need to think like missionaries as we try to shape a church community for the culture we are in. The book is very practical in its approach to this issue. This was my favorite take-away from Ed Stetzer’s previous book — Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age (recently reissued as Planting Missional Churches) — and I am glad to see them explore this idea further. I do agree that the role of the church leaders is not to implement their favorite things from other churches they have seen, but to understand the culture that they are in and create a church community that can connect with that culture.

On the other hand, I would have liked a bit more groundwork laid on what it means to be missional. My understanding of being missional is that it is far more than just how to approach the community you are in like a missionary, and so it differs from the authors. I see a missional community as one that is trying to embody and continue the mission and ministry of Jesus, whereas I feel like the main question that this book approaches is how to present the message of Jesus within your community. Certainly a presentation of Jesus’ message is a part of the mission of the church, but it is not the entirety of it.

This is the first book I’m aware of that begins to lay some practical groundwork for shaping a missional community.For someone trying to understand how to be a missional leader in a missional community, this book has lots of practical insights that make it worth reading. But for a more complete understanding of what it means to be a missional church, I would recommend it be read in conjunction The Present Future, The Shaping of Things to Come, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, and Missional Church (all of which are cited at least once by Stetzer and Putnam).

If you don’t visit PostSecret weekly, please start.

It seems like pastors and Loverboy have something in common. We’re only interested in “working for the weekend”*. Unfortunately.

As a pastor, I read a lot of blogs of others pastors. Monday is reaction day. Many pastors review the day before and how they felt about their Sunday services. I certainly know the feeling, because I do the same thing.

The problem is this…church isn’t a Sunday service. As pastors, we have to be about so much more than that. We put a lot of time work on and evaluating how a Sunday went, and it is far too easy to lose sight of the rest of the week. However, we also talk about how we want the church to go and be the church the rest of the week.

So I’m asking myself some questions:
How can pastors who spend the majority of their time and energy preparing for Sunday morning (or critiquing the previous Sunday) expect others to think of church as more than just a Sunday morning event?
How can we find ways to measure what happens in the life of a church throughout the rest of the week (and I don’t just mean small group attendance)?
How can we reshape Sundays to be a valuable time in the life of a church community, but not the primary expression of church in people’s minds?
Can we do this simply by restating it over and over, or do we have to make noticeable changes?

There are 8640 minutes in a week, not just 75-90. It’s time we pastors started “Lovin’ Every Minute of It”*.

*lame, I know, but how could I resist?

So I did some pastoral research yesterday and went to see The DaVinci Code. After seeing it, it’s crazy to me that the movie’s reviews have been as bad as they are. It was nowhere near as bad as the reviews have been. I think that after the first few reviews were bad, all the other reviewers are afraid they will lose their credibility if they don’t pan it.

Admittedly, I love history — especially about Jesus and the church — so the movie is going to keep me interested just because of that. I also had low expectations because of the reviews, so maybe it wasn’t hard to surpass them. {SPOILER AHEAD} For me, the most troubling thing about the movie was wondering if it is wrong to think that a fictional descendant of Jesus is attractive…

We’re talking about the end times this week at Pathways. More importantly, we’re talking about how to live in anticipation of them without mentally checking out of the present day. That dialogue led me to these lyrics:

No Earthly Good, by Johnny Cash

Come hear me good brothers come here one and all
Don’t brag about standing or you’ll surely fall
You’re shinin’ your light yes and shine if you should
You’re so heavenly minded and you’re no earthly good
No earthly good you are no earthly good
You’re so heavenly minded you’re no earthly good
You’re shinin’ your light yes and shine if you should
You’re so heavenly minded and you’re no earthly good

Come here me good sisters you’re salt of the earth
If your salt isn’t salted then what is it worth
You could give someone a cool drink if you would
You’re so heavenly minded and you’re no earthly good
No earthly good you are no earthly good
You’re so heavenly minded you’re no earthly good
You could give someone a cool drink if you would
You’re so heavenly minded and you’re no earthly good

If you’re holdin’ heaven then spread it around
There are hungry hands reaching up here from the ground
Move over and share the high ground where you stood
So heavenly minded and you’re no earthly good
No earthly good you are no earthly good
You’re so heavenly minded you’re no earthly good
Move over and share the high ground where you stood
So heavenly minded and you’re no earthly good
No earthly good…

They say that the best things in life are worth waiting for. Maybe that’s true, but in this case, waiting for three months just get’s you a new episode of TheoHacks, hosted by Zach Lind and yours truly.

Colossians Remixed, by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat, is both a cultural and a textual commentary. They reveal how Paul’s message in the book of Colossians was deeply subversive to the Roman Empire. However, as so many other commentaries might, they don’t stop there. They continue by projecting what it might look like for that same message today.

They go about the difficult task of laying out what our contemporary empires might be and among other things, they set consumerism in their sights. They make suggestions about how we need to withdraw from our consumer culture in much the same way Christians in the first century almost had to withdraw to avoid the emperor worship that was all around them. For some, the book might go to far in this, and I felt myself feeling that at times. But how could they write it any differently? It was necessary for them to push the limits of these ideas in order to cause the reader to think, and in this reader at least, they were successful.

More than anything, I enjoyed the writing style. The book transitions between narrative, dialogue, prose, and poetry in different sections, along with some sections where Paul’s letter to Colossians is rewritten as he might have written it today. This is not your mama’s commentary, so don’t go expecting a verse by verse treatment. It is a new kind of commentary for a new era, and a model of how ancient text and contemporary culture should meet in any context where we hope to reveal the contents of the Scriptures.

I spent the last three days in an intensive master’s class on leadership. It was taught by Ron Carucci. Ron has been a highly respected leadership consultant for corporate executives for many years. Today, he continues that work while he serves as the COO at Mars Hill. His work as a consultant, combined with his passion for the school and students, created an enriching experinece.

Late today, as we were wrapping up, he made this statement: If you lead in a way that does not welcome someone’s fullness to the table, you have betrayed them.

What a beautiful idea. This concept grabbed me and it has been meandering through my brain ever since. How could someone not want to work in environment where they are encouraged to offer and explore the fullness of who they are? A leader is not one who just influences others toward a goal, but one who offers people the chance to fully be who they are and contribute that to something beyond themself. It is a call to both growth and meaning.

(On a personal note, one of the things I am enjoying about my role at Pathways is that I feel like I truly get to be myself. Dean and I have been friends for so long that he knows what I can offer and welcomes it. Thanks Dean…I hope I can learn how to do the same for others.)

Sometimes you have to get creative when you don’t have an office.

Apple rolled out the MacBook today. (Kind of ironic since we picked up a used iBook really cheap off of Craigslist yesterday, but I already suspected this was coming, so no regrets.) Most people will be raving about the black, which is nice, but the black costs more than the others…it’s not as if you have the option of whatever specs you want in either color. Personally, I think the best thing about it is the widescreen. I was a skeptic of widescreens when I first saw them, and didn’t see the point, but after using one for the last few years, I love them.

If you’re liking the MacBook, give it some love over at inbreaking.com.

After seriously considering a switch to Cingular to get a Cingular 2125, we decided to stay with T-Mobile, and we got the T-Mobile SDA. Wow.

First of all, T-Mobile came up 1st or 2nd in customer satisfaction in all the reviews I found…Cingular was pretty much the opposite. Even my own experience with that. I spent 10 minutes on hold the two times I called Cingular, and I couldn’t get a consensus answer on what data plan was required. With T-Mobile, I was never on hold in 3-4 phone calls, and the sales reps seem to know their products.

As far as the SDA goes, it’s amazing. It’s runs Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition. (I’m a Mac lover, but still appreciate Microsoft products — now both sides can mock me.) I think this is the best product I’ve ever used from Microsoft. It’s still a little bulky here and there, but more simple than any other Microsoft product to navigate through. It has features that are well throught through and I have little difficulty navigating through the OS with one hand. Best of all, it syncs at regularly scheduled times with our Exchange server, so my email and contacts are always up to date. If you’re out and about, and especially if you use and Exchange server, this is a pretty special product.

Just testing a moblog post from my mobile phone!

I had coffee with Steve Lewis today. Steve is yet another connection I made through the blogosphere, and it was great to connect with him to hear his heart and dreams. He does campus ministry at UDub, but is working on a year-long program called inter::mission for recent graduates to immerse themselves in intentional community, teaching and campus ministry. If you are graduating from college soon, or know someone who is, this is a program worth looking into. Here’s a few words from their website:

The world is changing at a blurry pace, and the ways and teachings of a first century Jewish revolutionary seem to get lost in the mix. But we believe they’re still vital and powerful, and that they reveal the Kingdom of God in such a compelling way that we can’t help but respond. The way we respond is by following God in the Way of Jesus and inviting others to follow with us.

inter::mission exists to experientially liberate and empower young adults toward missional vocation. It’s a progressive approach to young adult ministry in the Puget Sound, and around the world.

The Short Version: PlanterBlogs.com is now PlanterPlanet.com. PlanterBlogs.com will no longer work, so please update your bookmarks and links on your site in order to help spread the word. (If you are subscribed to the old feed, it’s address has not changed, so you don’t need to change anything.)

The Long Version: Sometime in the last week, PlanterBlogs was hacked, and a fake bank website was uploaded in a subfolder trying to lure people to enter their account info. When the abuse was reported to GoDaddy, they tried to notify me, but the email went to my spam folder. When they didn’t hear back from me, the deactivated the domain in order to stop anyone else from accessing the fake bank site. Now that the fake bank site has been cleared off the server, they are trying to charge me $200 to reactivate the domain. Since I have no interest at all in paying that, and I don’t know how long it will take to resolve this, I went ahead and registered the new domain. (And for the record, GoDaddy did not get my business for the new domain.)

A few months ago, I wrote my thoughts on Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. I had a chance to meet with Steve Lewis today and we talked about how much we both enjoyed the book. The conversation reminded me of my conclusions about the book, which seem especially fitting with the DaVinci Code’s realease next week:

With The DaVinci Code set to release this spring, there will be another cry among Christians to find a conservative and reliable presentation of the historical Jesus. Maybe the best resource for many won’t be a reference work, but another fictional novel.

There is a big push for Christian’s to rediscover the arts, and I’m all for that — whether it be photography, painting, sculpture, music, film, or whatever medium. It seems like one medium that is worth more attention than effort has been creative forms of writing, and especially historical fiction. If there is one thing DaVinci Code has showed us, it is that a well-written story can awaken spiritual stirrings in all. For many, there is more interest in the experience of the story, than in the facts or truth of the story. Anne Rice also describes something similar on her website as she describes the response to Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt:

At some point I will try to draw together my thoughts on what I’ve learned from email since late October, 2005 when CHRIST THE LORD first hit the stores. But my first obligation right now is write the next book about the life of Our Lord. And research and writing consume almost 100% of my time.

For the moment, let me say that I’ve been pleasantly and at times joyously overwhelmed by the evidence of religious faith in the letters I’ve received. Generous and loving letters have poured in from Jews, and from Christians of all denominations, from gay people and straight people, and from some people who are not connected with any organized religion in any way.

This has given me a magnificent glimpse into what really matters to a lot of readers — an awareness that when they are permitted to do so, these people want to talk reverently and intelligently about their relationship to God. They have volunteered stories about searching for faith, of perhaps losing it and then finding it again, of trying to live without it, of wanting to share the joy of experiencing it, of wanting to welcome some one (me) who has only lately returned to the fold. Even those who are highly critical of me and my work are often driven by the best of intentions, and a burning need to speak from their hearts. I sense in this body of letters a great spiritual urgency and a great spiritual depth. I’m humbled by all this. I’m amazed. It seems I have to get used to being amazed. How do you do that? I don’t know.

It seems that many are finding her work as a safe exploration of who Jesus was. I wonder how else we can use fiction, and especially historical fiction, as an exploration of faith. It goes without saying that many more people can connect with theology through well-written narrative rather than charts, acrostics or outlines. I’m looking forward to the rest of Anne’s book in this series, and I hope there is a whole genre can begin to be explored.

And one more thing…I think this officially declares my interest and support of Zach’s new club: Christians Not Afraid of Fiction. Count me in, my friend!