Cutting Edge is a great quarterly publication put out by some really sharp Vineyard folks. It’s always good. It’s incredible how well they do intelligent while remaining accessible, timely without being short-sighted, and relevant without being overcooked and lame.You should join the thousands who read every issue.
The most recent issue was really significant. In an interview about the nature of the Church, Bert Waggoner (the National Director of the Vineyard USA) drew some courageous, necessary, and truly insightful lines in the sand.
Our movement is in good hands.
Read it! Read it! Read it!
Then leave a comment and let me know what you thought.
Here it is. (it’s a .pdf, and it’s the first story)
Ok, just started reading. Does Waggoner’s water molecule analogy infer that mission is two thirds of the church’s purpose? Or am I over-geeking this thing? Second question: what’s the oxygen part of the church?
oh, you’re definitely over-geeking it, Seth!
Great interview…. well done…. he’s starting to sound like a missionary, spirit-filled Anglican (which is what I accuse anyone who makes sense to me of being).
I would amplify his expression of what the Apostolic nature of the church is, however, which would sort of strengthen our understanding of everything we (he, you, and I) are about:
an apostle is one who is sent in the authority of the sender, with the message of the sender, in obedience to the sender’s intention, specifically to the person or people to whom the sender is sending them, knowing they’ll be accountable to the sender if they do anything at all inconsistent with the sender’s intention.
simply saying an apostle is one who is sent, while not in the slightest bit inaccurate, is incomplete… we are under the authority of the Apostles’ teaching, not at liberty to add or subtract to it, we are merely vicars of the King who sends us, empowered with a message not our own, not on our own authority, but His.
also, I love the word kerygma here, because it is not only the content of the Apostles’ teaching, but it is the event of it’s proclamation, including the evidence and manifestation of the fruit of the presence of God. Some think that Doctrine hung on the cross. Others think Missiology hung on the cross. The Doctrine camp thinks that the intellectual exchange of information ABOUT Jesus will solve everything. The Mission camp tends to be so engaged in chasing after the culture as though after another lover, celebrating it’s latest, most clever strategy for getting people to no longer fund Christians abjectly offensive.
The two things need each other, and they fit together in the word kerygma, filling out our definition of the responsibility of apostles:
sent with the King’s message, on the King’s mission to another people, in the authority and power of the King, to do the King’s will.
…. definitely over geeking it… ;>)
oops… that should be “find Christians,” not “fund Christians.” Freudian betrayal of the fact that it’s budgeting time….