a pastor in Austin
From the monthly archives:
(This post is part of a series reflecting on David Bosch’s six distinctives for a missiology of Western culture. See the introductory post for a little background.)
We have, at long last, come to the conviction that mission in the Third World must be contextual. We do not have an equally clear conviction about the need [...]
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Gathering and sending are related to one another like breathing in and breathing out. The important thing is therefore to view life in the everyday world as just as important as the gathering of the congregation in the feast of worship.” — Jurgen Moltmann
(Lovely thought. I think I’ll steal it for our church gatherings page.)
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(This post is part of a series reflecting on David Bosch’s six distinctives for a missiology of Western culture. See the introductory post for a little background.)
A mission to the West will have to be ecumenical.
Yesterday, I sat in a room full of Austin pastors, most of them in recently planted churches. I have come [...]
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Jonathan Dodson is a church planter in Austin who I am thankful to call a friend. Today, he blogged about the stages of organic growth as they experienced them at Austin City Life. It was encouraging to read. Much of what Jonathan describes is similar to how I pray these early stages of Austin Mustard [...]
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Last week, the details were announced for the 2009 Ecclesia National Gathering. The theme of the conference this year is Crafting Missional Expressions of Church. We will gather in early March in the company of Mike Breen, Eddie Gibbs, Darrell Guder, and Jon Tyson.
This serves as an annual gathering of leaders of churches in The [...]
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I’m doing some freelance design work, so I’ve launched Strange Idea Labs. I’m specializing in simple content-based websites (mostly using Wordpress), some branding and print media, and web hosting.
We’ve decided it would be best to be bivocational rather than put unreasonable financial pressure on Austin Mustard Seed early in the life of this church [...]
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(This post is part of a series reflecting on David Bosch’s six distinctives for a missiology of Western culture. See the introductory post for a little background.)
a mission to the West must be countercultural, though not in an escapist way
I wasn’t planning on spreading the posts in this series a week apart. But, maybe it’s [...]
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Here’s a glimpse of today’s high powered board meeting for Austin Mustard Seed with Todd Hiestand and Chris Marlow. I promise it was more fun than the looks on their faces might convey.
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The church now seems to stand in the same place as God stood in some 2,500 years ago: misrepresented, accused of bigotry, portrayed as narrow-minded and in love with power, only interested in buildings, ready to smite the dirty and sinful, over-occupied with sex, and ready to lend support for unjust wars … And so [...]
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(This post is part of a series reflecting on David Bosch’s six distinctives for a missiology of Western culture. See the introductory post for a little background.)
A missiology of Western culture must include an ecological dimension.
Thanks to my nature loving Grandma, I’ve always had an appreciation for nature that wasn’t really offered in my Evangelical [...]
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Our problem today: the space for imagination to expand and take shape is inversely proportional to the speed at which we live. Driven hard and fast, we lack the time to allow alternate worlds and possibilities to form, careening past small turnings and exits, bound to follow the obvious straight paths of the present arrangement.” [...]
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I’ve worked through another small pile of books that I received as an Ooze Select Blogger. Publishers partner with the Ooze to send me free books, and I tell you what I think about them on my blog. Here’s the latest stack:
The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher: A Novel, by Rob Stennett – This [...]
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We have to create, and sustain, communities where this life is being lived in such a way that when we speak of it we are obviously telling the truth. That is the hard part. As long as our churches are places where we struggle to sustain an hour or two’s public worship per week, with [...]
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(This post is the introduction to a series reflecting on David Bosch’s six distinctives for a missiology of Western culture. See the end of the post for links to the rest of the series.)
David Bosch was a missiologist in South Africa who died in 1992. A car accident took his life only a year after [...]
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A year or two after we moved into our home in Washington, I noticed they were starting to move some dirt around on a vacant street corner. It was within walking distance of our house, and I was excited to see what new, and walkable, convenience we might have. It turned out to be a [...]
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