welcome back.
An online conversation with Brian Russell at 12 Noon (PST). Read Brian’s blog at real meal cafe .
welcome back.
An online conversation with Brian Russell at 12 Noon (PST). Read Brian’s blog at real meal cafe .
Category: IMN | 109 comments
Brian, Thanks for joining us today for an IMN online conversation. You’ll get a chance to meet a lot of today’s participants in May during the 7-Day immersion.
Today’s conversation will conclude at 1.00PM (PST). aT around 12.59 or so, I’ll bring the conversation to a close. I’m sure others will come in later, read and comment. Also, this conversartion will continue to be available through the IMN archives on this blog.
Again, to Brian, thanks, and to everyone, enjoy.
Looking forward to read your conversation as I will be sound asleep here in Africa! I’ll read tommorow morning though. I love Brians Blog and look forward to reading the conversation.
I am excited….to experience this sharing of knowledge….Much love from the Nati (cincinnati)
Greetings IMN cohort! It is a privilege to spend some time today in dialogue with one another.
Let me introduce myself briefly. My name is Brian Russell. I serve as an Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary’s Orlando Campus. I am also a practitioner who teaches and preaches regularly in local churches. I am part of a team that is launching a new community of faith in the greater Orlando area. This is to say that I am not merely interested in theory for theory sake. I am passionate about intersecting biblical truth with the on the street reality. I am passionate about learning how to connect the Gospel of Jesus Christ with our world.
I am looking forward to our conversation.
Please introduce yourselves as you check in today. I will also have the opportunity of meeting many of your face to face in May in Los Angeles.
Brian,
Do you know Jim Woolums education guru at Campbellsville University and Asbury Alumni?
Hi Brian, I’m looking forward to the conversation…thanks for taking the time.
And to everyone else, it’ll be good to hang out with you all once again for an hour. Rachel won’t be here this time I’m afraid, but she says hi and will have a read later.
Our topic today is the development and implementation of a missional reading of the Bible. This is a conversation near and dear to my own thinking as I am writing a book with the working title “How to Read the Bible Missiologically.”
As you have time, I would invite you to check out my website Real Meal Ministries . I write regularly on mission and you will find much to supplement our conversations from today.
In particular the following essay will prove helpful (I hope) to our talk today and in our missional activities: Implementing a Missiological Reading in the Church.
Let’s use a quote from Unstoppable Force to begin our conversation. Erwin McManus advocates a missiological reading of Scripture over against a mere theological reading. He writes:
A theological construct for interpretation finds success in the attainment of knowledge. The more you know, the more mature a Christian you are thought to be. And yet knowledge of the Bible does not guarantee application of the Bible. To know is not necessarily to do. When the construct applied to the Bible is missiological, you engage the Bible to discover the response required of your life. (p. 72)
McManus is definitely on to a strange phenomenon in our churches. We want to be entertained; we want to learn facts about the Bible; we want the preacher or teacher to feed us. But I wonder if we ever stop and ask ourselves, “What is it that the Bible wants to do to us?â€
If mission is one of the principal reasons for the existence of the Church (the body of Christ), how can we read the Bible in such a way as to convert both our fellow Christ-followers to God’s mission in the world and invite non-believers to join this mission as well?
good afternoon everyone.
alex, good to see you back.
brian, i’ve been looking forward to this!
brandon, hello again. good to see you.
sam, hey man, i’m using your skin on vox.
Greetings Brandon, Sam, and Octavio.
Brandon, I think that I have heard Jim’s name but I don’t think that I’ve met him. Campbellsville is in Kentucky (right?) — I work primarily in Orlando, Florida.
Also, let me remind everyone to hit the REFRESH button on your web browser in order to read new comments.
Yeah…he said he hasn’t crossed path’s with you yet…but read up on you in the Asbury newsletter….
I think on your first comment, we read the bible as a guidebook instead of a textbook. We have to read/teach like Jesus in that we read a little, then we “do” a little, then reflect on how the doing lines up with the reading….this is how I mentor…sorry if that was rhetorical.
I think very often we read and interpret the Bible in very static ways when in reality it is a book of movement. God moving in and through people to further His purposes on the earth. It is very easy to pull out theological principles and miss the bigger picture of movement that is being portrayed. I think that is why we need to recapture the Bible as being a story and a story that is still ongoing today and that we can become part of. I liked the subtitle to John Eldredge’s book ‘Epic’ which was ‘The story God is telling and the role that is yours to play’.
brian,
first, teach the holy book in a missiological context. train folks to see the stories of scripture as encounters with god versus a set facts to me memorized.
second, do what you teach. if you want folks to invite people, share their faith, spend time with those who do not share our views, you got to do it first. i think it’s impossible (and harmful) to teach without doing.
But, what about the danger of it becoming void of the meaning…and now we are just doing, because its part of our process…..checklist.
I think the very fact that we can think of teaching in ways that are separated from doing emphasises how much we could misinterpret Jesus’ ministry as a Teacher.
brandon,
you make a valid point.
i think there’s a way to avoid this danger, but brian, what say you?
I think that it is crucial to see the relationship between reading Scripture and missional activity in a circle. They exist together. Too often these activities have been undertaken in isolation. Reading/Interpreting Scripture informs our missional work, but our missional work will continually drive us back to the text with new questions and a desire to be recharged and renewed.
Hey Brian, this is eriq in Silver City, NM. I’m glad to be here. I believe that we need to get rid of the seperation between clergy & laiety. People need to be empowered and given confidence that God wants to use them specifically and intentially wherever they are.
hi everyone.
I think that Octavio is right on target on the necessity of leaders actually leading in missional activity. I think that in our generation we need to recapture the image of pastor/leader as “missionary preacher/teacher” instead of older images of pastor as CEO or as resident theologian.
Brian,
The centrifuge circle thing I think has caused us to become selfserving….? My local baptist church is a VORTEX of programs that serve us….and this seems to be the case for many churches.
Hi Eriq and Dean,
Welcome aboard!
instead of a circle….what if we view the process as BREATHING…..in with text out with mission. this way we can’t recycle what comes out…its not useful to us anymore….make sense?
Brandon has touched a key point of practical import. How do we move past the Church as service center (meaning essentially service of the needs of the congregation) instead of mobilizing center for mission to the world? I link the image of a centrifuge — it is a scary one.
How can we shape the way that we do “Christian education” so that it becomes transformative instead of merely informative?
Perhaps, we should limit the number of times that people are allowed to enter the church’s facility in a given week 8^) ?
I think in the life of Jesus you see Him go through various stages in His teaching:
1] I do; you watch
2] We do together
3] You do; I watch
4] You go and train up others
It is very much an apprentice, missional approach.
brandon,
great metaphor!
breathe in the spirit, breathe out service.
balanced approach.
I like that sam…!
My dad’s cousin is an Anglican vicar and I was chatting with him my cousins wedding recently and we got to talking about an MBA he’s been doing. Basically, on that course he was asked who his customers were. This presented a dilema. Was it the members of the church or was the people in the community around the church. As he weighed this up, he felt that the community are the customers. He was then asked, what does that make your members then? And he said “staff, I guess”. I think this is the direction churches need to be going in; members seeing themselves as staff there TO serve rather than TO BE served.
sam,
good observation/summary.
brian,
i have resisted multiple mid-week bible studies to minimize visits to church (the building) and instead encourage the Church (followers) to visit their communities.
Sam….I like that…but how does that happen in a consumer world where we just want to get FAT!
brandon,
…it happens the same way to avoid being fat in any sphere…movement.
Octavio, I’m definitely with you on minimising church meetings and having a church that is “out there” as opposed to always “in here”. It’s a challenge though as there are lots of Christians who just love meetings excessively so!
Hello everyone, Jon Olson here sorry I am a little late.
Sam’s story is critical.
1)How do we change our teaching and preaching of Scripture in order to create an ethos of service rather than an ethos of consumption?
2) Think about our own practices of preaching. What sort of ethos does our current practice create?
Brian,
Would you give us an example of a missiological v. static theological interpretive at work?
Brandon, I don’t think it’s easy, but I think the challenge as leaders is to not give people what they want, but what they truly need. We need to have the strength of character to stick to what we believe is right, even if we lose some people to churches who may be prepared to pamper them.
Welcome Jon.
Are all of you guys leading communities of faith?
brian,
i am.
still thinking about your earlier question.
Well if it a 30 minute sermon monologue then the ethos you are creating is a consumer ethos.
by the way Chris from Miami
I see this happening in the form of social sabotage in love.
“Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed you might say in disguise, and is calling us to take part in His great compaingn of sabotage.” C.S. Lewis
We have to move the church like Octavio away from the “church building” and slowing take over community locations as extensions of the church.
I am fattening lambs for slaughter at The Spring in Thousand Oaks, CA.
My understanding about scripture reading is that we seek to gain knowledge about God rather than experience God through scripture. The historical/critical method helped to further this idea that scripture can be unlocked with the right knowledge (I am not saying some of the h/c stuff isn’t helpful).
I don’t think it so much where we meet or how meet, the question is are we encountering the living God through scripture and are we being transformed through that experience.
My supposition is that a person who encounters God in Christ can’t help but share that love. I think that is what we see throughout scripture–people encountering God, being transformed, obeying God and sharing His love with others.
I am leading a new community of faith.
Mosaic Sheffield will be launching in April, Brian! I’ve been the assistant pastor or a black majority Pentecostal church and me and my wife Rachel sensed God calling us to start Mosiac around August last year.
Most preaching I see (and have done) has been largely informational. Not nearly enough is transformational and not nearly enough is focussed on equipping. When I think of the role of the five-fold ministry it is about leaders equipping all members to serve. I want to very much shift my teaching into line with this.
I am in transition from a solo position as a pastor of Lutheran church in Southern Oregon to an associate pastor of a congregation in Auburn, Washington.
Hi, everyone.
Levi….is it scripture that transforms us or the power of the Holy Spirit? Scripture has also been used to do horrible things…when not interpreted correctly.
I am planting in New Mexico. I love preaching, but so did Herod. I like to look at the sword comming out of Jesus mouth in Rev. As the preaching of the Gospel advancing the Kingdom of God. But maybe all our sermons do not need to be preached from a stage or a pulpit. Like was mentioned by Sam earlier there is movement in the scriptures. Jesus was always on the move.
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