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Category: missional

  • Book Review: You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith

    DISCLAIMER: If you are a follower of Christ- who is already going to heaven – and talk about changing the traditions which define the methods of the “church” (lower case “c” on purpose) irritates you, you’ll definitively not appreciate this book…just sayin’ 🙂

    …we must be honest enough with ourselves to determine where our allegiance is merely cultural (like first-generation immirants) rather than biblical

    – pg 56 “You Lost Me”

    I had been waiting what seems like forever to get my hands on David Kinnaman’s new book, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are leaving Church…And Rethinking Faith.  Almost as long as I have been waiting for an opportunity to share my thoughts on the book.

    Before I talk about this book, I should share that most of my excitement for reading this book comes from 2 reasons.

    1. Reading Unchristian (see my review here) totally blew me away
    2. My heart personally is deeply invested in seeing people live an engaged life as Christ Follower – and the question “How do we reach the next generation with the Gospel” is a question that is constantly on my mind.

    I’ve been joking with my fellow staff members that one of these days I’m gonna write a book for people I like to define as those who are going through a “Quarter-Life Crisis.”  Not because I am making fun of them or seeing them as a project to fix, but because they have a special place in my heart.  For one of the reasons, this book is timely.

    Young Christians are leaving the church – but they are not necessarily leaving Jesus.  This is what I have seen.  This is what You Lost Me affirms through its research.

    This should not be.

    Not for the sake of the institution that is the church in the western world – it’s for the sake of biblical mission.  If the local expression of God’s fellowship of believers is to remain a witness for Christ in their community then making sure the next generation is reengaged in church is important. If it is God’s design that the changing power of the Gospel is to find great effectiveness through what we have defined as the local church – then making sure the next generation not only finds value in staying engaging in church but finds meaning and purpose by being a part of it is mission-critical.

    Maybe I am old school. Maybe I am naive to believe that the church can become not only something followers of Christ live to be a part of, but even become martyrs to defend, then this is important.

    There is soooo much in this book.  I can’t even begin to scratch the surface of all that this book is, but I will share some of my favorite parts.

    • the cultural setting in which young people come of age is significantly changed from what was experienced during the formative years of previous generations…we …must commit ourselves to understanding our culture today to be effective translators of faith to the next generation.  We must come to grips with the challenges and with the opportunities for the gospel to advance.
    • I am concerned that too many Mosaic Christians are so interested in pursuing the good, the true, and the beautiful that they forget to acknowledge and draw near to the source of those pursuits – Jesus.
    • …only a traditionalist would argue that all talk about sex is vulgar
    • How would the church be different if we were to reject exclusion as unacceptable and tolerance as not good enough?
    • The generation gap is growing, fueled in part by technology, so it takes extra effort to be on the same page.
    • New churches must be formed where all believers are expected to do the work of evangelism and discipleship.  This generation sees the potency of a church where pastors equip and shepherd disciple-makers rather than service-attenders.
    • (1) the church needs to reconsider how we make disciples; (2) we need to rediscover Christian calling and vocation; and (3)we need to reprioritize wisdom over information as we seek to know God.

     As I look over these bullet points I feel that I I am not even doing the book justice.  If you are a statistics junkie (I am not) there’s tons of info based on their research that you’ll love.  If you’re the type that doesn’t like books related to Christianity that are devoid of biblical passages and teachings on them – you’ll find plenty of that as well.

    I do not feel the need to go into all of the book – after all this is a review, not a summary.  If I could give a summarizing statement, it would have to be from the book itself.

    …the Christian community must rethink our efforts to make disciples.  Many of the assumptions on which we have built our work with young people are rooted in modern, mechanistic, and mass production paradigms.
    …We need new architects to design interconnected approaches to faith transference.  We need new ecosystems of spiritual and vocational apprenticeship that can support deeper relationships and more vibrant faith formation.  We need to recognize the generational shfts from left-brain skills like logic, analysis, and structure to the right-brain aptitudes of creativity, synthesis, and empathy.  We need to renew our catechisms and confirmations-not because we need new theology, but because their current forms too rarely produce young people of deep, abiding faith.  We need to rethink our assumptions and we need the creativity, honest, and vitality of the next generation to help us.

    Pick the book up.  You may not agree with all of it, but you’d be hard-pressed to not feel engaged by it and challenged to rethink the difference between defining the end result of Christian discipleship and defining the methods by which you have been exposed to and embrace for Biblical discipleship.

  • A Soccer Story: I’m Official

    You can now call me “Coach.” (why does it look like I’ve got lazy eye)

    http://instagr.am/p/KCJsQ/?ref=nf

  • A Soccer Story: The Beginning

    Not many people who have known me over the past ten years may know this, but among the many loves in my life, I have a deep love of the game of soccer. Truth be told, as a short guy whose only physical strength was the ability to run fast and play aggressively, soccer was an obvious sport for me to get engaged in. Not to mention, it was a sport my dad loved to play. (ok…there wasn’t a sport my dad didn’t love, but that’s another story.)

    So, this year I have been able to dive back into a sport I loved and grew up playing by assisting in coaching a couple of teams this summer with a good friend of mine who has a HUGE resume of coaching competitive soccer.  I helped with coaching a Maple Grove park and rec team as well as assisting as much as I could with a MapleBrook Soccer team.  I learned so much this summer about the coaching side of soccer and I am really excited about a new opportunity to coach Armstrong High School’s freshman girls soccer.

    In more ways than one, this is really meaningful to me.

    First off, it’s going to be great to be back in the neighborhood I started my “real-world-life” in.  When I graduated from college, Robbinsdale was the first place I called “home”.

    Second, I am loving the opportunity to serve in the community in this way.  Even though it isn’t Maple Grove, Robbinsdale is literally like the next city over – and there’s something about getting involved in the community that excites me!  Don’t get me wrong…I LOVE and am so grateful for the call of God on my life to minister in a local expression of God’s Church in Maple Grove.

    But being involved in a world that is different from the one that I usually live in – a world where I wake up to a Christian home, leave to go to work with Christian co-workers, primarily have lunch and meetings with other followers of Christ, and then go home to my Christian wife to get ready for our Christian baby-sitter to watch our kids while we go to our Christian Bible study with Christian friends – the public school environment reminds me of why I got involved in ministry.

    I love the opportunity to be a follower of Christ who sees that his greatest calling in not to be removed from the world, but to live in the world.  To tangibly be a light.  To not forget to do the work of an evangelist even though I am called to the work of ministry.

    I am so grateful for this opportunity – and it kinda reminds me of my days in student ministry, which is another reason I am really excited.

    So stay close and hopefully, you’ll enjoy bearing the journey with me.   Tryouts start August 15th, so look for blog updates and keep me in your prayers =)

  • Hugging your neighbor’s wife


    Yesterday i found myself both uncomfortable and embarrassed.  Have you ever felt that way?

    Yesterday I found myself hugging my neighbor’s wife.

    Maybe I should give you some background.  As I was working on my yard, my next door neighbor’s wife came out to work on hers.  She’s a really nice lady- a little very shy – but friendly none the less.

    On a side note, my wife and I had noticed that we haven’t seen her husband around in a while.  Don’t get us wrong, we are good neighbors, but we’re definitely not “nosey nieghbors.”  We assumed a couple of different scenarios, but never really asked.  We figured we would find that answer out someday, so no need to create a potentially awkward situation.

    Well…the awkward situation found me.

    The gap in between kindly saying hi to my neighbor’s wife and me getting back to heading towards trimming my yard is filled with boring descriptions of me describing in detail the proper use of weed and feed and all that jazz short.  What happened next totally caught me off guard.

    As I walked away to go back to trimming my yard, in a timid, yet slightly raised voice she said,

    “Thanks…you know it’s been tough since my husband died”

    DIED?  Her husband died?  I turned around and all I could say was I am sorry.  I asked when it happened and she told me how he passed last summer.  He had gone in for shoulder pain and the doctor originally thought it was some type of arthritis.  But when the treatment he prescribed wasn’t working, they went back.  This time they took some x-rays, and things didn’t look right.  When they took a CT scan they found out why.

    Cancer had overtaken the bone marrow in his arm – and was actually spreading all throughout his body.  From the day they heard that news, until his death was only 4 months.

    I was embarrassed because I didn’t ask what happened to him when we noticed he was gone.  Being that they were about the same age as our parents (and also have a son old enough to be my brother), I kind of naturally assumed a number of different situations: they were separated or he had moved back to California for work.

    Then I became uncomfortable.  I didn’t know what to say, so I simply asked if I could pray with her.  She said yes.  And as I extended my hand to pray, this short little Chinese lady reached up, hugged my neck, and began to cry on my shoulder.  As I prayed with her the embarrassment and uncomfortablity that once clouded my emotions was overcome by compassion and love.

    My family and I have been feeling the Lord challenging us towards living our lives with a more missional mindset/paradigm, I am beginning to see how God begins to ordain open doors towards living a “great commission” life and I believe he is opening these doors because we are asking for it.

    And that was my day.

    How was yours?

  • Book Review: Missional Renaissance

    Missional Renaissance

    “Missional” is just another spin at Christian-ese.

    A new generation of ultra-hip, establishment-abortionists with their mac computers and iPhones has come up with a new “catch-phrase” to label their definition of what they think church should be. Why “missional?” Can’t we just say we are biblical?

    This is what I used to think when I heard of the word “Missional” being tossed around a few years ago.  Fortunately, my own personal journey of following Christ has allowed me the opportunity to see beyond my own stubborn paradigms.  So when I received this book in the mail, I was open and excited to explore a movement that defines many Christ-followers, who I have judged before even taking the time to understand.

    The first thing I realized when I started reading this book was that what I thought the term “MISSIONAL” meant – was wrong.  Being Missional isn’t some trite or redesigned way to describe a people who are evangelistic or believers who like to drink at bars (though being at a bar may be an intentional strategy to fulfilling God’s desire for biblical living).

    I will be honest and say that I am still processing a lot of this information.  Right off the bat, I found some things I was saying, “YEAH!!  RIGHT ON!”  Then there were things I was saying, “REALLY?   THAT‘s biblical?”  But overall, I found that nothing heretical in nature was found.  In fact, I am starting to believe that the “Missional Mindset” may, in fact, truly be a renaissance of sorts in the organization of the people of God – the church.  With that said, here are some things that stuck out to me, ranging from things I totally agree about to the things I need to break open my bible and talk with God about.

    • We must change our ideas of what it means to develop a disciple, shifting the emphasis from studying Jesus and all things spiritual in an environment protected from the world to following Jesus into the world to join Him in His redemptive mission.
    • …study after study continues to reveal that active church members do not reflect a different value set than the culture at large.
    • Missional followers of Jesus don’t belong to a church. They are the church.
    • Our job is not to “do church” well but to be the people of God in an unmistakable way in the world.
    • The missional follower of Jesus cannot conceive of their spiritual identity outside of being in accountable and encouraging relationships with other Jesus followers.
    • …substituting religions activity for helping people doesn’t cut it with God.
    • People deserve to be blessed simply because they are people, not just so we can “witness” to them.
    • When the church thinks it’s the destination, it also confuses the scorecard.
    • Substituting church activity as the preferred life expression is as weird as believing that airports are more interesting than the destination they serve.
    • The missional church, as you might guess, has an allergic reaction to the reach-and-assimilate social engineering of people.
    • People will accept help in shaping their spiritual path…especially from people they respect and trust, who seem to have their best interests at heart.
    • …if the [YMCA] operated like the church, it’d bring people in once a week, feed them coffee and donuts, and let them watch Jason [the club personal trainer] work out!
    • Maturation is messy. It takes time.  It doesn’t occur linearly.  Maturation occurs in an atmosphere where accountability is expected and practiced.
    • Giving people information without providing means for application and accountability for their behaviors turn them into knowledgeable but disobedient people.
    • …the New Testament discussion about gifts and ministry occurred in a world where acts of ministry were primarily done in the marketplace, not “at church.” They were being the church in the world.
    • …missional leaders…believe [they] are on a mission in the world and are partnering with God in blessing the people in [their] sphere of influence.

    How “Missional” are you?