miletwo::network

In a spirited blog post, Geoff Surrat expresses concerns many of us are faced with as we deal with negative impressions of many.

It was at least five or six years ago when I first saw that monotone halo surrounding those curly locks on a mannequine at Urban Outfitters. “Jesus is my homeboy…” HA!  I laughed! My immediate reaction was… “yea… he’s definitely my homeboy too.”  Little did I know how radically diverse the reactions would be to this simple but powerful statement.

I’ve been talking about the concept of becoming a goer with a friend lately and have decided to put a few concepts in line prior to taking this to a larger audience. You, the faithful few who follow my blog will get to see it first.

I read The Resurgence… a lot.  As well as catalystspace.com, Mark Driscoll’s blog, Scott Knight’s blog, and a host of others.  This provides a lot of food for thought and some good ideas for how to minister hope and healing to the world around me.  I often will blog a trackback to the stuff I think is cool, but I wonder… is it okay to blog the stuff I think is lame?

One of the primary goals of a missional outreach (church, mission, seminar, whatever) is reaching the culture around it.  The biggest flaw in most of these efforts is failing to contextualize the effort.  This doesn’t mean becoming a gnarly, beer-swilling, foul-mouthed, party animal… it means strategically modifying your language, media, and style to match the culture and context into which you are reaching.

I’ve been having a difficult time lately with our attitudes as followers of “The Way” which is a 1st century euphemism for Christianity.

According to a recently released report by the Barna Group, Evangelical Christians are finally getting on the Green band-wagon.  The cool thing to note is that, as I’ve mentioned in the past, we’re doing it for the right reasons.  Christians have a responsibility to be concerned for the environment because it’s GOD’S CREATION!

The way Christians handle issues regarding sexual orientation is always going to be a touchy (yikes)… how about difficult topic.  Let’s face it folks, we live in a fallen world… full of sin and broken people.  That said, I have to stand up and say how sick I am of the liberal, whacked out, flag burning… geez I need to calm down.