Why This Blog

Ever since high school, I have loved studying history and religion. The historical, cultural, and religious dynamics that continue to influence why the world is the way it is fascinate me. I majored in History and Religion in College, and then continued my studies in graduate school. I decided to start writing this blog to help me process the history of the church from a missional perspective while taking a course at Fuller Seminary in the Spring of 2008. Overtime, I hope that this will not only be a resource for me but for others in understanding the dynamics that have shaped the church.

Every history is written from a particular perspective. None of us are neutral as we all see the world through own particular cultural biases, experiences, and values. My interest in this study not only comes from personal curiosity, but from my commitment to following Jesus in our culture today. As much as many of our contemporary expressions of Christianity bother me, I write as an insider to the Christian movement. When I was 15 years old, I had a life-changing experience with Jesus and have been involved with different ministries to invite others to participate in the life and mission of Jesus ever since.

Over time, I have found the ugliness of Christian history is one of the biggest obstacles to people desiring to follow Jesus. Not only has the church committed as many atrocities in the name of Jesus as it has beautiful deeds, but the church often seems judgmental, rigid, conforming, and oppressive. People so often are interested in Jesus but want nothing to do with the church—and for good reason.

I am writing this blog to understand and remember the history of the church in order to help my own witness to Jesus today. This is what I mean by missional– to be a participant in God’s hope-filled mission. I believe in the missio Dei, or God’s beautiful mission to redeem and restore every human life and the entire cosmos that has fallen short of His intentions. I believe we can see God’s intentions for humanity in the life of Jesus, we can know God’s heart and passion for the world through the cross, we can enter a journey of redemption by receiving His Spirit into our lives, and be apart of God’s movement of restoration by joining with Him in putting the world back together again until the final day when everything is made right.

In addition to my own personal commitment, I believe this missional study of the church is important for several reasons:

• to keep us from getting self-righteous–it’s really easy to the ugliness of the church without acknowledging the same thing in our own lives
• to root the “trend of missional church” history and Scripture. Too many people talk about missional like it is a new thing when God has been working His mission throughout the history.
• to understand the church as missionary in essence rather than institutional
• to gain an appreciation for the world Christian movement that is currently largest outside of Western culture. The church in the West is in decline and a minority on a global scale for the first time in 500 years.
• to understand how God has worked throughout history to better identify His work today

While I have started this website during my study of Paul Pierson’s course, The Dynamic Expansion of the People of God, I want to continue to compile and explore resources on this site over my lifetime. Please feel free to join me in this study.