Blueprint of the God life and church

I have come to understand the God life and church much differently than the traditional belief of the American Church. What I read in the scriptures and see in the life of Jesus is something much different. So I have come up with a new blue print for the God life I desire to live, of what the church is and how it functions. This is still a work in progress, I am still trying to come to grips with and understand the God life, Christian life and church. Above is a diagram of a flow chart of a missional God life that is to be the foundation, blue print of my life in Christ. Each layer, phase of the missional flow of the God life links to a web site that I have made explaining, laying out that part of the life, church and what I see God saying it is to be, that Christ lived and modeled for us to reproduce.

Individual expression of Jesus

www.thechristiannextdoor.com

Individual expression of the Church

www.churchnextdoor.us

Collective Expression of the Church and Kingdom life

www.thecrowdedhouse.us

Synergetic[1] expression of the Church and body of Christ

www.fourteentwentysixgathering.thecrowdedhouse.us

I believe our life should be the touch point for others to see and experience the person and life of Jesus, they should know that He was and is because they see Him and the life the bible said He lived manifested in our life, world view, thinking and actions.

That our home should be the touch point for the Kingdom of Heaven, God life for them, you, your wife and children should be first where they see the kingdom life manifested, lived out. And should be where they see the church lived out (where two or more are their I am), their touch point for the person of Christ. Be where they see and touch the Kingdom community life lived out just as Christ lived it out with His disciples. You at work or school or while shopping at Target should be where they encounter the church and Jesus as well, all of these instances should be where they see the life of Jesus on lived out. Our homes should be more known and identified as the church in the neighborhood than the cold stone buildings that have a sign out front call it a church. Our lives and homes should be know as the place to go to experience church, be part of church, not some glamorizes entertainment center that calls it self the church.

Mouseover the image to and click on to see full flow chart, copy and paste in your browser the links from center of page to visit websites.

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[1] Synergetic \Syn`er*get"ic\, adjective. [from Greek expression, from to work together; sy`n with 'e`rgon work.]. Definition: Acting together; enhancing the effect of another force or agent.

Whose responsibility is it to carry out the Great Commission?

The following is a test to see how well you know the scriptures and the essentials of Christianity.

Take out a peace of paper and answer the following question:

In fifty words or less, tell me whose responsibility the Great Commission is?



Actually it’s a trick question, it does not take 50 words to answer the question, not even 40, the answer take only one word.

If you answered anything other than ‘mine.’, sorry you fail. You must repeat the class again, please pick up your textbook the Bible and open to Matthew chapter one and re-read paying close attention to the life and words of Jesus. Then repeat this for each of the books of the NT. Then you may re-take the test.

What did Jesus call us to, our mission or His?

When Jesus said, “Come follow me,” this must have stopped the disciples dead in their tracts, cause their hearts to start of pound a thousand times a minute. This was a bunch of ordinary people with ordinary lives being called by an extraordinary man with an extraordinary life. This was the man who healed people, restoring their dignity and inviting them out of oppression. He touched lepers without harm, turned water into wine and caused the fish to over fill the nets. Caused a little to feed thousands, He healed multitudes. He ate and hung out with the outcast, prostitutes, drunkards and the poorest of the poor. While both shunning and condemning the religious. To follow Him was an daring call, a moment to be part of something grater and against the grain of what was established as goodly, righteous and holy way of life.

Then He invited them to come to the local synagogue on Sunday morning for a couple of hours and Wednesday night for another couple of hours. Forget following him around and watching Him do things. And when they got to there, he sat them down and led them through a couple of songs. Everyone sat in the same direction facing Jesus as they listened to him speak from behind a small upright box. The message was on average an hour long, tightly scripted with an introductory joke to arouse the crowd and was primarily about how to “not sin”. It usually included three points, a story from His personal life, and a summary to wrap it all up. He always finished with a challenge to his disciples to do better and closed with another song. At some point in the process he passed a large basket around expecting them to put a little something in to pay the rent and help build a larger meeting place, and for advertising and marketing plans and hire professionals to plan their programs to attract others and to get people to come and join there tight little group. The reality was that those in setup were tired of unpacking and packing up each time they met in this rented building. A new, obviously larger building just made sense. After all them more we pack in the more we get in the basket. Under this scenario you have to imagine the original call to “Come follow me” seems to lose its impact, doesn’t it?

The problem is that this isn’t in the Bible, it is not the life Jesus lead, the disciples where called to or lead. But yet this is exactly what the church and Christendom has practiced over the last 1,700 years, the blue print for every traditional church in America for the last 300 years. And yet Jesus never did it this way, nor did the church in the first three centuries. He went out to the people and restored them. He sought out reconciliation and healing. He engaged His Father’s mission, it was His way of life. Can you imagine watching Jesus heal someone? But in doing so He showed the disciples the way to life, to function in everyday life. He modeled a leadership that empowered them to do it themselves. It was an apprentice model of leadership that taught them how to engage the mission themselves. Nor did Jesus did not say I will assemble a bunch of people together so they can hangout, have free coffee and donuts and be entertained great performers, videos and skits and here some motivation feel good about yourself preaching.

But rather He said I am sending you.

He did not say service to Him was changing diapers, hading out programs or parking cars, He said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Paul said, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” Paul got it, he understood what Jesus meant when He said follow me, it meant imitate my life, every detail of it, even on to death for the good of others.

We must ask ourselves,

Do I know My Father’s mission?

Jesus understood that God had always been on a mission of restoring all of His creation. He said to Mary when she was looking for Him “Do you not know that I must be about My Father's business? Can you say the same thing?

Is my life structured in a way to accomplish this mission?

Ninety percent of what we think when we say “church” does not exist in Jesus’ blue print. He took ordinary people created a people who changed the world. A people who where the church, not a building that was the church, not an organization with lots of programs made to entertain a bunch of pew warmers and coffee drinkers. But a people who lived exactly as He did and did every thing and even can do grater things than He did, people whose lives looked just like His. Does you life look just like His, are you doing every thing He did, and greater as He promised that His followers would do. "Most assuredly I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” John 14:12

His very invitation invites us into a larger mission of restoration, of true relationship with God, the building of the Kingdom of God on earth, not the building of buildings.

Purpose driven life

When we do not live on mission, it produces a very marginalized Christianity, a very narrow understanding of Christianity and what it is, when we are not living with a bigger purpose of what a Global God is doing in the whole world. Then your Christianity is going to be about you and you alone, about making you happy, meeting your needs, its about God serving you because what else are you left with? And this can been seen in our traditional church services our contemporary worships services, they are focused soly on the individual and that churches needs only.

If we are not living with the bigger pitcher of what God is doing in the earth, then it is just going to boil down to what God is doing in my life. Our lives are to complex to ask God to give me a “Purpose Driving life” or a “Your Best Life Now”, I do not want God to step down into my existence and give me a individual purpose, I want Him to lift my eyes up to Him and say this is what I am doing now, this is My purpose on earth today and you can be involved in it, be a part of it. That gets me excited, not wow God blessed my little enterprise, my self-purpose, self-plans. Are we so really small minded to think that the God who created all that is, who was and is to be, who decides who take one more breath of not. Is the one I call to be my assistant in life, to do my biding, to enable my plans, to follow my lead or even depend on me to come up with the right plan for His work on earth.

The eternal God of the universe, who is and always will be is actual dong something, working, on mission from day one on the earth, He just not setting there on the side lines waiting on someone to do something to come up with a plan to save the world, reach the lost. He has a plan from before creation and His is actively working in out on earth. And not only is He doing something, He has chosen not to have the angles carry it out His work, and could do so a 1000 times better. But has chosen week and broken vessel who are the most need of Him and redemption to be His emissaries to go out and be His hands and feet to ministry to other who need Him the most. We are a desperate broken messed up people going to other broken messed up people and say we need God, we cannot save ourselves, lets go to God together. That is a bigger and greater mission than I could ever come up with myself anything as great and anything less is a waste of life, for self-glory not God’s glory.

How do we be missional?

How do we be missional? Here is a collaborated list of thoughts on how to be missional.

1. Think Missio Dei. God is a missionary God. As God the Father sent Jesus, Jesus sent us, and empowered us by the Spirit. Isaiah 61:1-2 is God’s manifesto; it is what Jesus gives as his first sermon in his hometown. He opens the Isaiah scroll and read what is to be his manifesto also, and it is mine also, Isaiah 61:1-2 is the goal if missio Dei. As God sent His Son with His manifesto, mission, so Jesus sends His people, His bride the church with the same manifesto, mission.
2. Think biblically. Be a student of the word of God, Jesus was. Be someone who studies them day and night, who thinks, eats and breathes the scriptures.
3. Be a Missionalest. If you aren’t, what’s the purpose of you life? Everything in your life should be directed toward participation in God’s mission, accomplishing God’s mission in the world, the restoring, renewal, redemption and reconciliation of all creation. (i.e. “Missio Dei is central in all that we say and do in life.”)
4. Be a Gospelists. The Gospel must be the very “heartbeat” in the soul of every believer, his worldview it molded by the Gospel, what he thinks about and meditates on is filtered through the Gospel. So then being gospel-centered means the gospel is functional central to your life, at the core of your being, what defines you. (i.e. “The gospel is central in all that we say and do in life.”)
5. Have a functional gospel-centered identity. Being gospel-centered means the gospel is functional central to your life, at the core of your being, what defines you. It is at the core of your identity, who you are.
6. Think contextually. If it was good enough for the apostle Paul, it’s good enough for me (1 Cor. 9:19-23). One-size never fits all. The Gospel never changes, but how we communicate it does.
7. Think culturally, act biblically. We live, breathe, and swim in culture. What's more, it's impossible to be a Jesus-follower in a non-cultural context. If we are serious about being missional, we need to understand the culture and subcultures surrounding us.
8. Practice incarnational principles. Incarnational living brings the living embodiment of the gospel to our neighbors, manifesting the reign of Jesus to our neighbors, and therefore liberates their suffering. We should consider how we can live in a way that makes the gospel most accessible to the people around us, that is see it at work in your life and Jesus tangible to them be cause you are the living image of Him.
9. Practice love. As in love God with all that you are, and love your neighbor with the same kind of love you show yourself.
10. Practice caring for those in need. Give loaves of bread and fish to those without, physically touch today’s lepers, and if you have more than one of something someone needs, give it to them.
11. Practice compassion. Bringing the same love that Jesus would bring to the broken and the lost.
12. Practice mercy. Bringing the same love that Jesus would bring to the broken and the lost.
13. Practice grace and forgiveness. Most people will need to see the gospel in action before they can adopt and practice it. Give grace, give forgiveness. Even if you think it will kill you.
14. It is about justice. Standing alongside the neglected, the falsely accused, and the abused.
15. Actively engage in restoration. In God’s mission of restoration, actively working to restore al of creation to wholeness. Not to condemn others who are in a fallen state, but on the mission or restoring them to wholeness and a right relationship with God.
16. Live in and build authentic community. Jesus was about intentional community, communities engaged in the restoration of each other and the world.
17. Practicing missional discipleship. Actively teaching one on one others to duplicate the life of Christ by imitating your example of dong it, by your life being about restoring, renewal, redemption and the reconciliation of all creation lived out right before them to see how it is done.
18. Practice the Great Commission. Share your faith in word and deed. Engage in doable evangelism. Don't discriminate. Instead, share the gospel with everyone regardless of ethnicity, religion, economic or social status.

I intend to make these my non-negotiable way of living a missional lifestyle.

Child like

I brought a friend of mine to the IHOP (International House of Prayer) service this past Sunday for his first visit and as we where leaving his 2 year old daughter in her class there was another 2 to 3 year old boy sitting on the floor crying his heart out. He was inconsolably, no one could get him to stop crying, he wanted his parents, he was unable to function without them near by him. He refused to be consoled, to participate with the other children, to even play, to be function in life until he was back in the presents of his parents.

When we returned to the sanctuary I though about that little boy and it came to me that perhaps that is part of what Jesus meant when He said we must become like little children to enter the Kingdom of God. That just like that little boy we to are inconsolable, unable, and unwilling to function when we are not in the presents of God. That if any time during the day we brake off communion with God, move out of His presents. Allow anything to come between us and God that we to become so upset that we like that little boy must fall to our knees and cry until we are back in His presents. That we to refuse to be comforted by any other thing in this world or any other person, that only our Fathers presents will satisfy us. Only when we are back in His present will we return to participating in life, because we dare not do so without Him, without being in His loving presents, with out His protecting presents with us. Only them do we feel safe to be in this world.

Maybe that is why Jesus said only children really understand how to enter the Kingdom of God, how to be a child of God. Can you function in life with out the presents of God, in constant communing with Him? Do you even aware if you are in His presents or not? Are you unwilling to go even 5 minutes in your day with out His presents, in communion with Him? Or do other things satisfy you so much that you don’t even notice if you are in Him or not, or that you don’t even need Him really to function in your daily life? These are question I well ask myself, I seek to become like that little boy, that I must be in the presents of my heavenly Father to live my daily life or I too will stop everything and cry out for Him and will not go on until I am back in communion with Him, walking in His very presents.

What does you life say Christianity is?

People look at the lives of Christians and say, “So that is what it means to be a Christian.”

So what is your life saying to them what it means to be a Christian?

People look and say “So that is what Christianity is all bout.”

So how does your life define the meaning and purpose of Christianity as being?

People look at your life and say “So that is who Jesus was and what His life was all about.”

So who does you life say Jesus is and what His life was bout?

Isyour life about God’s mission on earth, liberating others from Sin, Gospel Proclamation, about the redemption of the world? Is it about compassion and mercy? Is it about Liberating others from Suffering, Gospel Incarnations therefore you are passionate about the poor, naked, orphan, widow, the hungry and the oppressed? You spend you time, money and life for these things.

Or is it about materialism, worldly things, your career, and bigger house, getting ahead in the corporate world. About self, me, mine and more for me. Does being Christina just mean you don’t cuss, dance, drink, smoke see movies and sleep around and go to “church” get entertained for an hour and put your Christian county club dues in the offering basket. That you don’t get around sinners, prostitutes, drug users, people with AIDS or drunkards. After all Jesus never did anything like that, God wants nothing to do with those kind of people right. Your prayer is all about your and what you want for your self to live a comfortable, rich and happy life. Church is there to server you and take care of any perceived needs you have.

Is that what you life is tell people that Jesus was about, that is why He came and died. That your life models God’s mission here on earth, what the Gospel is all bout? After all Christians are told to imitate the life of Christ, Christian means, to be Christ like, therefore you life tells everyone looking at you what Jesus lived like, His purpose, what His death was for, what things God is concerned about, His mission, and what it means to become a Christian, what Christians live for and their mission in life. So what is it saying?