Food For Thought: Summer’s Ending Edition
Every week here at Pursuing Glory I try to bring together the best posts I’ve found that will equip the end-times church to operate in her God-ordained destiny. These are the best blogs, articles, books and other resources related to our purpose here at this site. Feel free to visit, comment, and make use of the resources found at each site.
It’s painfully obvious that summer is almost over. Now we await the cold of Fall and Winter. The plus side is my office will become more usable and that may mean more time for blogging. I’ll keep my fingers crossed and let you know if that ever materializes.
Time for America to Turn Back to God
I was encouraged by this call to repentance from Bob Roberts Jr. It lacked the typical “time to take back America from the Godless” rhetoric, but still called America back to God in practical, essential ways.
God calls us to set up monuments to His work in our lives. In this post, Josh recounts the moments God has directed him in supernatural ways to work and live among the poor of the Earth.
One of the things that I’ve been hearing from the Lord is that our inability to work as a team is a hindrance to creating disciple making movements. Guy’s post is an excellent primer on what makes teams work.
It’s Not About Church Planting
I’m encouraged by the fact that more and more people are gaining this perspective. Church planting is fruitless unless it is the result of new converts coming to Jesus.
BONUS MEDIA LINK:
The Salvation Army – Lessons for Us
Lex Loizides, uber Christian historian from the New Frontiers tribe, made his conference session on the history of the Salvation Army available for download. The Salvation Army has an amazing history that should provoke us all to live a missional lifestyle and Lex’s retelling of their story is a great way to “touch the bones” of this movement.
Photo Credit: Design Probes – Food for Thought by centralasian.
2 responses to “Food For Thought: Summer’s Ending Edition”
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Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 
I don’t remember how I got to your blog, specifically, anymore. I am attempting to look at as many writers as are writing on simple/organic/house church as I can. A couple of years ago, I had a job that consisted of sitting at a desk in a luxury condo and pressing a button when a resident needed to come in. During that time, which was just after reading Pagan Christianity, I began writing a group of two minute commentaries for radio on the subjects of not within simple church. I never have had the money to air those, but have come to learn that five minutes is a more acceptable time frame in my area. Later yet, I came to realize that others, particularly in the blog medium, have expressed some thoughts better than I, often because their life experience differs than I. Those transcripts make up much of my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com.
Now, what God has been showing me this week. One of the first five minute commentaries I wrote I called, 8 Definitions of Church. Then, I found another, and then, another. Recently, at my church, the facilitator’s mother in law came to live with them, and she made a comment about her less than optimal experiences in traditional church over time. I was thinking of sharing the contents of the commentary on definitions on church next Sunday, but thought that I would look it over. In doing so, I noticed that I had referenced Matthew 18:20, “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am there also,” and it occurred to me that that was a definition that I had not considered. For whatever reason, I punched Matthew 18:20 into my computer, and one of the first choices was a site that held synopses of various commentaries. One of those pointed out that, in the context of Matthew 18, Jesus is speaking to the disciples, possibly privately (whether others were or were not around is unclear). The commentator pointed out that Jewish tradition of the day was that in took ten persons to have a congregation. This was clearly Jesus redefining for the disciples, and therefore us, today, that the minimum definition of a church was two or three believers in agreement, with Jesus as the Head, as Colossians 1 and Galatians 5 tells us. I also believe this explains why for so many of us, including our brothers and sisters in institutional settings, the most powerful moves of the Spirit in our lives are in informal groups and not traditional services.
Tom, thanks for the message. Glad to hear the Lord has been speaking to you about a lot of the same things it seems like He is saying to other folks. I’ll check out the your blog, too! Feel free to stick around and share insights, we all grow by learning from one another!