TheBolgBlog

Mission in American Culture

My mission in American Culture class got a good start this week. We will be taking a look at the American elections and explore options for Christian engagement within political cultures. Like my other class, we'll be using a wetpaint wiki for the homepage and netvibes for the updates. We will also be posting to a political blog -- it doesn't have much on it now, but as a class we will be posting on it from now until the first week of December. Our hope is to culturally exegete American political culture.

#Churchtechcamp

I'll be at #churchtechcamp today at Fuller Seminary -- it is "a localized unconference for people of faith to gather and share their own best practices and "in the field" insights."  Looking forward to meeting all the people and hearing what they have to say...

The Church in Mission 2.0

I made the mistake of watching pedagogical rock star Michael Wesch's video a couple weeks back. It got me thinking about transforming one of my fall classes more fully into Web 2.0. I began tinkering with my Church in Mission course (with help) -- it is a course I teach once a year to 60 MA students at Fuller Seminary. After talking with friends, I decided to create a couple of new things in the course this year, both in terms of web platform and content.

Web Platform:
Instead of a blog for the home page, students will access the class on a wetpaint wiki. This allows them to add to and change class resources easily. Students may upload course notes for each lecture up to the wiki (and therefore collaborate on the class notes). Students will also use netvibes to track their twitter feeds, wiki changes, diigo bookmarks, and youtube videos for class communication and research. Student group projects will include creating and maintaining a wiki and a youtube video.

On the content side:
I've changed the course to connect the disciplines of ecclesiology, missiology, postcolonial studies, and race/ethnic studies. In the class, student groups will reflect on the historical and contemporary church experience for particular ethnic groups in the US or overseas (along denominational or regional lines), and create group wikis and youtube videos that explore how the following postcolonial themes manifest in that particular tradition: diaspora, identity, race, cultural difference, hybridity, gender, sexuality, feminism, postmodernism, nationalism, globalization, and empire. Students will collect and analyze the stories of these communities and explore how we might be the "sent" people of God in the midst of these powers.

The class starts next week and runs for ten weeks -- I'll give an update as the quarter progresses. I made changes to my other fall class -- I'll write that up in the next few days.

The Irrelevance of Relevance

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been part of a six member team (and now seven) re-thinking worship at an elderly congregation. One of our insights came to us as we shared about our hopes for worship. "How do we connect our music to the young people?" was one of the questions asked. We had maybe ten junior high and high school youth, and they pretty much checked out during the whole service. They came because their parents were there. It tended to be one of those things they needed to endure. Our worship group naturally wanted to see them involved.

But asking what kind of music should we play asks the wrong question. It has no possible answer... because our churches consist of many age groups and many cultures (not to mention church cultures), and trying to be relevant to each is impossible. It would leave everyone frustrated, as many blended worship gatherings do. The same goes for preaching the relevant sermon, playing the right video clip, or dressing up the announcements. Trying to reach the the audience with the right cultural element when our congregations today share so little of the same culture is an exercise in futility.

Instead of trying to create worship a service for them, in what we perceive to be their culture, the right question to ask is how do we create a space for them to express their own worship to God. We don't need to figure out how to do it to them, if they are doing it for themselves! We create a venue for participation rather than produce a show for them. They are the new creators, the ones we want to see engage at deeper levels. We do it together.

The relevancy issue takes care of itself if people create worship for themselves. In planning for worship, we don't need to strategize every aspect of the service, spend money on demographics, take polls on felt needs, blah, blah, blah. What our congregations really need are deep encounters with God in worship. They experience God when they become active co-producers of worship. Our role as worship facilitators is to create that space for them and with them.

Result? At this particular congregation, the youth now look forward to 'family sunday' - it energizes them, stirs them up, and connects their faith to their everyday reality. It is the one service a month they do not want to miss and they do not soon forget. Not just with the youth, but with the whole church, we became relevant when we gave up on relevance.

Transforming Worship in a Traditional Church

I always get questions from students -- how do you transform worship in a church that has a very fixed format or doesn't really want to change? My answer is - transform whatever and wherever you can -- push at the edges, and avoid messing with the sacred cows. Where is there permission to start something truly alternative -- in the youth group, the Sunday night service, or in a small group? You never know, If you create something really meaningful, it may, like a virus, spread throughout the system...and if it doesn't, at least you created something compelling for the participants of that group.

For the last seven months, I've been part of a five-member team rethinking worship in a elderly 100-year old Presbyterian congregation with 75-100 attendees every week. About half the congregation is over 70, and the other half are scattered amongst the younger generations. Our elderly component are Japanese who lived through the internment, the rest of the congregation is mixed, consisting of Asians, Whites, and African-Americans.

Where did we start? First, we got a team in place. On the team were three people who knew the culture of the church at a deep level -- one staff member, and two elders. Another member is a former worship pastor of another church, and I was the fifth. A sixth, a new Fuller student, just recently joined us. For us, it was essential to have church insiders, who desired change, as part of the group. Their insights helped us see where we could push and where we needed to pull back. It was a real dance back and forth. "Yes, we can do that, no, that is too much."

Turning the regular Sunday service upside down was never a real option. But -- what we did have on the calendar was a vaguely understood, ill-defined Sunday each month, 'Family Sunday'. It was a time where the whole church was to worship together (no Sunday school). It was also understood that somehow the youth would be more involved on that Sunday. However, it really was not utilized at all. Maybe a little less formal, but that was it. Family Sunday would be our means for transforming worship.

Beginning with the five of us, we started to meet two hours each week to talk about worship. What were our dreams? What did we like about worship, and what didn't we like? We were in no hurry to begin an alternative service, so we met weekly until we could share a similar vision of where we wanted to go. We were not on the same page, but we wanted to learn from one another. Different desires were expressed – more kid-friendly worship materials, more connecting with the youth – more involvement with the old people.. Some were happy with a fixed liturgy and another wanted to abandon it. But we were flexible to hear from the others and we were all transformed in the process.

This process of talking, thinking, and imagining took us about six weeks -- before we could even begin creating the first service. We became one in the process -- and in all our brainstorming we received one direction from these early meetings -- one driving question that would influence every aspect of our worship planning from there on out. Our question: how might we create spaces for deep levels of participation within every aspect of the worship service?

That question created quite an adventure for us and for the church. I'll talk about what that looked like in a subsequent post...

Evangelicalism: An Americanized Christianity -- Book Review

Here is a book review I recently completed...Some of the details: Evangelicalism: An Americanized Christianity. By Richard Kyle.  New Brunswick, N.J.:  Transaction Books, 2006. Pp. xiv, 337. $34.95.

Richard Kyle is professor of history and religion at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas. He received theological training at both Baptist and Presbyterian divinity schools. His church membership has been a part of the Mennonite Brethren.

Kyle writes a brief history of popular evangelicalism in the United States, giving two chapters to 18th and 19th century evangelicalism. His main focus, however, is Twentieth-century evangelicalism, writing two chapters dealing with the first half of the century, and three chapters on the second half. 

Kyle’s evaluation of popular American evangelicalism is, with rare exception, entirely negative. “There is only a fine line between being relevant to its surrounding culture and being absorbed by that culture. American evangelicalism has stepped over this line (2).” Much of Kyle’s critique regards the accommodation of evangelical faith to popular culture. He laments the loss of expository sermons, four-part harmony choirs, the organ, and the pastor as shepherd. He decries the use of guitars and drums, personal stories on relevant topics, and big screen monitors in worship. He praises high culture, with its focus on objectivity, the timeless, and the transcendent, and he decries popular culture as trivial, new, and spectacular.

Any missiologist will benefit from Kyle’s close look at the relation between church and culture in America.  However, Kyle sees the relation of church and culture as a zero-sum game – more of one equals less of another – they are always at odds. From Andrew Walls, we know that one cannot have too much of either gospel or culture – just too little. Rather than abandon popular culture and embrace high culture as Kyle prefers, what American evangelicalism needs is more gospel.

Fuller Seminary and Emerging Churches

This last spring, I had the opportunity to speak at the Association of Theological Schools “SPAN” conference for administrators. They asked me to speak about the changes in the American/British church scene that I wrote about in the book “Emerging Churches”, a book I co-wrote with Fuller professor Eddie Gibbs.

My talk addressed the need for seminaries to be transformed if they are to continue to serve the needs of churches in the Twenty-first century. As I spoke, I realized that Fuller has already made many of these changes and is well suited to partner with emerging churches in the future.

For me, the conversation on the emerging church and Fuller started in a little conference room located in Glasser Hall, one of the older converted homes on the Fuller campus, back in thee mid-nineties. About five to ten of us would have a “brown-bag” lunch weekly. Some were Masters students, such as myself, and Barry Taylor, some were doctoral students, and some were professors: Wilbert Shenk and Eddie Gibbs. The conversation always strayed to conversations about how the church must adapt in the coming few years.

Wilbert Shenk, the instigator of the meeting, suggested the subversive idea, brought over from England and Lesslie Newbigin in the early nineties, that the West functioned as a mission field: that the church ought to see its surrounding cultures in the same way as good missionaries do. Eddie Gibbs brought his deep understanding of everyday church life to the meetings; Eddie had recently penned “In Name Only”, the classic text on nominality, and was working on a subsequent book, “Churchnext”.

I'm still here...

Hi -- just a note to say I'm still alive! Spring quarter finished with some great students doing some wonderfully creative church plant projects. Ian Mobsby was his amazing self in his talk at Fuller in June. I taught an 80 hour two-week intensive on cultural analysis in late June for some really engaged D. Miss. students. After all this I crashed!! I've spent some time away with the family in July. Very much needed. I'm returning tomorrow to Fuller to teach a two-week intensive and will slowly be easing my way back into all things school. I haven't taught the class before (don't tell my students!) but inherited it from my respected friend and (former) colleague, Eddie Gibbs.   

I'll try not to be too much of a stranger the rest of the summer...

Ian Mobsby to Speak at Fuller

I'm really excited about this. Ian Mobsby is one of the most intelligent and articulate spokespersons on the Emerging Church. Hailing from London, he has been at the forefront of conversations on liturgy and popular culture, new forms of worship within ancient traditions, and mission in the twenty-first century. In my interviews for "Emerging Churches, Ian served as a great conversation partner; in addition, I found Ian to be a prophetic practitioner of experimental forms of worship.

On Friday, June 15th at 3pm-5pm, in Travis Auditorium at Fuller Seminary, Ian will be speaking on "Church, Mission & Evangelism in a new age of holistic spirituality". It should be great. The event is open, so please consider yourselves invited...

On Robert Webber 1933-2007

Three panel experts, each representing a particular Christian tradition (evangelical, mainline, and liberal), sat on barstools facing the 1000 plus crowd. The interviewer -- Brian McLaren, was poised to ask the evangelical representative the next question.   "What does your tradition do so well that you could lead the rest of us in?"  I winced, as I had been part of some intra-faith dialogues where evangelicals did not fare so well. I prepared for the worst.

"PASSION is what other Christian traditions can learn from us." He went on, but I don't remember the rest -- I didn't need to hear it. I felt great relief -- he nailed it. I needn't have worried. For the evangelical answering the question was none other than Robert Webber.

It made me recall a conversation that I had previous to that Emergent Convention, with a social activist/professor working in downtown LA. Knowing his liberal theological leanings, I asked him how he felt about the evangelical students from Fuller that would come down to work with him. 'I love the evangelicals," he said, "they have passion -- they really think they can change the world." Yes, I think Bob Webber was on to something...

His work on Ancient/Future Worship opened up a new world for the many who wearied of singing endless praise choruses. His encyclopedic knowledge of worship served the church at a time when many began to mine the depths of the past. His work with the Institute of Worship Studies will insure that his contributions will continue to form the worshippers of tomorrow.

I only met Robert Webber once -- we served on a panel on the Emerging Church at Talbot two years ago. During the past year, I also worked with him as one of the writers aka the "Board of Reference" of "A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future". Webber impressed me with his commitment to worship, to theology, to evangelicalism and ecumenism.

Robert Webber served as an ambassador for the Christian faith -- an evangelical truly worthy of the name...