Missional Church FAIL

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Attractional Megachurches Cashing in on 'missional' Buzz

Maybe I have no clue what the word missional means, or perhaps I do and just get ancy when mega churches use the word. Now, I don't own words, but I do understand the semantics game. Missional, in a simple form, is an attempt to communicate the gospel in a language our post-Christendom world can understand. That means breaking down distinctions (clergy-laity), exegeting culture along with scripture to help our communication, embracing community over consumerism, and living incarnationally rather than individually.

Yes, that's a simple assessment, but it sums up some of the key components. Tell me then, how do megachurch leaders sleep at night when they label their outfits as 'missional'. By definition I'm pretty sure missional leads to, by default, SMALL networks. Churches of 2000+ gathering at the same time every week to watch a show DON"T embrace the basics of what it means to be missional, period. Continue reading →

A People’s History of Christianity: Diane Butler Bass – Review

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Part of my commitment with theooze is to review books they send. I don't technically have to blog about them but I figure they're willing to send the books then I'll return the favour and review them. This time around I opted to peruse the latest attempt at summarizing Christian history from a Western perspective taking in Diana Butler Bass', "A People's History of Christianity. The Other side of the Story". (You can browse inside the book online here.)

How compelling....The 'Other' side of the Story. So why is there an 'other' and what would be the apparent 'current' side of the story? Continue reading →

New Web Design for PomoTheo

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Hello to all our visitors. I'm sure you've noticed our big change. Gone is the simple scheme we had before, in comes a new design. We don't mind the change, but we'd like to get your input too. Let us know what you think and also post any bugs you might find. We already know about the comment box wrapping incorrectly.

Thanks for bookmarking us and adding us to your readers. We've got plenty more posts upcoming.

Attractional Church is Extractional Church

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Attractional Churches = Extractional Churches

This equation is not a unique idea to me but rather was mentioned by Alan Hirsch during a recent conference.

Missional heads have used the term 'attractional' to describe the majority of churches and their operations to 'attract' people into their buildings with programs and 'outreach' events. The saying goes, this consumerist mentality is killing the organic nature of our church 'growth' models.

Rather than using the word attractional perhaps a better word is in fact 'extractional' in that we extract people from culture, have them do all the cross-cultural work to learn what it means to be a right-wing bible thumping movie hating Christian. Continue reading →

Christian Spirituality and Blogging

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Do they mix? To what extent should people let the blogging world permeate their lives? You can't escape the 'blog'; the expression of writing in our internet day and age. The medium will progress, but it can't be neglected or vilified. I have heard a number of 'old people' who barely check the weather once a week on the web blast regular bloggers for the time they spend on their blogs.

It's not healthy, they spend too much time, it's like watching too much TV.

Although there is some merit to the concerns, somebody who never uses the net for information or expressions can't really enter in the dialogue of Christian spirituality and blogging. Many people are connected with new ideas and share perspectives they would otherwise not find or hear about if it weren't for regular blog contributors. So where's the balance?

I have come across two great posts, one a video, on the topic. Continue reading →

Church Planting Errors – Stop Calling People Pagans

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An Acts29 article was released chatting about the 5 things new church planters should know. There's some good tips in there, pretty straight forward, deal with people not books or web sites. However, there is a component that I've found over and over again in conversation and in writings regarding church planting.

Christians refer to regular, happy, fun, but non-Christian people as PAGANS. Do Christians have to step out of their way to use derogatory terms for everyone who's not like them? Why do we specifically target a people group and choose to use language that's probably not offensive, but certainly in bad taste? Continue reading →

Keep One Non-Christian Around for Witnessing

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http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2009/06/563-keeping-at-least-one-non-believer.html

Yes, Stuff Christians Like is a wicked tongue in cheek summary of evangelical elitism in North America. I particularly enjoyed this post because it's so true. We're called by leaders, and leaders themselves act in this way, that we need to find at least one non-Christian and do stuff with--of course with the purpose of 'saving them'. Continue reading →

Book Review: So Beautiful by Leonard Sweet

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Divine Design for Life and the Church

As a viral blogger with TheOOZE they send me books and I read them. Nice setup if you can get it. This edition I am happy to read through 'So Beautiful' by Leonard Sweet. (As an aside i think it's pretty funny that a missional guy like Sweet is published by the David C. Cook who also put out books by Tim LaHaye.... :rollseyes:)

Read the first chapter here.

Check out this quick youtube preview:

Continue reading →