Author: Deji Okegbile

GROWING 21ST CENTURY MISSIONAL CHURCH: Forward to the Past.

The Church’s role as a “sent church” is sacrosanct.[1] Against the managerial and mechanical solutions of Babylon in our post-Christian culture, sending and being sent remains constitutive of Christian mission[2] (Ps 137). Growing 21st century missional church is a reminder for the church to stop repeating its decline and mistake because, ‘the one thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn anything from history.’ Resultantly, churches continue to loose our followers to new communities of belief. Today, the church is continuing in a fatal period with a ‘miserable mistake,’ and rather than confessing and repenting from our...

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Remaining Faithful and Fruitful: Missional Matter

John, in our Gospel reading this week reminds us the kind of love Christians are called to embody (Jn 15:9-17). The summation of this chapter can be expressed in two statements: (1) Abide in me—experience that love (verses 1-8); and (2) Express that love (verses 9-17). To love is to live missionally, embodying the Good News of a God who is love. Jesus instructs us in the way of loving others with God’s love: “Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in...

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UNDOING CHURCH DECLINE IN A TRANSITIONAL AGE: Missional Metrics of Christian faith.

The Church landscapes continues to change at a rapid clip. The wheel, signs, and cycles of church decline in our fluid, unsettled, interim and temporary world are real. Decline disrupts the common mission and faith upon which the Church functions. Sin, unbelief, and denial of the Truth among others deepens church decline. The Good News is that, with repentance and prayer, there is hope among missional metrics of Christian faith. Decline disrupts a culture with conflicting ideologies that corrupt minds. Bernard Lonergan’s description of the pervasiveness of societal decline reveals the deeper level of compromise that discredit and distort...

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THE BIBLE SPEAKS AGAIN: DIVINE PERSPECTIVE FOR THE ‘NEW NORMAL.’

Teach us to number (the brevity) our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom – Ps 90:12 The Bible on its course through the centuries speaks again to us today with its living and redeeming power and promises. Psalm 90 is the only psalm attributed to Moses, a man with whom the Lord spoke “face to face, as a man speaks with his friend” (Exd 33:11, Num 12:7-8). Moses had seen a generation squander 40 years in the wilderness, hence he was honest when he observed that life ‘quickly passes and we fly away’ (v10). Moses’ warning...

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Missional Leadership: Beyond Temple Priests or a “Marketplace” Motives.

“I have a belief system that when the Good Lord created the world, he created Coke one and Pepsi number two”[1] – Neville Isdell In Jesus’ own day there was no shortage of temple priests with a marketplace self-serving motives. The second and third generation of the church and leadership faced the same problem especially with money and often linked with success, sex, and power. There are some arguments with examples in support of a ‘marketplace’ approach to church growth and leadership. One example is Neville Isdell who rose from a bottle salesman to run the Coca-Cola as the world’s...

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