05.07.09
Tangible Kingdom Primer
Hugh Halter writes,
“Everywhere we went, we talked about the need to create resources for those in the existing church to reorient people back to the missional way of God. The problem in the past has been that we have separated the idea of spiritual formation from missional practices. It’s time to redefine discipleship as “becoming like Jesus†and call people deep spiritual formation on the street.
“The TK Primer is now available. We’re more excited about this tool than we were about the release of the book. Quite simply because we want every Christian to understand their way in God’s missional call.
“The Primer is not a workbook. We’ve realized that you can’t train, program, or preach people into incarnational life and community. The only way people will live like Jesus lived is if they have a heart change born of time with God and people on the streets. .. The Primer is a spiritual formation journal that walks someone through an 8 week process to deal with the barriers to real apprenticeship: Individualism, Consumerism, and Materialism. This is an individual process, but one must do it with friends. Each week has 7 days of content and follows this format.”
The eight sections of the book all work from the same rhythm, week by week. It runs like this: Day one: Exploration of the concept; Day two: Meditation of scripture on the concept; Day three: Change element: what change must occur to reorient life; Day Four: Action: baby steps into new life; Day Five: Community: where they process their personal journey together; Day Six: Calibration: Serious reorientation to the new habit; Day Seven: Sabbath Communion.
I have had a thorough look at the primer and I believe it’s a fantastic tool. There is a possibility that FORGE Canada will take this primer as a basis for a new contextualized version. One possibility is to integrate the journey with the movement toward a missional order. When you have the book in hand you may have the same feeling I did – a rule of life is woven through the journey already but never made explicit. Time will tell, but I think it would add a powerful final CHANGE and ACTION point toward INCARNATION and SUSTAINABILITY of the journey made in community. How’s that for buzz words?
NextReformation » Borderland Churches said,
December 1, 2009 at 12:08 pm
[...] The movement Gary is describing is also documented by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay in The Tangible Kingdom. On pages 103-110 they draw the structural diagram of a typical business model for the last century.. leaders on top, and those implementing the vision and following the commands from above in the wide body below – a triangle. But the missional paradigm requires that we turn the triangle on its side.. with leaders out front learning and risking, and the entire body mobilized in their neighborhoods, work places, and tribes. [...]
Resonate » Blog Archive » Borderland Churches I - A growing missional friendship of Canadians exploring the Gospel in Canadian culture. said,
December 16, 2009 at 3:01 pm
[...] The movement Gary is describing is also documented by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay in The Tangible Kingdom. On pages 103-110 they draw the structural diagram of a typical business model for the last century.. leaders on top, and those implementing the vision and following the commands from above in the wide body below – a triangle. But the missional paradigm requires that we turn the triangle on its side.. with leaders out front learning and risking, and the entire body mobilized in their neighborhoods, work places, and tribes. [...]
NextReformation » life happens said,
February 2, 2010 at 9:57 am
[...] But I have two other projects in process. The first is a fieldbook similar in design to the Tangible Kingdom Primer. The intended audience is spiritual seekers who are still “churched.” They may no longer be comfortable there. Some are merely bored. Many know there is much more, and they are ready to be led into a different way of seeing.. and practicing.. the good news of the kingdom. This project is now complete in its first draft and will be field tested and then shipped off to a publisher. Two publishers are looking at it. [...]