Archive for February, 2009
Attractional and Missional | TheResurgence
Posted by Todd Engstrom in assimilation, austin stone, church, missional on February 21, 2009
Below is quote from a post a The Resurgence on the Attractional vs. Missional “debate”.
People often set up attractional church and missional church as polar opposites. Attractional has a come-to-us mentality. It’s about drawing people to the church. Missional is a go-to-them mentality. We take the gospel to people, meeting them on their terms and their turf.
But biblical missiology contains both elements.
At The Austin Stone, we are very much involved in both sides of the equation, and believe that biblically based and effectively leveraged, the Attractional and Missional concepts of church can be effectively married.
The post concludes with this point:
The problem with a lot of attractional churches is not their missiology, but their ecclesiology. Church is seen as a meeting. Attracting means attracting people to an event or even a performance. But biblical mission is about a community life, ordinary life, lived under God’s Word that attracts people to God.
I would tend to disagree…the problem with many attractional (more specifically seeker-driven) churches is their missiology, and basing their core strategy on addressing felt needs. This leads to the improper ecclesiology based on consumerism, which develops into an event driven church.
Thoughts?
A Future and a Hope Conference
Posted by Todd Engstrom in adoption, personal on February 19, 2009
I attended and helped greet at an adoption conference this weekend with Olivia.
There were three main sessions and a panel:
- Kristin Wong spoke on God’s heart for adoption from Ephesians 1
- Julie Kouri presented myths to adoption and highlighted the basic adoption process
- Jason Kovacs shared some insight on funding for adoption through organizations like the Abba Fund.
- The panel consisted of a number of families who had adopted, including a family and a birth mother who had an open adoption.
Here is a link to Jason Kovacs’ recap of the conference.
I’ve definitely wrestled for awhile about adoption, but God finally brought me to a place of peace and excitement aboutthe potential of pursuing His heart in this way. Pray for us as we consider pursuing adoption as a family, and that God would make clear His timing for us.
Additionally, it has been a blessing to see the Lord use Olivia to lay a great foundation for foster and adoption ministry at The Austin Stone. I pray that God will use us as a church to change the face of Austin and the world through adoption.
Reflections on the Ministry : Rick McKinley
Posted by Todd Engstrom in leadership, personal on February 18, 2009
This was a convicting message for me to hear from Rick McKinley of Imago Dei in Portland.
The art of unbusyness and unneccesariness is essential to the being available to God. There is disaster awaiting the one who gets bogged down with doing good, and not dwelling in the excellent. It is our job to pay attention to God and life and to help others to do the same, this is the heart of the work as pastor. I am not suggesting that this means that we don’t do our work or have work to do. We have a lot of work to do, but what I am saying is that many times we exchange important things for urgent things and the important things never get addressed.
I am seemingly always in need of a breather, and have definitely struggled to place priority on “unbusyness”. God will teach me the discipline over time, but I am definitely terrible at it now.
adaptive challenges and the church | The Forgotten Ways
Posted by Todd Engstrom in christianity, missional on February 17, 2009
Really liked this quote from Alan Hirsch, and it speaks toward the movement we desire to see in Austin:
When I am teaching TFW material, one of the constant questions that is raised is “do we need persecution to become a fully fledged Jesus movement?” And my answer is “No, I don’t believe that it is necessary”. The reason for this is that persecution only represents one of the forms of adaptive challenge–the adapt or die variety. But this is not the only form of adaptive challenge. As as I have said above, we are confronted with both forms in our day. Adapt of die AND compelling opportunity. I have to believe that God’s people don’t always have to have our collective asses kicked to get our act together. We have all the latent potential for movement in us already. Surely we can access it by other means.
via adaptive challenges and the church : The Forgotten Ways.
What Makes a Great Leadership Team? | Gallup Management Journal
Posted by Todd Engstrom in leadership on February 16, 2009
Came across this at What’s Best Next from What Makes a Great Leadership Team? at Gallup Management Journal, and thought it was another helpful understanding of balanced leadership teams.
As we worked with these leadership teams, we began to see that while each member had his or her own unique strengths, the most cohesive and successful teams possessed broader groupings of strengths. So we went back and initiated our most thorough review of this research to date. From this dataset, four distinct domains of leadership strength emerged: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking.
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There are so many models of leadership in the world, but many of them agree on the concept of plurality of leadership, and individuals within the team excelling in particular giftings and skills.
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