• Archive for December, 2011

    Tweets for the Week : 2011-12-26

    December 26, 2011 // No Comments »

    • from the lifeasmission archives: I Think I Kinda Knew It…. http://t.co/qIitYTDH #FB #
    • Aubrey's gonna try & sleep her way through her 1st Christmas Eve service. It's UMC, so that just might work ;) http://t.co/lqw8iMsL #
    • RT @downtownelgin: The DNA is saddened by the passing of friend Victor Gonzalez. http://t.co/SDTxkDti // very sad indeed. #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: A Follow Up http://t.co/Ye8LkBX5 #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Riding for Refugees http://t.co/EN6CgPYW #FB #
    • Perhaps one of the worst advertising slogans I have ever read. #FB http://t.co/1Xrhh6nK #
    • Empty personal & work inboxes as we prepare to head to OH & Christmas vacation begins. #FB #ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Confusing Foundations and Convictions http://t.co/XDyG4Ap3 #FB #
    • Recently read both, "What is the Mission of the Church?" & "Against Calvinism." Both lean on very diff. understandings of the gospel. #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Lessons in Entertai… er… Excellence http://t.co/Qwhxtnyc #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Party Fuller Style http://t.co/iI3upO68 #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: The World Our Words Create http://t.co/m53YfQib #FB #

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    Tweets for the Week : 2011-12-19

    December 19, 2011 // No Comments »

    • Apparently @ATT has decided to discontinue both cellular & data service to the @ElginIL area. Horrible network consistency. #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: JR's Career Path http://t.co/5euQxvoZ #FB #
    • Sad (albeit hilarious) commentary on the commodification of the Christian faith. http://t.co/VRr1n1Ka #FB #footballplayersarenotourheroes #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Spreading the Wealth http://t.co/eIFl76c6 #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Party Fuller Style http://t.co/iI3upO68 #FB #
    • Looking to borrow a copy of "Post-Christendom" by Stuart Murray. Anyone? #FB #
    • Showing his true colors @nseminary Xmas party, @fitchest goes for the STBX bag only to get stuck w/ a Max Lucado cd. http://t.co/4E9APvss #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Discovering the God Imagination http://t.co/76nqO3eO #FB #
    • I've definitely become a fan of @sugarsync, but man do I wish more ppl. would integrate it w/ their apps as w/ @dropbox. Big help. #FB #
    • Out to dinner w/ my girls & then off to a celebration of Advent w/ some neighborhood friends – just what I need after a day of grading. #FB #
    • 400K views so far (100K might be me ;) . If you're even vaguely familiar w/ discussions ab. Tebow, you'll love this! http://t.co/5qJrDlna #FB #
    • RT @FullerDMiss: New video up for DMiss: http://t.co/00I1K6uk // one of the best doctoral programs running right now IMHO #FB #
    • Brilliant article from @theotherjournal on how/why Christians tend to ask the wrong questions ab. capitalism http://t.co/yLIZxxc0 #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: 3DM, Learning Communites, and the End of Celebrity-Driven Christian Gatherings http://t.co/T918H24E #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: This is Why I Love Stanley Hauerwas http://t.co/Ive7VrSx #FB #
    • I'm yet to see Tebow plan an NFL down, but I've heard the relevant chatter. Which is why I found this hilarious! http://t.co/5qJrDlna #FB #
    • ? Of the morning: Is it more accurate to say "Jesus came to die" or "Jesus died because He came." #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Tweets for the Week : 2010-06-21 http://t.co/5ZKZ5Rmn #FB #

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    Tweets for the Week : 2011-12-12

    December 12, 2011 // No Comments »

    Posted in weekly tweets

    The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens

    December 9, 2011 // No Comments »

    Below is the fourth and final article that we’ve submitted to Patheos as a contribution to their forum on “The Future of the Seminary.”  I don’t believe it’s actually up over there yet and it seems like that forum has sort of run out of steam, so I thought I’d go ahead and post it here.  If it does make it up over at Patheos, I’ll update this post.  If this happens to be new to you and you’ve got some interest, here’s where you can find the first three articles:

    Shaping Students w/ the Character and Competency of Jesus (lifeasmission | Patheos)

    Missionary Pastors for a Missionary God (lifeasmission | Patheos)

    Ministers are Mobilizers, Not Managers (lifeasmission | Patheos)

    As I’ve noted in previous posts, this is some edited content from a more comprehensive white paper that I worked on.  You can find the whole paper here as a resource at thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com.

    I hope to round this all out with a (more brief!) summary post soon.  Thanks to those of you who have been following along and weighing in.  Engagement is the only way to refine these sort of ideas toward the creation of something truly new, helpful, and concrete.

    This is the 4th and final article in a series that we have been happy to offer related this Patheos forum on, “The Future of the Seminary.”  For our part, we have sought to call attention to the idea that inasmuch as theological education seeks to locate its purpose and aim in the missio Dei, its shape and future can be most helpfully understood from a missiological perspective.  This is the fundamental point of the white paper from which these few posts have emerged, The Missiological Future of Theological Education.

    We first offered a video, which summarizes the issues surrounding the way in which Christendom obscured our view of God’s missionary nature, thereby mis-shaping not only our theology, but our ecclesiology and the systems of theological education that we constructed to prepare leaders for these Christendom-shaped churches.  The video also suggests that…

    as we seek to re-imagine theological education along missional lines, the most important ‘accrediting factor’ for our schools lies in their ability to do their part in producing leaders who are able to demonstrate having taken on the character and competency of Jesus.

    If you haven’t seen it yet, the video is embedded below:

    After this initial post, we offered two more that sought to outline the missiological principles that we believe best contribute to creating processes of theological formation along these lines:

    1) Missionary Pastors for a Missionary God, in which we suggest that missional approaches to theological education will be praxeological – geared toward the training of theologically reflective practitioners.

    2) Ministers are Mobilizers, not Managers, in which we suggest that missional approaches to theological education will be mobilizational - geared toward the training of missionary leaders.

    In this final post, we’d like to outline a final missiological principle that we believe will guide a faithful re-imagining of theological education, that of being spiritual – geared toward the training of kingdom citizens.

    Spiritual, of course, can mean many things. For us, it simply means that everything about what theological education is and does, ought to be predicated on the centrality of a vibrant and growing relationship with the triune God and his work in the world.  In other words, just as Jesus’ efforts to train and form his disciples would have had no ultimate significance apart from their connection to God and God’s work in the world, so too are the efforts of seminaries wasted apart from this same connection.

    Having lost its proper missiological shape, theological education within Christendom made it possible to separate ones intellectual development from ones spiritual maturity. This is a dichotomy that our centers of theological education must repudiate if they hope to lend any support to the shaping of leaders for Kingdom ministry.  Moving forward will call for, at the very least, processes of theological formation that shape convictions, impart spiritual knowledge, re-frame our relationship to Scripture, and embrace the irreplaceable role of the Holy Spirit.

    Shaping Kingdom Convictions

    As theologian James McClendon once said, “Convictions are not so much things that we have but things that have us.”  As important as we believe Christian doctrine and truth are, if we fail to cultivate leaders who are as convicted by them (as evidenced by life transformation) as they purport to be convinced of them, we will only continue to contribute to the collapse of Western Christianity. If seminaries are to make any sort of meaningful contribution to the mission and witness of the Church in Western culture, they must show primary concern, not only for the information that their graduates possess, but for the convictions that will shape, drive and sustain them through all the trials and tribulations of not only ministry in a Post-Christian context, but amidst the sort of suffering and persecution which the Bible tells us always accompanies faithful witness.

    Imparting Spiritual Knowledge

    Seminaries and churches are full of people who know plenty of things about God. What our seminaries and churches seem in desperate lack of are people who truly know God in the way the Apostle Paul speaks of when he says, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…” What we have to accept is that this kind of “knowing” cannot be manufactured or controlled. The impartation of spiritual knowledge is finally the work of the Holy Spirit as we live in relationship with God and participate in his mission in the world in the way of Jesus. Thus, it is incumbent upon seminaries to create environments where God can do this kind of work in shaping Kingdom leaders.

    Re-framing Our Relationship to Scripture

    It should go without saying that in the endeavor of theological education to contribute to the shaping of Christian leaders, there is no text more important or sacred than the Bible. Unfortunately, the experience of many a seminarian is that the Bible is reduced to little more than an object to be examined and dissected. However, when you abstract an engagement with Scripture from a predisposition towards inviting the work of the Holy Spirit, we miss God’s intention for this discipline. Therefore, in terms of truly honoring a spiritual disposition towards theological education, not only will the Bible occupy a primary place throughout the whole of our programs (as opposed to being confined to individual courses), it will increasingly need to be seen as the very story out of which seminaries derive their own identity, purpose, and function.

    Embracing the Irreplaceable Role of the Holy Spirit

    Our prevailing systems of theological education train and equip people to be leaders in such a way that they assume an ability to succeed based upon their own intellectual capacity and/or skill-set rather than upon their ability to discern the Holy Spirit’s leading and therefore upon the Holy Spirit’s power rather than their own. We suggest that to the degree that centers of theological education want to contribute to preparing leaders for faithful service as Kingdom citizens, they must re-imagine theological education in such a way that the work and role of the Holy Spirit in the theological formation of leaders, as well as in the world, will be given primary attention.

    Concluding Thoughts

    One of the great travesties of our current Christian landscape is that emerging leaders often feel like they have to make a choice between “going to seminary,” because it will provide the sort of “accreditation” that many denominations and organizations require, or “going into ministry,” in order to give themselves fully to the sort of life & labor they feel like God has called them to.  As we re-imagine theological education along the lines of God’s Kingdom and God’s mission in the world, our hope and prayer is that these emerging leaders wouldn’t feel like this is a choice they have to make. Instead, we envision truly missional systems of theological education, so radically committed to a Kingdom vision of accreditation and to commissioning Kingdom leaders on account of their character and competency rather than their GPA, that ministry becomes the context for all our education and formation as we train reflective practitioners, that the aim of our education would become the mobilization of God’s people for loving and faithful service as we train missionary leaders, and that all of this emerges out of a vibrant and growing relationship with the triune God as we train Kingdom citizens.

    Posted in 3DM, anabaptist, bible, christendom, church, culture, discipleship, doctrine, God, gospel, Jesus, justice, kingdom, leadership, missiology, missional, missional theology, narrative theology, post-christendom, preaching/teaching, spiritual formation, theological education, theology, truth, western culture

    The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders

    December 5, 2011 // No Comments »

    As part of their forum on, “The Future of the Seminary,” the 3rd of 4 articles that I’ve contributed to, Ministers are Mobilizers, Not Managers,  went up the other day.  You can find the previous articles both here at lifeasmission as well as over at Patheos…

    Shaping Students w/ the Character and Competency of Jesus (lifeasmission | Patheos)

    Missionary Pastors for a Missionary God (lifeasmission | Patheos)

    Again, this is some edited content from a more comprehensive white paper that I worked on.  You can find the whole paper here as a resource at thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com.  Hope to see some helpful conversation emerge there, here, and over at Patheos as well.

    In terms of our particular contribution to this forum, we began by suggesting that while we passionately affirm the important role that seminaries play educationally, from a Kingdom perspective, the more important ‘accrediting factor’ is their ability to graduate students who have increasingly taken on both the character and competency of Jesus.   Given those aims and the ways in which our systems of theological education have been corrupted by the (non-missional) assumptions and characteristics of Christendom, we suggested that the central task before us is identifying educational principles guided by a theological vision of the missio Dei as it relates to both the Gospel and the Church that can help us re-imagine and re-shape our processes of theological formation.

    In our second post we sought to outline the central features of the first of three of these educational principles, that of being praxeological.   This praxeological orientation to theological education would result in the cultivation of reflective practitioners – leaders for whom the practice of mission and ministry and critical theological and missiological reflection always go hand-in-hand.

    Here, we’d like to provide a sketch of a second educational principle, again drawn from the life and ministry of Jesus, that we feel must inform our processes of theological formation, that of being mobilizational – geared toward the training of missionary leaders.

    One of the most disastrous effects of Christendom upon our systems of theological education has been the unhelpful assumption that the Church does and should exist at the center of our society.   Under this vision, seminaries have equipped leaders who would excel at managing and maintaining this system.   However, as the missio Dei and its implications for the Gospel and the Church come back into focus in Post-Christendom, we submit that our systems of theological education must be re-imagined for the purposes of training missionary leaders.  These will be leaders whose concern and skill-set revolve not around managing churches as part of a culture believed to be “Christian,” or even further, around church growth, but around mobilizing the people of God for participation in God’s mission in the world.  We submit that a truly mobilizational system of theological education will be, among other things, affordable, accessible, designed to prepare leaders as cultural pioneers, and judged on its ability to cultivate leaders who are competent to make disciples and mobilize others for faithful participation in God’s mission in the world.

    Affordable

    Unless you happen to live in a certain place, going to seminary requires the time and expense of uprooting your life and moving to another location.  In addition, the vast majority of seminary students are completely on their own to figure out how to pay for a seminary education.  A staggering number of students carry an enormous amount of debt for years, if not decades, following the completion of their program.   Not only is this problematic because of the current costs of seminary education, but increasingly, attaining a seminary degree does not translate into a proportional ability to get any job, let alone one that will alleviate students of their debt.   Moreover, because seminary degree programs remain, in large part, shaped by the assumptions of Christendom, students may quickly discover they are ill equipped to faithfully engage with the practical realities of ministry in Post-Christendom.  In order to be truly mobilizational, it is incumbent on us to re-imagine systems of theological education that are vastly more financially sustainable.

    Accessible

    Lack of proximity to the kinds of formational education that we are talking about isn’t just an affordability problem; it’s also an accessibility problem.  While we applaud the efforts of the increasing number of seminaries that value distance and
    distributed learning opportunities, we would suggest much more innovation is required.  Increasingly, seminaries need to embody in themselves the kind of character they should be instilling in their students.  In other words, just as we need to mobilize leaders, we also need to imagine what it might mean to mobilize theological education itself.  Institutions of theological education that are truly mobilizational will happily release power and control as they give their time and energy to initiatives that make quality theological education more accessible even if they don’t directly benefit.  The future of theological education belongs to those groups and institutions who care more for the work of God’s Kingdom than they do their own.

    Prepare Cultural Pioneers

    The ecclesial vision of Christendom provided for a system of theological education that mainly had in view the creation of Christian leaders who might well be described as managers or custodians of the church at the center of culture.  But, with the significant shaking occurring as we move from Christendom to Post-Christendom, the maps we previously used for theological education prove unhelpful and misleading.  In direct juxtaposition to a Christendom-shaped reality, a missional understanding of God and the Church compel us to give our time and attention to the equipping of missionary leaders capable of pioneering in a world without maps.  This will require the re-imagining of structures and programs that are designed to impart to students, missionary, as opposed to managerial, skill-sets.

    Cultivate Disciple-Makers and Mobilizers

    A final aspect of theological education that is mobilizational is the central importance of equipping leaders to be disciple-makers and mobilizers of God’s people for mission.  However, a particular person might be individually gifted, their ability to leverage that giftedness in concert with the biblically unifying commission to “go and make disciples of all nations,” is a fundamental marker of their fit for Kingdom ministry.  Said another way, we suggest that a profound understanding of one’s giftedness and a correspondingly profound track record of the exercise of that giftedness as a means of making disciples and mobilizing people and communities for mission ought to be seen as a basic requirement for the completion of any seminary program.

    In short, as the Church is increasingly pushed to the margins of society, it has (we have!) the opportunity to rediscover the missional nature of God, the Gospel, and the Church that was eclipsed within Christendom.   Among other things called for by this rediscovery is the complete restructuring of our systems of theological education as we seek to equip leaders who can serve the Church out of missionary rather than managerial perspectives and skill-sets.   We offer additional thoughts along these lines in the full paper, available here and check out the video and other resources at thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com.

    Posted in 3DM, anabaptist, bi-vocational, christendom, church, church planting, culture, discipleship, God, gospel, Jesus, kingdom, missiology, missional, missional theology, post-christendom, salvation, spiritual gifts, theological education, theology, western culture

    Tweets for the Week : 2011-12-05

    // No Comments »

    • from the lifeasmission archives: Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: Preliminary Thoughts http://t.co/5NJfSnCm #FB #
    • Movie night w/ @amyrozko. Introducing her to Dumb & Dummer for the 1st time. She keeps saying, "Hey, you say that." #exposed #FB #
    • After a great weekend of student coaching & visiting w/ friends in Indy, the Rozko's 3 are heading home! #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Freeing Love from the Shackles of Fear http://t.co/K5Esw3KD #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Tweets for the Week : 2011-08-22 http://t.co/2EYtdK5B #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Northern Seminary & 3DM: Discipleship-Oriented Theological Education (Part 2) http://t.co/adCkmVjI #FB #
    • Time 4 purportedly missional ppl/schools/ntwrks 2 partner & put resources behind initiatives like this http://t.co/0KVhzUVg by @fitchest #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Tweets for the Week : 2011-04-18 http://t.co/AXz8eGPL #FB #
    • Looking for an awesome cloud storage solution w/ free mobile apps? Join me on @SugarSync – 5GB+ of free space http://t.co/6LDpRamy #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: A Memorial Week at Home http://t.co/zBqo19DF #FB #
    • Me to the college guys I am discipling: "The most subversive thing you can do is sleep 8 hours a night. Guys: … scratch heads. #kairos #FB #
    • from the lifeasmission archives: Tweets for the Week : 2010-07-05 http://t.co/4z7JR5QO #FB #

    Posted in weekly tweets