This is a provocative and important snippet from N.T. Wright on whether or not Hell exists. What do you think? (HT: Out of Ur)

Sunday night we wrapped up our series of discussions on community formation with an overview of mission. This represents the outer layer in our proposed rhythm of life: Discipleship > Community > Mission. The subject of “mission” and being “missional” is a hot topic in Church circles these days, so it’s important that we capture a way to think about what this means for our lives together.

Mission Belongs to God
Taking John 5:1-30 as our focus, I proposed that mission is the missio dei, or the “mission of God,” which is His act of entering into the world and doing His work of redemption and restoration. Fundamentally, then, mission belongs to God – not the Church. He initiates it and sustains it. We don’t bring God to people, God is already “at work” in the world (John 5:17) bringing about His redemption and restoration, making the world right again.

To put it another way, the church doesn’t have a mission, the mission of God has a church.

I recently read an article in Patrol Magazine that I think fits rather nicely with our discussions about community. Stephen Simpson is a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary and asks the question, “Why is church so dull?” and I don’t think his answers are what you would expect. Here’s an excerpt:

As much as postmodern evangelicals bandy about the word “community,” our gatherings have changed very little. Stylistic alterations might add some hipster flair, but the focal point of the liturgical week remains theater. A dozen or so people perform for a few hundred that sit, stand, kneel, pray, and sing on command. We squeeze real community into the gaps, between events with a hierarchical structure. Not only is this a long way from Biblical models of the early Christian church, it’s a breeding ground for messy group dynamics. And, again, it’s boring.

The issues he raises are exactly what we’re wrestling with. I’m not saying you should agree with everything he says, but please take some time to read the whole article by clicking here, then come back and share your thoughts.

Last night we had a great discussion about what it means to be a community of faith and what some of our challenges might be. This week I’d like to use this website as a way to anchor that ongoing discussion.

This will be the only major post this week. I’ll add a few brief quotes and links over the next few days that hopefully with stir the pot a bit, but for the most part this is the critical discussion we need to have in depth.

Last night I suggested that community life together is where discipleship actually occurs most powerfully. I would add that it’s only in our community relationships with one another that we encounter biblical “salvation.” If you want to dig in a little right now, here are some key biblical narratives for gaining a vision of how the people of God are to live out salvation concretely in community:

Today’s post come from my friend Roy Inzunza. He brings a wealth of experience as a practitioner of spiritual formation exercises, so I’ve asked him to chime in on our conversation.

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“One can begin one’s [spiritual] quest by attending to the desires of the heart, both personal and communal.  The Spirit is revealed in our genuine hopes for ourselves and for the world.”

When we talk about spiritual formation – the process of becoming transformed into the  image of Christ – we must begin by talking about desire. It is in desire that our true  longings reside. And boy, do we have desires! 

So far I’ve said that everything we do is spiritual, therefore everything we do is worship. When it comes to discipleship, or “spiritual formation,” that means every realm of life is open to spirituality – and that spiritual training should involve every realm of life.

But some will object that doing so will lead to religious legalism.

Nobody wants to be in a legalistic church, where people judging themselves and others according to petty and meaningless external behaviors. This is already the case! According to studies of Christian character the Western Church by-and-large already produces an insincere form of religious legalism - it just happens to be a shallow form. But shallow religiosity is still religiosity. Setting a low bar of expectations has not saved us from the error of the Judaizers, it has only created a modern, secularized form of it. We’ve pressed the lessons of Luther and Calvin to the point of complete absurdity, making salvation nothing more than a matter of pure motives and approved doctrines. Now, instead of suffering under the blight of a works-based righteousness, we suffer under the blight of an information-based unrighteousness.

Yesterday I said everything we do is spiritual, which is why Paul says that true Christian “worship” is not a visit to the temple or time spent in prayer, singing to God, or reading scripture, but rather the sacrifice of one’s whole life to God:

Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship” (Rom 12:1).

Worship is not merely the religious acts we commit at religious times. Worship is the natural act of devoting ourselves to something in which we find value or worth (worth-ship). Remember, whatever we do with our bodies is always the result of our spirit. Always. We always act in accordance with the deep values and beliefs that direct our decision-making. We simply can’t help it. We may be motivated by faith or fear, we may even have competing beliefs that cause bizarre, erratic, or contradictory behavior, but our spirit – however fragmented and compartmentalized – dictates our actions nonetheless.

In the rhythm of life we’ve proposed for Ikon Community, “spiritual formation” (or discipleship) stands at the very heart of the life of faith. Last night we talked about some ideas for seeing discipleship differently. This week I’ll post a series of articles meant to stimulate our thinking on this topic.

The trouble with talking about spiritual formation is that spirit is invisible. How do we know if we are becoming spiritually strong or good? How do we know who requires more or less spiritual training? In the church we talk about “spirit,” but don’t explore what exactly it is.

So, what exactly is our spirit? What exactly are we trying to form when we seek to becomes disciples?

Another thing we discussed Sunday night was how we could look to Christ as the example of how we might live our our faith as a community. I other words, how would we see church differently if we viewed Jesus Christ as the prototype of the Church?

Theologian Chris Wright says Jesus is the “hermeneutical coherence” through which all disciples must read the texts that “lead up to” and “on from” Christ. In our case, this means developing a prophetic imagination that is able to grab hold of Christ’s example to be a foundation for our own gathered lives as missional pilgrims in 21st century America.

Not surprisingly, examples of Christ acting as a missionary to his own culture are everywhere in the gospel narratives, but I’ve chosen a specific passage to highlight because I believe it reveals so much about Christ’s overall posture toward the people of God, the world, and the gospel itself: John 5:1-30.

This past Sunday, several of us gathered to discuss the vision and formation of Ikon Community. Over the next few weeks I’ll post a variety of notes, ideas, video clips, links to other communities of faith, etc. to give us a central place to foster discussion. Please take some time to chip in your thoughts.

One of the main things we discussed last Sunday night was how in a culture dominated by entertainment and consumerism church tends to slip into a performer/spectator and producer/consumer mode of existence. Being a Christian comes to mean buying into the right beliefs, or wearing the right kind of clothes, or reading the right kind of bible. Going to church means driving to an impressive facility, hearing good sermons, and enjoying good worship. Everything is receptive – just like our culture.

This tends to create passive consumer Christians who become serial critics of sermons, worship bands, and church programs, and are content to accumulate knowledge and religious accessories rather than radically follow Christ by infiltrating our culture with the gospel.

Consequently at Ikon our aim, as Alan Roxbourgh has stated, is to create:

“A place where members learn to function as cross-cultural missionaries rather than be a gathering where people come to receive religious goods and services.”

This is the shift in perspective we are looking for at Ikon Community. Let’s start with a simple question: What about this appeals to you and what doesn’t?