Events like Love Portland are great opportunities for us as a church to reflect on and enter into God’s missional calling for us as a church.  It gives us an opportunity to respond to God’s overflowing love on our hearts, by turning outward and pouring out love for our community.

To be signed up to work at the event, send an email to loveportland@imagodeicommunity.com with Kelly Elementary as the subject.  In the email include

• Your first and last name
• # if there are others coming besides yourself
• email
• phone
• state that you are wanting to help at Kelly
• if you might be available to work before the Saturday event
• tools you might be able to bring

If you want more info about love portland you can go to the website or go directly to the site on serving schools

As we begin to prep for that, I have thought that it might be a good thing to begin discussing some of the values that we have, both ones that are listed on our about page and other things.  For a while, I’m hoping to focus on the idea of “missional”.  I may have a tendency to sound like a theologian as I write this, though I will try to do my best to not just slip into theologian speak.  That said I’d like to discuss the epistimological soteriology of metaphysics(just kidding, really I’m just putting bbuzzwords out there to try to lure unsuspecting googlers into our site… kind of… it was still more a joke)

Missional is a buzzword of sorts right now in the church.  Many folks are embracing missional as a silver bullet that is going to solve all of the churches woes and the dying out that is happening with many churches that have been around for a while across the US and the rest of Western culture.  Some see being missional as a way of overhauling the many programs that a lot of churches already have, as a rethinking of felt needs.

Being missional however challenges even our idea of programs that we have going on in our churches, it’s not to say that we will get rid of all of the programs, but it will challenge us to think about the role of the church in how it interacts with the people around it.  The idea of missional is rooted in the idea that God has a mission for the church.  This mission might be seen clearest in a section of scripture we call the Great Commision.  It is found in a recap of the life of Jesus that we know in the Bible as the Gospel of Matthew.  In the Great Commission, Jesus sends out the disciples giving a few specific instructions.  If we are to quickly list them they are 1)making disciples of all nations 2)baptizing people in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 3)teaching them to obey everything Jesus taught. Jesus adds after these instructions that he will be with His disciples as they do these things.

These instructions serve as a great illustration of the church being rooted in a missional mindset.  First we see that the church is a sent people.  The missional church is not an organization that sits around thinking about cool activities to draw people into its doors, but rather it is Christ followers going in the whole world.  The missional church is about proclamation of the gospel.  From the very conception of the church it has been about sharing the gospel, which literally translated from Greek means good news!  The missional church seeks to share good news with the entire world.  Through the sharing of this good news, new disciples are made.

As these new disciples are made, they are baptized, signifying conversion.  Baptism serves as a rite of identity, but it also serves as a spiritual experience, the reality of what has been happening with them on the inside is done in a public act as a proclamation of the spiritual reality.  After baptism, Jesus lists teaching them to obey all that He commanded.  The missional church is not content to see the gospel as just a set of beliefs which an individual may or may not hold.  Neither does the missional church see the gospel being about just a personal relationship with Jesus.  In fact the missional church cannot see Christianity as just a personal relationship, because the nature of the missional life is a very public life.  It is the living out of the reality of the gospel in a public fashion.

Living missionally means getting outside the walls of a church building and going to people who aren’t yet disciples.  Living missionally means allowing the reality of union with Christ, a much deeper more significant idea than just a personal relationship, to effect every facet of the Christ followers life.  Because of this the church cannot be content to design a program that just gets people in the door.

This is by no means a full description of being missional.  It would take many months of blogging to do so( and coincidentally missional will be a topic for a while to come).  But I hope this can serve as a spring board to a deeper discussion on what it means to be a missional church.

I would love to interact with people, if you are a member of the Anchor or not, whether you found us because I was tricky and put some big theological words in here, or you just searched for missional and somehow ended up on this site.  Feel free to leave comments so we can open this to be a bigger conversation.

Quite simply the idea of tradition is that we confer with The church and its stances over the years.  Among other things, tradition stands as a way of giving us guardrails, directions which other Christians have thought about and found to be unhealthy directions for the church.  While we may have some freedom to re-explore many of the issues which the church has argued about, we don’t want to think that somehow we are alone in asking our questions.  In this sense, tradition serves as a guide in our discussion of theology.

With the Anchor, we see this playing an important role.  Specifically, we want to look at connections in how the things we do are generally things which the historic church have considered to be good.  Among these things are traditions of caring for the poor, for orphans, for widows, for aliens(both legal and illegal).

If we were to think of theology in terms of music, Tradition serves are the Bass and Rhythm, giving a rootedness and basis to build off of.   If we were to speak of theology in the terms of a building, tradition serves as a sort of knowledge base from those who have already built other buildings.  We learn from them both in what they have done well and in where they have found themselves failing.  When we ignore tradition, it is similar to those who ignore history: we are bound to repeat the same mistakes which we have already seen happen.

This is a continuation in our Basis for Theology series.  Click the links below to see the other entries.

Basis for Theology: Introduction

Basis for Theology: God Reveals

Basis for Theology: Scripture

Just wanted to quickly update you on what has been happening with the Anchor lately.

First the sad news: our dear friend Brandon who has been a key part of our conversations has decided to move to Oklahoma.  We are sad to see him go, but I am pretty sure it will be good for him.

Okay, second thing: Braxton and I are yet to find a place to live in the neighborhood, as the house we applied for did not pan out.

One exciting thing is going on though, I have had a series of encouraging emails with the deacon of Laurelwood UMC, which is located in our area.  I don’t know what will happen out of these emails or whether it will just be a friendship forged with another pastor, but it will be exciting to see where this leads.

I am in Colville until the tenth or so, doing some programming for Hachisoft and officiating a cousin’s wedding next Saturday.  It’s been nice to be out of the city and have some time to just sit and read when I am not working.  I almost got attacked by a deer yesterday but that is an entirely different story.  I have been reading through 1 John over and over and being really encouraged from reading it.  I don’t know if I will share on the site, or save it as something to preach over or what, but let me tell you, it has been encouraging and exciting reading for me!

Blessings,

Bryan

As Christians, we believe that the Bible tells the story of God, and how He has interacted with Christianity.  Each of the 66 books that make up the Bible tell a different piece of the larger story.  From the beginning of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, we are introduced to a good world that God has created, and how God has declared all of the Creation He has made to be good.  By the third chapter though, this begins to change.  The first humans decide to break their relationship with God by focusing on themselves and their perceived needs first.  The end result is the disobey God and ruin their relationship with Him, introduce destruction to the work, and now life is much more difficult.  This sets the stage for the story of God’s interaction with humanity that is told through the rest of the Bible.

The story then tracks how God begins to go about creating redemption for humanity, so that their relationship with Him can be restored.  This redemption becomes fully realized when God incarnates our story, taking on human form.  This is the story of Jesus.  Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is the ultimate solution to the problem of humanity being ensnared by self-love, or as Christian’s also refer to it: sin.

There is more to the story, as the New Testament then tracks the result of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection through the establishment and growth of the early church.  The Bible finishes with a book called Revelation, which is a book full of images.  Ultimately it conveys one point- in the end Jesus wins, the fallen powers lose.

At least one more issue must be addressed as we begin to think about scripture as a basis for theology.  Theologians like to call this issue “inspiration.”  Going back to the post before this, we discussed the idea that God reveals.  As Christian’s, we believe that because we serve a God who reveals Himself to people, that one of the primary ways He has done that is through these written books.   A problem arises, since these books are not written by God, but by humans.  “Inspiration” now serves as our understanding for how it is that humans could write a collection of works, which we consider to be a primary part of God’s revelation to humanity.  This idea is that the Holy Spirit has been at work, giving the inspiration for the Bible’s human writers.  This does not mean that God has insisted on the very choice of words, but the primary intent of these books has been inspired by the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of human individuals, going as far as to use their personality and context in how the message is conveyed.

This is a continuation in our Basis for Theology series. Click the links below to see the other entries.

Basis for Theology: Introduction

Basis for Theology: God Reveals

Over the past couple weeks, I feel like I have spent a large amount of time meeting with people. People that are connected with Christian Associates, friends of the church plant, having birthday parties. It has been really nice to connect and re-connect with a lot of different folks.

On the subject of meetings, next Wednesday, July 9 we will be having a meeting of those who are interested in the Anchor. I would LOVE to have anyone remotely interested come for a visit. Details will be put out shortly, but know for now that it is going to be an evening meeting in SE Portland.

When we want to start this conversation, we start by asserting that there is a God, for the basis of a conversation about the nature of God must start with a statement that there is a God. And further to begin a discussion about God we must also assume that this God is knowable. Stating that we can know God already puts us apart from some who would say “there might be a god, but I am not sure that we could really know this god.”

The basis of Christianity is this idea that God reveals Himself, from the story of the beginning of Israel as God coming to Abraham, throughout Israel’s history and culminating in God revealing Himself in Jesus, who is fully human and yet fully divine. Jesus shows us the character of God by how He lives. At one point there is a discussion with His disciples when they ask Him to show them the Father. Jesus replies that by seeing Him, they have seen the Father.

Although usually we imply this though, it is important that we realize it is there before we start a conversation on foundations for having a conversation about who God is and how He interacts with us.

This is a continuation in our Basis for Theology series. Click the links below to see the other entries.

Basis for Theology: Introduction

A list of the things that are hitting home with me right now:

what I call “wake up” theology that you’ve heard me talk about before

The gospel truely reveals and is the power of God, and as such, we (and me espeically) need to live with more power from God.

Participation of the body of Christ - every week I go to a church that runs a top-down service and it drives me crazy that some people’s spiritual exesitence is what they see on a Sunday morning and doesn’t extend anywhere else. I guess this goes hand in hand with the Wake Up theology.

Temptation. To quote Matisyahu “we are warriors fighting for our souls.”  We need to start thinking about temptation, and muse over the idea of taking radical measures against sin in our communities. (I do know the problem with that is the question “what is sin?” I think it can be done while still being loving and open with people and agressive against sin)

So my theology is moving towards living a life of power from God, free from the restraints of sin and this world, and liberating people to begin in the same revolution. You’ve heard the phrase “take back America” I think its time to take back the Church, and save her from the prison that she is in.

So of the things listed above, what do you resonate with? Or do you disagree with anything?

Jeff

Saturday was the day of the first annual Compassion SE, which we did at Woodmere elementary here in Southeast Portland. All in all, it was a great day. I just got an email with some of the statistics : we were able to provide 85 medical appointments(plus another 16 on the Multnomah County Medical Van), 48 dental appointments, and served 470 lunches to our guests. There was also a number of hair stylists that gave haircuts(rumor has it one stylist did somewhere between 25 and 30 haircuts herself!)

I ended up being the “microphone announcer guy” for all the dental appointments, which was quite the experience. Compassion SE was a great opportunity for us to respond to God’s love poured out on our hearts by loving our neighbors in turn. I hope that it will serve as a great beginning to something that can continue to do, both through the event and through everyday interactions.

Thank you to everyone who came out to help and made this first event a big success!

Also, today I got to meet with my friend Dan for a couple hours to talk about the church plant, about vision, and about who I am as a leader. Dan is involved with a group called Christian Associates. There is a good chance that as a church plant we may be affiliated with CA as a group which has some experience in the type of church plant that we are doing. It was a great meeting, and I’m excited to see how we may fit in with the organization.

Next Sunday, I am speaking at Hartline Assembly of God about the church plant, and what we are doing. Starting next month, there should hopefully be some more going on with the church plant here. I hope this message finds you well, and that you are enjoying the pseudo-summer weather that we are getting!

Blessings,

BD(Pastor Bryan)

As you have probably surmised from the given title of this post, the series is called “Basis for Theology.”  For those who may encounter this site and are not Christ-followers, but are interested, or for those who just aren’t familiar with church jargon(and for that I am envious of you!), I feel a good way to start this section is by defining “theology.”  After that I will give you an idea of where the next few posts are going to go on this topic.

Theology is a discussion about the nature of God and the various beliefs of the church.  Traditionally, the goal of theology has been to prayerfully and reasonable bring people to a better understanding of these debates, at times defending beliefs, at other times seeking to find a better way for people to understand their beliefs.  However at the end of the day, theology must always come back to us seeking to more fully understand God.(It is this idea that God is knowable that will be the first discussion of the Basis for Theology series)

The plan will be to discuss five topics that are used as the base points for us to enter into this discussion called theology.  They are(in the order they will be discussed), 1)God is Knowable, 2)Scripture, 3)Tradition(longstanding Christian beliefs), 3)Reason(does it make sense?) and 4)Experience(what I experience is true)

I’m looking forward to getting to write through these topics and begin to explore the things that serve as the base points for us talking about theology!