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.

Related posts:

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

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.

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A while back I had the chance to conduct an interview with Scott Sabin, the author of Tending to Eden and the Executive Director of Plant with Purpose – a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to helping the rural poor through environmental restoration, economic empowerment, and spiritual renewal.

Plant with Purpose has put together a Holiday Village Market.  Through the market you can buy or contribute toward..

Animals

Trees

Eco Items

A Family Garden

Business Skills and Micro-credit Loan Management Training

Spiritual Renewal

I think it would be simply brilliant to buy one (or way more!) of these gifts on behalf of a friend or family member and give them some token of it as a way of stimulating conversation or even direct involvement with regard to the basic and urgent needs around the world.  Please leave a comment here if you plan to make use of this Holiday Village Market this Christmas.

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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.

Related posts:

1. Launching Missional Communities (Book Review)
2. Back to the Cross
3. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens

Plant With Purpose is an international environmental organization that transforms lives in rural areas where poverty is caused by deforestation. For over 25 years, Plant With Purpose has provided lasting solutions to heal the relationship between people and their environment by planting trees, revitalizing farms, and offering loans to create economic opportunity.

Yesterday, I had the chance to actually interview Scott and ask him a few questions about the book.  Besides providing an overview of Plant with Purpose and the book, Tending to Eden, we spend some talking about the devastation in Haiti, one of the places where they serve, the vicious cycle of poverty and environmental degradation, and the relationship between creation care and the gospel.  The whole interview (~ 22 mins.) is worth the selection of the book that Scott reads toward the end.

Download audio file (Sabin%20Interview.mp3)
Download.

If you’re reading this in a feed reader and don’t see the audio player, click through to see it.

If you buy the book through the Amazon link on this page, a portion of the proceeds will directly benefit the rural poor.

Related posts:

1. Book Review – Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People
2. An Interview with N.T. Wright
3. Give the Gift of Hope

Especially as a citizen of Memphis, where Dr. King was assassinated, the importance of all he stood for comes powerfully home.  Memphis is in many ways a broken and hurting city.  Racial division (if not tension) remains thick.  Systems and structures which perpetuate generational poverty and crime continue to plague us.  And the dominant expression of church here in the mid-south seems unable or unwilling to powerfully engage this sort of brokenness.  Memphis is a city desperate for the good news of God’s Kingdom breaking forth into the world.

I caught a glimmer of this hope the other day as I was remembering King’s famous, “Paul’s Letter to American Christians” and came across this quote (from that sermon) on one of the walls of the downtown YMCA where I workout…

Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.

I am happy to stand with those who are excited about the progress we have made as a country, evidenced in our election of a black President.  I am even happy to stand with those inspired by the hope that this new President and administration aim to offer to a nation that has lost its way in war, economic crisis, and poor international reputation.  Yet I long for more.

Yesterday we celebrated a man and his legacy of striving for racial reconciliation, care for the poor, and justice for all.  Today we celebrate the dawn of a new era for our country, an era (perhaps) to be marked by change for the better.

But I long for the day that only God can bring about, a day when all our human striving and labor will be tested as with fire.  The chaff of our striving will be burned away and the precious stones of our striving will be even further refined.  On 2 days when it is so easy for me to get caught up in the acclaim of two good men, one who had a dream and another who represents, in part, the evidence of that dream coming to pass, I pause to remember the supremacy of the one man, who, at the height of his glory, was abandoned by all as he hung on a cross and proclaimed, “It is finished.”

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While the Christmas-specific dimension of Advent Conspiracy has been a beautiful thing, it’s my sincere hope that our community (and the numerous others that participated) will carry the spirit of the movement forward, that we’ll maintain our enthusiasm to change the way we live our lives all year round so that we are always seeking to change the lives of others.  In general, one of the best ways we can help others around the world (not to mention ourselves) is to simply consume less.  We think we need way more than we do and we have become accustomed to a lifestyle of excess.  We need to live simpler lives.  But, over and above this, when it comes to making purchases that are just a part of life, we would do well to consider how we can make these purchases in responsible ways.

I have mentioned Better World Books before, but I just came across this video which speaks of their new partnership with Invisible Children and was reminded of just how great an organization they are.  Please, if you need to buy books, forget Amazon and look to Better World Books.  You might even think about taking up some donations of books!

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And here’s something a few folks from Living Hope put together for our community.

Related posts:

1. Change Your Life – Change the Lives of Others
2. Relational Gift Giving Ideas

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Leaving this afternoon for Miami along with some other friends for the CCDA conference.  I have been looking forward to this conference for quite some time and plan on blogging and twittering some of my thoughts and experiences through the week as I am able.

There is a Facebook group if you are intereted in joining.

Tomorrow I’ll be in a workshop that has to do with creating urban/suburban partnerships and here’s a list of the speakers for the week.

Related posts:

1. 3DM, Learning Communites, and the End of Celebrity-Driven Christian Gatherings
2. Why I’m Going to the Ecclesia National Gathering
3. Epic Fail Pastors Conference

Related posts:

1. Have You Seen My Bike or God’s Justice?
2. Jesus and (Social) Justice

I was in California this past weekend.  I was most excited to see my family and friends as well as to remind myself of just how awesome LA is.  However, I was also set to appear in court to handle an outstanding matter.

I first left Pasadena in the summer of 2006.  I left a car in the hands of my house church and asked them to find someone down on their luck who could use it.  They did, and I was thrilled.  Until about a year later when it came to my attention that I was receiving parking tickets on the donated car.  I spoke with the person who assured me that they would rectify the situation immediately.  This past February I flew out to California and was mortified to find out that the recipient of this car had not in fact rectified the situation and had amassed nearly $5,000 worth of parking tickets in my name.  Again, I spoke with this individual – this time in person – and again they promised me that they would do what was necessary to make things right.  A few months went by – still nothing.  So, I was forced to file a small claims court case, which was scheduled for yesterday in Pasadena.

As I guessed, although this person was served with court papers, they did not show up for the court date.  I explained the situation to the judge and he found in my favor.  Translation, “Yes, she owes you the money for the tickets.  Have fun collecting!”

I have not paid for these tickets yet and I am going to try a few other avenues, but the matter remains largely unresolved.

This is not unlike when I came home to Ohio to discover that renters had done $15,000 worth of damage to my home.  There was a judgment in my favor there as well, but I haven’t (and don’t presume I ever will) see a cent.

In all honesty, I am not complaining, just sharing.  I am not really sure exactly what to feel.  It would be easy to play the victim, I mean in reality I suppose I am, but I’d rather not settle for that.  I am trying my best to push through the frustration and financial hardship and ask myself, “What evil must have been done to a person to bring them to a point where they act like this?”  Certainly we all bear responsibility for our actions, but I do not count myself among those who feel people simply act evil impulsively.  I think we act out evil because some sort of evil has been done to us.

So, while not merely excusing the actions of these folks, I am really trying to sympathize with their situation and ask for justice – not just for me, but for them.

Oh yeah, I had my car in the shop while I was away to the tune of $500 in repairs for stuff and then I wrecked it this afternoon when I decided to drive through a ditch and into a fence rather than up the rear end of the lady who slammed on her brakes at the last minute to make a left turn she didn’t signal for.  Evil abounds!  (Yes, I’m fine)

** I almost hesitate to use the word “evil” to describe this sort of stuff – there are far worse travesties and situations in the world that are far more deserving of the title, but hopefully you get my drift.

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This was an awesome movie.  Not only shot, directed, and acted well, but an incredibly eye-opening (though certainly not meant to be a non-fiction) film regarding the conflict in the Middle East.  The 5-minute introduction alone, a brief history of the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia (The Kingdom) was worth the price of the movie.

As I walked out with my friends last night and we were talking about the movie, I lamented that so much of the fighting in this war has to do with 2 competing ideologies, both predicated on the notion that victory will come through the violent elimination of their enemies. 

But, to quote a contemporary prophetic voice, “Peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication.”  Violence ONLY EVER begets more violence.   I have no definitive answers to some of the very real problems and dilemmas that we face in this war, but I have put all my hope and have put all my trust in the way of Jesus, the way of non-violent resistance, prophetic action and speaking, and sacrificial living unto death. 

These are God’s means of peace in the world. 

As soon as you can check out this movie.  Here’s a trailer.

Related posts:

1. The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens
2. Mission and Kingdom
3. Brian McLaren on the Kingdom of God

Related posts:

1. Preaching in the Missional Church
2. Bi-Vocational Ministry & the Missional Church
3. Human Trafficing :: Global Awareness :: Missional Church