Americans fleeing religion in droves

Here's the current cover story on a certain well-known newspaper:

Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds

This is not exactly a surprise.

One thought I had, which I enjoyed having because it made me feel OK: "emerging churches" are criticized (and I myself worry about this) for not having many converts - for being made up mostly of people who have departed more traditional church environments and are trying to save their own faith. But in an atmosphere like this, I sorta feel like helping folks to not leave the Church is, well, something. For real.

(But I still think we collectively miss opportunities to engage - for mutual benefit - with folks outside our comfy and safe and "thank God we're not where we used to be" church cocoons.)

A rant on "active" church (with fitness club analogy)

My friend Kate wrote a blog post in which she asked some excellent questions about the nature of "church" and what being a part of this thing called "church" looks like. Among her questions:

But then I began to think a bit - what if I’m the one who needs to be served? What if I’m not in a position to serve yet - not in a place to work? Am I part of the church too? And if I am, what does that mean? And if I’m not, then is that really such a bad thing?

Something in there got me fired up, and I wrote a long comment in reply. Since I ended up with so dang many words, I figured I'd post them here too. Here's me:

I think it depends what you mean by “not in a position to serve.” Here’s what *I* mean. (Note that I’m talking ideals here - specifically *my* ideals, FWIW.)

I don’t think churches should be places in which “just show up and be served (or taught or inspired or whatever)” is an option that would even make sense - on an ongoing basis. We all have periods in our lives when we need to just lean on others - when we’re suffering or overwhelmed or grieving or in crisis. This applies to pastors too, though y’all rarely have the freedom to go into that mode. Of course churches should be communities where we support each other in those times, and don’t ask much of the struggling person - this loving support should be a hallmark of Christian communities. (Though I’d also mention that I’ve received *huge* gifts through coming alongside folks who are struggling - so it’s not as if you’re not “serving” when you’re in a place of needing others to serve/help/support you, IMHO.)

But this should be in the context of a clear cultural context within the church community: it should be obvious to the newcomer walking in that this is a community of people who *all* work to serve and bless each other and the world. Yes, on any given day, not every single person will be able, or even needed, to work/serve. But it should simply be a given fact of the community culture that every single person in the community is encouraged and challenged (by the the people around them, not just the “leaders”) to discern the gifts they have for service, and to serve. This shouldn’t be something people just talk about, or that only some people do - it should be part of the nature of the community.

Walking into a church community should be like walking into a gym/health club. It should be blatantly obvious that everybody is there to actively participate. Sure, I *guess* you could just hang out and watch everybody else exercise, but that’s pretty obviously an odd thing to do. If you’re injured or sick, then you might need to work out *much* less strenuously and/or with a lot of help, or not work out at all for a while. But still, the nature of the place is immediately apparent. If you don’t want to exercise, you’ll probably go somewhere else.

I honestly think churches should be like that. Jesus calls followers, not fans. “Show up and be appreciative” should really not be a long-term option. *Everybody* has gifts, *everybody* can serve (I recall a story of an elderly woman who became frail, deaf, and blind - and found a new calling as a powerful intercessory prayer warrior), and our church communities should be places where *everybody* is actively invited to do so - from day one - not just with words but by the very nature of the community. Everybody else is serving, so it would be kinda weird not to.

And I do mean “from day one”. You’re new? Welcome! Can you help me put these books away? You’ve got doubts? Me too. What’s your take on today’s Scripture passage? Etc. But I *don’t* believe in the “We’ll start you out with just sitting back and being served/taught/inspired, then maybe you’ll eventually graduate to participation.” That’s rubbish. That’s how people go their whole lives as fans, not followers, of Jesus.

OK, sorry for the big rant. Whew. I got going there. Anyway, obviously something I feel strongly about.

Head on over to Kate's blog for the whole conversation - it's much better with all her words there too.

image by The Killer Biscuit (rights)

TOE jam

(Parenthetical word to the wise: I definitely do not recommend doing an online image search using the term "toe". Most of the results are really gross, in a fascinating variety of yuckness.)

So P3T3 is in search of TOE's (Theories of Everything). He says (unless I misread him): physicists know they lack one, and are seeking one fervently; fundamentalists act as if they've got one, but don't; evangelicals sort of have one, yet leave key terms undefined (kinda wise, if you ask me); and emergentingishlicalian Christians ought to be seeking one to avoid divide-by-zero errors such as classic pitfalls surrounding hell, the exclusivity of salvation through Jesus, and the (excellent) question, "Does God hate brown people?"

Now, I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of TOE's (apart from the 10 fleshy ones that most of us have - this despite having just now seen about 100 disgusting online photos of said digits). They sort of strike me as the epitome of hubris. I'd much rather just admit I don't have that level of clue, and probably never will.

HOWEVER, I do recognize that it's impossible to do really authentic, quality, high-level, big-picture thinking without edging into the territory of TOE's - and that TOE's are, by definition, theories. (You know - "just" a theory - like evolution, or gravity.) This means that any TOE, no matter how comprehensive, is by definition provisional. I'm pretty sure that the physicists burning the midnight oil trying to reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics realize that their success (should they succeed) will one day seem rather limited and perhaps even naive, however useful it might be in its time, place, and conditions.

I think Physics learned that one long about the time time the last ivory-tower holdout said, "FINE. You win. There's no such thing as aether. Are you happy now?? Gorram kraut Einstein." - and then picked up his toys and went home.

(Religion, I fear, hasn't learned that lesson yet, by and large.)

So with that in mind (that this is provisional, limited, speculative, and in all likelihood simply full of crap), I'll take a stab at a vaguely TOE-like line of reasoning that has helped shape my thinking around some of Pete's emerging-church divide-by-zero errors. Here's what I think, based upon my personal "three-legged stool" of Scripture, community, and experience:

God is Love, and God is the Father of all creatures. God loves each and every creature - certainly including each and every human being ever born - to a degree that we can't grasp. Every human being: Pharoah, Judas, Nero Caesar, Hitler, Pol Pot - everybody.

I very strongly suspect that God never gives up on that love for any one of us. Admittedly, this suspicion is based largely on the third leg of my stool, "experience" - but also on my reading of the character of Jesus in the New Testament. My personal understanding of God and God's character makes it pretty much inconceivable to me that a God who is Love would ever give up that love for any child of God. Therefore, I disagree with those who interpret Scripture to say that one's eternal fate is sealed upon the moment of death: that doctrine, IMHO, places limits on God's love.

Does this make me a universalist? Maybe. Quite honestly, I don't really care one way or the other about that label. But though I don't admit the possibility of God giving up on any of us, I do admit the possibility of us giving up on God, and never repenting of that desertion for all eternity. Frankly, this seems unlikely to me, but I admit that it's possible. Just as I hesitate to place limits on God's love, it seems unwise to place limits on the extent to which we talking monkeys are capable of thrusting our heads up our asses.

So that's part of my personal TOE: I think that God is Love, and that God loves all God's creatures, and that God never, ever gives up on that love.

Which leads me another thought. I sort of feel like there's been a tendency, through the ages, of people within the Church equating "the Church" with "the set of people who are loved by God". This equation has sometimes been explicit, but often seems to be an unstated assumption. It seems implicit in the culture of consumer Christianity: churches must not expect much from churchgoers, because they must be places for everyone who has decided to say "yes" to God's love.

It's widely known that deciding to follow Jesus with one's whole life and be obedient to God's risky call is a different thing from simply deciding to give mental assent to God's loving reconciliation in Jesus Christ. But (the thinking seems to go), the Church consists of all those who love and are loved by God, whether they choose to try following in the dangerous footsteps of Jesus or not - and our churches, therefore, must be comfortable places for those who don't make that choice.

But what if the set of people who are loved by God is not the set of people called "the Church", but instead the one called "everybody"? Then what is the Church? My thought - and it's a rude one, I admit - is that "the Church" is actually the set of people who are earnestly trying to respond to Jesus' invitation, "Take up your cross and follow me." This set of people may have (and does have) a WIDE variety of interpretations of what that looks like - from the most fundamentalist to the most liberal, to mention just one possible "axis" of opinion.

But the reason I say this is a "rude thought" is that this implies (IMHO) that there are an awful lot of folks who are members of churches but who are not members of the Church, and probably never will be - because there's no expectation that "the Church" is anything other than "those who are loved by God and know it".

My suggestion is that God's love is for everyone - it's an enormous, immense, incredible gift of grace for every human being. But God has other gifts too. God's Son has a yoke that is good, and risky, and dangerous, and joyful, and surprising, and demanding, and maybe a little bit nuts. Not everybody wants that yoke - and that's OK! God doesn't love those who try to follow Jesus one iota more than those who don't. But following Jesus is an enormous gift, and when we confuse that gift with the gift of God's love, given freely to all, we do no one a service.

So I think that's how I, personally, do-si-do around P3T3's divide-by-zero.

Hell? Maybe - if we can be stubborn enough in our hatred to outlast God's love - which means holding onto it until the end of time.

Exclusivity? No way, if you're talking about the love of God - but yes, obviously, if you're talking about following Jesus. It's a matter of obvious fact that not everybody tries to follow Jesus - not every human, and not every churchgoer - and that may be because they're not aware of the option. (Though many people who have never heard of Jesus - or who have heard of him, but have been put off by Christians or their doctrines - choose to live much more like him than I do!)

God hating brown people? Well, I sure as hell hope not. I admit I'm still a little weirded out that the enormous gift of following in the way of Jesus is something that needed to spread by word of mouth from a single point in time and geography.

But that's the undeniable pattern of history, and of every historical gift from God - including so many that have come to us at times and in places where brown people live. It's weird, when you think about it - but peculiar distribution of gifts is a lesser matter, I guess, than excluding some of God's children from the very love of God.

And that's as far as my TOE's have carried me today.

Photo: "Big Toe goes to Dharamsala" by Qaanaaq (rights)

Short term mission vs. formation as a people of justice

Lately, when I don't have much to say myself, I seem to get a lot of mileage (in my own mind, anyway) from quoting Len.

So in that spirit, I have stolen another Len post in its entirety. Let me show you it.

short term mission.. colonial?

by len

Short term mission tends have very limited effect, and while it helps us feel better about ourselves, it does not take us closer to justice. At SHIFT Kara Powell spoke about moving from shallow service to “deep justice.”

“After tracing the importance of justice as a theme in the Old and New Testaments she laid out the difference between serving the poor and seeking justice. “Service is giving someone a glass of cold water who needs it. Justice is asking why the person needs a glass of cold water.” Service is good, she says, because it addresses real needs. But seeking justice means fixing the system that created the problem in the first place.

“Our churches tend to approach service as an event—buying gifts for poor kids at Christmas, feeding the homeless, going to Mexico to build a house. Again, these are worthwhile things. But justice isn’t an event, it’s a lifestyle. She defined justice as simply “righting wrongs.” Toward this end students at her church are engaging issues like sex trafficking, HIV/Aids, and modern-day slavery.

“Powell’s talk was very piercing. Is your church forming people to merely serve, or to be a people of justice?”

More at Out of Ur

I have known people whose lives have been deeply and lastingly transformed by short-term mission experiences. I have also known people who came back thinking, "Wow, I feel great! I can really make a difference in people's lives...as long as I go to Honduras. Oh well, back to life as I know it...."

The purpose of church (for the churched) is to utterly transform life as we know it, for every single person who gets on this path and sets out to follow Jesus...to form us into a people of justice. Every day. In our "regular" lives. (Really, this is the purpose for everybody, but folks need to "opt in" to the whole Jesus-following thing to get the full benefit, IMHO.)

God help us if we settle for less.

The Bridge Builder

This poem arrived in my inbox from an older friend of mine (older than me, but not necessarily "older", if you know what I mean), a fellow member of the youth ministry teams at Holy Comforter. I thought it was a good reminder for us postmodern, baggage-laden, smartypants whippersnappers when we get to thinking how we know so much better than those s-q-u-a-r-e "moderns" and the quaint and irrelevant ways they used to do things.

The Bridge Builder

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fears for him;

But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim, near,

“You are wasting strength with building here;

Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way;
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you a bridge at the eventide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head:

“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,

“There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

“This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;

Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.”

Changing minds, changing hearts, changing the world

Yes! The presence of the invincible Danger Mouse over there can mean only one thing: this, at long last, is the post about DANGER. :-)

OK, all right, let me get one thing perfectly clear: what I'm not doing. I'm not trying to sound the alarm of "heresy!" or "revisionism!" or "satanic influence!" or anything like that. What I want to talk about is a question of emphasis - of the relative importance of various things that are all fundamentally good. Please keep that in mind.

Another disclaimer: I'm going to be making a lot of gross generalizations and oversimplifications for rhetorical purposes. I know I'm doing it. I think I need to do it to say what I want to say with anything approaching an economy of words. Despite that, please rest assured that I know reality is far more complex than I make it out to be.

Right: That'll do for the preliminaries. Here begins the post proper.

It seems an odd thing to say about the world's most notoriously conservative institutions, but I believe that religions are fundamentally about change. One of the interesting ways in which they differ is in the types of change they emphasize. For the purposes of my argument, I'm going to lump the types of change into three broad categories:

• Changing minds. I mean this in the sense of "Change Your Mind Day" - spiritual practices aimed at transforming the individual for the better. More spiritual, more compassionate, more attuned to the divine, less angry, less greedy, etc. Meditation, contemplative prayer, rosary, labyrinth, fasting and other ascetic practices, attending teachings, reading books, etc.
  
• Changing hearts. I mean this in the sense of "conversion". Evangelism. Proselytizing. Whatever. Inviting more people to commit to the faith. (It's worth noting that even faiths that don't emphasize conversion are concerned, to some extent, with changing the hearts of the next generation of their own current believers.)
• Changing the world. You know, "love your neighbor as yourself". Caring for the creation/environment. Working for peace and justice. Making the world a better place.

To continue with my broad generalizations, I'm going to claim that different world faiths place differing emphasis on these types of change. For example, Buddhism is all about "changing minds", with a secondary emphasis on "changing hearts", and very little tradition of "changing the world" (at least in the here and now - the quest for enlightenment is, ultimately, meant to transform the universe, but probably not in this lifetime). Hinduism has incredibly rich traditions for "changing minds" but has not been primarily concerned with "changing hearts" or "changing the world" (though this itself has changed somewhat since Gandhi).

In general, the "Western" or Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and their children - have been more concerned with "changing the world" and have been described as "historical" faiths, in contrast with the "Eastern" faiths, which tend to see history as cyclical. Judaism's emphasis has been on "changing the world" - a chosen people called to be a blessing to the nations. Islam has emphasized both changing the world and changing hearts. Both Judaism and Islam have rich "changing minds" traditions (Kabbalah and Sufism, among other strains within those faiths), but these are not the dominant voices within the two religions.

And what of Christianity? I would submit that any careful study of the Biblical tradition, the life and teachings of Jesus, the early church, and church tradition would lead one to the conclusion that the Christian faith has a dual emphasis: changing hearts (the Great Commission) and changing the world (the Great Commandment). There is a strong, incredibly important tradition of rich, beautiful practices for "changing minds" - from Jesus' solitude in the desert through the Desert Mothers and Fathers to Benedict, Juliana of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Juan de la Cruz, Ignatius, Brother Lawrence, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, etc., etc. (I don't claim to have those saints in historical order.) :-) These traditions are incredibly rich, vital, good, and necessary. I need to practice them much more than I do. But.

But..."changing minds" was not Jesus' main concern. It is not the main concern of the New Testament. So here's where I finally get to the part about "danger". The danger is one of emphasis - of priority among good things - but in my opinion it's real. Here it is: the liberal mainline churches and emerging churches need to be careful that they don't end up creating a version of the Christian faith that's "all about practice" - all about inward spiritual exercises aimed at "changing your mind". Spiritual practices are very much in vogue in both mainline and emerging circles. Here are a few examples.

This is good. It's wonderful that we're rediscovering these traditions. We need to keep exploring them. But "practice" is not the only thing, and if the Christian faith is to remain true to Jesus, I don't believe it's the main thing, either. There is also "changing hearts", and there is also "changing the world". Though Jesus was indisputably an Asian, Christianity is not an Eastern faith, and I think he would have us live as he did - recharging in solitude and prayer, and then getting our hineys back out there to participate in God's mission: changing the world and the human hearts within it. So, while we're reconnecting with our rich traditions of spiritual practice - while we're becoming intentionally practicing congregations - let's not forget that the purpose of these practices is to enable us to be ambassadors of the kingdom of God, participating in God's mission in the world.

That's all. No heretics or demons for Danger Mouse to fight. Sorry. :-)

HT: Israel, for getting me thinking about contemplative/Eastern practices and their relation to the Christian faith.

Scot McKnight on Emerging Evangelism

Scot McKnight has a post about another book I may need to add to my "to read" queue. An interesting quote:

"Our teachers and mentors in the evangelism adventure are now African and Asian and Latin American peoples."

And several "big points":

1. Evangelism is collaboration with what God is doing by listening to God, praying to God, and working with the Spirit.

2. God is raising up witnessing communities more than witnessing individuals. Belonging comes before believing — yep, he uses that old line because it is true.

3. Developing friendship through conversation is what it is all about instead of downloading information and content about the gospel. The current generation, we’ve been told over and over because it is true, does not trust the church; it will trust credible people. Become a friend. Do what you love with nonchurched folks.

4. Tell a story of God’s power and gospel realities. Stories are containers big enough to tell truth. Logic isn’t as effective as it once was. Connect your story to the stories of others.

5. Talk about a Jesus who is outside the box. Jettison the cliche Jesus. He’s more like Warhead candy than tofu [I know the latter, not the former]. He confronted religious elitism, consumerism.

6. The gospel is good news for the here and now and not just the there and then. The gospel is spiritual and physical, individual and communal, personal and social, human and cosmic, people and nations. It is good news for all of this.

7. It is an invitation to a wedding and marriage. He means it is a journey rather than an event. Inviting me to a wedding is not a good idea; too long, too formal, too much hub-bub. But, he’s got a good chp here. If salvation is union with Christ, then a wedding is a good image for what we are invited to because it leads to a marriage.

I think this is all good stuff. But don't just read about it here - pop over to Scot's blog, where (as always) the comments discussion is top notch.

What about the information?

Third post in one day! But as you can tell, I'm basically in "advertising other folks' good stuff" mode, as opposed to providing much of anything original. There's lots going on right now with me, some of which I even get paid to do. :-) Some time soon I'll engage in actual creative thought.

Anyway, The Blind Beggar pointed me at an excellent, if hasty, post that's thinking through the changing value of an "information"-based gospel. Check it out. I think this is part of the answer to a question I've been asked: How is being "missional" different from what the evangelical churches have been doing all along (vis-a-vis "evangelism")?

Postevangelism

Thanks to J. Derek Harbin, priest at Church of the Beloved in Charlotte, NC, for this quote from Karen Ward, the church planter for Church of the Apostles in Seattle, Washington. (That's Karen on the right.) Derek says, "Believing that the word 'evangelism' is forever colored by the negative cultural images associated with it, she encourages her church community to live as postevangelists." Here's Karen:

I no longer believe in evangelism. To be postevangelism is to live our lives in Christ without a strategy but with the compassion and the servant posture of Jesus Christ. We do not do evangelism or have a mission. The Holy Spirit is the evangelist, and the mission belongs to God. What we do is simply live our lives publicly as a community in the way of Jesus Christ, and when people inquire as to why we live this way, we share with them an account of the hope within us. We are to love one another, and that creates its own attraction.

What do y'all think of that? I think it's spot-on, but to my mainline (and emerging?) friends who may be reluctant to ever be overt about their faith, I would draw attention to the phrases "live our lives publicly as a community in the way of Jesus Christ" and "when people inquire...we share with them an account of the hope within us." We still need to be witnesses of the gospel, even if we are "postevangelism."

N.T. Wright: Simply Christian

This past Tuesday, I attended an outstanding lecture at the National Cathedral from Tom (N.T.) Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham (England) and superlative New Testament scholar/theologian, on his latest book, Simply Christian, which is a fairly slim treatise on the essentials of following Jesus, in the tradition of C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.

As always, the wonderful folks at the Cathedral have made the video of this talk available. You can watch it here. I highly recommend that you do so.

I took notes at the lecture intending to blog them, but I'm feeling lazy. I'll gladly blog my notes if anyone asks me to, but if everyone would rather just watch the video (and if you've got the time, you should do that!) then I'll save myself the trouble. So, if you'd like to read my notes, please let me know (comment on this post). Don't worry about putting me out - I really don't mind a bit blogging my notes if anyone wants to read them.

For now, I'll just tease you with some near-quotes from the end of Wright's talk, when he was speaking about our eschatological hope regarding the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven:

"In justice, God will put the world to right....There will come a time when we can love and be loved; know and be known....It is time now to take up our proper role as agents, heralds, and stewards of the new day that is dawning."

Thy kingdom come!

Emerging evangelism

Great post from Scot McKnight (quoting Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger) about the shape of evanglization in the church that is emerging. Check it out.

Come and grow

So yesterday, I get an e-mail from A. Bowie Snodgrass, Web Content Editor of the Office of Communication of the Episcopal Church, saying that my blog was, at some point within the last year, one of the top 25 referring domains to the "Come and Grow" evangelism campaign of the national church. Frankly, that's a little scary. I love dearly each and every one of you readers of this humble blog, but one thing you aren't is numerous.

Anyway, Bowie wanted to know if I'd be willing to mention/link to a new survey regarding the future of the Episcopal Church's online evangelism, which is available on the Episcopal Church homepage until Friday, April 7. So, sure thing, sez I. The survey is interesting, and Bowie says that folks who aren't part of the Episcopal Church are especially welcome to fill it out. I myself will need to put some thought into my answers.

So, give it a look, and if you feel inspired to do so, fill out the survey. The church, I think, could sure use your help. Danke.

Really good theology for the not-already-committed

Elizabeth M., a reader of my blog and writer of (among other things) truly excellent comments/questions on the same, just finished reading Brian McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy. She thought it might be a good try at convincing folks who were already committed evangelical Christians to consider allowing a bit more generosity into their faith, but asks,

So, I'm still wondering -- is there anyone out there who isn't only preaching to the choir?

That, my dear, is a really, really, really fine question. I think we're probably all in agreement here that the choir can use some preachin' to, but for all the emphasis in the Missional Church and Emerging Church conversations on evangelism, is there anybody out there writing postmodern, generously orthodox theology for the not-already-committed? Stuff that's not tying to do "the continuing conversion of the church" (like most Emerging stuff seems to be doing) and is also not (completely) beholden to the left/right dualism of modern theology? I know McLaren's got Finding Faith, but I haven't read it and don't know whether Elizabeth would like his approach in that any more than she did his approach in aGO.

I'm tempted to recommend folks like Tom (N.T.) Wright, Dallas Willard, Henri Nouwen, Marcus Borg, though the truth is that they're generally writing for the church too. But they do write stuff that's just good theology, not completely beholden to modern right-wing evangelical assumptions nor modern left-wing "mainline" assumptions (though their roots and theology will tend one way or the other--Willard right, Borg left, etc.). Also, they don't necessarily have an explicit agenda of trying to reform the church, like the Missional and Emerging authors tend to--an agenda, I might add, that's pretty much irrelevant to folks who aren't already part of the church. Maybe Tom Wright's "For Everyone" Bible study series?

I'm dismayed that I don't have a better answer to this question. Help?

What is the gospel?

Over at the Mars Hill Unauthorized Theology Pub (a Yahoo group I enjoy participating in), I started a discussion on the topic, "What is the Gospel?" In right cowardly fashion, I declined to submit my own opinion on the matter and waited for some others to do so first. Some did, and their thoughts were excellent. Finally I plucked up the courage and submitted what follows. For this week, anyway, this is how I would formulate an answer to "What is the gospel?"

One sentence super-nutshell version: "The Gospel is the story of God's loving work to save the world through Jesus Christ."

To expand on that a bit--bottom line: it's all about Jesus. Since Jesus is the complete intersection of God and the world God loves, it's also all about God and all about the world. But it's about Jesus, and I think a full telling of that story makes reference to the following elements:

• His preexistence as the Word of God, creating and loving the world and every living thing, in joyful, communal dance with the loving Father/Mother and the indwelling Spirit.
• His anticipation in the lives and stories of the Jewish people, grappling as we all do with the tension between the love God calls us to and our sinful temptations.
• His birth, becoming fully incarnate in the world he loves, as a helpless baby born into a poor family in a poorly-regarded corner of the Jewish world.
• His life and ministry: calling followers, proclaiming the nearness of the Kingdom and eternal life, and demonstrating it through teaching, healing, generosity, radical welcome, and speaking prophetically about justice.
• His passion and death on the cross: by entering into the deepest depths of human existence--the deepest depths of cruelty and suffering--somehow opening the way to eternal life and the salvation of the world he loves.
• His resurrection: in becoming the firstborn from the dead, demonstrating that God's love is more powerful than death, and that to the kind of life to which he invites us, death is no enemy.
• His ascension and commissioning of the church, giving us the gift of the Holy Spirit, calling us to our mission as the sign and foretaste of the now-and-future Kingdom, and returning to his Father.
• His life today as the risen Lord and Son of God, lovingly present to us through prayer and worship, eternally in communion with Father and Spirit, and inviting us to join in that communion.
• His coming again at the end of the age, when the loving God will wipe away every tear and the Kingdom will be fully established on earth as it is in heaven.

That, I think, is how I'd present the gospel. This week. :-)

Jesus, love, and mission in the Gospel of John

Here's something I learned at my Discipleship Group gathering this evening: The footnote to John 6:57 in my HarperCollins Study Bible sends you on a cool trip through the Gospel of John and several increasingly missional statements of Jesus. Here they are:

John 6:57: "Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me."

John 15:9: "As my Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love."

John 17:18: "As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world."

John 20:21: Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."

I encourage you to read them in context. You can do that by clicking on the hyperlinks if you want.

Can any sane person read the Gospels and doubt that Jesus saw himself fundamentally as someone sent on a mission by his loving Father? And can there be any doubt that he saw himself as, in that same love, sending his disciples into the world on their own missions of love? And that those missions, in the same spirit of reciprocity, are to pass on that love and to, in turn, equip other disciples for their missions?

Mission is not a program at your church, one among many. Mission (which includes both disciple-making, aka evangelism, and active love, aka healing, hospitality, justice, etc.) is why your church--any church--the Church--exists. It's unavoidable. If you're a Christian, do you see yourself, as Jesus did, fundamentally as a person on a mission of love in the world? If not, what is fundamental in your Christian identity?

Whole grain, whole enchilada, whole church

Well, if you were looking for a dose of pretentious BS with your morning cup o' joe (or whatever tasty beverage you might be enjoying just now), you came to the right place. In the following post, I make sweeping statements (not uncommon in this blog), I invent words (less common), and I present to you a half-baked ecclesiology in such a way as to imply that this is the system God intended for the church and was kind enough to reveal to me. So I apologize up front and hope that by these words I can defuse it a bit. But this is one of those things that just seemed to download into my brain from somewhere while I was driving in to work this morning, thinking about the "Missional vs. Intentional" thing I was on about a few posts back. And this blog is where I work those things out. So please, be kind--I know I'm being something of a windbag--but please do comment and please do criticize and help me think these concepts through.

The thing that I like least about it is the name I came up with for the overall concept. "Whole church" implies that I think churches that don't emphasize the things I say are important are somehow incomplete, inadequate, or less than "whole." I don't think that. It's just the best name I could think of so far. Anyway, here's my "theory", such as it is.

• A whole church is MISSIONAL/TRANSFORMATIONAL. A whole church recognizes that the most fundamental identity of followers of Jesus is that of a people on a mission. That mission is specific to each Christian, each church, and each church system, and must be continuously discerned, but it always consists of the two parts of the mission Jesus gave his emissaries in Luke 10:9: proclaim the inbreaking Kingdom of God, and demonstrate it by transforming the world, one child of God at a time. By living out their particular missions together as contrast communities within and fully part of their larger cultures, Christians become the sign and foretaste of the Kingdom by healing the sick, welcoming the outcast, and speaking truth to power in defense of social justice and peace. Through proclaiming, through deed and word, the Gospel of Jesus and his Kingdom, they invite more disciples to join in this transformational work. I believe it's telling that it's mainly folks from a liberal/mainline/denominational background who are doing the hard thinking and writing on Missional Church: this sense of mission is perhaps something especially needed in those traditions.
• A whole church is INTENTIONAL/FORMATIONAL. A whole church recognizes that authentic Christian lives are permeated by a habit of spiritual practice and prayer. Whole churches appreciate the rich inheritance of the Christian traditions of the past. They foster communities where the spiritual life does not revolve around the Sunday service, but bridges Sunday to Monday in a rich rhythm including prayer, discernment, fellowship, study/learning, service, and hospitality. Only through a Christian life that's formational can new disciples become mature disciples, and mature disciples stay grounded enough to be the sign and foretaste of the Kingdom and agents of God's work to transform the world. I think it's telling that so many "emerging church" thinkers from a conservative/evangelical/nondenominational background (Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt) are writing books about practice: this habit of intentional practice is perhaps especially needed in those traditions.
• A whole church is CHANGE-EMBRACING/REFORMATIONAL. A whole church is not afraid to change. As the faces of its members change, or the faces of the folks outside the church doors change (or as new faces are discovered inside or outside that were always there but never noticed before), a church needs to be ready to reform itself to serve those who now need to be served in the ways that they need to be served--and to allow its own members to minister in the ways they are called to minister. To be able to do this, it's essential that the first two items be true. Without a strong yet continuously discerned sense of mission, how can a church know what is essential to its vocation and what is negotiable? Without a strong (or at least developing) habit of intentional practice, how can we have the courage and maturity to embrace change in this way?
• A whole church is ESCHATOLOGICAL/"PRE"FORMATIONAL. A whole church always keeps in mind that everything it does--forming disciples, transforming the world, reforming itself--is in a very real sense just rehearsal, just preliminary. A whole church expects to change the world, but not through that modern myth called "progress." Instead, we expect God to transform the world (including us) through the surprising inbreaking of the Kingdom of God, through the work of the Spirit in unexpected places, and through us as the sign and foretaste of that Kingdom. We hold in tension Jesus' announcement that the Kingdom is at hand and within us now and his prayer for the future day when God's kingdom will come, fully, on earth as in heaven.

The key to all of that is a steadfast focus on what Jesus spent so much time proclaiming: the Kingdom or Reign of God, God's inbreaking New World, both now and yet to come. We transform the world as we proclaim and demonstrate that Kingdom. We form ourselves as mature members of the Kingdom. We reform our institutions to conform to the inbreaking of the Kingdom in our where and our when. And we "pre"form all our work in the image (so we hope and pray) of the full Kingdom that is to come.

So that's my high-fallutin' theory of "whole church". Church with plenty of fiber, organic and unbleached. ;-) Thoughts?

Postmodernity, purpose, and mission

Usually, when a bunch of unrelated threads in my life seem to intersect (and I notice), I end up thinking and writing about it. This has happened recently.

• I recently saw the movie "Rabbit-Proof Fence", about three young girls who trek 1500 miles to return home in defiance of an early 20th-century Australian national policy of "rescuing" mixed-race children from their Aboriginal families so they can be raised in the obviously "superior" white culture.
• I'm reading a novel written by a friend of mine, in which the protagonist is a young woman whose face was severely scarred in an auto accident. In the section I'm reading now, she's coming to terms with the idea that the concepts of "beauty" and "ugliness" she's so far taken as self-evident are just social constructs imposed by society, nothing more.
• Another book I'm reading is Darrell Guder's The Continuing Conversion of the Church. In it, Guder writes about the history of Western European missionary efforts, with their assumption that white European culture is the ultimate expression of the Gospel, and that the encounter between the Gospel and non-European culture necessarily entailed the reshaping of those cultures in the Western mold.
• Finally, while I was walking this morning with another friend of mine (who's taking a class on postmodernism), she told me about some thinking and research she'd done on colonialism in the Philippines and on western feminine ideals. Both involve the establishment of a cultural construct as normative for everyone, often to the detriment of those it is imposed upon.

I think there is a common thread in all of this, and it has to do with the transition between modernism and postmodernism. Western cultural superiority, white racial superiority, narrow definitions of femininity and of beauty--all of these are metanarratives (big stories) that are a product of human cultures, but have been set up by those cultures as absolute and normative for all. In the modern age, it was common to accept these sorts of metanarratives as self-evident, or at least obvious to the sufficiently "civilized": since absolute truth was knowable, what the culture "knew" about civilization, about race, about gender, about beauty was usually accepted as absolutely true and normative for everyone.

There have always been rebels, of course, who bucked those norms. But if cultural observers are correct about this "postmodern" shift, for the last half-century or so (probably more like one or two centuries, actually), whole cultures have begun to rebel against--and relativize--these metanarratives, and to see them as mere cultural constructs without absolute value. Obviously, this can be very liberating. It can also leave us without a Story or Stories with which to interpret our lives. I tend to think this is something human beings need. Whether that's true or not, many of us postmoderns seem to be searching for a new Story--we may not want it to be absolute for everyone or think it could be so, but we do want to find some narrative that's authentic for us and helps us interpret and narrate our lives.

In the Western Christian world, one popular candidate for this life-defining story has been pastor Rick Warren's "Purpose-Driven" Life/Church/etc. While Warren's ideas are being voraciously consumed, my sense is that they're much more popular with Boomers and others who are largely "modern" in outlook, and less so with younger postmoderns. I've read The Purpose-Driven Life, and I found it fairly compelling, although not wildly so. I couldn't put my finger on why not--other than some biblical literalism which wasn't central to the book, I couldn't identify a big problem I had with it. So what makes "Purpose Driven" more of a "modern" phenomenon?

I'm still not sure, but I've sort of decided that it's "modern" because it's setting up one more absolute metanarrative that's normative for all individuals. Let me pick that apart a little. Rick Warren's "purposes" are presented as the purposes in life for everyone, everywhere--normative and absolute, one-size fits all, like most modern Stories. Further, they primarily seem to represent demands that each individual needs to fulfill--it's all about the purpose in my life, which I need to live out. I suspect that Purpose-Driven Church, which I haven't read, takes a more collective approach, but my impression of Warren's approach is that it's pretty individualistic, another hallmark of modernism.

What I like about the Missional Church conversation, is that in some ways it's the opposite of this. Missional Church is about discerning the unique vocation that God is calling you to in the world. It's not about a one-size-fits-all, normative metanarrative; it's about looking at the context of the world around your faith community, your particular talents, spiritual gifts, and passions, and figuring out where and how you can do God's work in the world. On the other hand, the way that story is discerned and lived out is fundamentally communal--there is an individual aspect to missional discernment, but calling must be discerned in community, and that's also the way it must be practiced in the world.

So: to me, a Story appropriate for us postmodern seekers is one that's our story in that it's specific and authentic to us, but also our story in that it can only be told and acted out in community. It should also be one that promotes humility, openness, welcome, diversity, and health, unlike many of the metanarratives of our past. I believe the Missional Church conversation--a conversation fundamentally about authentic ways to follow Jesus in the world--a provides one path toward answering the question: as we leave behind or diminish many of these cracked old stories, what new story--our story--are we going to tell?

Begin with the mission?

So there's this really exciting idea that's been floating around certain Christian circles for the last 10 years or something (probably longer), called "Missional Church." Here's a really good FAQ on the concept (it's a PDF). If you don't feel like reading that, I'll summarize: a Missional Church is a community of Christians (of any size) who define their Christian identity primarily and fundamentally as that of a people on a mission. This mission is thought of as having been given to us by Jesus himself, and to consist of following in his footsteps, passing on his teachings, continuing and growing the community he formed, and doing the deeds he did. Put another way, our mission is to welcome the entire world to receive and enter into the Kingdom of God, God's New World that Jesus spoke constantly about and demonstrated through his actions.

Reactions to these ideas range from,"Well, duh!" to "What on earth are you talking about?" Which is only to be expected. But honestly, I think folks with the latter reaction are closer to the truth. I mean, if you honestly think that this is how most Christians of any persuasion have approached their faith down through the ages, I'd have to quibble with your assessment of history and current events. And I've come to believe that if Christians do come to see their faith in these terms, it can be revolutionary.

But I'm not writing to evangelize you about being missional. I'm writing to reflect on the implications of the missional idea for evangelism. I've never really thought that the classic evangelical presentation of the Gospel ("you are a sinner, the wages of sin is death, Jesus died so you could live, choose Jesus choose life") would be very effective with most people I know. But I'm really rather intrigued by the potential of the Christian equivalent of the old Uncle Sam poster: "Jesus wants YOU! He's got a mission for you: to help him usher in a New World."

Conventional Christian wisdom, it seems to me, would put any discussion of mission way, way at the tail end of any process of evangelism or disciple-making. First you "convert" someone, then you invite them into the community, then when they start to get committed, you approach them about serving within the community, then and only then you might start to talk to them about serving and transforming the world. Or, if you believe in "belonging before believing" (as I surely do), then you reverse the first two steps, but the rest probably proceeds as above. Membership, Maturity, Ministry, then Mission, to quote a four-step disciple formation system first pioneered at one of the innovative megachurches and now being adapted, with my wholehearted approval, at my own church. It's logical, right? But what if it's backwards? What if mission should (at least sometimes) come first?

I'm pretty convinced that there are lots of folks out there, particularly younger, postmodern, post-Christian folks, who want very much to make a difference in the world, to transform it a little, to make it a slightly better place. But they don't know where to begin. If they do find a way to help (for example, volunteering for an organization that's doing some good), often they don't stick with it for too long, because while they sincerely want to transform the world for the better, they themselves have not been transformed; they haven't encountered a tradition, a community, and a God with the power to transform them. And because of their background and experience (and this was me for many years), the idea that the church could be such a tradition and that the God of Christianity could be such a God seems really improbable.

But what if we began with the mission? What if our evangelistic icon weren't that classic chasm-with-us-on-the-left-and-God-on-the-right-and-the-cross-bridging-the-gap, but instead were that "Jesus wants YOU!" Uncle Sam poster? (Note for the metaphorically impaired: I don't mean really.) Would it cause folks to run away, or would it make them curious enough to try belonging and joining in the mission, in a context that could lead to both personal and local/global transformation?

I don't really know, but I wonder.

Emerging = evangelical?

I keep on hearing things in the news lately that threaten, with their combined weight, to break my heart. The problem--the crisis, really--is that described in the article linked in my last post. In brief: the world and this nation are groaning in poverty, injustice, and war. Jesus' heart would have broken--Jesus' heart does break. The Christian right, who believe in making faith part of public and political life (and do very effectively make faith a very big part of public and political life), somehow don't think those are God's priorities. The Christian left, for whom counteracting poverty, injustice, and war are (sometimes) priorities, don't believe in making faith a part of public and political life, and if they did, they'd be laughed off the stage as irrelevant. Because we are overwhelmingly a (professedly) Christian nation, I don't think it's possible to say that these problems will be solved in this country through secular means. One or another form of Christianity is going to heavily influence the public debate and limit the effectiveness of secular solutions.

Of course, secular organizations and a great many faith-based organizations are doing huge amounts of good, but what kills me is the vast reservoir of untapped resources that we could lay claim to if the two sides of the left-right gulf within Christianity could somehow be persuaded to stop fighting each other and get busy with the mission Jesus gave us. Lefties: news flash: we have a mission. We are expected to get our asses in gear. If you haven't found a community that is helping you see how your faith should be transforming you and the world, let me know; I'll help you look for one. Righties: news flash: the mission is not primarily about beating people over the head regarding personal morality issues. It's primarily about healing the world and its people and inviting them to join us in that adventure.

So, I'll call that Problem Number One.

In related news, people have been noticing for decades now that both the Christian left and right are mightily missing the point. They have been at a loss to see what a Christian identity and a Christian community could possibly have to do with them. And, they've had kids. So we have whole generations of folks 35 and under, especially in urban areas, who have zero connection to the Christian faith story. Some of them may have been half-heartedly connected with a Christian church in their childhood. Based on that slim connection, they may decide to give the church another try some day. Maybe not. Lots of younger folks, however, have zero exposure to Christianity apart from the media and some Christian folks they may know. (Note that I'm not primarily talking about folks brought up in a non-Christian faith, but folks brought up with no faith.)

Like as not, these Christians are of either the right-wing-check-your-brain-(and-heart?)-upon-entering-the-church variety, or else the left-wing-check-your-faith-upon-exiting-the-church variety. I myself knew lots of Christians growing up, but with the exception of my Grandfather (some day I'll blog about Papa, one of my chief role models), my impression of every one of them was one or the other of those stereotypes. No doubt this was a grossly unfair impression in many cases (in fact, I've since learned that it certainly was), but I can nonetheless understand why, for many of these younger folks, the idea of joining a church makes about as much sense for them personally as the idea of joining the circus. But a lot of these younger folks want very much to make a positive difference in the world, if only they knew where to begin, and who could help them find a way to do that.

I'll call that Problem Number Two.

In the face of these two problems, I must admit that I get a little worked up when I hear people say that the Emerging Church conversation is a phenomenon of evangelicals, for evangelicals, relevant only to evangelicals. Yes, it began among (primarily nondenominational and Baptist) evangelical Protestants. Yes, to this day most of the conversation's leading lights and rank-and-file folks hail from that background. And yes, many of the books I've been reading on the Emerging Church pretty much assume that their audience consists exclusively of evangelical Protestants. The thinking, I guess, is that since a core assumption of the Emerging Church is that Christians are on a mission from Jesus that should transform their lives and give them an active, outward-directed faith, and since that's not the sort of faith that is associated with liberal mainliners, liberal mainliners are probably not interested. (Also, a lot of emerging writing seems to be geared toward getting conservatives to consider the "generous" part of "generous orthodoxy", which many liberals already get.)

OK, I follow this line of thinking, but let's assume for the sake of argument that I'm right in saying that a large part of the business of the Emerging Church is to work on finding solutions to Problems One and Two. Further, let's say I'm right in claiming that the Emerging Church folks are having some success in that business.

So I ask you: What exactly about Problems One and Two makes them a bigger issue for evangelicals than for largely-liberal mainliners? My opinion: nothing. My own mainline church is one that gets, to a large extent, that faith should transform us and cause us to transform the world, but despite that, I see very few folks age 20 to 35 when I look around in our worship services. When I travel, I generally attend Episcopal or Lutheran churches, and guess what? I see the same thing there as well. Problem Two is not an evangelical, nondenominational problem. It's a Christian problem--and for all I know, it's probably a Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist problem as well. And Problem One is obviously equally "our" problem in the mainline--maybe more so, since both sides of the left/right squabble are well represented in our denominations and are very busy tearing them apart from the inside. So if the Emerging conversation is finding answers to these problems, how on earth can we sit back and say, "All of this sounds great! We're certainly glad some of you evangelicals are learning to be more generous! Keep us posted!"

Aaargh! No! We have to join this conversation. We've been invited, specifically, on multiple occasions, by multiple leaders in the Emerging Church--and by "we" I mean mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Christians alike. And I personally know many mainline individuals and congregations which are engaging this conversation. And for me, personally, these two problems are something that I feel very strongly called to help solve--perhaps to devote the rest of my life to helping solve. Tomorrow evening, several fellow disciples and I will gather at my church to talk about starting an Emerging-style service at Holy Comforter--a small step in this direction, or so I pray. God, if it's your will,be with us as we try to engage both emerging generations and our brothers and sisters from other parts of the Body of Christ in new ways. Amen.

Opening doors?

Well, there’s lots going on in my ministry life right now. I hesitate to write too much about it here, because much is in flux and I don’t want to prejudge outcomes. In the last post I shared some of my thoughts regarding my church’s renewed focus on evangelism. Another Big Deal in my life is that my rector, Fr. Rick, is interested in working (with a small team that’s beginning to form, including me) on what we hesitate to call an “alternative worship service”, but which will be along the lines of Emerging Church gatherings: Experiential, Participatory, Image-based, and Connective. I’m really unspeakably excited about this. I’ll reprint here a paragraph I recently e-mailed to a friend that speaks to my passion for both of these new efforts:

“The single thing that I am most excited and passionate about right now is seeking and trying out answers to the following question: How can we make the faith of Jesus Christ relevant to emerging generations, who are often postmodern in outlook and post-Christian in upbringing? (This population includes many of my close friends, and included me as recently as three years ago.) I think exciting answers to this question are being explored by the Missional Church and Emerging Church movements, as well as the rich traditions of Anglicanism and other forms of Christianity. Many days, after reading a book or having a stimulating conversation or prayer session on these topics, I feel like my heart is ready to burst with a sense of mission and of work God has given me to do.”

To my non-Christian friends who read this blog: do not fear. I come in peace. I have no intention of trying to sell Christianity to you whenever we connect. On the other hand, I do know that for many of you being active in a church seems to make about as much sense as joining the circus. Sure, some folks may find it rewarding, but what could it possibly have to do with me?? What I’m interested in is coming up with better answers to that question, for those who might be asking it with some openness to the idea that the answer may not be the obvious “nothing”. These days, it’s easy to conclude that the church is all about closed-mindedness, bigotry, and exclusion on the one hand, empty irrelevance and dry rehashing of tradition on the other hand, and an unhealthy dose of divisiveness, defensiveness, and self-absorption all around. None of that is what Jesus or the first disciples had in mind. There are other alternatives. More than anything, I want to play some part in making those alternatives real and visible.

I’ll make one further admission: I really think this is what I’m supposed to do with the rest of my life. Less doctoring computers so they connect the American consumer with his destined advert, more doctoring churches so they connect the American seeker with her fellow humans, with the world, and with God. (Though I’ll probably be doing both, for who knows how long, to pay the bills.)

I’m not necessarily talking about ordained ministry, though I haven’t ruled it out. Nor have I ruled out teaching hang gliding to Asian tourists in the more crocodile-infested parts of Australia, if that’s what God wants me to do. (Please note: If You find that image amusing, as I rather suspect You do, You’d better be prepared to reveal some heretofore completely unsuspected spiritual and natural gifts, Buster.) In any case, one way or another, I want ministry to be a much bigger part of what I devote my time and talent to, so I pray that if that’s God’s will too, God will point the way to make it so. Amen.