StretchyChurch

Woohoo! Check out the trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian! Click here!

Here’s a picture of the Missional Leadership Model that I discuss in this post (from page 41 of The Missional Leader). I told you I’d get it to you! Thanks to Tom for e-mailing it to me.

I mentioned last week that I was beginning my Doctor of Ministry program at Fuller this month. Lucky for all of you that means I’ll have lots of stuff to post! Woohoo!! Here’s my book review of Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, by Stephen Toulmin.

—

In Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, Stephen Toulmin makes two major arguments. The first argument is foundational to the second.

Toulmin’s first point is that Modernity did not arise from the fact that philosophers and scientists were free from political unrest or pressure from the church. Rather, the rise of Modernity was a response to the turbulence of the times. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was a major factor in the growing “Quest for Certainty” (70). People wanted to have stability in their lives. Toulmin states that “from 1615 to 1650, people had a fair chance of having their throats cut and their houses burned down by strangers who merely disliked their religion” (17). Out of this instability, came the search for universal principles (in philosophy, in ethics, in science, etc.) that would hopefully yield a more peaceful society.

Second, Toulmin argues that the development of the Modern Cosmopolis led to a dehumanizing of societies and governments. The desire was, of course, for something good (the social stability mentioned above). To achieve this, Modernity sought two kinds of order: order in the universe (the cosmos) and order in the social/political realm (the polis). From this pursuit came the principle of the cosmopolis—a society in which the order of the social/political realm was at its best when it reflected the divine order in nature.

The dehumanization stemmed from the fact that philosophers and scientists sought to decontextualize everything. Toulmin states that “the 17^th century philosophers were theory-centered, not practical-minded” (34). By refusing to focus on specific circumstances (context), people ended up being oppressed, exploited, or generally ignored if they were not in the upper classes of the dominant society.

As Modernity (or at least, this phase of Modernity) has begun to come to an end, the goal, according to Toulmin, is to reintroduce the significance of context. By so doing, Modernity can be humanized. Toulmin states, “As things stand, we can neither cling to Modernity in its historic form, nor reject it totally—least of all despise it. The task is, rather, to reform, and even reclaim, our inherited modernity, by humanizing it” (180).

What strikes me most about Toulmin’s arguments is that most of what he challenges, our culture has generally taken for granted. Universal principles? Of course. Why wouldn’t we seek principles that are true everywhere, at all times. The assertion that the quest for universal principles has led to exploitation and oppression is not a connection I would have guessed. It almost sounds like we should put an end to our search for universals.

My inclination is to respond, “But some things must be universal, mustn’t they? Isn’t right always right and wrong always wrong? Is it a given that a desire for universal rights and wrongs will eventually lead toward some sort of oppression?”

As I reflect on this, I begin to realize that there is a tendency toward some sort of oppression. Or if not oppression, then at least judgmentalism. Toulmin says that the “idolization of ‘traditional values’…and its dogmas stand in the way of more discriminating and discerning approaches to moral issues” (195). He’s right. When we unthinkingly rely on “traditional values,” it is easy to ignore the context in which someone might have failed to live out those values. Toulmin pointedly adds that “dogmatic appeals to ‘tradition’ are, in biblical terms, the teachings of the Pharisees more than those of Jesus” (195).

But this is difficult. It is much easier to point to a universal principle and then point at an action and say, “That was right” or “That was wrong.” It’s much harder to weigh a situation and wrestle with the “rightness” or “wrongness” based on the context.

But, certainly, this is what Jesus did. Whereas the teachers of the law and the Pharisees were ready to condemn the woman caught in adultery, Jesus’ response was based on the context of the situation (John 8:1-11).

As a leader, my longing is for my congregation to leave behind blind judgment based on universal principles. It’s not that I think universal principles are all bad; it’s blind judgment that is bad.

In teaching my congregation to humanize our world, I’m not sure that I would spend a lot of time on the intricacies of Modernity in the way that Toulmin does. I suppose an in-depth discussion like that might be appropriate in a Bible study or small group setting, but a little too academic for a Sunday morning.

However, I think there is something to be gained in helping people understand the importance of context—that when someone “sins” there is a context to that sin. And it’s not that I would want to minimize the significance of sin. Instead, I would want to teach our people to maximize their understanding of a person’s context.

And I think that love is a big part of this. Love focuses on the person. Love understands the context. Love listens to the story. Love says, “Neither do I condemn you” (John 8:11).

I just started reading The Blogging Church by Brian Bailey. I mentioned that book about a year ago just before it came out and am finally getting around to reading it. And I gotta say, it’s giving me some great ideas for the soon-to-come redesign of Northminster’s website.

But before I get into that I wanted to share some thoughts on The Sky is Falling!?! by Alan Roxburgh, which I just finished reading a few days ago. There are two things I really liked about this book: 1) his emphasis on the need for “Emergents” and “Liminals” to come together to discover God’s future for the church and 2) his proposed leadership typology for the transition that our culture is in.

I’ll talk about the first one in this post and the second in a soon-to-come post.

One of Roxburgh’s primary emphases in The Sky is Falling!?! focuses on the need for what he calls different tribes of Christians to come together. He argues that there are basically two kinds of Christian leaders today who are trying to cope with the massive changes that our culture is undergoing.

The first tribe is what he calls the “Emergents.” Emergents tend to be younger (Generation X and Millenial) and are comfortable with change because they’ve grown up in a world of change. Their response to the culture is to throw off all forms of what church has been and do something completely new. They may lead house churches, organic gatherings that meet at coffee shops and pubs, focus their Christian life around living in intentional community, and so forth.

The second tribe is known as the “Liminals” (for an anthropological explanation of this word, click here; Roxburgh suggests that the church is in a liminal phase at this time). Liminals are those who work and serve in traditional churches (by traditional, I mean any church that revolves around meeting in a building on Sunday morning—they could be traditional or contemporary in style; they could be 100 members or 10,000 members). They have had success in reaching the culture in the past, but are beginning to realize that the world is changing and their form of church is no longer effective in today’s society. They are struggling to discern how to be a church in this time of discontinuous change.

Typically, these two groups tend to be at odds with one another to some extent. Emergents look at Liminals and don’t know why they continue to try to do ministry that is, in their eyes, so ineffective. Liminals look at Emergents and see a bunch of reactive radicals who are turning their backs on historic Christianity.

These are, of course, generalizations. And the way they see one another is filled with misperception.

But Roxburgh’s hope is for these two tribes to come together and work together to discover God’s future for the church. All of us, Liminals and Emergents, have something to contribute to this discovery. And only together can we truly follow God’s lead in this time of change.

I LOVE THAT!!

That’s what I want to be a part of. And I feel like I have been a part of that. While I lived in Cincinnati, I met with a group of young pastors, a mix of Liminals and Emergents. We were in leadership in traditional Presbyterian and Methodist churches, small independent church plants, emerging church communities, and organic gatherings.

And what a blessing it was to be able to share our hopes and our frustrations together. What we learned is that we’re all simply trying to lead the people of God through a time of cultural change. And the best part is that we liked each other!! Meeting with them was almost always the best part of my week!

My hope is that as I begin my life in San Diego, I’ll be able to become a part of a communitas (as Roxburgh calls it) of Liminals and Emergents seeking to follow God together.

Any takers out there?

Finally finished reading Missional Church. But before I move on to something new, I wanted to reflect a little on what the book says about church membership.

A few months ago I had a couple posts about membership in which I questioned if there is a better way for people to become members than just going through a membership class, and if there is a better word for us to use than “member.” Here are those posts:

• “What’s a Church Member?”
• “What’s Wrong with ‘Membership’?”

Anyway, Missional Church makes a helpful distinction between Bounded Set Churches and Centered Set Churches. A bounded set is any kind of organization or structure that has clear boundaries and clear entry and exit points.

Organizations like clubs and societies have initiation rites through which prospective members must move before they can join. People accept the rules of an organization before being allowed into membership. Bounded sets give mechanisms of structure and control to institutions.

Obviously, this is how most churches are organized. In order to become a member you go through a membership class. Hence, a bounded set. The problem is that most people aren’t really interested in belonging to bounded set organizations in our culture these days.

So that’s a bounded set. Here’s how they describe a centered set:

Centered-set organizations do not define membership and identity at the entrance points or boundaries. The centered-set organization invites people to enter on a journey toward a set of values and commitments.

They go on to say:

In our pluralistic context, where people search in multiple directions and struggle to understand the nature of Christian life, a centered-set represents the church as a people on the way toward the fullness of God’s reign in Jesus Christ. People are constantly being invited to move toward and into a covenant, disciple community. This kind of centered-set church is open to all who may want to be on this journey. It has a permeability that is open to others since it seeks to draw others alongside and minister to people at every level on the way.

Notice the statement that “people are constantly being invited to move toward and into a covenant, disciple community.” In other words, it’s not enough to just be a centered-set church. There comes a point at which a person, in their centered-set journey into the reign of God, has to make a deeper commitment to an alternative way of life.

Missional communities are more than centered-set congregations. A pilgrim, covenant people require an alternative way of life. This calls for bounded-set identity. Within the centered set will form a covenant community….

So there is a bounded-set character to a missional church.

The missional community must be both centered and bounded. But where does each operate? The centered-set congregation invites people onto a journey with Jesus in order to understand its contours, to hear its stories, to sort out the issues and questions of commitment and discipleship. While the direction of the journey is the reign of God, the community is where people can discover and encounter the meaning of this larger journey. This journey, as a pilgrim people, calls for commitments to practices of the reign of God that can be made only in covenant…. The covenant community is a bounded set composed of those who have chosen to take on the commitment, practices, and disciplines that make them a distinct, missionary community.

The question is, how does all this work out in practice? How does someone actually enter this journey into the reign of God in the centered-set congregation? And how does one then actually make the transition into the bounded-set covenant community? Do they go through a membership class (hopefully not!)? And how do you keep a spiritual classism of sorts from developing between the congregation and the covenant community?

In the end, I really like this concept of church. It deals with our culture’s reluctance to make a quick commitment to a bounded-set organization, as well as the importance of eventually making a deeper commitment to the practices of the church. How does this really work? I guess the only way to see if and how it works is to start trying to put it into practice. Start experimenting.

One of the most common questions when it comes to the idea of missional church is, “What the heck does a missional church look like?” Well here’s another great quote from the book, Missional Church, in which the authors provide a bunch of examples of ways a community of Christians could live out a missional form of church.

Christians may form themselves as an intentional community living in the same neighborhood, making lifestyle decisions that enable them to organize their daily lives and family interactions as a primary form of witness. But they may worship in their homes rather than own a church building. Christians may form themselves as a non-geographical community centered on a particular form of witness. Their calling may be to demonstrate the gospel in ministry to the homeless, to young people, to the elderly, to prisoners, to the terminally ill, or to an immigrant population. Such a vocation might mean that their congregation meets in a borrowed facility, a rented hall, or a storefront that welcomes their particular constituency. Christians may join together to share church buildings erected for a time when the church was dominant in our society. Their particular vocation may be to conduct public worship in innovative ways that build communication bridges to their society and present the gospel to unevangelized people in ways they can understand. To do this they may find themselves using a local theater on Sunday mornings or taking over an abandoned inner-city church and using its space for untraditional forms of worship and ministry. A particular group of Christians may respond to the loneliness and isolation of the modern city and form themselves as a vowed intentional community, sharing several apartments in order to carry out a ministry of hospitality and friendship in the midst of the highly secularized world of professionals. Other Christians may form themselves around the charism of hospitality, or ministry with the handicapped, or the contemplative life.

So I’m listening to God Has A Dream by Desmond Tutu on CD and he uses this expression that I think is one of the coolest expressions I’ve ever heard! Here’s the phrase:

“terminological inexactitude”

Don’t you love it?! I can completely picture myself using that expression. Here, let’s try it out:

• A: You’re jerk!
• B: I’m a jerk?! That’s such a terminological inexactitude!

• A: Star Wars sucks!
• B: Dude, that’s a huge terminological inexactitude!

• A: Jesus doesn’t really love me…
• B: My friend, don’t think like that. It’s a terminological inexactitude.

Yes, I think this phrase will come in quite handy…

FYI…

I just updated my About Me page to include a list of “Great books I recently read” as well as what “I’m currently reading.”

Check it out here.

And there was much rejoicing in the land!!

Early this year I read most of a book called The Missional Leader by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk.

The book is 206 pages long. I misplaced the book after reading 193 pages. Frustrating!! To be so close to finishing and then to leave it dangling…

But yesterday afternoon, while straightening an cleaning in preparation for having to sell our house, Robin found my book! And this morning I finally finished reading it!

And I gotta tell you it’s a great book! It focuses on what a leader needs to do to cultivate a church’s missional imagination. In other words, how can a leader help a church discover its calling as a missionary people in the world?

Here’s the cool thing: Based on the conversations I’ve had with people at Northminster Presbyterian Church (the church I’ll be leading starting in October), a lot of folks at that church are coming–or have come–to the realization that a church needs to be more than a place you go to on Sunday morning. A church needs to be God’s missionary people in its community and in the world.

I’m excited that the church and I share a mutual mindset–at least among those I’ve gotten to know in the last couple of months.

My plan is to review this book over the next few weeks, and hopefully post some of the really good stuff here.

I’m reading a book right now called The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard, a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California and a Christian.

I gotta tell you, this book has been pushing me and challenging me theologically more than the past ten books I’ve read combined! And I’ll tell you why.

The Divine Conspiracy focuses largely on The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5 and 6. Most of the time, when we read these teachings of Jesus—teachings like: do not be angry, do not lust, do not swear an oath, love your enemies, etc., etc., etc.—when we read these, we assume that Jesus is giving us laws to obey. But Willard argues that these are not laws; these are illustrations of how a certain kind of person lives.

And what kind of person is this? A person whose life is completely submitted to God. A person who lives and breathes the life of God. A person whose feet are covered with the dust kicked up by Jesus’ feet because they are following so closely.

This kind of person does not simply obey a law that says “do not be angry with your brother or sister” (and, by the way, Jesus doesn’t exactly say this, but this is how we often understand Matthew 5:21-22). The kind of person that Jesus is talking about does not get angry or bitter because their life is filled with the love of God.

This kind of person does not simply obey a law that says “do not lust” (again, not exactly how Jesus put it). This kind of person will not objectify anyone sexually because they understand a person’s value the way God understands a person’s value.

This kind of person will not merely obey a law that says “do not swear.” This kind of person will be a person of integrity and honesty; a person who does not need to swear or promise or make an oath because this person always means what he or she says—and follows through.

I hope this makes sense. I’m still learning to grasp this way of reading Jesus’ words. And I’m struggling with this question: “Am I that kind of person? Or am I just trying to obey what I think are the rules?”

Let me end with these two paragraphs from The Divine Conspiracy:

Is it then hard to do the things with which Jesus illustrates the kingdom heart of love? Or the things Paul says love does? It is very hard indeed if you have not been substantially transformed in the depths of your being, in the intricacies of your thoughts, feelings, assurances, and dispositions, in such a way that you are permeated with love. Once that happens, then it is not hard. What would be hard would be to act the way you acted before.

When Jesus hung on the cross and prayed, “Father, forgive them because they do not understand what they are doing,” that was not hard for him. What would have been hard for him would have been to curse his enemies and spew forth vileness and evil upon everyone, God and the world…. He calls us to impart himself to us. He does not call us to do what he did, but to be as he was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what he did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in him.