One of their main attacks is that we have been preaching “another Jesus” that is a crime I am happy to plead guilty to. I don’t want to preach a Jesus who wants to make us comfortable and happy while he meets our every need. I am abhor the emasculated Christ I hear about in so many comfortable churches. I want to proclaim and follow a radical Jesus who calls on us to pick up our cross and follow Him in the way of sacrificial servanthood.

Creation Commandments

1. Exercise dominion over creation bring our world to its full potential … the cultural mandate.

2. Love God and love neighbor.

Redemption Commandments

3. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Jn. 13:34-35) The New Commandment

4. Go and make disciples … the Great Commission.

Missional has to include all four.

“…mobilize the church for the purpose of fulfilling God’s mission of reconciling the world to himself.”

But reconciliation is not just between God and individuals. We are reconciled into God’s reconciling community. Reconciled communities reach out the world draw people in … and this presumes a community exists for individuals to be brought into. As #3 above suggests, it means communities that are inwardly focused enough in their care for each other that others are drawn to the community. That community is going to have rituals and language that in some measure differs from others because the community has a different narrative. The mission is both about gathering in and sending out.

Which is more important to breathing … inhaling or exhaling? So the church has erred in its obsession with inhalation. Let’s not compound the error by focusing purely on exhalation.

Sounds like another one of the core values of Mosaic.

P.P.S. Your book, Seizing Your Divine Moment, played a large role in my planting of a very outside-the-box church about 3-and-a-half years ago.

You said, “We will not forsake the Word of God for the traditions of men,” and I assume you would say you would not forsake it for anything. However, this commitment conflicts with your commitment to avoiding “traditions that mean . . . nothing to a person searching for God”—that is, unless you intend the word “nothing” to be taken literally (which, of course, would vastly diminish the number of Christian practices to which you are referring). In any regard, much of what the church is called to do (e.g., the ordinances) is unavoidably and necessarily foreign to unbelievers. Moreover, a total disregard of traditions or practices that edify believers means a total disregard of the church and thus a total abandonment of the gospel mission workforce, which obviously would undermine the mission. That said, I think the cultural gap between believers and unbelievers is not as wide as is often assumed. I’m with you on making sure that the church’s culture reflects this narrow disparity.

On a different note, one of my mentors, who happens to be a seminary prof at a prominent evangelical seminary, conveyed major disappointment over your message at the Exponential Conference this year because of your apparent attempt to wiggle out from underneath the exclusiveness of the gospel to those who have embraced Christ by faith and the reality of hell for those who don’t. That, rather than an emphasis on the missio Dei, is what will increasingly arouse the indignation of your orthodox co-laborers in the gospel.