In all of the discussion and debate revolving around the issue of contextualization most will agree that knowing the truth of the gospel is not enough, but that we are called by God to also make it known to make disciples. As the Apostle Paul wrote, "... how can they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe without hearing about Him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent?" (Rom 10:14, 15 HCSB).

The desire for contextualization is often driven by a hope for clear gospel communication. (I've touched on this a bit in part 1 and part 2 of this series.) However, agreement on our calling to make the gospel known to make disciples will only help us to see the need for contextualization if we define it properly.

Contextualization is not so easy to define because people use the word differently in different traditions. Yet, as I did when defining culture, I think it is important to consider how evangelicals define and use a term if we are to have any meaningful conversation in the evangelical community. Thus, we look again to The Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, where Gilliland explains that contextualization is a tool to "to enable, insofar as it is humanly possible, an understanding of what it means that Jesus Christ, the Word, is authentically experienced in each and every human situation" (Gilliland, Dean. "Contextualization." In The Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions. Ed. Scott Moreau. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2000).

There are other variants of that view and I will not try to address each one. For that, I would suggest reading Contextualization: Meanings, Methods, and Models by David Hesselgrave and Edward Rommen. And, it should tell us something that whole books would be written on the subject.

Thus, all definitions of contextualization address communication. Gilliland says elsewhere, "Contextualization is, first of all, concerned with communicating by appropriate and understandable means that salvation is in Jesus only." (Cited by Darrell Whiteman in "The Function of Appropriate Contextualization in Mission" in Appropriate Christianity, edited by Charles Kraft. William Carey Library, 2005).

Though communication is not all that contextualization includes (as subsequent installments will discuss), it is a central part of the concern.

What is Contextualization?

Most generally, to contextualize is to place something in a particular context. Thus, I would say that any definition of contextualization must include presenting the unchanging truths of the gospel within the unique and changing contexts of cultures and worldviews. This requires us to retain the nature of the truth and the integrity of the message while explaining and applying such things in the necessarily unique or specific ways that enable hearers to understand and respond.

Maybe Pictionary will help me make this point.

Most of us are familiar with the classic party game, Pictionary. The "artist" gets a name of a person, place, or thing and he has to draw the picture so that his team can guess it, without ever using any words to help. Imagine if I was playing a game of Pictionary at a party. I am assigned to draw the person President George W. Bush. So, in efforts of simplicity and speed, I draw a picture of a bush. I'm playing with a pretty quick crowd, so they guess it right away. "BUSH!!!"

They've partially got the answer, but not all of it, so it doesn't count. So, I start pointing at the bush and make hand gestures, moans, and grunts (but no words). I use my hands to say, "that's right, but more." Again, the crowd is smart, so they can see the clue has something to do with a bush so they start guessing. "Tree!... Plant!... Green!... Photosynthesis!... Oxygen to carbon dioxide!... Krebs Cycle!" (I told you they were smart.) Now, they're getting way off base, but I can't say anything, so I just keep pointing at that bush. I point at it harder and harder and keep gesturing and grunting and, at this point, I'm getting mad.

The others never get it. I know what it is. I know they should know it. It is so obvious. But they don't.

I get frustrated, and yet, I never gave another clue.

Too often, I think this is what many evangelicals look like in the twenty-first century. For example, many today in American culture want to talk about "spirituality," but are unfamiliar with the gospel and not warm to the idea of spiritual absolutes. Some well-meaning Christians hear the spirituality talk and want to move people to the gospel, but the unexplained theological language and the old evangelistic approaches that were targeting a different worldview amount to noise that leaves the hearer in the dark trying to guess. It's like we, as believers, start communicating through our gestures and grunts, but they don't get it. We wind up giving clues that lead them in circles, and not to the truth. We know the answer, and we want them to know the answer, but we just can't make a solid connection.

Without contextualization, the words and arguments we use can amount to ineffective clues.

We Already Contextualize

Let's be clear about this issue of contextualization; everyone does it. Everyone. Whether or not they use the term, all have contextualized, because every presentation of the gospel must be given to a particular audience, in a particular culture. If you share the gospel with others, then you are contextualizing. You either do it properly, or poorly. For example, you do it poorly when you are attempting to share Christ with the unchurched person in front of you, but present the gospel as if you're speaking to someone who is already familiar with the claims of Jesus.

You can't just jump into "Jesus died to save you, and his resurrection demonstrates that he is who he said he is" because the person first needs to know about the one true God, their sin before him, and who Jesus is and what he has done. A person must first know they are lost before they will be found. I am fairly certain most of you will agree with the previous two sentences. If you do, you believe in contextualization, which is placing the gospel in a particular context. We may argue about the amount of contextualization, but we cannot argue with the need for such (assuming the definition mentioned earlier).

We can also turn the example around. The de-churched southerner who has grown up in an evangelical church where the Scripture is preached might not need convincing that the Bible is God's word, or that he or she is a sinner, but he or she may simply need clarity on the new birth, or how one responds to the gospel (personally via faith and repentance).

Contextualized Communication and Clear Gospel Proclamation

Contextualization is necessary because while the human condition and the gospel remain the same, people have different worldviews which in turn impact how they interpret themselves, the world and the things you say. People who care about contextualization care because they want a clear gospel proclaimed AND understood.

It's one thing to know the gospel, but it's another to make the gospel known. And making the gospel known is more complicated in America today than it was in decades past. Less people today have a general Christian orientation, or even a shared Judeo-Christian ethic. This means concepts (truths) like sin, death and hell cannot be assumed. So when we want to communicate the gospel and deal with categories like God, man, Christ and faith we must not only know them well, but also how to effectively make them known to the people God has sent us. Knowing where to begin and how to explain the truth to particular people are issues of contextualization.

We are already contextualizing. Let's do it well.

I've written quite a bit about my friends at the Upstream Collective. Their goal is to help churches "think and act like missionaries." One of the ways they do this is by leading vision trips to urban centers in Europe and beyond. These trips allow church leaders and planters to see first-hand the needs and opportunities for direct church involvement in God's global mission. I've had the pleasure of helping to lead several of these trips, teaching practical missiology and providing running commentary as we interact with missionaries, pastors, and national church planters. This week, we're in London and Paris with a group of more than twenty.

Many people won't consider Europe to be a mission field, but the veneer of nominal religion is wearing thin as once-packed Cathedrals are turned into museums, restaurants, and even mosques.Only 4.2% of the population profess to follow Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, as per the European Spiritual Estimate. According to the Upstream Collective, a trip to Europe can provide a glimpse into the cultural future of the United States.

These stats should get our attention, but of course there is hope. God is calling men and women from all over the world to plant their lives in Europe for the sake of the gospel. Unreached peoples are being engaged, the gospel is being proclaimed, lives are being transformed, and churches are being planted. Churches are learning to think and act like missionaries.

In the following video, Upstream Collective co-founder, Caleb Crider, introduces the concept behind their "Jet Set" vision trips. To learn more about how your church might be more directly involved in missions, visit theupstreamcollective.org

As you read this, I'm heading off to London with Daniel Montgomery and a team of pastors for the next Upstream Collective trip to London and Paris. It's a week long interaction with different European cultures and churches in order to see what God is doing and how American Christians and churches can get involved.

From the Upstream Collective blog,

The Eurobarometer Poll 2005 indicates 20 and 33 percent of the United Kingdom and French populations, respectively, does not believe a spirit, god or life force exists, while 40 and 27 percent do. On average, 38 and 34 percent of the polled audiences believes in a god.

Less people are attending churches in Western Europe. Forty-seven percent of the French population claims agnosticism, according to 2003 studies. Other predominant religions on the continent include Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Hinduism. Of these, their largest populations are found in the United Kingdom and France.

You can follow the happenings of the Jet Set Tour here, and at the Upstream Collective blog as well as at @edstetzer and @TheUpstreamC on Twitter.

I am glad to take several weeks each year in partnership with the IMB to connect pastors with global mission opportunities. Stay tuned at the blog this week for more information.

See how you're paying attention? Well, it's no bait and switch-- but there is a hitch. There are books to be given away and we will do so in July. We are only 2 months away from the misisonSHIFT conference and we wanted to give away some books to the attendees.

The next 100 people to register for missionSHIFT will receive 4 free books on mission, leadership, and the church. (If you show up and don't get the one you want, there will be "trading." Those who have already registered will get these books as well.)

Some of the books that will be given away are:
Mentor Like Jesus by Regi Campbell
TransformMissional Coaching by Steve Ogne and Tim Roehl
Augustine as Mentor by Edward Smither
Entrusted with the Gospel by Andreas Kostenberger
Breaking the Missional Code by Ed Stetzer and David Putman
Bonhoeffer Speaks Today by Mark Devine
Evangelism Handbook by Alvin Reid
Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger
Killing Cockroaches by Tony Morgan
Breaking the Discipleship Code by David Putnam

I'm really looking forward to missionSHIFT, and believe this is more than just another conference. There will be times for dialogue, community, and family. Our desire is to speak into church communities to exhort them to be on mission from those communities.

I'm eager to hear from Matt Chandler, Alan Hirsch, and J.D. Greear in the main sessions. And, we are stacked when it comes to breakout lab leaders: Matt Carter, Dan Kimball, Linda Bergquist, Neil Cole, Jeff Curtis, and Daniel Montgomery just to name a few. (Be sure to see the website for the full list.)

Go to the website today and get registered! You will want to be among the next 100 registrants.

We are doing lots of introductions for missionSHIFT this week. Already this week we have introduced Jeff Curtis and J.D. Greear. Today, we introduce and interview Daniel Montgomery.

Daniel Montgomery is the founding pastor of Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, KY. He has been married to Mandy since 1998 and they have three children. He is pursuing a doctor of ministry from Reformed Theological Seminary.

At this summer's missionSHIFT Conference Daniel will teach the lab Missional Preaching. He describes the content as: Missional preaching is about preaching the whole gospel and the whole church to the whole world. This lab will deal with the theology as well as the practice of preaching missionally - providing concrete tools, inventories and guidelines for doing so.

J.D. Greear, did his PhD work in Christian and Islamic theology at Southeastern Seminary. He now pastors a rapidly growing multi-campus church of 4000 in the Raleigh-Durham area. The Summit Church, has undertaken the goal of planting 1000 churches in the next 40 years. Currently, they have 12 plants around the world. J.D. has authored a number of publications, including Breaking the Islam Code. He lives in Durham, NC with his wife Veronica and his four ridiculously cute kids, Kharis, Alethia, Ryah and Adon.

J.D. is one of the main speakers at the missionSHIFT Conference this summer.

Dr. Jeffrey D. Curtis is originally from California, where he pastored several churches and then served as a team leader in a denominational role. He is finishing up a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership from Regent University and has a D.Min. from Golden Gate Seminary, where he now serves as an adjunct professor of Christian Education. He currently serves as a church consultant offering help to churches in issues of mission and leadership.

At missionSHIFT, Jeffrey will offer share in a main session and in a breakout lab on Missional Leadership to discuss the leadership principles that facilitate transformation of communities of faith in an increasingly culturally diverse world.

Last time we looked at the influence of missio Dei theology by examining its sway on the emphases of one of today's leading missiologists, Darrell Guder. This week we turn our attention to a new crop of leading missional practitioners that have also begun re-envisioning the posture of the church within the emerging cultural context: Alan Roxburgh and Alan Hirsch.

The Two Alans

Two of the better known thinkers in the missional church conversation are named "Alan." When we started doing our three part series (part 1, 2, and 3) about "mission Al," we noticed this and made a reference to it in the videos. Both are mentioned in the "Missional Family Tree" I mentioned in my last missiology post. Their ideas warrant consideration.

I thought it might be helpful to use the "Monday is for Missiology" series and look at some of the leading missional practitioners in the 21st century-- names that many of you will recognize.

So why look at the leading voices in the missional conversation today? In a time where it is "en vogue" to be missional, many Christian and leaders treat the models and modes suggested by missional authors "carte blanche." I think it is important to look at the substance (not just the popularity) of these practitioners to consider their views and advance the conversation.

There is much to be gleaned from their writing and speaking and I think you will find it interesting how many of these individuals find the impetus of their thought in 20th century missions history. I specifically want to look at the influence of missio Dei theology by examining its sway on the emphases of today's leading missiologists and missional church practitioners. Today, we look at Darrell Guder...

Guder, Newbigin, Bosch and the Genesis of Missional Terminology

Neil Cole is an experienced pastor and movement leader. Aside from founding the Awakening Chapels, which are reaching young postmodern people in urban settings, he is also a founder of Church Multiplication Associates (CMA) which has grown to thousands of churches in 40+ states and 40+ nations in only 10 years and is one of the key foundation layers of the simple church movement that is rapidly growing around the world. Currently Neil serves as CMA's executive director. He is responsible for resourcing church leaders with ministry tools to reproduce healthy disciples, leaders, churches and movements.

Matt Chandler serves as lead pastor of The Village Church in Highland Village, TX. He describes his 7 year tenure at The Village as a re-planting effort where he was involved in changing the theological and philosophical culture of the congregation. The church has witnessed tremendous growth from 160 people to over 5000 including two satellite campuses (Denton and Northway). Prior to accepting the pastorate at The Village, Matt had a vibrant itinerant ministry for over ten years where he spoke to hundreds of thousands of people in America and abroad about the glory of God and beauty of Jesus. His greatest joy outside of Jesus is being married to Lauren and being a dad to their three children, Audrey, Reid, and Norah.

Matt will be one of our main speakers at the missionSHIFT conference this summer.

Ed: Many of us have been keeping track, watching the video updates, and praying for you, Lauren, and the kids. The first and most obvious question is how is your health this week?

Continue reading missionSHIFT: Introducing Matt Chandler.

Randy Nabors is the pastor of New City Fellowship in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His goal in life is "To live out Philippians 1:20 & 21, to raise up indigenous urban disciples, to motivate, challenge, equip and mentor disciples into urban mission, especially in the African American community, and to participate and encourage holistic missions around the world."

Randy will be leading a lab at the missionSHIFT conference this summer called, Missional Justice, or "Be there when you get there" that will explore "the strange notion that we are to be what we proclaim, by what we practice and how we live and what we seek to accomplish. Reclaiming our Christian heritage that mercy and justice are not only necessary results of Gospel proclamation but are integral to its message, and rightfully give it creditable weight."

Ed: How you came to the work of New City Fellowship and what all fills your days?

My wife and I grew up in the projects of Newark, NJ in the sixties. This was a time of intense racial and social change, culminating in the riots of 1967. We came to Christ through an urban church that preached a Gospel that was for all people, and the church began to gather a harvest of all kinds of people. It identified with the city, with the poor, and celebrated the inter-racial nature of the result. In the mercy of God I was given an opportunity to go to college and went first to Biola in California, and then transferred to Covenant College on Lookout Mountain.

While at Covenant I became involved in a mission Sunday School in the Black community of Chattanooga, TN. I began a street ministry as part of that work, which developed into a para-church ministry of evangelism, discipleship, and economic development. Soon worship services began and I preached there until leaving for seminary in St. Louis, Mo. I was called back after graduation to organize the mission into a church in 1976.

I continue to believe in the vision of our church, "To be a cross cultural worshipping community, centered in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, producing discipled believers who will become God's instruments of grace, justice and mercy in the community and around the world." Racial reconciliation has been a major theme in my ministry and life as it is an evidence of justice in the face of a history of racism in our nation. Ministries of mercy that lead to economic development are inherent in the dynamics of our ministry.

Ed: What do you see in the church that is giving you hope that we are doing better at engaging in God's mission?

My feelings about the Church in the USA, and around the world, are fairly mixed when it comes to engaging in God's mission. My feelings about my own congregation are more hopeful, except for the weight of the daily struggle of life in terms of sin, the attacks of Satan, and our failure to live in the power of the Holy Spirit. That is the existential ambiguity which I think in inherent in the Christian life. What does not have to be inherent is living for the wrong vision, which is where my mixed feelings come in about the Church around the world. America's historical struggle with race, and with the reality of poverty, has given many our national congregations the opportunity to live out and cry out for justice, and to practice mercy. This has given a credibility to many congregations that they did not have, or do not have when simultaneously preaching a life changing/soul saving Gospel but practicing discrimination or materialistic idolatry. In God's mercy to the American church the Lord has used disaster to motivate many congregations to bring relief to those who have been devastated in various places, and this has helped change our congregations for the better. The rise of non-Western churches to speak for themselves has helped the American church learn of its' own cultural narrowness. The wrong vision has all too often incipiently subverted the Gospel by allowing the egotism of preachers, the glory seeking of congregations, the arrogance of western culture (through spiritualizing and normalizing its' cultural forms of worship), and the shallowness of numbering decisions to substitute for real impact and social change in the communities in which we planted churches.

When I first came to believe that Christ had called me to preach I knew that I never wanted to invite anyone to a church about which I would be embarrassed. What I mean is that I didn't want any non-believer to accuse us of hypocrisy, that we didn't love people, that we weren't earnest about reconciliation or mercy to the hungry and hurting. I also didn't think church should be boring. I don't think anyone could accuse Jesus of being inconsistent with what he taught but so much of Christianity seemed so different from what the Master taught and lived. One of my greatest joys and hopes in my own congregation is the amazing living example of a mixed race congregation, with a cross cultural worship form, while trying to be radically committed to the Scriptures. I am not ashamed to invite anyone there, nor am I nervous about anyone looking too close. We are sinners, that is certainly true, but I think that as much as it depends on us we are seeking the heavenly vision.

Ed: Can you tell the readers an example of where you and your wife are seeking to live missionally?

My wife is African American and I am white. In January 2011 we will have been married for 40 years. Our marriage is very much a part of what we believe Christ has done for us. We are not a perfect picture of reconciliation, but we are a perfect picture of strugglinh to live it out, with all of its' trials and setbacks. This is true not only as black and white, but simply as man and woman, person and person. We live out our life in ministry, wherever this vision takes us. My wife has always been committed to the call of God for mission on her life. I remember when, shortly after she had come to faith in Christ, we went to a youth missionary conference together. The preacher spoke from Isaiah 6:8, and then he gave a challenge for anyone who was ready to go if God should call them to stand up. Joan was the first one on her feet, and I somewhat sheepishly stood up after her. Later I asked her, "why were you so fast to stand up?" She looked at me like I was a little mentally slow, "why wouldn't you go if God asked you?" she replied. Her new found faith made it that simple. God called me to plant a church and grow it, to model what it ought to be, and to mobilize others to do wonderful things in the world. Though I am inadequate, and often fumble my way through, and far too often sin in various ways, that is what my wife and I try to do. We are trying to understand grace, and the power that it has in the Gospel, to remake us and help us to endure. Not just for our own personal spiritual development, but for the Kingdom that invades the hearts and minds of people, and brings righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit not only individually, but to communities.

Are you registered for the missionSHIFT conference? You don't want to miss it. Register here.

Note: I usually post these on Monday but I am a bit slow this week... so I changed the blog post title but kept the graphic.

Here on the blog we were recently looking at the relationship between evangelism and social justice and connecting it to the ongoing discussion of the missional church. My guess is that many evangelicals will find it interesting that the reaction to this shift in attitude from individuals such as Donald McGavran, John Stott, and Billy Graham was across the spectrum. Some saw justice as an implication of the Gospel, others as a "facet" of the gospel "diamond," and others as a co-equal of the Gospel. We will look at the spectrum of belief more in depth later.

One of the things which I am very glad about when I consider what will happen at the missionSHIFT conference this July concerns its focus. It is too easy for ministry conferences to use the same metrics as a sporting event:

Number of attendees + conference fees x publicity = Success of the conference

But when Brad Andrews suggested that we ask a worship pastor to be with us for the conference, I thought it was a great idea. Our hope is to have a gathering that takes blog comment streams, wrestling over ideas, and missional manifesto conversations to then culminate in times of worshiping the Christ for His ruling a kingdom that will never end. And for that, we need someone who loves the local church and leads in one regularly.

So let me introduce Michael Bleeker.

It's time for another installment of "Monday is for Missiology" and I want to thank those of you who are engaging in this important conversation around important missional themes.

Last week (and the week before... and the week before that!), we looked at salvation. I focused in on one of the most dominant and contentious personalities in 20th century missions history, J.C. Hoekendijk, and his influence on the discussion related to salvation. I tried to bring some historical perspective that I think is important lest history repeat itself. In doing so, I scanned the mission drift of the missio dei movement in the 1970's church, while many of you responded all over the blogosphere. (I will list some of those responses in the coming days.)

Over the next couple of weeks, I thought I would put out some ideas about another significant debate in the missional conversation that requires our attention: the relationship between social justice and evangelism. Today, we are going to look at the historical impetus for this discussion and its evolution into the social gospel in the late 19th century and early 20th century (further back than that missio dei movement but with some similarities). Next week, we will look at the evangelical response to this shift.

Brad and his college sweetheart of 10 years, Holly, live in St. Louis, Missouri and have four children: Cooper (8), Margo (6), Sloan (4), and Everett (2). After serving as a teaching professor of emerging trends in the church and worship at a Christian university, and a part of The Journey in St. Louis for the last three years, Brad is headed to the urban core of Tulsa, Oklahoma in May to launch mercyview, a network of missional communities and expressions that he prays will birth a regional movement in the High and Central Plains of the United States He writes about the convergence of the Gospel, the church, mission, and culture at his blog, transformission, which also serves as a missional "aggregator" that highlights the "best of" missional thought in the blogosphere. He is serving as the conference architect for missionSHIFT. I'm excited to have him talk about worship-- he brings a unique and helpful perspective.

Brad will be leading a lab at missionSHIFT Conference titled, "A Prelude to Sentness: Gathering the Scattered Church for Worship without Blurring Mission." He describes his Lab below.

Why did Jesus spend so much time with the disciples prior to sending them? It's in the context of being gathered around the person of Jesus that we are changed, sharpened, refined and made ready for mission. Unfortunately, our corporate worship many times subverts mission when pressed through the filter of our "ism's": individualism, reductionism, professionalism, and traditionalism. We will look through the lens of Scripture, theology, and history to discern how to shape a gathering that is spiritually formative, places the gathering in the context of a holistic church experience, and keeps us from the distractions that would take us from mission

.

I asked Brad a few questions as a way of introducing him to you all before the missionSHIFT Conference.

Jeff Vanderstelt is a pastor and an equipper of church leaders. He served in Youth Ministry for 14 years and as a pastor for over 7 years. Presently, he is one of the pastors of Soma Communities, a multi-expression church and one of the founders and leaders of the GCM Collective. Jeff is married to his wife of 17 years, Jayne, with whom he loves and shepherds their three children in Gospel life and mission.

Jeff will be leading a lab at the missionSHIFT Conference titled, "Transitioning a Church to Missional." There he will unpack the principles and leadership qualities needed to move a church family through the process of recognizing God's mission and engaging in it. Jeff will share some of his experiences of leading Soma Communities and how your church can be on mission in its context.

Jeff shares some of his passion right at a well-received session at the Verge Conference:

Ed: Soma Communities is not a typical church. Or the typical name for a church. Tell us a little about the work of Soma.

Continue reading missionSHIFT: Introducing Jeff Vanderstelt.

I want to thank those of you who are engaging in this important conversation around these missional themes. Last week, we looked one of the most dominant and contentious personalities in 20th century missions history, J.C. Hoekendijk, and his influence on the discussion. We also scanned the drift of the missio dei movement in the 70s to include such things as a "preferential option" for the poor and the redefinition of the mission. In all of this, we observed an expanded definition of salvation to include issues of social justice, one with which evangelicals would struggle-- and often reject.

In response to our big question ("how is God at work outside the church?"), Jared Wilson wrote an entry entitled, "God is God is the Church is the Church" and David Fitch reciprocated with, "The church's role within the missio Dei - Yes, we still need the church."

I think it is interesting how often the answer to the salvation question would be, "Well that sounds like an evangelical definition of salvation-- too narrow." And, that is partly the point. Evangelicals and mainliners had a divergent view of salvation, which many evangelicals today are reconsidering-- and sounding more like mainliners.

Today, I wanted to hit the theme one more time. I am going to look at two different approaches in the relationship between salvation and social justice that evolved in the aftermath of the 70s "redefinition," and then look at the Scriptures and the story of Zaccheus to inform us on how we might define salvation Biblically.

Ron Sider, Salvation, and Social Justice

Joe Thorn is the founding and Lead Pastor of Redeemer Fellowship in Saint Charles, IL and is the author of the forthcoming book, Notes to Self, to be released by Crossway Publishing and ReLit. He and his wife Jen are parents to Katherine, Elias, Madeline and are now expecting their fourth.

Joe will be leading a Lab at missionSHIFT called, "Subverting Suburbia: The Missional Church in the Suburban Context." There he will address the often blurry line between city and suburb, and dispel some of the myths of the suburbs while making a case for the need for more suburban, gospel-centered, mission-driven churches through planting and revitalization.

Ed: Tell us briefly how you came to the ministry at Redeemer Fellowship and what all fills your days?

Redeemer Fellowship was started in 2007 as two churches disbanded, and then banded together to start something entirely new. This is the healthiest church I've been a part of as it seeks to maintain a confessional identity, relational and missional character, and gospel centrality. As the Lead Pastor, I focus on the ministry of the Word, leadership development and vision casting. At this stage I can still meet with all our newcomers, and I love unpacking our vision for a gospel centered church in the 'burbs.

Ed: What do you see in the church that is giving you hope that we are doing better at engaging in God's mission?

Continue reading missionSHIFT: Introducing Joe Thorn.

Back in February I spoke at the Verge Missional Community Conference on making disciples. My topic was the need for obedience-based discipleship that moves from knowing to doing. Verge was an amazing gathering I was happy to be a part of. The HD versions of the preaching should be available in a few weeks, but for now you can check out my session via youtube.