TheBolgBlog

The Congregation Strikes Back?

Bill Kinnon, at Achieveable Ends, wrote a post that captivated the blogosphere. In it, he plays off of Jay Rosen's The People Formerly Known as the Audience. Titled The People Formerly Known as the Congregation, Bill rants against leadership that leads by 3-point sermons, raises money for building programs, and solicits volunteers to run the various ministries. But more than that, Bill rants against what it means to be a member in a congregation today -- he feels 'used' and writes that he is no longer going to be a passive recipient of all things church. The tone is 'don't do it to me, but partner with me, treat me like an adult -- a co-producer of church.'

Bill sparked a number of follow up posts that piggy-backed on his idea, written from the perspective of pastors and others who agree that the system is not really working. Of course, a passive congregation is not particularly the pastor's fault, the congregants' fault, or even the seminaries' fault. Our entire church system is built around a Christendom model of church where we pay a special class of people to do ministry to and for everyone else.

Over the past ten years or so, the missional church conversation centered around the idea of equipping entire congregations to serve as missionaries to their surrounding cultures. They work with churches who embody this Christendom passivity. They look to help them re-imagine what it means to be the people of God.

I believe Bill taps into another dynamic not addressed by the missional church conversation. Bill speaks for those who already left. They couldn't tolerate being treated as children and opted out. Now located outside "church", these active (as opposed to passive) Christians create alternative ways to worship God, encourage one another, and witness to their faith.

Bill's inspired rant describes the depths to which we need to re-think congregational life in a post-Christendom, postmodern context.

Technorati Tags: church, Jay Rosen, Leadership, missional church, Bill Kinnon, seminary

What does a Missional Evangelical Seminary look like?

Last November I was asked the question, what would it take to move an evangelical seminary in the direction of missional church thinking and practice? Writing with my friend Mark Lau Branson, we offered some first thoughts towards an answer. This paper was one of five distributed at the Allelon Missional Schools Project in Dallas, serving the discussions as a conversation starter.

Technorati Tags: Allelon, Mark Lau Branson, missional church, seminary

Missional Seminary Project

In February, I participated in the launch of the Allelon Missional Seminary Project, a three-day conversation on transitioning seminaries to a missional paradigm. Twenty-four seminaries participated by sending a team of five people respectively. During the three days, Alan Roxburgh, Pat Keifert, and Craig Van Gelder (among others) invited us to re-imagine our seminaries for life after Christendom. Time was spent in large group lectures, small focus groups, and in-house seminary discussions.

It was quite an ambitious agenda, given the differing starting points of the seminaries. Some seminaries were over two hundred years old, a few were less than five years old. Some were very well versed in the missional conversation over the last ten years, and some didn't understand the missional conversation at all. There were a fairly diverse set of schools included in the conversation including liberal, evangelical, conservative, Catholic, and Anabaptist traditions.

Five writers were tapped to present discussion papers to get the conversation going. Each of the writers were to write from their particular tradition: one Nazarene, one Evangelical, one Mainline, and one Mennonite. I co-wrote the evangelical paper, and I will share that on the blog tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: Allelon, Leadership, missional church

Guide on the Side

From Edu-Blogged news and specifically Will Richardson, I read how teaching is changing because of the web. Rather than the teacher serving as the authoritative voice and primary source of class content, students look to the web for resources. In response, teachers may either ignore this reality, fight against it, or serve as a "guide on the side". Even further, teachers may encourage and facilitate the web's use. In this case, teachers serve as connectors rather than content providers. They bring their students to the information that the teacher finds most helpful and they provide contexts for working through the material. As I am fairly new to the teaching scene, these thoughts are quite sobering. I get strokes when I get to be the 'sage on the stage'. Moving to the side changes the way I think about teaching completely.

As I think about churches, I realize the web will or ought to change the way we do church and leadership. Rather than the pastor or leaders serving as the one source or even the primary source of information for the community, church members will be looking to the Internet for resources regarding their faith. Leadership as the single funnel or portal of information will cease to be workable. Leaders will have two options -- to control the information, which will become increasingly difficult, or again, like the new type of teacher, to serve as a connector rather than a content provider. Leaders will come alongside to help gather, interpret, start conversations, and build the community around helpful content.

I believe if we work with this cultural change rather than fight against it, we will see wonderful life come to our faith communities. I've heard some leaders respond, when I ask them who the leader of their community is, 'hopefully the Holy Spirit". I believe this shift creates an opportunity for a move in this direction, i.e. to an egalitarian spirit-led community. Although it may feel like a chastened role for the leader, I do believe "leader as connector" creates a space for the Holy Spirit to serve as the primary leader of our communities.

Technorati Tags: Leadership, teaching, technology

The Web as Prophetic Critique to the Church?

Steve Collins, ever the creative thinker for new forms of church, muses about the web and its impact on documents. He speaks of the control that authors once had on their text, a control that the web obliterated as readers break up, interpret, and parse the document in any way that is suitable to their uses. Steve then turns his sights to the church and ponders what might happen if the web impacts the church as much as it has cultures.

What might the church learn from the web? Any modern church leader is trained to maintain control over the whole process of what we know as church, manifesting most specifically in the maintenance of order. Our church authors/producers/leaders are not prepared to release the text/church service/way of life to the readers/consumers/members. None of their training has prepared them for this uncontrolled way of living in community. So much of church training assumes the leader will face a passive audience that will receive their 'text' in its entirety. We are not trained to participate in church as an ongoing dynamic conversation of equals. I know this, because I train these same leaders.

What would it mean for leaders to let go of control, to realize that it is pointless to try and contain the life of faith, just as pointless as it would be to attempt to control the web? What would happen if our authority to act as leaders came from the many unsolicited links one receives rather than the title one bears? What would happen if our members can post 24-7 and are not required to sign in through a single portal, i.e. not seek permission for ministry but are trusted as friends and colleagues to create meaningful God inspired activities?

I'm just posing a few questions, to which I do not have good answers. Stepping back a bit, it has been an elusive task of the church to see the priesthood of believers realized. If we want to imagine what that an egalitarian, spirit-led community might look like, we need look no further than the liberating freedom that many experience within the web community.

Technorati Tags: Emerging_Church, Steve_Collins, technology

Pictures on Fuller/Allelon Consultation

A few pictures on the consultation at Fuller April 27-29 -- I will post a few more later...