TheBolgBlog

From little c to Big C church...

Yesterday I wrote a review of George Barna's Revolution. Many fear that Barna dismisses the need for local churches. I don't know if Barna goes that far. What Barna dismantles are particular sociological expressions of church -- those of American congregationalism, rather than particular gatherings of believers. “Revolutionaries realize --- sometimes very reluctantly – that the core issue isn’t whether or not one is involved in a local church, but whether or not one is connected to the body of believers in the pursuit of godliness and worship." Barna writes that one needs to be connected to a body of believers in the pursuit of God, he doesn't say where and when, and his readers find that worrisome.

Technorati Tags: church, George Barna, globalization, modernity

The Stretching of Social Space

I had already been up this morning, typing on the computer.  My nine year-old son came out from his bedroom and said "I miss Chris." My son rarely expresses this kind of emotion, feelings reserved for cousins and very special friends. "I know, I miss him too. I thought he was really funny."

Doesn't sound that unusual, but the thing is, my son has never met Chris, at least physically. Chris Sligh was just voted off American Idol. We started watching the show a few weeks into the season this year,and we got hooked. In these past few episodes, my son felt connected to him, relating to him in a special way.

One thing I talk about in my classes is how modernity stretches space. Many many years ago, the space we shared with people always meant the sharing of physical space. Over the few hundred year span of modernity, more and more of our social world dealt with those at a distance from us, either across the town or across the world. Moreover, many of these people with whom we connected we did not even know, in the face-to-face conventional sense.

As Christian leaders, we spend the bulk of our time thinking about serving those with whom we share physical space. However, if physically proximate space is the only sphere in which we think missiologically, we might leave much of our social world untouched and 'secular'. Missional thinking, if it is to recognize that 'the earth is the Lord's' and thereby all realms are candidates for redemption, must increasingly focus on faceless relationships as well as the face-to-face, on American Idol as well as the relationships in the home...

Technorati Tags: American Idol, Chris Sligh, everyday life, Social Space

Ghandi and Mission

I just read Jonny Baker's post last week on Ghandi's mission advice to Christians. Wow. Live more like Jesus, do not tone down your faith, make love central, look for the good in other faiths so that you might be more sympathetic. What a challenge! We could plan a whole curriculum around that advice!

Jonny goes on to write about E. Stanley Jones and his advice to the Indians - Make Christ your own -- read the gospels afresh -- do not take on our Western forms. We expect you to add to our understanding of Christ by what you put together to follow him. This moves away from a modern perspective of mission, one that states that a particular cultural expression of Christianity is most valid for the rest of the world (usually developed in 16th century Northern Europe) and moves to a missional (and non-modern) model: each distinct people, when following Christ within their cultural forms and developed theologies, adds to the collective understanding of God and brings about the celebratory worship that culminates in Rev. 5:9.

In an interesting aside, Jonny closes with conversations between a Hindu and a Christian about trading holy books -- Christians read the Bible, where the NT teaches peace, yet they advocate war, and HIndus read the Bhagavad Gita, a book that gives reasons for war, and yet they are generally peaceful.

A really challenging set of writings -- thanks Jonny!!

In one of my classes at Fuller, we talk about a good deal about post-colonialism and mission.

Technorati Tags: culture, Hindu, mission

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

The Church in Consumer Culture

Pete Ward, author of Liquid Church and senior lecturer at Kings College, London, spoke at Fuller last night on "All Consuming Liquid Culture, Liquid Church". In his talk, he addressed critics who said he was too positive on culture in his book "Liquid Church". Vincent Miller's book, Consuming Religion, served as his conversation partner.

Pete Ward asks if the dislocation of 'stuff' and symbols from the church is necessarily a bad thing? More importantly, we need to look at where these items are re-located in culture. For example, a CD of church music, recorded by a secular musician, and played by someone in their car, re-locates the sacred in new spaces. As another example, we know about Taize because of its products --
we might decry commercialization, but hasn't the re-location of their
music been beneficial? He asks if God can be in that? If the text mediated Christ at church, does it still mediate Christ in the culture? He wanted us to consider that possibility. He describes this movement as the stretching of "ecclesial being".

He talked about 'stuff' - that stuff means things, maybe more than we know. They often reveal or 'represent' the spiritual state of things. These 'representations' circulate, and we share a language talking about them (discourses). Because we buy certain stuff and not others, we become something, i.e. we form identities around the materials of our lives. Both those who oppose culture and those who embrace it form their identities in this way.

Ward discussed God's presence and how it is mediated in our culture. Episodically, God is 'represented' in our communications, in our discourses, provided this mediation gives rise to contemplation. These mediations stretch ecclesial being and relocate our sense of belonging and identity. In the Liquid Church, we might see Christ mediated through networks, brands, and products.

For Ward, the church is faced with two choices -- Pandora's Box or St. Peter's. We can try to keep all the spiritual things hidden and safe (Pandora), or we can re-think what we formerly thought was unclean and open up our faith to those outside our traditional boundaries (St. Peter's option). Pete votes with his namesake...

WARNING: This is my take on what Pete said, and I am not sure I was always tracking with him. Pete, if you read this, please forgive me for where I completely mis-represented what you were saying!! 

Pete is one of the best thinkers on church and culture, and I always love hearing from him. He asks the hard questions and refuses the pat answers. He pushes me to think through the most pressing missiological issues regarding the intersections of church and culture. I found myself in another world after his talk, trying to process all that I heard...

Technorati Tags: consumerism , mission

Christians as Loving Adversaries

I read the words today of Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh which said "We are the loving adversaries of every regime". As I reflected on this, I believe it encapsulates perfectly the challenge for the Christian to be "in the world but not of it".

As followers of Christ, we are to embrace God's creation, i.e. to love persons, families, workplaces, subcultures, political and economic realities, i.e. all aspects of how cultures express themselves -- truly loving, serving, and caring as insiders.

However, as much as we love these cultures, they are fallen, and we must serve as adversaries as well. Adversaries against any expressions within these institutions or cultures that lead towards death. As Christians, our battle is to stand against all acts of oppression, arrogance, pride, greed,  violence, i.e. any practice that robs of life, that marginalizes, that excludes. Christians are to act as redemptive agents within all aspects of culture, simultaneously loving and refusing all that each culture/economy/family/political system has to offer.

More food for thought as the church and culture discussion continues...

Technorati Tags: Enemy-love

Does the World Know Jesus Better Than The Church Does?

I was sitting in a hotel room late the other day, flipping channels as I haplessly attempted sleep. I ran across the repeat of Bill Maher's show with Kurt Vonnegut which originally aired last week. I found myself both agreeing and disagreeing with much of what was said that night. Maher and Vonnegut were talking about New Orleans, America, and politics, but then they shifted to a very surprising discussion about Jesus. Here is the extent of their conversation:

Bill Maher (to Kurt Vonnegut Jr.):
In your new book you make a very interesting point about how the Republican right is always wanting to post the Ten Commandments in public places, which of course is from the Old Testament, but they never, ever seem to want to post the sayings of Jesus, like the Beautitudes: Blessed are the meek, Blessed are the merciful, Blessed are the peacemakers. They’re such Christians but they never want to put up what Jesus said.

Kurt Vonnegut (in response to Bill Maher):
Well I don’t think they’ve ever paid any attention to him, and if he were to show up now with that kind of talk I think he would probably be given lethal injection rather than crucifixion.
No, I don’t think they know anything about Jesus…
 
They then went on to address other political issues in Vonnegut's work. Regardless of one's opinion of their stated politics, I found their discussion of Jesus quite revealing. They each knew the Beautitudes, most specifically they knew about Jesus' humility, his mercy, and his commitment to peacemaking. Somehow, they also knew that Jesus' life was somehow instructive, that it ought to be emulated somehow. They equated knowing Jesus with living like Jesus.

I've interviewed Emerging Church leaders who have told me the same thing. They tell me that their non-Christian neighbors know who Jesus is -- the problem is that the church doesn't. These leaders tell me their simple (but not easy) task is to emulate Jesus as a community, to resemble the way he lived, in very public ways. They do not need to introduce those in the world to Jesus -- these 'neighbors' already have a pretty good idea of what he is about. Their fundamental task is to introduce these neighbors to a Christ-following church, i.e. to a people that resembles this humble, merciful and peace-making Jesus.

Not a few times does the church find that the prophetic critique of its life comes not from those inside the community but from those labeled 'world'. Rather than defend ourselves, we need to listen  and see what the Holy Spirit is saying to us...

Technorati Tags: Jesus, politics, America

Advice for Modern Leaders, "Let Go"

In reading an excellent book on a narrative history of mission, Constants in Context, the authors offer their advice to those wishing to do mission cross-culturally. Their encouragements equally apply to those moderns who seek to do (or support) ministry to postmoderns (those who live within an artistic, communal, holistic and spiritual way of life).

Bevans and Schroeder encourage a spirituality that allows faith in Christ and non-faith to encounter each other. It is a spirituality of  'letting go' and 'speaking out', and it functions differently for outsiders (moderns) and insiders (postmoderns).

"For outsiders, the main spiritual task in the inculturation process is letting go -- of superiority, of power, of illusions they understand a culture, of illusions that theirs is the true understanding of Christianity. Only after years of listening, learning, and being evangelized by the context in which they live as strangers and guests might they dare speak out with suggestions for inculturation or with critiques of the context."

In my interviews with senior leaders and Emerging Church leaders, I have seen this to be the case -- where modern leaders came with a teachable and supporting spirit, allowing new expressions of church to exist for several years with very few questions, emerging leaders thrive. Where modern leaders think they understand postmodern culture, or that their modern perspectives of Christianity are absolute and superior, or that leadership is not to be shared with those of different perspectives, then emerging leaders are forced to deny their culture, oppose their pastor, or leave.

This word equally applies to those moderns who are planting churches within postmodern culture -- they must come humbly, recognizing that much of their understanding of their faith is cultural. They must listen for years before speaking, with the understanding that that they are guests.

Bevans and Schroeder also have encouragements for insiders to the culture. "The main spiritual task is to speak out -- to have confidence in themselves and in their own understandings of their cultural and/or social context, and to risk ways of encounter between gospel and context. Only very slowly should they heed criticism of their culture and let go of their intuitions and instincts."

Insiders must feel free to create within that culture, to speak out from within. As insiders, they can push hard on the sides, offering prophetic embrace and critique as those who are truly part of that community. Outsiders may offer support to insiders in this creative task.  Where this kind of rare support happens, amazing ministries within postmodern culture are planted.

Bevans and Schroeder conclude, "It is in such prophetic dialogue (between faith in Christ and non-faith) that local communities and their leadership -- whether insiders or outsiders -- will discover new ways of living, witnessing to and proclaiming the good news of healing, reconciliation, and new life."

Amen, let it be so!

Technorati Tags: Constants_in_Context, Emerging_Church, Leadership, power

Emerging Church in Spanish?

I received a request for Emerging Church books in Spanish...I'm at a loss here -- any ideas? Part of me wants to say 'no' -- don't let the English speakers influence the ongoing formation of your churches in Latin America and elsewhere. As a Southern Californian, I am saddened by the fact that so many people travel great distances to make pilgrimage at some of our megachurches. They later discover, after much expense, that these forms of church work with Anglo suburban baby boomers in America and not back home. My word to them is always, please, save your money, we need you need to teach us!!

However, I am ambivalent -- as Emerging Churches are urban and multi-cultural and connected globally, it ceases to be an Engish speaking movement (if it ever entirely was), at least that is the hope. It may not necessarily be oppressive to translate these works but perhaps liberating. So, I return to my original request -- any ideas on Emerging Church books in Spanish??

Technorati Tags: Emerging_Church, Languages

Christian Worldview? I don't think so...

I was conversing with a friend today and he said that he was involved in developing a Christian worldview for his particular organization. I believe this effort is mistaken for a few reasons -- one, it presumes a Cartesian perspective on reality -- if we think rightly then everything else will sort itself out...Two, what these proponents are really advocating is a Christendom worldview -- a perspective that presumes that Christians are in power, in the center, closely aligned with the state and can therefore implement some of these inclinations. Often the goal is to exclude those who do not share this particular worldview. Groups residing on the margins of society do not share this same luxury. Third, often what is perpetuated as a Christian worldview is simply a modern /Reformed nostalgic worldview. This particular theological perspective mistakenly sees itself as universal when in reality it is simply a contextual response to 16th century northern Europe.

What we want is not the development of a Christian worldview, instead, we want to see the gospel deeply incarnated into the cultural practices of a people. This will look very different from (sub) culture to (sub) culture, but there will be strong, family resemblances...

Technorati Tags: worldview