Children’s Pastors: What Traits Influence Your Ministry?

Sage and Trendwatcher. Manager and Entreprenuer. Leader and Shepherd. All of these traits have value in ministry. To be sure, there are others I could list, but  the length of this post will already test the patience of my readers. What has God called you to be at this point in your life?

The sage is a person of wisdom earned from study and life experience. Usually the sage is in his or her senior years, although being retirement age does not automatically qualify a person for wisdom any more than being college age makes a young person relevant to his peers. We need sages. We ignore their input into our lives at our own peril. They have a sense of history lived. It is not merely theoretical for them. They have seen things. They have experienced a part of God’s redemptive story in the community. They make wonderful mentors to developing generations of young people.

The trendwatcher is that person who is acutely attuned to new ways of doing things, whether in music or media, communications or entertainment, to name a few. Most of these folks do not create trends, but they observe, adapt and deploy variations of someone else’s creation. A select few, rare indeed, actually design innovative content and methods which gain grassroots appeal and later mainstream acceptance. They are the trendsetters upon whom the trendwatchers focus their attention. Both would be wise to nurture connection to godly sages, just as those same sages value the creativity which God imparts to these young and not-so-young innovators.

The manager has gotten a bad rap in recent years, compared unfavorably to leaders or entreprenuers. This is unfortunate. Without skilled, stable and faithful managers to provide consistency and maturity to our endeavors, chaos would ensue. I call for a truce between the skillsets. Authentic leaders do not have a need to put down their managerial counterparts. They lift them up and encourage them. They recognize their contributions and refrain from harboring unrealistic expectations. Much of the recruiting problems in churches would be resolved if leaders would learn how to treat those who provide high level management with more respect and consideration.

Entreprenuers and leaders often are lumped into the same mold. They can go hand-in-hand, but not necessarily. It seems to me that entreprenuers tend to be designer personality types. Leaders can be that, but also are builders. Managers tend to be maintainers. Design in an organization has a limited time frame, unless of course you are constantly redesigning, in which case it will be the Extreme Organizational Makeover that never quite bore fruit from its design labors. Entreprenuers like to tread new territory, create new endeavors, discover new revenue streams to support their primary passions. Leaders like to cast vision for grand ideas and mobilize large groups of people toward that end, fulfilling therefore, not only the grand vision, but also the dreams of those who participate in the process and its success. Managers love to come alongside leaders and entreprenuers to take care of the many details necessary to fulfill the grand dream. They have caught the vision and want to be part of something larger than themselves, and are willing to labor in relative obscurity to make it happen, within reason.

Shepherds, on the other hand, do not quite fit into any of these molds. Yet that is what God called his overseers to be and do as they minister to the fledgling flocks of congregations scattering the Greco-Roman landscape, from Greece to Israel to Alexandria. Shepherds. Un-21st century. So irrelevant. So relevant. So agrarian. So human. And so apt. Although our methods have changed in multiple respects, we recognize the principle that human nature, at its core, is consistently the same. We are made in God’s image, and we marred that image through sin. Yet God provided a way of redemption through Jesus Christ, whereby our nature may be made righteous again because of his righteousness. Our role as shepherds of people is to guide them as lovingly, protectively, gently and firmly as real shepherds into a life of fruitful faith in Christ Jesus. Call it leading. Call it managing. You can even call it being a trendwatching entreprenuer with postmodern sensitivity. I don’t care.

Package it however you want within the appropriate rubric of biblical fidelity and missional attention to cultural relevance. But between you, me and the one or two other folks who will read this post, what the people really need is a shepherd who will lay his or her life down for them so that they might know Jesus Christ, and him crucified. Is that enough of a risk for you?

Modernism and Postmodernism

Soon I will be posting a lengthy article about postmodernism. For now, let me say this. Both modernism and postmodernism have provided tremendous unique opportunities and, taken to an extreme, significant problems. Secular modernism announced the death of God and the superiority of human reason. Christian moderns tend to be fundamentalist in their beliefs, relying on human reason through evidence and argumentation to refute theological error. This was and is a reaction to the blatant theological attacks on the Bible and God. Also, this is true of modernist liberals and conservatives for different reasons.

Postmodernism ushered in a greater degree of tolerance,  for good or for bad. This is nothing new historically. Consider the Greeks and their pantheon of gods. Also, postmodernism, taken to an extreme, diverts to nihilism and despair. However, there are helpful aspects which paint parts of postmodernity. Reacting against the anti-phenomenology of moderns (consider denominations which argue against charismatic giftings of 1 Corinthians and state that the gifts ceased with the death of the apostles), postmoderns are open to anything spiritual. They are willing to consider the gospel, but not in the confrontive way most Christians in fundamentalist groups have been taught to wield. Emergent folks get a bad rap for not proclaiming the gospel. Yet people come to faith daily through their ministries. Why is that? Maybe it is because many of them live the gospel and over time the lost meet Jesus. Yet their modernist counterparts have a valid point. How will people know the gospel unless they are told? Still, arguing with postmoderns is not helpful. Conversing with them as friends is a better course to take.

Modern, postmodern and premodern worldviews co-exist in the West today. I believe there will come a day when all three exist in a state of growing irrelevance. Just as postmodernism has faded in importance in the UK for the last fifteen years, so also will it fade in the USA. Futurists and publishers would be wise to consider the possibility of an event horizon we cannot yet see, one which strips away unnecessary labels denoting tertiary theological differences, and causes believers to love one another and their enemies despite those differences.

Also, it is important to realize that painting all of postmodernism as evil is inaccurate and uncharitable. Nor is it helpful to ascribe only positive attributes to modernism without acknowledging its pitfalls. The sins of the moderns, to a great degree, unleashed the rise of the postmodern response. Both worldviews have serious risks and present wonderful opportunities. One is not inherently better than the other. They both represent the fallen efforts of humans to make sense of a troubling world.

Relevant Children’s Ministry

Over the past several years I have heard and read much about relevant ministry, both in terms of the entire church and children’s ministry. Missiologists such as Guder and Bosch, to name a couple of seminal thinkers, have introduced missiological ways of thinking into the philosophical framework of contemporary church practitioners. To be missional, the thinking therefore goes, is to be relevant. Innovative practitioners in children’s ministry (many of whom will never write a book or article, or be featured prominently in yearly conferences) have rightly borrowed missional thinking and the need for relevance in developing more effective ways to reach the culture. But, what is relevance? I fear our definition may be at risk of becoming too narrow. Let me explain what I mean.

Typically, relevance is considered from the cultural point-of-view. That is, it is considered in terms of the self-aware perspective of the specific target cultural group. Clear as mud? Let me be even more specific with a precise example. In my ministry setting, my church is targeting a mix of families with a diverse cultural background: Vietnamese; Guatemalen, Mexican, Korean, Russian, Romanian, Anglo-Saxon, African-American, and many others. Most of these families in the apartment complex live below a certain economic standard which qualifies them for Section 8 housing. Over the past several months I have become aware of specific self-reported (by the children and to a lesser extent, the parents) disadvantages and advantages which are a part of their experience. These perspectives reflect what is relevant from their point-of-view. However, they do not entirely reflect what is relevant from God’s point-of-view.

We surely want to understand and become missionally fluent in the cultures to which God has called us. We want to hear their heartbeat, respect their unique cultural identities, and honor them as persons and as cultures. This principle applies also to sub-cultures within our own culture, whether they are generational, or sub-cultures which transcend generations.

It is here that we risk narrowing the definition of relevance. For example, in churches which are self-consciously postmodern (I shy away from the term emergent, because, to my knowledge, not all emergent-type churches have bought into post-modern philosophy), there is a trend to shy away from clear presentations of the gospel that share about the future hope of heaven and the future danger of hell. Instead, there is a tendency to focus on belonging before believing (a valid point of concern from which evangelicals should learn, but one which can cause misunderstanding and also, at its most extreme, espouse salvific  inclusivism).

Thus, for many self-conscious post-modern Christians, relevance is getting to know someone on their terms without an agenda to convert them to Christianity. I am sympathetic to this way of thinking and I think there is value in learning from it. There is only one problem. Jesus told us to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19-20). The Fourth Evangelist writes, “For God so loved the world, he gave his one and only unique Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). So, cultural relevance says, “Be sensitive to the needs of people in the culture who do not want to be blasted by evangelistic efforts which have no interest in them as a person, except as it pertains to making them a convert.” Biblical relevance, in my view, says, “I agree. Be sensitive to the needs of people who don’t want to be hijacked by aggressive evangelistic efforts which have no interest in real people. At the same time, those real people really will go to hell unless they choose to accept God’s free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. The cross is relevant, even if it offends people. Cultural relevance demands that we be gracious and loving in developing real relationships with people, rather than simply treating them as notches in our theological score cards. Biblical relevance demands that we be so gracious, so loving, so serving, so giving sacrificially of our lives, that those same people will ask of the hope that is within us. We will have become relevant by becoming real and authentic as persons reflecting the character and life of Jesus.”

In children’s ministry we try to discern what makes children tick and how we might better reach them and their families with the Gospel. We use a lot of different metrics to aid us. We consider age-level insights learned from human development literature, cultural trends as learned from the marketing efforts of manufacturers and retailers, or through qualitative research studies by Gallup, Pew, or Barna. We learn from philosophical trends, the writings of those who deem themselves futurists (I only know of one bona-fide futurist; he is God), and the collective wisdom of fellow practitioners, to name a few. We strive to be relevant so that we can garner their interest and plainly make Christ known in their language.

My recommendation? Let’s not let the need for relevance limit our definition of what the word means. Websters is cited in Dictionary.com as saying relevant is the ”relation to the matter at hand.” No human being can possibly know all there is to know about the matter at hand in terms of their own needs, both now and in the future. This is why God sent Jesus. This is why Jesus sends us; sends you. You have something to say to the culture in which God has placed you. They might not want to hear it. Your task is to love them, understand them the best you can, and to communicate in ways that they can clearly understand the undiluted message of the cross. That, in my view, is ministry relevance. It will look different ways for different ministries. But that is its essence. Now, off you go. Feed the sheep God has given into your care, and seek those whom he is calling into his fold.

HomePDX: A Church for the Homeless in Portland, Oregon

Occasionally I am asked about the innovative ways in which people do church in Portland. HomePDX is a church which was planted by Ken Lloyd. It is an offshoot of the Bridge Church in North Portland, where his wife continues to pastor. Neither of these churches are self-consciously attempting to get attention via style. They simply are trying to reach distinct communities for which most of us have little understanding or contact. The video below gives you a taste of a typical Sunday morning gathering. You may also visit them on the web at homepdx.net. However, be warned that the website does contain pervasive bad language. I do not personally agree with it, but it is what it is. So if you are easily offended, don’t bother navigating to their site. However, if you want to see authentic ministry in the margins of US American culture, then check it out.

Is the Western Church Irrelevant to the Culture?

Has the western church become irrelevant to the culture? In one sense, when we consider God’s purpose for the church and the fact it was He who established it, we would have to say, “Of course not.” In another more easily ignored sense, when we think about how far adrift so many of our congregations have strayed in terms of understanding, much less relating to, the culture redemptively, we are forced to admit that absolutely, we have become irrelevant to a large degree. I want to point out that there are others who are doing a wonderful job of connecting with the culture in missional ways in their local settings. Yet I get the sense that they are the minority, rather than the norm.

Consider the following and see how they apply to your church.

1. Take a look at the demographics of census.gov in relation to your city and county and neighborhood. Are these the people your church is reaching? If not, why not? If yes, what are you doing to make that happen? And if they were never reached, would your church notice the difference? Would anyone even care?

2. Take a look at your church’s financials, specifically the budget allocations for missions and local outreach, compared to allocations related to property management and staff salaries. Based on these numbers, what are the ministry priorities of your church? Do they line up with the stated mission and core values of your church? Is there an overbalance of priority placed on facilities as opposed to helping the poor, feeding the hungry, providing shelter for the homeless, and meeting the needs of children and widows?

3. Consider your church’s strategy for outreach. Is it primarily devoted to marketing which drives people to the church campus for special events and regular services? To what degree are parishioners encouraged to be the presence of Christ in their local neighborhoods? What does this look like practically on a daily basis? Is outreach seasonal or lifestyle oriented within the normal flow of daily living in the community? In short, is outreach a leader-led program with a definite beginning and end or a culturally infused ethos which is part of everyday life?

4. Consider your church’s philosophy of volunteerism. Are parishioners primarily asked to volunteer for positions which the church needs to have filled in order for ministries to run smoothly on campus? This question is especially relevant for children’s ministries. Is there any substantive encouragement for people to volunteer their time in creative expressions of ministry which do not necessarily have corollary benefits to campus ministry? Do parents have permission to say no on occasion? If yes, are you sure?

5. Consider your church’s attitude toward the world. Is there an us vs them mentality? Is there a kind of evangelistic militancy with a turn or burn twist if a person does not respond according to a prescribed theological script? Or is there a sense of conversation in which intelligent believers dialogue with those outside the faith respectively and redemptively? Are non-believers allowed to belong to the community before they believe? Or must they first believe before they belong in any real sense?

6. Consider your church’s vocabulary. If a non-believer walked into your congregation’s worship, would they easily be able to understand the vocabulary? Or is there a large specialized vocabularly which they first would need to understand?

7. Does your church primarily cater to a consumer mentality, offering goods and services to congregants which they can pick and choose based on their perceived needs? Or does it primarily encourage them to offer themselves to the community to meet its needs, understanding that their needs will be met as they love God and each other in creative, unselfish ways which defy predictable market driven forces?

8. Consider your church’s reputation in the community. What are locals saying about your church? Is it the church which drives tinted window SUV’s into a neighborhood whose inhabitants can barely afford the bus, as if to hint at the disparity of the two worlds? Is it the church who finds ways to help their neighbors with small unheralded acts of kindness? Is it the church which seems to shrug at the need for rigorous financial and moral accountability? Is it the church which secretly finds ways to help the poor and homeless around them? What is the prevailing theme in their conversations? From the perspective of the locals, is your church’s message relevant because of the caliber of your kindness which permeates all you do? Or is the message lost because of a lack of real relationships due to a greater priority of focusing on what happens on campus, rather than what could happen in the community? Is your church and integral part of the community, or is it simply located there as an isolated anomaly with no real relevance to the community’s ebb and flow?

9. Does your church operate on the cultural assumptions of the 50’s and 60’s, believing that the people will come if there is a good program for them to enjoy? Or is there a bunker mentality which suggests that the church should insulate its members from the world? Or is there a missional attitude emerging in the conversations taking place in your midst, compelling your people to takes risks and being the presence of Christ even in the dark places; you know, the places Jesus would go and for which he was criticized: bars, homes of the culturally depised, in public places with those who have been culturally shunned, and so on.

Is the western church irrelevant to the culture? I am afraid that to a large degree it is. Yet I see many hopeful signs. I observe the significant ministry happening here in Portland in the heart of the city through various churches who fuse social justice and biblical teaching cooperatively, rather than as an either/or practice. I consider the exciting things beginning to happen at teaching churches such as Willow Creek and I am greatly encouraged. May their tribe increase all the more through conversion growth as their people capture the shared vision of missional connective living in their local communities. I rejoice concerning the churches around the world who set admirable examples for us in the West, challenging us to set aside our addiction to consumerism and put our neighbors first in love and kindness so that the message of Christ can bear fruit in their hearts on account of our witness. Irrelevance is a difficult malady to overcome. No amount of typical marketing will accomplish the task. However, people in the world will be moved by the narratives of kindness, sacrifice, humility and giving which are beginning to emerge in the stories we share; they may even be moved to believe, so long as we share with authenticity the life of Christ, rather than revert to second and third tier theological priorities which usually only distract, rather than instruct.

Disillusioned Christians: Implications for Educational Ministries in the Church

Recently a person contacted the IRC website of which I am a part. He had some pretty angry things to say about God, Christians, and Christianity. Typically, I would simply ignore that kind of unprovoked rhetoric, but I decided to reply, just to see if there was any possibility for conversation. I told him I would be praying for him and I asked him why he is so angry. He explained to me that he had spent much time in the church and in youth groups, but that he realized his experiences fell short of giving him the answers he desired when he finally actually read the Bible for himself. Those of us who are church leaders would do well to listen to the heart of people who give complaints like his, rather than get hung up by any errors of fact or biblical misunderstanding on their part, not to mention the provocative challenges to our faith. Indeed, I have continued the dialogue with him with additional emails in the hope of removing some of his barriers to understanding the text and the potential of leading him to faith in Christ.

The words in quotations below retain his style of writing and his choice of spelling, including all typos, so that you can gain an accurate sense of his tone and content.

He says, “I then thought, perhaps it would be a good idea to read the bible, instead of just blindly accepting everything my minister said and accepting the verses and psalms read in church.” In other words, he was not necessarily taught how to read the Bible for himself with even the most basic interpretive skills. So when he did read it, he was not prepared for the experience, specially given his apparent angry temperament.

He goes on to say, “What i found disgusted me beyond anything I could ever imagin. Homophobea, canabalism, womens rights injustices, religious intolerance, absurdity, human
sacrifice, animal sacrifice, rape, amputation…. And nobody has been able to answer my questions as to why these exsist in the bible and are usually brought forth by God himself, who is sapposed to be all powerful and all knowing, I can’t find an intelligent religious person to answer any of my questions, all I find everywhere I go is blind conformity. Nobody thinks for themselves, and the
religion we now call christianity and not christianity at all, its a modern day socially acceptable state of believe in which people identify with only becuase if they identified with something else they would be labeled as such.” He is not the first person to point out these issues. In fact, I find myself wondering if he has been influenced by the vocal and evangelistic breed of new atheists who have been making waves with their books in recent years.

Again, I did exchange a few more emails with him; enough to help him realize I was not trying to give token responses, but that I was engaged with the real concerns he is raising. He actually toned down his rhetoric toward me, which I took to be a sign of warming relations.

Having written all of that, imagine this type of scenario being played out in the hearts and minds of Christian young people in our churches all over the USA and in other parts of the developed world. It is happening with alarming frequency. I often to talk to people about these very issues. Why is that? Why are young people experiencing crises of faith after having spent most of their lives in the church, worshipping with their families?

Based on the comments above, here are a few general suggestions to consider. They are in no way directed to any specific church. They are intended to prod all of us just a bit:

1. Eventually, young people are going to begin thinking for themselves. I maintain we should help them learn that process, as developmentally appropriate, in their growing up years, rather than telling them what to think and constantly spoon feeding them information in the form of the standard Bible stories, songs, verses and of course, standards of church conduct. Either way, there will come a time when they are going to evaluate the merits of what they have long been taught in the church with the skills, or the lack thereof, at their disposal. Why would we not engage them increasingly with inductive skills in the biblical text even as they are beginning to learn to read and throughout their elementary years into middle school and high school? Why do we take the so-called easy road of Christian moralisms with little or no biblical context, and then expect them to get it by the time they graduate? Is it any wonder they become disillusioned when faced with the harsh realities of life’s real narratives as they head out on their own?

2. Why are so many Christians afraid to engage someone like this in honest discussion about the issues he raises? I suspect it is because they realize they are ill-equipped to attempt such an endeavor, and so they resort to the standard responses full of church jargon and appeals to piety, rather than doing the hard work of having a real conversation. What frustrates many people like this isn’t that Christians don’t know all the technical answers. It is that so many of them do not even attempt to become conversant with their own Bibles. To be fair, he is just now reading the Bible for himself. But isn’t it reasonable to expect that people who are pastors and teachers, not to mention mature Christians, should be at least modestly equipped to engage the text?

3. I think sometimes we have to look past the provocative rhetoric of people in crises of faith into the hearts of brokenness which spew it out. The words they say might offend, but they really can’t do much to hurt us. However, given the opportunity, the words we say in reply hold the potential to speak into their hearts if we do so with the leading of the Holy Spirit, and with thoughtful biblical authenticity which is bathed in the compassion of Jesus.

4. This issue is not a passing fad. It has been with us for a long while and will continue to grow exponentially as people leave our churches in search for a spirituality or life experiences which seems real to them. Some will be vocal about it, as my interlocuter has been via email. Others will leave quietly. I wonder…. Do we notice their departure? What implications does this have for the way we do community in the church context? Churches that help people connect authentically and which provide consistent opportunities for engaging the biblical text will, in my view, grow biblically grounded and relationally connected disciples. They need not be mutually exclusive concerns. I suggest checking out Barna’s research on this. I don’t agree with some of his conclusions about the church and its future, but I do think he is on to something about the disillusionment of many.

5. I agree with my friends at Group publishing wholeheartedly in saying that Bible learning needs to be R.E.A.L. That is to say, it needs to be Relational. Experiential. Application Oriented. Learner-based. Contrary to the accusations of some competing publisher’s representatives, this does not imply that learners cannot be engaged in-depth with the biblical text. I honestly think that a genuine partnership between the home and the church which provides for cooperative R.E.A.L. learning will instill in children and their families the best possible preparation for lifelong discipleship. There will still be challenges along the way, but the accusations of not even being exposed to reading the Bible should never be one of them.

Unique Approach to Children’s Ministry Leadership

Ken Bussell of Our Place Christian Church in Hillsboro, Oregon shares his thoughts on how his church is developing their children’s ministry. It is a different approach from what I have seen elsewhere. Apparently it is working well for them. I am more interested in the underlying reasons behind the paradigm shift they have engaged than in the outward manifestation of dropping the position of children’s director in favor of hiring five part-time teachers. You may read more thoroughly about their shift here in his article entitled An Emerging Approach to Children’s Ministry.

Blessings,

Glen Woods

Post Doctoral Intensive Accessing Initialization Sub-Directories/Correlating Integrated Synchronization Source Code….

I tried to find ugliness in the margins of rural Sandy. Honest. I really did. But I got side tracked by the stunning beauty afforded by the Jonsrud Viewpoint. In particular I was captivated by this view. Although I did see some sights that had potential for my purposes, they were inaccessible.

Perhaps you are scratching your head in confusion. Why would I be searching for things that are ugly, disgarded, and in the margins? Isn’t beauty much more worthwhile and pleasing? My point for pursuing these kinds of objects or scenes is to decribe the similarity between objects and places with seem ugly and people who live on the margins of society.

Consider the barn which has no further usefulness, the crushed empty can of soda which lies in the gutter, the disintegrating paper bag no longer able to hold contents, the car which lies in the front yard, without tires and with paint peeling. These are the kinds of objects that call to mind people who somehow have lost their value in the eyes of society.

Consider the prostitute addicted to drugs and abandoned by her pimp because she is no longer viewed as pretty by johns; the divorced single mom with kids who is viewed by the church as “damaged goods” no longer worthy of respect; the entreprenuer whose business failed miserably, leaving him in debt and in trouble with creditors and thus someone to be looked on with pity; the child with some sort of physical or mental handicap who is viewed condescendingly; the street youth who cannot relate to parents or authority figures and is ready to check out all together because no one seems to care.

All of us have pain of some kind. Recently a person made a comment about my appearance. He was kidding. I knew he meant no harm. I took it for what it was, considering the source. But it is that sort of seemingly callous disregard for the feelings of others that perpetuates relational misunderstanding and conflict. The comment truly didn’t affect me as it would have in my earlier years. I have learned not to be hurt by people who do not demonstrate an authentic commitment of Christ-like love toward me. My point in sharing it is that callous offhand remarks toward people with whom we may or may not have an invested relationship often translate into callous disregard for others, especially others who live on the fringe, on the margins of polite society. They become something to be ridiculed almost in a tabloid sensationalistic way, or something to be forgotten, kicked to the curb, or worse yet, institutionally subsidized so as to sate our guilt, but not have an interest in building conversational relationship which fosters mutual respect and value. It is as if we sanitize them and what they stand for, rather than seek to understand and communicate love and respect.

I know. It is hard to show love to people who throw it back in our faces, to people who steal kill and destroy, and to others who violate our trust. It is hard to relate to others who think differently, look different, approach life differently. They feel the same way about us. Looking from the margins they consider our wealth and influence and all they see is arrogance and selfishness. Do you suppose their critique might be justified?

Our society is a complex multi-layered mosaic of cultures and people groups. Mixtures of languages and tribal regionalized narratives struggle to live in harmony with one in another, mostly failing miserably, but not always. To the extent that we, as followers of Jesus Christ, can humble ourselves to consider the needs of others before our own, we will earn respect and a voice in the cacophony of conversations taking place in the community. As we commit to living incarnationally outside of the safe cocoon of our faith communities, we will become known for the character of Jesus Christ who is living his life through ours as we continue to mature. And since they generally like Jesus, they just might learn to like us, and perhaps even ask of the hope within us.

It is going to take time. Most likely a long time. We better get started now.

Realty TV, Media Interactivity and the Power of Narrative

Reality TV. We know the drill. Game shows, various mutations of talent competitions, not least, American Idol, shows that pit persons against or with each other from diverse backgrounds in entirely uncommon situations, unlikely community, anger, comedy, moral ambiguity, et al. And the culture eats it up. American Idol, in its 6th season, eats up the competition. It is experiential, participatory, image based and communal. Len Sweet coined those terms under the acrostic EPIC to refer to spiritual disciplines within community.

I wonder if the dynamics of interactive media venues have gained remarkable popularity because they invite people into a narrative larger than themselves? Nevermind that most of it is contrived, fake really. People join the story. They control the outcome by their voting or their winning of competitions. They gain fame, ridicule, glory, shame, honor, vilification and much more in the public view of millions. And then for the most part, they fade back into obscurity, with the memory of their brief brush with notoriety.

It was experiential, but not formative.
It was participatory, but not relational.
It was image based, but not substantive.
It was communal, but generative.

And so the populace continues to embrace new forms of participatory narrative within the frameworks of media, seeking meaning and participation in a story larger than their own.

Couldn’t we enter into community with them, inviting them into God’s story in ways that are authentically experiential, participatory, image based and communal? Couldn’t we offer them an alternative narrative which takes seriously the life of Jesus Christ both in terms of his works and his claims? Wouldn’t that seem the missionally winsome ethos to embrace as we strive to understand emerging culture in this post Christendom world?

Think on these things with me as we prayerfully ask God for prophetic discernment to understand our cultural contexts and what He is wanting to communicate to it.

Day 4, Evangelism and Discipleship in the Contemporary Context

Thursday 8 february 2007

These are the notes from my final day of class with Todd Hunter. I will write more in the next couple of days.

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Main things I have learned today

1. Evangelism is a process, usually taking a long time. Hence the need for invitation into incarnational community which is contextually sensitive while also not compromising faithfulness to Christ’s character.
2. Discipleship is a mosaic, non-linear but no less intentional. It functions best in the liminal spaces of life where teachable moments appear in varying degrees of crisis or pain. Spiritual direction then becomes needed and wanted. The spiritual disciplines become opportunities to provide training wheels for incarnational living for Christ.
3. Incarnational living can only happen in community. Some people may need to practive the discipline of solitude and silence. Others, those few like me who are quiet thinkers and listeners, may need to practice the discipline of community. Incarnation does not come nearly so easily to someone like me, as it does for the majority who seem to gravitate naturally to some form of community.

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Nooma video rhythm

Jesus came to show us how to live in tune with the song. God’s song spans continents, cultures and ages. People may deny it exists but it keeps playing. The question isn’t whether you are playing the song, the question is, are you in tune?

God reaches into the margins, the dark places, where people feel abandoned by those they love and by God. God invites them into His story, His song.

We are completed in Jesus

The kingdom of God as a basis for contemporary ministry

Every legitimate advance has the seeds of weakness to it.

One of the unintended consequences of newton’s ideas and the enlightenment is deism. The founding fathers of usa were functional deists, yet they were sincere Christians in the sense of how they operated within their worldview.

Our challenge as orthodox Christians is to be in tune with the “other” without losing sight of others. It provides a check from irrationalism.

Bosch: alert people to the reign of God; announce, embody, and demonstrate its reality.
Do not establish a Christian society: “Christians make exemplary citizens, capitalists, etc. Herodians.

Not: withdraw from society all together. “religion is a private affair” Qumran sect.

Post-modern opportunity: people are also post-secular. People don’t want to go to church but they also don’t want to be secular. They want to be spiritual.

Inherent within the church growth movement are seeds of problems (don mcgavran) marketing, find a need and meet it, church as a product. –schuller, hybels, warren.

Have a good hypothesis and act on it, but protect from the powers that be. You can trim a hedge. Sometimes you have to let it grow a bit. Create a green house for it somewhere on the side.

Always talk missiologically. We never expect missionaries to get it right. We do expect pastors to get it right.

Ask for permission to experiment missionally.

Take on the identity of a missionary to this culture. Ask for the blessing to create a greenhouse.
Hunter: the kingdom of God creates the church. The kingdom of God is global. Lay people are best equipped to lead a secular life as ambassadors of the kingdom. We must ask how we can given them an imagination that their real life counts. It is their mission field and the soil for their discipleship.

GOCN: Gospel and our Community Network.

Roxburgh: liminality

Leaving one reality and entering another but not quite there yet. It is the threshold with all of its disorientation. Kobyashi maru, star trek.

Who are we in reference to God’s story? We cannot do mission from the basis of a private faith; only embodying our roles in the story of will do. It is not merely a doctrinal problem. It also speaks to how we live practically.

Professionalism increasingly is not going to work. That worked in the combination of modernity and Christendom, but not now.

Liminality as a model for contemporary engagement in mission: separation->liminal->reaggregation: through this process a group is changed both inside and in their engagement with those outside the group.

The church is not the only human institution in a liminal state; all human systems are. Old institutions don’t seem anchored anymore and the new realities are not yet built. Example: two docks on either side of the river as we try to cross from one to the other. The old dock is moving, the new dock is not yet totally built and the river is moving with us in it.
1. Prophetic: OT prophets, calling people back to God’s story.
2. Teaching: trying to explain what is going on. Explaining history, story and telos.
3. Evangelism: asking or inviting people to be faithful in the story/decision.

Alpha presentation
Sage on the stage (you come to me in the church) vs guy on the side (I come to you on the margins, layered, mulit-tasked, looking and talking off camera), just my opinion, non-threatening, real. There is an attempt to create layers within the physical space itself, eg candles, art, structure. Layeredness is normative. How do we communicate with them? Physicality of space is one thing to consider.

Hunter would get rid of the talking head and have a conversation within a multi-ethnic and mulit-gender group who say the same things as the talking head.
What is not working:
1. there is a tension re. intention. A lot of people are really squeamish about making relationships with an agenda (evangelism). For young people leadership is a loaded gun. They do not see it as benign.
2. for most emerging people see intentionality as manipulative. They have not constructed a positive alternative yet. But they are deconstructing intention. Emerging church types place out a smorgasboard of activities and invite you to participate. There is intent but they leave the person in control as to whether they participate. They would say, lets just have community. They intended the absence of something.
Hunter says manipulation is not the same as intentionality. Manipulation means to control someone. To play on them through insidious means, especially if it is to your advantage. Give an appearance of, but not a real choice in a matter, forcing them into a corner.
Take your best thought approaches to leadership and evangelism and emerse them, baptize them in the golden rule. Problem is, they are not doing great evangelism. Most of their growth is through transfer growth. Most of their growth is from disenfranchised children of evangelicals. Perhaps the reason is that evangelism takes so long now so maybe our criticism is unfair.

Evangelism gets harder to measure since it is slower and not as focused on conversion. Degrees of separation from God’s story.
Three streams re salvation:
1. exclusivists
2. inclusivists
3. universalist
Mission is more than just evangelism. It is helping the poor, healing the sick, feeding the hungry.

Traditional liberals were trying to find ways not to believe because of scientific foundationalism. Emergent post-moderns are trying to find ways to believe and to make sense of being Christian..
Billy graham banner: anchored to the rock, geared to the times.
That is the fundamental problem with contextualism. Theological inclined missiologists are the most helpful with this.

There are post-liberals who also do not want to be evangelicals. They want to find another way. George Lindeck British theologian

Dmin is applied research. It takes the existing body of literature and applies it to ministry context.

Leading others into discipleship spiritual growth begins with assessment. Find out where they are. If you are in silence you can only hear your voice or God’s. Jesus voice will not be heard amongst the clatter and clamor of street noise.

Ask person to be present with yourself and God. Be silent for at least 20 minutes.
Locate themselves. Silence and solitude. However some people are total loners and they need the discipline of community, or going out to lunch with someone else.
Then locate themselves within God’s story. Change their map.
God will not snuff out a smoldering wick.

We al only have one vocation. Vocation does not mean job. It means calling (latin: vocare). Our spiritual transformation. Discipleship is the human cooperation it takes with the authoritative story of God. My calling in life is to be a follower of Jesus Christ. We need to help them answer the question of purpose.

Church of the savior Washington dc. Journey inward, journey outward

The sense of journey inward must be intimately connected to the journey outward. We are on this journey of spiritual transformation not for mere piety but so that we can faithfully be Christ followers in the world.

Metaphors of spiritual transformation. Out of the abundance of your heart, the mouth speaks. Apple trees do not produce pumpkins (biological chaos). We come to Christ with all kinds of hurt. As we cooperate with the means of grace we become essentially different as a result. Whitewashed tombs. The Pharisees’ approach to spirituality was essentially outward which did nothing for their hearts. Jesus was not angry, he was being rabbi, he was teaching.

When we use Jesus as a way to explain discipleship it connects. People like Jesus.

Dallas Willard: renovation of the heart.
Vision: We can still ask people to decide whether or not to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Are they ready to press through the crowd like the woman with the issue of blood or cry out like blind bartimaues.

intention: try to invade Jesus teaching. Be observant at your points of failure, especially how and why you fail. Be present to your life. Peter’s legs ran away before his heart. We are prepared to do wrong even when our intention is to do right.

means: Do in reliance on the spirit and grace what will remove the causes of failure. Why are you not doing that? What are you afraid of? It becomes more embodied for them to do what is right. We teach our legs to do what we told Jesus we would do.

Think about these bible stories humanly. We think theologically, but what about the underlying teachable moments and humanity?

Discipleship is not linear. It does not unfold like a table of contents. People become teachable when they actually have a crisis. Like a mosaic there are teachable moments at varying points. Spiritual direction at their point of need.

Our selfishness has consequences. We all leave a trail of destruction from our actions.