January/February 2011 Recorder

Posted by: Lil Goertzen
Church:
Date: February 20th, 2011

January-February 2011 Recorder

Contact information for Belize

Posted by: Go Mission
Church:
Date: February 18th, 2011

For those who are travelling to Belize for Gathering 2011 and would like to have a contact number where people can reach you in the case of an emergency, please use the Blue Creek EMMC phone number 011-501-323-0052.  They can leave a message and it will get posted on a message board.
Another way to send a message would be to email [email protected] which will be checked periodically throughout the weekend.

ministry – or mission?

Posted by: len hjalmarson
Church: Aylmer, Ontario Aylmer
Date: February 17th, 2011

In the footnotes of The Shaping of Things to Come Mike and Alan made this statement:

“If you focus on ministry you won’t have time to do mission. If you focus on mission, you’ll be forced to do ministry.”

Ouch. Do we have to choose? What these brothers are talking about is the inward vs outward focus, ecclesial life becomes its own world in a box, with the energy and time that are required to manage and administrate programs and people.

There probably is no happy tension between these two worlds, and the transition always demands more of us than merely staying the same. It takes extra energy to make the shift. But we are encouraging our staff here to live in both worlds, and even mix them.

Practically speaking, that means that some of the old boundaries become blurred. My day is no longer neatly compartmentalized into private time or work time. God loves to live in the interruptions – the cracks and crevices of the day. If I respond to a tweet during the day, have I imported my personal life into my work — or is it so easy to define those boundaries anymore? If I make a blog post during work hours – as I am doing here – have I crossed a line, or I am merely recognizing that the world has changed, and living in this new world requires not only different skills but a different imagination?

Yes– a lot of this hits at an issue Reg McNeal raised in these words: how do we measure success? It’s time to change the scorecard. What value do I as a leader attach to networking in the larger space? Connecting outside the walls with other groups and organizations? If I am going to talk about living on mission, how do I model it, and not model merely serving Christians and programs? What percentage of my time is given to serving in the wider community? How many unbelievers do I personally know? How do I as a pastor live on mission?

These are critical issues for more reasons than modeling. Jesus loved to spend his time with people on the margins, especially those who wouldn’t fit well in our churches. I want to be connected with and available to those who do not yet know Jesus as much as to those who do. That requires a different level of intentionality — and it requires that I somehow make space for it to happen.

Inevitably, these kinds of pursuits don’t look as “holy.” Some of our congregation think this is dangerous ground. They are right. Any time we step out of the boat we are walking in faith. The problem is, Paul didn’t seem to worry much about danger, even when the Holy Spirit warned him of what was ahead. And Jesus took most of his flack for being “a friend of sinners.”

I’d like that on a business card, or maybe on my tombstone. “A friend of sinners.”