Join us for an amazing evening of music and humor on September 11th @ the Fountain Room in Hollywood.  All proceeds from this benefit concert will go to the Solis Foundation, which gives micro grants to help start new businesses in Lodwar, Kenya.  You can purchase tickets in advance at the Artist @ the Fountain website, or by calling 818.970.2114.  Advance tickets are $10, while tickets at the door are $12.

We have an incredible line up for the evening.  We have Hi Ho Silver Oh, an Experimental/Folk/Roots Music band.  L.A. Record says this about the band: “”There were a few songs that started out with just Trela, the other members staring dreamily at points on stage and occasionally mouthing along to a line. But just when you started to wonder “Wait, what are these other guys doing here?” you’d hear a tsk tsk tsk on the cymbal or a delicate whine from the violin, and you knew this was about to turn into something big. Then all the sounds would ball up tighter and tighter until they’d explode into a sonic rush that made your hair blow back a little bit from your face.”

This picture gives you a sense of their crazyness.

And then there is the special guest Charlyne Yi, who you may have seen in a film or television show.  You can check out her IMDb page. One of her most recent films was Paper Heart.  Here is the official trailer to check out.

Hope to see you there!

If we want to be witnesses like Jesus, our only concern should be to be as alive with the love of God as Jesus was.” - Henri Nouwen

good morning la

Originally uploaded by dream awakener

Part one was about the recovering of missio Dei. Part two how the church is called to be a sign, foretaste and instrument of the kingdom. Part three was about asking who is the church. Today, we look at current images to describe the who of the church.

So what if Paul were living today? What if he was an urbanite living in Los Angeles. What images would he use to describe the nature of the church? Since the five equippers in Ephesians four represent the five different ministries of Jesus, let look at a missional ecclesiology that is developed through the lens of the five equippers. Because the five equippers provide a healthy framework for missional sustainability, I started to think through a couple of metaphors for each of the equippers listed in Ephesians. These metaphors are a combination of biblical metaphors as well as metaphors from our context that act as a guide by which we live out who we are in Christ. Click image for larger view.

When it comes to metaphors, Walter Brueggemann helps us understand their power. “A metaphor proceeds by having only an odd, playful, and ill fitting match it its reality, the purpose of which; to illuminate and evoke dimensions of reality which will otherwise go unnoticed and therefore unexperienced” (Brueggemann 1997:1). Of course there are so many more metaphors that could describe each of the equippers. But these metaphors are rich in helping us to awaken to God’s reality, so that we might remember who we are and that we might better live out our calling in the church for the sake of the world.

In the final part to this series, I will address how we participate in missio Dei through the lens of these metaphors.

This is hilarious.

Father,

I want to know thee, but my cowardly heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there.

From The Pursuit of God HT Lee Bezotte

The first question that Scot asks Brian is: Brian, it is common for a reader of yours to come away from a book or a chapter, say The Last Word, and The Word After That, or Generous Orthodoxy or your New Kind of Christianity and still wonder what you believe. Most of us detect a provocative ambiguity, while others wonder if there is not deliberate refusal to clarify your views. How would you describe your strategy when addressing polarized issues, why not just come out and tell people what you believe.

Watch the video for Brian’s answer to this question and others, and let me know what you thought about the interview.

Q | Conversations on Being a Heretic from Q Ideas on Vimeo.

In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds. - Henri Nouwen

Moments from Everynone on Vimeo.

The word kairos is used over 90 different times in the New Testament and having varying shades of meaning.  The Greeks had two words for time.  Chronos, where we get chronology from. This meant linear time – the days, weeks, months and years.  And then there were the kairos moments, divine moments.  Kairos moments are those moments of epiphany, small or large that cause us to make decisions that shape our destiny.

Leonardi da Vinci once reflected that the average human “looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odor or fragrance, and talks without thinking. He could have added, “and lives without sensing the importance of time.”

Kairos moments may be monumental, or they may be mundane, for God even speaks through a whisper. They may be moments of great joy, or they may be moments of great sorrow. Seeing your kairos moments in one thing, responding to them is yet another.  We respond to them by asking ourselves, what is God saying to me in the moment, and how does he want me to respond? The ability to see and respond to our kairos moments in life is one of the paths to maturity.  So what has been your kairos moment recently and how have you responded to it?

From Victoria Peak

Originally uploaded by dream awakener

In part one, we talked about the recovering of missio Dei. In part two how the church is called to be a sign, foretaste and instrument of the kingdom. So how will this happen? As the church understands who she is.

So who is the church? What metaphors do Paul and Peter use to describe who the church is, and how might these metaphors connect with the inherent nature of the five equippers mentioned in Ephesians four?

Paul Minear studied the scripture to see how many of these images and metaphors were used in the New Testament to refer to the church. He found 96. I guess he didn’t have much to do. When Paul describes the church, he uses metaphors like: God’s field, a temple, a body and much more. When he describes the church, he uses many of the images that fit right into his native culture and time. Farm analogies and fishing analogies were quite common, because, in those agrarian times, many people were either farmers or fishermen.

But what if Paul were living today? What if he were an urbanite living in Los Angeles or another city? What images would he use to describe the nature of the church? I will address this in the next post.