Barnabas File

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied:   “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.   And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40, NIV) Like others who identify with the Cooperative Baptist movement, I have been reading both the report of the Illumination Project and responses on social media.  My only conclusion so far is that we don’t all agree on this decision.  I have friends who express widely divergent and opposing opinions, so I continue to reflect on the implications of the decision, pray about it, and even look at scripture like the passage above. Of course, Jesus was not trying to start an organization.  If anything, what he was creating was a very messy, chaotic organism which was to be led by the Spirit of God.  ...

As readers of this blog have observed, I believe that ministry entrepreneurs are serving a significant role in Kingdom work today and will continue to do so in the future.   I have had the chance to meet such creative people and to learn from them.   These gifted men and women have cast many of the old paradigms aside and are taking advantage of the new resources in our evolving context.   They learn not only from traditional Christian sources but from the marketplace as well.   In a recent blog , Claire Diaz-Ortiz shared some insights she learned from her involvement in the startup of Twitter that might be helpful to social entrepreneurs.  Let’s consider how these might apply to ministry entrepreneurs. First, take risks.  Diaz-Ortiz comments that “big risks bring big rewards.”  Every ministry entrepreneur must assess risk from his or her own perspective, but it is certain to involve some sense of skepticism and even rejection from religious...