“A missional ecclesiology challenges the church to be intentional about its unique social potential. Congregations should reflect the full social mix of the communities they serve, if they are truly contextual. In like manner, denominations as larger communions of congregations should seek to reflect the broad social reality of the North American population. Taking this approach will require substantial changes on the part of many congregations and most denominations. But it is in taking such an approach that congregations and denominations with rediscover what it means that the church is ’sent’ into a particular context. If the North American church is to regain a public voice for the gospel, it must address this issue.”

Tags: missional, church, context, multicultural, ecclesiology, emerging

– Hauerwas & Willimon, Resident Aliens, p. 161

Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”

They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”

Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ ” Now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing. The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’

“I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing withwater was that he might be revealed to Israel.” Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”

The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

– John 1:19-36

Tags: john, jesus, liturgy, work of the people, wilderness, lamb

There is really no reason that we, as followers of Jesus, should allow the global mall, our class or income to define for us what constitutes the good life and better future. Remember the imagery of the better future that Jesus, “who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2), looked forward to. What was the “joy that was set before him”? It was to see “God’s kingdom come and God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It meant looking forward to that homecoming day when he returns to a world in which healing comes to the broken, justice to the poor and shalom to the nations – all made possible because he endured the cross and because he rose as the first member of a new humanity.

Tom Sine, The New Conspirators (p. 228)

Tags: gospel, future, jesus, tom sine, new conspirators, joy

But today I was really struck by a disparity. I was sitting, eating lunch in a local diner (not a chain) and reading Tom Sine’s book The New Conspirators (a very important book, fully recommended). I was in the chapter talking about ways to live sustainably and locally when I over heard a conversation at the next table.

Just as I was beginning to pledge allegiance to the colour green I heard a couple of ladies discussing their plans for a shopping trip to Buffalo, NY – roughly 3 hours from our present location. Cross border shopping is very common in Ontario, especially with the American dollar in the state it is in. So the women were discussing the best route to take to hit all all the great bargains. The one thing they were really keen on was the thing that really struck me… A foaming coconut soap from some big American box store. Now, once again, I am not judging these people at all, I am equally guilty. If anything their conversation opened up to thinking honestly about my own addictions to all things exotic and trendy, such as certain European crafted beers and spirits. Just think about it, traveling three hours by car, to Buffalo – to another country – to get soap scented with milk from the tropical coconut; the ingredients for which probably came from 3 or 4 different countries, almost all of them tropical.

Is the pressure we place on our natural world and infrastructure really worth saving a few dollars on coconut soap?

Tags: green, environment, local, dollar, consumption, habit, border, tom sine, new conspirators

An extended quote from the truly prophetic (think call for repentance, not fortune telling) book by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw:

Today the logic goes something like this: “Calling a ruler ‘Son of God’ is out of style. No one really does that nowadays. We can support a president while also worshiping Jesus as the Son of God.” But how is this possible? For one says that we must love our enemies, and the other says we must kill them; one promotes the economics of competition, while the other admonishes the forgiveness of debts. To which do we pledge allegiance? Surely, one of them must have the wrong idea of how to move history. Can a servant serve two masters? To say that we must kill our enemies and join the popular project to “rid the world of evil” is to call Jesus unrealistic. And that is possibly desirable for many; surely his ideas do not resonate with any common wisdom. But can you call Jesus the Son of God and say, “He just doesn’t understand the world today”? How ironic is it to see a bumper sticker that says “Jesus is the answer” next to a bumper sticker supporting the war in Iraq, as if to say “Jesus is the answer – but not in the real world.” Remember, Jesus’ followers were burned alive, beheaded, or fed to lions. They knew evil and the “real world.” They would meet it face to face. If there was anyone who tried to deal with evildoers and terrorists, it was certainly first-century Christians.

When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God. After all, what is the point in calling anything God if it does not also hold sway in every part of one’s life – especially one’s politics? (Haw/Claiborne, p.166)

Instead of worshiping flags and rulers and constitutions let’s start putting our hand over our heart in salute when we ask for forgiveness or when we say “thank you” to the provider (think sunshine, not Costco) for our daily bread. Maybe the act of saluting our creator will stop us in our tracks when we start to worship any other master.

Tags: politics, jesus, shane claiborne, chris haw, jesus for president, books, iraq, war

How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.

I would love to get some feedback on this passage from Pete’s book.

“To develop a healthy community, the best approach can actually involve being clear that one is not starting a community at all and that there will be no pastoral support, that no one will be charged with the job of taking in money and distributing it on people’s behalf, and that no one will be responsible for calling you up if you stop attending events. In short, it must be clear that the group does not care about people’s needs in the slightest. While this may sound deeply uncaring, the reason for stating this is precisely in order to help provide a healthy soil for real pastoral and financial support to grow.

“Providing a space with no welcoming team or pastoral support group means that individuals need to take responsibility for welcoming and caring for others themselves. Here the role of those setting up the group is not to create a new priest/laity divide but rather to refuse to act in the role of a priest precisely so as to encourage a priesthood of all believers, offering relational, mutually dependent, pastoral support. This does not mean that there is no place for leadership, for here the leader is the one who attempts to prevent any one person, including the leader, from taking over the space and taking on the role of some high priest. In such a space there is a radical refusal, by those who organize the gathering, to take on pastoral responsibility. for by refusing the place of power, the ‘pastors’ equip everyone to be a pastor, simultaneously discouraging an unhealthy dependency in those who attend.” (Rollins, pp. 177-178)

This is where I’m at somewhat in my own thinking. Questions of how it happens practically in our own context naturally surface. I’m not the best at asking the practical questions. I’m much more the dreamer, and luckily I have friends that can come alongside and provide the ground under my feet. I think our small gathering of friends, as unformed as it is, are somewhat heading in this direction already. The question is how to continue it once others join in that may naturally think of the “pioneers” of the group as the leaders. Throw in…

You know those times when your thoughts are building and changing so quickly that you barely have time to reflect on each of them and give them the brain time they deserve? Those times when all you can do is pound your hand on the table or attempt to suppress a squeal of excitement? Yes. Those times.

You know those times when thoughts start to crawl beneath your skin and into your eyeballs amidst the most queasy of itchiness? When you find yourself only able to think about how you need to stop thinking about these concepts because they are burning worse images in your head than those Faces of Death videos from grade seven? Yea…

Admittedly, three years ago the ratio of the first to the second would have been entirely reversed, but still, Pete’s latest book had me in both regions of anxiety. When reading The Fidelity of Betrayal the table pounding squeals far outweighed the eyeball squirms, but they were still there.

Pete takes us through three (four) aspects of our experience of God that we possibly need to be ready to betray in order to avoid mistaking these objectified realities for the creator God we worship. These being the Word, the Name, and the Act of God – the fourth being Truth itself (himself).

My biggest pauses came when I heard myself saying things like, “Aw that snake wasn’t such a bad guy,” Even though my beliefs about the story of the fall have changed drastically in the last while, I was still believing that the person-hood of God was contained in the words written about the encounter between God, Eve, Adam, and the Serpent (poor snake). Pete’s intent is not to pull us into a sympathy for the devil but to pull us from a loyalty to our words about God as contained in the Bible. We need to search out a deeper devotion to our creator born out of that betrayal. So while I’m not ready to run off to join some serpent cult, I am more ready to embrace the ambiguity of God’s nature within the Biblical narrative and try to see past my simplified ideas about a knowable personality of God.

Skipping ahead to the end of the book, Pete prompts us to consider a betrayal of our secured church boundaries in favor of a communal encounter with a God that we find in a religion without religion. A religion founded on the movement of God in miracles of love and reflected on through sacraments and then third and least made knowable through a set beliefs and creeds. I’m still to find a church institution that doesn’t try to downplay 1 John 4 in some way – to attempt to house the “of Gods” first within a church structure, system, or belief net.

So, I finished this book angrily and over-joyed. I’m angry because I feel alone. I feel alone among a sea of churches and Christians. I feel an insecurity in my beliefs that somehow fills me with a wonderful desire to fill the absence with love. I’m angry that I believed for so long that doubt and insecurity would be my enemy in life – that I needed to make sure I built my house on a church-rock. The problem being that the church-rock lately has felt much more like quicksand. Quicksand that pulls down anyone that doesn’t fit in order to make room to stabilize those who would do well in that system. And the thing is, I have a vision of Jesus jumping right off that church-rock too. Not to pull people back up on top, but to be present with those who have been sucked down.

It seems scary, and right now I feel alone, but I am going to try to stop squirming and go down too. I’m thinking that’s where I’ll find God. It seems that’s where heaven is.

Reading The Fidelity of Betrayal on a dripping Saturday afternoon. I’m now into Part Two and his exploration of the Name of G–D through ancient mythologies such as Lilith, Isis, and then the Moses narrative. Reading Part One where Rollins explores how a faithful reading of the text of the Bible may involve our betrayal of the words we find has already lead to some fascinating and rich discussions with friends. I’ll leave you with a passage from Part One while I continue on myself.

“The words of the Bible, wonderful as they often are, must not be allowed to stand in for God’s majestic Word, as if the words and phrases have been conferred with some sacred status and the phonetic patterns given divine power. Rather, the Word of God can be described as that dark core around which the words of the text find their orbit, the unspeakable Source within the text that cannot be reduced to the words themselves but that breathes life into them.” (Rollins, p. 57)

So, tomorrow I’m going to turn pages in Post-Charismatic? by Rob McAlpine (aka RobbyMac). I’m not from the charismatic stream officially, but have interacted with the local Pentecostal and Vineyard churches quite often throughout my life. I’m especially interested in learning to engage more fully with this stream of Christianity to move forward into a more generous and spiritually expressive future. I’m excited about the opportunity to look both look backward while facing forward into a hopeful future together with my charismatic and post-charismatic sisters and brothers.

Oh, and Rob, I’m really sorry about the absence of picture on the amazon.ca page. That’s actually my fault and it will be corrected next week!

Pax

Tags: reading, charismatic, postcharismatic, robbymac,

Tags: phyllistickle, emergence, emergent, books

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

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

Tags: reading

“Our organizations have tended to value control, stability, and the ability to quickly resolve tension with a solution. However, one of the dominant currencies of creativity is tension – the ability to hold seemingly opposing forces in dynamic relationship without privileging one at the expense of the other or too quickly resolving it. New life is messy and doesn’t always fit neatly into preexisting categories . . .

“. . . Creativity values tension because it creates possibility.”

Tim Keel, Intuitive Leadership, 200-201

Often we jump to answers before we have even asked the questions. We live in the assumption that until we have something pinned down we are unable to truly engage it. We love specimens, artifacts, conclusions, and statements. The problem is, once we have successfully avoided the tension by assuming a standard we have precluded the need for creativity and possibility. Nothing will be birthed.

Ever noticed how every time someone is born they are a new thing? Fascinating. We never biologically birth something that is exactly the same. In our most creaturely engagements with creation we can’t help but be wondrously imaginative.

Tags: leadership, emerging, church

1. Pagan Christianity - George Barna and Frank Viola

Straight into the fire. First, the airing of grievances. Frank really diminishes his very important points in two big ways.

First, the word PAGAN. From various interviews and responses to critics it is clear that Frank’s argument in this book is not that Pagan = Evil. The discussion goes along great until the inevitable mentions of the P word. It’s gets to be just about as bile-inducing as Heretic, or Biblical, or American Beer. I wish the title of the book was something like “The Fossilizing of Christianity” or “Calcified Christianity”. I don’t know. The idea that the God of the universe would be concerned with paganism is so daft to me.

Second, there is a lot of rigidity in the way Viola and Barna present this organic dream of church. Josh Brown’s misgivings after hearing Frank speak in Florida speak a bit to this. I really was taken back by the idea that someone so infatuated with an organic church model could be so rigid in how that works itself out. I just don’t understand the New Testament community as being meant to be prescriptive to all eras. Certainly Jesus’ reminder to make love of our neighbor on par with our love of God (indeed the two should be and must be indistinguishable and inseparable) is a very really need in every faithful community, but not the skins that we wrap around it.

Viola’s warnings to avoid deifying our church structures that are not “biblical” (ew!) are very important to heed when these structures obscure a picture of loving, worshipping, formative community.

There are a few opportunities for imagination that I have taken from the reading of this book:

• Full understanding and implementation of the priesthood of all believers.
• Movement toward every member functioning, and given space to contribute in our meetings
• Imagination with regards to compensation to staff (bi-vocational pastorate, etc)
• Revisiting giving
• Communion in community (Party!)
• Reworking Christian education and programs

I am very glad to be done with this book though. It was not a pleasure to read. I did not leave it feeling positive, but I am determined to work with it and leave behind the foulness and build love and creativity from Frank’s work. Not in an effort to be more biblical or less pagan, but in an effort to be a fuller representation of Christ’s body and Kingdom resident.

2. The New Christians - Tony Jones

Two words sum up this book for me. Inviting and Hope.

This is a book that is very inviting to anyone who has questions about the bold frontiers of Christianity in America and the world. This is not a harsh book. Tony is gracious in his arguments and easy to engage throughout the work. He is honest when it comes to past criticisms of Emergent and even includes a fairly even handed early history of the friendship. Incidentally if anyone was skeptical about that word choice (friendship) to describe emergent, I think TNC does a great job of laying bare just how much this really has grown out of friendships. And it continues to evolve new kinships and conversations. Discussions with Jewish communities who also find themselves in this emerging landscape gush with grace and honesty.

The New Christians helps us to understand that we can’t pigeonhole emerging into a Christian phenomenon. This is just one part of a world wide shift. We can either embrace the changes and live fully into this moment God has given us, or we can continue to recede into our caves of comfort and modernity. One thing is clear, the God’s world will not stick around to wait for you.

I really appreciated the final chapters where Tony engages with a variety of emerging communities and developing philosophies (wikichurch). The beautiful messiness of these communities really draws me. These communities are nobody’s attempts to be trendy or relevant, they are just the only way we know how to do things. Sitting in church structures that were normal for our great grandparents just doesn’t make sense anymore. This is the Hope. God is not done yet. See, he is doing a new thing. Even now it springs up. Can’t you see it? Our hope is fully in him as we march on into the frontiers of now.

Man, now that was meandering…

3. What is the What - Dave Eggers

I don’t know how this book pulls it off! And I don’t know how I’ll explain that exclamation without giving away too much of the story!

One day, around 10 years of age, I was deep in my own dreamland as usual. I miss-judged the edges of my bed and summersaulted right out into open bedroom air and landed squarely on my upper back. I felt that horrible woosh as the last pockets of air jumped from my lungs and I wheezed and cried feebly for them to come back inside. This book is that experience, but repeated every 10 minutes for 350 pages.

The plight of the Lost Boys of Sudan make me wonder if I will ever experience life. How could I really know what a good day is when I have been able to avoid seeing my friends snatched away in the jaws of lions. Or had to walk past children barely old enough for school as their life leaked away from starvation. Reality is too real. My selfishness inside wishes this book was not around to confront my fat belly and overextended credit.

It seems that great stories of life aren’t read so much as they read us.

4. The Shack - William P. Young

A book that opens up a possibility of what it means to claim you can say anything of substance about what God does or doesn’t do. Secondarily this book imagines possible dance steps of a God who is Three in One (Father, Son, Gardener). William Young seems to have provoked the wrath of all those critics who just can’t stay away from their keyboard long enough to wait for Brian McLaren’s next book. Personally, I loved it. This book claims nothing about truth, but rather dreams a dream. I haven’t studied trinitarian thought enough to say anything about the theology in this novel. So I will end here. It didn’t change my life as some have said, but I won’t deny the tears on my cheek near the end. Good stuff.

1. Everything Must Change - Brian McLaren

Much has been written about this book. So I will not really interact with it in depth. Just a couple of thoughts. I appreciate so much the work that Brian is doing. The conversations he is involved in all over the world are so important. The trajectory of his life has made him the center of a hurricane of criticisms.

After considering this work from a social point of view I find myself lacking in resolve in so many areas. I drink too much, I buy too much, I work too little for the luxury I have. I neglect my neighbour, I dislike my neighbour, I work against my neighbour, I don’t know my neighbour. I am grateful for someone like Brian who will confront me and witness to the mission of Christ that we are called to that manages to wind its way out of the church buildings that use to captivate our Saviour (perhaps to keep him from being crucified again.)

When considering Brian’s book from a theological point of view it is another effort to get us to shed this diabolical notion that God’s work (and the church’s) is to save individual souls from eternal hell. More than anything we need to surrender our warehousing instincts. No more pray a prayer and saved forever. However, this DOES NOT mean we are otherwise left to work out our salvation through our works.

Jesus proclaims that simply believing his good news brings salvation. This is “salvation by grace through faith” in a planetary sense: if we believe that God graciously offers us a new way, a new truth, and a new life, we can be liberated from the vicious, addictive cycles of our suicidal framing stories. That kind of faith will save us. If we don’t believe, we will persist in trying harder and harder, again and again, to acheive our own salvation through our existing narratives and the techniques they inspire. Even if Jesus’ “saving poetry” is true, our failure to believe it will keep us from experiencing its saving potential, and so we’ll spin on in the vicious prose cycles of Caesar.” (McLaren, p. 270)

This leads me to a thought I have had recently. Should our salvation as fully expressed in the work of Jesus Christ really be coupled, and really, made one with a subsequent (and preexistent) call to follow? Whether through believing or working I am thoroughly suspicious of a salvation story that ends in something WE do. But I will leave this thread alone for now.

2. Irresistable Revolution - Shane Claiborne

Another World Is Possible.

There isn’t much to say other than GO READ THIS. This book stirred my imagination and dropped a 50,000 pound weight on my pride and greed. There is not a page in the 300 or so that does not convict. Unfortunately I read it a while ago and have since loaned out my copy so I can’t drop down the myriad of quotes that I have underlined in it. I do have one which I had copied into a text file.

“When we are trying to teach kids not to hit each other and they see a government use violence to bring about change, we start to consider what it means to give witness to a peace that is not like the world gives. (John 14:27)” (Shane Claiborne)

As he mentions in his book, it is in much sadness that we hear this kind of life being called Radical. This is the way we are supposed to live! It should be Normal. Everyone, can we please pledge to help make Shane normal?

3. Colossians Remixed - Silvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh

The imagination thing continues in this epic outpouring from the lives of Silvia and Brian. And I mean lives. These two live out their theology, which is the only way to do it. Praxidoxy? I don’t know.

Anyway, Colossians Remixed is one part commentary, one part translation, one part targum, one part social conscience, and four zillion parts pure creation/gospel/reconciliation-particaptory imagination. How has our current social structures and abuses disguised the subversive culture confronting message of Paul to the Colossians? Now that we have rediscovered the danger inherit in this text how do we translate it to speak into the powers and principalities of our own times? And dare we? If anyone knows of similar treatments of other books in the Bible please send me in their direction. 5 Stars. (note… I actually somewhat dislike the giving of a rating, but I just can’t help it here…. 6 Stars!)

4. Martin Luther King Jr. (Penguin Lives Biography) - Marshall Frady

I’m pretty sure this guy was quoted in all three of the books mentioned above. What to say…

Marshall does not sugar coat King. I really appreciate this. King was in this world just as much as George Wallace. King had no intention of trying to separate himself from the dirt of life. He lived an imperfect life and made it his goal to live intentionally whole. The weight of his choices crushed him from every side. And sometimes he melted. But he could not be moved. As much as we would like to imbue King with angelic status it just doesn’t stick. And I am glad that we are kept from that in Frady’s biography. We can more easily march alongside King and stand against the firehoses and know that while we go home and weep, so does this man who only hopes to have the strength to do it all again – only because he must.

“We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside . . . but one day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved.” (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)

Here stands another Radical. Let us stand with him! Please!

Next time….

5. Pagan Christianity - George Barna and Frank Viola

8. The Shack - William P. Young

Below is an interview with Anne at the 2007 Writer’s Symposium by the Sea. She is so engaging and honest. I absoutely adore her.