Quotable >> Chirst The Lord: The Road to Cana

Jesus says:

“What is all that?  Egypt, Italy, Greece, Germania, Asia, what is all that?  It’s the world, my lord.  That’s what it is to us, it’s the world to whom we are to be the light, we, our people!”

He was outraged.  “What are you saying?”

“It’s where I live, my lord,” I said.  “Not in the Temple, but in the world.  and in the world, I learn what the world is and what the world will teach, and I am of the world.  The world’s made of wood and stone and iron, and I work in it.  No, not in the Temple.  In the world.  And I study Torah; and I pray with the assembly; and on feasts I go to Jerusalem to stand before the Lord - in the Temple - but this is in the world, all this.  In the world.  And when it is time for me to do what the Lord has sent me to do in this world, this world which belongs to Him, this world of wood and stone and iron and grass and air, He will reveal it to me.  And what this carpenter shall yet build in this world on that day, the Lord knows, and he Lord shall reveal it.”

He was speechless.

I love that exchange between Jesus and Hananel of Cana!

NOT a Zero-Sum Game

From Chris Marshall:

Ordinary Community: Being Ready
It is the sense of entitlement that I am speaking against when it comes to vocational roles in ministry. I am not against the idea of being paid, I am against the assumption that its the way it always has been and always will be. God does not owe us anything! Not a job, not a title of honor, not an air-conditioned office nor full time hours a week to be a spiritual leader. Now his provision may [embody] all of that for you, but we have to be okay if it doesn’t.

I think this is so important.  This weekend, as I reflected on this issue, I found myself being often drawn back to the idea that this thing (the transition, the economics of what it means to be the people of God in the early 21C) is NOT a Zero-Sum Game. “In game theory and economic theory, zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant’s gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s).”

This is not about one “model” of church being more “right” than the other.  It is not even about being more biblical, though I think that is an intriguing question.  It is about the Kingdom of God continuing to break in and how we are going to respond.  It is not about older, traditional church folks losing and young, hip, emerging Jesus-followers winning.  That is NOT the point.  It is about the Mission of God in our time and place.  It has always been about God’s Mission, we’ve just tended toward co-opting it to our own ends (and I’m as guilty as anyone on that matter).

I had a couple offline (i.e. real life!) conversations this weekend with 2 friends (Russell and Bethany) who read my (and others’) post about this topic.  A prevailing concern was that of older, traditional church and the older, traditional adults in them.  Does this move to a new form of ministry and church leave them in the dust?  What about inter- and multi-generational ministry?  What about all those presently paid clergy and staff, are they all doing it “wrong”?  Again, I don’t think this is a Zero-Sum Game.  Transition times are inherently liminal spaces and as a society (and as a global church) we’ll surely have a period of both/and-ness.  We’ll have traditional, institutional expressions of church who are honestly and sincerely seeking to follow in the Way of Jesus… right along side organic, emerging, experimental communities of faith also seeking to follow in the Way of Jesus.  We’ll have paid clergy who instigate Kingdom work partnering with bi-occupational pastors and missional leaders (Russell Smith is a great example of this!).

I think one of the points of this whole conversation is that many see that this transition is coming (and has in significant ways already arrived).  These deep cultural shifts aren’t going away.  The church has always and will continue to adapt to the cultural situation in which it finds itself.  My take on these (blog) writings of church leaders from around the country is that we’re seeing similar adaptations across the USofA.  These adaptations look less and less like the churches of our parents and grandparents (not necessarily less and less like Jesus - though every experiment will have the errant petri dish…).

So, during this transitional time we may have to work extra hard to facilitate inter-generational ministries.  We are by our nature cultural beings who feel most comfortable in what is familiar to us.  But, and I think this point is very important, we are not bound by our culture.  We have the ability to cross cultures and even be countercultural.  As a church our main identifier should never be the comfy cultural confines of me and mine.  This is equally pertinent for the postmodern-embedded college student and the retirement-home octogenarian - both (and all of us in between) must seek first the Kingdom.  We find our common cause in the cause of Christ.  Of course we’ll have disagreements and points of contention, but that is important too for the refining process.  Our unity is in Christ.  Working out the way we live as a people of God in a particular place and culture… well that takes time and an openness to the Spirit that cannot happen if we are tight-fisted about our way (which we always think is the “right way”) of doing things.

Mark Van Steenwyk’s comment on his blog in this conversation is helpful in this strain.  In response to what traditional (local churches, denominations, seminaries) churches can do, he says…

You can be helpful by doing what you’re doing…leveraging what resources you have at your disposal to think with a kingdom mindset, rather than with an Institutional one.

At some point, all of us tied into the status quo need to make a choice. We have to choose whether it is better to work hard to secure what we have…or work hard to secure the future. In other words, are we going to leverage everything to try to make sure that the Mennonite Church USA and Canada have a place in the future? Are we going to leverage everything to try to make sure Bethel Seminary and Mars Hill Grad school have a place in the future? OR are we going to leverage everything that MCUSA and MC Canda and Bethel and Mars Hill has to advance the kingdom where we see it breaking in, with a lesser concern for the role they will keep for themselves in that inbreaking future?

To say it another way: Maybe our educational institutions shouldn’t ask how they can survive the transition. Maybe they should ask, how can we risk our resources on our students so that they can thrive in the transition? Clearly there is a tension here. It doesn’t need to be an either/or. But the way most institution are operating (from the lofty philosophical level to the banal logistical level), I am seeing a stronger desire to maintain market share…to survive…than a desire to help create the necessary future.

The distribution and use of resources is a HUGE issue with all this.  Who has what resources and how are they being used is an important part of the process of how any ministry works.  It also says a lot about our lived theology and priorities… follow the money.  Figuring out how to leverage resources (money, time, property, etc…) for the Kingdom is essential.

May the Kingdom Come…

More thoughts on Immersion

Below is a diagram of the four realms of experience, taken from an unlikely source*. Though I am not fond of the term “escapist” this is the quadrant that I perceive our Stations engaging. We (all who go through the stations) should be active participants - not mere observers. There should be some kind of engagement, physically, emotionally and spiritually. As opposed to Entertainment or Education, we are not attempting to get the worshipper to necessarily “ingest” some bit of information. Rather than reducing the “meaning” of a station or the stations to a few bite-sized morsels the meanings of the experience will be intentionally like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.

There will be layers upon layers of meanings and messages, not all of them (or any of them) tied up neatly for “taking home”. Certainly, we hope that persons come away from this experienced changed and that that will likely mean that they “got something out of it”, but this will be a by-product of the experience. In fact, in many ways this experience - the Stations - stand alone as a sacramental event. They have the potential of being an outward sign of an inward and spiritual grace (Thank you, John Wesley). The Stations exist not so that we can get something out of them, but so that we can put ourselves into them.

Hopefully, we won’t escape from something (our lives, our families, our communities) as much as we will escape into the sufferings of Christ. We will actively engage our own suffering and (even more?) actively engage in the world’s suffering.

We will be embraced into Christ’s reality - a kingdom realm - and in this way we will be transformed. Perhaps we will even be converted. Converted - changed - both to Christ and for the world. We will find life through the death. Resurrection is not merely a future reality; it is a present expectation of the kingdom breaking in. As much of Christ calls us away and unto himself, he likewise calls us into the world - to a solidarity with those on the margins. But these things are not up to us (we who would be so bold as to attempt these Stations), it is the Spirit who moves and who does the changing. We can only be faithful to his work within us - not passively, but with active anticipation of the change that he is doing in us. As we do this we will be privileged to witness his work within one another as well. This is what the Stations are - an opportunity to observe the Spirit’s working.

This may also be why the Stations make such a good setting for this kind of Holy Spirit work. The muck and the mire of our lives are laid bare as we identify with Jesus’ suffering. It is in the compost of our souls, the pain, the hurt, and the wounds that we see the Spirit active. It is in our brokenness that we can become whole.

Big Long Quote on Immersion

“The experience of being transported to an elaborately simulated place is pleasurable in itself, regardless of the fantasy content. We refer to this experience as immersion. Immersion is a metaphorical term derived from the physical experience of being submerged in water. We seek the same feeling from a psychologically immersive experience that we do from a plunge in the ocean or swimming pool: the sensation of being surrounded by a completely other reality, as different as water is from air, that takes over all of our attention, our whole perceptual apparatus. We enjoy the movement out of our familiar world, the feeling of alertness that comes from being in this new place, and the delight that comes from learning to move within it. Immersion can entail a mere flooding of the mind with sensation, the over flow of sensory stimulation experienced in the televisor parlor in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Many people listen to music in this way, as a pleasurable drowning of the verbal parts of the brain. But in a participatory medium, immersion implies learning to swim, to do the thing that the new environment makes possible.” pp.98-99

From - Murray, Janet B. 1998. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. The MIT Press.

* Pine, Joseph B. and James H. Gilmore. 1999. The Experience Economy. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. (link)

New Beginnings

Yes, I really do blog.  Life has been overfull of late (as evidenced by the mound of dirty dishes on the counter…. umm, maybe they’ll get washed tomorrow).  I really like keeping a clean and organized house, but with small children I find it increasingly difficult, if not approaching impossible!  So needless to say I haven’t had much time for writing and planning, but I have been thinking.

Here we are at the beginning of 2008 and, I must admit, I’m very excited.  I anticipate that 2008 will be a year of new beginnings, hope, and change.  Chief of those for me is the dream of a new community of faith birthing in Cincinnati.  So how do we get there?  What are the first steps?  How does this all work with the rest of a full life?  What is the “time-table”?  Good questions.  I certainly don’t pretend to think these sorts of things “just happen”.  I’m reminded of Dallas Willard’s helpful little acronym V.I.M. from Renovation of the Heart (link to article about VIM).  Applied to church planting it looks like this:  What is the Vision of life in the Kingdom for this neighborhood?  What do we Intend to do in birthing this new community of faith?  What are our Means by which to accomplish our intended church plant?

Honestly, I feel like I’ve been held up in my articulation of these things for a deeper reason.  True, life has been full these last few weeks of holidays, small children, and a lingering cold that fills my head with too much mucus - but I think I’ve been stymied by an unseen specter of “You’ve got to get this just right”.  I’m going to do my best to ignore those voices in my head and just try to tell it as I see it….

The Vision of life in the Kingdom for this neighborhood is one that lives within the heart of an actual community of faith.  A small community of 150 folks or so that intentionally follow Jesus together.  The Kingdom of God - or to borrow Greg Boyd’s phrase, “the dome in which God is King” - is evident in this community of faith as a sign pointing the way and illuminating Emmanuel, “Christ with us”.  It is evident as this community works together and with others to bring the Kingdom  - God’s extravagant Grace and Reconciling Love - to bear in our homes, streets, schools, and workplaces.  It is evident as this community lives its life together in the Way of Christ, loving the least, the last, and the lost.  Kingdom life is a life lived in accord with one another and with the Triune God.  Simply put, we envision a community of faith living a Kingdom-life together.  And just to be clear (because I don’t want “Kingdom” to sound jargon-y), “Kingdom” means that “dome in which God is king”, in that “dome” is a life of deep grace, true love, and real peace.  But, it is not a Utopian, pie-in-the-sky life, but a life lived in concert with the Creator and Sustainer.  Kingdom-life takes suffering seriously, believes that healing is real, and works towards reconciliation with God, humanity, and creation.

We Intend to birth a new community of faith in Cincinnati.  This community of faith would a People of God on God’s Kingdom Mission in our neighborhoods, homes, schools, and workplaces.  We would be a Jesus-centered community.  We would be a real community - in that we would intentionally live our lives together (not just see each other once a week at a religious gathering).  We would “do life together” - in our neighborhoods, in mentoring relationships, in small groups/house churches, and in larger corporate gatherings and projects.  We would be around 150 people who would meet together weekly to worship together.  We would meet throughout the week in one another’s homes, coffeeshops, bars, and chili parlors.  We would live within proximity of one another and share food and resources (and childcare).  [There are questions here, I'm sure.... how is this different than Vineyard Central?  And what is our current/future relationship with VC?  Why 150?  What happens if we get to 151?  Would we pay staff/pastor/leaders?  Would we buy a building, own property, rent/lease/borrow space to worship?  Who let the dogs out? I'm not going to address these questions here, but they are all things I've spent time considering.  Leave a comment or send an email and I'll address the ones that you are curious about or ask me other questions]

The Means by which we accomplish this intended church plant are as followed (based on current standings):
1.  Pray (something I want to get better at doing)
2.  Write out Vision, Mission, Values, and relevant Issues pertaining to church planting (so as to facilitate being on the same page!) and complete New Church Plan for RCA
3.  Propose intention to our House Church
4.  Enter a month of sabbatical and prayer as a House Church to discern next steps
5.  Form a planting team of folks committed to seeing the new community birthed
6.  Initiate an advisory board of wise folks to help us navigate the waves and decisions of the first year

Well, that’s all I got right now.  Sarah just got home and I want to post this and email it some folks (I suspect my readership is way down).  Peace.

Pondering yourself…

 From blog one another. Which of these describe you best?

Entrepreneur
- Pioneer, Strategist, Innovator, Visionary
- Groundbreaker who initiates an organization’s mission

Questioner
- Disturber, Agitator
- Upsets the status quo, challenging an organization to move in new directions

Recruiter
- Passionate communicator of organizational message
- Recruits to the cause

Humanizer
- Carer, Social cement
- Provides organization glue by caring for the individuals in it

Systematizer
- Philosopher, Translator
- Organizes the various parts into a working unit and articulates that structure to the other members