What is a Missional Church anyway?

I've been posting a lot about Missional Church lately. Here's a little bit of clarification about this model I'm strongly resonating with.

A thought I can't shake...

While listening to a lecture in my youth ministry evangelism course, a short rabbit trail stuck out to me about who our neighbors and friends are.

"When little kids in gym class are told to grab a friend, they reach for the kid's hand right next to them. Teenagers and adults often look around the room and ignore the person right next to them."- Chap Clark

I do the same thing. I hadn't realized how the messages I received from my culture pressured me to ignore my neighbor. At my darkest I look to partner with people who can give me something or promote me or make me feel good. I don't have any profound things to add to that quote, just the image of children in some PE class grabbing their neighbors hand.

What kind of world would this be if we took to heart this notion of friendship? How would we treat our neighbors? our coworkers? our family?

This week my cohort is looking at economics and social justice issues and we will do some processing together about ways the church can speak to these issues. This is one of the first quotes I came across in my assigned readings.

Mother Teresa said, “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, and deserted by everybody. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love.”
Arloa Sutter (2010-09-01). The Invisible: What the Church Can Do to Find and Serve the Least of These (Kindle Locations 448-450). Wesleyan Publishing House. Kindle Edition.

What is a convert?

This semester I'm taking two classes. One of which is with one of my youth ministry heroes, Dr. Chap Clark, Author of Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers (Youth, Family, and Culture). 

In our first few weeks we have been reflecting on something called Incarnational Witness. The basic idea is that our methods of evangelism should reflect the life and model of ministry Jesus practiced. This model dictates that evangelism should be motivated by the same things that motivated Jesus, like being sent by the Father. We should model our evangelism after Christ's example, leaving our place of comfort to go to the broken, the hurting, and the forgotten.

• These lectures are invigorating my love for youth ministry!
• The course material is also solidifying my belief in relational youth ministry as opposed to creating a class or a program for every kind of problem teens will face. When I look back at my adolescence, it was people who journeyed with me that made the difference and not classes or even sermons! I remember the way my youth pastor and youth leaders listened to me, came to my games, and took my questions. I pray that I can be that for our youth and train others in the same model. 

When you think back to your teenage years or even a recent crisis, what made the difference for you?

Are we welcome?

This past Sunday we had a service where our youth sent in questions via text message and our team took turns answering them. I was struck by one of the questions, "My parents and I used to be Jehovah's Witness and now we've made up our own religion. Are we welcome at Shoreline?" Most of my thoughts were drawn from Shaping of Things to Come, The: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church

• First off, I posted about our predominant culture's posture towards 'do it yourself' religion and was not surprised to see it show up in our youth meeting. 
• I also spoke to her about our Church's philosophy. Shoreline wishes to engage Austin's culture and to say that they were not welcome to attend our services based on their beliefs of behavior wouldn't sit well with our leadership. We don't make attendance about belief and behavior, however we make no apology for teaching very specific things about how we believe and how our church family should behave. 
• Then, there was almost sadness in the question. "Are we welcome?" That part of the text, as it was read aloud broke my heart. In it I heard a longing for community, for belonging, and for connection. This is so prevalent in our culture, regardless of age. 

How about your experience with church communities? What is your experience with church community?  Are there things that people do or believe that would make them unwelcome?

"Radical Alternative"

I forgot where I found this, but it showed up in a file I clipped from my studies.

Stanley Hauerwas and William Willmon propose a "confessing church" model as a "radical alternative" to the "activist" (Constantinian) or "conversionist" (privatized) models that are current. What they envision is the church as "an alternative polis, a countercultural social structure called church." Such a church has its overriding political task "that again asserts that God, not nations, rule the world, that boundaries of God's kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price." They invite us to see ourselves with the exilic eyes as "resident" aliens, an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief."

• The privatized church model is centered too much on the individual for me. The church is not a provider of goods and services. It is something so much more than that. 

• Whether we like it or not, we are "resident" aliens in our surrounding culture.  

What if we (as the church) viewed our apartments, homes, or where ever we live as foreign embassies, representing another kingdom? 

How would this change our church programs? How would this change the way we work, go to school, and interact with our neighbors? 

Is there one way to Heaven?

In a service on Christmas day, our worship pastor made a comment about Jesus being the only way to Heaven. The claim was a little more direct than we usually make, but I thought it was well in the appropriate bounds for a Christian worship gathering. I knew there was a Muslim man attending our service to watch his son perform in our service. I remember glancing his way to see his reaction and I was surprised to see him clapping. Even more so, he came up to me after service to tell me how much he enjoyed worshipping with us and to thank me for mentoring his son.

That's not the first surprise. The people who were offended by the claim were from our congregation. This week, these two youtube videos are assigned viewing in my Contemporary Cultures class at Fuller. 

What do you think of these? Is there one way to Heaven or are there multiple ways? Has Oprah gone off the deep end here? How would you respond to these women?

I'm pretty conservative in my beliefs, but I'd like to know what you think. 

I want to be missional.

I've been a way a while because of work and school, but I have been reading a lot and I'm ready to start posting again. This one is longer than usual, but it encapsulates what I've been chewing on and wrestling with in my life and calling. I hope you enjoy!


The missional church is incarnational, not attractional, in its ecclesiology. By incarnational we mean it does not create sanctified spaces into which unbelievers must come to encounter the gospel. Rather, the missional church disassembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society in order to be Christ to those who don’t yet know him.

The missional church is messianic, not dualistic, in its spirituality. That is, it adopts the worldview of Jesus the Messiah, rather than that of the Greco-Roman empire. Instead of seeing the world as divided between the sacred (religious) and profane (nonreligious), like Christ it sees the world and God’s place in it as more holistic and integrated.

The missional church adopts an apostolic, rather than a hierarchical, mode of leadership. By apostolic we mean a mode of leadership that recognizes the fivefold model detailed by Paul in Ephesians 4. It abandons the triangular hierarchies of the traditional church and embraces a biblical, flat-leadership community that unleashes the gifts of evangelism, apostleship, and prophecy, as well as the currently popular pastoral and teaching gifts.

Frost, Michael; Hirsch, Alan (2001-01-01). Shaping of Things to Come, The (Kindle Locations 346-356). Baker Book Group. Kindle Edition.

Awake

     A week ago I was awakened to the wonderful world of records. My friend bough me a real record player on craig's list and the first album I've ever known is U2's "The Unforgettable Fire." I know our Fuller Seminary rapid reading instructions tell us that music impairs us from reading well, and  know the instructions are correct. Some habits are hard to break, but I'm glad I didn't. 

     While reading Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership I find myself repeatedly setting the book down because the lyrics and tones of the songs intersect perfectly with what I'm reading. It is too much of what my soul needs to be a coincidence. The album's title just hit me! "The Unforgettable Fire!!!"

     Rock and Roll may not be your cup of tea, but I thought I'd share my experience because I feel like I'm so good at sharing the struggles I have, especially with my friends in ministry and at Fuller. At times I fear I'm too honest. The image manager inside my soul kicks in and I wonder if everyone thinks I'm a "downer." These past two weeks have seen major times of renewal in my family, professional, and soul life. 

• Marie and I are finding "the new normal" with two kids instead of one.
• Conflict and Crisis at work doesn't take the emotional toll on me like it used to. 
• I'm having personal time with God more regularly again. I even dusted off my personal rule of life (from my first Fuller class) and set up a reminder for the doc to automatically pop up in my outlook calendar at the appropriate intervals. My soul is feeding for the first time in a long while.

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What is the Bible?

Our ML 520 Biblical Foundations of Misison class is exploring the idea that the Bible is a missionary book. Of all the ways I've heard the Bible explained, (handbook, rulebook, instructionbook, etc) this is the theory I'm most attracted to. I'll post my report soon. Can't wait to dig into this one!

"That Book is not the book of a nation, but the Book of nations, because it places before us the fortunes of one nation as a symbol unto all the rest, because it connects the history of this one people with the origin of the world, and by a series of earthly and spiritual developments, of facts necessary and accidental continues it unto the remotest regions of the farthest eternities." 

-Goethe 

Book Review: Jesus and Community

About the author: Gerhard Lohfink grew up in Germany in the midst of rising national tensions as nations built up to World War II forcing him to move many times. He excelled in the field of academics gaining permission to pursue higher degrees while serving as pastor and chaplain in various posts. His perspective as a German, a priest, and college professor uniquely qualify him to make bold claims with his thesis and to support it with evidence from scripture, early church history, and first hand experience.

About the Thesis: His thesis claims that Christian Community’s form must come from the practices of Jesus that we have in the form of the gospels, which was uniquely focused on Israel, gathering it together so that the world my experience the kingdom of God, bringing God’s reign into the earthly realm, standing out in the midst the dominant culture, and acting as Christ’s agent of change.

About the Structure: He supports his thesis using a 4-section structure. First sections define Jesus’ model of Community as implied by his actions on earth and Old Testament precedent. The final sections outline how Apostles and early followers continued the important aspects of community instituted by Christ. These practices include but are not limited to: praying for the sick, living as a contrast society, bearing the identity of “God’s people,” passively resisting the kingdom of this world, and cultivating a community of equals that serve each other.

Personal Reaction: Lohfink’s repetitious structure aided my understanding of his thesis. With out the repetition of a claim, a scripture, an explanation of the passage, and conclusions, he would certainly have lost me. Thankfully we did not have to read it in German. From my perspective these insights are valuable, but perhaps too familiar. This may be a byproduct of the generation I’m a part of and the generation of people I work with, but I found myself too easily agreeing with Lohfink’s highly authentic, communal, egalitarian, peaceful, and accountable version of Christian community. After reflection, I find myself asking, “Why don’t more people in my stream of Christianity know about this book?”

About Application: As for application to my ministry situation, I think this book will find it’s place in a stockpile I’ll return to in a search to provide Shoreline’s youth an alternative to consumerism. The image I found most vivid was in the introduction. It talked about a priest, a counselor, and physician roaming a city “on call” (Location, 84). This vivid picture illustrates a tension I currently feel in ministry to a large church. We want to help people, but Lohfink challenged my thinking about the way Mega Churches serve congregations. There certainly isn’t anything wrong with serving a parishioner, but what if the structure of a community actually encourages individualism? If Jesus was in charge of my youth group, (a bold thought, I know) what would he say about our programs and the impulses they feed? How would they compare to the picture of Christ’s community provided by Lohfink?

Initially, I think we have a long way to go as a contrast society. We have a gathering, but I wonder about how much of Lohfink’s community we experience. There are brilliant moments that punctuate our program, that come in Small Groups, Retreats, and Summer Camps where young people catch a glimpse of what God’s Kingdom might look like, but this rarely translates into the day to day life of our community. This issue cannot be solved with a sermon series or a small group study. Perhaps I need to look at my own life and ask if I’m buying what I’m “selling?” My gut level hunch is that young people will not do it until they see it, so perhaps what our group needs is a contrast society within our community.

Book Review: A Community of Character

A bit about the author: Stanley Hauerwas plainly says that he identifies strongly with the (Southern) Methodist tradition, but is open to ideas from other streams of Christianity (Page 6). He’s the son of a workingman from Indiana, who pursued higher education instead of staying close to home. He taught at Notre Dame and currently teaches at Duke Divinity School. He’s a prolific author and thinker, whose books are required reading in many theology programs.

Thesis: Hauerwas claims that the Church is to be a group of people who view life through the lens of Biblical Narrative and live in such a way that is true to those stories (Page 1).  That is the main way that Christians will “reassert” their relevance to culture (Page 1).

Structure: This book is a collection of essays grouped into three sections. Part 1 explores and explains what Hauerwas means by a narrative and it’s implications for community. Part 2 builds upon the definition of narrative and broadly traces it’s development and usage historically and ends with implications for spiritual formation. Section 3 takes advantage of the stage set by previous definitions and explorations and delves into critical areas in Christian Social Ethics. These issues are a definition of family, politics, how to talk about sex, and a response to the issue of abortion.

Personal Application: I am grateful for the way the thesis challenges the Church to be different from the world without withdrawing from it. Growing up in the height of the Religious Right’s popularity, left me questioning if the church’s main responsibility was in the arena of social policy, especially politics.  He supports his arguments and even includes many ideas contrary to his own position. This made his ideas more credible, even if it was hard to stick with the overarching thoughts in each essay. It was a stretch for me to read. I found myself agreeing with his positions, but perplexed as to how to apply it to my discussions with teenagers and parents.

The biggest challenge for me is how to apply these thoughts to my own family. I found myself without a quick answer to why I want children (Page 157). I’ve wanted to be a Father as long as I can remember, but I found myself without a vocabulary to explain why. After this read, and a little bit of thinking, I can say that I want my family to be ambassadors of another kingdom. I want us intimately involved in our neighborhood and church community. Now comes the hard part, doing this on purpose. Marie and I used to dream of taking our daughters to outreaches, doing things for our neighbors, and modeling a different way of life for them. However, much of this fervor gave way to the daily pressures of life. Hauerwas gives hope to this as well, as we can even see the mundane as “heroic”  (Page 174).

Seminary Update

In December I finally bit the bullet and applied to a seminary for my 2nd try at grad school. I'm about 1/2 way through my Master's of Divinity degree. I missed the deadline to start Jan 1st, but I made it into the 2nd session of 2008. The first class was surprisingly helpful to me. We took a hard look at what the word "calling" means, what that means for us, our roles in ministry, and the roles of mentors in our lives. We also wrestled with some hard questions about our futures in ministry. One of my favorite parts of the class was coming up with a personalized learning plan for the rest of my seminary experience. I'll post it below:

Section One: My Personal Calling Statement

My purpose is to unveil the beauty of God’s love. It is a simple purpose intentionally.

Family First: I am a husband and father before anything else.
Rhythm: I take time each week to remind myself that I’m not God.
Point to beauty: All truth is ours, and its my job to point it out when I see it.
All things: I will seek to live a life of moderation.
Underdog: I will speak for those who have no voice.
God and others: I will respect all things God made.
Poet and prophet: I seek to tell the truth with excellence.
Abide: I reset in God’s finished work.
Weak: Weak is the new strong.

I see myself using my talents to inspire people to grown in their walk with the Lord. I will use my talents to speak, teach, and write in order to celebrate truth and beauty. I will share my story, the messy parts and the good parts. I will sharpen my skills to equip and train others for ministry.

Section Two: My Design, Shape, and Call

I am prepared to do what God wants in the sense that I’m open to whatever he wants to do with my life. I’m not perfectly prepared as far as my abilities and maturity come into play. Overall, I would say that I’m in the process of discovering and doing what God wants me to do, and I’m getting better every time.

In order to get where I need to get, I need to grow the skill of abiding in the vine. When I start to depend on my own skills and talents, things in my life quickly unravel and I make a mess of things.

Where do I need to develop so that I can be obedient to my call?
One skill that I need to develop is producing leaders that produce other leaders. At this point, I’ve been able to reproduce myself in other leaders, but they are not developing other people. These leaders are doing well running services, projects, and whole campuses of our youth ministry, but they are not producing new leaders. As a result they are shouldering too much of the work load and are at risk for burnout. I need to acquire skills that will help me equip them to equip others.


Section Three: My Rockbridge Learning

I’ve been asking the following question of myself a lot lately: “Why am I here?” I’m on this planet and enrolled in Rockbridge to find creative ways to point out the truth and beauty of what God has done. I will do this through creating meaningful worship gatherings, serving junior high students and their families, reproducing other poets, prophets, and preachers, and most importantly being the best husband and father that I can be.

Right now, my competency to lead others in creating worship gatherings is developing. I need to learn how to express my ideas in a compelling way that helps others understand what I have in my head. I need to get better at having a clearer picture in my head of what creative ideas I do have. When I get an idea, I share it too quickly. When this happens, it doesn’t seem like I own it and it is hard to persuade other people to be excited about its execution because I don’t fully grasp what I want to do.

This happens in a few key areas. The first, being my family. I need to get better at sharing my heart with my wife so that she will know the best way to support me. I can’t do this if I don’t know myself, so some soul searching to find the true me is also necessary.

I need to spend more time in prayer and personal reflection. I spend nearly none. I use the argument that my life is a prayer, but the truth is, I rarely take time out for directed spiritual renewal. Stolen moments throughout the day are well and good, but there is something to be said about having an appointment to seek the Lord and listen for His voice. How can I know who I am if I never ask God and never listen?

If I take just a few minutes out of my week to review the creative minutes and sermon titles from Pastor Rob, I can prepare better for our creative meetings. Then my ideas will not be as off the cuff and raw as they usually are.

Taking time to rest in the Father’s love will also give me the confidence and vision I need to reproduce other poets, prophets, and preachers. The hesitation I experience is because I’m not abiding in the vine. The times that I fall short occur because I have the bad habit of relying on my own talents and creativity instead of the Lord’s strength and wisdom.

Section Four: Top 7-10 Ministry Competencies (there are 35 total, but here are the ones I picked to work on)
Here are the competencies where I need further development in light of this calling:

3. Designs creative worship experiences that involve music, media, and the arts.
*5. Communicates Scripture in a way that leads an intended audience to worship and to experience life transformation.

11. Functions effectively with professional staff and church members and works with others in resolving conflict in the body of Christ.
19. Demonstrates a vibrant spiritual life through the implementation of spiritual disciplines including prayer, Bible study, holiness of life and communion with God.
22. Exercises the administrative skills of strategic planning, organizing, leading and evaluating the work of ministry that leads to achievement of defined goals and the mission of the New Testament church.
25. Assesses the needs of the ministry community, designs appropriate actions to meet those needs, and effectively markets the church’s ministry in the community.
29. Communicates biblical truth through preaching, personal witness, teaching, speaking, writing, music, and other ways as may be appropriate to fulfill the Great Commission.
33. Interprets the culture and plans appropriate strategies for sharing the gospel in that culture.
34. Respects persons of different cultural, social and religious backgrounds.
35. Articulates the Christian message and contrasts that message with other worldviews and major world religions.


I'm not really sure where this will all end up, but I think it is a decent start. I'm taking some time now to save up money to pay for another class and to transfer some credits in from my old seminary. Looking forward...