I am about half way thru the Celestine Prophecy, a book loaned to me by a friend who has recently read it and found it inspiring and helpful. (BTW – Thanks to those who have left comment about ‘inspiring books’)

A few observations:

* As a novel it is crap! It is nothing more than an excuse to preach. I guess it is to the New Age world what the ‘Left Behind’ series is to Christianity (although I haven’t read Left Behind so I am not sure if they are as crappy as this novel.)

* Many who read it will not see it as a novel, but will see it as a guide to life, although there is no question that this is the author’s intent. The nine insights are supposed to be ‘keys to life’ so to speak, only couched in fictional writing.

* There is huge potential to use this book redemptively. It clearly taps into the spiritual desires of people and articulates something they are longing for. If every culture has its ‘Jesus myths’ then perhaps this is a significant one from our culture?…

Stick with me!

For every insight Redfield articulates there is some kind of Christian equivalent or something that the Bible would say to his point of view to either affirm or clarify. Rather than getting too uptight that its a ‘new age’ book and actually ‘contrary’ to the gospel we can actually see pointers to Jesus and gospel truth within it. I think Paul would have a lot of fun with this book!

Check the first five insights:

#1.) Feeling restless? You’re not alone: Everybody’s starting to look for more meaning in life. Start paying closer attention to those seemingly “Chance Coincidences” – strange occurrences that feel like they were meant to happen. They are actually synchronistic events, and following them will start you on your path to spiritual truth.

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Is there someone out there?… Refield seems to think there is a bigger picture to life than we have so far acknowledged.

#2.) Observe our culture within its proper historical context. The first half of the past millennium was spent under the thumb of the church; in the second half we became preoccupied with material comfort. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, we’ve exhausted that preoccupation. We’re ready to discover life’s ultimate purpose.

Redfield traces the move from premodernity to modernity and finally to postmodernity quite well – emphasisng that we need to find meaning in the spiritual rather than the material or intellectual. He emphasises the place of experience in determining what is truth – something we need to grapple with as Christians from a modernist background.

#3.) Start to get acquainted with the subtle energy that infuses all things. With practice, you can learn to see the aura around any living being and to project your own energy around it to give it strength.

Could that ‘energy’ be the spirit of God?… Could we give words to describe that ‘energy’ more accurately? Redfield acknowledges a higher power at work even if he is pantheistic.

#4.) An unconscious competition for energy underlies all conflicts. By dominating or manipulating others, we get the extra energy we think we need. Sure, it feels good – but both parties are damaged in the conflict.

Sin?!…

#5.) The key to overcoming conflict in the world is the mystical experience, which is available to everyone. To nurture the mystical and build your energy, allow yourself to be filled with a sense of love.

A solution to sin?… It seems that he is suggesting that by tapping into the divine energy we can lose the need for oneupmanship and actually love another properly. He advocates the practice of contemplative spirituality as a means of connecting with the divine. Perhaps we would say that when a person is connected to God they can live the fruit of the spirit and love completely.

So far I can work with all of that…

I am thinking maybe I could develop a course that works with the CP and the Bible together for those who are CP fans and open to exploration. It does risk syncretism, but then isn’t that part of the challenge of a missional context?

In a meeting the other day with Ian Robinson I asked him what shifts he has seen in evangelism over the last 20-30 years.

He suggested a key one was that it now takes the average person 7 years to come to faith instead of 2. Its a much longer journey.

I am very aware of not wanting to short circuit the genuine journey in my endeavours to see people ‘saved’.

At last Forge has a new website.

Its still in development but you can get the vibe of what we are on about.

I am convinced that what we offer is probably the best training for first world mission I have ever come across. If you are dinkum about connecting with western people and haven’t checked out Forge as a training form then you really ought to.

With guys like Al Hirsch, Steve Said and Darren Rouse as some of the key players you know you’re in good company.

If you’ve been following our journey with leadership then you’ll be interested in what came out of our meeting last Tuesday night.

We finished our biblical reflection and distillation with the following conclusions and over the last week we were going to take time to pray, listen to God and see what he had to say as ‘where to from here?’

I had thought we would unearth some kind of a small team to oversee the wider team/mission and discuss any critical issues of direction and focus.

Funnily enough over the week, although I spent time in prayer I couldn’t sense God saying anything at all – not a whisper!

When we came together on Tuesday we went around the group and I asked people to share what they felt God had been saying to them before I shared my own nothingness. Almost without exception the group raised questions of ‘do we need this team yet? Can we just function as one big ‘leadership team’ and all decide on direction?’

It wasn’t what I expected and not what I was hoping for either. But it certainly seemed like God was saying ‘go this way for now’. The conclusions sat well with me, not because it was what I wanted but because there was a sense of having heard God. This is the value of a team process and the protection against one person’s way of seeing things.

It means we will function as one larger decision making group at this stage – a situation has both pros and cons. It seems everything we do is a series of trade offs, so we need to keep coming back to who we are and what we are about.

In taking this route it necessarily means that some of our time as a group will be spent dealing with directional/strategic questions and that will take away from worship/prayer/scripture/hanging out. But to have a team within a team would also remove people a step from the thinking process of the decisions.

Everything we do has a cost and benefit. If we meet weekly we lose some level of relational closeness that is possible in a small group. If we meet fortnightly then we stop building a sense of connectedness in the larger group.

One of our essential foci is that of being a team of missionaries connecting with the community rather than focusing on us as a gathered community. Its all too easy to default to getting out gatherings right (because they are the visible structural entities) and all too easy to neglect the day to day hanging out and making connections that actually validate what we are seeking to do.

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Its been a while since I have spoken anywhere, but its time for my annual ‘sermon’ at the Cottesloe Vineyard.

I have been there once every year for the last 4 years…

The senior pastor there – Stuart Wesley – is probably my longest standing friend – a really good mate who I went thru school with, did youth ministry with, and for the last 15 years have walked the ‘paid ministry’ journey with.

Hopefully he will be the overseer of our Forge coaching program from next year on.great buck howard the dvdrip

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I have written before that I believe the critical ingredient of effective missional communities is the leadership.

This is something we have been working on over the last couple of months and now we are at the point of acting on what we believe the scriptures to be saying.

Listed below is our distilled summary of what we see the NT saying about leadership (in no particular order):

• Leaders in scripture seem to have a sense of calling to the task of leading
• Biblical leaders must be servants
• Character/integrity is an essential quality of biblical leaders
• There is a gift of leadership and also the function of leadership
• Leaders are usually teachers / communicators of vision/direction
• Biblical leadership is about empowering and equipping others
• Leadership is plural
• Regards APEPT we would see that there is a need for a balance of orientation within a leadership team
• Leaders need to have a clear mission focus

As we talked tonight we agreed that the type of leadership we need right now is leadership that:
* keeps the group focused on the key calling of being missionaries in this community
* oversights the direction of the group and ensures we do what we say we are going to do
* protects the theological DNA of the group and ensures we are faithful to scripture in all we do

The next step is for us to appoint a leadership team. This week we will be praying about that issue and then coming together on Tuesday to see what we feel God saying.

At this stage we don’t have a specific process in place (making it up as we go!) but we are looking to hear God and see where it heads.

I will really value having a small team of people to chew the fat with and pray with regularly.

Today I met with three different denominational leaders in one day – and even enjoyed it!

At one meeting I was putting my case for future funding for Forge (nice alliteration hey?!) and was given a fairly intense questioning by the guys I was meeting with. They were doing their job so don’t read this as me being upset at them. They are both friends and we had a really good and mutually affirming conversation.

The key questions were along the lines of ‘why should we invest in what you guys are doing? What’s to say this approach to mission and church has currency and will bear fruit?’ These are the most common questions I hit everywhere and I feel quite at ease with them now.

Perhaps 2 years ago I might have been feeling under fire and ducked for cover, but in the last 24 months I have become increasingly convinced of the desperate need for the church to re-examine its practices and ask ‘how are we doing missionally?’

Because hard cold reality is, the punters still aren’t flocking to our services no matter how we funk them up.

I like the concept of Forge as the R&D dept of the church – the people who experiment, try new things and report back what has been learnt in the process. What it means is, we make things up as we go and we don’t have ‘models’ to work from. It means we have to be well earthed theologically as we are constantly checking our assumptions. It means people who want definite answers and clarity will struggle in our settings because we are challenging the ‘clarity’ we have come from.

For true blue missionaries this is not an issue, but if you just want a church to go and ‘enjoy’ then I reckon the Forge concepts will not be up your alley.

I’m not sure if they’ll back us… but I am absolutely convinced they ought to!!

Justin download rocketman and I have been discussing leadership a little and he pointed me to Leighton’s post. I think he’s on the money. I have added my thoughts over at his place.

“Jordon is back today and invited a bunch of us over for a Bar-B-Q. He started talking about some of the words of challenge he heard from some folks down south. Part of it was that we younger leaders are still waiting for something, some sort of approval to lead. We have been too passive.” Read on… barbie mariposa and her butterfly fairy friends free download sunshine boys the divx

I have made it a practice to drop in every Friday afternoon at the local tavern, known by the locals as ‘the dump’, ‘the dive’, the bloodbath’ and the ‘shithole’. Very few of them actually like the place – which you would completely understand if you ever saw it – but they still go there because its ‘local’.

Its been 4 months of going there now and I think I really am becoming ‘a regular’. Guys who wouldn’t give me the time of day 2 months back will say ‘g’day’ and include me in their conversations. And on a Friday arvo its often the same guys who front up.

I am making friends and developing relationships – but if I’m honest there are days when I would rather just go straight home on a Friday afternoon. Sometimes it’d be much easier to keep driving and not bother. Today was one of those days. Will I? won’t I?… Will I? won’t I?…

In the end I decided to go. At times I feel like I am doing something that requires some serious effort – its not like hanging out with a few close friends. It really is entering another people group and learning the ropes. That is hard when you are tired, and yet as I remind myself on the drive home, the only way to be a regular is… welll… to be there regularly!