and

A very interesting, and I think very important conversation is about to take place around "the Gospel, politics & the future."

Here is an excerpt from an email my friend Keelan Downton sent this morning.  "This June 8-10, scholars, artists, activists, and pastors will converge on Princeton to envision a course for Christian political engagement over the next decade. We hope you'll be one of them. Over 60 leaders will guide a strategic conversation and deep meditation to discern what it means to be a prophetic Christian in America today."

For more details visit: www.ev08.org

Peace, dwight

 

Media history – media future

If the medium and the message are intrinsically linked what might the gospel look like in our connective world?

peace, dwight

 

I just received word that I’ll have the privilege and responsibility being one of the North American representatives at the Younger Leaders Gathering ’06 (mid 30’s and younger) sponsored by the Lausanne Movement. This gathering of 550 emerging leaderes from roughly 100 countries will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the end of September 2006.

As a former student of TV Thomas, Robert Coleman, and Ajith Fernando I have heard many stories from this historic movement, and its importance for the evangelical church. I can't believe that I get to participate, wow!

Historically the Lausanne Conference has focused on world evangelization. What is ‘world evangelization’ today? So much within Western Christian thought and practice is being reimagined - if not entirely revisioned - that I wonder what this global conversation will be like. How will the effects of the spread of consumerism, globalism, urbanism, post-modernism, the threat pandemics or more generally what does the ‘spread of the Good News of Jesus Christ’ sound like to those whose lives are so radically different from mine. For those discipled into a form of colonial Christianity what is world evangelism? With all the conversation in recent years regarding atonement theories, universalism, the afterlife, etc. how might such a conversation proceed? How big is ‘our’ gospel? Can I understand ‘their’ gospel? And what happens when our gospels tangle?

If you could bring a question, a concern, or a hope to such a gathering what might you bring? I'm open to suggestions and thoughts.

Peace, dwight

A comment in a student's paper this Spring has been lingering in the back of my mind.  Dale Helt re-framed the classic Evangelical litmus-test question by exchanging the word "personal" for "communal."  The question, as he voiced it was, "Do you have a communal relationship with God?" 

I very much appreciate the direction Dale is taking this question.

I (like many Evangelicals - I suppose) lived much of my life with a truncated vision and articulation of the Good News.

How good is the good news?  Is the good news only good for some - is it good for all - what about creation?

peace, dwight

Recently, I wrote a very brief article for Off-the-Map.org, titled, "Rethinking the Bridge Illustration." 

You can find it here.

Peace, dwight

Talking with a "solid" evangelical" leader the other day I heard him say something to the effect of, "our message never changes, our methods may but not our message." I would suggest that our message does in fact need to evolve.

Consider Salvation: The centrality of the cross. Our sinfulness. Our need for be made holy by the work of Christ and we speak of Salvation history etc.

In the spirit of evolving message, I would throw out there that forgiveness was never a primary goal of God's, and that our Western emphasis on "salvation" place our sin at the center of the God story. It may be time for us to evolve.

God is relationship, he has created us in his image for relationship. Therefore it may stand to reason that in may be wise to place our emphasis on reconciliation and adoption into the family of God. This places relationship at the center of the God story. Relating becomes primary not my sin.

Remember that evolving does not obliterate what came before, rather it morphs it.

Peace, dwight

The Eastern Orthodox concept of the center point of the gospel as the incarnation of Christ makes more and more sense to me. If we are relationally created by a relational God (One/Three), than it make sense that the Emmanuel (God with Us) is core.

In order for any relationship to endure, death is essential. Call it kenosis, emptying, self-negation, the way of the cross, etc.; offering oneself for the "other" and for the "Us" is a relational necessity. To pursue self is anti-relational, is anit-Christ.

The cross of Christ is vital. Because life, love and relationship is only possible if one is dies to self.

The relational beauty of the incarnation of Christ is not the Cross but is his Ascension.

Incarnation = God with Human
Cross = death to self for life together
Ascension = Human with God

When Jesus Christ ascends to our Father we see the Divine/Human relationship move to a relationship of reciprocity, (which is now and not yet). Jesus - fully God and fully human present with God in perfect oneness. And his high priestly prayer suggesting that can be our experience too.

Peace, dwight

I AM THE GOSPEL

Jesus preached the gospel but it wasn't his preaching that that made people take note of him. Jesus preformed the gospel – making the blind to see and the lame to walk but it wasn't his performance of the gospel that made people take note of him. What made people take note was the reality that Jesus was the gospel. Jesus was the good news who set the captives free. He didn't just bear the good news he embodied it.

He was the gospel.

Jesus didn't say that you will preach as his witness, or that you will act as his witness Jesus said that you are his witness. You are the gospel – for good or for evil – your life, your whole person, your entire being, proclaims your relationship with God.

If I am a Christ-follower, a Christian, that means that I am in Christ and Christ is in me.

I am the good news. I dare not limit the gospel to the presentation of objective truth (if we think we can still communicate objective truth) as through propositions in themselves bring transformation.

I dare not limit the gospel to displays of divine power or spiritual gifts. The gospel is infinitely holistic. Christ in you the hope of Glory.

Relationship brings Transformation:

If you are in Christ and Christ is in you – you are the gospel, you are not the perfect gospel that is Christ. But no gospel you share is ever perfect – only Christ is. And the sharing of the gospel is nothing other than the sharing of yourself. Exactly the way Christ did. Christ did not come to served but to serve. He emptied himself of all that was rightly due him precisely because that is what love does. Christian love is emptying self for the sake of the other. Love lays down what everyone else is fighting to pick up. Christian life is decreasing so that Christ may increase. "greater love has no one than this, then a person lay down their life for a friend.

peace, dwight