Lent starts next Wednesday! Starting in 2010 (when God interrupted my Lenten prayer),  I’ve enjoyed the Lent devotional provided by CRM:

• Church Resource Ministries is an organization I highly respect. They’re doing missional work around the world, including the United States.
• The thoughts and questions come from CRM’s missional focus. There’s no fluff. It’s real, personal and honest.
• The format is a daily devotional email during Lent. The daily reminder in my technological world helps keep me grounded.

With a smart phone, you can have the email devotional in your hand, wherever you are. I like to take a mid-morning break during my workdays and walk around outside with my iPhone. I walk slowly and meditatively, holding the thoughts, questions and prayers against the backdrop of both nature and workplace.

To sign up for this email devotional, go to www.crmleaders.org/subscribe. Click the “Lent and Week of Prayer mailings” checkbox.

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The American way: Make a reproducible franchise

Two of my friends made an unexpected connection online. Their dialog stirred thoughts in me that had fallen dormant… What does it take to start new churches in the U.S.? What’s the connection between new churches and evangelism? Is anyone reaching post-Christian America? What should Kay & I do (if anything)?

Andrew Jones (a.k.a. tallskinnykiwi) wrote a Leadership Journal post, 9 Reasons NOT to Plant a Church in 2012.
My former pastor Dave Jacobs replied with My Patellar Reflex to Andrew Jones’ “9 reasons NOT to plant churches.”
This could be interesting, I thought…

New churches: He says / he says

Andrew "tallskinnykiwi"

Andrew starts by quoting C. Peter Wagner, the godfather of Church Growth. “Church planting is the most effective form of evangelism under heaven.” But Andrew is observing a shift away from starting new churches and toward “a wider range of transforming Kingdom activities.”

Dave "Small Church Pastor"

Dave points out that most of Andrew’s examples come from outside the U.S.A. He infers a connection to house churches, in particular “the missional-house-church movement.” I’m not sure this is what Andrew is talking about. But Dave says that comparing house church movements in other countries to the United States “is often a matter of apples and oranges.”

(By the way, you’ve never seen two people disagreeing with more humility, openness and respect. You guys rock.)

Global examples: It doesn’t work here. Or does it?

From the Korean cell church model to Chinese house churches, people have tried to import these patterns to start new churches in the United States. I’ve been there, done that, and now see two problems:

Icon of Colonel Sanders

1. Americans love models! It doesn’t matter how organic and Spirit-filled it is overseas. We want to reduce it to reproducible systems, much like fast-food franchises. If you open a new McDonald’s or a new Baskin Robbins, you go to training classes to learn how to follow their pre-established systems. The “cell church model.” The “house church model.”

I’ve certainly been guilty of this wish. But now I feel drawn back to my first love: Jesus. When we look at thriving churches and movements, including those within the U.S., we forget how they got there in the first place:

• Prayer.
• Shaping our lives towards that of Christ.
• Dependence upon the Holy Spirit.
• Hospitality.
• Serving the marginalized.
• Expecting God to speak and move.

If we really want to copy successful churches, we can’t copy where they’ve ended up. We instead need to copy how they started.

2. We haven’t reckoned with the uniqueness of the American spirit. “It works there, why doesn’t it work here?” Because we haven’t done the missionary homework of exegeting the culture — that is, interpreting the context. This isn’t Korea or China. That much seems obvious, but only in retrospect. We honestly thought the Korean cell-church model would take off here.

What a lot of people miss is that this isn’t the Christianized America of their memories. This is postmodern, post-Christian America. Cyber-connected but relationally starved. An individualistic consumer society seeking instant gratification.

Enter missiologist Alan Hirsch who teaches us to ask, “What will sound like good news for these people?”

To be continued… [This is part of Starting New Churches: Is Our Focus Misplaced?]

Photos by Keoni Cabral (license) and Thomas Hawk (license)

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It all started simply enough:
Andrew Jones wrote a Leadership Journal post, 9 Reasons NOT to Plant a Church in 2012.
Dave Jacobs replied with My Patellar Reflex to Andrew Jones’ “9 reasons NOT to plant churches.”
Their exchange about the value of starting new churches kicked my thoughts into motion.

I was going to post a comment on Dave’s blog, but it got too long. So I started to write a post here. But it got too long, as well! (I’m working on taming the length of my posts.) So I thought, “OK, I’ll make it a two-parter.” I wrote part two. But I still hadn’t finished what I want to say.

God is stirring, and I’m starting to bubble

Evidently, God is stirring me again. It’s not just coming from my blogging friends; they were just an important kick. I feel like I’m entering a new season:

• Kay experienced spiritual growth in a sudden, unexpected burst.
• I had my own encounter with God.
• I started blogging here again. There’s something about trying to put my thoughts into semi-coherent words that forces me to wrestle through those thoughts.
• Prayer is a lot easier now.
• I’ve started reading Sacrilege: Finding Life in the Unorthodox Ways of Jesus by Hugh Halter.

So I’ll share what’s starting to bubble through a short series:

1. New Churches, Global Movements and the U.S.A.
2. New Churches Stuck in a Box in Post-Christian America
3. New Churches & Evangelism: Do We Have It Backwards?

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Things look different here, eh? Blogging has changed over the years, and I’ve been experiencing WordPress envy. I’m proud to roll out the biggest change since moving this blog from Blogger to TypePad in the summer of ’93: Blog One Another now runs on my own server, on WordPress, woot woot!

Why am I excited? Because everything has changed underneath. I plopped down some money for a hosting service (Dreamhost) and a WordPress theme (Standard Theme), and spent a chunk of time moving everything over from TypePad. You’ll experience a number of improvements, including:

• Speed: Pages load quickly. And I mean super-fast!
• Comment avatars: Just sign up at Gravatar, and your smiling face will make your comments more fun!
• Comment threading: Now more than a single level of replies! The threads of conversation will be clearer going forward.
• Comment subscriptions: No more need to check back manually! Just click the checkbox when you add a comment, and you’ll be notified when anyone adds something new.
• Easy sharing: Buttons float along the left side of each post. This makes it easy to share a post on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.

I want you to get the most out of the new setup! Here are things you can do to maximize your experience:

Update your links

jonreid.blogs.com was my address on TypePad, but now that’s going away. So you’ll want to update your links and bookmarks.

If you list me in your blogroll (usually the sidebar), make sure you’re pointing to blogoneanother.com. (Joe Garcia, I’m looking at you.)

Check your RSS subscription

The RSS feeds have changed. I’m able to redirect

• http://blogoneanother.com/atom.xml
• http://blogoneanother.com/rss.xml

to http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogoneanother. But it’s an unnecessary hop through the Internet. Please update your RSS subscription to use http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogoneanother.

And there are  a surprising number of you who point to something even older! Any readers pointing to either

• http://jonreid.blogs.com/oneanother/atom.xml
• http://jonreid.blogs.com/oneanother/rss.xml

will be left in the cold. Here’s the correct address to use in your RSS reader: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogoneanother.

Post a comment

Try posting a comment! The very first time you comment on this new system, you’ll get an email with a link. Click that link to verify that you’re a real human being. This will only happen once; after that, we’ll believe you’re not a spambot. But it will happen once, even if you’ve posted comments before on the old system.

And as I mentioned before, comments will be more fun if we can put a face to your name. So go sign up at Gravatar! It’s useful across a number of systems.

Spot anything wrong?

Thanks for your patience during this move. If you see anything out-of-place (like broken links), please let me know in the comments.

I’m stoked!

Photo by jenlen (license)

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I didn't know there was a book!

I did a little soul-searching recently. I decided I could make the purpose and focus of this blog clearer. And it’s tied to my background as a Third Culture Kid (TCK).

…On the one hand, this is just a personal spiritual blog. There’s nothing necessarily focused about that.

…But on the other hand, this is my personal spiritual blog! What you get at Blog One Another is what I’m seeing and experiencing, that I want to pass on to you. So I had to ask myself, “What’s so unique about my perspective?”

A TCK lives in two worlds

Answer: I’m a TCK, a Third Culture Kid — I grew up in Japan, as an American. I’m used to being the child of two cultures, while not fully belonging to either. It colors everything about how I see culture, belonging, and what to do when cultures clash. I found myself sketching these ideas on a whiteboard:

Whiteboard scribbles

By now, you’ve seen those orange guys in the banner stretching that poor grey fellow. You know, up in the banner. The whiteboard shows the genesis of the image: “squeeze / stretch / Ahhh!” It’s in the stretching that I find Jesus.

And so, I introduce Blog One Another’s new tagline: Stretching between faith & culture (to find Jesus). Maybe this helps explain:

• …why I find close friendship with both Christians and atheists.
• …why I seem similar to you, and then surprisingly different, whether you’re a Christian or an atheist.
• …why you can help me live into the way of Christ, whether you’re a Christian or an atheist.
• …why I seem conservative. Or liberal. Or something.
• …why I hold to the Bible, while looking around me to see what God is saying & doing.
• …why I want Christians to stop trying so hard to evangelize to their friends, while wanting my atheist friends to experience the amazing healing & empowering love of God in Jesus Christ.

So I revamped my About page to reflect this focus. Go check it out. You’ll like the images I chose!

I have good plans for this blog for this year, so stick around. Thanks for being part of Blog One Another! …Again, check out the About page. I’d love to hear what you think.

Photo by Earthworm (license)

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1.21 gigawatts?!

Back… back… back in time! Unless you go way back on Blog One Another, this will all be new.

It’s common for bloggers to wrap up the year with a “best of” summary. But that doesn’t work for me this year, since I only recently came back from a one-year hiatus. So instead, let’s stretch back to 2003. I give you classic posts from my first year of blogging!

• Postmodern Daydreaming — I brainstorm about what a “postmodern” worship service might look like. I don’t understand why these things are still so rare.
• Postmodernity Schooling — Cutting-edge classrooms have changed to adapt to a new way of thinking. Why haven’t churches?
• “The sick and demon-possessed” (Mark 1:32-34 Lectio) — In my lectio divina series, I meditate on how “You are a sinner” no longer works as a starting point for evangelism.
• Sunday Services Overrated? — Why do church plants often begin as small groups, but then pour 80% of their effort into a large weekly meeting?
• Heat and Light: An evangelistic conversation — A friend asks me if he is going to hell.
• “Stories” (Mark 4:1-20 Lectio) — Another lectio divina, in which I think about how my decision to stop evangelizing my friends has led to more conversations about spiritual things.
• Stop Inviting Friends to Church — I tried inviting my friends. Believe me, I tried.
• Ritual and Meaning — Kids respond to “all that pomo touchy-feely, multi-sensory stuff.”
• Adventures in Nametagging 2 — An experiment in wearing a nametag in public makes me a bolder servant.
• A Different Approach to Evangelism — What if we turn the tables? Not “I am helping you,” but “You are helping me.”

Thanks for reading, commenting, and sharing Blog One Another with others! I’m looking forward to what the new year brings. (2012, that is.)

Photo by Team Tanenbaum (license)

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“And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.”

I leaned over to my daughter during the worship service and whispered, “So the announcement of God’s coming is made to a bunch of dirty scumbags. And to a group of foreigners.”

I love the upside-down nature of God’s kingdom! It confounds those with supposed wisdom, whether we’re talking religious wisdom or anti-religious wisdom. It reminds me that God’s ways are so unlike our own, and that to follow Jesus, I have to “free my mind.”

For all my friends — Christian, atheist, and otherwise — I give you a blessing:

May the coming year bring you freeing of your minds.
May you experience wholeness and purpose.
May your relationships be healed.
May you begin to know the depth of Papa’s love for you.

God has moved into the neighborhood! Merry Christmas!

Comic by David Hayward, a.k.a. nakedpastor

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Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and Jesus Christ? A series of tweets and Facebook posts led me to a surprising discovery…

“If Jesus communicated kingdom stories/parables in our context today, what stories would he tell?” This is the question J.R. Briggs posed on Twitter. He followed it up with 11 surprising parables. Here’s my own tweeted contribution:

@jr_briggs The kingdom of God is like a young Tunisian man who sets himself on fire, igniting the Middle East in a way no superpower could.

February 1, 2011 4:51 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@jonmreid

Jon Reid

But things didn’t stop there, and this parable came back to haunt me. The kingdom of God is like… Occupy Wall Street?

From Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street

What if the Occupy movement is the hand of God at work?

I tweeted that 10 months ago. Who could have foreseen that the Arab Spring would continue to shake nations and topple rulers? Or that it would inspire other protests in the United States and across Europe to “speak truth to power”?

What if the Arab Spring is the hand of God at work? …So far, you might not have trouble accepting that. After all, these are corrupt, oppressive governments. People crying out for freedom sounds like God.

But let me stretch you further. What if the Occupy movement is the hand of God at work?

Prophecies of a youth movement

Back up. In modern prophetic circles, there have been prophecies for some time about God raising up a new generation. There were words about “a great shaking” and “going beyond church walls.”

Two of my friends from the Soliton Sessions discussed this on Facebook, and drew a connection to Occupy Wall Street that stunned me. Heather started it.

We’ve all been told a huge youth movement was coming. What, did we expect it would be all sanitized and churchified? God is moving in this generation, and religious hearts will fail to see His handiwork in the midst of it all.

Whoa. Then Mike Morrell jumped in and commented,

Mega-like.

And I think, y’all, that Heather might be saying that #OccupyEverywhere is the big, messy youth movement. You might not like its politics but there’s no denying that 1.) It’s here/everywhere 2.) It’s about a rebellion from materialism to transcendent values being made concrete and 3.) There’s an undeniably spiritual hunger at the root of it all – one in which many followers of Jesus are rising to meet, but which many, many others are simply standing in judgement over.

Like Heather, I grew up in a milieu where charismatic & ‘prophetic’ ministries prophesied that the ‘Joshua Generation’ would raise up into some kind of ‘youth revival’ – the bravest among these prophets even suggested that it would be ‘unreligious’ and take place outside the four walls of a building.

Still. I’ll be amazingly impressed if any of the prophets who have prophesied this are seeing the signs that many others are seeing in OWS.

Again, the prophecies were about a youth-led movement that would go beyond church walls to shake the nations. Are you connecting the dots yet? This is huge.

Could it be God?

One objection people might have is that the Occupy movement is messy. “God is a God of order.” But folks who say this haven’t experienced renewal/revival, where the Holy Spirit worked on and through a large number of people over a period of time. I have, and trust me: it’s messy.

Not convinced? Brian McLaren wrote an article entitled OWS and the Holy Spirit: “There is a spiritual dimension to the Occupy movement that too few people understand. A first-hand report from Occupy D.C.”

Still not convinced? Martin Luff blogs at The Deliberate Disciple, where he wrote Occupy Wall St. – The Revolution Is Love. He shared this powerful video, along with his own thoughts:

What do you think? This wouldn’t be the first time God has chosen to go outside of religious authority structures, even in my lifetime. Is God behind Occupy Wall Street? How should we respond? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Follow me on Twitter to catch these ideas in their early stages before they become full-blown blog posts.

Update: I created a “word cloud” from this post. It looks like computer-generated prophetic poetry!

Photo by duncan (license)

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If Jesus communicated kingdom stories / parables in our context today, what stories would he tell?

If Jesus communicated kingdom stories/parables in our context today, what stories would he tell? #compellingquestionoftheday

January 26, 2011 7:03 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@jr_briggs

jr_briggs

This was the question J.R. Briggs posed on Twitter. I would have shared it right away, but this was 11 months ago, while this blog was in remission.

But I loved the question so much, I saved it for future posting, along with J.R.’s own 11 examples. And now, the time has come!

1. The kingdom of God is like a flash mob in the food court of a shopping mall…

2. The kingdom of God is like a kid’s time-release capsule. Put it in hot water and it slowly becomes a dinosaur.

3. The kingdom of God is like a YouTube video made by a student in his dorm room. In 4 days it receives 11 million hits.

4. The kingdom is God is like a woman who bought 2 rabbits. The rabbits bred and within 3 years there were 30,000 of them.

5. The kingdom of God is like a 3D hologram poster. One man stares and immediately sees the image — another man stares all day and sees nothin’.

6. The kingdom of God is like the al Qaeda network setting out to plan a mission for good, not evil.

7. The kingdom of God is like Inception: a complex idea broken down to its simplest form in order to work. Is the top still spinning?

8. The kingdom of God is like a bored eight-year-old girl who sets up a lemonade stand in front of her house on a hot day. In 3 hours she makes $7,000.

9. The kingdom of God is like an immigrant wanting to buy land. The land has crude oil underground. Sells everything. Buys it. Makes billions.

10. The kingdom of God is like a man in a canoe in Florida. The lake seems calm, but an alligator watches motionless nearby.

11. (Okay. One more.) The kingdom of God is like… Double Rainbow Guy

Well, maybe you’ve heard of that last one…

What do you think of these? And what parables would you add? The kingdom of God is like…

Update: See my own parable, and the thoughts it spurred: Is God Behind Occupy Wall Street (and We’re Missing It)?

Photo by Wall in Palestine (license)

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