PGF Outbox

Material Offerings, Eucharist, and Our Vision of the Future Life

The future life envisioned by Holy Scripture involves a restored physical universe, a “renewal of all things” — a New Heavens and New Earth (e.g. Rev. 21).  It’s true, however, that if we were to take a poll of western Christians about their views on what the future life will be like, we’d likely get a very different prevailing view: something like a disembodied existence, a “heaven” that is an immaterial existence. Critics of that prevailing western view have often laid the blame on the influence of a Platonic dualism (where immaterial “spirit” and material “flesh” are juxtaposed as higher and lower modes of existence). This criticism is mostly right.

ONE PASTOR COMMENDS 'RETREATING' IN ORDER TO IMAGINE...

Jim Street pastors North River Community Church, in Lawrenceville, Georgia.  The congregation represents some fifty households.  After watching Michael Frost on YouTube, Street decided to do something unusual: he took a one-day retreat originally slated for the church’s leadership and opened it up for the whole congregation.  Not insignificantly, nearly half of the congregation took part in a day organized entirely around Frost’s two presentations at the 2007 PGF conference. 

“The Missional Imagination,” (as the retreat was called) was not an effort to “come to any conclusions or create a five-point strategy,” as Street recalls.  “Rather it was to open up our minds to other ways of seeing God, ourselves and our neighbor that are more faithful to the intentions and purposes of God.” Here Street shares what he learned from the experience…

Missional, communally AND individually

One of the issues that I have struggled with as we at Heritage try to become more missional is how to make sure that missional does not become only about what we do together in community.  In other words, how do we begin to discover that being a sent people is also very much about what each of us do Monday through Saturday at work, in our neighborhoods, and with our friends.

We started our journey by focusing on how we as a body could become more missional. 

I think this was a great place to begin because we were able to discern the Spirit in community rather than as individuals.  Also, when we were doing something missional as a community (like holding a “festival” for the apartment complex next door) it was much less risky than if we were trying to do these things as individuals.  Yet, as we continued in this journey I began to feel as if there had not been enough focus on the way the Spirit is going before us at all times and in all places. 

"A Church without a church"

“We help people discover a God who loves us more than we can possibly imagine.  By stepping into God’s mission of restoration and reconciliation, we can discover the life that is worth living for and dying for.”  That is how missional visionary Jonathan Brink describes the work of the non-profit ministry that he directs.  “Thrive Ministries,” as it is called, seeks to explore what it means to follow Jesus in His mission of restoration and reconciliation.  Here Brink pokes holes in traditional assumptions of “church” as “place” and wrestles with the concept of what it means to be truly “a Church without a church.”  (You can find the full-length version of the article at his blog, "Missio Dei," at http://jonathanbrink.com.)

ST. ANDREWS PRES REACHES OUT TO LATINO IMMIGRANTS

“My wife calls us the ‘outlet for misfit toys.’”  That is how Spike Coleman, pastor for the past ten years of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, in Charleston, South Carolina, begins the story of his congregation’s journey towards missional transformation...