faithrunner

For many years I have invited Christ followers to see the church and themselves as "a mission outpost where every member is a missionary in his or her own mission field." Whenever I find someone else calling for the same way of living, I get fired up and realize maybe the idea is more than a catchy phrase.  Meet Sean Benesh . He lives in Portland with his wife, Katie, and his three sons. He is a missionary on a bicycle . He has written a short book called, The Bikeable Church , which I endorsed because I was captured by his questions and heart to be a missionary in the true sense where he was planted. He's some of his thinking and challenge: Why do we continue to insist on auto-based commuting patterns for church life and worship? What if we simply reduced the scale and scope to that which is bikeable and/or walkable? As missiologists one of the principles behind exegeting a city is to learn how people naturally gather for fellowship and community. Most often...

I commuted this morning on my bike from my house to a men's small group and then from the group to my office . I met up with Jason along the way, and we made it without major incident from our homes to our destinations on the streets and bike trails of Plano . The reason I would blog about this is that our town is not really suited for commuting by bike on the streets .   Suburbs are built for cars, not bikes and pedestrians. Bicycles in this town are for recreation and sport, and walking is for exercise. Anything "everyday" is 99% done in a car. It's designed that way. Yes, the City of Plano is making strides to make motorists aware of bikes  on the streets (See below), but they are still dominated by motorized vehicles and angry drivers . I recently connected with a virtual acquaintance, Sean Benesh , who lives and commutes in Portland. He muses about such things as being Metrospiritual and creating a "bikeable" church. He has dipped in...