Forgive the language, but I think he's correct as far as NGO, and spiritual work in places such as Africa. Need to know who's the barrier to your work. Get to know him!
"Last year in one of my grad school classes that was specifically designed to prepare for PC my professor walked into the room, turned on the projector, and put up a slide that said,
- Every village has a son of a bitch. Your job is to find out who that person is."
Clearly this is a work to live culture, not one in which people live to work. You are not defined by what you do, but simply by your existence and your interactions with others.This is difficult for me. I come from the upper mid-west. A very German sort of place where what you do with yourself is important. You live to work. Productivity is valuable. Time spent sitting around with friends not "doing" anything is viewed as time wasted... and there's nothing worse than wasting time in America."
Matt, May 7, 2010,
www. mattinwestafrica.blogspot.com/2010/05/interesting-short-stories-and-excerpts.html
"A quick but important point: If you recognize that you are a part of a traditional-attractional church structure, don’t punt! The best response is to create the missional pyramid from scratch with a few missional people of your choice and start right where you are. If you leave, nothing beneficial will happen in your church. But if you—with a humble desire to influence or model a new way—launch out with a few friends while staying connected to your church, you’ll not only enjoy the freedom of being on mission, you’ll be able to influence and inspire more people within the existing structure to change.
When Matt and I work with attractional churches to help them become more missional, we never try to change or challenge the present structure. Instead, we ask for a small handful of would-be missionaries to pilot incarnational community. If it works, then we believe the grassroots success will spread to more people in the existing structure. Most pastors have no reason not to want this experiment to succeed. They want you to live out this calling, but part of their calling is to also hold the saints together. Structures don’t change easily through challenge or critique. They change best as people within the organization change and model new approaches. So, instead of pointing your finger at your pastor or elder board, go live out this ancient way and pray for the larger community to eventually move forward with you. If you’re a pastor and you’re ready to move on this, we suggest the same thing. Call some friends together and begin a beautiful underground experiment. If it works, you’ll have helped move your church into new territory. If it doesn’t, you’ll have a great time with a few friends. How bad can that be?
“I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now! Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
Stephen Grellet,
"Urban Neighbours of Hope (UNOH) in Melbourne and the InnerChange workers in San Francisco, identification with the poor is an absolutely fundamental principle to their mission among the poor. All the missionaries and workers in these two missionary orders voluntarily live under the poverty line and refuse to be paid by their organizations for their work among the poor lest the people say, “you are paid to be kind to us.” They choose to live like the people with all the struggles and problems that poverty creates for people without power and resources. This incarnational act not only creates credibility for the missionaries, but it thus creates the relational- social context within which they can meaningfully and humanly share their faith. Because it means that for all intents and purposes, they have actually become part of the people group that they are trying to reach and have thereby overcome a very significant cultural barrier to the communication of the gospel. To identify incarnationally with a people will mean that we must try to enter into something of the cultural life of a “people’; to seek to understand their perspectives, their grievances and causes, in other words their real existence, in such a way as to genuinely reflect the act of identification that God made with us in Jesus.........................
"......incarnational mission implies a real and abiding incarnational presence among a group of people. Quite simply, it means that if you want to reach the local gangstas, you are going to have to live where they live and hang out where they hang out. Or it might mean that if you want to plant a church in a given suburb, you should really think about living there. Why? Because you cannot become part of the organic life of a given community if you are not present to it and do not experience its cultural rhythms, its life, and its geography. ................This is true whether they are the local ravers or members of bohemian art cooperatives, sports dubs, common interest groups, or parent groups—we need to identify a whole lot more before we can expect to really share Jesus in a meaningful way with them."
"My first impression of Peace Corps – two dozen scared faces clutching blue invitation kits."
I wonder how God might lead us if we were more concerned about being a “friend of sinners” than a friend to those inside our church or denomination?"(Tangible Kingdom. Hugh Halter, pg 46. 2008, Jossey-Bass)
"I’ve been in Mali a year and three days now. It is a Peace Corps cliché that volunteers enter as typically individualistic, efficient, work-driven, consumption-loving Americans and leave having learnt about what is really important in life - family, friendships, and community."
"Remember, there’s one thing that is just as important as truth, and maybe even more important. That is whether or not someone is willing or ready to receive truth. An environment of discovery is the only way we’re going to help people experience an alternative opportunity. Helping them make a personal “preference” for Christ and his life will always be more powerful than bashing their values. This doesn’t mean we don’t get to speak and teach truth. It just means we're better missionaries if we letthem experience it before we start debating it."
(Tangible Kingdom. Hugh Halter, pg 66. 2008, Jossey-Bass)
Amy Carmichael
Took in abandoned baby girls, rescued girls from temple prostitution in India, educated them & taught trades. She was asked;
“Why don’t you concentrate on saving their souls?”
Her reply was,
“I find their souls are very stubbornly attached to their bodies.”
1. This statement assumes living "Missional" is, somehow, an extreme to be avoided. It's some how not "Balanced" to be "too Missional". Are you kidding me? How can anyone be too missional? What does "too missional" look like? What exactly do they mean by balanced "mission"?'
2. Those talking about the "Balance" are very deeply steeped in, and working within, a highly "attractional" Church model. They are immersed in a method of churching that, frankly, needs people to show up, and give significant doses of cash to support this church and it's style of doing things, or, or that model fails.
"The hundreds of pastors with whom we’ve shared our story love unchurched folks as much as our edgiest church planters, but they are also responsible to keep a church structure afloat, one that signifies safety and survival for themselves and their parishioners. It’s not an enviable position. I used to judge these leaders as weak, or unwilling, or even worse, unloving toward the harvest field. But now I’ve come to believe that they are just as important as the brave, arrogant, pioneer pastors. They are the shepherds; the ones who can help the pioneers take risks. They are the ones with the resources, people, and facilities who can help out the fledgling mushroom eaters.
Would it be okay to consider that there are degrees of missionality! That some will be sent to cross blue seas, cross cultures, and go to the far reaches of paganism in order to find the one lost sheep, while others may just need to be sent across the street? Is it possible that God doesn’t need nor ask everyone to start something new? Is it possible that God needs millions of leaders to care for a host of Christians who won’t be able to make the turn into new forms of church? I think so.. . . I think we must.
The transition within the U.S. church doesn’t require that we all travel on the same ship, but we must all sail on the same sea. Even in Adullam, we have some shepherding types, men and women who’ve been in the faith and in traditional churches a long while, are solid students of the Bible, and who love the mission of Adullam. They support and encourage us, but they never try to take over and dictate. They trust our hearts and our mission and give us a wide berth to be ourselves and follow what we feel to be God’s way of being church. They don’t waste time complaining; they cheer, and they roll up their shirtsleeves whenever they can, to help when they can. As someone who has lived my life meeting folks at the crossroads of culture, I have learned that I can’t sustain this life and ministry without the encouragement, funding, and long-term help of the stable caregivers.
Within every congregation there are people at every level of willingness, strength, and maturity. I liken these Christians to bricks in the under-structure of a bridge that reaches out to the other side of the river. They aren’t going to make it across the bridge. They may not fill churches with new Christ followers, they may not even be people you want your non-Christian friends to meet, but they can help support the old and new structures that will allow the others to go out."
(Tangible Kingdom. Hugh Halter, pg 34, 2008, Jossey-Bass)
"As I once heard, “Doing church differently is like rearranging chairs on the Titanic.” We must realize that slight tweaks, new music, creative lighting, wearing hula shirts, shorts, and flip-flops won’t make doing church more attractive. Church must not be the goal of the gospel anymore. Church should not be the focus of our efforts or the banner we hold up to explain what we’re about. Church should be what ends up happening as a natural response to people wanting to follow us, be with us, and be like us as we are following the way of Christ.
(Tangible Kingdom. Hugh Halter, pg 30, 2008, Jossey-Bass.)
"Many pastors I meet tell me, “I tried it and it did not work!” By my guess, there could be about two hundred thousand pastors worldwide today who suffer from what I call the “Yonggi Cho depression.” David Yonggi Cho is a most unusual Korean pastor. extremely gifted and capable of leading people and building a church movement.
Many have followed his example and tried to copy him. A very few well-gifted men have even succeeded to some degree, but most have failed. The latter group feel today more guilty and depressed than before, a clear symptom of the pathological pattern of 'COPYISM,' a dangerous and deadly disease that has stricken many churches around the globe today.
But Pastor Cho’s message has never been “Copy me, and you will get the same results.” Instead, he wants people to obey God and learn from the church-growth principles that God has shown him.
Let us slip into the devil’s shoes for a few seconds: isn’t “copyism” a perfect trap? For many churches, everything starts so wonderfully. Someone experiences God’s blessing because he or she has been obedient to His Word and Spirit. Someone else tells the story and a third person creates a model out of this experience, which is then copied and cloned by a fourth person. A fifth person finally suggests, “Let’s create an institution around this new model!” He goes on to start franchises all over the world. The sixth person forms this way of doing things into a new “law,” which judges everyone who chooses to do things differently. Here then are “six sure and easy steps to transform a blessing into a curse.” If we put our hands to the plow and then look back—or abroad—how dare we think we are fit for the work in the Kingdom of God? (Luke 9:62).
It is high time that we resurrected and nurtured all that good, creative, and powerful potential that our Creator put into all of us long ago, which is nearly suffocating under too many layers of copied blessings. To do so would mean that we have to continually learn and research the ways that God is winning people to Himself and His church in our part of the world and in our society and culture. Could it be that our addiction to “successful” church models actually reveals a deep a deep leadership crisis and a widespread insecurity about what we should do?" Even more dangerous, could our wish for success reveal a serious deafness to what the Holy Spirit is trying to say to our churches about what we need to repent and get rid of?
But let us remain realistic. Statistics reveal that 80 percent of all pastors will simply copy other models and programs. Fifteen percent of all pastors will change the models to make them fit better. Only 5 percent are true inventors of their own models.
(Wolfgang Simson, "The House Church Book." Barna, 2009, pg 137-138)
"I once heard some young Christians from the United States talking about some outreach they were doing in Calcutta. They had genuine tears of brokenness in their eyes as they talked about the people worshiping dead idols in temples, yet these young people did not recognize the idols of sports, music, and television being worshiped in their own country. They had broken hearts over the abject poverty in Calcutta, but they did not see the spiritual and emotional poverty of the countless millions suffering from loneliness and meaninglessness in the United States. While they could not believe that people sacrifice flowers and even animals to their gods, they overlooked the fact that many of us sacrifice children and whole families on the altar of success every day. They marveled at the smoke and incense offerings made to pagan gods but failed to see the smog caused by cars, industry; and cigarette smokers in their own country; They said, “These children here are so dirty!” yet they did not realize that most children in their own country regularly use unbelievably dirty language.
In short, they saw and judged the outside but could not see inside. They were shocked by the culture, but not by the spirit behind it, and they failed to see that it is no better at home than in Asia. Humankind’s fallen and sinful nature only takes on a different outward appearance in different cultures and places; its quality is essentially the same everywhere.
(The House Church Book. Wolfgang Simson. Barna, 2009, pg 134-135)
" (Whimsical Holiness) Whimsy, therefore, allows you to be with people regardless of their angle of life without casting any judgment their way. It paves the way for them to feel comfortable enough to be themselves, feel loved, and dignified as human beings. It... See More’s not making an issue out of anything that’s not the main issue. That simply means we don’t flinch at sin or bad language or nasty T-shirts or crude music or a Sojourner who overindulged. Whimsy may he the missing element of Christlike love in today’s world. It’s the essence of missional posture that helps gain someone’s heart..... The issue isn’t so much about how far you can go to “do evangelism.” Its more about whether or not we will enlarge our view of discipleship to include behaving like Jesus did with the types of people Jesus would always have made a priority. .... Whimsy is the posture we take that allows people to be themselves. Holiness is that quiet inner posture that shines through and subversively witnesses of an alternative way to live. Whimsy implies that you can seamlessly interact in the culture with ease, humor, love, and holiness without being swayed away...."
