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Missions, Misunderstood

Photo by tinkernoonoo (license), adapted by Jon Reid

One of my favorite new blogs I read regularly is Missions, Misunderstood by "Ernest Goodman," a pseudonym for a former missionary. A recent post titled Expectations began,

It usually goes something like this:

“Yay, we’re going to be missionaries! We love the nations! God’s glory! Passion! Finish the task”

Then, “It’s okay to be uncomfortable. Different isn’t necessarily bad. We can do this.”

Finally, “I’m just not cut out for missions. The missionaries here aren’t cut out for missions. I’m never leaving home again.”

Those lines in particular really resonated with me. I left the following comment, but decided to share it here as well:

Loving Your Gay Neighbor

Spencer Burke interviews Andrew Marin about what he's learned about ministry, and about Jesus, in the center of Chicago's gay community. This is terrific stuff from TheOOZE.TV.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Social Acceptance: A Missional Metric

Photo by Darren Hester (license )

"What does your church measure, and why?" That's how my latest blog post starts. But you won't find it here! Instead, go on over to ChurchETHOS, a blog by my friend Nathan Creitz. There you will find Social Acceptance: A Missional Metric.

While you're there, check out the rest of Nathan's blog. Like me, Nathan questions things about church, out of love for the Church. Besides, he has a really cool logo. Reset!

Ambassador's Alliance Radio vs. Jon Reid

Well, another radio show critiqued my 14 Reasons to Stop Evangelizing Your Friends. Ambassador's Alliance Radio is by Tony Miano of Last Words Radio, except that this is an Internet radio show (as opposed to broadcast through the air.) Tony must really like my article, because he keeps using it.

The show is two hours long (podcast available here), with the first hour devoted to critiquing my post. Actually, they spend a lot of time getting things set up and introducing the guest who joins in the critique. They don't get started with me until 15 minutes in.

I don't intend to do a point-by-point rebuttal of their criticism. You can listen and come to your own conclusions. But overall, the thing that kept striking me was their focus on "what happens when you die" and the dualism that naturally results from making the gospel about life after death rather than about the kingdom of God being here, now. Also, their gospel seems extremely hell-centric. Isn't that backwards?

So Beautiful book review

What if there were a single design that explained the meaning of life — the universe — everything? What if it pulled together the nature of God with the mission of humanity? What if it were so simple that, when sliced and labeled, many will brush it off saying, "That's obvious. So what?" That was my initial reaction when I saw that the front cover of Leonard Sweet's new book So Beautiful has the words, "Missional — Relational — Incarnational: Divine Design for Life and the Church." Because those concepts are already important to me, I was inclined to respond, "That's cool," shrug, and dismiss it as something I already "get."

Friends, do not dismiss this book.

I pressed beyond my initial dismissal because the author, Leonard Sweet, had already impacted my life before. When I made the transition out of modernistic Christianity, it was a very scary and painful time; I was afraid I was losing my faith. Three things saved me:

• SoulTsunami by Leonard Sweet helped me understand my new context.
• A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren helped me find faith again.
• The Soliton Sessions showed me I was not alone, and created a space for me to encounter Jesus all over again.

So Len Sweet helped me get reoriented when I needed it. His latest book again catches me at just the right time. When I read SoulTsunami, I characterized Len as a Christian futurist. But in So Beautiful, I see that he is a preacher, a wordsmith.

Last Words Radio vs. Jon Reid

The podcast is up! Last Words Radio let me know they were going to critique my 14 Reasons to Stop Evangelizing Your Friends. Over Twitter before the show, I suggested that we make it a Celebrity Deathmatch, where my claymation figure takes on their claymation figures in a wrestling match to the death. Fight! Fight!

I had originally planned to write a Part 4 in my This I Used to Believe series critiquing their response to Trisha. But because this latest show focused specifically on what I wrote, it clearly highlights the differences in our philosophies, approaches to evangelism, and understandings of the gospel. So now I'm wondering if it's worth doing Part 4; it may still be valuable, especially if Trisha gets around to writing her response to them.

I missed the first eight minutes of the show (busy tucking my girls into bed), but was then able to connect with Dru and Tony on the show's chat room. So I had a small "voice" on the air as they read aloud some of the things I typed in response to them.

Last Words Radio takes on my "14 Reasons" tonight!

Last Words Radio has a weekly show on the topic of evangelism. Tonight, they will be discussing 14 Reasons to Stop Evangelizing Your Friends by yours truly!

It looks like we have pretty different perspectives. Their website has an invitation to join them on the streets of Burbank, California: "We pass out Bible tracts, open-air preach, and engage people in one-on-one conversations." Been there, done that (well, not in Burbank). I shared this over breakfast this morning:

Me: "Handing out tracts! Tracts are pamphlets, little booklets," I explained to the children. "But why do they call them tracts? Who else uses that word these days?"
Kay: "It shows they're stuck in the past."
Me: "And open-air preaching? I don't think it makes sense in the U.S. But, you know, maybe it does somewhere else. Like India."
Kay: "No, not even India."
Me: "You're right, that's not why the church is growing there."

But I admire their passion, and welcome their critique. The show is 9:00 - 10:00 p.m. PST. If you're in Southern California, you can tune in to 99.5 KKLA. Otherwise, you can listen online at kkla.com or watch the live video stream.

Update: The podcast of the show is now available.

This I Used to Believe: Evangelism gone wrong

This is part 3 of a series on This I Used to Believe.

Last time, I shared an amazingly good example of evangelism. This time, I share an amazingly bad example …by the same person!

This American Life aired a show called This I Used to Believe, which featured a conversation between Trisha, a self-described lapsed Catholic, and Coach Hogan, an evangelical Christian. This segment caught the attention of another radio program called Last Words Radio, and they began their discussion by stating, "One thing we're not doing is critiquing Coach Hogan."

I will not be so kind.

As I shared in part 2, Coach Hogan used a football game as a conduit for the gospel. This powerful story touched many people including myself, and a woman named Trisha Sebastian. I won't repeat what was broadcast — you can catch that in part 1 — but will dive straight into Trisha's interactions with the coach.

"14 Reasons to Stop Evangelizing Your Friends" now in Spanish

Well, this is a neat surprise: Someone translated my 14 Reasons to Stop Evangelizing Your Friends. There is now a Spanish version! Check it out: 14 razones por las cuales usted debería dejar de evangelizar a sus amigos.

(I am using Google translate to read the comments in English.)

This I Used to Believe: Evangelism done well

This is part 2 of a series on This I Used to Believe.

How can the same person be so good at evangelism, and also so bad at it?

Let's look at the good first:

The radio show This American Life aired an episode called This I Used to Believe. The segment "Team Spirit in the Sky" begins with a description of a most unusual football game in which a coach at a Christian high school got his team's fans to cheer… for the other team! Chances are good you've read about it, because this story went viral on the Internet:

LIFE OF REILLY
There are some games where cheering for the other side feels better than winning. (12/23/08)