Filed under: Church, Mission Leadership | Tags: Church, Jesus, Christian, relationship, Prayer, emerging leaders, Fuller Theological Seminary, Global Leadership, leader, leadership emergence, training, paradigm, obedience, Great Commission, disciple, life, love
Have you asked this question? What kind of leaders does the church need today?
There is no simple answer, unless you say that it needs more and better leaders. But it takes more than wishing for better leaders. What is needed is better training. Churches and those training church leaders need to clarify their purpose.
Recently, I completed significant training with Fuller Theological Seminary. I now have a Masters in Global Leadership. Yippee!
But seriously, what was emphasized in my training was the basic questions. I was taught to name the “why”, to clarify the purpose for training.
Certainly the purpose for training Christian leaders must be founded on the Great Commission. When training emerging leaders the emphasis needs to be on “obeying,” not just “knowing.” More importantly, our training must be centered on obedience as an overflow of our relationship with God. We obey God because we love Him; we look to Him and follow His lead, His way, and His extraordinary love for everyone.
So let me ask you this: Have you received teaching that has led you to greater obedience or has that teaching just filled up your head?
Every Christian leader is charged with the task of making disciples. We’re directed and empowered by the Holy Spirit to lead people, modeling a life of learning and loving. We’re called to equip them who follow the One who loves them unconditionally. As we personally follow God’s extravagant ways in response to His amazing love, we will equip emerging leaders to do the same.
Those disciples, those learners, will also obey all that Jesus commanded because they will see us doing it as a response to God’s love. Whether you are involved in formal training of emerging leaders or whether you do it informally, every Jesus follower, every lover of God, will be involved in teaching the next generation to obey the Great Commission.
What do you think is the best way to train people to obey?
I think we’ll miss the real importance of this question if we jump right to the questions of technique. We should not be so concerned about how to lecture, what materials to use, or how to create a syllabus. Our primary purpose should be life on life, or live-learn experiences, teaching with the goal of obedience.
The paradigm from which we operate our training is what will determine our results. Have you considered the results of the past century or so of seminary training for church leaders?
From my studies of leadership emergence, the history of the church, and my personal observations in 30 countries and almost 25 years of faith missions, it is obvious that in many cases the paradigm of training has been ineffective.
To be effective in training emerging leaders to obey, we must begin with full on love for God and a passion to know him. We must be whole-hearted followers fully engaged in the Great Commission. As we respond to God’s love through our own obedience, he will give us the understanding of the most appropriate way to teach every individual emerging leader he brings to us.
Too many have been concerned about knowing Jesus as a means to an end. That kind of teaching will never produce life in our churches. Jesus spoke these words in prayer for you and me, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)
Filed under: Introductions | Tags: Church, Consultant, Fuller Theological Seminary, Global Leadership, Mission, Outreach Leader, Speaker, Trainer
John Henry has a contagious love and passion for Jesus and his call to make disciples of all nations. John will inform and challenge your group to re-align your vision and programs toward God’s plan and purposes. His high content and inspirational presentations will help every participant focus on what is really important in life, love, and learning.
Through carefully customized presentations designed to meet your group’s specific needs, John will help emphasize God’s calling for any audience, aligning career goals with God’s purposes.
In addition to being a mission mobilizer, John has been a frequent guest speaker in churches, conferences, seminars and workshops around the world. John is the founder and international director of the University of the Nations’ Student Mobilization Centre. The Centre was first commissioned internationally at the UofN Workshop in Korea in 1997. John serves a growing network of over seventy YWAM university ministries in over thirty countries.
Following the Youth With A Mission foundational value of “first do, then teach,” John brings nearly 25 years experience “doing” what he teaches. Since 1985, John has been a faith-missionary with experience in many different aspects of church, missions, and leadership, especially among university students.
Since 1989, John has learned many essentials for spiritual formation and leadership emergence as he has coordinated, equipped, and mobilized seventy-five student teams from over 100 colleges and universities from nine nations to serve and learn alongside long term field projects on short-term internships in over thirty countries.
Through various lecture and activity presentations, John not only shows people what to do, he teaches and models how to think Christianly and listen to God’s heart. If you want a tested witness of God’s faithfulness in Christian ministry and mission with experience in over 30 countries who approaches learning from an integrated relational perspective, invite John to come share his life with your group.
John and his wife, Mary, have three children, two boys, and one girl adopted from China. As a Christian parent with active involvement in his family’s education and local congregation, John is also in touch with the daily challenges confronting families, young people, and churches. John is able to share through experience what works, what doesn’t, and what makes the difference in your family, your Church, or ministry group.
Education: MA Global Leadership, Fuller Theological Seminary.
Experience: Speaker (Since 1983) Short-term Outreach Leader/Trainer (Since 1987) Church/Mission Consultant (Since 1989).
Keywords of all John’s messages include: Faith, Calling, Mission, Learning, and Leadership
General Topics include: Careers, Ministerial Training, Education, Culture, and Leadership & Motivation.
Most Requested Topics:
1. Call to Relationship: Hearing and Responding to God
The heart of every relationship is found in four essential elements. Without a working familiarity with these elements, relationships eventually break down. Listening to God is urgently necessary if we are going to understand our value, our identity, and our purpose in life. Until we have that relationship with our Creator, we will struggle in virtually every other relationship. This most vital relationship is not merely for our own benefit, however. It is necessary to have a living relationship with God in order to have a living relationship with our families, our friends, our neighbors, our leaders, our teachers, our church community, and every aspect of our world, including our physical surroundings.
This message will penetrate through the non-essentials to help participants respond to God’s initiative of grace in relationships.
2. A Biblical Christian Worldview
Worldview is more than what we see; it’s how we see. John will surprise your group as he leads you into a worldview learning experience. He will help you discover how learning happens and how to understand worldview and how it influences every area of our lives. John leads his audience into a path of discovery, emphasizing the role of personal relationship in the learning experience. John will explore revelation, paradigms, and the four basic questions of worldview. However, this lecture is not a presentation of a simple reduction of philosophical concepts; it is an exposition of the breadth of worldviews, from materialism to spiritism, in contrast with a Christian worldview. Your group will discover together, through small group discussions, the relational nature of learning and the impact worldview has on every sphere of society.
3. Leadership and Collaboration: State of the Church in the 21st Century
The world has changed. Have you noticed? John brings his experience, his travels and ministry in thirty countries in four continents over the past twenty-five years, to his message on Leadership and Collaboration. His studies of culture, theology, and the history of the church will be obvious as he leads your group a thoroughly engaging discovery of the major waves of mission advance during the past 200 hundred years including global shifts which have occurred during the twentieth century. Your group will examine the implications of the significant shifts of the Western Church and the Church of the Global South. In so doing, he will present the need for a new kind of leadership for the Church, and the need for partnership and collaboration in the 21st century.
4. Being Sure about God’s Calling
Where do you fit in God’s unswerving plan to make disciples of all nations?
God is calling you to do kingdom works that he has planned and prepared for you and your community. The Creator of the universe desires you to work alongside him as he crafts his work on planet earth. In this lecture, John Henry shares about finding your place in fulfilling God’s plans for your community and for the nations.
Filed under: Books and Stuff, Mission Leadership | Tags: 1910, African churches, Anglican, Baptist, Brian Stanley, Chinese, Church, Congregationalist, Edinburgh, European, evangelical, financial structures, Hindu, imperialism, individualistic, Islam, John R. Mott, nationalism, Protestant, Rev. Dr. harada Tasuku, Robert Speer, Samuel Azariah, Shanghai conference 1907, Western Christendom, World Missionary Conference
I recently read Brian Stanley’s new book “The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910 (Studies in the History of Christian Missions).”
I read this book wondering what may have been learned among Protestant church mission leaders during the 20th century. My biggest question as I read this book: DID THIS EVENT “ENLARGE THE STORY”? In other words, was the presence of “younger churches” heard? Brian Stanley has provided a thorough and useful study, a snap shot of the state of Christian Missions at the height of Western Christendom.
Probably the most important appeal made at the conference was that the “individualistic view of the missionary task must now be ‘entirely abandoned’.” (p.133)
I have selected some excerpts for those interested in what happened at that event.
p. 4 – “…however vibrant the state of missionary passion among the evangelical public may have been in 1910, the intended appeal of the conference was not to the popular Christian imagination so much as to the concentrated attention of serious Christian minds. “A Grand Council for the Advancement of Missionary Science.”
p. 16 – Two intermingled voices of the conference:
The first and most audible – boundless optimism and unsullied confidence in the ideological and financial powers of western Christendom.
The second – “the more muted and discerning voice, heard periodically throughout the text of the Commission reports, and deriving from the more astute serving missionaries whose questionnaire replies formed the raw material for the reports. The voice spoke of crisis and opportunity, of challenge and competition, and occasionally even of threat and danger.”
p. 25 – “emphasis was to be on study and consultation by the leaders of the foreign missionary forces of the world concerning the large and most vital questions of missionary opportunity and policy.” (Apparently following the template of the Shanghai conference in 1907)
p. 33 – Eight Commissions – reports allowed only 7 minutes.
p. 99 – If the African churches were deemed to be insufficiently ‘advanced’ to merit their own representatives, it was not simply because these churches were young in years, but also because their members were thought to be starting from much further back in the process of human development than were Christian converts in Asia. Africans were regarded as “primitive, childlike, and at the bottom of the evolutionary hierarchy, relatively unimportant in the future of the world church.”
There were no Africans present and no one noticed.
p. 108 – The young Chinese made a profound impact, even “disturbing” through two speeches. … urging … not to be afraid to allow Chinese Christians to assume the challenge of sustaining and managing its own life. Cheng’s second speech to the debate of the report of the Commission VIII on “cooperation and the promotion of unity” – “Without question, the best speech.” Cheng presented a vision of a church in China without the denominationalism of Europe. Was this the beginning of post-denominationalism?
Was Cheng correct saying denominationalism and nationalism limit apostolic missionary power? If so, how do we now respond 100 years later?
However, some commissioners, including Gairdiner, pushed back – claiming Cheng was “artless” and apparently naive of fundamental ecclesiology.
p. 111- Nationalism issue emerged with Japan’s delegates. “The spirit of nationalism, so deeply stirring in all lands, found utterance again and again at the conference. …China, Japan, India must bring their own traditions and their own passion of patriotism into a Church of Christ, truly become also the Church of China, Japan, India. Missions exist to make missions unnecessary.” Japan especially demanded autonomy.
p. 112 – Rev Dr. Harada Tasuku (studied at Chicago, Yale, with Ph.D in England and Germany.) Prof. Japanese History, Literature, Language – Dean of new dept. of Asian studies at U. Hawaii. Spoke three times at Edinburgh – Expressed his indebtedness to western theology, while arguing for uniquely Asian expressions of Christianity. He argued that “a church’s expression of faith should grow naturally out of the distinctive Christian life and spiritual experience of its adherents.” He urged that christianity’s should teach bible without too much of our interpretation, and then be patient as well as watchful to await the outcome of the Christian life in non-Christian lands.”
p. 113 – The heart of Harada’s paper was an exposition from an organic liberal Protestant perspective of the essential qualities of the three Asian nations could offer to the body of Christ.
p. 123 – Samuel Azariah – Anglican from S. India – very upset about his 3rd class treatment during his travels, later being told to dress in a turban, etc.
p. 124 – Made remarks with this backdrop “The problem of race relationships is one of the most serious confronting Christianity today.” He went on to complain of ‘a certain aloofness, a lack of mutual understanding and openness, a great lack of frank intercourse and friendliness’ between European missionaries and their national Christians.
p. 125 – He identified the problem as the “financial structures of mission movement.” Which he revealed was a “failure of basic Christian spirituality.”
p. 128 – This speech was the first shot in what became the campaign against missionary imperialism.
p. 130 – Speer’s review of these key Asian speakers was that “true listening to their message had been, at best, partial.” Speer had a “progressive enthusiasm” for “a substantial modification of our interpretation of Christianity.”
p. 133 – Important general conclusion – “individualistic view of the missionary task must now be ‘entirely abandoned’. The church on the mission field could no longer be regarded as a mere by-product of mission work, but the ‘most efficient element in Christian propaganda.” – The church was not simply the goal but also the instrument of mission.
p. 136 – church structures and emergence of new “overtly episcopal role of missionaries” among independent Baptist and Congregationalists guaranteeing voice for laity.
p. 145 – only one Indian church being wholly self-governing, self supporting, self propagating in Orrissa Baptist do not have power over churches, so no transfer necessary
p. 160 – theology “must be written afresh for every fresh race” and “not misrepresented as if it were no more than a precipitation from the antiquated text-books of the West.”
“what was conspicuously lacking was a ‘living form of Christian knowledge’ …
p. 163 – “a vigorous theology..is likely to arise…”
p. 176 – “three aims of missionary education – evangelization, edification, and leavening”
p. 164 – “the churches of Europe & america should…give “full authority” to modify western forms…”
p. 195 – The vision of heaven is one where the cultural gifts of the nations are brought to the holy city
p. 198 – determined mission boards should not emphasize leavening function of christianity education
p. 216 – Howells saw no comparison between Christianity & Hinduism, rather approach should be the commendation of the person of Christ.
p. 222 – Hogg rejects view that Christianity is fulfillment of Hinduism.
p. 224 – The missionary should point out differences, to “upset the equilibrium of Hindu consciousness” -a dialectic approach offering Christ as Satisfier to those with a newfound sense of need.
p. 228 – Gaidner (Anglican expert on Islam) said it’s explicit attitude was to “supersede” the original Revelation of Jesus. Therefore, not compatible.
p. 229 – “Islam is the greatest direct contradiction of christianity.. (and) could not be said to be a preparation for christianity.”
p. 236 – The Commission found nothing in Africa “fetish belief” that was a help, consolation.
p. 238 – Most respondents saw no congruence with tribal high god and Christian deity.
Filed under: Activist, Church, Madison, Wisconsin, Mission Leadership | Tags: Church, reformation, Mission, Partnership, university, Madison, Jesus Christ, UW, HIV/AIDS, Pope Innocent, Henri Nouwen, Luther, prophet, New College, Vern Visick, apostolic, Ravi Zacharias, apologetic
Pope Innocent 12th, 1243 AD said, “Universities are rivers of knowledge that feed and fertilize the universal church.” The attitude of the church toward universities, including the UW – Madison, was at one time positive. “We do not want to repeat the errors that have come from not revisiting the theological and biblical underpinnings of our mission.” (Taylor 2001:7) The mission for the Church in Madison is to make disciples of all nations, including the powerful institution of the university.
“The way of the Christian leader,” Henri Nouwen writes, “is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross.” (Taylor 2001:9) The challenge of the cross today, is to enter the halls of the universities as reformers. Luther, a professor in a university, never intended to be a reformer. Christian professors at the UW may be unwilling, however these professors may be called to be the leaders in a reformation that is as significant for the university as Luther’s was for the church.
Prophetic engagement with the university is underway through various agencies, such as New College in Madison led by Vern Visick. The challenge is to allow that prophet call to stimulate apostolic response. The apostolic call to the Church in Madison is to engage global issues. With effective church partnership, for example, a challenge could go out to the Church in Madison in response to the global HIV/AIDS crisis: “If you adopt an HIV/AIDS orphan (of which there are over 10 million today), the church in Madison will sponsor that child’s education.” “If the Church of Jesus Christ rises to the challenge of HIV/AIDS it will be the greatest apologetic the world has ever seen,” writes Ravi Zacharias. The Church in Madison’s acceptance of a new apostolic call to engage the university with its influential role in the world, it will present a powerful apologetic of the love of God and the love of our global neighbor.
Filed under: Church, Madison, Wisconsin, Mission Leadership | Tags: Au Sable Institute, Christian, Church, community, education, environmentalism, poverty, Ray Bakke, university community, Wisconsin Idea
Ray Bakke points out that an “incarnational servanthood” model presents a “unique and profound combination of Jesus as message and Jesus as model.” (Sider 2004:137) Families opening their homes to students will counteract globalization’s isolating effect, for the host and the student. My wife and I have hosted internationals in one way or another since we were married in 1988. Relationships with students from Japan to Colombia, Ethiopia to Indonesia, and China to Saudi Arabia have been cultivated at our dinner table, living room, and backyard BBQ. This kind of hospitality, friendship with the foreigner, is biblical. It’s loving our global neighbors.
When the church responds to the opportunities for international relationships at the university community, she will find herself more apt to pursue answers to desperate social issues, presenting a more hopeful message.
The growing global need for pure water reveals our interdependency and our call to environmental stewardship. Because the “goal of the church’s holistic outreach is the transformation of people, communities, and society for the glory of God,” water is a primary operating theme for development.
The Au Sable Institute, a biblically based Wisconsin Idea, is pursuing a vision to help develop livable cities, energy-efficiency, and rising standards of living around the world. Au Sable presents a view of God that comes from the revelation of creation. By our faithful stewardship of God’s creation we witness to the world that our faith is real. The church is marginalized in influence in as much as Christians have little revelation of the God of the material world where environmental issues and global poverty are very real.
“The Christian answer to the educational problem must be given in unity with the answer to the problem of personality and community…it must point men (sic) toward such a community as is sufficiently concrete and commanding to claim the hearts of individuals and masses and yet also sufficiently transcendent and universal to embrace all human ideals and possibilities.” (Tillich 1988:18)
Filed under: Madison, Wisconsin, Mission Leadership | Tags: Biblical, Church, Cross-Cultural, culture, individualism, Madison, Mission, mustard seed
Why is it sixty-two percent of the churches in Madison, including ten congregations with one thousand or more weekly attenders, identified no missionaries serving on mission fields? (Jericho 1997:7) Perhaps the lack of significant cross-cultural engagement is the result of an insufficient biblical model of the church. Perhaps the weakness of the “modern” church is the preoccupation with growth and size as a measure of success. Many say that “bigger is better”, but this has no biblical foundation.
The church is a complex system, “a living organism.” The church is called to bear fruit. Jesus taught us the “mustard seed” principle, which like complexity theory “illuminates the long-range significance of small actions.” When individual decision is made the foundation of church identity, the fruit that is borne is a culture of individualism. Individual choice and personal need becomes ultimate, rather than the unswerving purpose of God to share his mercy with every person in every culture. To begin to overcome this culture of individualism, one must first deny self and then lead a community of believers to do the same. Only then will the church fulfill her mission.
Filed under: Madison, Wisconsin, Mission Leadership | Tags: Christians, Church, communication, culture, economy, In Global Good News, Information Age, Madison, materialism, materialist, Michael Budde, mission field, nation, Pastor Survey, Paul, poor, postmodern, Protestant ethic, technology, wealth, William O'Brien
The Madison Senior Pastor Survey conducted in 1996, found eighty-four percent of the congregations placed “some” or “a lot” of emphasis on meeting the needs of the poor. (1996:7) Madison area Christians may disagree, however it is obvious that their standard of living has gradually increased so much that they are blind to the influence of materialism. Living in the comforts of Madison, it is difficult to see the effects of materialism. Until we are shocked into awareness by a trip to a country, and not to the confines of a typical tourist hotel, where the annual income is less than an American child’s allowance. Those who earn more than ten thousand dollars per year share the top ten percent of the world’s wealth. (Barret 2001)
Michael Budde writes, the “Protestant ethic is dysfunctional in the consumption-driven postmodern era.” Budde adds that the apostle Paul’s admonition has been turned on its head in our materialist economy; it “dictates that if people will not eat (and drink, and buy compact discs, the latest in fashions, and home appliances) in sufficient volume, then no one will work.” If the Church in Madison does not allow herself to be shocked out of her slumber, she will fail to be effective confronting the desperate human needs of the world.
The good news is that technology has opened new vistas of communication and broken down centuries old barriers to the gospel. “The Information Age is boundary blind,” William O’Brien writes in his article “Mission in the Valley of Postmodernity” (from the book ‘In Global Good News: Mission in a New Context’). O’Brien adds, “There are no unique continental or regional areas identified exclusively as ‘mission fields’.” Easy access to people of every nation and culture is suddenly made available through the world wide web.
This access provides opportunity for the flow of up to the minute information for prayer, generous giving, and a deepened understanding of the plight of peoples around the world. However, as desperate needs cascade across our computer screens, there may not yet be sufficient spiritual equipping for the Church in Madison to respond appropriately.
Filed under: Madison, Wisconsin, Mission Leadership | Tags: Bascom Hall, Christianity, Church, environmentalism, free, Globalization, gospel, individualism, Lee Dreyfus, Madison, materialism, pluralism, postmodernism, poverty, secularism, South Hall, Truth, University of Wisconsin, UW-Stevens Point
During his 1978 run for governor, the former UW-Stevens Point chancellor, Lee Dreyfus, was quoted saying Madison is “thirty square miles surrounded by reality.” (Moe 1999) There are major “gaps between gospel values and the practices of Christianity in ‘Christian’ Europe” and other formerly Christian territories. (Budde 1997:5) Equally true is the gap between the early gospel values and practices at the University of Wisconsin. A plaque on Bascom Hall reveals the commitment to “encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth may be found.” Etched in the stone of South Hall, is: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Class of 1955.”
The following posts will discuss four characteristics of globalization in the Madison context and how they affect the Church in Madison. They are post-modernism; materialism; secularism and pluralism; and individualism, environmentalism, and poverty.
Filed under: Bible | Tags: Church, Colossians, Ephesus, gospel, Grace, Greek, Laodicean, Letter to the Ephesians, Paul, Revelation, Roman Empire, theology
I was asked “Why do you think Paul did not write the Letter to the Ephesians?” Well, there are a series of questions that lead to that one. First, who was the audience? Was it the Church at Ephesus? Possibly not. Why? Because the text “in ephesus” was not in the earliest writings of this letter. This is an important question, because the answer definitely reveals something of the author. The author apparently has no first hand knowledge of Ephesus. (1:15, 3:2, 4:21) There is no reference to Paul’s earlier visit.
Then who was the letter originally addressed to? Was it the Laodiceans (Col. 4:16)? Possibly, but there was no manuscript found with the text “in Laodicea.” Was it a general letter to all the churches? This is very possible. “In Ephesus” could have been added later since it was the third largest city in the Roman empire and letters were often circulated in this way. (Eph. 6:21 & 2 Tim. 4:12) Note that all the “churches” in the book of Revelation were centered around this major city of Ephesus.
So back to our question: Did Paul write the Letter to the Ephesians? If it was addressed to Ephesus, then NO, it was not Paul because it reveals that the author does not know Ephesus.
I’m not a Greek scholar, but I’ve read that the style of Greek is different. Many words and phrases are different from those of Paul. The letter is similar to Colossians though. In fact, the author seems to use Colossians as a reference.
So then, why was Paul’s name on the letter? Apparently custom demanded giving reference to the person whose ideas are being used. Writing in Paul’s name would have been a form of citation of reference common in that period.
If not Paul, then who did write Ephesians? It was likely a follower of Paul. Whether we agree on authorship or not, we can agree that the letter is very useful to learn of Paul’s theology. The author is clearly dedicated to Paul’s message. It was someone who obviously knew Paul’s gospel of grace.
Filed under: Bible | Tags: Christ, Christ's finished work, Christians, Church, Ephesians, family, future, Gentile, God's eternal plan, gospel, Holy Spirit, Jew, live worthy, mystery, pantheism, Paul, reconciled, representational Cristology, Resurrection, Romans, self-sacrificial love, Universal Significance of Christ, worldview
By the time the Letter to the Ephesians is written, the church has emerged as a social and political force. The author, likely not Paul, has identified problems of the universal significance of God’s act in Christ. This letter shares the theme of Romans (Jew & Gentile conflict), but that conflict is apparently fading. There’s little reference to that conflict in Ephesians. However, a wider conflict in the Greco-Roman world has emerged: The challenge of the pagan worldview of pantheism. In this letter, the author argues that Christ is supreme.
This author is not likely to be Paul. Though clearly dedicated to Paul’s message, the author brilliantly outlines Paul’s gospel of grace. The message is Christ and his supremacy. In this letter we find a “representational Cristology”, which is the revelation that we can determine our future based on Christ’s life and resurrection.
The flow of the the argument is in two parts. First, the “Universal Significance of Christ” (1:3 – 3:21), which includes meditations on the meaning of Christ and the revelation of God’s eternal plan, with the presence of Holy Spirit as guarantee until inheritance. Christ is described as “head” of creation and of the church, but Christians sit with him in heavenly places. Therefore, Christians are free from the prince of the power of the air. God’s mysterious and eternal plan has always been Christ’s death & resurrection.
The purpose of the Church, then, is to make the mystery known, to declare the outcome of Christ’s finished work. That is, the church is to declare the unity of humanity in Christ, that there is no longer any “wall” or distinction between Jew or Gentile. Through the cross, Christ has reconciled all to God. (4:1-6:20)
The author then directs the reader’s attention to behavior, how we should then live, in light of these realities. Believers need to understand how to relate to non-believers and how to make their stand against forces of darkness. We are called to “live worthy”, functioning as members of a family, with good order, and self-sacrificial love.
Filed under: Bible, Church, Mission Leadership | Tags: aliens, Church, community, culture, dialog, exiled, Gonzalez, gospel, history, interpretation, Jesus, marginalized, Mestizos, New Testament, One New Humanity, Paul, Pentecost, principalities and powers
Understanding González’ paradigms of culture helps us understand Paul, who reconciled his identity as a Mestizos. González’ paradigms help us understand why Paul stood so strongly against those who preached a “different gospel” (Gal. 1:6 NIV) which throughout history has fragmented, marginalized, exiled, and made aliens. These paradigms help us interpret how God is at work among people in the margins or between cultures. The paradigm of solidarity helps us see in the Scriptures and throughout history the need for give-and-take dialog between cultures and the need for proper engagement within culture. As González relates, “The most exciting things have happened, not at the traditional centers of the life of the church, but at the edges.” The disarming of principalities and powers occurs as we participate with God in the example of Pentecost through which God’s Spirit inaugurates the character of openness to outsiders. Interpretation of the New Testament, without attention to the influences of culture, may lead to alienation and distort the message, however the Bible will always affirm the purpose of God, directing the readers’ understanding to the call of the new community of Jesus’ followers to open their hearts to every culture to become One New Humanity.
Filed under: Bible, Church, Mission Leadership | Tags: aliens, Bible, Church, coercion, doctrine, Ephesians, Ethnic, exile, foreigners, frontiers, generation, Gentiles, gospel, Hispanic, interpretation, Israel, Jesus, Jose Vasconcelos, Judaism, Justification by faith, Justo Gonzalez, kingdom, Latinos, Messiah, military, missionary, Modern, Moses, Paul, pride, Protestant, religious, Roman Empire, Samaritan woman, Second-Temple Judaism, Spanish, triumphalist, unity in the faith, Western civilization, worldview
The notion of the “Cosmic Race,” popularized among Latinos by Mexican author Jose Vasconcelos, is a philosophical basis for pride in the mixture of races. González writes, there is “no single perspective or a single clue to ‘reading with Hispanic eyes.’” Therefore a people of varied backgrounds sharing a single identity is dubious. However, this is Paul’s vision and the message he preaches to the Gentiles. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul (or one of his disciples) writes that Jesus’ “purpose was to create in himself one new person.” He (or she) continues with the message of solidarity, “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow-citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household.” (Eph. 2:15, 19 NIV) This “unity in the faith,” misunderstood by Paul’s contemporaries, has also been misinterpreted in every generation since.
Before meeting Jesus, Saul/Paul’s aim was to eliminate the threat that the new sect of Jesus followers represented to Judaism. Ethnic and religious purity, which was tied to the ultimate conquest of Israel’s Messiah over all nations, defined his worldview. Sadly Spanish missionary endeavors in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries interpreted the Scriptures envisioning a kind of religious purity through coerced conversion in Latin America, which appears to be an amalgamation of the purity ethic of Second Temple Judaism and the conquest ethic of the Roman Empire. Modern Protestant missionary endeavors continued a triumphalist interpretation, albeit separated from military coercion, by expanding into the “frontiers,” which implies redrawing the “borders” of Western civilization. Western individualism, informed by the Protestant Reformation’s doctrine of justification by faith, which possesses an important “supporting role” in Paul’s gospel, became the central understanding the expanding Protestant missionary enterprise. Today, when Westerners read the stories of Moses at the burning bush (Exo. 3:1-10) and the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:5-35), they read how the individual finds God, rather than a calling, “to go back to their people to do the work of God with and among them.” Westerners interpret the purpose of the Church (and of the Bible) to be a functionary agent to meet individual needs, rather than an expression of the gospel itself and a “foretaste of the kingdom.” This misinterpretation of the gospel message has resulted in a new form of “exile,” “a dislocation from the center,” as people are either left out, pushed out, or choose to remain outside the center.
Filed under: Church, Mission Leadership | Tags: alientation, Christians, Church, conversion, culture, Hellenist, Jewish, Lord, Messiah, mestizaje, Mestizos, oppression, Paul, persecutor, Roman citizen, Saul, Spaniard, Stephen
“Mestizos,” a pejorative term used by the powerful and “pure” Spaniard conquerors, was used to convince the “mixed-breeds” that they were inferior. One of Paul’s Hellenist Jewish parents made him a kind of mixed-breed who likely experienced a severe oppression and “double alienation,” which undermined the “barriers of separation that consolidate self-identity and security.” Saul, “also known as Paul,” was a Roman citizen misfit among the Hellenist Jews in Tarsus. It appears he had to overcompensate to assure his fellow Jews that he was a true believer, which produced the “persecutor” of the Jewish Christians with his consent to the death of Stephen. After his conversion, Saul continued to experience this challenge to his identity. Not only did he have to overcome his past as a persecutor of the Church, his Mestizos identity contributed to his need to continually defend his calling as an apostle.
Saul comes to terms with his Mestizaje, allowing himself to be known as Paul, when he turns in anger to defend a Roman official’s faith in Jesus against the lies of Elymas, a Jewish sorcerer. “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right!” Paul rebuked, “You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?” (Acts 13:6-10) Paul’s use of his Hellenist name at this juncture, setting aside pride in his Benjamite heritage, represented his commitment to stand against forces restricting the pronouncement of the gospel for every culture. Certainly, this event was as significant as his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. Paul understood the gospel message and set out to implement the purpose of God for all humanity which had been completed through Israel’s Messiah.
Filed under: Bible, Church, Mission Leadership | Tags: Book of Acts, Christ, Christ's return, Christians, Church, eschatological confusion, Jesus, Judaism, Left Behind, Macedonia, Messiah, Organic, Paul, Rapture, Second Coming, Thessalonians
Based on his missionary journeys in the Book of Acts, it’s very likely that among Paul’s letters in our Bibles, his letters to the Thessalonians were probably the first. Paul’s main concern for the Thessalonian believers relates to Christ’s second coming. Nothing has changed. For as long as I can remember, Christians have had similar questions about Christ’s second coming. What can we learn from Paul’s letters regarding the second coming? More than I can relate in this short post.
Because Paul’s first letter shows a curiosity among early Christians about Jesus’ return, we should not be surprised when today’s Christians are also curious.
The Thessalonians were despairing over the long delay of Christ’s return. The fame of their church had spread beyond Macedonia, even though there was apparently little formal church organization. It was truly an organic movement of believers radically committed, no matter what the risk, to a new king, Jesus.
Paul writes to assuage the early Christians’ worries about Christ’s delayed return, especially their questions about those who have already died. This is when the letter gets interesting.
Paul writes about what Christian tradition has called the “rapture.”
Paul writes with pastoral compassion. He is particularly intimate in his first letter, as he not only teaches and corrects, he also admonishes with advice regarding behavior. This is not a private letter. He admonishes the one who receives it to read it aloud for the whole community.
In his second letter, Paul addresses the Thessalonians’ anxiety that Christ may have already returned. They thought they had missed it. This was a festering eschatological confusion, which continues today. In this second letter, Paul is comforting those suffering under persecution and uncharacteristically speaks of the coming wrath and judgment.
Again Paul is primarily addressing apocalyptic issues, which are consistent with his background in apocalyptic Judaism. So what does he say about the rapture?
The return of the Messiah will be sudden and the events preceding his coming will be observable. It will be sudden, like a thief, but it will not be a secret. No, you won’t wake up from your nap on a plane and find your neighbor’s underwear “left behind.”
This notion of being “left behind” is the popular view, but it does not stand up to an honest and thorough study of the scriptures. Jesus is coming. But everyone will know when it happens.
More on this in a later post.
Filed under: Activist, Mission Leadership | Tags: 21st century, Aldrin Bogi, bridges, Call2All, Campus America, campus ministries, catalyst, Children at Risk, Christian Magna Carta, Church, Collaboration, collaborative, community, Corruption, Discipleship, Field Ministry Internships, Field Project Interface, Global Human Need, Grants, HIV/AIDS, Human Development Index, Human Trafficking, Impure Water, India, Integrated Community Field Projects, international missions movement, Johns Hopkins, Malaria, poverty, School of University Ministries & Missions, Slingshot Camp, SMC, Student Mobilization Centre, Transformation, University Community Interface, University of Maryland, Wilder Project, YWAM
How can a small community of Christ followers serve as a catalyst of a new, broad-structured, international missions movement for the 21st century?
Answer: By creating collaborative partnerships among ministries and leaders in university communities building “bridges” of community transformation.
The following action steps are what our ministries are attempting in this new season of development. Our plan is to serve as a catalyst with YWAM Campus Ministries creating “bridges” of community transformation by:
1. Committing to a coherent set of learning outcomes, a core curriculum, for all School of University Ministries & Missions (SUMM) participants, and in seminars. All SUMM participants will develop an understanding of the 21st century mission field.
a. The school will emphasize YWAM’s commitment to the Christian Magna Carta. Participants will learn how to facilitate a spirit of collaboration in response to dramatic shifts in the Church globally and extraordinary economic and societal crises.
b. Mobilizing students on cross-cultural, serving-learning experiences is an integral part of YWAM’s discipleship of students in every campus ministry location. (See: Field Ministry Internships)
c. Designing Seminars & Conferences, which target and rally university communities for mobilization toward effective ministry addressing Global Human Need. (See: Human Development Index.) These desperate needs, including poverty, corruption, children at risk, HIV/AIDS, malaria, human trafficking, and impure water, are targeted as “giants” which we are confronting with “smooth stones” in our Slingshot Camps. Slingshot is a discipleship camp with an intention of training young people in how to live and share the gospel. This Slingshot is built on the concept of David’s five smooth stones defined as:
(1) Identity in Christ
(2) Intimacy with God
(3) Integrity in Life
(4) Influence in the world, and
(5) Involvement in Missions.
Seven Slingshot events have been running in India, led by SMC South Asia Director, Aldrin Bogi, with more than 3000 attending. (See video of Aldrin speaking on leadership.)
2. Recruiting and Dispatching Volunteers: Field Project Interface and University Community Interface. These staff assignments will be limited to those who have completed the School of University Ministries & Missions (IDM/HIS 313 & 314) -or- a YWAM staff with a Four-Year College Degree and Student Ministries Leadership Seminar (IDM 501).
If either Field Project Interface or University Community Interface serve in locations where there is no YWAM team or ministry, they must have a minimum of two team members working together. All SMC staff require a two year commitment.
A. Field Project Interface: A minimum of two Field Project Interface, serving as SMC staff, will live and work in a YWAM Campus Ministry community in the developing world with the task of coordinating field projects for student teams, particularly Field Ministry Internships. Field Project Interface will assess community needs (health, education, economic, family, environment, etc.), create partnerships with churches and ministries, and interface with the YWAM host when student project teams travel and serve in their location. Field Project Interface will have a particular liaison role with the SMC preparing for summer teams, drawing up project plans for students to gain academic credit, and assisting the SMC to apply for project grants.
B. University Community Interface will partner with existing YWAM ministries and campus ministries, facilitating collaboration and adoption of a whole community in the developing world. University Community Interface will recruit outreach teams for field projects in a single developing world community, drawing from the resources and personnel of a single university community, including churches, student organizations, and Christian faculty and staff.
3. Emphasizing “Community Bridges” – a collaborative and transformational approach to ministries. As a catalyst of transformation, we are building “bridges” of engagement between university communities and developing world communities. The SMC will work with Campus Ministries and associate ministries and churches to remove barriers of collaboration that get in the way of transforming students’ lives and transforming whole communities.
The Community Bridge approach will broaden the radar of any single student organization or church ministry in the university community to focus resources to accomplish far more than any single organization could.
This community transformation approach will require a model, an example, to stimulate a long-term commitment of two Christian communities in two university settings. Emphasizing collaborative field projects to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God and fulfill the Christian Magna Carta.
4. Creating a robust “Community Bridge” Model between one YWAM campus ministry/university community and one developing world community, preferably where we have another YWAM campus ministry. For example, YWAM Kingsway Maryland, with campus ministries at the U. of MD and Johns Hopkins, is developing a “community bridge” with a series of integrated projects to serve Delhi, India.
5. Making Grant Funding requests for Integrated Community Field Projects. Today’s foundations and major donors are more apt to assist collaborative efforts. Our Community Bridge approach to YWAM Campus Ministries will help us raise funds for projects, especially projects such as pure water, education, micro-business development, HIV/AIDS awareness, Malaria prevention, and Children at Risk in the developing world. Funds raised through SMC grants will be designated to the respective field projects, possibly allocating a portion for Field Project stipend for housing and travel, YWAM Campus Ministry expenses, and student team expenses.
6. Increasing the size of the SMC International Team of facilitators through rapid regional development. As the School of University Ministries & Missions trains workers on every continent, SMC Regional Teams are being formed to foster Community Bridges and Collaborative Networks.
7. Establishing New Call2All Students Networking Forums to bring together a wider collaborative movement of university ministries and missions mobilization Working collaboratively through international and inter-agency partnerships, cross-disciplinary teams, and campus-wide partnerships including faculty, staff, and students, the SMC will focus our catalytic training and resources on building bridges to serve whole communities.
A YWAM Campus Ministries International Celebration is already scheduled for 2010. Currently collaborative activities are underway through the new Campus America Wilder Project.
A new Call2AllStudents web site is being developed to serve the broader network of ministries. These efforts will culminate in periodic Regional Call2All Forums beginning in 2012 that present testimonials, instruction, and models with the best practices offering Christian communities tools to serve some of the world’s most vexing social, environmental, and economic challenges.
Filed under: Church | Tags: Christ, Church, conservatives, eternal, evangelical, Gnostic, healing, incarnation, Israelis, Jesus, liberals, nations, Palestinians, Resurrection
From my experience, evangelical churches are largely Gnostic, which removes Jesus from much of any daily practical consequence.
Today’s church leaders need to consider the incarnation of Christ. Jesus incarnation is eternal, therefore the practical concerns related to Jesus’ resurrected body (and eventually our own) are eternal. Because he has eyes, ears, and a nose, arms to embrace, and taste-buds to enjoy foods, every facet of our physical existence has an eternal stamp of Jesus incarnation on it. Education, Government, Media, Arts, Sciences, every Social and Cultural concern today will have a fuller appreciation in the resurrection. If trees are for healing nations, as it states in John’s Revelation, perhaps there will still need for some further healing between peoples, such as Palestinians and Israelis.
The question this all raises for liberals and conservatives is this: How then should we live? Should we not engage every facet of our existence on this green earth with respect to the resurrected Christ?
Jesus said it. What does it mean? Now you can listen in on a message I gave summing up all the nine practices of emerging churches. Let me know you heard it and if you have questions.
In honor of the Head of the Church,
John Henry
Filed under: Church | Tags: breakthrough, Church, community, cross, die to self, Fruit, Jesus, Leadership, Mission, missionary, model, no reputation, Pastor
I just read an article on leadership development in the church. The point of the article was that Jesus spent time with the few, as we read in Bob Coleman’s “Master Plan of Evangelism.” The important point I took away from the article is that developing leaders is done by modeling people to follow Christ’s example. The central act of Jesus is the cross; he modeled unrelenting surrender.
The “seed” Jesus refers to in John 12 is not only our willingness to die to our most favored activities; we must die to self, our egos. We must be willing to be of no reputation as we serve our pastor, Jesus.
The one thing to which leaders today need to die to is the image of the senior pastor. I am not a senior pastor. I am a missionary. Of course, Jesus is not only a pastor; he is also a missionary. Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, I send you.” We, the Church, are not only the sheep of his pasture; we are a sent people with a mission. God’s Church does not have a mission; God’s mission has a church.
The willingness to die to our reputations of churches led by a single senior pastor leader, a Jesus figure in the community, may be the most important breakthrough in the church, as a seed breaks under the earth, which is necessary to produce many new seeds for growth and release of leaders. This is the “way of Jesus,” modeling the way to bear much fruit.
Filed under: Church, Mission Leadership | Tags: Abraham, Adam, change, Church, community, Eden, Glory, Jesus, Journey, Liminality, Mission, Missional, Moses, Steven Hawthorne, Temple, Tent of Meeting, Tradition, Transition, Weight of Glory, Wine Skin
Looking for alternatives to church forms will always challenge the status quo. Alternatives collide with traditional ways of doing things. However, alternatives will also encourage vision of the Church as a people and a community on mission with God.
Jesus used terms like “wine skin” and “cloth” to explain this tension between the new and the old. The nomenclature we employ, the terms we use to name things, is one of the greatest gifts of God. Like Adam who named all the creatures in Eden, God created us with the amazing privilege of naming things. What kind of God is this who would create all things and give away the privilege of naming them? We name our children and celebrate the wonder of God’s good gifts as we do so.We create with God and ascribe names to those creations, songs, books, events, buildings, even communities and cities. The power to name things is the power to assign character and our values to them.
This privilege of naming things is not an exclusive task for just a few experts or elites. God never intended to separate people by class or caste, giving more power and privilege to the few. Some might argue that it creates confusion to have so many names for things. Allowing a few to assign names to things may avoid confusion, but there will be a cost. It will limit creativity. The privilege of participating in a community, naming things creatively, is a gift of God to every member of Christ’s body.
When we share the responsibility of naming things, shared creativity ensues. This is the process of creating culture, I believe. It’s happening all around us, and it can’t easily be contained or controlled to avoid confusion.
Confusion may occur temporarily; it is part of the process of change. The Church has always been emerging and always will. When it stops changing, it becomes an old wine skin. The few may enjoy the old wine for a season, but there is no place for the new wine for the new generation. As we step out into an unknown future, as Abram did, we may experience some temporary confusion about where we are going. However, by setting out on this journey of change, we are the people of faith God called us to be.
God intends that his community of followers accept that there will always be change, transition, liminality, and a stepping into a future together. Certainly, the Children of Israel did not know all that was before them when they were delivered from Egypt. They entered into a transition in the wilderness. Nomenclature from the past carried meaning of the past and habits and sins of the past. The children of Israel needed to find terms for what God was wanting to do next. The Tent of Meeting was a new idea. Later came the Temple. But God would never dwell in a house made by human hands. Neither will he dwell, that is to stay permanently, in our contemporary idea of church. He has chosen to dwell in the hearts of his followers who are on a journey, on mission with him. This liminality is an exciting process; we are always following, always taking up our cross, always going in Jesus Name. You see, the Church, the community of Christ followers, is not a static central edifice in history. As a missionary, I’ve thought long and hard about this. Too many churches have relegated their understanding of the Great Commission to a department of the church, a line item in their budget. This formation, this attitude, has emasculated the Church. You see, the Church does not have a mission, God’s mission has a Church. We, the whole community of Christ followers, are called into his mission. This alternative view, this missional formation of church, will take us to new places, doing new things, in new ways, and assigning names to those things along the journey.
Those who have made the choice have within them Christ’s love compelling them to embrace and explore the new things God is wanting to do. When our hearts are full, we surrender our rights to the security of tradition. With faith and hope and love, we declare how majestic is the Name of Jesus in all the earth. This is the extraordinary “weight of glory” in naming things. Steven Hawthorne describes glory as “a relational beauty that every person’s heart yearns to behold and even to enter. The essential worth, beauty and value of people, created things and, of course, the Creator Himself.”
God told Moses, “Let my people go, that they may worship me.” As we set out through the wilderness of major transition, we’ll name things with the shared purpose of ascribing greatness to God. He’ll receive glory as we follow him in faith, so long as we don’t hold too tightly to the security of the ways we once knew.
Filed under: Activist | Tags: Church, generation, Madison, Mission, poverty, reformation, revolution, Sixties, Students, university
We all want to change the world. Perhaps I’m just too old AND too young, but I’ve always disliked the word “revolution.” I was born in ‘58, just old enough to really dislike the impact of the 60’s Revolution. That period was probably really from ‘68 to ‘74.
I can’t say for sure if it was due to the radical ideas of the ’60s, but it was during that time my family ripped apart with divorce. I lived in Madison, Wisconsin then. I witnessed the student riots (another excuse to skip class?) and the bombing of Sterling Hall (killing an innocent person). I saw the “peace” marchers turn violent. What do you think? Did those Sixties radicals, the ones who wanted to change the world for the better, have any core beliefs? Where are they now? Some are journalists, some in government, and some are teaching the next generation of university students. We’re hearing those voices more and more.
The word revolution has made a comeback in recent years. Today’s students, many of them, are wanting to change the world again. That’s good. We all want to change the world. But why are Christians using the word revolution? I’m all for social justice as part of God’s mission to the world, but I’ve felt a huge disconnect with those who call for revolution today, those who march, sign petitions, and claim by doing so they can end poverty. The way Jesus taught his disciples to turn the world upside down was by dying to self with open-handed surrender. Perhaps, if we are going to use the word “revolution,” we should be clear in our definition. We should not promote the closed fist posture, demanding of rights, with marches on Washington.
The dictionary definition of “revolution” includes “forcible overthrow of government,” “class struggle,” and “political change through uprising.” If instead, today’s revolutionaries could re-interpret the word to mean reorientation, making Jesus the center of our reality, both spiritual and physical reality, then I could join in the call for a revolution. I want to see every person, every family, community, people group, and nation find their hope in Jesus. Some argue that Jesus is too exclusive, that Christians are too narrow in their beliefs. My reply is that Jesus is the most inclusive personality in the universe. Christians are not exclusive, their particular; they want everyone to meet the One who created everything and everyone with good intention.
What the Church often gets wrong, I think, is that they set up a “missions department,” as if the Church were the center of all things. This posture communicates to church-goers and the surrounding world that the task of reaching every person for Christ is just one of the many things the Church must do, a line item in their budget, a committee, something to remember at the annual missions conference.
Reformation, not revolution, is needed. I propose a different attitude and posture for the Church. The Church does not have a mission. God has a mission. The Church must once again apprehend the Misseo Dei, that God is on a mission. We should reorient the Church to join Christ’s mission. The Church is not the center, Jesus is the center. God has a mission and his mission has a Church. Now that is a revolutionary idea!
Filed under: Church | Tags: Church, community, Emerging Church, Generosity, gospel, Grace, missionaries, Vocation, Worship
Grace is the undeserved, overwhelming generosity of God, “the core of gospel.” (2005: 136) Many churches support of missionaries are an example of the generosity of members who pledge contributions over and above their tithe. Emerging churches typically have no building or salaries, and therefore have freedom to financially assist people and projects through personal connections. Because many churches maintain substantial properties and salaries, there is less flexibility with resources. However, they could explore ways to resource Commission Group projects, both locally and globally, by tithing as a church. (2005: 150) With Commission Groups serving through “grass roots initiatives, rather than planned programs,” churches could practice more of the “bottom-up involvement” of emerging churches. (2005: 143) Fostering generosity, they could encourage groups, not only to serve within the larger church community, but also serve Christ in “an unbroken link between worship and vocation.” (2005: 151)
Next Pattern: Creating as Created Beings
Filed under: Church | Tags: adopt, Church, community, Eddie Gibbs, emerging, evangelism, Hospitality, Ryan Bolger, sacrifice, strangers, Tim Keel
Welcoming strangers is very strategic. While people in your fellowship may practice hospitality, these connections may be practiced mostly in the privacy of homes, rather than celebrated and resourced as a community commitment. According to Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs, inviting strangers into community and practicing inclusion is the emerging church’s approach to sharing the good news. (Bolger & Gibbs 2005: 119) This undisguised evangelistic strategy of emerging churches is not confrontational, but invitational. Are members of your fellowship prepared to embrace the emerging church value of becoming “good news people before proclaiming it”? (2005: 145, 152)
Every Christian is adopted into the family of God through costly initiative, beginning with Christ’s sacrifice. Newly adopted babies are bonded to loving parents, unaccompanied by their conscious choice. Likewise, God has appointed men and women in his fellowship to welcome strangers as family. Welcoming strangers is also about going to where life happens, to the margins of culture, to adopt disaffected people. (See Tim Keel’s book, Intuitive Leadership 2007:98)
What may be necessary to remedy a lack of hospitality is identificational repentance, identifying with the poor while repenting from a lack of concern for the poor and needy. If we fail to be an authentically welcoming community, we cannot be a witness to the wider world. (Bolger & Gibbs 2005: 107)
Next week’s Emerging Church Pattern: Living as Community
Filed under: Church | Tags: Bolger, Church, Cole, community, evangelical, family, Father, Gibbs, Jesus, Mission, Organic Church, Samaritan, seeker-sensitive
The first of the nine patterns of emerging churches as outlined in the book, Emerging Churches, by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs, is “Identifying with Jesus.”
Many evangelicals have witnessed the “seeker-sensitive” approach to church. While this approach may have been justified at one time, many today recognize that it was inadequate. A seeker sensitive approach inadvertently teaches “people to be passive spectators, objects, receivers.” (Bolger & Gibbs 2005: 172)
When he spoke to the Samaritan woman, Jesus said the “Seeker” is the Father, implying that “we are His heart’s desire.” (Organic Churches, Cole 2005: 39) Jesus is our model for living and worship. He lived the Father’s mission. His supreme purpose was not measured in the number of his followers. He did not write a book. He did not create an organization or build a building. Jesus’ supreme purpose is to bring glory to his Father. In doing so, he lived in intimacy with his Father, seeking to do that which gives his Father pleasure.
Rather than leading seeker-sensitive churches, emerging churches are seeking to identify with Jesus. This new “seeker-generating” approach is not about a place, but a Person. Rather than ask people to, “Come to us,” emerging church groups emphasize a call to be like Jesus, moving around the neighborhood, engaging the community, and extending his family to the ends of the earth.
Filed under: Church | Tags: Bolger, Church, community, Emerging Church, Gibbs, reformation, small group, spiritual growth, Steve Taylor, structure
As promised, I will now begin a discussion of the nine patterns of emerging churches, some of which many local churches are already practicing. First, I will propose a dynamic and flexible structure, how a typical evangelical church may re-structure to foster small groups as a new kind of emerging church.
Emerging churches are mostly small, dynamic, and creative communities, where innovation, intimacy, and spiritual growth are intensified. Emerging church leaders have yet to find a sustainable structure with “zero control, high accountability, and low maintenance.”(Bolger & Gibbs 2005: 209)
This is a proposal for a strategy to encourage the formation of new small groups as witnessing communities, which I am calling “Commission Groups.” I will maintain that this re-structuring will help local churches grow members to spiritual maturity, while also growing the community numerically through an outward focused posture. Servicing Commission Groups will help the members of local churches begin to re-imagine and transform into a people, “a love leaking community.” (Taylor 2005:109)
These new Commission Groups will help local churches embrace patterns of emerging churches, which will serve locally and partner globally. What is unique in this formation is the vital connection of new emerging church groups to a typically larger local church.
That vital connection is enhanced as the leadership team of the local church gives opportunity for these groups to periodically give leadership to segments of the Sunday worship event. This crucial element of this strategy is that Commission Groups will be encouraged to bring testimony to the weekly gathering of how they are doing as representatives of Jesus to their neighbors and the world. As Commission Groups begin to lead various segments of worship, including prayer, testimonies, multi-media presentations, and perhaps inviting a special speaker, the Sunday service will become a celebration of authentic community and witness to the greater glory of God.
Filed under: Church | Tags: Church, culture, YWAM, Body of Christ, Shared Leadership, Business, Collaboration, Missional, Youth With A Mission, Foundational Values, Team Leadership, Oswald Sanders, Robert Greenleaf, Scott Rodin, Equipping, Pastor, Partnership, Network, Phill Butler, Darrell Guder, Kouzes and Posner, Calvin, Lausanne Movement, Servant Leadership, Kennon Callahan
I have been asked for a definition of shared leadership. I’ve tested this response on several leaders, each of whom have given me a strong positive feedback. Therefore, I am posting this for your response.
In my reply to the question, I suggest first looking at the purpose for shared leadership. That purpose is found when we understand the current context in which the Church, the Body of Christ, exists. The world at the time of the early Church was a diverse pluralistic society. Today, we find ourselves in a similarly diverse and pluralistic world, an “unchurched” world.
Kennon Callahan, in his book, Effective Church Leadership (1990), gives a compelling argument that the day of the professional pastor in a traditional church is over. Society is changing from a “churched” society to an “unchurched” society and this requires that a pastor become a “missionary”. Callahan writes, “In many ways, the church in America is in the same situation that American business is in: the world is changing and passing it by! This calls for a radical change in the way the church “does business.”
Businesses have been changing and many books are available on the topic of shared leadership, partnership, collaboration, and alliances. I have read several and can loan them to you if you are interested. This shift from the professional pastor began quietly on the mission field many years ago. As the world became increasingly more diverse and increasingly “unchurched,” the need for change in the approach to church leadership became more apparent and more urgent. The missionary strategy is not the same as the pastoral strategy. The focus must be outside the church walls, equipping workers to lead missional communities as the church in their cultural setting. In today’s context, we must set as a high priority the building of new leaders who will function as facilitators on teams.
I have been with Youth With A Mission for 23 years. One of YWAM’s Foundational Values is that we are called to function in teams in all aspects of ministry and leadership. This YWAM Foundational Value states that: “We believe that a combination of complementary gifts, callings, perspectives, ministries and generations working together in unity at all levels of our mission provides wisdom and safety. Seeking God’s will and making decisions in a team context allows accountability and contributes to greater relationship, motivation, responsibility and ownership of the vision.” Team leadership is shared leadership. This value is just that, a value, and the actual practice is different in every setting. It does not stand alone: Team Leadership is complemented by all of YWAM’s Foundational Values, including Relationship-Oriented, Broad Structured and Decentralized, and Exhibit Servant Leadership.
Team leadership is shared and not invested in one person. Leaders of local churches need not direct or set the agenda, but rather facilitate a process by which the community sets the agenda. A shared leadership posture will support and foster the emergence of what I call ‘Commission Groups’. These Commission Groups are not merely small groups; they are small churches, missional communities bearing witness to their community with no control exerted over them.
The leadership challenge, then, is in finding the answers to some key questions: How do you decide who leads? and How do you lead without control?
J. Oswald Sanders (from his book Spiritual Leadership) writes: “Jesus knew that the idea of leader as ‘loving servant of all’ would not appeal to most people. Securing our own creature comforts is a much more common mission. But ’servant’ is His requirement for those who want to lead in His kingdom.”
Scott Rodin, in his article “Leader of No Reputation” writes: “In the end, our work as leaders is all about lordship. Before it is about vision-casting or risk-taking or motivating others or building teams or communicating or strategic planning or public speaking, it is about lordship. Where Jesus is singularly and absolutely lord of our life, we will seek to be like him and him only. That will be our sole calling. We will be called to our work and that work will carry God’s anointing. We will be called to decrease, that Christ may increase. We will be called to be people of God before and as we do the work of God.”
Becoming leaders can’t be left to the persons who want to be a leader. They must be called (and affirmed by the community for their individual anointing within the community and a recognized track record of character, capacity, and commitment), trained (not solely through formal training, but also the non-formal sponsorship of a Barnabas-type leader), and under authority (not seeking positional authority, but humbly serving under the anointing of the Holy Spirit).
The process of equipping and releasing servant leaders in the Body of Christ is the single greatest task of the Church, I believe. Leaders given positional authority tend to rely on that position for security, and worse they can tend to lead through control. By virtue of the positional leadership accorded to pastors of churches, these leaders can be isolated from true fellowship and accountability in the community. History, including recent history, is littered with the damage done by pastors who, in their isolation, became proud, abused their authority, or committed adultery. To maintain positional authority, pastors may hesitate to release others into ministry, unless there is a strong accountability and unless they can also exert control over those under their authority. While this is not true of all pastors, it can be argued that the structure of churches, including the role of the modern pastor, is the primary contributor to the problem.
Shared leadership works through a shared vision, but the primary vision behind shared leadership is not structural. The primary vision will be the cross, and the centrality of Christ. Working toward a shared vision requires that the leadership team manifests the quality of servant leaders, surrendered to the lordship of Christ. Their leadership gifts will be manifest with an understanding and appreciation of the common good, which extends beyond the boundaries of their own group, or their positional authority. Paul writes, “The manifestations of the Spirit are given to each one for the common good.” (I Cor. 12:7)
To define shared leadership, first it is necessary to define two kinds of “shared vision”, which result in the sharing of leadership, networks and partnerships. These definitions come from Phill Butler in his book “Well Connected”:
“Network: Any group of individuals or organizations, sharing a common interest, who regularly communicate with each other to enhance their individual purposes.”
“Partnership: Any group of individuals or organizations, sharing a common interest, who regularly communicate, plan, and work together to achieve a common vision beyond the capacity of any one of the individual partners.”
Butler writes, “frequently networks are incubators for partnerships.” Therefore, the development of a network is best as first priority, with a particular focus on common concerns and resources. By focusing first on individuals in a network, the empowering of participants or ministries is enhanced to a greater effectiveness in their own sphere of influence. The leadership team needs to come together with the same spirit of a network, empowering each others’ ministry gifts within their spheres. That team needs to be the catalyst for the broadening of the network and the creation of partnerships, both short term and long term.
The Lausanne Movement has identified a powerful trend in the Body of Christ: “the shift of power from the center to the edges.” Partnerships, Butler clarifies, have been “based on an ‘open architecture’ model.” He identified this trend first among mission agencies. He writes, “Any individual or agency clearly committed to taking Christ to a specific people group was welcome. While the partnerships developed their own criteria for involvement, leadership roles, etc., they clearly have been inclusive rather than exclusive.” Today, many local churches are partnering with other churches and agencies in their desire to be more missional locally and globally. (See Darrell Guder’s book, Missional Churches and the book Treasures in Jars of Clay.)
What I am recognizing in my studies is that those churches are not the only trend. There is also a trend among people to migrate away from traditional and evangelical churches to what are identified as “emerging churches.” I propose a way to integrate both trends, the trend to be more missional through partnerships and the trend to have smaller, more authentic communities.
Shared leadership needs a shared vision. The vision is of ‘Christ in You’ (individually and corporately), ‘the Hope of Glory.’ The leadership team must “model the way” (See Kouzes and Posner’s book, Leadership Challenge), for families, communities, and yes, nations. The local church community can model how to disciple nations? Yes! Think of the fruit of Calvin’s doctrine of depravity, which stimulated the Presbyterian model of leadership with mutual accountability within the leadership structure. No one individual or group has authority to make all the decisions for the church. Leadership was distributed in ways found in Scripture, which taught the nations the branches of government. This model of leadership literally taught the nations of Great Britain, The Netherlands, and The United States of America, how to have checks and balances of accountability in their governments. The world is watching what the church does and the world can learn through leadership of the church.
Collaboration is a popular word among businesses working together today, however the use of the term and extensive literature does not mean the individuals within those organizations know how to do it. This kind of leadership requires the character of a servant (See Robert Greenleaf’s seminal book, Servant Leadership.) The church needs to equip the next generation of leaders by modeling the way in our structures and our lifestyles. Today’s spiritual leaders need to create collaborative spirit and capacity within a local church, through heart change and structure change, to stimulate missional engagement of the community, and therefore teach the communities and leaders in those communities to lead as servants. True collaboration and true shared leadership, requires a commitment to shared goals, a jointly developed structure and shared responsibility, mutual authority and accountability for success, and sharing of resources, risks, and rewards.
So, here’s my simple definition of Shared Leadership:
Shared leadership for the Church is a Christ-centered relationship entered into by two or more individuals, groups, or organizations to achieve common goals in obedience to Christ’s commission. It is the Body of Christ functioning according to Eph. 4:11-13, Rom. 12:1-11, and I Cor 12:11-28.
Filed under: Church | Tags: Christ, Christian, Church, community, Mission, Purpose, reformation, structure, Transformation, Values, Vision
A great friend from over 20 years ago asked me this question: “Is the church to be a transformational community of believers or a reformational community of believers or both and if both which is to be first?” He writes: “Whatever is first will determine purpose, values, vision and mission.”
My reply:
I think the Church will always have a core of thorough-going martyrs, who’ve carried their cross to their ultimate death to self. Others are following from a distance, like Peter after his denial of Christ. They are conflicted, knowing they need a savior and willing to make personal sacrifice, but too often out of self-righteous motives. The trick is telling the difference between the core and the cultural Christians. Jesus spoke to 500 when he ascended to heaven, but then only 120 actually obeyed and waited in the upper room.
So, transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit through the community of the atonement, those who have taken up their cross to follow Christ. Reformation may only be outer adjustments, priorities, and structures. Still, reformation is necessary. Consider Christ’s declaration that he is the “Bread of Life.” That was a sort of reformation, causing many to refocus their priorities and perhaps become core believers.
Filed under: Mission Leadership | Tags: Church, Cross-Cultural, Development, Internships, Leadership, Ministry, Missions, Strategy, Students, Transformation, YWAM
This question, “Can we transform the world through students?” calls for serious reflection regarding this generation, historical examples, biblical precedent, and issues of leadership credibility.The following reflection is an exercise I have undergone to refocus my own efforts and the ministries of Youth With A Mission’s Student Mobilization Centre.
First, we must ask, “What problem? What needs transformation?”
I believe the Glory of God is revealed as Jesus’ followers portray the truth of the gospel both by proclamation and by loving our global neighbor. The good news: There is a growing number of young people who are activated to help solve the world’s problems, poverty, HIV/AIDS, Malaria, etc. They want to serve among the poor and needy and make a difference. The problem: Those who desire to do something about global human need have little grounding in biblical truth; they either see little need or have insufficient understanding to proclaim the gospel.
Next, we must ask “What harm would be done if the problem isn’t solved?”
If this problem is not solved, a hopeful generation of emerging leaders may lose heart after facing the enormous global challenges without sufficient biblical christian worldview training. I see the urgent need to mobilize a new generation of student missions volunteers from every academic discipline who will learn to think biblically and who will preach and practice the gospel of the kingdom with relevance to the issues and needs of today.
Next, we need to consider the solution or solutions and why the solution(s) are desirable. Why is it a good idea?
Jesus method of training was simply, “Come, follow me.” While classroom instruction has value, Jesus simply modeled his lifestyle and his followers experienced that life and learning while serving alongside him. Our solution for mobilization of today’s university students into short term mission projects complements the specialized training students are getting in universities. Our solution specifically engages the student’s worldview and motivation for service, providing a biblical framework, personal discipleship, and community involvement to help them relate personally with Jesus while they serve. The distinctive of our summer projects for students is the integration of the theoretical with the practical, the sacred with the secular, studies with service, the local with the global, and the personal with the corporate calling to make disciples of all nations.Students come to grasp the height, width, depth and breadth of God’s love for a needy world as they portray his kingdom through loving relationships in community.
We must also ask “Why is solving this problem relevant?” More specifically, “Is this problem and solution relevant to you and to your community? Your church? Your ministry? Your profession? Your family?”
Our student ministries are designed with partnership in mind. Our Centre partners with student groups, church groups, professionals, and field projects. I believe today’s Church must be both a sending and a receiving church, which means we must make our commitment to the developing world a more complete partnership between the sending and receiving communities. The Student Mobilization Centre invites new partners to participate in these community bridges of 21st century missions.
Finally, “Is our solution credible? Do we have some kind of track record of results?”
The Student Mobilization Centre facilitates practical opportunities for university students to integrate into working cross-cultural ministry situations related to their fields of study. Our Field Ministry Internships teams are short term learning-serving summer experiences for students and christian leaders. Students gain academic credit serving collaboratively with one of our many integrated development and church planting projects in the developing world. FMI students from over 100 colleges/universities in nine nations have participated on 75 teams in 34 countries since 1989.
Filed under: Church | Tags: Biblical, Bolger, Christian, Church, Communities, Emerging Church, Faithful, Gibbs, Hope, Humble, Keel, McLaren, Posture, Practice, Reenergize, Reforming, Religion, Spiritual, Virtue
Some Christians may move from one church to another seeking to meet spiritual needs, however others remain faithful in their church communities with hope. Some Christians have abandoned the modern church form, seeking a more biblical form, a purer formation of Christian community. I want to suggest that the way forward is not to abandon the existing church formation entirely. In this time of radical cultural shift, perhaps the way forward is to seek ways to re-form church by taking a humble posture to re-imagine, to re-new, and to re-create. Reenergizing this church will be closely linked to hope. “Embracing change is dangerous,” Tim Keel of Jacob’s Well writes, “but so is inaction.” Rather than completely abandon church and “organized religion,” as some have done, I propose a reforming posture of “organizing religion,” as Brian McLaren writes, by encouraging the formation of small communities “celebrating virtue and training people to practice it.”
In my next post, I will begin to outline those “postures” that Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger have identified in their book “Emerging Churches.”
Filed under: Activist | Tags: Church, community, consumer, culture, feedom, gospel, kingdom, materialist, Priesthood of all believers, Reformers, Roman, western
This week I’m looking at the Western Church. Many formations of the Church have emerged all over the world. However, the Western Church emerged by aligning with Roman power. This formation has resulted in centuries of failure to truly bear witness to the good news of the kingdom of God. Despite human failing, the Holy Spirit continued to pour out into many cultures, such as Ireland, with little structural support.
Today, the Western mindset tempts church leaders around the world to continue the Roman formation of structural, positional, and hierarchical or authoritarian power. Even after the Reformers re-articulation of the “Priesthood of All Believers,” most church structures continue to fail to demonstrate it. Churches in the late twentieth century have gone a step further, linking success to the capacity to meet the religious needs of members. Because leaders are presenting “church” as a spectator event, cultural christians pick and choose the church gathering that most appeals to their individual needs or wants.
Too often captive to a materialist and consumer culture, most church-goers do not see how the Western Church has been the beneficiary of institutional power, wealth, and influence. Therefore many Christians fail to represent Christ and His kingdom through community.
If we are captive, what steps should we take to break free to truly become a community witnessing to the good news of the kingdom of God?
Filed under: Church | Tags: Bolger, Christendom, Church, emerging, Gen-X, Gibbs, Keel, postmodern, reformation, theology
Gen-X churches are not Emerging Churches, but rather failed attempts to emerge from the Western church form. The Emerging Church is not trying to rebuild Christendom, as some might hear in the larger Gen-X churches. Gen-X gatherings began in the early 1990’s. Within a few years, large churches began to sponsor churches within churches for Gen-X youth as if they were not ready for adult church. By the mid-1990’s, Gen-X church leaders, committed to the rigorous study of theology and postmodernity, began to focus on a postmodern reformation. These emerging church leaders such as Tim Keel, Jacob’s Well, understand that theology is “local, conversational, and temporary.” Many have concluded that if God would not dwell in a temple, neither will He dwell in our theology. Meanwhile, Ryan Bolgers and Eddie Gibbs point out in their book “Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures,” that some are questioning “whether postmodern Christians could still be considered evangelicals.”
According to Bolgers and Gibbs, emerging church leaders are more apt to speak of “what they are emerging from more than …what they are emerging into.” Facing centuries of institutional and cultural strongholds, emerging church leaders are accepting the challenge to counter modernity and its controls through hierarchy, doctrine, or consumerism. These are major challenges that require humility and discernment. In their book, Bolger and Gibbs outline nine patterns, identified by their field research with stories collected from fifty emerging church leaders. Those nine patterns are: identifying with Jesus, transforming secular space, living as community, welcoming strangers, serving with generosity, participating as producers, creating as created beings, leading as a body, and merging ancient and contemporary spiritualities. In the following posts, I will examine these emerging church patterns and propose ways to adopt them for your fellowship.
Books about the Emerging Church are everywhere. Thoughts about the Church are just as varied. What should be included in the discussion is revelation of the Kingdom of God. Perhaps we should look at the Early Church to get some of our ideas and at the words of Jesus to get some ideas about the Kingdom of God.
Today, I believe we can be like the Early Church, which had a clear missionary impulse with no intended cultural, linguistic, or hierarchical center. After the risen Christ told five hundred on-lookers to wait, only one hundred and twenty decided to be present the day the Spirit came in power. However, as they poured into the street, the Spirit empowered the witness of the tiny new church to speak the seventeen languages of the cultural mix in Jerusalem. Peter then spoke with a newfound courage and the community quickly became a network of three thousand. Their un-programmed witness continued as they met new friends in homes.
Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” But what is it like in heaven? What should it be like on earth? Do we even know what we are praying?
The Jews who heard Jesus, even his own disciples, thought Jesus was making a political declaration. They thought the Messiah was coming to kick out the Romans and give them political liberty. But that’s not what Jesus was sent to do. The people of that day needed to repent, change their thinking, for the Kingdom of God is far more universal. Some reading this may need to repent of the same false idea. The Kingdom of God is not represented by a political party or a new kind of government. We’re not turning the government over to a savior, no matter who we are privileged to vote for.
It is also important to change our thinking, our understanding of “church,” to distinguish the church from the “kingdom of God,” which is the boundary-free domain that Jesus commissioned his witnesses to proclaim. As citizens of heaven, Christ followers must remember that our formation of church communities will fall short of the ideal.
The way to bear witness to the kingdom, is to have vision for the kingdom. To do that, I believe the Father intends that we ask for his vision of the kingdom and his vision for a dynamic, fluid, and distributed Church, which bears fruit that will last.
Filed under: Church | Tags: Church, community, humility, Jesus, kingdom of God, service, witness
The emergence of the church is “part of a long history of God-inspired apostolic endeavor.” (Steve Taylor, Out of Bounds Church 2005, p. 39) Before discussing formations of the Church, which I plan to do in subsequent posts, it is imperative that our understanding of “church” be distinguished from the “kingdom of God,” which is the boundary-free domain that Jesus commissioned his witnesses to proclaim. As citizens of heaven, Christ followers must remember that our formation of church communities will fall short of the ideal. However, the most effective witnessing church formations take a posture of humility and service within smaller groupings. Amid a world consumed by façade, how do we create authentic communities to best demonstrate the Church’s anticipation of the kingdom of God? (Tim Keel, Intuitive Leadership 2007, p. 117)
Another question:
Tim Keel, Jacob’s Well Church, Kansas City, writes: “At the heart of the Protestant Reformation are Latin phrases like ‘reformata semper reformanda est’ and ‘Ecclesia semper reformanda est.’ They can be translated, respectively, ‘reformed and always being re-formed,’ and similarly, ‘the church always needs to be reformed.’”
Doug Pagitt, Solomon’s Porch, Minneapolis, MN adds: “We honor the reformers not by saying what they said, but by doing what they did.”
How should the church be reformed in today’s pluralistic world and why?
Filed under: Church, Introductions | Tags: change, Church, city, culture, Europe, multicultural, pluralistic, translation, USA
Charles Kraft, Professor of Anthropology and Intercultural Communication in the School of Intercultural Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, writes: “A contemporary church, like a contemporary translation, should impress the uninitiated observer as an original production in the contemporary culture, not as a badly fitted import from somewhere else.”
Given the extreme changes in culture during the past 20 years, especially the increasingly multi-cultural and pluralistic setting of nearly every city around the world, most especially in the USA and Europe, what should the church look like today?
