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Also
in Surface Mailing:
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June
21-24, 2009, RENOVARÉ
International
Conference Promotions
GROWING
EDGES
Dear
Friends,
Jesus never mastered the secrets of management
success. It is quite clear that if he had
brought in professional help—an advisor
or consultant—he would have run his organization
very differently.
Just consider the facts. Jesus had no public
ministry until the age of 30; he invested
almost all his adult life in a building
trade. He built his leadership team out
of young, inexperienced men—short-tempered
fishermen, impetuous resistance fighters,
and grafting tax-gatherers, drawn from his
following of peasants and low-life. He confined
his time almost exclusively to out-of-the-way
rural communities in small town Palestine;
he was more Podunk, Tennessee, than Washington,
DC. He never published a book, wrote a curriculum,
initiated a building project, established
a foundation, or raised an endowment. His
extensive preaching produced twelve committed
disciples and perhaps a hundred or so more-or-less
fringe followers.
And even after the glory and wonder of the
resurrection, the first act of these missionary
apostles sent out into all the world . .
. was to spend a month hiding behind locked
doors. Frankly, it is hard to imagine Jesus
being invited to speak at a church growth
seminar.
Jesus' Measureless
Passion . . .
Jesus’ priorities lay elsewhere, of course.
His benchmarks were never attendance, finances,
programs, and expansion. Instead he lived
out his own teaching, that the greatest
torah (that is, wisdom, direction,
or rule) is whole-heart, whole-mind, and
whole-body love for God, and self-sacrificial
love for other people. He did not have measures
of success, only measureless passion for
glorifying God and breathing new life into
shattered human beings.
Eugene Peterson’s recent book, The Jesus
Way, draws from the Old Testament a
series of cautionary tales for today’s church,
which is too often trying to achieve “Jesus’
Goals” independently of walking the Jesus
Way. We are passionate about the visionary
aims of Jesus Christ: the evangelization
of the world, the reaching of nations for
Christ. But we seem very quickly to be swept
up in a whirlwind of methodologies, techniques,
programs, and processes that bear little
resemblance to the way of life and ministry
demonstrated by Christ and his disciples
in the pages of Scripture. Eugene presents
us with a challenging picture of what the
Jesus Way might mean for the contemporary
people of God, and shows very cogently how
that same Jesus Way is also found displayed
in the flawed but faithful men and women
in Israel’s history. It is a fascinating
book, and not always a comfortable read.
Exploring What
it Might Mean to Walk Together—The Jesus
Way
We are eagerly anticipating the opportunity
to explore this theme in much greater depth
at next year’s RENOVARÉ
International Conference on The Jesus
Way: recovering the lost content of discipleship
(San Antonio, Texas, June 21-24, 2009).
Eugene will be delivering our opening keynote
address, initiating a conversation with
an incredible range of Christian thinkers,
writers, and speakers—including Richard
Foster, Dallas Willard, Becoming Like Jesus
Perspective John Ortberg, Emilie Griffin,
Robert Gelinas, Juanita Rasmus, James Bryan
Smith, Mindy Caliguire, Joshua Choonmin
Kang, myself, and about 40 more authors
and speakers. There will be eight general
sessions, almost 40 Individual Workshops,
and seven unique Workshop Tracks, all carefully
exploring from different angles what it
might mean to walk together in the Jesus
Way.
This issue of Perspective might help
whet your appetite for that conversation.
We have included (among other things) an
extract from The Jesus Way and an
interview with Eugene Peterson about the
ideas behind the book. I sincerely hope
you will consider joining us for the conference
itself. I can make you some rather unusual
promises. I promise that you will not
discover magic secrets to transform
your life overnight, you will not
learn techniques and methods for converting
the world, you will not be introduced
to the latest program, product, or gimmick
to make your church the hottest thing since
sliced bread. And I promise that you will
be invited to consider with us how our lives
and our churches might look if we were more
interested in persons not crowds, in hidden
holiness not public visibility, in sacrifice
not success, in spiritual formation not
structured programs. Not an easy conversation,
to be sure, but long overdue—and many of
us are more than ready. I hope that might
include you.
Every blessing,
Christopher S. Webb, TSSF
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