whatever you do.

Mudhouse Sabbath – Lauren Winner

In the last few days I have devoured this tiny book during lunch hour reading sessions. Mudhouse Sabbath is an honest and concise exploration of how ancient and more modern Jewish practices can enrich the lives of Christians if only we would look outside our own houses once in a while. Lauren takes us on a journey through a selection of Jewish spiritual practices including shabbat (sabbath), avelut (mourning), hachnassat orchim (hospitality), tzum (fasting), kiddushin (weddings), and mezuzot (doorpost inscriptions). In her distinctively vulnerable way, Winner takes us through her own attempts at incorporating these practices into her adopted Christian life. Lauren’s deep love and respect for both spiritual traditions and her knowledge of the quirks and intricacies of them each surfaces in every personal reflection.

One large theme echoed in my head in each chapter. The first and most important reason for a Jew to engage in all of the mentioned practices is because they were told to. Their first thought was never to personal benefits that arise from the practices, but to God’s command to be faithful; although the personal benefits are indeed numerous. “They don’t light Sabbath candles simply because candles make them feel close to God, but because God commanded the lighting of candles. Closeness might be a nice by-product, but it is not the point.” (Winner, xii)

Christians are more likely to practice spiritual discipline for personal benefit and it is a great freedom and privilege to do so. However, we would do well to consider the selfless attitude of obedience that marked the consistency with which the Jewish community has committed themselves to remembering these time-honored rhythms.

I also really love the devotion to community and hospitality as a spiritual discipline above all others. If your adherence to dietary laws does a disservice to your interactions with others then it ceases to be a blessing. The rhythms in the Jewish wedding and mourning traditions give preeminence to the role of the community in those celebrations. Often we think of spiritual discipline as something we act out in our bedroom when we are supremely alone with God. But a faith that is only personal gives us a very partial view of the real blessing awaiting a community that practices together.

My own attempts at spiritual discipline are always disjointed and more valiant in my head than they end up being in practice. The simplicity in Lauren’s book has strengthened me to try again. Practice is never all that fun, but the results are always thrilling and most surprising.

Tags: reading, lauren winner, judaism, christianity, spiritual discipline

Will Samson says, “I am collecting preliminary data for a more detailed social network survey in the fall. The survey involves the Emerging / Emergent Church, and the people who tend to be connected to that conversation. If you would be willing to help out, Click here to take survey.”
UPDATE: The survey is now closed.

Tags: emerging, emergent, christianity, survey

scott: i have been pondering over the weekend about the word ‘missional’

scott: i find that defining terms is not something that i excel at, but i have sort of narrowed it down to 3 bible passages that make the term work in my life

david: right. i’m hoping we can all help each other to understand it better

david: i have yet to put something together too.. i use it often, but I think i use it differently

david: on different days

scott: haha

scott: it seems to be the kind of word that can have more than one meaning to it

david: ya… well that’s part of it.. i wan to get beyond the missionaries/normal people way of thinking about it

scott: i am on board for that

scott: i have been seeing it as a ‘team-working’ (if you can’t tell, i just made that term up) of the greatest commandments, the sheep and goats being judged, and the great commission

david: cool

scott: for me it focuses it on the main aspect of loving people, and because of that love, taking care of their physical needs and sharing the gospel

scott: i like looking at it like that because it can work on a micro and a macro scale

david: you mean, it is about individual relationships and also relates to the call of the church as a whole?

scott: yes… to the individual and to the body. also, it relates the day to day with the long term

david: or the whole mission of god

scott: yes

scott: the mission of taking care of spiritual and physical needs in an ongoing way, based off of the love that we have for others

david: i think that’s one of the important distinctions

david: we tend to think of our mission as first and foremost shouting on street corners

david: forgetting that jesus said that the gospel is good news to the afflicted

scott: for sure… and going that out of obligation and not as an act of love

scott: going = doing

david: right

scott: so yeah… that is what i have been thinking about the word ‘missional’

david: i believe mission has to absolutely foundational to a group of people that would call themselves part of the church

scott: i would have to agree with you, sir. for most of my life, the word mission dealt with profession

david: right

scott: that is all the word was to me, but i think that it should be a purposeful lifestyle

scott: a sincere one, at that

david: i believe that is why people leave churches

david: they have not been given a chance to be missional

david: it is fairly unfulfilling to just take up space

david: many times we take away the job of everyone and give it to the professionals

scott: that is a very good point, dave

scott: and when people can’t pitch in, then they aren’t actually a part of a family, they are a guest

david: the majority of the church is told that their job is to fund the professional christians

david: which is great, but comes up short

scott: haha… for sure, which makes it a business relationship more than anything

david: share holders

scott: exactly

Tags: missional, church, jesus, incarnational

I attempted to distill this list down to some absolutely peerless
resource connections. If anyone has something to add please do!

This 50 minute clip should absolutely be seen first:
Michael Frost on Youtube

After that these are all excellent places to search through:
Shaping of Things to Come, Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch (Book)
Missio Dei, Fred Peatross (Book)
Allelon.org reading list
Resonate.ca
Resonate Audio Podcast (features some great talks by Michael Frost)
Friendofmissional.org
Missio Dei (Wikipedia)

Then there is also the little project that this blog is part of that is trying to add more story and understanding to our missional lives.
Missional Synchroblog

Tags: missional, emergent, emerging, church

Well, almost a year… (Blog birthday approacheth!)

So this is primarily a blog about Christianity and it has gone on for almost 12 months and over 100 posts without mentioning Hitler or Nazi Germany. Congratulations in order?

Oh, and this post DOESN’T COUNT.

Right now I am engaged in conversation with friends. Tuesday night church it has come to be called. We are collected from a variety of backgrounds (city and country, pastor and student, business world and outdoors enthusiasts) with a shared thirst for true community and mission.

We are dreaming about and beginning to participate in a community that we have decided to describe as missional. Missional was the FIRST word that we chose as a point of connection. It came before church, baptist, relevant, emergent, postmodern, purpose-driven, subversive, or biblical. All buzzwords begin to lose immediacy through our careless useage as characterized by the grandfather of buzzwords: Christian. Before the followers of “The Way” were labeled with the first-century buzzword of “Christian”, they were engaged in mission.

Every successful buzzword has action at its core. Christians were those in communities that were following the mission of God as perfected by Jesus, and living it within a cultural mission flavoured by the Jewish and Greek customs of the day. But somehow the perfect example of Jesus didn’t finish the mission. He sent his followers onward to continue to live this mission. To be missional is to be in transit. In the past there was a bestowing of mission. That comission is then acknowledged and acted on. We are now Missioning.

To be missioning is to live intentionally restorative reflections of God’s creative purpose into every part of our lives. Every relationship, every endeavor. Our missioning community is aiming to create connections and space to empower each other to live these lives of deep restoration. We are determined to not build walls, but instead to plant gardens. We are determined to go kayaking and laugh together in the woods. We are determined to cry with each other. We are determined to never wear our “Sunday Best”.

Since friendship and strategy just don’t seem to fit together, we are determined to avoid every 4 step evangelism strategy. In the words of Brian McLaren, we are counting conversations, not conversions. Instead, we commit ourselves to knowing each other’s strengths. We commit ourselves to listen to the purposes of God in the people we don’t yet know. We commit ourselves to our commission beyond our allegiance to any buzzword. Christian, Postmodern, Emergent, or Missional.

——————————————————————
This post is part of a Missional Synchroblog organized by Jonathan Brink

Synchroblog Participants
Jonathan Brink - Meeting God Where He’s Already Working
Ben Wheatley - Are Things You Are Living For Worth It
Blake Huggins - What Does Missional Living Look Like
Alan Knox - Living in the love of God
Dave DeVries - The Missional Challenge
Bryan Riley - What Does Missional Living Look Like To Me
Jeromy Johnson - What is missional living to me
Tim Jones - Living Like the Word Says
Nathan Gann - Inevitability?

Tags: Missional, Emerging, Emergent, Church, Christianity, Jesus

I’ve just started up a Tumblr space. This post is really just an excuse to see if I seeded my RSS correctly from this blog.

“Recognizing the story of the gospel is planted within the very culture that it is destined to transform accounts for the story’s own transitory nature. Our story is en route. As the gospel story is being finished in our midst, so are the practices of the gospel community. Jürgen Moltmann writes: ‘The restless world corresponds to the restless hearts of the children of Abraham. All transitory creatures are, along with Abraham’s children, on the way to that future in which the restless God comes to rest and finds his home in the house of the completed creation.’”

Troy Bronsink, An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, 67

I’ve been browsing around GapingVoid today, thinking about Hugh’s concept of emerging marketing being driven by the Social Object. Here is a great quote by Seth Godin about emerging marketing:

“You make what my friend Hugh MacLeod calls “social objects”—things that people want to talk about. That’s what the iPhone is. People say the iPhone was superhyped, but Apple didn’t hype it. People hyped it to each other. The challenge is not “How do I spend $50 million on advertising?” The challenge is “How do I spend $50 million on product development, so I can make a product people will talk about?”

The premise here is, in a hopeless quest for relevancy, many companies believe that if they digitize their products they will find new market shares and be validated to continue to make the same product they have always made. Money is poured into new marketing streams, but renovations to the product itself do not receive similar funding. The goodness and usefulness of the product is seen as timeless once it has been validated using one marketing method. Seth Godin again:

“First, companies have to decide: Either they’re in or they’re out. You either make meatballs, or you’re part of this new regime. But if you only want to use the regime to just sell more [meatballs], you’re going to fail. Gillette invented the safety razor on the back of two things: a really good factory and aggressive mass marketing. And they’re really good at it. The question is: Why do we think Gillette deserves to succeed in this new medium? My answer is: They don’t. There’s nothing about what Gillette does that makes them worthy of conversations online, that makes their ads in Google clickable, that makes you want to visit their website.”

The church is struggling with the same tension. Certainly, almost eveyone has recognized that the forms and structures are changing and need to change, but we have been very slow to pick up on the fact that these changes are actually compelled by a need for a reinterpretation of the Gospel itself. Otherwise we end up looking just as silly as Gillette.

The Gospel was a compelling social object in Jesus day. It was Good News to everyone. It drew crowds. It breathed hope into a people that had been demoralized by empire. It wasn’t the relevancy of the packaging that drew people.

The Gospel is a compelling social object in our day. It is not a timeless truth that simply needs to be given a new slogan every decade. It is a fully incarnated, integrated reality, necessarily different in every way, every day, but never diminishing in goodness through each incarnation.

Tags: Gospel, Marketing, Social Object, Seth Godin, Gapingvoid, emergent, emerging

This is a thought stream triggered by our recent movements into a new local church community. The question deals with the concern that an open-source community church structure could perhaps devolve into an ugly patriotism.

I don’t think that Ubuntu Philosophy fully describes the Kingdom of God and our part in it, but it is very helpful in opening us up to the ‘other’ and not fearing the differences among us.

The major difference between patriotism and Ubuntu philosophy is that patriotism is a deep commitment to an ideal community rather than to a real community. Patriotism kills community by being married to the idealism of the nation and the notion that it is superior to all others. It is a devotion to conformity rather than community. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is the spirit of listening to those around you and trusting in the wisdom of the community more than listening to your own ideals for that community. It is not that we all abandon our uniqueness and become one homogeneous blob, but that we bring all that we are into community and trust each other with our whole selves.

I would liken Patriotism to brand loyalty. In the ‘church as a business’ model brand loyalty became really important. Your denomination held all the ideals and the pastor took on the role of CEO. The Western church became a bunch of patriots, both to the country (which was portrayed as Christian) and to their right interpretation of Scripture above all others (or in the mainline church to the power structures, institutions, and sacraments).

In the model inspired by Ubuntu/Open-Source philosophy there is no ideal other than what beauty comes from the togetherness of the community itself. It is a remarkably flat structure. It’s not that there is no longer power or structure, but that structure is defined by the relationships. It changes and shifts depending on the needs of the community. A pastor is no longer CEO but takes a role fully integrated in the community. Ideals and right interpretation are not handed out from above by a superpower, but are formed in community. There is no brand or ideal to be loyal to. In its place is a community of people who all put each other before themselves. A community that takes seriously the care and support of and from all members. I love that line in the New Testament “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.”

This is an intense belief that there really is a priesthood of ALL believers. It is a system that gives voice to the margins, believing that since God always seems to speak from the most unlikely places we should posture ourselves to better listen for that still small voice.

Maybe this is again why we need to be “intentional” about this thing. never forsaking the actual community for an ideal community. Because our ideal will always neglect important aspects that our individuality will miss.

Tags: Church, Emergent, , Emerging, Ubuntu Philosophy, Patriotism, Community