Nashvegas and Downward Mobility

I'm in Nashville this week finishing up the course requirments for the M.Div. at Lipscomb. This week I'm taking a Seminar in Theology class with John Mark Hicks who one of my friends in grad school refers to as "one of the smartest men in North America." Check out his blog at http://www.professingprofessor.blogspot.com/. The class is entitled Postmodern Theologies and we're going to look at post-evangelicalism (recovering fundamentalists), postliberals (recovering liberals) and communal praxis (the people who actually take Jesus' call to discipleship seriously)...ok maybe that was a slight exaggeration.

I'm taking this class with one of my good friends Mark Manry who is also finishing up the M.Div. this summer. Mark is a member where I currently work--the Rochester Church of Christ in Michigan. Mark is about to move his entire family to Uganda to join a mission team supported by the Rochester Church. I tease Mark that he's on the fast track for "downward mobility"--he's driving the wrong way down a one way street :). Seriously, Mark has a pastor's heart and will be Kingdom blessing while he's in Uganda and when we steal him back in five years to work with us at RCC.

The Rochester Church is not a perfect church by any measuring standards but they are committed to training up their own and sending them into the world. We currently have disciples (raised up from within our church) in Eastern Europe, Brazil, Uganda (a few families), Honduras, and one training to go to the Bronx to join an ACU mission team. I know I'm forgetting someone.

Our next step???? Getting the body of Christ at Rochester to see themselves as missionaries in the setting they find themselves in. Becoming a missional church out of a comfortable evangelical worldview is no easy task. I can't imagine a more exciting project than being a part of this.