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: Activist, Madison, Wisconsin, Mission Leadership | Tags: community, Jesus, Christ, poverty, Madison, individualism, University of Wisconsin, Global Human Need, HIV/AIDS, Pharisees, Freedom, Globalization, environmentalism, water, technology, Western culture, neighbor
How do people react to individualism, environmentalism, and poverty in Madison? These forces may be at the same time subtle and powerful. Globalization is having a paradoxical effect, connecting people and resources through technology and isolating people in reaction to the enormity of global needs. “As the [global] demand for water continues to increase, there is greater pressure placed on an already shrinking water supply,” says Joel Pedersen, a UW-Madison environmental chemist. “More people are considering the reuse of water.” While most expect individual freedoms to continue, others are sounding the alarm to warn us that individualism in Western culture is a major contributor to global problems. In Madison, research on water resources, HIV/AIDS, and global poverty is churning in the laboratories of the University of Wisconsin. How should today’s Jesus follower respond? Followers of Christ believe in community, but most have so aligned with the culture of individualism that they take little notice of urgent global human needs. Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Perhaps, like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, evangelical believers in the 21st century should ask “Who is my neighbor?”
Filed under: Madison, Wisconsin, Mission Leadership | Tags: community, Development, Christian, Madison, materialism, secularism, individualism, University of Wisconsin, Western civilization, Globalization, study, postmodernism, Berkley, Sterling Hall, Wisconsin Idea
This is the first of a series of posts from a study I performed in 2004 on how the Christian community can respond to the effects of globalization in the city of Madison, Wisconsin. In it I will describe the context and an appropriate missional response. As I review this study with you, I will also post some real time activities and ministries responding to globalization taking place in Madison.
Introduction
Satellite television is broadcasting the notable influences of globalization as global culture industries seek ways to quicken the pace and broaden the demand for entertainment, variety, and convenience. The microchip has ushered Western civilization into a new age of ever more rapid development and information transfer. Modernism, and the “in-between” era of postmodernism, has guided individual participants toward the shared values of materialism, secularism, and individualism, with a vast array of interrelated characteristics of globalization.
Madison, the capitol of Wisconsin, is a city with over two hundred thousand residents and host to over forty thousand University of Wisconsin students. Sometimes called “Berkley of the Midwest,” the UW-Madison has a history of radical student activity. At the time of the Vietnam War, Madison was shaken by a series of student protests. Madison residents can buy organic smoothies at the Library Mall Juice cart run by Karl Armstrong, famed for his part in the 1970 bombing of Sterling Hall, which killed a graduate student of physics. Madison, proud of its progressive thinking and tolerance, powerfully influences state and national politics, philosophy, entertainment, and education. The “Wisconsin Idea” is described as the compelling need to carry “the beneficent influence of the university … to every home in the state.” (Stark 1995) With more than four thousand international students from one hundred and twenty nations, the UW impressively shapes more than Madison; it affects the world. (Bollag 2004)
The examination of how globalization has affected Madison, especially with respect to the influence of the University of Wisconsin, will help us to understand the context in which the Church in Madison is ministering. With that understanding in mind, we will discuss how the Church in Madison ought to respond and what the kingdom of God could look like in a major university community.
Filed under: Bible | Tags: Achtemeier, and Thompson, Book of Acts, Christian Church, community, Gentile, Green, historical documents, history, Luke, missiological perspective, New Testament, Roman Empire, Scriptures, story of Jesus, story of the Church, theological perspective, value-based
The Book of Acts is obviously Luke’s continuing historical account transitioning from the story of Jesus to the story of the Church. What’s somewhat surprising is the necessity to foster a theological perspective, or rather a missiological perspective, as you read the chronology of the early witnesses of the Good News to the Gentile nations. The fact is we would not be able to understand the rest of the New Testament without the Book of Acts.
Luke & Acts are primarily historical documents in nature. It is not a pure history. It comes from a limited perspective of what occurred in and outside the community of believers, which expanded throughout the Roman Empire. It should not discourage us to know that we will not find a purely objective history. It is value-based, biased, and a limited view of the events.
Our study of the Scriptures requires respect; no method of study will “correspond precisely to the conviction that the New Testament… comprises the Scriptures of the Christian Church.” (Achtemeier, Green, and Thompson: 12)
By having respect, I mean that we should employ a “critical openness” posture, listening respectfully and responding thoughtfully. We should examine the literary and historical nature of the documents, and at the same time understand their importance shaping the faith and conduct of communities of Christ followers through the centuries and in many cultures.
Filed under: Bible | Tags: Angels, Christian, community, Cristological, faith, Greek philosophy, Hebrews, High Priest, humanity, Jewish, Melchizedek, Modern, Paul, pilgrim, priesthood, Revelation, Rome, Scriptures, tabernacle, Temple, wilderness
Hebrews is an “elegantly polished” text, which is “removed from the world of the Modern reader.” This book serves as a pastoral letter, which exhorts Christian believers, a “pilgrim people,” to “persevere” and to continue to grow. Though the letter is Pauline in content, he is not the author. Instead, the author is likely to have been associated with Paul. This author is an educated Jewish person trained in Greek philosophy and exegesis. This person is clearly an authority in the church with an important word for an increasingly diverse, though clearly the author’s contemporary Jewish audience, probably in Rome. This letter refers to the “tabernacle” more than the “temple”, with references to the “wilderness” through which the “pilgrim” community is venturing and can reach their destination “today.” This treatise, which describes the Hebrew Scriptures as “alive and active”, is clearly describing the realities and promises fulfilled through the finished work of God in Christ. The author outlines three key Christological arguments; Jesus is “superior.” Jesus is superior as the Son, the Pioneer of our Faith, and the High Priest. God has spoken in the past through angels, but now he speaks to us through his Son, the agent of God’s creation and revelation, in these “last days.” He shares our humanity, yet he is the heir of all things, who receives the promise on behalf of all human beings. As a superior pioneer, he has gone ahead of us, blazing a trail for us to follow, doing what we could not do. After the order of the priesthood of Melchizedek, he is a “perfect” high priest, who was made perfect through suffering, and can make our consciences perfect through his perfect offering made once for all.
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: blasphemous, Christ, Christian, community, destiny, doctrine, dualism, election, eschatalogical, exodus, future, humanity, Israel, Jesus, Jewish, Messiah, monotheism, Paul, Purpose, Road to Damascus
Something about that encounter on the Road to Damascus was so “utterly trustworthy” that Paul was convinced that the God of his fathers had appeared to him in the person of Jesus. God had called Israel to fulfill a purpose, which is the future for all people. This has always been the purpose of Israel’s election. Jesus is the ultimate exodus for Israel and the whole world. Israel’s destiny is summed up in the Messiah. Paul is not teaching Christian dualism and he is not launching a new movement. He is not forming a separate people. However, he is preaching a new message, one of the fulfillment of Israel’s promises, one new humanity.
Throughout his life, Paul was committed to Jewish monotheism. What changed was the depth of his understanding of that “fighting doctrine,” which declares “blasphemous” all other gods, all other philosophies, and all other political loyalties. The contrasting changes and consistencies in Paul’s identity within his faith community, his understanding of the Law, and his eschatological vision were clearly the result of his personal encounter with Jesus on the Road to Damascus. Paul realized a vital relationship with the One “true content” of Jewish monotheism, Jesus Christ. Paul became “known” by the God of Israel. (Gal. 4:8-11)
Filed under: Bible, Church, Mission Leadership | Tags: community, Damascus, faith, Gameliel, Herod the Great, Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, Judaism, Messiah, Paul, Pharisees, Saul, Stephen
Saul’s self-identity as a member of the “strictest sect” of the Jewish religion has often led to a misinterpretation of Paul, the apostle of Christ Jesus. (Acts 26:5) The Pharisees were a significant social movement of nearly six thousand people at the end of the reign of Herod the Great. These ‘Separate Ones’ proselytized their fellow Jews to the end that a new community of devout followers of God, a sort of priesthood of all Jewish believers, would emerge. Consistent with the messages of John the Baptist and Jesus, many Pharisees sought to reform God’s people.
The Pharisees were not unified in their political and social aspirations, however. While the Pharisees may have all expected an apocalyptic future judgment on all of Israel’s enemies, they were divided, liberal and conservative, with different political and religious emphases. Under the tutorage of Gameliel, Saul originally identified with Hillelites, the liberal Hellenistic Pharisees. Saul evidently had a significant conversion within Pharisaic Judaism, through which he began to identify with Shamaites, the revolutionary Pharisees. This conversion had therefore narrowed Saul’s community of faith to a smaller group of “daggermen.” He was willing to use violence on anyone, even liberal Jewish “traitors”, who would not support the Shamaite’s tri-part myopic agenda for Israel, her people, her land, and her temple. This begins to explain why Saul gave approval of those who killed Stephen. (Acts 8:1, 3)
After six hundred years of captivity, the prophetic promise for Israel’s deliverance was deeply embedded in Saul’s worldview. (Isa. 46:12-13) Contrary to popular opinion, Saul’s identity in Jewish community was not defined by legalism. Instead, it was the belief that Israel was God’s people and that God had a special covenant of grace with them. Saul heard a new spin on the story of Israel’s Messiah when Stephen expounded the Hebrew Scriptures. Stephen’s rendition claimed Israel’s Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth. Then Saul witnessed Stephen looking up saying, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” As he was stoned to death, Stephen said, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” (Acts 7:56, 60)
Probably enraged by Stephen’s claim that he saw the “Son of Man,” the name reserved for Israel, Saul expanded his persecution seeking permission from the high priest to arrest followers of the “Way” in Damascus. (Acts 9:1-2) Though he was devout in his understanding of the grandeur of Jewish monotheism, Israel’s election, and apocalyptic eschatology, Saul’s radical devotion to Torah had diminished his Judaism to a sect with little evidence of grace. He must have been conflicted knowing that Israel was a covenant people who “responded to God’s gracious initiative in terms set forth in the Torah.” Clearly, Saul witnessed the grace of the Spirit of Israel’s Messiah through the testimony and martyrdom of Stephen. Saul’s longing for the abundant grace of God for the community of Israel was not evident in his life, however this early encounter of grace exhibited in Stephen’s final words had implanted a seed of apocalyptic revelation.
The next post will be about Paul’s changing relationship with the Torah and the Law of the Spirit Life.
Filed under: Mission Leadership | Tags: Abraham, community, eschatological, faith, Isaac, Jacob, Jesus, Jewish, Judaism, monotheism, Paul, Road to Damascus, Saul
Saul of Tarsus’ dramatic meeting with the risen Lord Jesus radically completed his appreciation for Jewish monotheism. The change of his name to Paul and the dramatic changes in his ministry orientation have sometimes been interpreted as an abandonment of his zeal for the faith of his fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However Paul’s scathing criticism of the first century practices of Judaism and his message of inclusion to pagan Greeks and Romans into communities of faith alongside Jews is not his final verdict on Judaism, it is rather his interpretation of the sequel to Israel’s story. After more than a century of Biblical scholarship, which has both “used and abused” Paul, some have begun to reevaluate Paul’s relationship to Judaism. With these new studies, we can now better compare and contrast changes in Paul’s story, his identity before and after his encounter with Jesus. In the next several posts, I will look at the changes and consistencies in Paul’s identity within his faith community, his understanding of the Law, and his eschatological vision, which I believe are all best understood through the singular lens of his personal encounter with Jesus on the Road to Damascus.
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: Mission Leadership | Tags: Bascom Hall, Budde, Christianity, community, Europe, Lee Dreyfus, Madison, Modernism, Truth, university, University of Wisconsin, UW
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.” There are major “gaps between gospel values and the practices of Christianity in ‘Christian’ Europe” and other formerly Christian territories. (See Michael Budde’s book, “The (Magic) Kingdom of God: Christianity and Global Culture Industries.” Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. 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.”
Today, the university community continues to seek truth, with the limitations of Modernism’s arrogant spirit. Finding truth requires humility and a willingness to learn from sources new and old, including learning from those who have been isolated and marginalized for their religious faith.
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 | Tags: Authenticity, Bolger, community, Emerging Church, Gibbs, Innovation, Jesus, Modern, Private, Public, Sacred, Secular, theology, western
Secular space was created when Western theology “reduced God to power and removed the sense that a good and beautiful God participates with humans. Unbelievers successfully created ‘safe zones’ so that God would not interfere with them” (See Emerging Churches, by Bolger & Gibbs, p. 192)
Modern Christians became comfortable in the ‘sacred spaces’ of the Church and their private lives. The witness of the Church was therefore weakened and reduced to a private decision, in a place set apart from the public domain. Emerging churches are countering this weakness by “removing the distinction of church and non church activities.” (Bolger & Gibbs, 107) They are synthesizing evangelism and service, avoiding differentiation between Christians and non-Christians. Emerging Churches are changing the focus from the external boundary of belief to the Person of Jesus at the center. They are more concerned about relating to Jesus in any setting, including night clubs and golf courses, than they are defining who is in and who is out.
Church communities today face a significant challenge, creating “bridges to span the sacred/secular divide.” (Bolger & Gibbs, 67) The way to do that may be for members of your church community to become the good news to their neighbors, encouraging and modeling gospel living to take place in secular spaces. The emphasis among Emerging Churches is to create “innovation” to “ensure authenticity.” (Bolger & Gibbs, 210)
Next week’s Emerging Church Pattern: Leading as the Body
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: Church | Tags: community, Creativity, Emerging Church, Steve Taylor, Tim Keel
In addition to creating spaces for community members and friends to share struggles, Commission Groups can also be venues for sharing stories and developing ministry gifts. Emerging churches are seeking to participate in God’s creativity as “musician/composer,” “designer/dresser,” “architect/builder,” “crafter/artisan,” and “playful storyteller.” (See Steve Taylor’s book, The Out of Bounds Church: Learning to Create a Community of Faith in a Culture of Change. ) A mid-sized Evangelical Church with the attractional model of ministry, may have staff to coordinate creative ministries and worship teams, however the focus is mostly on the Sunday gathering.
Many church goers have received teaching about spiritual gifts and those teachings are often designed to stimulate creativity and participation, however they too often emphasize the equipping of members to serve the church event. (See Tim Keel’s book, Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, & Chaos.) The adjustment for a mid-sized Evangelical Church community is to release the creativity of everyone, first within Commission Groups and later in the Sunday worship event. Commission Groups with testimonies of effective witness and creative worship can be encouraged to lead various segments of the Sunday event, the worship, prayer, testimonies, multi-media, drama, and even inviting a speaker. However a new formation of a mid-sized church community can release the creativity within smaller communities, or Commission Groups . Leaders of Commission Groups can be coached by a Leadership Team of the mid-sized Evangelical Church community. Not only will the members express creativity within Commission Groups, they may also be invited to lead the larger Sunday event. By doing so, the Commission Groups can show evidence of what God can do with ordinary materials, creatively reporting and celebrating ways in which they are worshipping and loving Jesus and their neighbors.
Next week’s Pattern: Participating as Producers
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: Bolger, community, Emerging Church, Gibbs, Jacob's Well, Leadership, Modernity, Neil Cole, Organic Church, Small Groups, Tony Jones
Jacob’s Well, an emerging church community in Kansas City, has a mural with the constant reminder that, “the visible church is not to be the bearer of Christ’s message, but to be the message.” (Tony Jones, The New Christians, 2008: 178) To fully embrace this pattern, local communities must dismantle the idea of church as a place, and reform it with the clear understanding that church is a people with commitment to community. The gospel message is best presented through small groups with genuine friendships, authenticity serving, loving, and giving. “The ideal size for effective fellowship and ministry,” is where “reproduction is easiest and community, accountability, confidentiality, flexibility, communication, direction and leadership are strongest.” (Cole, The Organic Church, 2005: 100-102)
Not all members are typically in one of their church community’s existing small groups. Why? Because it is difficult for people “nurtured in a culture of modernity and the unlimited sovereignty of the individual” to make themselves vulnerable within authentic community. (Bolger & Gibbs, Emerging Churches, 2005: 92) Emerging churches recognize the gospels are stories of “missional formation experiences” within small communities. (2005: 105) For them church is less about meetings and places, than an expression of kingdom values in a witnessing community.
Next week’s Emerging Church Pattern: Serving with Generosity
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: 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: 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: 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)
