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Martin Lloyd Jones, in his book Authentic Christianity which is from his Studies in Acts Series, makes the following statement:

I am convinced that the trouble with the world today is that it does not believe in God.  And much of our evangelism goes wrong because it starts with the Lord Jesus Christ.  But you must start with God the Father, God the Creator, one whose glory fills the heavens, who is over all.  With reverence I say that you cannot understand the Lord Jesus Christ, and indeed there is a sense in which there is no meaning to Him and to the message about Him, unless you start with God the Father.

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I want to begin disseminating some of my research over the past two years. I have been focusing on the integration of emerging sciences and scripture to develop a theology of transformational change. What I find wonderfully interesting is that in this area, science and theology play nice. The neurosciences fit well with much of scripture. The area of emotional intelligence flows well with scripture. Generational sin is found in scripture. Communication science plays well with scripture.

I want begin by discussing my last paper and talk about designing communication environments. And I want to begin this discussion by describing how we construct reality.

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Ok, hang with me here. I am doing research into how the brain processes language, aural, written, and visual, and I am in a chapter of a book describing the nature and power of images. There is much to be blogged about in this chapter, particularly to how we learn, but part of the discussion has centered on the implications of free will and election (or determinism) from the perspective of Chaos Theory.

For now, I will simply link to Chaos Theory so that you can read it for yourself. Basically, part of the theory has randomness within a deterministic system. In theological terms, it’s free will inside election. Continue Reading

I hoped to have had this post on Tuesday but I got behind on a computer project I was involved in. I do some IT consulting on the side and had a software-based phone system that was giving me fits, which I finally finished up yesterday. So I’m late on this post…Please forgive me.

Christopher Wright gives us, in the introduction, several definitions centered around the word mission so that the reader gets an idea of how he is thinking and describing his thesis.

Mission - “Fundamentally, our mission (if it is biblically informed and validated) means our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation.” He goes on to describe the word mission in a more general sense of a “long-term purpose or goal that is to be achieved through proximate objectives and planned actions. Within such a broad mission…there is room for subordinate missions, in the sense of specific tasks assigned to a person or group that are to be accomplished as steps toward the wider mission.” He also states that the Bible gives us a picture of a God who is entirely purposeful, and thus on a mission.

Missionary - This word refers to people who engage in mission, most often in a culture other than their own. They are typically sent by churches or agencies to work in mission or on missions.

Missional - This word is simply an adjective “denoting something that is relates to or characterized by mission, or has the qualities, attributes or dynamics of mission.” Wright goes on to argue that Israel had a missional reason for existence, not necessarily a missionary mandate to go to the nations.