Are you…Radical?

by The RevNo Comments
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=FFFFFF&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=danielmroseco-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&asins=1596449381I just finished reading David Platt’s Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From The American Dream. It’s a good read and really challenging. David successfully puts the ideas and concepts of books like Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat’s Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire into terms that the average 40+ person can understand. His metaphors are great. His passion is obvious. I think for the most part his exegesis is solid too. Nothing really stood out as problematic. I really appreciated the clarion call throughout the text to abandon all and follow Jesus. For this alone the book was worth the price of admission. The place where I think the book really wins is the emphasis on discipleship. I am reminded again that Robert Coleman nearly 50 years ago really did know what he was talking about with The Master Plan of Evangelism . I hope that we who have read this book will take the Biblical command to multiply our lives through discipleship seriously. It is...
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Why Dad?

by The RevNo Comments
On our way home from school I decided to break the news to Ethan. He had only one question, “Why Dad?”Listening to all the talk about Miguel Cabrera and thinking about my own family’s history with alcohol and drug abuse, I am realizing that all of us are asking the same question. We feel a lot like this:[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQveng3Wxz8?rel=0]You know what though? We don’t want to hear the answer. Why would a man who has a great wife sleep around? Why would a person with a family who loved him turn to drink? Why would a kid with everything in front of her slice up her arms? Why does a kid with a great future waste it away sitting on a couch getting high?We are constantly left with the question, “Why Dad?”The answer, while simple, is profound. The answer, while simple, sounds weak coming off the tongue. The answer, while simple, is not what we want to admit to. The answer...
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Dear Miguel

by The RevNo Comments
Dear Miguel,I don’t know you. I have not ever met you. I have watched you play baseball every summer since your arrival in Detroit a few years ago. You may be the best baseball player I have ever seen. Every night before I go to bed I see your life sized poster hanging on Ethan’s, my nine year old son, bedroom door. You are his favorite player. He’s never met you either. Ethan and I cheer for you. We feel like we know you because you are in our home nearly every night from April through September (hopefully October too). Ethan wants to be a baseball player when he grows up and you are one of his heroes.Today as I drove into work I heard on the radio about your DUI. My heart broke and my eyes filled with tears. I thought this is stupid, I don’t even know him. My heart is broken because I know that Ethan when he watches Sportscenter...
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Your GPS is Broken

by The RevNo Comments
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=FFFFFF&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=danielmroseco-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&asins=0470486724Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition is one of those books that jumped out at me as one that I needed to read. First, it was penned by Alan J. Roxburgh who has been a key player in the missional movement for a very long time. Second, the title alone highlights the fact that Roxburgh is not just talking recipes but is seeking to dive deeper into the heart of what is happening in the church today.The text is broken out into two parts. The first is entitled, “When Maps No Longer Work”. In this first part Roxburgh makes a cogent argument that the world is not changing but has changed. The shift has occurred and our culture has moved from the “enlightenment/modern” understanding of the world to the “post-modern”. This means that our entire way of understanding the cultural terrain is broken. Roxburgh uses maps as his key metaphor. He argues that each of us have internal...
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Create. Creation. Creative.

by The RevNo Comments
Creation: the act of producing or causing to exist; the act of creating; engendering. We are all little creators. We are designed to create. Some of us may do this ways we would call “creative”; poets, artists, authors, or painters. Regardless of how creative you feel, you as a person created in the image of God, are to create. This is what it means when the Scriptures talk about the “subduing” and having “dominion” over the creation. We are to leave the world better than when we found it. We are to build, shape, mold, and design. This is what it means to be human. This is the distinctive difference between us and the animal kingdom (and opposable thumbs). To be human is to create. To be Christian should mean to create at the highest level. Sadly the creatives among us are largely ignored or cast out. A friend says that we plucked out the eye of the church (although we like musicians because...
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Culture War — The Introduction

by The RevNo Comments
The Holy Spirit lives in those of us who have been reconciled by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Those of us who are invited into and adopted as sons and daughters of the living God have received our new but old identity as ambassadors.He gives us all we need to be who we are. This is it what it means to human.What does this ambassadorship look like?We create culture. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”So God created man in his own image,in the image of God he created him;male and female he created them.And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and...
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The New is the Old

by The RevNo Comments
Where have we been in this quest for understanding the cultural engagement by Christians? Well first we saw that humanity is created in the image of God, second we recognized our epic fail, then we saw how the Law was given to keep on the straight and narrow, and in the previous post we looked at King Jesus.The question we must now face is what does this mean for the Christian? If we indeed have been transferred from death to life by King Jesus through his bloody revolution on a Cross, what does this new life look like?2 Corinthians 5 gives us the answer, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20 ESV).”In the new life we are now ambassadors for Christ. Wait, isn’t that what we were called back in the first post: “God gives humanity a very specific responsibility and...
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Easter, It’s More Than a Bunny

by The RevNo Comments
As we continue to think about what it means to be culturally engaged Christians we must take a look at the turning point. Where have we been so far? First, we are created in God’s image. Second, we failed and failed big. Third, the Law was given as an overseer to show us our need for the Son. Now, we come to this place, the turning point. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to...
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Overlords, Overseers, and a Glimmer

by The RevNo Comments
Last week I wrote that we have experienced an epic fail regarding our roles as ambassadors for the Creator to the creation. We rebelled and separated ourselves. We lost our way and began a corrupting process that led to shame and guilt (the first sin was Adam’s silence followed quickly by fratricide, that’s one heck of a spiral).The story though is just beginning. Thankfully we are not the heroes or the centerpieces of this story. A good story needs a hero who desires something and overcomes conflict to get it.The story that I am talking about has a hero, God. He wants something, relationship with people. So, what is he doing to get it? That’s the question I want look at.It started in Genesis 3: And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. (Genesis 3:21 ESV) If you look a few verses earlier you see that Adam and Eve were experiencing shame from being...
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Epic Fail

by The RevNo Comments
In my previous post we looked at our identity as image bearers of the Creator King. We saw that humanity is called to follow its Creator in creation as representatives and ambassadors.But, something is not right.The original ambassadors for the King failed. They failed and as a result they sent all future generations into despair and exile. The man, Adam our representative head, was silent as his wife was deceived and drawn into sin.From this moment on humanity was in a state of brokenness. We were lost and dead. The consequences extended to how humanity related to one another and to the creation. We no longer functioned as the King’s ambassadors but as traitors to the throne.We corrupted it all.We broke everything.Separation was natural.As a result we went to war to with our natural calling as human beings. We set aside our freedom for law. Enslaved by a self-centeredness that is tangible to every aspect of life.We lost our way....
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