Sublime

So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without Him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us

The research indicates that Americans today are seeking connection with others who share their values. But they’re not involved in communities that typically provide deep ongoing connection, membership, and life-honoring rituals. Best-selling author and marketing guru Seth Godin writes that people today want connection more than material things. He

contemporary Christianity views the marketplace as little more than a venue for generating ministry funds for the local church. This is a tragedy that has separated most of the Christian community from most of the ministry opportunity! When Jesus commands, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel,” he makes no exception for the workplace.

We can’t keep trying to improve the mechanics of the system because they’re not the problem. The problem is that the system is doing what it should do because it is energized by a badly shaped gospel.

However, this is the whole point of embracing the gift mindset and practicing generosity. It exposes our default scripts about how we think the world should work and opens us up to new possibilities.

The huge challenge for the Euro-tribal churches is how we come to release our techniques, management, and desire to fix the church, and instead believe it is God who is acting out ahead of us, particularly in our neighborhoods.

Do we love God and others enough to drop the pretense and just be ourselves? Only the gospel simultaneously provides the humility and the confidence the pastor needs to be his real self. The pastorate is no place for image-managing, for worrying about our own PR. In any event, if everybody likes you, something’s wrong, and if everybody hates you,

Ministry Design Principle 4: Narrate God’s story of change throughout life.