TheBolgBlog

The Carnivalistic Life

I've been doing a good amount of reading on culture this quarter for the class I'm teaching. I ran into this writing on carnivals by Mikhail Bakhtin. He wrote that in the medieval carnival, there was no separation between performers and spectators. In fact, performers were really not performers at all; instead, they lived in this carnivalesque space. Much more than a performance, the carnival was a life lived. Both 'spectator' and 'performer' held their roles lightly in this newly shared space.

Bakhtin went on to explain that all the oppressive conditions of everyday life -- and there were plenty in medieval Europe -- were suspended during the carnival. Revelry replaced terror, laughter replaced gloominess, abundance replaced scarcity, freedom replaced all restrictions. All social inequalities, hierarchical structures, and rules of social distance were set aside as well. The carnival space combined "the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low, the great with the insignificant, the wise with the stupid."

When I read this, I immediately thought about a comment I heard from Karen Ward, how her community "plays in the kingdom", i.e. practices heaven. In their church life together, they are more than simply performers -- they participate in a life lived under a different logic, they indwell a different time and space, a future time, the 'now and not yet', the rule and reign of God.

I wondered, as followers of Jesus, how we might create these free zones, these spaces where the oppression of the world does not reign. I was thinking not only in our times of meeting together but separately as well, in our workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, parks. How do we create this alternative space where hierarchies are not observed, where everyone has a voice, where people experience liberation, where laughter is frequent, where the terror is lifted, even for just a few moments? What if our 'witness' is not a performance but the creation of an alternative space, a space that does not yield to the powers of this world but strives to point to the next?

Technorati Tags: Bakhtin, carnival, Fuller Theological Seminary, Karen_Ward, kingdom of God, Social Space

Mission in Contemporary Culture

We had a great first day of class yesterday in Transforming Contemporary Culture. I'm really excited about the students -- about half are new, the other half seasoned Fuller students. They were really engaged for the first day. I'll post more as I learn more about them.

I introduced the history of our particular class, originally title 'Mission in Contemporary Culture'. I traced it back to Lesslie Newbigin and the early 1980s Britain. It was at that time that Newbigin suggested that the West was a mission field and, several years later, Wilbert Shenk went to work with him in the early 1990s. Wilbert Shenk was hired by Fuller in 1995 to begin teaching 'Mission in the West' as well as Mission History.

What was so unusual about this move was that mission reflection was always done for/to the non-West, primarily using tools from anthropology. But what if culture was taken seriously, in the West, just as missionaries took it seriously in the non-West. What if we trained ordinary Christians with cultural tools, so they could facilitate indigenous expressions of church in the West?

The move to understand culture is consistent with the founder of our school, Donald McGavran. He stated again and again that a person should not have to change cultures to find God. The incarnation came to us, in ways people could understand, i.e. Jesus spoke and dressed within the everyday life and culture of first-century palestine. If we want to be like Jesus, we need to do the same in the cultures of the West.

So, Wilbert Shenk started MP520, Mission in Contemporary Culture, and instead of studying tribals, we studied modernity, postmodernity, christendom, postchristendom, politics, economics, health, sport, consumerism,  and the list goes on.  We studied what a missional witness might look at within these  aspects of culture, as ones who live inside these rubrics. How do we point to the kingdom as insiders, as residents who are never quite at home in this world?

Taking this class in 1998 turned me upside down. I had never heard of the idea of a mission in the West. I became Shenk's TA in the late 90s and started a PhD with him at that time. During 2004, we brainstormed where to take the class once he retired. Now I'm teaching it for the second year and I am so passionate about the material. I believe it provides essential tools for the huge transition (fifty years or so) the Western church is making from Christendom to Missional. I'm lovin it!

Technorati Tags: Fuller Theological Seminary, mission, culture

School Begins, Scrambling, Scrambling

Well, the fall quarter started today, and my first class of the quarter is tomorrow. I've been scrambling to get it all together and ready to go. With the help of my friend and Ph.D student, Wess Daniels, I have a new blog for my classes at Fuller. I'll keep posting at thebolgblog all those things not necessarily directed at my students. Thebolgblog will still serve as my primary blog area, although, admittedly, I've been particularly challenged to keep it going.

Technorati Tags: C. Wess Daniels, Fuller Theological Seminary

Back to Work...

Well, the kids are now back in school, thus officially ending 'summer' for me. It was a great summer on which I hope to do some more reflecting...the Newbigin consultation & Blah tours on the EC front, andplay in England and Big Bear, CA with good friends and family. The home front included lots of play with the kids and coordinating our kitchen remodel.

Of course, the best part of the Newbigin consultation and blah were making some new relationships and developing others further. I learn so much from these people.

Coming up for me this fall? I'm writing a 21st century 'take' on Donald McGavran's contribution. I'm doing this because I need to get my head around this guy, as I'm teaching through his material in Church Growth in October. I'm developing a class on ecclesiology with Doug Pagitt to be taught at Fuller next spring. I'm writing an article with J. Shawn Landres on the similarities between "Emergent Synagogues" and Emerging Churches. Finally I'm teaching a class on Transforming Contemporary Cultures. I taught this class last year, but I'm changing the material to emphasize the role of media. Over the summer, I've been influenced by British Cultural Studies, so this class will reflect that change. Finally, I'm supposed to be writing book 2  -- tentatively on Jesus and culture, but, er, um, having a bit of trouble getting to it...Publish or perish is more of a guideline than a rule, right? :)

This post signifies my jumping back into a regular posting schedule -- at least weekly, if not more. As I'm reflecting on the summer or jumping into these new projects, I'll share some of my reflections. Cheers!

Technorati Tags: everyday life

Training Cultural Prophets -- Dreams For My School Part 2

In a post a while back, I described an all-day 'dreaming' event we had at Fuller. As one of the presenters I listed four dreams I had for my school. In my blog, I listed the first and said the other three would come later. Here is one part of the later -- Dream #2 for my school.

How do we equip men and women for the manifold ministries of Christ and his church, when these communities have no physical church structure, their life is 24-7, where the church service is not the main focus and thus not the connecting point with those outside? How do we train in when the church-y stuff is gone?

We must train our students for church in the world – that the culture forms the ground from which they minister.  How to do that? We would equip students with skills to connect their faith within cultures, teaching them both to exegete the powers and to transform them. This would include both an exclusion and an embrace of cultural elements. We would advocate a Jesus-like model as a way to live in contemporary culture.
   
To train these cultural prophets, our pedagogy must change. We must allow the students' questions to drive the execution of our content – same core material, but accessed in ways that help them serve as missionaries in their context. Each class is dynamic – the questions asked form a rubric for what is covered – the content, teacher, and students are in a dynamic conversation.

Professors must be aware of the ways in which their course material serves Christ-followers in their missionary endeavors. We would offer our resources in theology, in biblical studies, in historical research, in ethics and philosophy to serve their witness in contemporary culture.

We would equip our students not solely in linear ways, but as artists, as sources of creativity in the spiritually wired culture. These students would live as prophets in the midst of contradictions -- embracing God’s ways amongst the marginalized in cultures that favor the powerful. This is my dream...

Does Diversity include the Mainstream?

Recently, I had an email conversation with one of my favorite students, David Best. It had to do with the diversity of thinking (or lack thereof) at Fuller Seminary. He first blogged about it here. He asked if he could blog about our ensuing conversation, I agreed, and then I thought I would post on it as well.

Dreams for My School

I love my school -- I can't picture doing what I do anywhere else in the world. The people here -- students, admin, and other faculty -- make this place fun and dynamic...Recently I was part of an all-day "dreaming event", a time of discernment to see where God might be leading us. What is my dream for the future of my school, Fuller Theological Seminary, as we look to equip ministers in the 21st century? In other words, what is God doing in the world, and what ought to be our response?

I had five minutes to present a few unfinished ideas, and here is what they were...

Days 3 & 4 What is the Emerging Church?

In our Emerging Church class the last two days, we explored various definitions of Emerging Churches. It has been a lively discussion. We gave a bit of our research story, and how our idea of emerging churches constantly changed as our research proceeded during the years 2000-2005. For the US scene, we continued to use our three-part rubric:
1986 -- present: new church plant, single-generation churches (some say Gen-X), often very large
1994 -- present: church-within-a-church, single generation church services (or youth service, young adult service) that are funded by large churches as part of their congregation, often very large
2000 -- present: Emerging Churches -- small, often networked, organic, Jesus-like communities (whose definition will be explored through the rest of the course).

We established this rubric because we found that people discuss these different movements as 'emerging church' but they are entirely different animals. As we gathered research data over a few years, these groupings became more obvious. I like to present Dieter Zander's story as an example of this evolution with his work at New Song in 1986-1993, Axis at Willow Creek 1994-1998, and his ministry beginning in San Francisco in 1999.

So we gave a bit of the story which led to our definition of Emerging Churches. In a sense, we have three sizes to our definition -- small, medium, and large, where we continue to flesh out our ideas a bit.

Small:
Emerging Churches are communities who practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures.
Medium:
Emerging Churches are those who take the life of Jesus as a model way to live (one), who transform the secular realm (two), as they live highly communal lives (three). Because of these three activities, they welcome those who are outside (four), they share generously (five), they participate (six), create (seven), they lead without control (eight), and function together in spiritual activities (nine).
Large:
In our book, Emerging Churches, we spend a chapter on each of these patterns, telling lots of stories. Hopefully these narratives will give life to our description of emerging churches...

So, as a class, we spent six hours discussing these ideas -- and no one seemed to sleep through it! We will now begin to expand on these definitions through the rest of the course...

Technorati Tags: Emerging_Church, Fuller Theological Seminary

Day 2: Russinger takes Fuller by Storm...

Greg Russinger of the Bridge Communities in Ventura, CA came and visited us on our second day of class. For about an hour, he told stories and fielded questions regarding the Bridge community that began in 1999. He was funny, thought-provoking, and very honest about his journey and that of his faith community. He translated their way of life into traditional church language, and he did it very well. Greg is one of the few, but the number is growing, leaders of emerging churches who did not need to unlearn many practices of church in the process of creating their faith community. More typical are emerging churches that begin with leaders who have seriously begun to question what it is church is about. It might take a few years, but there is a period of disillusionment with church-as-it-is before the creation of a community that is no longer reacting, but creating something fresh and new. With Greg, he intuits emerging church. Hospitality pervades all they do -- it is urban, it is artistic, it is communal, it is prayerful, it is everyday, and it is in the world. Greg and his community do not expend energy on how to do things in a way that is different than they knew before -- this is their primary understanding of 'church'. Greg said that those in the community who have the hardest time with how they do life were those who had spent significant time in more traditional churches.

In the 1990s in the US, church leaders and scholars spent a good amount of time pondering what incarnational witness might look like within postmodernity. In many ways it seemed like an impossible dream. In this decade, however, we see indigenous postmodern communities being birthed in places all over the globe, and they look a lot like what is happening in the Bridge...

Technorati Tags: Fuller Theological Seminary, Greg_Russinger

Day 1: Emerging Churches

It was great to start the class -- maybe 35 of us working through the material...

A very rough guesstimate of our students might be:
Pastors, mission leaders, youth pastors, those concerned with church growth and/or connecting to the youth -- 40%
Curious, concerned, or those desiring to learn more about the Emerging Church itself -- 40%
Those who are disillusioned with church as we know it -- 20%

Interspersed among these were artists seeking to connect with culture...(maybe 5 to 10% of the class). And of course, many could put themselves in multiple categories, but this is how they described their primary reason for attending...

I found that these Emerging Church topics, in any venue, invite many questions, and this class is no exception...I feel like Eddie and I talked too much -- but hopefully that will change as we move into the rest of the week.

A word to those outside the class who want to visit our class blog and individual blogs -- by all means you are welcome!!

Technorati Tags: Emerging_Church, Fuller Theological Seminary