I confidently say that I love God in a deeper and fuller way as a result of Re:Train. I have been exposed to more of His glory, more of His richness, and more of His love as I have seen His magnificent plan unfold through His Word and in my life. I have been pushed and challenged in my thoughts and plans for the express purpose of bringing God more glory.  I have read books that caused me to marvel at God’s wisdom and design, written papers that caused me to wonder at the many ways that God ordains to use sinful and fallible man for His glorious purposes, and sung praises at the top of my lungs with upraised arms rejoicing at the beauty of the horror of our Savior nailed to a cross. If all God has planned for me following Re:Train is a lifetime of service in a struggling church, then I can do nothing but rejoice at His goodness and mercy, for I once was a rebel against all that He is, deserving of eternal torment in Hell. That He called me to Himself and gave me the opportunity to worship Him and call Him Father is a delight I do not deserve and I can think of no better response than to seek Him with all that I am, desiring that everyone everywhere would proclaim the glory of His name.

Starting with our first Re:Train class, the past year has had a significant focus on discipleship. I got my discipleship paper back from Bill Clem and, while my grade was OK, his comments will definitely make it more biblical and usable. Discipleship is tough and it takes time. The Trellis and the Vine is probably the best book on discipleship I’ve read and here is a blog post from Aaron Menikoff that has many similar ideas.

First, every Christian needs to be discipled. … The Great Commission of Matthew 28 and the call to encouragement of Hebrews 3:13 makes this clear. …

Second, every Christian should feel the responsibility to make disciples. … The Great Commission is for all which means discipling is for all.

Third, discipling can take place in small groups and in one-on-one relationships. … As a few gather or just a couple, Christians should take deliberate steps to apply the Gospel to each other’s lives.

Fourth, discipling requires commitment. Often the commitment comes in the form of time. I met this morning at 7am with four wonderful brothers for a time of discipling. I get paid to do this. These men were meeting before their workday began. That is commitment. Sometimes the commitment is emotional. Getting to know someone spiritually means being there to hear tough stuff. Sometimes it means listening while someone is obviously immature but they need to talk and process so they can grow. Sometimes it means being willing to challenge–which can make the relationship awkward. All of this is commitment, and that it costly.

Fifth, discipling is less about what you do and more about “life on life.” … But at the core of it all needs to be humans applying God’s Word so that sanctification takes place. This can be done in conversation at a ball game and it can be done through Bible study in the living room. The key is that the Word is being applied to life. This means discipling relationships may look different from person to person. Where does friendship end and discipling begin? It’s not always easy to tell. Regardless of the answer, in a discipling relationship lives are being uncovered, challenged, and encouraged.

Sixth, discipling may require discriminating between low-hanging and high-hanging fruit. … Strategy may lead you to invest your time in someone you have reason to believe will be likely to model well the gospel for others. This is all helpful but a word of caution is in order: sometimes the people God puts in our lives–whether they be low-hanging or high-hanging fruit–are exactly the people we should be serving.

Seventh, discipling takes time. … It never ends. We never graduate.

My Re:Train class that starts tomorrow is Leader as King and for class we’ve read a number of leadership books. As I read the books I reflected on the various jobs I’ve had. Working for a creative company, leadership looks very different from what it looked like working for a school district. Here’s an interesting interview with Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, the company who produced one of my favorite films of all time, Monster’s Inc. His thoughts on leading creatives is helpful as I look towards leading a church and hopefully building a culture of creative doxology.

Things to note

• People don’t like post mortems, but they are helpful. Be aware that people try to game the system and use them as another opportunity to praise the team
• “Hard rules don’t work”
• Pixar intentionally includes elements that young kids don’t understand because it’s a reflection of their world, that they’re daily figuring out new things
• “Fundamentally, successful companies are unstable and we need to operate in that unstable place.” This quote refers to dealing with the tension of competing interests in an organization.
• People with vision also need to draw the best out of other people
• It has to be OK for managers to learn of things out of order.
• It’s better for managers to fix error vs. trying to prevent it.

I love the church. I’ve been a part of it almost my whole life and I can bear witness to how God has changed me through it. That is why I’m very excited about our Re:Train class in two days – Missional Ecclesiology, taught by Southern Seminary professor Gregg Allison. The books we read in the pre-class work were engaging and challenging and I’m looking forward to in-class discussions that could find people in different camps (things like elder-ruled vs. elder-led, congregationalism, infant baptism, etc). As a primer for class, Dr. Allison has posted articles for the past two days on TheResurgence.com detailing six characteristics of the missional church.

The first article deals with trinitarian aspects of the church

1. Doxological: Oriented to the Glory of God

The church is doxological, or oriented to the glory of God. Like everything else that God has created—the heavens and the earth (Psalm 19:1; Psalm 108:5), the angelic realm (Psalm 29:1-2), and human beings as the divine image-bearers (Psalm 8:5), the church is characterized by an orientation to give God glory (Ephesians 3:21).

Specifically, the church is to be orthodoxological, or oriented to the proper (Gr. ortho) glory (Gr. doxa) of God. Implied in this imperative is the possibility for the church to engage in false glory giving, or idolatry (1 Corinthians 10:14; 1 John 5:20-21; 2 Corinthians 11:1-4). Manifestations of the church’s false gods include money, power, societal approbation, its pastor or its programs, political persuasion, size, and the like. The church must avoid such idolatry and be oriented to the proper glory of God.

2. Logocentric: Focused on the Word

The church is logocentric, or focused on the logos, the Word, understood in two senses to refer to Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, and Scripture, the inspired Word of God. As for the first sense, the eternal Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, took on the fullness of human nature and became the incarnate God-man, Jesus Christ John 1:1, John 1:14). He promised, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18), and he is its cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20) and its head (Ephesians 1:20-23). The church is centered on this incarnate Word of God.

In the second sense of logos, the church is Word-centered in that it focuses on Scripture, the inspired Word of God. This inspired, sufficient, necessary, truthful (inerrant), clear, authoritative, and productive Word announces salvation (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14), brings new birth (1 Peter 1:23), ignites faith (Romans 10:13-17), presents sound doctrine and equips the church for good works (2 Timothy 3:16-17) and, while providing cohesion and nourishment for the church, also destabilizes it by confronting its many sins. The church is centered on this inspired Word of God.

3. Pneumadynamic: Empowered by the Spirit

The church is pneumadynamic, or created, gathered, gifted, and empowered by the Holy Spirit. He inaugurated the first church on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-5), and this church in Jerusalem multiplied and expanded through the evangelistic centrifugal movement orchestrated by the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8). In these churches, the Spirit distributes spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:11) for “the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7), while also being the creator and sustainer of unity (Ephesians 4:3) by supplying genuine love among church members (Romans 15:30; Colossians 1:8) and fostering an atmosphere of righteousness, peace, and joy (Romans 14:17). Certain members are installed as leaders in the church by the appointment of the Holy Spirit (Acts 20:28; Acts 13:2-3). Thus, the church is Spirit-activated.

The second article deals with the “gatheredness and sendedness of the church”.

4. Covenantal: Relationship with God and Others

The church is covenantal, or gathered as members in new covenant relationship with God and in covenant relationship with each other. As for the first covenantal aspect, the new covenant:

1. is a unilateral agreement, established by God and God alone
2. creates a structured relationship between him and his covenant partners, Christ-followers “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9)
3. features binding obligations on the part of both God and his covenant partners (e.g., 2 Corinthians 6:16-18; Matthew 22:37-40; Matthew 28:19-10; Galatians 6:2)
4. is sealed by two covenantal signs, baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

As for the second covenantal aspect, the new covenant places church members into relationship with one another (Ephesians 4:17-5:14). This aspect may be best expressed by means of a church covenant, an agreement that binds those who affirm it to life together in the church.

5. Confessional: United by Common Faith

The church is confessional, or united by both personal confession of faith in Christ and common confession of the historic Christian faith. All church members must have a credible profession of faith in Christ as they have heard about his person and work through the gospel (Romans 10:8-13). This aspect is the act of faith that leads to salvation.

Additionally, the church as a corporate assembly regularly makes a common confession of the Christian faith (e.g., 1 Timothy 3:15-16), professing together the sound doctrine that unites the church (Ephesians 4:4-6) and brings it to maturity while keeping it from going adrift (Ephesians 4:13-15). This aspect is the content of the Christian faith that marks the church throughout the ages.

6. Missional: Divinely Called and Sent

As discussed above, the church is missional, or identified as the body of divinely-called and divinely-sent ministers to proclaim the gospel and advance the kingdom of God.

7. Historical Reality, Future Hope

The church is spatio-temporal-eschatological (here and not-here, oralready but not yet), or assembled as a historical reality (located in space and time) and possessing a certain hope and clear destiny (eschatology) while it lives the strangeness of its existence in the here-and-now. Christians meet together to worship God “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24) in local churches that, while they may be anywhere (that is, the location is not the issue; John 4:20-21), they are always somewhere also. This spatial characteristic means that the church takes up physical space—often a building—and prompts reflection on an important question: Does this physical space advance or obstruct what the church is seeking to be and do?

Legacy

The temporal element means that a church has a heritage that goes before the current manifestation of gathered people, and this legacy exerts a powerful influence for either good or bad on the current expression of the church. Additionally, if the Lord wills, the church will have a future that goes beyond the current manifestation of gathered people, and this hope prompts reflection on what kind of reputation this current expression of the church will bequeath to its next iteration.

Sojourners

Beyond its being “here,” the church is also “not here,” in that what the church experiences now is only a foretaste, a down payment, of a promise of yet more to come. The church lives in a “boundary epoch” between the two advents of Jesus Christ, so it is composed of strangers and aliens (1 Peter 1:11), sojourners who are in the world and for the world, but not of the world. The eschatological church awaits a greater reality (Revelation 21-22).

This week is our second Re:Train class, Missional Christology, taught by Dr. Bruce Ware, a professor of Christian Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Our pre-class work included reading four books

• Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ by John Piper
• Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance by Bruce Ware
• Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution by Jeffrey, Ovey, and Sach
• Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective: An Introductory Christology edited by Sanders and Issler

This class will be intense, but I’m really looking forward to learning more about Missional Christology. But, you may ask, what is Missional Christology? Well, here’s Dr. Ware’s explanation from TheResurgence.com.

“Missional Christology” focuses on aspects of the Person and Work of Jesus Christ which are central to the mission he fulfilled, by the ordination of the Father, in the power of the Spirit. Christology is relevant to the mission of the church because we are called to express and extend the mission of Christ. His mission is now ours.

The Father’s Plan

Understanding the Person and Work of Christ as missional is crucial and central to understanding Jesus and his work correctly. The mission of the Son began long before his going to the cross, or his baptism, or even his incarnation. The mission of the Son began in eternity past when the Father devised his plan by which the Son would be preeminent over the created world the Father designed, planned, and willed to create.

As the Father chose the Son to be his Agent by which creation would come into being, so the Father chose the Son to be his Agent by which re-creation also would come to pass. The Son’s mission, then, was from eternity past the mission of one thing—he sought in all that he thought and felt and said and did to do the will of his Father.

Divine Empowerment

But to accomplish this mission, the Son had to take on human nature and live as one of us. While he was fully God, he also was fully man. And as man, he needed divine empowerment to obey the Father, resist temptation, and fulfill the mission the Father sent him to carry out. The Spirit’s indwelling presence and power on the Son was necessary for the Son to accomplish what he did. Only as the Spirit-anointed Messiah could this Christ be our Savior.

To see the mission of the Son correctly requires that we see him in Trinitarian context. Both the Person and the Work of the Son are fully inexplicable apart from seeing the Son’s relation to the Father and the Spirit. Getting the Trinity right is crucial to getting the mission of the Son right.

Christ’s Mission

So, the Son was sent by the Father and empowered by the Spirit—but to do what? Here we realize that the Son’s mission was about regaining the lost creation through the salvation of the elect and his victory over the powers of darkness. At the core of the Son’s accomplishment are the dual biblical themes of penal substitution and Christus Victor. His payment for sin and victory over sin constitute the basis for the fulfillment of all that the Father sent the Son to do.

Spirit-Empowered Disciples

Amazingly, the mission of the Son does not end, though, with his efficacious death for sin or his victorious resurrection from the dead. Rather, this is where the mission of the Son moves more clearly from “singular” to “plural.” His singular sinless life and singular substitutionary death now give way to plural ministry as he now completes his mission with, and only with, the joint-work of his followers. Jesus’ last words to his disciples instruct them to wait in Jerusalem for what the Father has promised. They will be granted the very same Holy Spirit invading their lives as had been indwelling and empowering Christ throughout his life and ministry. They will proclaim his message, display his character, perform his deeds, and further his mission only as they are Spirit-empowered followers of the Son.

The Great Drama

In the end, he will return to complete his mission of remaking everything such that it becomes more glorious and magnificent than it was originally. Just as the second Adam surpasses the first, the new Eden surpasses the original. Christ will take his rightful place as Supreme Victor over all, and we, his saved followers and friends, will reign with him forever and ever.

What a story this “missional Christology” is! What drama. What majesty. What glory. To see the mission of the Son as his-mission-become-ours should result in stirring within us the longing to do as Christ did. As his mission was the mission of one thing—to do the will of his Father in the power of the Spirit—so ours likewise should be the mission of one thing—to follow our Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit, doing all we do in obedience to him, to the praise and glory of the Father.