Ben Sternke

Field notes on life and mission with God after Christendom

Notable Posts

Which Comes First: Structure or Life?

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It seems clear to me that we need structure if we’re going to see organisms flourish. The structure exists to support the life that’s there, and is only good in as much as it helps the flourishing of that life. I wrote about this in Part 7 of my Missional Communities series:

As things grow, some form of organization or structure is necessary if we wish to see things continue to grow… some kind of structure is actually necessary for the ongoing flourishing of life.

The assumption I’ve made in this regard is that structure follows life from a chronological standpoint. Life emerges, and we put structure in place to support the life that’s there. But something I read in an advance copy of Mike Breen‘s upcoming book Multiplying Missional Leaders has me wondering about that.

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Renaming, Rethinking, or Really Re-forming?

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Yesterday my brother Aaron (who leads a great worship band, btw) tweeted the following:

I have no idea if this is actually what AT&T did, but it struck me as a great parable for one way that we often try to take shortcuts in leadership: instead of doing the hard work of really building a culture of discipleship and mission, we just re-brand what we currently have.

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Why We Celebrate the Christian Calendar

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Today is the first Sunday of Advent, which is New Year’s Day for the Church. Today is when we start telling the story again, the story of how Jesus Christ fulfilled the story of Israel in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and how we now live with him by the Spirit and await his final return.

Every year we tell the story again, basically because we need to immerse ourselves in it, because it is the true story of the world. It is the report of what God is doing in the world to redeem and restore all things, the proclamation of how God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.

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The Key to Recognizing a Person of Peace

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When we train leaders and begin to focus on evangelism, we always start with the practice of identifying “Persons of Peace.”

This is the strategy Jesus seems to lay out in Luke 9-10, when he sends his disciples out with his authority to do the same stuff he has been doing (you know, “heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons…” Beginner stuff 😉 ).

A Person of Peace is simply someone that God has prepared ahead of time to hear the message of the gospel through you. We recognize Persons of Peace as those who welcome us, like to be with us, and attempt to serve us in some way.

Which is all fine and good in theory, but as we’ve been working with people on this, we’ve noticed what we think is a key element to recognizing a person of peace, without which we will remain blind to what God is doing around us.

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What Powers Mission?

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After a wonderful final Learning Community immersion (“Establishing Centers of Mission”) with the 3DM team, I’ve been thinking about mission a lot. Not mission-as-project or mission-as-event, but real kingdom-of-God stuff: people becoming disciples of Jesus and joining with him in his work. What is necessary for real kingdom mission to flourish? What hinders it?

This morning I was reading Andrew Murray’s wonderful little prayer primer With Christ in the School of Prayer, and came across this gem of a quote, which deserves a slow, careful reading, because the implications for mission are astounding. [Read more…] about What Powers Mission?