Missionary Journey Workshop

Description

This workshop is to help you discover where you are in your missionary journey and what will help you progress. The Friends Network exists to serve and resource House Church leaders and emerging leaders in their various stages of growth and development.

Lordship and Liminality

Lordship of Jesus

We’re in a struggle for lordship - to submit hearts, lives, pursuits, desires to the ways of Jesus over our own ways.

Encountering Scripture, Jesus.

Wake up to the fact there are large areas of status quo faith in their lives. Jesus and…

Jesus and Church

Jesus and bible study

Jesus and success

Jesus and safety, peace...

I want Jesus but also want these other things.

A new way of listening

You have one job: listen to his voice.

Alertness to his voice where he says, I want everything.

Can’t respond to it if there isn’t a cleaning out of the ears, yearning to search and listen to him.

He disagrees with you at some level. Scripture is reading you and your life and we have to wrestle with that dissonance.

My way must become your way. Have you asked Jesus what he wants you to do with __________.

Investigate our hearts and admit.

God is going to put his finger on something right now. Lord, put your finger on something that puts us in your ways.

Investigate self-confirmation bias. I already know, am in alignment. I really self-deceive. I’m missing this somehow because I’m biased toward myself.

What have you heard Jesus say to you - what is he asking of you and how should you respond? Let’s give him room for this.

Can’t get to calling if you’re not submitted to Jesus.

Liminality

There’s a new pain we encounter on the other side of knowing Christ.

Philippians 3:8–11 ESV

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Paul's passion was to know Christ more fully - not as a theological topic to be discussed but as a person to be enjoyed. He desired to experience in practice what he knew theoretically - that when Christ died he died and when Christ was resurrected, he, too, was resurrected. Christ's suffering for sin put to death his own sin.

Passion shift - renounce selfish desires and say yes to Christ who called him to conform himself to his death by daily taking up his cross in self-sacrificing service to others.

Paul is saying, I want to be in liminality.

Place of discomfort, pain, undoing. I see something in the world that is not of God’s kingdom, that is painful and destructive to people God loves and it is undoing me. Christ suffered for it and I want to know that suffering.

Suffering allows a depth of fellowship with Jesus we can’t experience otherwise (calvary, Paul). Not a happy place. Not a peaceful place.

Making sense of pain in light of the kingdom? Does God have good purposes in the midst of this pain?

SS answers don’t work anymore. What does that mean, God?

Have to be ok with being uncomfortable.

Knowing Christ’ suffering and those he suffered for - Compassion - suffering with someone and not have all the answers.

Assumptions are blasted when we have major encounter with ________ (ex: homeless community).

Have to lay them aside or won’t be able to encounter God’s heart.

Won’t meet God when you think you know what’s going on and have the answers. This is the environment where God is - not necessarily where I normally meet him.

Trying to draw close to God in this place with these people. Pray and feel God’s heart.

Ok to feel all the feels; now let’s ask, seek, knock.

Going through liminality

Connecting with brokenness helps us see that God is working redemptively in the world and invites us into that work. Can’t be invited if we haven’t taken time to be led into it, experienced it.

Lordship and Liminality is the formation of calling: I think God wants me to be part of his purposes.

Calling and Starting

2 Parts to calling:

Jesus himself where he calls our name. Intimate friendship. Be with him. Where is he? Least and lost. This is where you’ll find him.

There are things we all are to do as followers of Jesus to love our neighbor.

The good, redemptive works Jesus has prepared for you to do; To the world he loves; people to whom he is sending us. YOUR PART TO PLAY.

To be intimate with Jesus, be near him is to find him where he is: the least and the lost. Is there a specific place or way? This side of calling is often connected to liminal experiences. Pain, suffering, etc provide clues.

Jesus is calling you to join him on the wind and the waves. to participate, own, serve, labor.

Calling isn’t static. Will change over lifetime. Still have to pray.

Ministry - to the body.

Mission - where Jesus is not known.

Calling is not about vocational roles to serve the body but mission: to people far from the kingdom; outside of the church;

Don’t negate ourselves from mission by serving the body. Still have to join God in his mission and that is outside of the body.

I think Jesus wants me to ______________.

Experiment and Practice

David Bosch.

As you see people respond to the call to join Jesus in his mission what manifests is the church.

Respond to Jesus to join him in his purposes How do I join Jesus in his purposes? Out of that response forms a people for his purpose. Biblical word for that - ekklesia (church).

Focus on being a sheep that hears his voice that joins him in his purposes on the edges with the least and the lost and eventually, you will be made a people who were not a people and he will plant a church.

Did you get up to bat and swing - well done. Did you try something - well done.

Trying something in incubation space with a team, etc = discipleship. Once through that process, we can give clearance for more resourcing.

How can HC’s Cultivate Calling for Members?

To whom and I called/sent to love - encouraging people to ask that question.

How is he inviting you to join him in his mission?

Give space where these questions can be discerned. Invite them to share their dreams; where they have responded.

Who do you pray for first when you pray for others; what stirs you emotionally.

Affirm that calling. You should respond to God’s voice.

Bias toward affirmation and we’re going to walk with you.

IDEAS

Prayer retreat at a park.

No best practices. Love people. Embrace failure. Sometimes you do this and you are rejected. Won’t be successful.

Success is stepping up to bat and taking your swings; not hitting a HR. This is about faith and obedience.

What we call good is rarely actually good. So many religious things we think are good aren’t in the eyes of the Lord - including our metrics.

Only metric we have control over is, did we try to respond to the voice of the shepherd?

We can live by faith very free as we imitate him in the world. Don’t try to control outcomes, convert and change people - what we really don’t know how to do.

Will make mistakes but keep loving the people God gives us to love.

Is all dynamic, changing a lot. A lot of experimentation is needed. Change/iteration/feedback loops, etc is a part of that work. You’re not great at loving others and they’re not great at receiving it.

Crossroads

You will hit a wall; betrayal; high hopes, low return. You will want to quit. What do you need in that moment?

What do we do when we crash/Want to quit?

Pivot

Calling doesn’t change. Pivot and experiment. Get up to bat and swing again. Refinement happens, etc.