This Week on Shapevine

Man, o man, is this ever a good week to tune in to Shapevine.com. Tonight (April 21st) at 6 PM CST you can catch Sally Morgenthaler. Tomorrow afternoon (April 22nd) at 3 PM CST you can have an online convo with Len Sweet who will be talking to Peter Rollins.

[Funny side story: Last summer I was flying to San Antonio to the Southern Baptist Convention and on the plane I was reading Peter Rollins’ How (Not) To Speak Of God. I noticed that the guy sitting next to me kept glancing over at what I was reading. He introduced himself as Danny Forshee and we had a nice conversation. Then he leaned up not-so-quietly to talk to the guy sitting in front of him (who he obviously knew) and proceeded to tell him that I was emergent <GASP!!>. I got a kick out of that.]

Anyway, if you want to get your emergent on, or if you want to be a part of some interesting conversations (you can even ask questions), check out Shapevine this week.

Books, Books, Books

You know…I had a really long post written out about the relationship of emergent and postmodernism and after I went back and scanned it I realized that even I didn’t want to read all of that. I don’t figure you would either. So here’s one that’s shorter and hopefully sweeter.

If you have any interests in what postmodernism is saying and if it has anything of value for the contemporary church (and I would resoundingly say that it does), then go read James K A Smith’s book Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism. It’s 160 short pages. He attempts to write in a way that is understandable to the average person. At times he succeeds fantastically. I enjoy how he introduces each chapter with a contemporary movie theme to illustrate what he’s going to say. There are several spots where I was left thinking that the “average person” I know would probably find some of the content difficult. I’m pretty average and I found it difficult. Nevertheless, it is more than worth the effort especially if you are engaged in ministry or for that matter if you are a follower of Jesus who is interested in engaging the broader culture around you.

There you have it. I guess that was just one book, wasn’t it?

The Gospel For A Community

I remember sitting in my seminary preaching lab when Dr. Grant Lovejoy told us that most Baptist preaching breaks down into one of the following: pray more, read your Bible more, give more, witness more.  Pretty true.  And one thing each of those has in common is that the emphasis is on the individual exercise of those things.

That’s because we tend to overwhelmingly view the Christian life as an individual endeavor.  But I think that individualism comes more from American culture than from the nature of the good news, the Biblical message and apostolic teaching.  I’ve been teaching a Bible study through Hebrews.  When the author of Hebrews wanted to address the threat of people in the church abandoning their faith he didn’t preach a good "pray more, read your Bible more, give more, witness more" message.  He challenged them to band together for mutual encouragement and accountability.  "But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin" (Heb. 3:13, ESV).

The gospel and the Christian life is not something we were meant to have a go at on our own.  But modern churches are often structured such that we continue to live largely isolated lives.  This is especially true the larger the church is.  I’ve known quite a few people who wanted to join a big church so that they could "get lost in the crowd."  But even in smaller churches our structures often keep us isolated from meaningful contact with one another.  We come.  We sit.  We sing.  We listen.  We leave.  And many won’t have any contact with anyone else from their church until the next official meeting time.  How is it possible, in that context, to "exhort one another every day?"  Could it be that in missing that we find one of the reasons for our own "hardening by the deceitfulness of sin?"  What would a gospel living community look like?  What would have to change in how we currently think of and practice the life of the church?  Are these things possible in the context of our present cultural situation?

The Myth of Objectivity

Posting has been a little sparse because I’ve been preoccupied - several funerals in the past two weeks, kids in soccer, cross country and basketball and, of course, the priority of taking in a few OU football games.

Thinking out loud: I believe there is such a thing as "objective" reality - or that there are things as they really are, not just as they are perceived.  I’ve even had friends tell me that they believe I’m one of the most objective people they know (don’t laugh!).  But the moment I say "I know…" doesn’t my knowing become subjective?  After all, I am a subject, not an object.  Thus, my knowing is the knowing of a subject - and thus subjective (by definition, it would seem).  I always have a context and my context will forever be shaped by certain contextual realities - my place of birth, my ethnic origin, my social/economic status, the particular family into which I was born, my educational background and a whole lot more.  My understanding of the world, how it works, who I am, what life is meant to be, are all heavily influenced by that context.

It should seem obvious that a white, middle-class, college educated, 21st Century American, son of a Baptist deacon and loving parents would think differently about the world and how it works than a poor, black, uneducated African, son of an abusive shaman father.  I think it is safe to say that even if the parents were Christian - say a middle-class Chinese laborer who’s mother works in a sweat shop making toys for Mattel.  Would we view the teachings of Scripture differently because of our context?  What makes the American context superior to all others when it comes to understanding something like Scripture?  Or am I wrong that we view it that way?  Because it sure seems to me, especially for Baptists in the south (and I’m broadly including Oklahoma here because of the strong Southern Baptist presence) that we view it that way.

These thoughts generated by a post from David Phillips.

What Does The Emerging Church Stand For?

Andrew Perriman has addressed that question at his Open Source Theology site.  It’s not the shortest of articles, but it’s good, and I like his answers.  If you’ve wondered about the "emerging church" this will give you a good description that isn’t a typical caricature.

Missional Order - The Follow-up

Last week I posted on a gathering that will be hosted by Allelon in October to discuss the formation of a Missional Order (follow the link for new updated info on the Allelon website).  My friend Alan Cross has asked what this missional order might look like.  While I don’t have any specific answers for this particular order (and since it has yet to be formed I doubt anyone does as of yet), I want to say something about what it could look like in light of some current trends in the church.

For about four years now there has been a movement arising that is becoming known as the new monasticism.  You can read a little about it here and also in this Christianity Today article.  Scot McKnight also posted a question about it back in February and you can read some responses in the comments of that post.  For a concrete example you can check out the Northumbria Community.

According to the newmonasticism.org website there are twelve distinguishing marks of the new monasticism.  They are:

1) Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.

                   

2) Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.

                   

3) Hospitality to the stranger

                   

4) Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.

                   

5) Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church.

                   

6) Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community along the lines of the old novitiate.

                   

7) Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.

                   

Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.

                   

9) Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.

                   

10) Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies.

                   

11) Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.

                   

12) Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.

As Jamie Arpin-Ricci mentions in the comments of Scot McKnight’s post, these marks could and perhaps should characterize every community of believers.

What I discovered at last year’s Emergent Gathering is that there is no one definition of what a missional order might look like, but there are some common characteristics.  Such orders may or may not involve communal living.  Some will live communally in the same home/building.  Others will live in the same neighborhood or community while yet others may be separated by states, or even countries.  I would suspect that the Missional Order that develops out of the Allelon meeting will focus more on a shared commitment to a way of life than shared space and economic resources.

A common characteristic of these "intentional communities" is a commitment to a shared way of life, known as the rule of the order.  The rule will generally involve a vow or vows to one another which may address any number of commitments.  While we are perhaps most familiar with monastic vows of chastity and poverty, these commitments in new monasticism tend more toward a simple lifestyle and certain values.  For instance, the Rule of the Northumbria Community involves commitments to availability (to God and others) and vulnerability (through prayer, devotion to the Scriptures and accountability to one another).

I suspect that the Missional Order will involve some shared commitments to some missional ways of living and that those who participate/join the order will take some sort of vow to those commitments.

More specifically to Alan’s questions:

Would it work in a local church?  I almost certainly imagine so.  The challenge will be in preventing something like this from appearing to be a group of the "super spiritual" in the midst of the "common folk."  Can that be done?  I believe so.  But there would have to be some intentional ways to stress the common journey of all in the church and that this is simply another avenue to pursue God’s direction that does not make one more spiritual than others nor would it be exclusive.

Is it something like a missional covenant that people would make?  Yes, I think it would be something exactly like that.

What would be involved?  Hopefully I’ve covered much of that.  Beyond what I’ve already said I think we will simply have to wait and see what comes out of the gathering in Washington.  The fact that Andrew Jones will be helping to lead the way in this gives me a lot of confidence that it will be well-grounded, Biblical and balanced.

By the way, if you are interested in the Allelon gathering be aware that space will be limited to 50, so make up your mind quickly and register at their site ASAP.

The Christ In You

One of the books in my "Recommended Reads" category in the left sidebar is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together.  The first time I read it that little book made a huge impact on my conceptions of the church and church life.  Well…let me correct that just a bit.  It didn’t simply make an impact on my conceptions of the church, but it made a rather significant impact on my attitudes about the church.

Being affiliated with the "Emergent crowd" it would be easy to plead guilty to a sort-of griping attitude about the church.  By and large I think the emergent conversations that are predominant these days have moved well beyond the whining or complaining stage and have become much more constructive.  But the appeal of the ongoing emergent movement has been a shared sense that the evangelical church has, by and large, let us down.  We see the lavish lifestyles of evangelical poster preachers and our guts tell us that there’s got to be more to our faith than that.  We see the plastic lives represented in the plastic stage sets on TBN and the plastic hairdos of their leader’s wives and we long for something of greater worth than synthetic polymers.  We watch as so many in our churches seem to simply be going through the motions and we long for something more enduring.

It was during a period of criticizing the church, even my local church, that I first read Life Together and was summarily beaten about the head and neck by Bonhoeffer’s words.  I remember phrases like, "God has not called you to constantly be taking the church’s temperature."  Bonhoeffer called me back to a love and appreciation for the bride of Christ even when she’s laying on the couch in sweats, not wearing any makeup, eating Bon Bons and watching Jerry Springer all day.  The perfect church is a myth, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t strive for something better than a church-going Peg Bundy.

Occasionally, even in the prevailing evangelical church or church-type setting we get glimpses of what we long for church to be like.  I got a few glimpses of that this past week.  Bonhoeffer wrote about experiencing the Christ in others, particularly when the Christ in us seems weak, remote or beyond our outstretched grasp.  Now, I’ve been around teenagers long enough to have a more-than-healthy cynicism when it comes to some of the expressions of faith that come out of youth camps.  Too many years of seeing too many of those commitments fall too flat in too short a time will do that to you.  But last week I saw the Christ in those kids shine through in some ways that pointed me to the potential that exists in the church of tomorrow.

I saw senior high students voluntarily partnering with middle school kids - even the really annoying ones - to talk about what the Scriptures are saying and how God is working in their lives.  I saw kids who are not an ongoing part of our church or youth group who were welcomed by the others as if they were longtime friends.  I heard as one after another shared about their brokenness and how they were beginning to experience healing through the presence of Christ and the presence of Christ they experience in their Christian friends.  I watched as they helped plan how they would share this work of God with their moms and dads, grandparents and church family and they didn’t come up with your typical, "We want to thank the cooks, ’cause the food was really great and I had a great time and thanks for letting us go," but instead led us in a deep calling out to a great God who had encountered them in the Arbuckle mountains of southern Oklahoma.

I will remember this camp experience.  Not for that infernal hill we had to climb several times a day making my knees sore.  Not for the new air conditioned tabernacle where we met to worship.  Not for the music or the preaching.  Not for the multitude of "decisions" that were made.  But for the Christ I witnessed in those kids which was unparalleled in all my years of summer youth camp.

Spiritual Discipline Tuesday - Introduction

Each Tuesday, for several months, I will join a group of other missional-minded bloggers in a series of posts on spiritual disciplines.  I hope it’s Tuesdays or I’m going to be out of sync for at least a couple of weeks. [By the way, check out Joe Kennedy for the list and links to the others who are joining in.]  Today is for introductions - to spiritual disciplines, that is.

I went to high school with one of the greatest pure athletes I’ve ever personally known.  I’ll not use his name because not everything I have to say will be flattering.  He was a basketball phenomenon.  He was dunking with ease at sixteen.  Our junior year in high school we won the state 5A basketball championship, the largest class at the time (no doubt the fact that some guy from Tulsa named Wayman Tisdale being hurt greatly improved everyone else’s chances).  And he didn’t even have to try.  When we’d run wind sprints in practice he always came in second-to-last.  Not because he was slow.  Because he didn’t try, and second-to-last only because he didn’t want to be dead last.  And he didn’t have to try.

Every tournament we played in that year he was named the MVP.  College scouts were all over him.  He went on to play for a major Division I college.  And that’s where his effort - or sometimes lack thereof - began to show.

He was still a really good college player.  He would have moments of brilliance.  In fact, he scored over 2000 points in his college career.  But there were games where he simply didn’t show up.  Nevertheless, 2000 points will get you drafted in the NBA.  But he never made it in the big league.  Within a few years of being drafted he was playing in the minor league Continental Basketball Association (now defunct).  It wasn’t long before his basketball career was also defunct.  Turns out he wasn’t even a superstar in the CBA.

I don’t believe the thing that made the difference was talent.  He had the talent.  He did not have the discipline.  Effort who’s goal is second-to-last may work in high school but it will not get you in the game with the likes of Karl Malone or Charles Barkley - or even Carl English or Charles Smith.

One of the reasons great players are great is because they try to be great every day, not just when they’re in the game.  I’m a 5′9" white man who could be the poster boy for "White Men Can’t Jump."  But I love to play basketball.  If I want to be any good, though, I cannot simply run onto the court at game time and expect to play like Michael Jordan.  In fact, Michael Jordan didn’t simply run onto the court expecting to play great.  He worked every day to practice great so that when he got into the game he would play great.

Spiritual disciplines are our way of practicing great so that when we are thrust into the moment of challenge we will perform great.  As followers of Christ we have been called to do the things he did.  But he made those things look easy.  To us they seem very hard.  Yet Jesus promised that his yoke is easy ad his burden is light.  His commands are not burdensome.  How can that be?

It is not because we take on his characteristics through spiritual osmosis.  It is because we do the things he did.  That doesn’t simply mean that as he turned the other cheek, so do we; as he blessed those who cursed and persecuted him, so do we.  It means that as he went out to a solitary place to commune with the Father, so do we; as he fasted, so do we; as he prayed, so do we; as he meditated on the Scripture, so do we; as he lived a life of simplicity, so do we; as he gave generously to others, so do we. 

In other words, as he disciplined his life, so do we.  It was in the day-to-day activities of life that Jesus honed his spiritual muscles and perfected his shot.  It was there that his fullness of the Spirit and communion with God because so overwhelming that he could truly do the things he did both naturally and with ease.  We, too, can learn that easy way of life.  It is actually much easier than all of the alternatives.  Try living life apart from the strength of the Spirit and that close communion with the Father and you will discover just how difficult life can be, just how heavy that burden.  But learn a way of life - his way of life - where doing the things he did comes easy and the load is light because we are not carrying it under our own efforts, but are yoked to him.  This is where the spiritual disciplines will lead us.

Too many Christians live their lives simply wanting to make sure they don’t come in dead last.  Second-to-last?  That’s not so bad.  But that is choosing the difficult path.  As long as life presents no greater challenge than high school then you may be able to make it.  But as you grow up you enter a world where high school spirituality simply becomes too difficult to adequately address the things you will face in life.  Come.  Let us learn together how to take on this easy yoke, this light burden.

Giving Away Spiritual Formation

Back to David Fitch’s book The Great Giveaway.  In chapter seven Fitch writes about the modern evangelical church’s giving away spiritual formation.  This chapter was a challenge for me.  I’ve had a fairly longstanding policy that I do not lay out the "counseling" shingle as a part of my ministry.  I tell people that I will giving them all of the Biblical counsel that I know how, but that if they present problems that are so deep seated that I feel I’m over my head I have no problem referring them to an outside Christian counselor.

Some of my feelings come from my time spent in Clinical Pastoral Education about fifteen years ago.  It was eye-opening as we sat in our small group time and "processed" the stuff in our pasts that have formed us into who we are while we remained largely ignorant of just exactly how those things had affected us, both positively and especially negatively.  Letting things out of those dark recesses was painful for many.  And these were fellow ministers.

To be honest I didn’t know what to do with most of that.  The CPE setting I was in was heavily influenced by both Freud and Jung.  Of course, I thought that was rather odd as many of their ideas seemed incompatible to me.  We got in touch with our "inner child."  Occasionally there was a little "dream interpretation."  In the end, people got some things out, but I wondered if they ever really got "better."

Ironically it was also during this time, as I was one day walking between Presbyterian Hospital and Children’s Hospital in OKC, that I had a copy of Time Magazine in my hand asking on the front cover if perhaps Freud was dead.  If he was it appeared that someone forgot to tell our CPE supervisors.  But I remember wondering how practically useful any of the psychological part of the program was, mainly because I just notice that we have an ever-increasing number of psychologists and psychotherapists in our culture but we don’t seem to be any healthier for it (no offense, Bowden).

But I had pretty well bought into the belief that the social sciences were largely neutral - descriptive more than prescriptive.  This is what Fitch tells us the evangelical church at large believes.  But he challenges that notion writing about the postmodern critique on modern psychology.  Foucault says that psychology is simply another power game that provides an interpretive grid from which to understand ourselves.  But make no mistake, it is an interpretive grid.  It is not reality.  It is a particular understanding of reality.  The therapist invites the individual to submit themselves to this understanding of who they are and the world around them.  Just because it goes by the name "science" does not make it neutral.  In fact, that has been a major critique of postmodernism: showing that the sciences, whether hard or soft, are not "objective" or "neutral" but approach their task from a particular perspective.

Fitch suggests that these psychological grids are not only not neutral but that they are designed to form the self (spiritual formation) in a particular way - be it the Freudian way, the Jungian way, the Rogerian way, the Adlerian way, or some other way.  He also suggests that all of these approaches are largely, if not exclusively, western in their approach and in their own ways show people how to live in a democratic capitalist world.  And they are fundamentally contrary to spiritual formation in the ways of Jesus.

The modern church - at least and especially the Protestant forms of it - have given away some important aspects of spiritual formation to the social sciences.  We’ve traded in the notion of self-denial for one of self-actualization; taking up our cross and following Jesus for taking up our inner child and returning to innocence; confessing our faults to other believers for confessing our dysfunctions to a therapist [I need to do a separate post on confession].  In place of forsaking our evil ways we learn to "positively appropriate" the dark aspects of our shadow side.  And sermons become therapeutic.

And that approach will shape us spiritually.   But what shape will that form us into?  As a gentleman in our church reminded me recently: we will become disciples.  The only question is what kind of disciples will we become?

So Fitch says there is no therapy apart from the church.  We can learn things from modern therapy.  We can learn the importance of unpacking our past and making a confession of those things.  We can learn how to be accountable to one another.  We can learn the necessity of owning our own sin and failures rather than blaming them on others.  But modern therapy views itself as the foundation in which one can overlay any spirituality they choose.  Fitch says it needs to work the other way around.  We submit ourselves to the foundation of life specifically and exclusively in Christ and if there is something from Freud or Jung that is of value in breaking down the barriers to that then fine, but spiritual formation in the way of Christ is our foundation.

Fitch suggests that we need to recapture the confessional in the church.  Not necessarily the Roman Catholic confessional, but the apostle James kind of confessional.  So he suggests that we move the work of the therapist out of the office and into the church.  I’ll follow up with some thoughts on confession.

Render Unto Caesar

Well…I knew it was coming but being busy this week I hadn’t checked to see if it was up yet.  Robert Marus, a writer for ABP, is doing contributing to a six part series on religion and politics.  The first article can be found here. [And yes, I’m linking to this because he quoted little ol’ me.]  Of course, in true "guilt-by-association" fashion this will ruin me….to be quoted in ABP….along with Ben Cole.  The madness must stop.

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