The last few days I haven’t read much of Missional Church and instead have been doing more Bible reading. The time I’ve spent reading the Bible this week has been very enjoyable. I’ve realized that I must be careful not to substitute reading about the Bible for actually reading the Bible. It would be a shame to only have secondhand knowledge of the Bible when it is so easily available to me.

1 Peter 2:2-3
like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord (NASB).

[tags]Bible, Scripture, reading[/tags]

I’ve been editing photos with the open source photo editing software called GIMP. This evening I experimented with the Sketched Glass tutorial. Below is my first attempt.

Original Image:

Result of the sketch effect:

Final product:

[tags]GIMP, photos, photo editing[/tags]

I’m continuing to read Missional Church. In chapter 5 there is an excellent description of the church as a representative of the reign (kingdom) of God.

The church is a preview of life under the rule of God in the age to come, a forerunner of the new Jerusalem, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, a sign of the reign of God.

[tags]reading, books, missional church, missional, church[/tags]

Mark Lauterbach of GospelDrivenLife has been writing a series entitled “Relevance or Faithfulness?”. His conclusion is that the distinction between relevance and faithfulness in making the Gospel know is a false distinction. He has some great things to say in these posts. I’ve listed and linked them below.

• Relevance or Faithfulness?, 1
• Relevance or Faithfulness, 2
• Relevance or Faithfulness?, 3
• Relevance or Faithfulness?, 4
• Relevance or Faithfulness, 5

[tags]Gospel, ministry, mission, missional, contextualization, culture[/tags]

I preached on 1 Peter 2:9-10 this evening.

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (ESV).

[tags]preaching, Bible, missions, missional[/tags]