(All of my posts from Renov8 can be found here)

(Whoever planned the music for this session had their head on straight: the singing actually involved the assembled attendees. The music was led by a 10-person home church, accompanied by only an acoustic guitar and some hand-drums. Sure, this seemed a little neo-hippy at first, but by the end they had almost everyone in the sanctuary singing, and that’s what’s important.)

Ok, the Michael Frost session:

Michael FrostFrost framed his talk around several stories of people who became vigilantes for the kingdom of God, people who were fed up with the status quo and took drastic, self-sacrificial action. These people are “missional heroes” but this should be the norm for all Christians.

One was a pastor in Cambodia who moved into a community that had been displaced by its government with 30 minutes notice. “He moved his pregnant wife into a mosquito infested slum, and read the book of Acts, and the Kingdom of God is unfolding in the middle of hell.” Frost asks this man what books he read that inspired such courage and zeal. “Acts, John, Luke…” the man replies.

One was a pastor who took action of the alcohol-related crime in his community by assembling a team of “street pastors” to assist people in their various states of drunken stupor. This was more effective than the city’s $2-million plan to deal with the problem.

One was a businessman in Texas who saw deplorable conditions in a trailer park and ended up buying the entire trailer park and tending to its transformation.

“The goal of Christian mission is not church planting or church growth, not building up a kingdom. The goal is alerting people to the reign and rule of God in Christ.”

“How do you alert people to the rule and reign of God in Christ? You create foretaste. Our lives should be like movie trailers: they should make others say ‘I want to see more of that’” When people see the kingdom at work, we can tell them it’s a trailer of the blockbuster to come. He worked this metaphor well.

His point is this: As churches, let’s orient ourselves around the needs of our neighborhood, and this will look different depending on the environment we’re in. Most churches offer their neighborhoods a big Sunday service and little else.

Jesus chooses a term with both civic and religious connotations (“ecclesia”) to describe his followers. Yes, we gather to worship and to be taught but also to be recognized as good and wise and true by our communities. We are the sent to add value to our neighborhoods, to be God’s sent gift into our neighborhoods so that it will be better with us than without us.

“Most of our communities don’t even know that we’re there, and if we were gone, they wouldn’t miss us. If our church were taken away from our neighborhood, would they grieve for their loss?”

We shouldn’t have to talk about knocking down walls – how did it come to this? It was never meant to be this way – that we would wall ourselves up, away from people in need.

“To whom has God sent you? There is no such thing as an unsent Christian. Go where God sends you. Make a home there. Love those people. Put deep roots into that place. Live there, love them, and never leave them.”

Frost gave a good presentation of and a challenge to participate in incarnational ministry.

All of my posts from Renov8 will be at this page. Refresh (and comment) often.

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Michael Krahn (michael.krahn@gmail.com) is a husband, father, Pastor, writer, and recording artist who enjoys books, theology, technology and the Ottawa Senators.
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