Questions about journal entries

I've gotten two questions about the journal entries, so I must not have been clear in the coursebook. Sorry about that. I expect you to write a journal entry every week, and there are questions for each week. So the questions for the week before an audioconference are for one journal entry, and the questions for the week after an audioconference are for another journal entry. Let me know if you have more questions.

Thanks, Grahame and Craig

To Grahame and Craig, who were bold enough to be the first people to make posts on the blog, thanks so much for your thoughts.

As a follow-up to Craig's post, here's a question. Do you think Minatrea is equating mission-minded and maintenance? I'm not sure he was doing that, and I'm not sure I would equate being mission-minded with being focused on maintenance. It seems to me some churches are mission-minded and missional, and some churches are mission-minded and focused on maintenance. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this.

Another thought I had is that even the most missional-minded person has maintenance thoughts sometimes, and probably many people focused on maintenance sometimes think missionally. So perhaps sometimes we should say, "When I'm thinking along maintenance lines, I find myself worried about . . . " or "When a person is in maintenance mindset, they might say . . ." This would help us from thinking there are two categories of Christians or two categories of churches.

Some blog post ideas

One clarification about posting to this blog. You will be posting by clicking on "comments" below one of my blog posts.

One of the topics I'd like to see addressed in blog posts this week or next week is the question of what "maintenance" looks like in congregations. I see it most clearly when (1) people talk about what they fear and (2) when I listen to people pray for the needs of their congregation. So I'd be happy to see some of you address these questions: What are the fears that are often expressed by people who view maintenance as the major role for congregations today? What are the kinds of things people pray for when they are most concerned about maintenance? And you may want to address the related questions of what do people fear and what do they pray for when their concerns are missional?

You may have many other ways to illustrate what maintenance looks like in a congregation. I'd love to read your observations.

Here's another topic I'd like to see addressed in blog posts: What is the church? And how does your proposed definition help us connect with missional church issues?

Missional Church

Welcome to the Missional Church paper at the University of Otago. I'm looking forward to "meeting" you all tonight at the audioconference. I'm looking forward to the dialog we will have during the audioconferences and on this blog. Students at the 300 level are welcome to read this blog and make posts.

Students at the 400 level are required to make posts during most weeks of the semester. I set up the paper this way because I want you to learn from each other online as well as in the audioconferences. You can write about

• something you read about the missional church that you found interesting, either in an assigned reading for the class or elsewhere
• something we talked about in the audioconference that you want to follow up on
• questions you have about the missional church
• or other topics related to the missional church

Here's one thing I would really appreciate. I intended to order Steve Taylor's book, The Out of Bounds Church?, for the Otago library. In fact, I thought I ordered it, but evidently I forgot to. Some of you have undoubtedly read his book and some of you probably read his blog. I would appreciate comments about what you learned from his book, particularly as it relates to our discussions about the missional church. And if you see something interesting on his blog, please post a link on this blog for the rest of us.

For this first week, feel free to write about anything in the bulleted categories above or to write about Steve Taylor's book. If I think of more specific questions after the audioconference, I'll post those questions.

Definitions of "culture"

I said I would post the definitions of culture I read in the audioconference last night. Here they are:

"the collective mental programming of a people in an environment" - Geert Hofstede, 1980

"everything one must learn in order to behave in ways that are recognizable, predictable, and understandable to a group of people" - Valentine, 1968

"a common set of previously assimilated master plans, from which . . . an infinite number of individual patterns directly applicable to specifric situations are generated" -Pierre Bordieu, 1976

If you want to cite them in your final paper, give the author and date I've mentioned, and then say "cited by Lynne Baab in audioconference 7." I don't have references for them.

last audioconference next Monday

For our last audioconference, please come prepared to talk about three things:

1. Of all the topics we talked about in this paper, which one would you say has the most impact on New Zealand churches?

2. Are there topics you wish we had addressed in this paper?

3. If you were asked what one thing you wish Christians in New Zealand understood about multi-cultural ministry or cross-cultural ministry, what would you say?

I'm sorry I haven't been able to write on this blog for the past few weeks. I've been so sick. But I'm definitely getting better and am looking forward to our last evening together.

Followup from last audioconference

I thought you'd be interested in hearing about a lecture by Anglican archbishop David Moxon that I heard last week. He talked about something that happened at the Lambeth conference recently. The Lambeth conference is a gathering of Anglican bishops from all over the world.

You may be familiar with the United Nations Millenium Goals (http://www.undp.org/mdg/basics.shtml). They are goals for 2015 related to aspects of world poverty, many of the same ones we talked about in the last audioconference.

Archbishop Moxon said that at the Lambeth conference, representatives of the United Nations came to speak to the delegates about the Millenium Goals. These U.N. representatives said that the church is indispensible in meeting those goals for two reasons. First, many of the development agencies that work with the poor around the world are Christian organizations, and these U.N. people said that Christian development groups are essential to help meet the goals because they do so much to address poverty.

The second way Christians are influential is something I had never thought about before. Christians, as citizens, can let their voices be heard, urging politicians to help meet the Millenium Goals. Archbishop Moxon said this applies to all kinds of countries, not just "rich" countries. Even countries in the 2/3 world set policies that have an impact on the poorer people in those countries, and when Christians speak up and urge that governments help their poorer citizens or help poor people in other countries, politicians listen. Or at least they listen sometimes! Christian leaders, then, can take on the role of encouraging other Christians to speak up about world poverty and the Millenium Goals, as well as speaking up themselves. I found this idea fascinating, challenging and encouraging.

It's really nice to know that U.N. leaders are appreciative of the efforts of Christians.