I saw this video over at ChurchCrunch and I think we can learn a lot from it. This is is Twitter’s co-founder, Evan Williams talking about how Twitter was originally a marginal side-project based on little more than a hunch and curiosity.
The project bloomed, and users found all kinds of creative ways to use the simplicity of Twitter to innovate and add value. Don’t know what Twitter is? You especially need to watch…
It’s worth your time. My thoughts after the jump…
If you get up in front of people and talk long enough you are going to say something stupid. This is why they invented PR handlers and speech writers. I don’t have a PR handler or a speech writer so I occasionally put my size 10 1/2 in mouth. Like the time I was trying to recruit Sunday School volunteers by convincing them that the job was easy. I did so by saying, “It’s so easy, even a person who is blind in one eye could do it.” It get’s better… our Sunday School coordinator is, as I soon learned, blind in one eye. It was like the “It’s so easy a caveman can do it” commercials only not at all funny. Thankfully, she has a great sense of humor. Otherwise, I’d be making fries at McDonalds right now. (no offense to the fine staff at McDonalds)
I actually got a little misty-eyed watching this. Not because of the sentimentality of the news man, but because this is a beautiful illustration of the church being what Jesus intended it to be. The key moment here is when the convicts say that every other team they played (presumably some even “Christian” teams) treated them like icky people that could transmit the sin-coodies if touched.
Thanks to one coach thinking like Jesus, and a group of Christians responding like Jesus, a group of men that the world had given up on discovered that Jesus offers them something different.
This is the essence of what it means to be “missional”.
[tags]missional, church, football, outreach[/tags]
This is David Fitch and Ed Stetzer having a great conversation about what it means to be a missional church in the secular West. The term “missional” and “Miseo Dei” has gotten pretty muddy these days. It’s become a bit of a junk drawer term that tends to mean “everything we don’t like about modernism and mega-churches”. But this isn’t just a clarifying conversation for those who are confused about the terms. I think it’s a pretty forward thinking conversation.
What I found particularly helpful in this video was the discussion about “attractional” vs. “missional” churches. I like how they both avoid allowing the conversation to degrade into a rehash of the all-too-familiar culture wars debate between the hymn singers and the head bangers.
Check it out. It’s worth your time. But, what I’m really interested in is your thoughts after watching it. This is a topic that the American Church MUST engage in.
Ed Stetzer & David Fitch – a missional conversation from Missional Tribe on Vimeo.
[tags]ed stetzer, david fitch, missional, attractional, video, church[/tags]
