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January, 2004 Blogs
Therefore I also do not cease to give thanks for you,
.. and raised us up together, and made us sit together
Ephesians 1, 2:6
Stunning, stunning prayer that lifts the veil to expose the reality of our position and authority as sons and daughters of God..
On Wednesday morning my wife had a dream. It was winter outside, as it is now. It was cold, and white, and frozen, and austere. Then .. suddenly.. it was spring, with green grass, flowers blooming and birds singing. But time had not passed.. it was the same day. One moment it was winter, and the next moment it was spring.
The living dynamic in this.. the power that transformed the world.. was the power of the resurrection. It was as in Narnia.. it had been always winter, but suddenly it was spring.
As she shared I was reminded of these verses in the Song of Songs:
Rise up my love, my fair one,
I believe the Lord is promising new life and a new season to us, but I believe the deeper message is that His power to transform our lives and our world is available to all believers. We long to see a new church.. we long to sing a new song unto the Lord... we long to see a transformed world, a world alive with the glory of God.. we long to know Jesus more deeply and to carry His light into dark places and bring hope.
Lord, at times your goodness astonishes me. Along this journey of the last few years you have given so much light and hope, so much joy and anticipation, new friends and new songs.. and I'm grateful.
A few years ago a few of us were gathered one evening, and we had a traveling Irish teacher named John Keating among us. He looked around at us, most of us had just stepped out of a church community and were traveling a road to unknown lands.. and he said, "Being prophetic is not just who you are.. it's WHERE you are.."
I thought about that this morning as I looked again at my own journey of the past few years. I brought my family to Kelowna at God's instigation, but for reasons I thought I knew. I was not even close to the target.
The real learning didn't begin until we left the well worn roads, and took a path less travelled by.
In those places of insecurity, the old answers no longer work. The old maps are useless. We learn to ask new questions, and we become open to new perspectives. We literally begin to see in new ways. New vistas open to us, and new possibilities arise.
The Gathering
We met again this past Sunday and plan to do so every two weeks. We gathered friends and neighbors together around a meal to celebrate Jesus. I am realizing that my hesitation to call this "church" has less to do with the informality and lack of titles and more to do with the connotations of that word, so marred by the modern incarnation of it. I thought of what Pete Ward wrote in "Liquid Church:"
"Stuart Murray described this to me as the shift from church as a noun to church as a verb. So we can say, "I church, you church, we church." For too long we have seen church as something that we attend. We might sign a few hymn or even play a more active role, but there is something passive and even a little alienating about the externalized and rather monolithic idea of church. If, however, church is something that comes about when we make it, then walls come tumbling down. Suddenly being church and doing church becoming an exciting adventure.
If the Modern Era was a rage for order, regulation, stability, singularity, and fixity, the Postmodern Era is a rage for chaos, uncertainty, otherness, openness, multiplicity, and change. Postmodern surfaces are not landscapes but wavescapes, with the waters always changing and the surfaces never the same. The sea knows no boundaries. - Leonard Sweet.
"Solid modernity is based on our victory of the settled over the nomad; it is a culture of production rather then consumption and above all is linked to ways of organizing production that were first developed by the car maker Henry Ford. Modernity was shaped by the Fordist principles of expansion, size, plant, boundaries, norms, rules, and class orientated affinities and identities.
"The local church may support many good and important activities, including mission trips, evangelism, youth ministry, social projects, and so on, but they are all assessed in terms of their effect or otherwise on regular Sunday attendance. People may turn to Christ through the youth mission or Alpha course, and this is good, but they are not banked, they really don't count, until they start to attend Sunday services.
"I have sometimes felt that the real purpose of the church services is to enable clergy to count the congregation. This is probably a little cynical, but solid church finds its main sense of success in the number of people who attend on a Sunday. Regular church attendance is seen as being a significant test of spiritual health, and church growth is measured in size of congregations. The importance of Sunday attendance and congregational size can never be underestimated for solid church.
"Believers are one with each other because they are joined to Christ. The temptation is to reverse these priorities, so that by being joined to the church one is joined to Christ.
"It is worth reflecting for a moment on the difference between these ideas of what it means to be "in Christ" and what immediately comes to mind when we use the phrase "in church". When we say, "in church," it is hard to get some kind of building out of our minds. This imagery is the heart of the debate about liquid church. We need to find some way if imagining church that reflects the fullness of Christ in whom all things join together. Paul was able to combine a dynamic lifestyle of being in Christ with the idea of being on with other Christians in the body of Christ." Pete Ward
Til Thou See in Me...
Lord, what I once had done with youthful might,
A dim aurora rises in my east,
Sometimes I wake, and, lo, I have forgot,
Death, like high faith, leveling, lifteth all.
Thy fishes breathe but where thy waters roll;
From "Diary of an Old Soul," by George MacDonald.
Women in the Emerging Church (from Jonny Baker's blog)
what women want
jen and i have been chatting following this discussion. jen had some great points that she kindly agreed to write up:
"As an observer, it seems to me that emerging church networks are little different in gender terms to what they are trying to emerge from. It's men on the whole who are in positions of influence and leadership, and maybe that's because they've done more thinking, talking and initiating so far - I don't know. I do feel despondent that it seems to just be more of the same and I've been trying to work out why.
"One of the biggest issues in the past that has stopped women being involved in leadership and being culture-shapers is of course theology. My guess is though that people involved in emerging church have got beyond this. There's no question about whether women can or should be involved in all areas of life in whatever form they want to be or feel called to be - it's a norm that we accept.
"Looking at traditional and especially evangelical churches, I think the other main issue that perpetuates the gender divide is that men and women in the church, and especially in any form of leadership, don't know how to be good mates with each other. A lot of networking happens relationally - through hanging out in pubs or over coffees, going for meals together and late night conversations at conferences. When people think about putting on conferences, or doing projects together, or meeting to wrestle with theology, they invite the people they know. And because it's largely men doing the inviting, it's largely men who have been invited; women have been left out of the picture or included in a token capacity because they know we ought to be in there somewhere.
"Because there has been such an unspoken fear of inappropriate relationships between men and women developing, most opportunities for strong healthy relationships have been squashed as well. Women are safe to converse with in larger groups but not one to one. It's OK to encourage them but not to mentor them. You can chat over coffee at the dinner table but not go down the pub and have a beer together. Single women are, of course, especially dangerous. And so the conversations and networking tend to happen in separate gender groups and are all the poorer for it.
"It seems that emerging church networks make a point of valuing and nurturing friendships, not wanting to set up hierarchies or claim to have the answers but rather spending time learning from each other which is great. But I hope that we've got over this fear of one another and that men and women are mature enough and secure enough to make space to really get to know each other well, to listen to dreams, frustrations, ideas and wonderings and together build something that's more like the kingdom."
(jenny baker)
And Jordon posted a comment by Karen Neudorf..
"I'm getting really tired of pomo folk trying to excuse the inclusive conversation on such weird grounds....thank God Billy Graham had the courage to tear down the color barriers at his crusades or we'd still be using the ole' "we have nothing in common with their culture" excuse.
"When I was involved in the pomo conversation, it was rather irritating to be treated as a woman first and as a person second. One of my favorite moments was having two male pastors shake hands across my editor and I at a big pomo conference as if we didn't exist. I was often the only woman on panels at conferences and knew my comments were being passed not through the "frustrated emerging leader filter" but the "angry woman" filter. Such is life. It's humiliating to meet for a panel discussion and having the circle of men turn inward and physically block you out of the circle as they discuss what the panel conversation was going to be about. Ahh memories.
"As a single person, it was doubly irritating to be treated like someone who was a time bomb waiting to go off. I MUST want you because I'm single. It's a little insulting and well, a little congratulatory to the other party to think they must be soooo attractive that we would jump them on the spot.
"If you work alongside men long enough, you know the rules. They can put their arms around you on a stage as they introduce you but if you touch them, you're being flirtatious. (This is actually related to social rules of heirarchy...adults pat kids on the heads, bosses reach out and pat employees on the arm but not the other way around.) Men can sit around in a circle at elders' meetings and talk about their butts. You, as the only woman, can sit and smile. You cannot join in.
"I have plenty of male friends. I always have. Many of them are married. Some are in the pastorate. I'd say the ones who have become friends are the ones who are good listeners. They don't treat me like an angry woman. They don't think I'm lying when I tell them the outrageous stories we encounter inside the church. They don't get defensive because they feel some strange guilt. They just know this is the way things are, acknowledge it, and we both work to bring about change. And I, hopefully, have listened (am learning to listen) to them...as people first acknowledging them as unique in only the ways that their gender, environment, perspective, culture, can make them so.
"There is a lot of anger in the pomo conversation. People feel marginalized and not heard. It's a normal stage to go through. You can't live there but I know the journey. But imagine being in the shoes of one who is marginalized even more because she is seen as "she" first and person second.Even if you disagree with women in leadership, there's a lot of work everyone could be doing here in regards to the objectifying of woman as things rather than whole and valued people in the Kingdom. It's part of the same work that Jesus started so long ago."
See also Women in Ministry.
"Have we found that anxiety about possible consequences inceased the clearness of our judgment, made us wiser and braver in meeting the present, and arming ourselves for the future? If we had prayed for this day's bread, and left the next to itself, if we had not huddled our days together, not alloting to each its appointed task, but ever deferring that to the future, and drawing upon the future for its own troubles, which must be met when they come whether we have anticipated them or not, we should have found a simplicity and honesty in our lives, a capacity for work, an enjoyment in it, to which we are now, for the most part, strangers."
FD Maurice
This is such a weird time in my life.. I am busier than I have ever been. The list of major projects I am involved in or initiating include:
I'm struck by a number of things in all this.
Ok, celebrate with me. Heartland Group website went active this morning. There is almost nothing there, but it will soon include PDF brochures and much more...
Blogger Idol is not a competition, rather it is a celebration of diversity and creativity, a chance to showcase your blog and to find some new quality blogs.
"The church was created to be the people of God to join him in his redemptive mission in the world. The church was never intended to exist for itself. It was and is the chosen instrument of God to expand his kingdom. The church is the bride of Christ. Its union with him is designed for reproduction, the growth of the kingdom. Jesus did not teach his disciples to pray, "Thy church come." The kingdom is the destination. In its institutional existence the church abandoned its real identity and reason for existence.
"God did not give up on his mission in the Old Testament when Israel refused to partner with him. God is a reckless lover. He decided to go on with the mission himself. We do not need to be mistaken about this: if the church refuses its missional assignment, God will do it another way. The church has [refused], and he is [moving on]. God is pulling end runs around the institutional North American church to get to people in the streets. God is still inviting us to join him on mission, but it is the invitation to be part of a movement, not a religious club.
"When Jesus came on the scene he entered a world very similar to our own in terms of its spiritual landscape. No one really believed in the Greek or Roman pantheon of gods. Judaism was also exhausted. The collapse of institutional religion in the first century was accompanied by an upsurge in personal spiritual search for God and salvation.
"Jesus tapped into this widespread sentiment of disillusionment with religion but hunger for God with his teaching about the kingdom of God and how people could become a part of it. His emphasis was on universal accessibility as opposed to the exclusivity of the Pharisees. He taught and practiced grace.. at the same time as he elevated standards of personal behavior by looking past externals to heart motivations. The movement Jesus initiated had power because it had at its core a personal life-transforming experience.
"The time is ripe for recapturing this original appeal of the Gospel. People are interested and searching for God and personal salvation through a relationship with him. Increasingly they are not turning to institutional religion for help. They don't trust religious institutions because they see them as inherently self-serving. So they are off on their own search for God.
"Unfortunately, the North American church has lost its influence at this critical juncture. It has lost its influence because it lost its identity. It lost its identity because it lost its mission.
"The correct response, then, to the collapse of the church culture is not to try to become better at doing church. This only feeds the problem and hastens the church's decline through its disconnect from the larger culture. The need is for a missional fix.
"The appropriate response to the emerging world is a rebooting of the mission, a radical obedience to an ancient command, a loss of self rather than self-preoccupation, concern about service and sacrifice rather than concern about style." Reggie McNeal. The Present Future
"Fallout is not limited to the clergy... The faithful.. wonder when they are going to experience the changed life they've been promised and expected to experience at church. In North America, these people have been led to believe that their Christian life is all about the church, so this failure of the church not only creates doubt about the church, it also leads them to all kinds of doubt about God and their relationship with Him."
"Many congregations and leaders.. adopt a refuge mentality. This is the perspective that withdraws from the culture, builds the walls thicker and higher, hunkers down to wait for the storm to blow over. Those with a refuge mentality view the world outside the church as the enemy [and] live within the bubble of Christian subculture.. Refuge churches evidence enormous self-preoccupation. They deceive themselves into believing they are a potent force.
"Some churches go to the opposite extreme. Instead of choosing refuge, their response to the collapse of the church culture is to sell out. [In one congregation] the only music sung was the soft-rock tune, "I can see clearly now the rain has gone." Not one word about resurrection .. on Easter Sunday!"
"The point is.. all the effort to fix the church misses the point. You can build the perfect church--and they still won't come. People are not looking for a great church... The age in which institutional religion holds appeal is passing away.
"Church leaders seem unable to grasp this simple implication of the new world--people outside the church think church is for church people, not for them." Reggie McNeal, The Present Future
Nick Fenn and I have known each other for ten years. Nick began life in England, then was raised in South Africa. Along the way he became a pilot, sold small aircraft, and after his conversion taught in the Children in Need school at the University of Nations in Kona, Hawaii with YWAM. He is also an accomplished musician and a gifted pastor.
Nick and I are opening "Heartland Counselling and Consulting Services" here in Kelowna. I already have had some interest in referrals, and some interest from a nearby faith community to do some consultation with a leadership team in transition there.
We will offer traditional personal and group counselling, teaching and seminars, and consultation services to churches who have realized their disconnect with the changing culture. We will also offer something less traditional: corporate chaplaincy. This has been a special interest of Nicks and it is a growth area for ministry models in the USA.
The problem of a local office remains. It's expensive to rent commercial space. I don't see that as an issue a year down the road, but for this spring we can't swing the funding. This means that our initial office space may have to be in a local church building. While that may limit our contact with pre-Christians initially, I guess we will have to live with that.
I've also had interest from a trans local fellowship to come spend two days a month on their premises as a counsellor. This strikes me as a creative arrangement and a good way to become a resource for other communities. So.. a new beginning, and one that the Lord appears to have confirmed.
"Faced with diminishing returns on investment of money, time and energy, church leaders have spent much of the last five decades trying to figure out how to do church better. Emphases have come and gone in rapid succession. Church and lay renewal has given way to church growth, which has given way to church health. The results beg the question.
"An entire industry has been spawned to help churches do whatever they decide to do... the mailings keep coming, and the conference notebooks stack up on the shelves.
"All this activity anesthetizes the pain of loss. It offers a way to keep busy and preoccupied with methodological pursuits while not facing the hard truth: none of this seems to be making a difference. Church activity is a poor substitute for genuine spiritual vitality."
Reggie McNeal, The Present Future
"To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is Love. Love is my true identity.
"If we are to seek some way of being Holy, we must first of all renounce our own way and or own wisdom. We must "empty ourselves" as He did/ We must "deny ourselves" and in some sense make ourselves "nothing" in order that we may live no so much in ourselves as in Him. We must live by a power and a light that seem not to be there. We must live by the strength of an apparent emptiness that is always truly empty and yet never fails to support us at every moment.
"This is holiness.
"None of this can be achieved by any effort of my own, by any striving of my own, by any competition with other men. It means leaving all the ways that men can follow or understand.
"I who am without love cannot become love unless Love identifies me with Himself. But if He sens His own Love, Himself, to act and love in me and in all that I do, than I shall be transformed. I shall discover who I am and shall possess my true identity by lose myself in Him.
"And this is sanctity." Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
"As soon as you begin to take yourself seriously and imagine that your virtues are important because they are yours, you become the prisoner of your own vanity and even your best works will blind and deceive you. Then, in order to defend yourself, you will begin to see sins and faults everywhere in the actions of other men...
"When humility delivers a man from attachment to his own reputation, he discovers that perfect joy is possible only when we have completely forgotten ourselves. And it is only when we pay no more attention to our own deeds and our own reputation and our own excellence that we are at last completely free to serve God in perfection and for His own sake alone." Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
Articles by N T Wright at ALLELON
More articles by N T Wright
Renovare.. Common Disciplines. I think I am ready for this and need to make a covenant with the Lord.
In case I neglected to post it, Leaders in the Missional Church
1. Leaders who know what time it is.
"God sometimes permits men to retain certain defects and imperfections, blind-spots and eccentricities, even after they have reached a high degree of sanctity, and because of these things their sanctity remains hidden from them and from other men. If the holiness of all the saints had always been plainly evident to everybody, they would never have been polished and perfected by trial, criticism, humiliation and opposition from the people they lived with.
"Be content that you are not yet a saint, even though you realize that the only thing worth living for is sanctity. Then you will be satisfied to let God lead you to sanctity by paths that you cannot understand. You will travel in darkness in which you will no longer be concerned with yourself and no longer compare yourself with others."
Thomas Merton, "New Seeds of Contemplation"
What's Clear, What is Not
I don't understand the Holy Spirit. I go for months, or for a year, with no clear guidance, and then it's like someone opened a tap. I get guidance from dreams, friends, readings, the Scripture, and pieces of the puzzle fall into place to my right hand and to my left, and the picture forms.
One thing is clear to me.. I am not in control of anything.
"Follow Me"
This was the word the Lord gave us when we left our last church community. We knew we had to leave.. we felt like rebels in doing so. Not a week later the Lord clearly spoke to us.. "Follow Me." We knew that we had largely been following men. We knew that a new learning curve was about to overtake us.
He has spoken this to us again. Again, it's "follow Me."
It's easy to get sidetracked. It's easy to get lost in self doubt and self reflection. It's easy to doubt what the Lord has previously spoken, particularly when most of those around you are still travelling traditional roads. And of course, it is right that some travel those roads. I believe that there are those in traditional structures who are salt and light to those places. Many of them want to leave, but are not called to do so..
But "following" the Lord really is costly, no matter where we are. For us it has been this "road less travelled" for the past two and a half years. It is a place of constant insecurity, and a place of dependence. It often feels like a desert.
If you are called to one of these lonely roads, here are some things to remember:
David Ruis
I had a dream last night. We had been working with David Ruis and we were coming back to the area where he was based. We came into a large gathering.. it seemed like thousands.. and as we carried our bags in there was a roar of welcome and then David making some wise crack over a PA system.. the crowd parted so we could get through.
I have no idea if it is significant, but of course there are touch points. I was listening to David on a tape from a Winnipeg conference while driving to a coffee meeting yesterday. He was talking about one of the first big parties they threw for the neighborhood poor, and how the food simply would not run out. We've heard other stories like this.. they are quite spine tingling. Someone makes a big pot of Chili and two hundred people show up.. and the pot never runs dry.
Anyway, the party for the poor was the first touch point. We've done many of these, and they really are crazy and rewarding. And we have often seen miraculous provision. Example... about a year back we were planning a gathering for the weekend. We were making up a grocery list only to discover that the cupboard was bare.. and so was the bank account. But immediately my wife felt it would not be a problem, that a cheque would appear.
In fact, she thought my pay cheque would appear early. LOL. I laughed and told her they are NEVER early, and virtually always LATE.
The next morning she asked me to check our account online. To my astonishment we had $600 in our account, a full week before it should have been there... Yes, great man of faith here..
The second touch point was David's story about walking down a Winnipeg street and coming on a potentially explosive situation. He saw one of the "sniffers" he knew sitting on the grass surrounded by three youth gang members, who were taunting him and obviously getting ready to give him a beating. He continued toward them and told them to cut it out.
"What's it to you?" they asked, turning toward him in a threatening way.
David had no idea what to say, but what came out of his mouth were the words, "He is my friend." The astonished gang members retreated into the nearby house mumbling and grumbling.
Yes.. it's that simple. Friendship with God, friendship with brothers and sisters, friends with the poor. Not two groups, helpers and helped... no levels, no titles, no flow charts, no great discourses on purpose and vision and the dynamics of teams.. We are called to be an alternative society and the way we relate to one another may be the only message that the world will hear.
As for any broader meaning, I think that we are going locally where David went.. working with the poor, no maps, breaking down structures to what is essential, doing community and mission as a group of friends.
"The fellowship of Jesus' followers is not merely a loose coalition of individuals who
acknowledge Jesus, however. Rather, it is a community of disciples who seek to walk
together in accordance with the principles of the kingdom. As Christ's church, we
desire to live out in the present the final reality that will come at the end of history,
namely, the reconciled community. This forms the ultimate reason why the goal of
evangelism is disciple making. The Spirit directs his great creative work toward
establishing the eschatological community, a people who are bonded together by
their mutual obedience to the God revealed in Jesus. It is their commitment to living
as Jesus' disciples which facilitates the mutuality that characterizes the community
they form." (p. 504) Stanley Grenz, Theology for the Community of God
"Jesus and his greatest commandment - Love god and Love people - that is what I want to be all about. But there is something inherent about big plans and visions that takes my focus off of the goal of really loving God and people. Somehow, people become part of my project, a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. At least that is what was happening for me. I read where Peter tells Christians to really Love each other deeply, from the heart, and that is compelling to me. But as far as I can see, that requires quality time and quantity time. When I was really a part of the big structure, I was so busy that all I had time for was quality time. But I seemed to be leaving a trail of disconnected, disillusioned people who thought they were part of a family, but were finding that they were really an unpaid employee in my corporation. I was thinking about it yesterday, I have been outside of the structure of church for some time now, and I have never had such an alive, growing network of relationships as I do now. The network is primarily about becoming a family - a people of God who Love each other honestly and want to do life like Jesus did. But I must admit I am hesitant to start placing titles on people and meetings because it seems like too quickly we would be back on the road to corporate status."
From a resurrected letter at Herban Sprawl for January 15. Living with ambiguity is healthy.. but the price for walking the road less travelled is insecurity.
I feel like I've been in a battle. Huge relief, tired, and grateful to be alive. Thanks for your thoughts and your prayers.
A comment that Jason made in the church planting list got me thinking. He was talking about the centrality of the Story to all that we do. I had a strange, almost out-of-body experience. I felt like I was looking through a lens that was clear to everyone but me. I felt I could not get a handle on his perspective, that it was mere words, which it very obviously was not.
Here is part of what he wrote:
"Jesus climaxed human history, showing humanity what it was to become as image- bearers and co-creators with God. Jesus also climaxed Israel's history, showing Israel
what it was to become as a community that embodied God's presence and
cooperatively re-created the world toward the renewed creation. In other words, the
Church, and our local manifestations of the Church, are called to follow Jesus, who
himself was the climax of an amazing Story.
"Knowing who Jesus is in God's Story helps us as individuals and as local communities
to know who we are in the Story as well. Our community's task has been to re-embed
Christ back into the Story as a 1st century Jewish man, who embodied the fullness of
God as the climax of what it meant to be human and what it meant to be Israel. We're
exploring the reality that Jesus climaxes the age-old story of God by embodying the
future finale of that story within the present. I think this is significant. When we say
the Church's mission is "to make disciples of Christ," we are talking about helping
people become students and apprentices of the one who completely embodied God's
future renewed creation in human form within the present."
After some further thought, I have an idea as to why I can't relate to that perspective, and why in this area my personal "paradigm" has not yet shifted.
I think it is because I relate easily to Jesus, but with difficulty to the "Church." In fact, I feel embraced by Jesus, but an orphan in relation to the Church. The churches I know are not places I would want to be.
But how then am I to feel like a part of something that transcends time and space? How do I connect to that bigger story as it has been rooted and manifested in human history since the time the disciples watched Jesus ascend to heaven?
I suspect this is at least one reason why many emerging communities are embracing a sacramental perspective, and various forms of liturgy. I think it's important that we find a way to connect with the historical church, both visible and invisible. The Story, after all, began long before we individually entered it.
Had quite an adventure today.. I woke at five with pain in my left side.. felt gastric so I thought I needed to hit the washroom.
But.. that wasn't it. So I thought maybe just bad gas..
The pain kept increasingly until by 6 AM I was becoming acquainted with the tiles in the bathroom.. doubled up in pain.
I was still convinced it was gastric so I didn't wake Betty. When I started vomiting I thought.. maybe food poisoning. Oh well.. just have to wait it out.
At 7:15 AM when Betty got up she immediately wondered if it was kidney stones. I was intermittently in very serious pain.
The walk in clinic opened at 9, and then I sat in the waiting room til 9:45.. after seeing the doctor, they announced 90% likelihood that I was "stoned." They gave me a shot of demoral and gravol.
Then off to emergency. They took X rays and CT scan and sure enough.. healthy 3mm stone in my urethra on its way to my bladder. Doctor was quite sure it would pass by itself within 24 hours, so when the pain cleared up they let me go home.
Right now is the first time all day I have almost no pain.. whew.. what an ordeal. I'd like to say it was also a wasted day... but I think it's good to be reminded of what real pain is like. I know many who have endured this and worse...
Monday Prayer
For all those who lack bread on their table today, Lord, hear our prayer.
Inspiration for Vocation issue #10.
Elise, my eldest daughter, turned 16 in December. We had a great conversation while bumping about the kitchen this morning. She said to me,
"Dad, why do we emphasize what we don't do in order to be a christian ... instead of what we DO do..?"
Wow. What a great question. The next comment was,
"I'm tired of hearing, "read your bible pray every day and you'll grow, grow, grow," anymore. It's important, but it's not the heart of it is it?"
From living in a children's story, where everything is black and white, to the complex world of discipleship, is a journey some believers never make. At 16 my daughter knows what it is to be an information junkie in an infotech world .. everything is words words words... As Eliza queried Professor Higgins, "Is that all you blighters can do?"
Our knowledge culture turned the Bible into a book of codes. It was intended to point us to a living relationship, not a list of do's and don'ts.
We don't read the Bible for in-formation, but to be formed-in.. transformed into the image of Jesus... It is first His work, but it requires our cooperation. It requires that we walk out what we learn, and repent of our unwillingness to follow. It requires that we draw on the resources of heaven. And it requires that we allow the Word to interpret us, to be tried and tested by it, to admit our brokenness, and to press on into Him. Being a disciple is about who we become and then about what we do; it is about a world of relationships and restoration.
Richard Rohr, in "Hope Against Darkness," comments that Jesus never called us to worship Him; He called us to follow Him. We can quibble about the distinction.. I quibbled the first time I read Rohr. But his point is that we love to gather and have religious experiences.. we are less ready to take those religious experiences into the world of dust and matter and smell. We are less ready to stop by the side of the road to help the broken of the world. To this day I am basically self-centered and protective of my space. I am too slow to sacrifice myself to make a difference.
Worse, I would rather offer an answer than be one. I would rather give a lecture on Christianity than live it. I confess, I am almost addicted to comfort and control.
Sadly, the result has been that we in the west have substituted church for living the gospel. We substituted the menu for the meal, the vehicle for the journey. We didn't notice that Jesus came preaching the kingdom, and not the church.
I didn't understand these things til I was 40 years old, and here my daughter at 16 is starting to critique our "christian" sub-culture, and becoming alive to issues of truth and justice. Wow.
The next issue will be where she goes from here. She is attending a Christian school and increasingly finding it too narrow and limited. After a summer working at Pizza Hut and relating to non-Christians she is realizing that life isn't found in cloistered community, but in being salt and light in the world. She is ready for more than the safety of Christian culture.. she is ready to follow Jesus. She is learning the difference between information and formation, and she is becoming an authentic disciple.
I was struck again this morning how the young culture respond so well to conversations, and poorly to lectures. My generation itself is a transitional one. I learned to take in huge amounts of information and regurgitate it on command. But my life was rarely formed by what I was learning. The information was rarely a response to my context and felt need. The beauty of conversations is that they are generally at the point of need. They invite discovery, instead of asking for conformity. When we are asking the questions and searching for the answers, we are ready to learn and grow.
Never kill a question;
No answer should be designed to kill the question.
Wherever there is a question, let it live!
Frost, "Bless My Growing"
This is one of those times when nothing seems to stretch far enough, and our community of friends finds itself in that insecure place of dependence again...
I wonder if the reason Jesus said "give it all away" to the rich young ruler was not that money itself was a problem, but that wealth gave him the illusion of control and the ability to remain independent.. alone, in control, isolated, out of community, and therefore unhealed. Maybe it is impossible to really be connected to the life of the Body apart from a certain reality of need. If we don't need one another, we can always run away when the going gets tough.. as it inevitably does.
Like marriage, mutual dependence breaks down our illusions of control, turns us to rely on one another and ultimately on the Lord. It teaches us in practice what we know in theory.. that "no man is an island," and that the Body of Christ has many members. It teaches us that in fact strength can be weakness, and weakness can be our strength.
Futhermore, it is at the point of our need that we discover grace, and sometimes miraculous provision through the Body. Most gladly, then, we should embrace our need. As St. Francis sang, "For brother poverty, we give thanks."
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As I am pondering the best way to get a new counselling business started, Bell Mobility called with an offer I couldn't refuse. A new cell phone and 6 months of unlimited calling, followed by a 24 month contract at $35 per month (including air time, the monthly access fee and voice mail). Great timing, and a wonderful gift from God when I have nothing to invest in start up costs.
This morning I finally posted "Kingdom Leadership in Postmodern Culture." While the article could use a little more time, I just can't find the time so I need to move on to other things..
"I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down. Simone Weil says simply, 'Let us love the country of here below. It is real; it offers resistance to love.'"
Annie Dillard, from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper & Row, 1974)
This quote really worries me. I worry that it may not be possible to build a new kind of community with those who have participated in the old one. I worry that institutional people are devoid of initiative, accustomed to being spoon fed, have no real sense of the meaning of Christian freedom.
The hope, of course, is that we can build alternative communities with new converts, and with those who have "detoxed" from the old system. Those who, as Reggie McNeal puts it, left the institution not because they had lost faith, but to preserve it.
We also need new leaders, and they aren't being created in institutional settings. The only kind of leader who can lead institutional people is the "hero," the type of leader who can create followers but not empower disciples. But we don't need more leadership cults; we need to build leadership cultures, where the DNA itself is spread through the tribe. The DNA of the Lion of Judah produces prophetic and priestly communities, immersed in a common story.
Unfortunately, we don't have the option of leading or announcing an Exodus. I tried this for a while.. it is dangerous and unhelpful. We can witness to the truth with out lives, but we can't call people to follow us out. Only the Lord can or should do that. If we call people to follow us, we renew the personality cult, and we have more followers. But only Jesus should be creating followers... We need people who carry the vision in their minds and spirits, a Spirit given vision of an alternative community.
Richard Quebedeaux writes that,
"Because the very foundations of American society, including the family, are crumbling, we MUST seek and find strong leaders. But we need a new kind of leader - beyond the celebrity, beyond the pragmatist - to show us the way to the abundant life, the good life that God originally intended for his children and still longs for us to have."
"No medium or method of conveying the Christian gospel can meet people's basic needs for recognition, involvement, worthiness, growth, and indeed salvation itself without the loving give and take of person-to-person interaction over a long period of time. This is what community really means, and this is exactly where popular religion and its leaders are not successful.
"In a secular society, in a world where homelessness is the norm, the only way religion can really be "successful" is to provide a home for the homeless -- a family that includes not just my kind of people, but God's kind of people, who love him with everything they have, and who love their neighbour as much as they love themselves. The church does need to become God's ideal family, both in word and in deed."
Emergent Thinking
"..I think the real issue may go a bit deeper [Christianity as counter-culture in the West]: it’s about how people actually live together. The problem is not so much that people don’t want to belong to churches as that they don’t feel they want to shoulder the moral responsibility for community. Now, that’s not just about a sense of community, it's people actually saying, ‘I want to carry a vision for the community.'"
Three Strands of Emergent Thinking about Church
"The current church culture in NA is on life support. It is living off the work, money and energy of previous generations from a previous world order. The plug will be pulled either when the money runs out (80 percent of money given to congregations comes from people aged fifty five and older_) or when the remaining three fourths of a generation who are institutional loyalists die off or both..."
"A growing number of of people are leaving the institutional church for a new reason. They are not leaving because they have lost their faith. They are leaving to preserve their faith." Reggie McNeal, "The Present Future"
The Present Future: Understanding Current Realities in the Church
"Some leaders fail to create a culture of leadership, and instead foster a personal cult. A cult is a rudimentary, incomplete, inherently ephemeral phenomenon that fades away when the personality that creates it departs. A culture is much more durable and robust than a cult, because its survival and power do not depend on the presence and personality of a single individual."
Deering, Dilts and Russel, Leadership Cults and Culture in Leader to Leader, Spring, 2003
"While our secular culture may have some influence on the move toward a post-evangelical posture, most of the motivation in that direction, as I have observed it through the years, is from within evangelical teaching and experience. This is due to an inherent tension that has always existed within the evangelical tradition. On one hand, it emphasizes as essential a personal, life-transforming experience of God. The one thing that has always been distinctive to evangelical Christianity is its rejection of second-hand faith, mediated through institutions of which one is a member. On the other hand, the evangelical tradition takes certain interpretations of the Bible, or certain biblical texts, as ultimate authority on what is to be believed and practiced. These two elements of evangelical Christianity are in constant tension.
"St. Francis of Assisi and Martin Luther are fascinating case studies of how the tension between experience and authority works. In their cases, authority won out. In fact, anytime a significant group or institution develops around a teaching or an individual, authority typically wins out. For then the question isn't, "Where are you before God"? It's rather, "Are you a member of our group?" (Are you really?) Those responsible for the integrity of the group usually see to it that the marks of group members are endorsed by the authority source--in our case, a set of interpretations about the Bible. So for example, issues such as whether you believe that women should be allowed to teach or whether Christ will return soon after the millennium begins may be used as tests for whether or not you believe the Bible--and that test may be used as tests for whether you are evangelical (or what is "Christian"?) And so on. The vital relationship to Jesus is smothered in a heap of trivialities."
Dallas Willard in the introduction to The Post Evangelical
And related, Leadership Cults and Culture.
"There is a sense of disconnection in the world. There is a sense of disconnection with one another. There is a sense that mayhem is taking over.
"What: A 2 day gathering of the emerging church in our present mayhem. Brian McLaren will help lead the conversation to make sense of our present reality and point us towards the future. We are gathering to say that we are not alone."
Not Alone (Conference) Jan.9-10 (If you attended this conference send me a report and I will post it here).
"These are the words I heard God whisper in my ear as I was on my way to Pasadena, California to attend a conference on the Postdenominational Church. I had no idea then what God meant, but now, more than six years later, it is coming clearly into view."
"Eighteenth century Methodism grew remarkably among England's working poor people who did not fit into the refined Chruch of England culture, whom Establishment Christianity largeley ignored. John Wesley went to great lengths, through observatin, interviews, and correspondence, to understand England's unchurched populations. Methodism, like celtic Christianity before it, took root and became contagious almost everywhere in the open air. Wesley's movement practiced the ministry of hospitality and welcomed seekers into the fellowship of Methodist class meetings, and even into membership in Methodist societies, before they believed or had experience anything. Most of them "caught" the faith from the fellowship.
"Methodism was a lay movement and saw itself as an alternative community, which practiced the ministry of conversation, and which contextualized the message and addressed "middle" as well as ultimate issues. Methodist leaders were aware of the influence of ethos and pathos, and identifying with the target population in communicating the message. Wesley travelled to communities with a team which ministered, usually with the goal to plant a Methodist society or to start new classes within a society. Methodism formed its people in ways reminiscent of the Celtic fivefold approach. Methodism engaged people's imaginations through Charles Wesley's poetry and the folk arts of the people. Early Methodism employed an alternative architecture in which people felt comfortable, which was conducive to fellowship and to sensing the imminence of the triune God. Early Methodism adopted the people's kind of music, and many people sang their way into faith. "
George G Hunter, III, "The Celtic Way of Evangelism," p. 98 99
And from wired, the ultimate gadget jacket: Sun Powered Jacket
Jason remarks,
“We [must] try to enter into the Pauline world at the one crucial place where his presuppositions tend to be radically different from those of the later church, but are the absolutely basic ‘theological’ or experiential framework for everything he experienced or thought. For Paul, through the resurrection of Christ and the subsequent gift of the Spirit, God himself had set the future inexorably in motion, so that everything in the ‘present’ is determined by the appearance of the ‘future.’ It is necessary for us to start here, not with ‘theology’ proper (the doctrine of God as such), because this is the experiential starting point for Paul and the early church.”
Toward that end, Derek Morphew on the Presence of the Future
"Leader to Leader" published by the Drucker Foundation has had some of the best articles on leadership and transformation published in the USA. Here are some links from past issues:
"In a world where the rules are constantly changing, millions of people in every sector of the economy are wrestling with the new demands of leadership. I hear managers everywhere discussing the same fundamental challenge -- the journey to transformation, moving from where we are to where we want to be in the tenuous future that lies before us. Around the world, in universities, the community of faith, corporations, government, and the burgeoning social sector, leaders are working to shape the transformation of their institutions."
Journey to Transformation by Frances Hesselbein
"Virtually every executive staff I’ve ever come across believes in teamwork. At least they say they do. Sadly, a scarce few of them make teamwork a reality in their organizations; in fact, they often end up creating environments where political infighting and departmental silos are the norm. And yet they continue to tout their belief in teamwork, as if that alone will somehow make it magically appear. I have found that only a small minority of companies truly understand and embrace teamwork, even though, according to their Web sites, more than one in three of the Fortune 500 publicly declare it to be a core value.
"How can this be? How can intelligent, well-meaning executives who supposedly set out to foster cooperation and collaboration among their peers be left with organizational dynamics that are anything but team-oriented? And why do they go on promoting a concept they are so often unable to deliver?"
"Some leaders fail to create a culture of leadership, and instead foster a personal cult. The paradox at the heart of organizational leadership is that the leader must add value to the organization but must not take it away when he or she leaves. An essential part of a leader's job is to become dispensable through creating a culture of leadership that extends throughout the organization."
"Old ways die hard. Amid all the evidence that our world is radically changing, we cling to what has worked in the past. We still think of organizations in mechanistic terms, as collections of replaceable parts capable of being reengineered. We act as if even people were machines, redesigning their jobs as we would prepare an engineering diagram, expecting them to perform to specifications with machinelike obedience. Over the years, our ideas of leadership have supported this metaphoric myth. We sought prediction and control, and also charged leaders with providing everything that was absent from the machine: vision, inspiration, intelligence, and courage. They alone had to provide the energy and direction to move their rusting vehicles of organization into the future."
Goodbye Command and Control by Margaret Wheatley
"Peter Drucker has elegantly presented the three ingredients of the discipline of innovation: focus on mission, define significant results, and do rigorous assessment. But if it sounds so simple, why is it so difficult for institutions to innovate?"
The Practice of Innovation by Peter Senge.
"Innovation has always been a primary challenge of leadership. Today we live in an era of such rapid change and evolution that leaders must work constantly to develop the capacity for continuous change and frequent adaptation, while ensuring that identity and values remain constant. They must recognize people's innate capacity to adapt and create -- to innovate."
Innovation Means Relying on Everyone's Creativity by Margaret Wheatley
"Creative persons stand out from the rest of us. Somehow their contributions affect large groups and move organizations toward something better. John Masters calls them "explorationists" (the most creative people in his organization discover oil and gas). Yet they function, for the most part, outside of or away from organizations. They work in all kinds of places -- in cafés, in airports, at home -- and they benefit from unusual relationships with the organizations they join. They often have odd reporting relationships, but somehow they instinctively insert themselves into organizations wherever they are needed.
"The changes and innovations they bring are often more like leaps than the small steps most of us experience. They think of the world in large terms. They work for institutions or societies or cultures or ideas, not for individuals. Their creativity comes from the novel connections they make between their work and their experience or observations. They are usually curious and need a field in which to exercise that curiosity. Leaders can work to bring the special and creative gifts of these people to bear on the efforts of a group."
Creative Leadership by Max De Pree
"What does a one-horned mother cow have to do with leadership? The answer requires a bit of reflection. Let's begin with a few words about words. Words are only secondarily the means by which we communicate; they're primarily the means by which we think. One can scarcely think or talk of organizations or management these days without coming across what leading thinkers from many disciplines believe will be the principal science of the next century: the understanding of autocatalytic, nonlinear, complex, adaptive systems, usually referred to as "complexity."
The Art of Chaordic Leadership by Dee Hock
"Change is nothing new to leaders, or their constituents. We understand by now that organizations cannot be just endlessly "managed," replicating yesterday's practices to achieve success. Business conditions change and yesterday's assumptions and practices no longer work. There must be innovation, and innovation means change."
Leading Transition by William Bridges
Got a call from a church community in a nearby town who want a counsellor to come in and offer some assessment. This is the first such call I have had since moving to Kelowna in 1998. It comes just as I have been asking the Lord to confirm this direction of moving back into counselling.
As we are talking, however, Bob begins to tell me about the shape of the leadership team, which is in a transition with a new pastor. In the end I offered to come and meet with the entire team and the pastors, and he will take that proposal back to the team.
I didn't expect this direction, but it feels very natural.
Then I went for lunch with Nick to talk about all the stuff that is popping in the past few weeks. Nick and I have often talked about working together, and Nick has a vision to give away counselling and communication skills to couples and communities as the foundation of transformation and healing. We share a dream to give a voice to all God's people. Nick says, "We are only as strong as our weakest link." It was obvious as we met today that the time has arrived, and we have agreed to plant a "counselling and consulting service" here in Kelowna. Name of the service.. TBA...
"The willingness to be born --and this means the willingness to let go of all "certainties" and illusions -- requires courage and faith. Courage to let go of certainties, courage to be different and stand isolation." Erich Fromm
Rhymes and Reasons is designed to capture the paradox that disciples are lifelong learners; therefore, if we rest in the answers and forget the questions we have actually stopped walking forward with Jesus. The strange paradox of having "found" Jesus but losing ourselves means we can actually let go of the answers as we journey forward together. This is a good presentation for those who are beginning the journey but who are worried that admitting they don't know everything or that some things will always remain unclear is an admission of failure.
The presentation is currently around 10MB. It may not run perfectly on older versions of PowerPoint or the MP3 files may not play properly.
Rhymes and Reasons: the Journey Beyond the Answers
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Check out George Hunsberger's article: Cultivating Ways of Christ in the Postmodern Transition: Ways of Witness. Hunsberger uses Newbigin to move us beyond a modern apologetic (the debate on "absolutes" and objective knowledge) as well as pointing to the biblical call for an authentic community as the foundation of witness.
"Newbigin's stress in later years on understanding the congregation to be a "hermeneutic of the gospel" forms an important answer to another of the authority questions postmodern people have, "Why the church?" By what authority, and on what ground, is there a rationale for the church to exist at all? The authority to witness is its authority to exist: the only adequate witness is one that iterates what is visibly and truly embodied in a community of people embraced by the message. The presence of the Christian community functions as a hermeneutical key, an interpretive lens through which onlookers gain a view of the gospel in the living colors of common life." George Hunsberger
This weekend I was looking at my growing children and thinking about another coming transition.. a childless home. Elise is now 16 and Lauren 14, and I am 47. That means if all goes well I have roughly 33 more years of activity, or about 12,000 days.
It isn't only mothers who think about these things, or find tears welling up in their eyes in quiet moments as they observe their growing children. I'm very proud of my girls, and I love them fiercely, and imperfectly. I'm searching for ways to give them more of myself before distance and time separate us.
Age does seem to be a strange imposter. I don't feel particularly old. I notice my age when I stay up too late, or when I eat pizza at 8 o'clock in the evening ;)
The trade off becomes increasingly evident.. knowledge and wisdom increase, strength and endurance decline. I find myself becoming a resource for church planters and leaders in transition. It is literally a case of "finding myself," as if there is one Len who observes and one who acts. Hmm.. so that is what I am doing.. who I am these days.. I have moments of self-doubt and moments of clarity. Mostly I realize I am off the map and I feel like Frodo carrying the Ring.. "Ok, I'll carry it.. but I don't know the way." One of the gifts of age is that I care less and less for maps and certainty anyway.
One is only becoming a teacher when one begins to understand how little one knows.. This is one area where WWJD does not apply. Which brings me to my reading last night, from "The Dancing Wu Li Masters":
"At the same time this was happening, I was trying to find out what a "Master" is. The dictionary was no help. All of its definitions involved an element of control. This did not fit easily into our image of the Dancing Wu Li Masters. Since Al Guang is a Tai Chi Master, I asked him: "That is the word that other people use to describe me," he said. To Al Huang, Al Huang was just Al Huang.
"Later in the week, I asked him the same questions again, hoping to get a more tangible answer. "A Master is someone who started before you did," was what I got that time.
My western education left me unable to accept a nondefinition for my definition of a "Master," so I begn to read Huang's book, "Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain." There, in the foreword by Alan Watts, in a paragraph describing Al Huang, I found what I sought. Said Alan Watts of Al Huang:
"He begins from the center and not from the fringe. He imparts an understanding of the basic principles of the art before going on to the meticulous details, and he refuses to break down the t'ai chi movements into a one-two-three drill so as to make the student into a robot. The traditional way.. is to teach by rote, and to give the impression that long periods of boredom are the most essential part of training. In that way a student may go on for years and years without ever getting the feel of what he is doing."
"A Master teaches essence. When the essence is perceived, he teaches what is necessary to expand perception. The Wu Li Master does not speak of gravity until the student stands in wonder at the flower petal falling to the groun. He does not speak of lawas until the student, of his own, says, "How strange! I drop two stones simultaneously, one ehavy and one light, and both reach the earth at the same moment."
In this way, the Wu Li Master dances with his student. The Master does not teach, but the student learns. The Master always begins at the center."
From "The Dancing Wu Li Masters," by Gary Zukav.
With changes ganging up on us, I've been thinking about transition. Here are two articles, one written by Todd Hunter as a summary of William Bridges, and the following two by myself.
Riding the Process of Change William Bridges
Gordon Cosby on Ordination to Daily Life.
"One order of ministry is not eternally more valuable than another. It is easy to absolutize the significance of one type of ministry and leave the feeling with many that they are second class members of the body, important only as extensions of official clergy. This I cannot accept."
Sociologist Alan Jamieson on "Ten Myths about Church Leavers."
More house church links and articles:
How to Plant a Church without Trying
Why I Don't Go to Church Anymore
"The more we become people of action and responsibility in our community, the more we must become people of contemplation. If we do not nurture our deep emotional life in prayer hidden in God, if we do not spend time in silence and if we do not know how to take time from the presence of our brothers and sisters, we risk becoming embittered. It is only to the extent that we nurture our own hearts that we can keep interior freedom. People who are hyperactive, fleeing from their deep selves and their wound, become tyrannical and their exercise of responsibility only creates conflict."
From: Community and Growth, Jean Vanier
Tim Clinton, President of The American Association of Christian Counselors
"In the knowledge era, we will finally have to surrender the myth of leaders as isolated heroes commanding their organizations from on high. Top-down directives, even when they are implemented, reinforce an environment of fear, distrust, and internal competitiveness that reduces collaboration and cooperation. They foster compliance instead of commitment, yet only genuine commitment can bring about the courage, imagination, patience, and perseverance necessary in a knowledge-creating organization. For those reasons, leadership in the future will be distributed among diverse individuals and teams who share responsibility for creating the organization's future."
Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline
A day off.. whew. I think one of the nicest things working at Office Depot has done for me is give me a whole new appreciation for "discretionary time." My first love is reading and writing and corresponding with friends on the net. Second is sitting down over a cup of java with a friend or two. Third gets more murky.. I love hitting the sheets at night. My first thoughts when climbing into bed are often like, "How do I deserve this?" Course having my warm wife to snuggle with only improves the experience...
But really.. having been born in Canada.. sometimes the reality stuns me. Why me? Why here in this safe, wealthy haven? Lord, help me to number my days and give me a heart of wisdom...
More change is afoot. I'll be making a presentation to the local ministerial here in early February as I plan to open a local counselling office. That was my chosen vocation after graduate school, and I worked as a marriage and family therapist from 1990- 1998. I'm glad I left it behind.. I believe I have learned much about life, prayer, and healing in the past five years. I also think I am more patient with regard to change..
"Theologian, journalist, and evangelical leader Carl F.H. Henry died Sunday, December 7, at age 90 in his longtime home of Watertown, Wisconsin. Henry made it his life's work to present biblical Christianity as intellectually credible and historically true. On the battlefields of modern theological thought, spanning seminaries, denominations, and media, Henry shaped the defenses of evangelicalism with two goals in mind: preserving truth and attracting nonbelievers."
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Fix: The Story of an Addicted City and
A Place Called Chiapas are going to be presented at the Paramount Theatre in Kelowna on Wed., Jan 14 at 7 PM. Admission is free. Documentary film maker Nettie Wild will speak afterwards.
I've been thinking about church planting this week. It began with something I read online somewhere, and then resulted in some conversations that in turn resulted in the initiation of a YAHOO discussion group by Stephen Shields of Faithmaps. We have nine people involved in the conversation.. should be fun. I'll post pieces of it as it occurs.
After a conversation with Casey yesterday I find myself thinking again about what a house church network would look like locally. I am also aware that initiating such a thing would be seen as the ultimate subversion by some local clergy. Think about it.. by facilitating that kind of expression of kingdom life you are saying that anyone with four walls to share can be a pastor/teacher clergy type. I know.. I'm mixing language here.. institutional language with outside-the-box language.. but you know what I mean. The real point is that we don't need pastor/teachers or clergy.. we don't need roles.. we need faithful men and women who will live out what God has put in them by loving God and loving their neighbors. It is not about meetings, it's about life.. but we need Houses That Change the World. (See also 15 Theses for a New Reformation).
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Ok, being the verbose one I have opened the discussion of "church planting in pomo culture" on our new list. Here is what I posted:
"Did Jesus call us to plant churches? Is "church planting"
the right focus? Is there anything in the Great Commission that
suggests this is our responsibility?"
To me Paul's question hits at intentionality and life. If we are
disciples of Jesus and loving him and loving His world, we will be,
as he said, salt and light. Inevitably, he will draw people to
Himself.
What do we do when that happens? We encourage the sharing of life..
both inward and outward.. caring for one another, and reaching out
to the lost and needy around us... life begets life.
Inevitably groups will form. In the first century Paul encouraged
Timothy to appoint elders in these forming clusters. Doubtless he
did so by recognizing a special anointing on certain people in these
growing communities. We needn't assume that Timothy imposed a
complete hierarchy and modern structure on these small groups. The
literature on the first century house churches tells us they were
small and simple, more like families than organizations or modern "churches."
But my point is that they are living organisms. Margaret Wheatley
says that life is self-organizing, and implies that we do violence
to life when we impose our own organizing (controlling) behavior on
it. If we come with a pre-conceived structure and the idea of
replicating what worked at another community (Saddelback etc), we
are not facilitating life.
This hints at a direction for leadership in self-organizing
communities. Leadership coaches have discovered that focus is more
important than individual behaviors in growing organizations. Taking
control would mean replacing individual initiative, and re-
centralizing authority, thus impeding the natural development of
community. If our goal is to be in control, we needn't worry about
the growth of community; a hierarchy will do.
If our goal is to
build a congregation, we only need a few leaders and a big theatre. The leaders will
settle for creating an audience, or burn out trying to turn an audience into a community. If our goal is
creative and self-sustaining, life-giving communities then we need to know how to
support, as leadership coach Margaret Wheatley put it,
".. self-organizing responses. People do not need the intricate
directions, time lines, plans, and organization charts that we
thought we had to give them. These are not how people accomplish
good work; they are what impede contributions. But people do need a
lot from their leaders. They need information, access, resources,
trust, and follow-through. Leaders are necessary to foster
experimentation, to help create connections across the organization,
to feed the system with rich information from multiple sources-all
while helping everyone stay clear on what we agreed we wanted to
accomplish and who we wanted to be." (Goodbye Command and Control, in "Leader to Leader")
If our goal is to grow communities and to empower ministry and life,
we dare not build a corporate culture or settle for a congregation.
We dare not be the savior or the one with all the answers, or the
one who is indispensable, replacing the Holy Spirit.
Furthermore, in this case we won't mind fluid structures or some
chaos because they we become more interested in finding meaning than
in building structures or establishing order. Margaret Wheatley
comments that "We instinctively reach out to leaders who work with
us in creating meaning."
Ok, what I have not done here is reflect on the pronounced
difference between intentional "church planting" efforts and just
living out the expression of what God has built into us. It will be
fun to talk some more about that :)
Some links related to First Nations ministries..
Healing the Land
"The three mirrors in the kaleidoscope are what provides the dance of ministry pieces and programs. The mirrors are the apostolic, the prophetic and the poetic. These three mirrors will reflect a very distinctive ministry dance and provide the direction mission and vision for a church.
"The apostolic mirror says what do we see out there in our "sentness" role as a church. Most churches are very focused within their four walls. The word apostle means sent one. The church isn't to be gathered except to be sent out. As we go out into the culture, what do we see and hear that will enable us to address ministry in ways that are culturally sensitive? In other words, the apostolic mirror reflects to us all the culture context can show us.
"The prophetic mirror reflects to us the new thing God wants to do in us and through us. Isaiah 43 says God wants to do a new thing. This mirror reflects to us God's heart at the moment and in the context of the apostolic mirror of the cultural context we find ourselves.
"The third mirror is the poetic. Every church has a unique voice, unique gifts, a unique way of expressing what God is doing through them. The poetic mirror reflects each churches unique delivery system to the community around them. When apostolic "sentness" captures the cultural context, and then mingles with the new thing God wants to speak prophetically into the culture and that is sieved through the poetic voice of the church, you have a very unique missional picture emerge that shapes and contours ministry initiatives for that local church. The interplay of those three mirrors and the corresponding ministry beachheads that emerge are what I call the kaleidoscopic dance." Interview with Ron Martoia at THE OOZE
Ascending the Mountain: The Dream
"When the dream began, I was standing in a cattle car that was at the end of a train. The train was moving up the side of a mountain. More accurately it was the foothills leading to a very tall mountain.
"The cattle car reminded me of the type of car that the Jews were taken to the concentration camps in. While I don't know how many, the cattle car was fairly crowded with believers. There were no denominational distinctions. There was however a strong gift of discernment operating in all of us that were in the cattle car.
"While in the dream, we didn't fully understand why, we all knew that we must get off the train immediately. The door was locked and all attempts to communicate with the engineers responsible for the train were ignored."
Read Allen's dream.
Oddly, I had a dream myself last night.. or actually two of them, but they were both about the same thing. The first I remember more clearly. I was called to fight, and I was dressed in camoflage gear. But I couldn't go and fight. I felt terrible about it. It wasn't from fear.. there was just something wrong with the battle itself.
When I woke up I felt awful. But immediately I thought of Saul's armor.. that it worked great for Saul, but David couldn't wear it. It was worse that useless.. it actually restricted him from following the Lord and fighting in a way that would bring victory.
Then later in the day I remembered Rick Joyner's article on Trench Warfare. If you haven't read it, take a look...
Other dreams that describe the urgency of change are like Ben's dream, an angel with a bomb..
John Driver, Community and Commitment
It's up to you and me to create community. If we rely on others to do it for us, or if we rely on the institution, it simply will not happen. Unfortunately, we are trained to rely on others (or the institution) to do it for us.. and that is crippling.
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"There are many days working in ministry where I find myself looking for my own locks and a pirate flag to fly to keep the non-creative people from killing my ideas and vision. One of the truths that I have come to grips with while serving in a local church is that creative people and great ideas are in short supply. I am not just talking about people who are artistic but people who have fresh ideas, new insights and like blazing trails. They just don't seem to be active in the majority of churches today.
"It didn't take me long to realize why. Many times a great idea of mine is questioned with, "Well, have Willow Creek or Saddleback done it? What was their result with it?" In other words, lets not lead, let's follow what others have done. Church leadership gets defined as the "road already safely traveled" or in the world of many churches, the "road that I can download". It isn't just lack of courage, there are numerous reasons why creative people are not part of many western local churches. Here is my list of things that can be major stumbling blocks to creativity in the church.
"We all want to blame the seminaries and Bible colleges for our woes but the problem is not just what is being taught there but the kind of students that they attract. Church leaders who have been trained by the church [feel that] creativity and new ideas put the old institution at risk. They are .. guardians rather than leaders. To ask them to change or lead in innovative ways is like asking for water from a stone. From a denominational or hiring perspective, looking for graduates of seminaries and Bible colleges to bring about revolutionary change will be difficult. A friend's local church was looking to hire a person and they wanted someone with long denominational ties (in other words someone from the right family and education) but wanted a "change agent". I told them that if they were looking for a change agent they were much better looking at someone with the wrong kind of education and from the wrong family. They got the right family person and a staff member who considered changing his hair a big deal.."
Like me, you are willing to confess that you never read Jordon Cooper's article Creativity in the Local Church . Ah well. it's never too late..
Maybe you are also willing to admit that you never read Sally Morgenthaler's classic: "Out of the Box: Authentic Worship in a Postmodern Culture."
"As a postmodern, you’re right-brained as well as left. You’re pro-mystery and anti-humanist. You consider yourself spiritual, as opposed to religious. You believe that there are other ways of knowing besides reason (intuition and emotions, for instance) and that truth goes way beyond what mere mortals can discern or verbalize. So you watch shows like X-Files, and, depending on your age, maybe even Touched By An Angel. And you agree with sixty-three percent of other Americans who believe, “Nothing can be known for certain except those things one experiences in one’s own life.” If you’re postmodern, the whole concept of human progress and self-mastery makes you gag. All in all, you’d probably plaster the following bumper stickers on your car if you could find them:
Wow... this movie looks worthwhile..: In America
And Big Fish begins Friday night. A "story about stories" in an age when we are rediscovering the power of story and the power of language.
My wife's day from Hell..
It started around 8 AM when a friend phoned for some help. She had no food in her fridge and her car would not start.. and her kids needed to get to school.. and then later, if she could get some food to make some sandwiches, her kids needed their lunch brought to them.
Another friend picked up the kids and took them across town to the Christian school. Then around 10 AM I picked up Nick and together we drove to her house to get the key to her car, which was where it was left yesterday when it would not start. Nick later found the car was out of gas, and he took care of that problem. We stopped by Coopers to buy her some basic groceries, and we also bought some sandwiches for her kids which Nick later dropped off.
What does this have to do with my wife Betty? She is the primary pastor, I just do some of the practical stuff. She carries most of the strain, she keeps in touch with these women from day do day, and this day it was only beginning.
Betty came home from work around 3:30, a typical day rushing around the city on slippery roads as part of a mobile nursing wound-care team. Not long after she came in the door a young woman from Calgary phoned. Kim has been a part of our extended family for eight years, and is manic-depressive, and was in Calgary in the psych ward again. Betty talked to her, reassured her, prayed with her.
Then at 7:30 in the evening she was off to another nursing visit, this one was in the south of town. It was snowing again, the roads very slippery.. thank God for our aging but reliable AWD van.
On her way south she was approaching an intersection when she heard a loud crash. For the second time in a week, she was the first on the scene of an accident. Since she is a licensed RN, she has no choice but to offer assistance. And anyway, she would never hesitate to do so.
In this case an older man was shaken but unhurt in a small car, while a younger man was staggering out of a mid sized car which was wrapped around the signal pole at the edge of the road. He was bleeding profusely from head injuries.
Betty took her nursing bag and bandaged him up, using her cell to call the police and ambulance and his mother.
The mother arrived about the same time as the paramedics. She was anxious and a bit obnoxious, finally getting in my wife's face and asking, "Who the Hell are you?"
"I was first on the scene, and I'm an RN. I'm the one who bandaged his head."
Shortly afterward, the paramedics dismissed her curtly with, "We'll take it from here."
Betty then got back on track for her scheduled nursing visit. An older and wealthy man lives alone in a large house overlooking Okanagan Lake.
His living situation is a bit unusual. He allows a medium sized dog to live in the home with him, but this dog does not get out of the house, and there is no "doggy box." The doggy box is the living room, which is unused by the old gent.
As a result, the smell in the house is enough to knock out the average person. One nurse has refused to return.
You have to know my wife and the mind of a trained medical person. My wife has a good nose; better than mine. She is also a bit obsessive about "clean." That is a typical RN. For her to go inside this house and work is a huge challenge. She does it twice a day. She does it in the evenings when the rest of her family is cozy and snug inside a warm home.
But this night was not typical. She was running a half hour late because of the accident. As a result, her patient was now in bed assuming she would not come.
She got to the door and had to knock and wait, call out, knock some more.. and the dog decided this was unusual behavior and came to the door barking and growling.
When she went in (he rarely comes to the door and expects the nurses to let themselves in) she had to contend with a mad dog.. and she is intimidated by angry dogs. When she got to the patients room the growling and snarling continued, so finally she mentioned it to the gentleman. His response was to lash out, blame her and swear at her, accusing her of being "self centered." Nothing could be further from the truth.
Ok, I admit, I'm venting a bit here.. Betty doesn't see it as "a day from Hell." I advised her to refuse to go back, but she is too stubborn and has too strong a sense of duty for that.
Thank God for friends like Nick who will give from their poverty. He will never appear on the front of a "World Vision" ad. Thank God for women like my wife who hang in when others (I) would quit.
Reputation..
The NT seems very mixed on this topic. "Woe to you when all mean speak well of you," Jesus tells us, then Paul tells us that we should only appoint elders who have good reputation.
I worry about my own reputation. It is .. ahem.. a bit mixed. But I also worry that I shouldn't worry about it. We can end up loving our reputation more than we love Christ.
"Confess your sins one to another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.."
Things that I am not proud of.. but are only known to me and my family.
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The Limits of Language
If I tell you, "Jesus is Lord," you know a bit about me.
If I say to you, "Jesus is the Lord of my life." You know just a little bit more.
If I say to you, "Jesus is the Lord of my life" and then talk for a few more minutes about how I live that out, you know a bit more still.
If I say to you, "Jesus is the Lord of my life, and here is what that means," and bend your ear for an hour, you have a good handle on what discipleship and the kingdom are about for me. But you still don't know it all.
If I do the above, and we walk and talk all day, and then you meet some of my friends, you could probably say, "I know what Jesus and the kingdom of God mean to Len," yet you still wouldn't know it all. Isn't it amazing how much we depend on language, yet how limited it is..
Dalai Lama, Tutu top list for Vancouver gathering
By Canada.com
Although details have yet to be officially announced, the Dalai Lama and Tutu will join former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel, an acclaimed playwright and poet, and Jewish Renewal leader Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi in four days of discussions, retreats, ceremonies and an interfaith dialogue.
The visits should provide a spiritual lift, said United Church Reverend Barry Cooke and Dr. Hong Chien, directors of Vancouver's Multi-Faith Action Society.
"It will bring together a convergence of positive spiritual energy," Cooke said. "I don't know what else you'd call it."
The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and a champion of human rights for his homeland of Tibet, will also receive an honorary degree from the University of B.C."
Some have responded,
"Are you willing to sit in judgment against the enemy? Are you willing to stand against the accuser in this hour? Its time for the church in Canada to rise up!! It's time for the saints to have dominion over the spiritual climate of the nation and our cities."
Indeed, we should have dominion by coming in the opposite spirit. We don't war against flesh and blood. Our war is not with these men. Let's pray,
"Lord, forgive us for being more concerned with our material well being than with justice. May we be known for justice even more than the Dalai Lama.
"Lord, forgive us for our activism and trust in our machines and human wisdom. May we be known as people of peace and of prayer, even more than the Buddhists.
"Lord, may we confess to these men that we have failed, and ask them to help us to learn to live what we believe, as they have.
"Lord, may we show the love of Jesus to all these men. They are made in your image, and they have sought the truth, and have at times made our own faith look pale by their commitment to justice and human understanding. May they see something different in us as they visit Canada.. may they see a church that is in the throes of rebirth, enraptured with love for a living God, and not merely trying to defend the "truth" we have failed to live.
for Jesus sake
Stan lent me Brueggemann's "The Prophetic Imagination." It is a stunning work, not unlike his more recent "Cadences of Home." Who is this guy? He was 20 years ahead of his time. I am just dabbling around in it now but I can't believe it has been around for nearly 30 years.. This is a reading of Isaiah that takes it far beyond the sentimental application that is seen as "now" and powerful prophetic utterance in most charismatic circles.
Moroever, the application and radical reading carry over into the Gospels.. how could they not when Isaiah is so important to Matthew and to Luke (and to Jesus!)
"Isaiah gives his people a remarkable gift. He gives them back their faith by rearticulating the old story. He gives them the linguistic capacity to confront despair rather than be surrounded by it. And he creates new standing ground outside the dominant consciousness upon which new humanness is possible."
"The dominant consciousness must be radically criticized and the dominant community must be finally dismantled. The purpose of an alternative community with an alternative consciousness is for the sake of that criticism and dismantling." Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 1978
After a conversation with some warrior types in the Mission yesterday morning, I remembered a vision a friend of ours saw while we were praying for him in our home a few summers past. He saw an explosion... slow motion and black and white, like the film of the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico.. In this vision instead of a small house being flattened, he saw church buildings being flattened.. church buildings here in my own city.
The literal fulfilment of this scenario is impossible, without the destruction of many other buildings. So, what if you were to read in the news..
CBC News
"It started in March, 2004. Pastors and ministers in Kelowna, BC felt compelled to attend a meeting of the local ministerial on an ordinary Tuesday morning. As they gathered, there was in their hearts a strange expectancy... for what, they didn't know. But as they met, talked and prayed together, they felt strangely warmed. There seemed to be a glow in the room, an incredible Presence in the air. Some were moved to weeping, others laughed until they cried. Where there was jealousy or old rivalry it melted away. Others who arrived tired felt renewed in their spirits, their fatigue suddenly lifted, and new vision for life and mission was birthed.
"Within weeks of the meeting the impact was felt all over the city. Four of the largest churches began turning their meeting halls into housing for the poor. Three others sold their buildings and bough |
My own professional training is as a marriage and family therapist. I practiced for three years on a contract with the ministry of Social Services in Langley, BC, and then worked part time for another five years in Cranbrook, BC.
