Tall Monastic Guy

UK & Ireland

Hugh, Matt, and I returned late Thursday night after spending 3 days in Scotland and 4 in Ireland connecting with churches and missions folks as well as spending some team time to ourselves. The motherland was amazingly rich with beauty and history and the people are great and deeply spiritual but equally deeply jaded and apathetic toward the church.

In Dublin we stood outside the dilapidated locked gates of an old church when an elderly Irish woman came up beside us to have a look as well. She was there on a pilgrimage of sorts coming from out of town in hopes of visiting this church, which she was baptized in 70 years prior to that day. She was disappointed to find the gates locked and the church shut down. That little experience painted a good overall representation of the state of the UK/Ireland church. While in Glasgow our favorite spots to enjoy a Guiness and debrief our day was in old churches that had been converted into pubs.

2 acronyms

Thanks to Thea for pointing me toward a Max Lucado book on my shelf that had significant dust on it. I’d actually never opened it before now. Thea discovered some similarities between Lucado’s chapter titled, “Study your S.T.O.R.Y.” in his book Cure for the Common Life and my thoughts on knowing one's life story.
I was given the book once as a gift but never opened it because the title struck me as too cheesy and I felt it sounded way too Dr. Phil-ish (I later discovered that Dr. Phil endorsed it on the back cover).
I did find Lucado’s emphasis on knowing one's life story encouraging and his acronym potentially helpful in the development of my thoughts on missional discipleship.

Here’s his acronym along with some snipits of explanation from the chapter…
Story- What are your strengths? “Synonymous verbs mark your biography: “repairing,” “creating,” “overseeing.” … “What certain things come to you so easily that you genuinely wonder why others can’t do them?”
sTory- What is your topic? Once you know your verbs, look for your nouns. What objects do you enjoy working with? What facination did he give you?
stOry- What are your optimal conditions? What factors trigger your motivation?
stoRy- What about relationships? Think back over your moments of satisfaction and success. On those days, how were you relating to people?
storY- Yes! When do you look up into the heavens and say, “I was made to do this”?
When do your Strengths, Topic, Optimal conditions, and Relationship pattern converge in such a fashion that you say, “Yes!”? When they do, you are living out your S.T.O.R.Y.

It’s encouraging to me that such a recognizable author/pastor values the idea of knowing one’s story as a crucial element of discipleship. 

missional discipleship

Yeah, I’m tired of hearing both of those words too, so maybe if I pair them together we can tolerate them.

My idea in pairing these two is to emphasize both the process of developing people in the way of Jesus (discipleship) along with the Re-Jesusing of the church in intentionally imitating the missio dei (missional). 

the Father's words to Jesus... and you and me too.

"You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." (Mark 1:11, Today's NIV)

"In the Western world, even those fathers who think this in their hearts are often too tongue-tied or embarrassed to tell their children how delighted they are with them..."

"The whole Christian gospel could be summed up in this point: that when the living God looks at us, at every baptized and believing Christian, he says to us what he said to Jesus on that day." -N.T. Wright, Mark for Everyone