Welcome to this 4th installment of Ask Caesar. Here’s this week’s question:
“Caesar, this missional lifestyle you write and speak about sounds so awesome, but I’m not an extrovert like you and your wife both seem to be. How do introverts like me fit into this whole missional thing?”
I’m glad you asked that Meg because I hear this a lot and I think it’s an important issue.
First, a little history about these personality types and how they differ.
Extraversion and Introversion are the preferences originally used in a personality inventory created by psychologist Carl Jung in the 1920s. Most people today may be more familiar with these terms in connection with the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory. These terms are unfortunately a bit outmoded, misunderstood and misused in that extraversion is not about being loud or the life of the party and introversion is not about being shy or anti-social. (more…)
Gossip is poison! And I’ve noticed gossip is one of those things these days that is so common in relationships, in our conversations and in our cultural experience, that we hardly even notice it anymore. Let me show you how to stop gossip.
I was thinking about how us humans have a predisposition to earn our worth by doing—do to be– to work hard for status, love, acceptance, and value.
I once heard it said that we always want to work FOR love instead of work FROM love. I want to remind you that in the beginning of the Story, God created humans in his own image on the sixth day, to be like him. And then on the next day—the very first full twenty-four hours of life for Adam and Eve—was a day off. A day of rest.
In the book of Exodus found in the Old Testament of the Bible, these ancient Hebrew writings show us that when God gives the fourth of what we commonly call the Ten Commandments, he says, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” He’s not talking about Ozzie Osbourne and his band… but he gives us a whole paragraph of instructions on this command while the other of the 10 Commandments are just mentioned briefly, such as, “You shall not steal or lie.”
It seems that God knew that we were going to want to work hard at earning and providing for ourselves, and that we would need a rhythm of reminders to help us restore balance and trust in him each week.God created everything, including us, pronounced it awesome, and then took a break to enjoy it all. That is his desire for us too—to live in a rhythm of resting in his finished work. So why do we so often treat this command of God’s as a suggestion? “Oh, um, yeah…I really need to do that more.” Or… “In the New Year, I am going to rest and take some time off. At least I hope to.”
But we would never say that about any of the other commands: “Next month I am going to cut my stealing and telling lies in half. I really need to.” Or, “I should definitely stop murdering people. I really gotta cut back.”
What?!
Why is it when it comes to the command to rest and then work, we so easily blow this one off? Maybe we get so busy we forget. We lose track of God’s ongoing goodness and provision, and begin thinking that we’re our own source of talent, energy, skills, and…well, everything.
God desires our lives to be a perpetual state of Sabbath, a non-stop resting in his completed work. On the cross, Jesus secured for us what we never could earn for ourselves, the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of our relationship with his Father. We can do nothing to add to this any more than we can cause plants to grow, control the weather, or cause God to love us any more than he already does.
Because of Jesus we can rest. Today. Every day. At a soul level.
So if you’ve been working hard and then resting… the next best time to start working from rest is now.
Let me know what keeps you from truly resting in a regular rhythm in the comments below.
Around the world thousands of churches have loads of people involved in what we’ve come to know as “small groups”. And that’s a good thing. But often these groups can become very inward focused–not a lot of outward or missional impulse. It’s time to shift those small groups to missional communities!
Transitioning small groups or community groups to missional communities is much more than a name change. It’s much more than a weekly meeting (of mostly Christians) and it’s not just a monthly service project added in and called “mission”. (more…)
I started dating Tina when we were both 16 years old and in high school. That was like, uh, 15 years ago? No actually, we have been together for well over half of our lifetime. And this month we celebrate 32 years of marriage. I can barely remember a “me” without Tina in my life. I love you honey!
We started out dating and became best friends. Throughout our marriage we’ve discovered that it is super-important to actively, intentionally work on staying friends. Having a regular, scheduled “date night” has been crucial to keeping the fires burning. We’ve found that if we don’t, we can end up only being in problem solving mode all the time and move from task to task and mini crisis to crisis and start to feel more like business partners than two people in love and marriage.
It’s happening. Churches are starting to shift their small groups to more mission-focused, incarnational communities. And many people I know are forming new “missional communities” among their family and friends. That is super encouraging!
But… Here’s the Problem:
Christians have spent years listening to sermons, studying theology and doing Bible studies, yet still feel intimidated or unable to naturally express the good news of the Gospel into normal life, conversations, and circumstances. We will never experience gospel-transformation and missional movement in our families and neighborhoods unless this changes. (more…)
