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.

Related posts:

1. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Reflective Practitioners
2. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Introduction

Based on this perspective, we suggest that the task before us is to identify educational principles guided by a theological vision of the missio Dei as it relates to both the gospel and the Church that can give shape and substance to processes of theological formation that are able to help students develop Kingdom-oriented character and competency.

We will explore two additional missiological principles that we believe ought to guide this vision of theological education in forthcoming posts, but here we would like to suggest that a vision of theological education that is guided and shaped by a missional vision of God, the Gospel, and the Church will be praxeological – given to the training of reflective practitioners.  While other changes are surely called for, we suggest that theological formation that is praxeological calls for elongated programs, training by missionary theologians, diversified learning environments, a high degree of attention to contextualization, and an emphasis on creating learning communities.

Elongated Programs of Theological Formation

Whereas many seminaries seem to be spending their energy trying to find ways to help students achieve degrees more quickly, a praxeological orientation calls for more integrated, and therefore elongated, programs. Obviously an elongated program delays the conferral of a degree, but under the vision of theological education suggested here, the idea isn’t getting a degree so that you can begin to do ministry, but beginning to do ministry so that you are rooted in the proper context for theological education and formation in the first place. If the end goal is not the conferral of a degree but actually becoming a certain kind of person, there simply are no shortcuts to be taken.

Training by Missionary Theologians

A praxeological orientation toward theological education will require a faculty composed not mainly of traditional academic scholars, but of missionary theologians – those whose ability to guide and shape others flows from their own praxeological formation. Again, we are not suggesting that scholarship does not have its place; we are simply saying that the right kind of scholarship will always be driven by and focused on its implications for the life and ministry of the Church. As Karl Barth has famously said,

There would be no theology if there were no ministry specially committed to the witness of the word… If we abstract its origin in the ministry of the community, all its problems are either irrelevant or they lose their theological character… (CD 4.3.2, 879)

Thus, we are compelled to ask whether or not those who are trained and formed by traditional PhD programs are the best candidates for the kind of mentors/teachers needed to equip those who embrace this vision of theological education.

Diversified Learning Environments

Learning theory suggests there are three ways we learn: the passing on of information, apprenticeship to learn certain skill-sets, and immersion. The best learning experience occurs when there is a dynamic interplay between all three. Driven by Christendom presuppositions, our current systems of theological education are designed to do the first, pass on information, but give no real attention to issues of apprenticeship or immersion experiences. A praxeological orientation to theological education will require that our seminaries create all three kinds of learning environments for their students. The issue here isn’t merely the lack of second and third environments, but the fact that that apart from them, the relevance of time spent in the first environment loses the impact it ought to have.

Issues of Contextualization

Ministry never occurs in a vacuum. Students don’t just need to learn what to apply to their ministry context, which under the current paradigm of theological education they may not even have; they need to learn how to apply it to their ministry context, which we are suggesting as a prerequisite. This implies not only the need for missiologically-driven advances in models of distributed learning, but calls for a greatly enhanced focus on the part of instructors and the designing of programs with regard to the application of theological learning to specific ministry contexts.*

*Living into this sort of vision will mean that increasingly, centers of theological education will see having a ministry context as a prerequisite for admission into its programs. In addition, this value should compel centers of theological education to put significant amounts of time and resources into establishing truly meaningful relationships and partnerships with local churches and ministry organizations in which students who don’t have their own ministry context might not just do occasional internships, but root the entirely of their educational process.

Learning Communities

A core component of a praxeological orientation to theological education is the importance of learning in community. Whereas we wholeheartedly agree that there is a unique and important place for those regarded as experts in their field who can offer their wisdom, experience, and insight as they guide students in their formation as Kingdom leaders, there is an equally important and formative dimension to theological education that is rooted within a community of learning. In line with the realities of Kingdom ministry, which always call for a collaborative approach to tasks and problems, seminary students should increasingly develop a capacity to embody an open and discerning posture towards the insights and critiques of their peers. Flying in the face of traditional assessment criteria that are nearly exclusively predicated on one’s individual academic performance, a core component of assessing the formation of Kingdom leaders will have to do with their posture toward and interaction with others in a learning community.*

*We suggest that where theological schools continue to offer residential options, they will do well to structure them around a more monastic model where students come to be immersed in an integrated program of sharing life, resources, learning experiences, and diversified endeavors in ministry and mission.

At the heart of the particular suggestion is the simple observation that, “this is how Jesus did it” – calling disciples to him “that they might be with him and that he might send them out…” (Mark 3:14)

Read the full white paper, The Missiological Future of Theological Education, here and join in the conversation below and over at thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com.

Related posts:

1. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders
2. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Introduction

1) I joined Doug Paul and Mike Breen of 3DM in hosting a forum on this topic at Northern Seminary.

2) We’ve launched a website that is hosting the white paper and video we produced as contributions to the conversation.

3) A number of people have begin conversations in the discussion forums on that site.

4) Dr. Craig Blomberg, Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary, offered a response to the paper that is posted on the resource blog

5) A slew of new posts, including the 1st of 4 from our perspective, have appeared in the online forum over at Patheos.

6) And we have received a couple dozen emails from people who are asking everything from, “Can you keep me informed on how this goes forward?” to “Can you come and help lead a discussion on this in our context?” Which we are more than excited to do! (inquire here).

I am actually quite a bit more interested in driving traffic over to thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com as a place where we can try and centralize some conversation and garner insight from as broad a population as possible, but just to generate some interest, I thought I would try and peak your interest with a few words from the introduction of the paper and the video that goes along with the initiative…

The American Church finds itself in a precarious position. Based on current statistics, each year 2.7 million people cease to be part of a local church community and 4000 churches close their doors. Beyond this, 85 percent of all our churches are classified as stagnant and dying…

…while we wholeheartedly agree that we are indeed in the midst of a cultural earthquake, we believe that these statistics are better read as symptoms of a deeper problem. Rather than working toward solutions aimed at helping the Church maintain or regain its position of power and privilege at the center of society, our contention is that a more faithful posture, in the midst of this cultural earthquake, is pausing to ask what God is saying and doing and how God is calling us to respond?

The missiological crisis of Christendom not only affected the Church, but also bore corresponding implications for seminaries and indeed our systems of theological education in general. As such, we believe that a massive re-imagining of the nature, purpose, and practice of theological education is in order. Simply put, the guiding thesis of this paper is that to the extent that our current systems of theological education have been shaped by Christendom presuppositions, they have lost their missiological bearings and are wholly inadequate to prepare Kingdom leaders. Incremental changes and clever adaptations to these current systems only serve to distract from the opportunity we have before us to develop a Kingdom, and therefore missional, vision of theological education. At the heart of this vision is the conviction that the proper telos of theological education is an “accreditation” of students based not merely on the degrees they earn, but on the development and fit of their character and competency for life and leadership in the Kingdom of God.

Related posts:

1. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Reflective Practitioners
2. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders

Battle 1: Seeking a Sustainable Vocational Life

The scenario is darn near worn out.  Sincere and devoted youth pastor finds himself increasingly disaffected by the theology and/or ministry philosophy of the church in which he serves.  To the tune of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, said youth pastor leaves that church (and maybe ministry altogether) for the greener pastures of seminary where he can get a handle on things.  In the midst of study and reflection, this poor soul either soon discovers that increasingly their theological education has rapidly diminishing market value, or, for missiological reasons, decides that full-time, paid, professional ministry is simply not an appropriate choice for them.  Either way, they have just invested years of their life and lots of money into an educational decision that actually led them away from gaining the standard return on that sort of investment.

In many ways this is my story and I’ve stopped counting the number of times I’ve heard others tell me the same or something very similar.  And thus, the battle begins.  In the realization that I can’t get or reject the value of a FT, paid, professional ministry job, and with a couple Christian/theological degrees under my belt and a hefty load of debt that I am responsible for, what do I do?

I won’t actually go into this now.  For more on this, go see Dave Fitch’s post here.  I simply want to name this as one of the main battles of emerging missional leaders.

There is another major battle facing emerging missional leaders however.  This is actually an older battle for me, one that has shaped me and my direction in life even more profoundly than the battle I just described – significant at it is!

Battle 2: Bridging the Gap Between Church and Academy

In one sense this is like the other battle in that it still has to do with vocation – how are you going to spend your time, earn a living, dare I say, “live out your calling?”  But, in another sense it is a much different battle.  There are different concerns, different questions, and different factors to consider. (see a couple good posts by J.R. Daniel Kirk on this subject here and here).

Even though I would say that the former battle is actually primary – a battle that every missional leader must contend with as opposed to this one which is more specific – it is this battle that began to shape and direct my life first.  Jarred by the glaring gap between my Christian education and my experience in the Church, I decided/felt called pretty early on to give myself to the bridging of this gap.  Ideally, I envisioned a life in which I would mainly be rooted in a local church context as some sort of a pastor and then I would teach on the side.  Granted, this is not an overwhelmingly creative idea.  At the same time, it is one that hasn’t seemed to find nearly enough expression.  By and large, those serving in the realms of church and academy do so on a FT basis in one camp or the other.

Now, I’ve gone ahead and complicated things for myself by choosing to do a DMiss rather than a PhD.  Cause anyone will tell you, if you think you want to teach, you need to get a PhD.  Competition is stiff enough without throwing a non-traditional degree into the mix.  Be that as it may, I’ve never been one to be driven by what “conventional wisdom” says.  In this instance, I did my best to wrestle with what I believe the needs of the church in Western culture are and are becoming, how God has seemed to be guiding and directing me personally, and the realities of ministry and life as they actually are right now (not some idealized future), and came to the conclusion that given all that and my lingering sense of calling to the battle of redeeming the Christendom-inspired rift between church and academy, doing missiological work at the doctoral level was an appropriate next step.

I may have indeed made things more difficult for myself in terms of my engagement in the first battle I described, but (and I hope that you can read this in its non-cliched intent) this is simply something I am attempting to trust God for as I try and remain faithful to what he has been and is doing in me. While I wholeheartedly agree that we need way more followers of Jesus willing to seek both an advanced theological education as well as a bi-vocational lifestyle in which they work a “real job” (ala Fitch), there is another battle raging that I am convinced is worth fighting that seems to mitigate against a full-scale engagement in this other battle.

Am I reading/thinking about that right?  Anyone else find themselves caught in one or both of these battles?  What’s your thinking?  Plan?

Related posts:

1. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders
2. Younger Missional Leaders, the Lausanne Movement, and the Shape/ing of the Church
3. The Emerging Guild of Missionary Theologians

Perhaps the best way for me to encapsulate my perspective here is to say…

I’ve come to a point where I so thoroughly understand the church in missional terms that by implication, I see no point to theological education other than its ability to come alongside the Church as it attempts to identify, educate, train, and mobilize disciples for mission.

Let me briefly pick that statement apart and clarify what I mean.

Come Alongside the Church…

In a sense, theological education, as a stand alone enterprise, is a modern novelty.  Theological education/formation has always been (theologically if not experientially) the responsibility of the Church.  I’m not compelled to spend time here delving into the merits or detriments of the Church farming out the bulk of this responsibility to Christian colleges and seminaries.  Rather, I just want to indicate that where and when this has happened, there is still a fundamental sense in which it has been “the Church” doing this work.  A central problem in my mind, is the newer reality of theological schools educating those who have self-selected themselves for theological training.  This ought not be the case.  Rather, we increasingly need to see centers of theological eduction become full partners in the Church’s corporate task of cultivating disciples for mission.

Identify…

While I wholeheartedly believe that one of the greatest needs in the Western church is the recovery of a missional vision of discipleship (every follower of Jesus is called to inhabit a reality in which they exist as resident aliens… ambassadors of the Kingdom… missionaries!), I still believe that there exists a simultaneous responsibility of identifying those who will serve others by advanced theological study and honing the skills and abilities that befit the (always servant-oriented) tasks and responsibilities of leading and equipping others within the Church.  This is the case even when (perhaps especially when!) there are fewer and fewer opportunities for people to be paid to do this sort of work full-time (see an important post by Dave Fitch on this here).  There is a way in which these responsibilities need to be taken up by a community, but there is another sense in which God has, does, and will continue to use communities to identify people/teams to lead these efforts as well. 

Educate…

As these people are identified, the task of educating them remains.  The study of Christian history and theology (to name just a few key areas) is no small task.  It takes focused time and attention as well as resources that typically extend beyond those of one particular congregation.  It bears noting that serving others in Christ-like humility, perhaps the most fundamental aspect of discipleship, doesn’t require an advanced theological education.  More than that, it has often been accused of undercutting this very thing.  But this doesn’t have to be the case.  Christian education, when done in conjunction with the life and ministry of local churches, can serve, rather than subvert, the aim of cultivating missional disciples.  To do this, however, will require the development of new delivery methods, paradigms of faculty involvement, and program designs.  Centers of theological education will need to abandon an isolated existence (the erosion of denominational fortitude poses another problem here) in favor of one in which they are intimately connected to the lives of local congregations. 

Train…

Another major problem facing seminaries is that by and large they have become one-trick ponies. They offer classes.  That’s it.  Ok, ok, sometimes they require internships or Clinical Pastoral Education, and these can be positive experiences, but more often they’re not, and this is to say nothing of the way in which they make up the periphery of a program as opposed to its core.  Bottom line, apprenticed ministry experience in local church contexts should be the focal point of a missional theological education.  But, like education, incredible amounts of value and perspective can be added to this sort of experience when external resources are brought to bear.  The faculty of many seminaries is comprised of people with not just advanced degrees, but decades of ministry experience.  Where this exists, we need to find ways to unleash and tap into the work of God in these peoples lives by bringing students into not just their classrooms, but their lives!

Mobilize…

This is an area that churches and centers of theological education are equally guilty of neglecting.  Not only do we often fail to show proper intentionality in the identification and support of future leaders – allowing them to self-select, but we seldom prioritize (if we even have!) strategies for mobilizing them.  Wouldn’t it make quite a bit of sense to develop programs of theological education, not only in conjunction with existing churches and ministry organizations, but around the actual practice of ministry so that when students “finish,” they not only hold some sort of credential, but also have been mobilized into the sphere of service that they were interested in to begin with? Beyond this, it seems reasonable to conclude that partnerships between centers of theological education and churches/organizations will result in the creation of  exponentially more ministry opportunities for which each party will have a share in the responsibility of producing disciples to help lead.

This is the sort of stuff getting me excited nowadays and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to be investing in some of these dreams at Northern Seminary (see here for a vision of Missional Theological Education that we are working toward).  Doubtless, many centers of theological education will find ways to tweak and shift this and that in order to maintain institutional viability – they’ll stay alive, maybe even grow.  But that’s not really the issue is it?  We don’t want centers of theological education that find a way to just “make it” in our emerging Post-Christendom context.  We want centers of theological education that invite, even welcome and advance, the demise of Christendom along with its assumptions and values and lead out into the missiological future of the Church by following that simple gospel pattern of listening and responding, seeing and following, repenting and believing.

Related posts:

1. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Introduction
2. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Reflective Practitioners
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders

The theme of the weekend was,”Deeper Church.”  Essentially what that meant was having discussions about certain topics which surface when we stop thinking about church as a worship service with a host of corresponding programs and begin to embrace church as a way of life in which we are joining God in his mission of reconciliation and the restoration of all things.  Some may want to try and explain how these are really two ways of saying the same thing, but for the vast majority of people who have been involved in this conversation for any length of time, the differences are too real and too important to dismiss with semantic gymnastics.

On Friday night there were maybe 30 people in attendance to discuss Soong-chan Rah’s book, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity.  This conversation was continued as the topic of the final session on Saturday.  Both conversations were engaging and helpful.  While the book had clear shortcomings and oversights, it served as a springboard for us to ask the question, “Why are missional congregations so white?”  We see this as a problem because implicit in missional theology is the value for listening to voices from the margins of society – something which should be a no-brainer to those of us who regard Scripture (a book authored by those speaking from the margins of society!) as our guiding text.  Those who live on the margins of society have much to teach those of us who don’t and the longer our congregations remain socio-economically and culturally homogeneous, the more the Body of Christ, and by implication, the world to which we testify of an alternative reality, suffers.

In light of that, we had discussions about the practices of deeper churches, what sharing the gospel means and looks like for deeper churches, and whether or not these deeper churches should have paid staff.  This session was led by a 3-person panel: Matt Tebbe one of the pastors of Life on the Vine who is bi-vocational, JR Woodward, who raises all of his support, and Bob Havenor, who was advocating for an up-paid approach to church leadership.

Thanks to Ben Sternke who put the missional commons site together, you can find audio from all of the sessions here.

If you are in the midwest and interested in the missional conversation, I hope you’ll consider joining us next year – details TBD.

Related posts:

1. Missional Learning Commons
2. Reflections (& Audio!) from the Missional Learning Commons 2010
3. Midwest Missional Learning Commons

In speaking of the differences in the multiplication of church communities in Christendom vs. Post-Christendom, Fitch says,

Among the new missional leaders, church is the name we give to a way of life, not a set of services. We do not plant an organized set of services; we inhabit a neighborhood as the living embodied presence of Christ.

In agreement, I’d say that “cultivating missional communities” might be a better way to describe what we have more often known as “church planting.”  In that vein, Fitch goes on to talk about the sorts of leaders necessary to cultivate missional communities suggesting that…

– they will be survivors

…the new missional community leaders must have patience, steady faithfulness and the ability to live simply. They must be able to get jobs and not see the ministry as a privileged full time vocation. They must have a mental image of how they are going to sustain their lives financially, relationally, spiritually and personally.

– they will be communal shepherds

They are not starting and managing an organization. They may not even be good at organization. Instead they are cultivating a communal sense of mission identity among a gathering people ‘for this time and place.’

– they will be interpretive leaders

Interpretive leaders do not dictate from the pulpit a list of do’s and don’ts and solutions from God for every problem. They interpret the Scriptures to open our eyes to what God is doing and where He is taking us. In other words, they cultivate other interpreters/listeners.

– they will be directors of spiritual formation

We must ever navigate against putting on a show that will attract; rather we must develop a liturgy that is simple, accessible and Scriptural and that guides our lives into Christ and guards us from the distractions that would take us away from Mission. …there will be no missional community of people formed and shaped for mission if we just preach Mission as a legalistic requirement. Mission requires patience, a sense of vision and a level of self-denial that can only be formed inwardly in living bodies, trained in the simple organic disciplines/liturgies of the historic church.

– they will be leaders who give away power

Hierarchy is the product of Christendom. It hails to a day when Christianity still held power in society…  It is my belief therefore that missional leadership needs always to be multiple. Most missional pastors/leaders need to be bi-vocational (bi-ministerial) for their own survival. Such leaders must learn to mutually submit to the other leaders as they guide the journey of the community. They must mutually learn to mentor leaders and give away power.

A final insight from the chapter is this little gem,

This kind of leader often does not come from our (all too often) modernist seminaries. They are grown in a community which gathers to worship the Triune God so as to discern Him at work in our midst. (my thoughts on that here)

Beginning the year with this post is no coincidence.  Amy and I have committed to serve alongside others from Life on the Vine to help cultivate a new missional community in 2010.  There’s a lot more questions than answers at this point, but we’re excited to see what God might do as we make ourselves available.

While I am sure to offer tid bits on this process on the blog from time to time, if you would like to get the inside scoop on a regular basis as someone who would commit to be praying for us, leave a comment or let us know through the contact page. Peace to you in the New Year and thanks for your prayers & support.

Related posts:

1. Launching Missional Communities (Book Review)
2. Chicago and Seeding Missional Communities
3. Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education: Community Rootedness

Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem | Fruit of the Problem | New Soil

A hallmark of theological education within Christendom is the primacy of the individual.  Individual choice, individual abilities, and individual achievement; these are the prized marks of Christian leaders within systems of coercive power.

This conflicts however with a missional vision of Christian leadership in which community is the most basic point of reference and choices, abilities, and achievements are all products of the Holy Spirit’s working amongst a community of people on mission together.  Thus, I am firmly convinced that the most faithful and helpful forms of theological education will be those rooted in missional communities.

Think for a moment about how our current system of theological education favors the individual.

1) While others may be consulted, basically, individuals make up their own minds to pursue theological education.  They choose the school they find most desirable and go through the academic motions as individuals (a class does not a community make!)

2) More often than not, whether by working, soliciting random scholarships, or taking out loans, individuals are on their own to fund their education.  They bear enormous amounts of responsibility for not only their finances, but their own decision to embark on an often terrifying and difficult educational venture.

3) These individuals have only their individual experience and knowledge as a grid through which to process the new information being thrown at them.  They may enter into dialogue with other at a superficial level, but again, this is a personal choice with no real consequence if not practiced.

4) Once students have made it through the process of theological education, they are once again basically on their own in terms of deciding what they want to do with their degree (mine is hanging on my bathroom wall!).

That theological education favors the individual is only 1/2 of the issue.  The other 1/2 is that those leaders who go through this process are formed by it – they will have a bent toward leading individualistically and lack the skills to help form missional communities.

My Proposal:

If helping people learn how to make decisions, live their lives, and find their identity not on their own, but in the community of the Body of Christ, is central to the task of Christian leaders, then their training must take place in that same context. This has implications for how we identify potential leaders, how we commit to and support them, the nature and structure of how we train them, and for what follows the completion of the training.

Identifying Missional Leaders…

Rather than being self-selected, in this vision, our pool of missional leaders are identified by people who have known them over the course of years of personal experience and can affirm their areas of giftedness.

This is part of the reason that missional communities embrace sustainable sizes – for this to work, people need to be known.  When this is the case it is much more realistic for those entrusted with leadership responsibility to be looking for others that seem gifted and inclined toward leadership.  Once they are, they can be shepherded toward a more intentional process of leadership formation.

Commiting to and Supporting Missional Leaders…

I cannot underestimate the importance of local communities committing to and supporting leaders in training.  Leadership training is (if it’s any good!) hard.  There is just no substitute for a leader in training having the constant reminder that what they are a part of is no mistake; it’s not just their idea, but an entire of community of people has affirmed their giftedness and potential and they have said publicaly, “whatever you need, we are here for you.”

More than this, the local church should bear 100% of the responsibility for funding whatever aspects of theological education are necessary for the leaders they themselves have identified. It is a great sin that any church should say to a young man or woman that they God has placed a call on their lives to leadership in the local church and then not say, “we’ll do whatever it takes to help you pursue that dream.”  Please keep in mind I say all this in light of what I have already said about the practice of bi-vocational leadership.

Training Missional Leaders…

Leaders in training become part of a community within a community. There is the local church community that has done its job of identifying future leaders and committed themselves to those people, and a smaller community of gifted leaders, committing themselves to each other and the larger body that has committed to them.

The various aspects of leadership training within this vision would all be rooted in community.  From reading and writing to praying and serving, the point of each and every dimension of leadership development would be suited to helping those who participate in it understand its place in the formation of people in community.

Commissioning Missional Leaders…

Modern church leaders graduate, missional church leaders are commissioned.  At the end of the more intentional process of leadership formation, it is the discernment between the leader and community, not the desires of either alone, that serves as the vehicle through which the leader is commissioned into leadership.  Commissioning is inherently relational.  It is a community saying, “As we have identified you as a leader, committed ourselves to your formation and supported you, we now send you affirm a calling on your life and support you in it.”

In the next post, I aim to address character formation as a second central mark of a missional vision of theological education. Looking forward to your questions, comments, etc. till then.

Related posts:

1. Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education: The Fruit of the Problem
2. Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: Contextual Training
3. Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: Conviction Shaping

1) Bi-Vocational Ministry

2) Bi-Vocational Ministry & the Missional Church

3) Bi-Vocational Ministry & Spiritual Formation

4) Bi-Vocational Ministry & Support Raising

Thinking on this topic has stirred up a number of thoughts, ideas, and connections that I think will take shape in a next series of posts, so I won’t say too much here.

What I will say is this…

In 2004 when I began my education at Fuller Theological Seminary, I was on the fence about doing an MDiv.  I wasn’t sure that my future was going to be in professional, paid, church staff ministry.  I also wasn’t so sure that the structure of the degree was all that well equipped to prepare people for that sort of ministry given the trajectory of the Western church anyway.  To my utter shock, I soon discovered that these sentiments were widely shared and many of the people who would have been the best candidates for MDiv’s were opting for less traditional and more flexible routes. (FYI – Fuller has since done some major and commendable course correcting regarding all their programs, including the MDiv!)

My hesitations confirmed by the sentiments and decisions of my peers, I chose to do an MA in theology which gave me the ability to take 1/2 my classes out of Fullers’ School of Intercultural Studies enabling me to craft a degree that explored a missiology of Western culture.

In contrast to the average School of Theology student, many of the students doing degrees in the School of Intercultural Studies had widely marketable skills and trades.  Whereas the average SOT student was there to get an academic credential in order to get a job, the average SIS student was in school to learn how to be better a better missionary or to do more study regarding a particular area of interest.  Unlike their SOT counterparts, they weren’t looking for a degree to get a job.

Now, Fuller as a school didn’t create this reality per se, they were merely filling two different needs, augmenting on the one hand, and preparing on the other.

If, as I have tried to say, churches being led by a team of bi-vocational leaders is more sustainable, healthier for leaders and congregations alike, and all-around positively spiritually formative, then theological schools would do well to intentionally structure themselves for the sort of education that Fuller’s SIS was offering de facto.

There is a lesson to be learned here from Christian Liberal Arts schools (yeah Malone!) which prepare men and women of God for service in all areas of life… AS FOLLOWERS OF JESUS.  That people would “graduate” from this sort of education to one of specialized, professional theological training is a regrettable reality.  I say this as one with the highest of value for theological rigor and advanced training.  But, I also say it as one who thinks these things should never come at the expense of extending to Christian leaders the opportunity to lose touch with “the world.”

A missional ecclesiology calls for a missional approach to theological education that would be best described in terms of formational training.  This is what I hope to explore further in my next series of posts.

Related posts:

1. Bi-Vocational Ministry & the Missional Church
2. Bi-Vocational Ministry & Support Raising
3. Bi-Vocational Ministry

For the last few days I have been participating in a seminar on “Ministry Partner Development,” led by my friend JR Woodward through Ecclesia, a missional church planting network.  So, naturally, I have been thinking about the relationship between bi-vocational ministry and support raising.  I am coming away from the seminar with 2 firm convictions.

1)  Support raising is a ministry in and of itself.  As a nation, we give 1-2% of our annual income to charitable causes.  As a subset of American Christians, conservatives slaughter that statistic at a whopping 3%!  Sad, really sad.  Those who raise support to do works of ministry are ministering to those that they ask to be partners simply by saying, “Hey, would you actually like to do something of eternal significance with your money?”  For a people that ought to be known for our generosity and our refusal to store up for ourselves treasures on earth, we’re pitiful and I am all for more and more and more people who have the courage to take steps of faith and ask others to financially support them.

2) Inasmuch as it is a ministry in and of itself and because I think our current model of theological eduction is largely missing the mark in truly preparing Christian leaders for the future landscape of the Church in Western culture, I think support raising is a necessary consideration. Leave aside for a moment the idea of support raising as a ministry to those who choose to partner, what other choice do people whose training is theological and ministerial in nature have if they want to practice bi-vocational leadership?  They aren’t really marketable in most of the non-church world and it will take some time if they are to acquire additional skills and training.  Perhaps worse, they take jobs in churches that are spiritually dead, but have some money, or they cave into the forms of church that are successfully marketing religious goods to a quasi-religious, Christendom population.  This is where I think support raising comes in.

Aside form the personal benefits of learning how to humbly depend on others, being able to pursue what God has put on your heart rather than choosing from the given options, and developing the disciplines necessary to do the work of support raising, developing a team of ministry partners can be a great way to free someone up to minister to those who have no concept of supporting pastors or those who, even if they “get it,” don’t have the means to do so anyway.  And it should go without saying that cultivating a ministry team that is supporting you not only through finances, but by diligent prayer and accountability is a blessing that far too many are missing out on.

When it comes to church ministry, I think support raising makes the most sense for apostolic and prophetic types of people.

Apostles are always on the move, charting new territory and plowing new ground.  Having a ministry team that sees and affirms that and says, “Here, we’ll pay your bills, you just keep on following where God leads!” are saints in my book.

Prophets get stoned and killed.  The quickest way to short circuit the ministry of those who God has called to point out how the Church is failing her calling, is to make them dependent on the giving of one congregation.  Like apostles, they do well to cultivate a team that acknowledges the church’s need for prophetic voices and says, “Here, be free to speak truthful words how the Lord leads.”

When it comes to bi-vocationality, I think one of the marks of a healthy church is its desire to financially support its leaders.  So, while I think support raising is a good idea in general for many and an excellent idea for some in particular, ultimately, for all the reasons I mentioned in my first post, I still think church leaders working in the community where they minister while being supported by the church they serve is something great to aspire to.

Related posts:

1. Bi-Vocational Ministry & the Missional Church
2. Bi-Vocational Ministry & Theological Education
3. Bi-Vocational Ministry & Spiritual Formation

I wanted to winnow that thought down a bit further and suggest that the biblical appeal for a bi-vocational approach to leadership (and in my opinion, the biblical appeal for anything that has to do with the church and Chirstian life!) has to do with spiritual formation.

Far too often people seek to defend their church structures and practices because of their supposed ability to, “grow the church,” “meet people where they’re at,” or “reflect people’s cultural expectations.” These have a ring of nobility to them but are far off the mark biblically speaking. Far worse is when we are forced to admit that we do what we do because, “that’s how it’s always been done,” “if we try to change things people will leave,” “so and so will stop giving if we stop doing things that way.”

As the Body of Christ, we should have a singular defense for everything we do, namely, its power to spiritually form people and communities into Christlikeness.*

Here’s why…

There’s a battle going on. The Church, as a foretaste of the Kingdom of God, through its formational practices and structures, wages war against the principalities and powers at work in the world which seek to “steal, kill, and destroy” all that God would have us be and do.

In Christendom, the Church equipped itself to fight the wrong battle. Within Christendom, so much is assumed about the nature and purpose of the church, that we tend to ask pragmatic questions. Does it work? But, for those of us who realize that Christendom is crumbling and/or think that it was never a good thing to begin with, these questions aren’t good enough. We need to ask deeper questions.

Biblical faithfulness is about mission, not models. As one helpful commenter pointed out in a previous post, the Bible does not prescribe one way to lead churches. There are several examples of what that looked like in the New Testament, but even these are not simply models to be copied as if we could then say, “We just do it like they did in the Bible.” The better way to understand biblical faithfulness is as an honest pursuit to join God in mission, not copy models. The Church is charged with the task of making disciples and is not given an exact blueprint for how to go about it.

This brings us full circle. Those churches whose structures and practices mainly serve the ends of church growth, cultural relevance, and even conversion, miss the mark. They are fighting the wrong battle biblically speaking.

I am advocating for a bi-vocational approach to church leadership, not because I can defend it as THE RIGHT biblical model or because it’s most effective (Christendom approaches), but because the tendencies in our culture toward consumerism and individualism are so thick that faithfulness to the mission of making disciples, forming people and communities into Christlikeness, make it the most appropriate option (missional approach).

Hopefully that serves to clarify my thoughts and intention some.

*I was greatly encouraged today while viewing this seminar online to hear Dr. Darrell Guder comment that, “It was not the mission of the apostolic church to save souls! The apostolic mission was the formation witnessing communities.” This is a far cry from how we commonly envision the role of church leaders, but something we badly need to recover.

Related posts:

1. Bi-Vocational Ministry & Support Raising
2. Bi-Vocational Ministry & the Missional Church
3. Bi-Vocational Ministry

It was just over 3 years ago that I “met” Todd. I was in Norway studying and writing my masters thesis. In my search for resources, I came across Todd’s blog and was excited to find someone else who was thinking about missional living in suburban contexts. We developed a collaborative friendship in the blog-o-sphere and I finally got to meet him face to face when his church community, The Well, in suburban Philly, was hosting a small seminar with Al Hsu regarding “The Church & Suburbia.”

Through our respective church communities, Todd and I are both affiliated with Ecclesia, a missional church planting network which gives us even more opportunity to interact.

Todd is living the dream as a bivocational (or bioccupational as he prefers) pastor and draw some income from doing web design. I have always admired his work with crafting wordpress themes and when I saw some of his latest work on the blog of one of his friends, I jokingly told him to send me the zip file. He took me seriously and 30 minutes later, I am enjoying the beautiful goodness you see before you (unless you’re reading this through a reader – if you are, do yourself a favor and click through to check it out).

Anyway, Todd didn’t ask for any money, but I am gonna give him some anyway cause he’s my hero!

For the sake of your own soul, you should get to know Todd. For the sake of your blog, you should hire him to rock your world.

Related posts:

1. Meremission
2. Missional in Suburbia
3. 10 Ideas for Living Missionally in the Suburbs

I’ve got a few ideas for follow up posts on the subject – thinking about how and where this practice intersects with theological education, community/spiritual formation, support raising, stewardship & sustainability, etc.  However, I think it might be most helpful to clarify how I understand the relationship between bi-vocational ministry and missional ecclesiology.

As I have said numerous times before, being missional is no mere add-on to current church practice.  Nor is it a shift any particular church community might make without rethinking those things which are most fundamental.  A truly missional ecclesiology arises out of a particular way of doing theology and the understandings of things like the gospel and salvation that emerge as a result.

While I can see why people from various ecclesial backgrounds might resonate with bi-vocational ministry as a model for church leadership, I think it makes most sense within a truly missional framework.  Here’s a few reasons why.

Missional churches gain their identity from the Missio Dei.  Their understandings of the gospel and salvation are defined by the very notion of participation in the life and mission of God in the world.  Appropriately, they would happily embrace a model of church leadership which creates a participatory context.

Since missional churches see Christendom as a cultural condition which distorts rather than enhances Christian discipleship and witness, it is no wonder that they would shy away from models of church leadership predicated on its very existence. As Christendom continues to crumble, the viability of multiple full-time church staff will continue to crumble with it.

Because missional churches seek to shape a people who are passionate about God’s redemption of the whole world, it would be second nature for them to embrace a kind of ministry in which the leaders of the community model the practice of vibrant Christian witness in the marketplace.

For me anyway, it’s the theological connection and not the pragmatic rationale of bi-vocational church leadership that is most motivating.

Related posts:

1. Bi-Vocational Ministry & Support Raising
2. Bi-Vocational Ministry & Theological Education
3. Bi-Vocational Ministry & Spiritual Formation

Life on the Vine

Some may take issue with the phrase bi-vocational, arguing that followers of Jesus, who may have multiple occupations, actually have a singular vocation – living as a Christian witness or something like that and I’d say that’s understandable.  However, if it passes to understand vocation as “a compensated way in which our singlular calling gets lived out” I think it’s just as easy to defend an argument for bi-vocational Christians.

That’s all actually kind of beside the point.  Here were our main talking points and my summary from our time together last Friday (via an article written by DF)…

1) Bi-vocational ministry breeds congregational participation in the life of a church.

When those who lead a church community are bi-vocational, they are more easily seen as those entrusted to guide and direct, as opposed to “get everything done.”  This returns ministry to its rightful place, the corporate body.

2) Bi-vocational ministry guards against excessive organization and programming.

Without full-time people to create and maintain all sorts of programming options, the life of a congregation is able to be more relational and organic, drawing on the heart and commitment of the community.

3) Bi-vocational ministry fosters a church culture that is outward focused.

Bi-vocational ministry affords those who lead local church communities the opportunity to invest more of their time and energy in the marketplace.  This, in turn, serves as a model for the rest of the congregation of living out a faithful witness in all areas of life.

This didn’t come up, perhaps because it’s so obvious, but when those who serve church congregations as leaders can supplement their income with alternative sources of revenue, more money is freed up for the community to meet the needs of others.

I tend to agree with these statements, but as a friend brought up in the course of discussion, embracing an ecclesiology which practices bi-vocationalism probably makes for all-around healthier churches and healthier pastors.  The reason is that the inverse of these marks is typically true.  Having full-time paid pastors stymies congregational participation in the life of church communities (why do it when you have people that you pay to do it?), encourages excessive organization and programming (afterall, if you’re paid full-time, you have to come up with stuff to do), and fosters an inward focused church culture (because apparently being a ‘professional’ minister is what those who are really serious about their faith do!).

Can you practice an ecclesiology predicated on one or multiple full-time paid staff that accomplishes the same ends as this bi-vocational vision?  I am quite sure that many people will read this and try to make the case that multiple full-time paid staff just have that much more time to give to doing just that.  The problem is that the medium doesn’t match the message.  I think this is what we are after at Life on the Vine – embodying a style of congregational leadership that itself communicates (if not necessitates) our commitment to fostering a church in which the responsibility for equipping people for ministry to one another and the world falls to the body and not paid professionals.

Lots of discussion to be had on this topic, so I am interested and anxious for feedback, pushback, and further thoughts and questions.

Related posts:

1. Bi-Vocational Ministry & the Missional Church
2. Bi-Vocational Ministry & Theological Education
3. Bi-Vocational Ministry & Support Raising

Well, I met a guy at church Sunday who is also a student at Fuller. We started talking and he informed me that there was a dual-degree program that Fuller offered. You can take theology classes from the school of theology and other stuff from the school of intercultural studies and at the end of three years you have 2 masters degrees. So, in the same time it would have taken me to get an MDiv I will have a Master of Arts in Theology as well as a Master of Arts in Crosscultural Studies. Every single class I take will be exactly what I have a desire to learn about and will be crucial in preparing me for what I think might be in store for after school.

I would love to help lead a Christian community in an unpaid fashion as well as work with young people (senior high or college age students) to earn my living in one way or another. I really can’t express how excited I am about this option. Truly, God knew what he was doing in bringing me out here. On top of all that I think I have it worked to where all my classes will be on Monday and Wednesday, meaning I am off Thurs.-Sun. Which, hopefully, will help with work and studying. I am still looking for a job, though the soccer coaching may still work out. But, I won’t find out till mid-October.

Anyway, now you know what is going on with me, so feel free to let me know what’s going on with you.

Related posts:

1. You Should Go to Fuller Theological Seminary
2. Party Fuller Style
3. Fuller and the Emerging Church