Communion 2…

by The RevNo Comments
My friend Tim challenged me to go deeper with this. So, I have been thinking about it for the last few days and meditating some more about why Communion is so significant right now in our time and place.I keep going back to mystery and transcendence. So much of our world today is “real” there is no imagination. There is no mystery. Our movies leave nothing to the imagination when it comes to sex, violence, or anything…really. Neither do sports. I was struck by this when I heard a caller on the local sports station talk about his experience as a boy going to his first Tiger game. He said that when he would watch a game on TV it was black and white. He had to imagine the grass being green, the colors of the uniforms, and the color of the stadium. He said that when he walked through the tunnel to enter his seats for the first time...
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Communion…I think it’s a big deal…

by The RevNo Comments
As I begin to write this I am feeling a bit like I am walking on sacred ground. In the Protestant tradition we only have two sacraments: communion and baptism. I have been thinking a great deal about the role of both. As I mentioned before communion is on the top of my mind because I just finished reading a book about it by Robert Letham. It was fantastic!First, what I am not going to do. I am not going to argue for the merits of the Reformed version (read Calvin’s) of communion. I will leave that to the places where it has been dealt with in full. If you want to know the differences between Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed understandings check out Letham’s text or the Westminster Confession of Faith.So, what’s the big deal? We take communion once a month in our church and it’s a nice ceremony with saltine crumbs and a thimble of grape juice. This is...
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Phase two…

by The RevNo Comments
So, I have been writing a bit about the big picture of what missional is and exploring some things here and asking questions. Most of these questions I don’t have answers for, it’s a bit frustrating for a guy who usually has answers for EVERYTHING!It’s hard to be in a place where you feel like everything is up for grabs. Where you are evaluating so much of what you believe and what you think. It’s good though because I am realizing how little I know and how little really matters. But, the things that do matter are critical.In light of all this, I want to take a bit of a detour. I have been thinking a bit about two issues that seem to me as very important for our time.Communion. Baptism. It seems that both of these issues are ones that either have been forgotten about (communion) or are taken for granted (baptism). Over the next couple of weeks or so I...
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Who leads this whole thing?

by The RevNo Comments
The one questiont that I have been wrestling with in conversation with a friend and as a result of reading The Forgotten Ways is the issue of authority. What does it mean? Who is in authority? Is there leadership anymore? What does it all look like in reality, right here, right now? Are we all to do what is right by our own personal hermeneutic? Are we simply to do what feels good? Is it “just Jesus and me”? What is the role of the community of God’s people? What are the individual roles within that body? Are some called to lead? Are some called to follow? What do we do with the Bible? What do we do with our heritage of the visible church?The answers are not easy in coming. But the list of questions continues to grow. Check out our conversation here....
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Stepping out…

by The RevNo Comments
So, I have begun thinking about “programming” in the church. It’s something that I have been wrestling with for a while and my thoughts are beginning to clarify a bit more. I studied some pretty large chunks of Acts this winter and spring. Something that really hit me was how “out there” the first and second generation Christians were (Paul is a second generation, let that one sink in for a moment).They met together and ate food. They worshiped out in the open at the Temple. There was no real distinction in their mind of anything sacred or secular. There certainly did not appear to be any kind of “holy huddle” going on in the early church. There was rhythm to their life.They broke bread, they served, they remembered the Lord, and they sat under the teaching of the leaders. They did all this in a culture that was just as pluralistic as ours. They did this in a culture...
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Applying the paradigm…maybe?

by The RevNo Comments
Here is something I put together about applying the missional concept to the role of “Youth Pastor”. What do you think?IntroductionThere has been a fundamental change in the way the world works over the last twenty-five years. The shift has been called “post-modernism” or “hyper-modernity” or “post-Christian” or “post-Christendom”. Regardless of what one calls the paradigm change, the change has indeed happened. The way that most people see and understand the world is very different than it was not very long ago. You could say, “this ain’t your mama’s world anymore”. The kind of shift that has happened is as thoroughgoing as the shift that took place in the 1960’s, maybe even more so.The environment that the children of the emerging generations are growing up with is a unique one that the church, their parents, and their educators have not ever experienced. The rampant individualism, the emphasis on a radical consumerism, and the overdevelopment of the institutional church are leaving...
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