Reformission

I just finished reading my first official church planting book. I guess now I know how to plant a church. Right. The only thing I'm left with is how overwhelmingly difficult it would be. I can't believe I dared to mention to people last year considerations of planting an entire city/village.

However, talking to some men one night while I was in Ottawa, we stumbled on to a discussion on living in new types of community, based on relationships, sharing possessions, even homes, practicing compassion… isn't this much like the early church living out the teachings of Jesus? It reminded me that God is the supreme planter, and that He has already planted a yearning in the fabric of our beings for something we label today as church. How close it is to the church God had in mind is another question.

I've recently started reading a book called, Houses that Change the World. It's been shaking up my structural paradigm of church. It suggests a next reformation on its way. From the theological reformation, to the spiritual reformation, a structural reformation is now emerging. It has some profound insights, and it's definitely been fueling my vision. More on this later, I'll need some time to absorb it.

I stole the title from Mark Driscoll's new book and conference (downloadable messages there of Driscoll and John Piper). I have yet to read or hear any of his thoughts on the topic, but my guess is it's likely along the lines of some of the things I've been discovering about God's misison, and it's a catchy title. I'm going to spend sometime the coming week working out some of the talks I've been giving to different groups on evangelism/mission. As I'm on this journey of integrity this year, I hope to hash out more formally my core values. I believe for this topic it comes down to a conviction that God calls every person to join Him on mission, to be motivated by love, offering hope to all people, by all possible means.

Note, I've migrated my blog's indexing sidebar to the bloglines feed tool. Unfortunately it doesn't allow me to link those of you who don't have sites that support feeds or haven't activated it in your online journals. Let me know if you that changes and you'd like to be linked to.