Not a wasted enterprise

Thanks the well spelled out encouragement of my dear brother dwm iii, I think I shall make camp within this blog-o-sphere. Though, I'm not laying any foundations here. Time will tell if this is more than a fad. But perhaps this shall not be a wasted enterprise!

Life surely can be overwhelming. Due to my rigorous schedule, with work, my Ph.D seminars, and my family, it is very difficult to maintain a proper mindset of life. I have just begun to read a book calling for a radical change in western ecclesiology: The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch.

This is not the first book I've read that challenges Western ideas of church, see Houses that Change the World by Wolfgang Simson. In fact, if you compare church planting methodology in the non-West versus the West, you will find an interesting, and quite large, disconnect.
At least with International Mission Board missionaries of the Southern Baptist Convention, the methodology employed oversees in planting churches is in stark contrast to the way of doing church in North America. According to their CPM Booklet, see also David Garrison's seminal work on the subject, a healthy church, or rather movement of churches planting churches within a people group, geographical area or poplution segment, is bathed in prayer, accomplished through "abundant gospel sowing", is led by local, "lay" leaders, meets in homes, not "church" buildings and is growing by multiplication through intentional church planting.
Do I see this in my local church in America? Not really. Don't get me wrong, I believe God is doing something in the lives of believers in my fellowship. We are growing in obedience. But...the focus of church ministry is fundamentally different. Case in point: Missions is something you do over there! Not to disparage John Piper, he didn't come up with the idea, but he propogates, in Let the Nations Be Glad!, the idea that missions is only that which is done on the frontier--where Christ has not been named. Everything thing else is just considered evangelism. (I'm glad he is so passionate about evangelism, you could never discredit his ministry for lack of concern for the lost. Aside: Isn't it interesting that some, though not all, of the greatest evangelists in history had strong views of God's providence. I don't want to say "were Calvinistic" or "were Reformed" because that would preclude Luther and others who are not in the Reformed tradition historically or who preceded the Reformation.) Nonetheless, by making the false dichotomy, one is not challenged to see everyday life as "missional", to borrow Frost's and Hisrch's category. Though the emerging church may be giving too much credence to postmodernism (is it the next philosophy of the day, or is it the result of the demise of the Enlightenment project, a transition into the next epoch of worldview?), at least Frost and Hirsch recognize the need for seeing everyday life as missional. That the point of doing mundane things is not the thing in and of themselves, but in being an everyday witness to the redeeming power of Christ. I must admit, I am only 24 pages into their book, so I will suspend judgment on their overall thesis and purpose, but I do find some of their ideas resonating with what I have been learning lately.
As I began this post, I know that life can be very overwhelming, but not just for me. My good friend Mark and I have been meeting together for prayer and Bible study for several months now. For the past few weeks, we have been meeting at my house along with my beautiful wife Zhanara. Just recently, we have been engaged with an idea that is shaking our current paradigms for life. We are on a mission trip. We began by talking about stewardship. How God has blessed us so that we can bless others. Then we began to reflect on our current spending habits. Mark related to us a parable he had been learning from a Randy Alcorn book, Money, Possessions, and Eternity: if you were going to be living in a hotel room for 80 days, you knew you were going to have to leave, would you go out of your way to redecorate, paint the walls, get new furniture, etc. No, it would seem foolish. Well, this life is a hotel room. It is not our final home. The way we spend our money reflects what we believe about our home. As we began to think about our lives are short pilgrimages (Augustine has a great discussion about this in City of God), we also began to reflect on the purpose God has for us in this time. We spend our time on making "our hotel room" comfortable. We distract ourselves from our heavenly home. What if we began to view life as a mission trip. Then our jobs, which seem very mundane at times, are the support for our mission. In fact, while we work, we have opportunties to reflect Christ in our ethics, as well as in our interaction, verbally with others. When we have to mow the grass and do chores that have to be done around the house, they are things that any missionary would have to do anywhere (how long do you think it takes to pay an electric bill in a third world country?). But, we view our houses as instruments for mission. We can be hospitable, reach out to our neighbors, invite people over. When we are not working, rather than settle in to a movie or the monotonous TV routine, we can be intentional about mission and evangelism. In fact, we can call each other and encourage one another. Hey, why not encourage others? Its a radical change of mind. I have been encouraged in the small number of pages I have read in Frost's and Hirsch's book that they are at least say, missions is not just something done overseas, its a way of life, a way of church. Kudo's!!! I can't wait to finish the book, even if I disagree with them of some key points.

Here is the question that we are left with: Is the institutional church irredeemable, or can there be "revival" that leads to a missionary engagement with North American culture?