April 2011
87 posts
Could your church be modern missionaries? →
“Tomorrow we are moving the entire Courageous Church operation to Tuscaloosa, Alabama – ground zero of the worst tornadoes in decades.
I want you to come with me. We will not be having our Sunday services, but instead will be joining churches and thousands of people in Tuscaloosa that lost everything they own and many people they love.
The buildings of Bethel Church of Pratt City were...
“Whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something,...”
– Paulo Coelho
“Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell; I wish to run a rescue...”
– C.T. Studd
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
– Mohandas K. Gandhi
“If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room.”
“A mission focus looks first at those who are outside the church before it ever...”
– Invading Secular Space by Martin Robinson & Dwight Smith, 2003
“The mission of God: to restore all of creation to wholeness (shalom).”
– Rev. Dr. Ken Shuman
Missional Movie Monday →
Entertaining Angels — the Dorothy Day story.
“It’s amazing what can be accomplished if you don’t worry about who...”
– Clarence W. Jones
“Missionary zeal does not grow out of intellectual beliefs, nor out of...”
– Roland Allen
Don't Cling To Me! →
“Sympathy is no substitute for action.”
– David Livingstone, missionary to Africa
Going to Hell
Maundy Thursday, we wash each other’s feet.
Good Friday, Tenebrae, we extinguish the candles slowly, one by one.
Holy Saturday, what do we do?
They say He went to Hell this day. Closed it down, rescuing the dead, the hurting,
the ones in limbo, the ones forgotten by the living.
And so it was they who were the first to experience Easter. Alleluia!
Metaphor, legend, or...
“I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land...”
– John Keith Falconer
“We affirm that every one of us is held in Creation’s hand – a part of the...”
– William F. Schulz (Unitarian Universalist, minister, humanitarian)
“Be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.”
– W. E. B. Du Bois
“No religion is a true religion that does not make men tingle to their finger...”
– ~WE Hocking
“The Church exists by mission, just as fire exists by burning.”
– The Word and the World by Emil Brunner
“To a person in love, the value of the individual is intuitively known. Love...”
– – Charles Lindbergh
“The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending...”
– Mike Stachura
“Our hands will not be clean until we get them dirty, until we roll up our...”
– Forrest Church, “Deeds Not Creeds,” in Our Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 54.
A little missional ecclesiology ...
From From Corporate Church to Missional Church Review and Expositor, 101, Summer 2004, Craig Van Gelder.
The missional church conversation has introduced a new dimension into the discussion of the identity of the church. In this conversation, mission is no longer understood primarily in functional terms as something the church does, as is the case for the corporate church. Rather it is understood...
“Every man is our brother, and every man’s burden is our own. Where poverty...”
– Whitney M. Young, Jr. (civil rights leader, educator, Unitarian Universalist)
What Missional Looks Like →
Last night, I attended a gathering of Micah’s Porch, a Unitarian Universalist missionary outreach in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. It was perhaps not what most people would conceive of as being mission… and I’m sure that there are more than a few people who might have an adverse reaction to it. But it works from what I think is one of the basic premises of missionary work…
“…my experience is that there are many others in our movement that are feeling...”
– David Owen-O’Quill, comment on “A Missionary Faith,” Celestial Lands, web log comment posted February 14, 2008, http://celestiallands.org/wayside/?p=40 (accessed April 13, 2011).
“The faithful church critiques its cultural environment, particularly the...”
– Darrell L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: a Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 1998), 114-115.
“Heaven can be experienced here and now as well, when we treat one another with...”
– Hosea Ballou
Missional Movie Monday →
Romero … Who is the voice of the oppressed in your neighborhood?
“Our missiology does not call us to convert our neighbors, but to embrace them,...”
– Rebecca Ann Parker
What Missional Looks Like →
… “It’s important to find people who are treated the worst, who have the worst resources and just love them,” Kiniry said. “Not try to fix them, not try to save them, but just show them hospitality and kindness.”
He said he began organizing the potlucks when it dawned on him that he had more food and material items than he needed.
“I realized I had all...
A missional pioneer moves into NYC →
“Evangelism is…a call to service…It will include a call to join the living Lord...”
– Darrell L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: a Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 1998), 418.
mindbasket asked: Are all the RPB and the missional UUs Christian and/or theist?
“A new valuation is being placed upon life. We accept the world for the joyous place it was meant to be. We like it, despite the fact that belated theologians look upon it with inherited suspicion … The dominant motive, therefore, is no longer to escape from earthly existence, but to make earthly existence as abundant and happy as it can be made. Modern religion …must speed those...
1 tag
What Missional Looks Like →
Vietnamese nuns build a community in Houston
…Their disciplined way of life begins at 5 a.m. with an hour and a half of prayer and worship, followed by breakfast before they commute to full-time jobs. After work, they pray together again before they prepare meals and eat. During meals they have lessons, so they can be “fed physically and intellectually.”
Different activities on...
“Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Anna Snoeyenbos wrote: If anyone in the Atlanta area is interested in the sacrament of footwashing - I volunteer at the Open Door Community every Wednesday night. Come for a community supper and then an evening of caring for the feet of Atlanta’s homeless. Visit http://opendoorcommunity.org/ for more info.
1 tag
What Missional Looks Like →
“Dolores Scott carefully rolled up the cuffs of Willie Wright’s khaki pants and helped the 50-year-old man remove his socks and shoes.
Wright sighed as she helped him place his feet in a large bowl of warm, sudsy water.
With a washcloth, Scott gently scrubbed his feet, paying careful attention to his toes.
He closed his eyes, relaxed and leaned back into the chair. Once...
kswork asked: In reading your descriptions of the missional church movement, I'm fascinated by the absence of the two examples of missional church/living with which I'm familiar: the Catholic Worker Movement and the Church of the Saviour network in Washington DC. Are they not missional, or are they just unfamiliar to you?
"If We’re Going to Be the Religion of our Time,... →
A sermon by the Rev. Chuck Freeman. (Click on clip above his name.)
“Participating in the mission of God means leaving our place of security, to...”
– Threshold of the Future: Reforming the Church in the Post-Christian West by Michael Riddell, 1998, p. 24
Missional Movie Monday →
Chocolat … who’s the real minister in the movie?
Not church missionaries converting others, but the...
The missional church grows out of a new reforming movement in Christianity that began in both England and the U.S. in the 1980s. At that time in particular church leaders realized that “Christendom” (an environment of a predominantly churched culture that set the cultural markers) was over. Most church identity and life had been molded in the world of Christendom where the church was...
1 tag
WatchWhat Missional Looks Like
A local community is teaming up to give their area an extreme makeover. All weekend dozens of residents, parents and college students have been cleaning up neighborhoods of Turley. They’re focusing on the Cherokee Elementary school which could close under a Tulsa Public Schools proposal. Thousands of people across the nation are doing the same kind of work but for...
“The person who’s in love with their vision of community will destroy community....”
– (via jfcrawford)
“People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream...”
1 tag
1 tag
What Missional Looks Like →
(started by a UU)
The “You Matter” Project is a registered non-profit organization, created to meet the physical needs and provide emotional encouragement to those without homes. We provide compassion without ideological expectation or judgment.
