I saw this post on another blog & thought the quotes were pretty good.  I have seen this book but not read it yet.

A couple of quotes from Michael Frost’s Exiles…

We
cannot demonstrate Christlikeness at a distance from those whom we feel
called to serve.  We need to get close enough to people that our lives
rub up against their lives, and that they see the incarnated Christ in
our values, beliefs, and practices as expressed in cultural formes that
make sense and convey impact. (p 55)

I would argue that in today’s society, any attempt to model your
life on the life of Christ must include a genuine attempt to hang out
regularly in third places.  Genuine incarnational living demands it.
Missional proximity can best be developed in bars, pubs, gyms, grocery
stores, beauty parlors, community groups, and coffee shops. (p 59)

Link: Reformissionary.

My friend Shaun started an interesting discussion last week on his blog. He made a couple of posts on what it means to be relevant.  To be honest, I’m not sure he is finished or where exactly he is going with his thoughts, but his posts caused me to do some thinking today…while I was doing yard work – one of the two places that I seem to think very clearly.

When we think of "relevant" in the church biz we often very quickly think of what kind of music is used, what new schemes or programs have been implemented, or what type of teaching is used.  Do you use video or don’t you & if you do for what and for how long?  Do you have religious icons or don’t you and is it wired, tired, or expired to use candles? Pews or chairs?  Auditorium or in the round?  Lights up or down?  Video streams behind the text or on other screens as not to distract?  Should there be a choir and if so how many people…where should they be positioned and should they be in robes or not.  Can we do a hymn – the old way or a new way?  Should we champion EE, FAITH, ABC, Max Q, or whatever new, hottest best method ever to be used that is out (I’m not sure if that sentence made sense, but oh well).  Could you would you in a Home group?  Would you could you in a LIFE Group?  (LIFE groups were Sunday school classes at my former place of service.  They were LIFE groups because they provided Learning  Involvement  Fellowship and every once in a while for a very few Evangelism..you know I can live with mosquitoes but couldn’t God have made an acronym free world?)  1, 2, 3, 6, 12 lead worshipers or maybe lets just be quiet this week.  Anyway, the list could go on forever…

I just keep coming back to one thing. 

When you love the people around you, I’m not really sure what Sunday looks like really matters.  I mean really love them, really care about them, really spend time & resources on & with them.  Does the Sunday programming really matter.  If a person has been affected by the love of Yahweh through my life and they have been given hope, do they really care?  Or are they just happy to be loved and be on the road to peace?  Is all of the other stuff really just for us — in the name of being relevant to get those who aren’t there, there?  And are the ones we are being "relevant" for just church shoppers looking for their newest fix?

Love, hope, and the possibility of an authentic relationship, I think maybe are really the key.  Maybe???  Relevant always changes…constantly…but to borrow a line > "these three remain faith, hope, & love." — I’m not sure they ever tarnish or lose their impact.  Relevant doesn’t work because we eventually get tired and settle in.  We can’t keep up with the change(s).  We don’t have the mental energy or the resources.  And I’m not sure that we have to.

This whole thing started with Shaun and to follow in Shlog fashion, to be continued…

(not that I have a fascinating story coming next, but because I’m kinda overwhelmed with different ideas & need to work through my thoughts, but I end with two…)

1) if we are the message, then we don’t have to work nearly as hard to re-invent ways to tell the message.

2)  being relevant is not a creative process.  it is intuitively doing things that resonate with the heart of your community. you know these things because you are where your people are.  this means that you have to be living, loving, hoping, dreaming, playing, talking, sharing… with them – not planning for them.

Red-faced because the best pictures of its
glory days are missing, NASA said Tuesday it was launching an official search for more than 13,000 original tapes of the historic Apollo moon missions.

What’s missing are the never-before-broadcast
clear original videos – not the grainy converted pictures the world
watched on television more than three decades ago.

The tapes aren’t lost, insists the NASA official put in charge of the search. But he doesn’t know where they are.

Most likely they are somewhere at the
sprawling Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., which
misplaced the tapes originally. But they also could be stored somewhere
else.

Read the rest of the article here: NASA Searching for Moon Landing Tapes – Forbes.com.