A Model T

About two weeks ago, I entered the strange atmospherics of the blogesphere. Several good friends have been encouraging me to do so, and I have been procrastinating, more out of reluctant apprehension than anything else.

That first effort went to just four persons. All four responded which encourages me to go at it again and send to a larger circle of friends.

In the meantime, I have looked at blogs from some others, such as Dr. LeBron Fairbanks and Dr. Scott Daniels and Dr. Russ Bredholt, and been impressed by their sophisticated format and content. Indeed, I feel like a Model T in a world of Ferrari's.

Mission musings is my tentative start up title. One source says that a musing is being "deep in thought, contemplative." If true, that is exactly what I hope to do. My observation is that mission is often something we do, sometimes something we like to philosophize and theorize about, but not often something we like to contemplate-----deeply.

My best descriptor for this effort is a paraphrase from James Atlas, who wrote that musings are "an elegant tapestry of quotations, aphorisms, and autobiographical reflections." And maybe, just maybe, something said here, should you choose to read it, will trigger a helpful thought in your mission ministry.

In 1963 a book was published from the pen of Dag Hammarskold, the Swedish diplomat elected as the second General Secretary of the United Nations. It was called "Markings" and is a remarkable assemblage of his deep inner thoughts about life, stress, death, events, challenges, recorded over a twenty year period of time. He became one of the most energetic and noted leaders of the UN. It was on his fourth visit to the Congo, where he was trying to broker peace, that he was killed in a plane crash, in 1961.

In "Markings" Hammarskold wrote "the road to holiness necessarily runs through a world of action." I have been hearing about the road to holiness all my life. But, I had never heard it expressed just like this. It is true. Those involve in mission are in a world of action and their life and belief in holiness is shaped by the events of that daily action.

My take away from this musing is just this. I may be in the T Model of technology when it comes to blogs, but hopefully not in a T Model philosophy of mission. And secondly, I believe our theology is shaped by more than books and teachers and writings. I believe it is also hammered into shape by the world of action.

Until later,

Franklin