GlocalNet

Just so you know who these guys are . . . . The four of us standing together are myself, President Jorge Sampaio, former President of Portugal and UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, His Royal Highness Prince Turki Al Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and Oliver McTernan of Forward Thinking.  The next picture is of me and my new best friend Abdulkarim Gheewala.  The third picture is His Royal Highness and I talking.  He was very curious about this concept of the “rapture.”  The last picture is Shamil Idriss, he is the one who pulled the meeting together, the Deputy Director of the UN Alliance of Civilizations, and is a young, brilliant, global emerging leader.  He will probably be Secretary-General of the UN before it’s all over! 

I must not know what Missional Church is.  I received the current Leadership Journal issue that dealt with this issue.  It was all about “converts” and “church”, absent as to engagement.  That isn’t to say church and converts don’t matter, it is to say we have made missional about us, and not them, about redefining church and not enlarging and engaging the Kingdom of God, a big mistake.  When will we get back to disciples and society?  This was what “making disciples” of “all nations” is about, raising up spiritual and loving people to touch nations with the love of God glocally!  I don’t know what I am, or what we would be labeled, as a church.  I just don’t think it matters.  The power is in the outflow of the love of God, not in the brand or label. 

NorthWood, and other churches, have engaged the inner-city and the world aggressively.  We have come to it, not on our terms, but on their terms.  If you’re serious about that, it will put you in places and with people that you never expected.  As I was speaking at this meeting in Lisbon, I told them, “It started with my hands, and I did what I did out of obligation to be true to the life of Jesus.  When I started using my hands it captured my heart, and now I love those I feared the most.  My heart caused me to re-examine my head, was I really thinking right or was it a result of my context?”  Oliver McTernan told me, hand, heart, and head, this is what we need and is a metaphor we can work with in the world. 

Hand, heart, and head . . . generally how we disciple is reversed; head, heart, and hand.  There is a huge implication when we reverse it.