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.

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.

The post below (edited slightly) was offered as the 2nd in a series of 4 articles on the “Future of the Seminary” forum over at Patheos (1st article here).  If you haven’t already seen it, this video will give you a good introduction to the basis for the perspective being offered.

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.

It’s been a few weeks since I posted about the groundswell of conversation that seemed to be happening around the topic of the state and future of theological education. Since then, a lot has happened.

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.

Wrote this post for the blog of the good people behind the Anabaptist Missional Project.

I’m an Anabaptist.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Mennonite, Hutterite, Brethren, or Amish and my name is Rozko for Pete’s sake!, but I’m an Anabaptist nonetheless.  I may have been baptized in an Episcopalian church when I was a baby, baptized again in a Church of Christ in high school when my faith became my own, ordained in the Christian Church tradition, and I may be part of a church community that is part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination and work for an American Baptist seminary, but I’m an Anabaptist nonetheless.

“How’s that work exactly?” you ask.  Good question.  In fact, it’s the question behind this post which is itself the result of a conversation I had with my good friend Dave Stutzman (he’s my Anabaptist passport for those of you skeptics out there

Well, here’s my brief answer.  It works because I’m one of thousands of seminary-trained people between the ages of 25 and 35 who have been orphaned by the Christendom-shaped theology and ecclesiology that raised us.  Like many, many others, left to fend for ourselves among the cultural wilderness that is Post-Christendom, Anabaptism has provided me with the theological and ecclesiological shelter and nourishment that I needed to sustain and guide me as I’ve sought to make sense of the world and my personal and ministerial place in it. 

To be a bit more specific, as Christianity has moved (been pushed?) from the center to the margins of our society, by and large, the responses of the Church have come in two types:

1) Fight – here I have in mind the typical right-wing Christian response of scraping and clawing through powerful maneuvering and campaigning to “take back America for God” in order to regain a place of power and privilege believed to be, if not rightfully ours, God’s ultimate aim for his people.

2) Ignore – here, there is either a complete lack of awareness (especially in the South) of the growing reality of Post-Christendom or an apathetic attitude toward what is simply dismissed as an inevitability.

Anabaptism, I believe, presents a third way, a posture more faithful to a biblical (at least through the lenses of Anabaptist theology & ecclesiology) vision of what it means to be the people of God living under the reign of God in the midst of a world that, while fallen, remains deeply loved and addressed by God.  It was this humble and hopeful vision that drew me in.

My initial touch points with Anabaptism came through a handful of professors at Fuller Theological Seminary such as Wilbert Shenk (anyone else think Wilbert needs to start a blog already?!), Nancey Murphy, and Glen Stassen (though there’s a palpable Anabaptist current throughout much of the school) and some time at Pasadena Mennonite Church.  These opened me up to the world of Anabaptist theology and (missional) ecclesiology, which has worked to powerfully shape both my identity and the contours of my life.

Anabaptist theology has had a profound impact on my thinking and practice with regard to, among many other things, missional church, politics, preaching, theological education, and the Gospel.  In fact, it was these touch points and their consequent exposure to the unique features of Anabaptism that inclined me to further study with Wilbert Shenk and James Krabill as part of DMiss cohort at Fuller focused on Anabaptist Perspectives in Missional Ecclesiology.

Interestingly, the one thing that my exposure to Anabaptism didn’t do, and I suppose this might be the real point of the post since it seemed to be one of the things Dave and I talked most about in our conversation, was incline me to seek out and join a (traditionally thought of) Anabaptist congregation.  I think there are 3 primary reasons for this.

1) There are only a couple “denominationally-Anabaptist” congregations near me and they are all incredibly introverted and insular – a startling reality in light of the fact that the inherently missional dimension of all Anabaptist theology was one of the things I initially found so freeing.

2) I have experienced and continue to understand Anabaptism as a theological and ecclesiological paradigm that defies denominational hegemony.  This of course relates to the first point, but personally, inasmuch as I have come to see Anabaptism as a theological (as opposed to denominational) tradition, I actually feel like I would be close to betraying my Anabaptist convictions to not seek to live them out in whatever other contexts it seems God has and is directing me.

3) Lastly, I am surrounded by people who share my story – people who, while having no official exposure to or experience with traditionally thought of Anabaptist congregations, have discovered, through any number of different means (books, blogs, classes, friends, conferences, etc.), that Anabaptism is the theological tradition that best expresses their core convictions. Thus, I am far more inclined band together with these folks to see the Anabaptist vision carried forth and lived out across an array of denominational and other contexts rather than I am to isolate myself to one of the few traditionally recognized contexts.

The point I suppose is this, there is a large and growing population of Christians who resonate with Anabaptist theology and ecclesiology.  It sure would be awesome if those who have been part of historically Anabaptist traditions were leading the way on this, but as of yet, that just doesn’t seem to be the case.  I don’t claim to have any divine insight or wisdom on this, but I think this much should be apparent: as Christendom continues to crumble, as denominational identity comes to mean less and less, and as more and more Christians/ministers have to figure out how to make sense of the world and their relationship to God and God’s work in it, there is a HUGE opportunity for those who espouse Anabaptist ideals to speak up and lead the way.  I represent a group of people who would gladly welcome the guidance!

I am one of those people who happens to believe in the importance of words.  While it’s a good thing to have a broad vocabulary, that’s not what I mean.  I mean that I think words are powerful.  Words aren’t just symbols and they certainly aren’t neutral.  Words actually DO things when we use them or hear them.

Ever been called an idiot?

Ever made a verbal promise?

Ever double-dog-dared someone to do something?

Yes?  Then you get what I mean.  Words are powerful tools.  I would even go so far as to say that words contribute to the shaping of our realities.  Just ask any teenager whose parent has told them on a consistent basis for years that they’re worthless.

This is why I have abandoned the language of “going to church.”  This language reinforces a false reality.  A reality in which church is understood to be a place or an event rather than a Kingdom community or family of disciples.  I would submit that the idea of “going to church” is a chief hallmark of cultural Christianity, the sort of thing that, while having a ring of sincerity to it, actually reshapes our imaginations and our reality in ways counter to the biblical narrative and the purposes of God.  So, a few weeks ago, as Amy and I prepared to take our daughter to a gathering of our church community, she and I had one of our first father-daughter chats.

I began to speak the kind of words to my daughter that I want her to grow up hearing – words that I want to shape her into the sort of person capable envisioning and receiving the story into which she has been born and invited – words that I hope will instill in her the sort of sorrowful/sick feeling that her father gets when he hears people relegate the Church to something we merely “go to.”

I said to her,

Daughter, you are a part of our family and our family is part of a very special group of people.  This group of people has a long, long history, filled with incredible stories that you will get to hear as you get older.  But here’s what you need to know.  God loves this world – everyone and everything in it.  He loves it more than we can even possibly imagine.  He loves it so much that he actually gave himself up for it – can you believe that?!  He did.  But lots of things are wrong.  Not everything is quite the way that it is supposed to be.  But don’t worry, God is at work.  He will see to it that in the end, all things will be made right again.  And guess what, God has invited us to join him on this mission.  He wants us to be a part of it with him as his people.  With God’s help we try to live out God’s dream for the world.  And because God’s own son, Jesus, did this better than anyone else ever did, we always try to follow his example.  That means that in many ways, the way we live is very different from the ways that other people live.  In fact, and this is difficult for me to say to you because I love you so much, it means that the more you live your life for God, the more likely it is that some people will not like you, maybe even hurt you like they did Jesus.  Even still…

Like Jesus, we talk to God and listen as he speaks to us rather than living life on our own terms.

Like Jesus, when people do mean and bad things, we offer forgiveness rather than hold grudges or try to get even.

Like Jesus, when people are hurt or in need, we offer to help rather than let them suffer or assume that it’s their own fault.

Like Jesus, we go out of our way to be friends with people who don’t like or make fun of rather than ignore them or do the same.

Like Jesus, we give our money and things to people who need them even if they can’t pay us back rather than keeping everything for ourselves.

Like Jesus, we will lay our lives down for our enemies rather than try to injure or destroy them.

And that’s just the beginning!  These are just some of the ways that we get to enjoy God’s dream for the world.

Now listen, there’s a special name for people who live this way together, they are called “Church.”  They are the people who have been called out of the ways of the way the world is, in order to live out God’s dream for the way the world should be and will be someday.  Some people think that Church is some thing that you go to, like going to a movie or a restaurant, only religious.  But that’s not what it is, not at all!  I know you won’t really understand all this quite yet, but the Church is a group of people who embody a whole new world!  Nothing you ever do will be more important than being part of this people and adventure.  Now, let’s go meet some of the people we’re on this mission with.

The first of many more conversations I hope to have with my precious daughter along these lines.

You have probably heard someone say at some point something along the lines of , “If you want to know a man’s heart or what his priorities are, take a look at his checkbook.”  The implication is that despite what we might say about our heart and priorities, how we live will always provide the true window into that reality.  We are what we do, not what we say.

I think this same logic applies to the Church.  Though it might be an unfamiliar frame of reference for us, I don’t think many would balk at the suggestion that our ecclesiologies – the way we understand and practice being the Church – are a direct reflection of how we understand the good news of God’s salvation.  I’m not merely saying that this should by the case or that we need to aspire more to this.  I’m saying that by definition, this always is the case.  As a man’s spending habits will give you insight into what he really cares about, so too will the life and practices of church communities give you insight into how they understand the good news of God’s salvation.

This may seem simple enough, but it’s a paradigm that I would suggest gets little to no traction amidst all the chatter over the trouble in which the Church in Western culture finds itself.  There are two ways to address the issue of someone whose stated priorities and actual spending patterns don’t match up.  The first is to ask him to work harder on spending in line with what he says is important to him.  Though it has come in many different forms and packages, I think this has been our basic approach to the plight of the Church in Western culture (purpose-driven, mission-driven, gospel-driven, house church, cell church, simple church, etc., etc.).  The second way to address the issue goes deeper; it takes a look at the man’s spending patterns and rather than saying, “These need to change,” it asks, “What does this tell us about what your priorities really are?”

I propose that, rightly understood, this is where the ultimate importance and value of the missional conversation lies – not by first suggesting a new paradigm for understanding the nature and life of the Church, but in offering visions of the gospel and salvation that are rooted in a missional understanding of God (missional theology) and a missional reading of Scripture (missional hermeneutics), which then lead naturally to a missional understanding of the Church (missional ecclesiology).  I don’t mean to be over-linear here.  There is definitely a reciprocal relationship between beliefs and behavior, I merely want to point out the side of that relationship that I think has largely gone ignored.

I have some good friends doing some great work through the ministry of 3DM.  A couple of them have become fond of saying, “The Church doesn’t so much have a leadership problem or a missional problem, the Church has a discipleship problem.”  In a sense, I couldn’t possibly agree with this sentiment more.  But, as I offered by way of a comment on a great blog post by Mike Breen the other day in which he was asking why more churches don’t spend as much time innovating their approaches to discipleship as they do technology, I think the underlying reason that this problem exists is on account of a flawed understanding of salvation.  As I said there,

As long as the gospel remains something that we primarily need to “believe” in the cognitive sense, then it actually makes perfect sense to spend the bulk of your time and energy on innovating technologically because the bottom line is ‘reaching’ [see a post I offered on this a few years ago] as many people as possible. Discipleship, in this vision, is optional, auxiliary to what it means to “be saved.” My sense is that it is only when people begin embrace the reality of the gospel as an invitation into a way of life (the Kingdom of God), and salvation as a way of describing the nature of life in the Kingdom, that they begin to understand the ‘biblical logic’ that leads to the shaping of an ecclesiology in which discipleship and innovative approaches to discipleship will begin to be of primary importance.

So, if I might sum up.  I feel like I see enormous amounts of time and energy being invested in trying to help people revisit how they understand and practice being the Church.  Fantastic!  But, let’s be honest, so long as people cling to (what I would term) Christendom-shaped conceptions of the gospel, primarily understood as something (theory of the atonement?) to which I give intellectual assent, as opposed to an invitation into a new reality that reshapes the entirely of my life, and salvation, primarily understood as getting into Heaven after I die, as opposed to my participation in the saving work that God is doing right here and now, we aren’t really getting to the heart of the matter.

I wonder if we’re ready for this conversation?  I mean, this is treading on pretty sacred ground, right?  We’re more than ok tweaking our language about the nature of the church or even jimmying a bit with our church programs and structures.  And while it’s one thing to talk about God as a missionary God (lots of people have hopped on board with that), it’s quite another to start talking about the implications of God being a missionary God for how we understand the nature of that God’s good news and that God’s salvation. Harder conversation, but I’m increasingly convinced that it’s the one we need to give more attention to fostering if the Church in Western culture is to respond faithfully to not just the situation we find ourselves in, but more importantly, to God and the ways in which God is at work in our midst.

I had something happen to me last week that has never happened before.  I got dropped by my car insurance company, State Farm.

I received a letter in the mail that said on account of the three claims that I have reported in the last three years, they were no longer willing to insure me.  I looked over the letter and thought about each accident.  As I did, I couldn’t help but feel depersonalized and taken advantage of and I began to reflect on how prone we often are to do this very same thing to others.  Here’s what I mean…

Accident #1, The Fence

The first accident happened while I lived in Memphis.  I was driving down a busy 2 lane road and a car, probably 4-5 cars in front of me, slammed on their brakes and turned left w/o signaling, cutting off traffic that was coming the other way.  The cars in front of me all braked rapidly as did I, but as I looked in my rear-view mirror, a car was barreling down so I decided to spin the wheel to the right where there was noting but grass and a fence in order to get out of the way.  Good thing I did, because the car absolutely would have slammed into me.  The result was a good bit of damage to the right front end of my car and a few broken slats in a fence.

Accident #2, Moving

The 2nd accident came just over a year later and happened while we were moving into our new apartment.  We had rented a U-Haul truck to move all our stuff, so I was driving that.  At one point I had to back the huge truck down a narrow alley and out onto a street.  Once I actually made it to the street I had a friend guiding me as I couldn’t really see behind me or keep an eye on traffic.  I could not possibly have been moving any slower, but as I was backing up to his direction, I heard a crunch.  The rear bumper of the truck had done some damage to the bumper of a parked car.

Accident #3, The Deer

The third accident took place, again, almost exactly a year later.  Amy and I were driving home to Ohio on the Turnpike.  We were in the right lane of a two lane portion of the Turnpike heading east.  All of a sudden, a woman in an SUV pulled up to our left and began honking her horn and waving her hands.  Obviously this took our attention off of the road for a moment and on to her.  As soon as we glanced back, we saw a couple deer on the side of the road very near our lane.  Since this lady was directly beside us, there was no room for us to move over to the left and with another car directly behind us, slamming on our brakes didn’t seem like the best idea either.  For some reason, one of the deer began running beside us and then jumped in front so that we gave it a good butt bounce.  Off the deer went, but we lost a headlight and had some minor paint damage to the bumper.

In the event that you trust my recounting of these accidents, I hope you’ll agree that it would be hard to make a case for my being a bad or negligent driver.  Instead, upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that my ill state (the one who had to file a claim) actually came about by external factors (bad driver in accident 1, bad navigator in accident 2, and dumb deer in accident 3).

My point in all this isn’t exactly to defend myself, but to point out how easy it is to depersonalize and take advantage of people when we aren’t willing to step into the details of peoples lives and circumstances.

We do this all the time.  We depersonalize people and take advantage of them in making judgments and estimations based on appearances w/o being willing to step into the minutia of their lives, their circumstances and stories.   Doing so is not only a source of great injustice, but it short circuits the fundamental work of the gospel.

Like insurance companies such as State Farm, it is so very tempting to just objectify people for our own purposes.  For insurance companies, getting personal and refusing to take advantage of a flawed system would adversely effect their bottom line, so they depersonalize and take advantage of people.  For us, getting personal and refusing to take advantage of the temptation to generalize and stereotype takes time, effort, and a willingness to have our most fundamental assumptions about the world called into question, so we follow suit.

In the midst of a culture which inclines us to function with the utmost concern for efficiency and our own best interests, I believe that Jesus calls us to the inefficiency of incarnational living and the freedom of a life lived for the sake of others.  Insurance companies may take the bait, but I hope I/we don’t.

Inasmuch as politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions regarding the way in which life ought to be lived, the Church is a thoroughly political entity. Taken together with the biblical reality of God’s Lordship over all of creation, it’s unfortunate that so many professing believers would dichotomize between “church” and “politics.”  As Christians, those who pledge their allegiance to the Kingdom of God under the Lordship of Jesus, everything we do is political.

Lots of voting took place here in the US the other day and both in person and virtually, I found myself engrossed in conversations surrounding, not the issues/people which were to be voted on, but the practice of voting itself.

I devoted a more focused post to this topic a couple years ago, but I wanted to add another thought that came up in the midst of these conversations.  To be clear, I’m not saying that it’s flat out and always wrong to vote.  I am saying that we do well to recognize exactly what democratic voting entails for those of us seeking to differentiate ourselves from others as citizens of another Kingdom.

One of the reasons Christians may choose to not vote is that we are first and foremost part of a community that roots its identity in what I would call an invitational politics.  That is to say, following Jesus, our fundamental political posture toward the world is to invite people into a way of seeing and engaging life that is rooted in the good news of God’s Kingdom.

The democratic process of voting, on the other hand, is anti-invitational.  It is (at best) 51% of a given population mandating that the other 49% conform to their particular political bents.

Therefore, if we are to vote in democratic elections, we must concede that we are participating in a political process which runs against the grain of God’s ultimate desire for us.

Jesus does not coerce or force people into his vision for the world.  He (and his disciples after him) live into that reality and invite others to experience it and do the same.  Like Jesus, we opt “to serve” others (and invite them to do the same) rather than “to be served” by voting our preferences so that others are compelled to obey.  Christians are those who are willing, in all matters and affairs to be counted among “the least” instead of using worldly power and influence to “lord it over” others.

There is a flawed logic at work in our dominant political vision.  It would have us believe that the future of the world and its peoples is in our hands and we therefore have a responsibility to vote to determine our future.  Sadly, this vision completely ignores the far greater reality held out to us in Scripture that God is in charge of the course of history and is at work in Christ to “bring everything under his control.”  Does this mean we just sit back and relax because God is in charge?  No!  Instead, the gospel of the Kingdom offers to us an alternative political reality and responsibilities.

In humility and weakness we die for that which is right before we ever dream of killing for it.  And we invite!

We speak with courage and boldness of the sovereignty of God and his righteousness.  And we invite!

We embody the truth we claim to believe – trusting that the truth itself and not our persuasiveness will win the day.  And we invite!

We run to the rescue of the poor and oppressed – we spend our lives on their behalf.  And we invite!

We invite, we invite, we invite!  And we pray to God that in the midst of our stumbling attempts to embody the sort of Kingdom reality held out to us in Scripture, that others see forgiveness, they see generosity, they see sacrificial living and a refusal to repay evil with evil and God draws them.  This is the sort of political reality and responsibility that God calls us in to as citizens of his Kingdom.

Looking forward to some discussion around this topic.  Let’s keep it civil and be open-minded with one another, eh?

Every so often I get an invitation to read and review a forthcoming book here at lifeasmission.  Ocassionally, I get really excited about the book I’m asked to take a look at.  That’s how I felt when I was contacted by Jason Derr (see some of his articles for the Huffington Post here) and asked to review his first book, Towards a Theopoetic of the Cross.

Most of that excitement stemmed from the fact that I had no idea what a theopoetic of the cross was!  Jason has helped me with that.

After setting the stage for what he intends in the book, Jason turns his attention to describing theopoetics before he applies them to the cross and discipleship.

I love theology, but I am no poet.  Few would find this to be a problem, but as Derr notes,

There is no theology without poetry. (37)

Poetry, like no other kind of writing, has the potential to enliven our imaginations.  As the author points out,

The theopoet is never safe to have at dinner parties, he will turn the whole thing into a Eucharist, s/he will remind us of the spiritual possibilities of the 6 o’clock news. (42)

Derr also points out that theopoetry is a realm of discourse for the “differently wisdomed,” a moniker which seems immeasurably more helpful in speaking of the theological contributions which might be offered by those we think of as having “learning disabilities.”

We are reminded by the author that,

The cross announces embarrassment to the church and to the world, that the unholy is holy, that it is revelation and that faith is not wrapped up in our neat moralities, our safe pleasantries. (58)

In a footnote to this text Derr acknowledges that this reality can be pushed too far, but it nevertheless reminds us that the cross, despite its evolution as a symbol and icon, was, and always should be, seen as a scandalous event to regard.

The cross, the author would have us remember, is an affront to our inclinations toward positions of power, be they “Christian” or not.  This idea flows into his final section on discipleship.

As only a theopoet might, Derr encourages us to envision a praxiological kind of discipleship through the metaphor of meal:

Te eat a meal, to be in love with its tastes is to enter into discipleship to it, to be transformed by it, to be driven into the school of the kitchen and to learn at its pots and pans, at its dirty dishes, at its spices and seasonings. (93)

This brief overview hardly does justice to the book.  Derr engages with the work of theologians such as Jugern Moltmann, Gustavo Gutierrez, Douglas John Hall, Martin Luther, and others.  He talks often of the manner of our incarnational engagement with the poor and oppressed and offers his take on how the Church ought to think of the GLBTQ community.

For those interested in sustained theological reflection and argumentation, this book will probably leave you wanting.  But, for those, not unlike me, who have to work harder to appreciate the nuances of what poetic language and thinking can do for our vision of God, this book is worth your time.

A few months back I mentioned the release of the book ViralHope: Good News from the Urbs to the Burbs (and everything in-between). I am one of 50 different authors who offers a brief reflection on what the “good news” might mean for my city (which was Memphis when I originally wrote).  The book has been doing quite well from what I understand and it now boasts an excellent promotional video.

You can still get single copies of the book through Amazon, or order multiple copies through Ecclesia Press.  I hope you’ll consider spreading this video around, maybe with a link to the book.

The video was made by Aaron Nee of the Brother NEE.  Check out this trailer from their feature film, The Last Romantic.

The guys over at Homebrewed Christianity recently posted an interview they did with N.T. Wright.  The interview was full of some really great sound bytes that I went ahead and divvied up to make your life easier

You can listen to or download the interview in its entirety here.

On being a bishop. Download audio file (wrightbishop.mp3)

On the unfortunate split between church and academy. Download audio file (wrightpastorwriter.mp3)

On returning to fulltime academic work. Download audio file (wrightteacher.mp3)

On Bart Ehrman. Download audio file (wrightbartehrman.mp3)

On John Shelby Spong. Download audio file (wrightspong.mp3)

On Luke Timothy Johnson. Download audio file (wrightjohnson.mp3)

On Marcus Borg & John Dominic Crossan. Download audio file (wrightborgcrossan.mp3)

On Jurgen Moltmann. Download audio file (wrightmoltmann.mp3)

On E.P. Sanders. Download audio file (wrightsanders.mp3)

On Karl Barth. Download audio file (wrightbarth.mp3)

On Stanley Hauerwas. Download audio file (wrighthauerwas.mp3)

On his most recent book, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters and why he chose to write about eschatology before ethics. Download audio file (wrightafteryoubelieve.mp3)

On the difference between Aristotelian virtue and Christian virtue. Download audio file (wrightchristianvirtue.mp3)

On the role of character and virtue in other religions. Download audio file (wrightreligiousvirtue.mp3)

On cultural virtue. Download audio file (wrightculturalvirtue.mp3)

On the renewing of our minds when they have become largely detached from the rest of who we are. Download audio file (wrightrenewing.mp3)

On Christianity Post-Postmodernity. Download audio file (wrightchristianitypostpostmodernity.mp3)

On the after-after life. Download audio file (wrightafterlife.mp3)

What NT Wright is reading, thinking, and planning for his “big book on Paul” as the next in his Christian Origins series. Download audio file (wrightreading.mp3)

What we can expect from NT Wright in his new role. Download audio file (wrightfuture.mp3)

Jim Belcher, the author of Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional, and I have much in common.

We both did masters degrees at Fuller Theological Seminary.

We both have a heart for church planting.

I teach a class on the Emerging Church based on the intensive that he references in his book. (35)

We get frustrated when people talk past one another, defaulting to caricatured stereotypes rather than embracing a posture of openness.

And we both value looking for a “third way” to approach dichotomistic thinking.

He is right when he says,

It seems that every time someone criticizes the emerging church, they pick the worst-case scenario or the most extreme statements. (49)

He is also correct in noting,

It seems the emerging church, for rhetorical purposes, uses sweeping generalizations about the traditional church that are unfair. (76)

The larger Body of Christ would indeed be served well by discourse that is deeper, more specific, and marked by a sense of humble openness.  Belcher’s chapters on Deep: Truth, Evangelism, Gospel, Worship, Preaching, Ecclesiology, and Culture, are essentially his attempts  to facilitate just that – a worthwhile enterprise in my opinion.

While Belcher’s book is truly helpful in this regard, I’m not sure he really hits the mark in terms of articulating a true “third way” as a means of engaging these topics.  Very often, his conclusions in these chapters are a combination of a chastened version of the EC position he articulates and an expanded version of the traditional position he articulates (usually w/ reference to Tim Keller and his church!).  I suppose this is a kind of “third way,” maybe even precisely the one Belcher desires, but I’m not certain it’s the most helpful kind of third way for the Church to pursue.

The mistake, I believe, comes in the assumption that one can simply pit the positions of the EC against the positions of the traditional church.  The main problem here is that many in the EC camp are themselves trying to articulate and maneuver a “third way” between the modern categories of conservatism and liberalism, a feature that Belcher seems to either overlook or discount w/o comment.  An indication of this is his quick dismissal of the Anabaptist tradition from which many in the EC draw as one which is able to circumvent many of the dichotomies addressed in this book on account of its fundamentally, Christendom-rejecting, stance.  Belcher never seems to ask, “How might people in the EC camp already be searching for a third way in response to classic approaches to these issues?,” but assumes that their positions are simply reactions against the positions of traditional churches.

Belcher sets himself on this course in stating,

We need to define it [the emerging church] as a movement, particularly its theology.  The best way to do this is to look at what the emerging church movement is against – the things they are protesting and the rasons why they are calling for change. (38)

For the life of me, I can’t grasp why someone would want to define a movement by what they are against (even it it is a protest movement) rather than what they are for.  We certainly regard what the classic reformers were for as far more more important than what they were against!  But more than this, Belcher fails to identify missiology as a core motif for the EC.  For many, if not most, in the global EC movement, it is an attempt to participate with God and God’s mission in the world that is reshaping how they understand the sorts of topics that Belcher raises in his book, not vice versa.

These criticisms notwithstanding, I am glad that Jim wrote this book and don’t doubt for a second that it has an will continue to help many.

**Jim has recently decided to resign from his position as lead pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA.  You can read a letter he wrote to the congregation regarding this transition here and some additional discussion about this sort of trend here.

A day of utter despair.  Our people have known these before.  Hopes crushed and lives threatened, we question God and his plan for us.  We weep and mourn in fear and despondence.  Why?  When?  For how long?  Why?

In the midst of our loss, our fear, and our pain.

On this Holy Saturday.

We worship.

For here is where God meets us.

God is in our loss.

God is in our fear.

God is in our pain.

The Gospel.

Previous posts in this Series:

Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem | The Fruit of the Problem | New Soil | Community Rootedness | Character Formation | Conviction Shaping

I have tried to make a case that a missional vision of theological education is one rooted in community that emphasizes the formation of Christan character marked by Kingdom convictions. I would further suggest that a missional vision of theological education will seek to train leaders contextually.

This is missiology 101.  Urban ministry is different than suburban.  Ministry amongst the poor is different than ministry amongst the affluent.  Ministry with adolescents is different than ministry with senior citizens.  Traditional theological education, however, is not equipped to train people with these nuances in mind.  The dominant expression of theological education within Christendom has been training at geographically specific institutions.  These schools of course bring their own context to bear on the training they are doing, but are necessarily limited by that same feature.  Geography isn’t the only problem, the very model of education employed in the seminary environment distances, if not outright separates, theological education from contextual factors.  Some schools have begun trying to correct this problem through online education, allowing students to continue serving in their present context while doing intensive biblical & theological study.  As I said here, these innovations within the current system of theological education are helpful, but they aren’t aimed at the other aspects of missional theological education that I have already covered.  So, the question before us is,

Within a missional vision of theological education, how will contextual leadership development take place?

I can think of at least three aspects of a beginning answer to that question.

1) Networks

Church networks are the missional answer to the decay of denominations. For good or for bad, denominations are crumbling.  In an era of post’s (post-modernity, post-Christendom, etc.) you can add to the list post-denominationalism.  Springing up in their place are inter-denominational networks of churches.  In my opinion, the best of these are striving to make a shared vision of missional living more central than individual points of doctrine.  Besides always being rooted in a particular context, the realities of globalization and pluralism mean that no one congregation has the capacity to train leaders for the church of the future by itself.  It must look outside.  If leaders are to be identified by local communities and if these same communities are to take primary responsibility for their holistic formation and contextual training, then meaningful involvement in a healthy network of missional churches through the sharing of resources and common ministry is a big part of how we accomplish the contextual training of leaders.

2) Apprenticeship

The most valuable resources to the spiritual formation & training of leaders are men and women who offer years of faithful service within a given context. Reading, writing, and peer discussion all have a vital place in the formation of missional church leaders, but all of these dimensions gain their final value in terms of their practical implications in a given context.  Seasoned leaders are invaluable in helping to achieve this goal.  Cultivating missional church leaders who have the skills necessary to help a body of people understand the gospel and its implications in contextually appropriate ways calls for a mentor-apprentice(s) dimension to any process of theological education.

3) Civic Engagement

Civic engagement needs to increasingly become a hallmark of both missional church ministry and leadership formation.  Immersion has long been a defining mark of truly cross-cultural ministry.  Therefore, those churches who embrace the West as a mission field should immediately resonate with the idea that the best way to become incarnationally faithful is to immerse themselves in their context.  The reason for this is at least 2-fold 1) To discover where and how God is already at work. 2) To discern what incarnationally faithful witness to the gospel will mean and look like.

If it’s not already obvious, this aspect of a missional vision of theological education is tied directly to the centrality of the Missio Dei for a missional ecclesiology.  A big part of what makes missional churches missional is their abdication of attractional approaches to church and ministry in favor of incarnational ones. All that Jesus said and did was said and done in light of the people he was speaking to and the place he was speaking in.  In both ministry and leadership formation, we do well to follow this pattern of contextual wisdom.

What has your experience with contextual leadership training been?  Do you see other ways to accomplish this goal in or outside of traditional models of theological education?

In my next post, I hope to round things off with some thoughts on cultural pioneering as a final mark of a missional vision of theological education.