Rapid Responses
A Rapid Response to ‘Community Building as Spiritual Practice’
One of the basic premises of the missioDei paradigm is that God’s activity in the world cannot be confined to the explicit mission activities of the church. The kingdom vision inspires us with the hope that God is at work...
Read moreA Rapid response to ‘Dislocated’, Chapter 1 from The New Parish by Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens and Dwight J Friesen
Any book that helps the Christian community take a more thoughtful approach to place is, in my view, to be welcomed and by focusing on the idea of the ‘new parish’ Sparks, Soerens and Friesen draw attention to aspects of...
Read moreA Rapid response to ‘Dislocated’, Chapter 1 from The New Parish by Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens and Dwight J Friesen
A few years ago, in the very early days of social media, I attended an impressive presentation from a pioneer in this field. As part of the presentation he invited subjects for debate from the audience and then presented these...
Read moreA Rapid Response to ‘Together at God’s Table: How Practising Hospitality Shapes our Imagination’ by Jamie Wilson
It is a pleasure to respond to this interesting and insightful piece on the role of hospitality in shaping an imagination oriented to and shaped in relation to God’s reconciling mission in the world. Wilson invites the reader to consider...
Read moreRapid Response to Practices of a Missional People by Alan J Roxburgh
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was traveling to Harlem and around the US in 1930, and it was there, in the neighborhood of Harlem that he said, ‘I moved from phraseology to reality.’ Current ecclesial speech in the US is around phraseology and...
Read moreDwight Zscheile – A Rapid Response to ‘Monastic Practices and the Missio Dei’
Spiritual formation is a critical dimension of the missional conversation overdue for further development within a missional framework. This essay helpfully reframes spiritual disciplines from a primarily private, individualistic view toward a socially-engaged, kingdom perspective. It grounds this reframing in...
Read moreRapid Response to Practices for a Missional Church Planting Order by Christopher B. James
As a church planter, I found Mr. James’s article helpful and relevant. I was particularly captivated by his reference to David Bosch’s observation that missionaries and church planters are often spiritual “misfits” at home, and the mission field (or church...
Read moreRapid Response to ‘Are We Post-Community’ by Ash Barker
It is with appreciation that I read this article asking a tantalizing, perhaps rhetorical question: ‘Are we post-community?’ While I don’t believe this is the case (the devil is in the question of what is meant by ‘community’). Barker is...
Read moreReply to Alan Roxburgh’s Rapid Response
I so appreciate that someone of Alan’s standing in the missional world would read and respond to my thoughts on community building. Quite thrilled actually. I respond here after re-reading my article with his thoughts in mind, but also in...
Read moreMission, Multiculturalism, and the African Immigrant Church: A Rapid Response to Faith without Borders by Babatunde Adedibu
It was Walter Hollenweger who once said that ‘British Christians prayed for revival, and when it came, they did not recognize it because it was black.’[1] There is some truth in his observation. The subject of multicultural Christianity is new...
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