• Archive of "theology" Category

    #Occupy Empire: Anabaptism in God’s Mission

    March 4, 2012 // 1 Comment »

    All sights are set right now on the Ecclesia National Gathering coming up next week… and I’m sure I’ll have plenty to report back on after returning, but for those of you who stand within (or look longingly upon from without!) the Anabaptist tradition, I thought I’d let you know about a mini-conference happening in just over a month at Eastern Mennonite University.  The event is entitled, “Occupy Empire: Anabaptism in God’s Mission” and is part of the Anabaptist Missional Project.  You can see the highlights in the image below, but the rest of the details and registration options are available here.  For some additional details on where the idea for the conference came from and what the purpose is, check this article.  

    I’ve written before about how I found a theological home w/ in the Anabaptist tradition, so I am really looking forward to spending some time with people who have been swimming in that stream for quite a bit longer than me.  If you can swing it, hope you’ll consider joining us!

    Posted in anabaptist, conference, discipleship, missiology, missional, missional theology, post-christendom, spiritual formation, theological education, theology, western culture

    A New Era of Theological Education May Be Dawning

    March 1, 2012 // No Comments »

    OK, that title might be a little over the top, but a guy can hope right?!  Time, as it always does, will tell!

    Last summer I started to talk about a partnership that was brewing between Northern Seminary and 3DM (Part 1, Part 2).

    Well, at long last that partnership has been officialized as Northern now offers a masters emphasis in Discipleship & Mission as well as a DMin in Discipleship and Mission, while 3DM is able to offer those who journey through their Learning Communities as part of a “Scholar Track,” seminary credit for doing so.  You can read Northern’s announcement here and 3DM’s here.

    I think this partnership embodies an important and concrete step toward one way to get at the new models of theological education that I’m convinced we so desperately need.

    While it’s not a full program – the masters emphasis is equivalent to 9, 3 credit-hour courses and the DMin track leaves only 3 additional “core courses” – what is being presented here seeks to make theological education…

    more accessible - through regionally, or ever nationally accessible intensive courses

    more affordable - by bringing the support of churches and ministry organizations more centrally into the mix and allowing students to remain where they live and work

    more integrated - as all learning is structured around its relevance for and application to actual ministry contexts and diverse subject matter (biblical studies, theological reflection, and ministry training) is interwoven amongst all modules as opposed to segmented out into their own courses

    more sustainable - as these options are deigned for those who take a longer-term view to their theological formation

    more formational - as students aren’t just offered content, but are invited into mentoring relationships with content experts who are also ministry practitioners

    more robust - as students root their education in a community of learning as opposed to simply tackling it primarily on an individual basis

    These are the sort of advances and initiatives that those of us who launched thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com and contributed to the production of the video and white paper hosted over on that site get really excited about!

    Of course I hope that this partnership and these program options are fruitful.  But even more, I am anxious for what will be learned as schools like Northern open themselves up to models of theological education that are simply better suited for preparing men and women to serve the Church as reflective practitioners, missionary leaders, and Kingdom citizens.

    Posted in 3DM, christendom, church, discipleship, individualism, kingdom, leadership, missiology, missional, missional theology, Northern Seminary, post-christendom, sustainability, theological education, theology

    We’ve all got a “Girl in the War” (Josh Ritter)

    February 29, 2012 // No Comments »

    Every so often a song, or at least a few lines from a song strike me and I’ll get on a kick of listening to it over and over and over.  Josh Ritter has done this to me a few times, most recently with his 2006 song, Girl in the War.  Josh himself talks about the song here on NPR and here in a performance for the Center for American Progress so I won’t attempt any lengthy exposition on the meaning of the song.  Except to say this…

    This song happens to coincide with a flurry of reading I am doing on the history of the church w/ regard to its missionary posture and involvement in the world.  Most of said history, if not marked by the absence of mission, is marred by sad if not deplorable actions.  This has me remembering, we too, as the Church, have a “girl in the war,” and it’s near impossible for me to think of anything that ought to be more central to our conversation, and engagement.  Sadly, many things distract, preoccupy, and consume our attention, thereby sabotaging our unity and compromising the integrity of our witness.  It seems that perhaps we too could do w/ an imagination in which the “dove from up above is a dragon and our feet are on fire.”

    Lyrics, video, and audio are below…

    Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

    Peter said to Paul you know all those words we wrote
    Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go
    But now talking to God is Laurel begging Hardy for a gun
    I got a girl in the war man I wonder what it is we done

    Paul said to Peter you got to rock yourself a little harder
    Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire
    But I got a girl in the war Paul the only thing I know to do
    Is turn up the music and pray that she makes it through

    Because the keys to the Kingdom got locked inside the Kingdom
    And the angels fly around in there but we can’t see them
    I got a girl in the war Paul I know that they can hear me yell
    If they can’t find a way to help her they can go to Hell
    If they can’t find a way to help her they can go to Hell

    Paul said to Peter you got to rock yourself a little harder
    Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire
    But I got a girl in the war Paul her eyes are like champagne
    They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain
    They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain
    They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

    Posted in church, culture, missiology, music, theology

    A Look Back and A Look Ahead

    January 17, 2012 // No Comments »

    Whoa, where did 2011 go? I suppose time seeming to run in fast forward when you have a baby for the first time is just an inevitability, but man, that really snuck up on me.

    Looking back over what I posted in 2011, I count about 32 posts, not including my weekly auto-posting of “Tweets of the Week” that gives me (and others if they’re interested) an overview of things (thoughts, pictures, links, etc) that seemed worthy of mention.  That doesn’t quite hit the 1/week rhythm I’d like to keep up with, but didn’t fall below 1/every other week either.  Hoping for some more consistency here in 2012.  We’ll see ;)

    As I survey what I did post, I spent a lot of time writing about theological education from a missiological perspective (initially in March, April, and May and then in a more focused manner in August, October, November, and December). The bulk those thoughts got encapsulated in a paper and video that I had the opportunity to contribute to that will hopefully continue to spur on some conversation over at thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com.

    Theological Education wasn’t the only thing I wrote about however.  Among other things…

    So if that’s a brief look back, what’s in view with a look ahead?  Near as I can tell, 2012 will be punctuated by three major developments.

    1. A Major Job Change

    As of the first year, I’ve resigned my position at Northern Seminary in order to begin working with a new initiative named the Missio Alliance (no website quite yet, but it’s coming).  The basic purpose of the initiative is to bring together a cadre of theological and missiological voices from various streams of evangelicalism in order to begin to offer training and resources for the theological and pastoral formation of Christian leaders.  I’m excited about this opportunity not just because I’ll find the work personally gratifying, but because I think there is a major need for an initiative like this, one that seeks to be theologically centrist, relationally oriented, and structured around the tight integration of theology and practice.  If this sounds like something you’re interested in knowing more about or participating in, don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

    2. Giving Ourselves to God’s Work in Elgin

    For over a year now we’ve had the sense that God might be calling us to give more of our attention and energy to the people and needs of Elgin.  We are just as enamored with our church community, Life on the Vine, as we have ever been.  But, a huge part of what it means to be committed to the vision of Life on the Vine is maintaining a sense of openness to God’s leading for mission and this is what we feel like we’re responding to in faith.  While what this might mean is still very much up for discernment with others (including the pastors of LOV, our close friends, and those we feel like God has brought into our lives as friends and partners here in Elgin), our sense is that God is leading us to begin cultivating what we would call a “missional community” – a group of 20-50 others who identify with a common sense of mission and seek to invest in one another through common rhythms and practices around that mission.

    3. Prayerfully Moving Forward with Adoption

    Amy and I have talked about adoption for several years now, since before we were married as a matter of fact.  The big questions for us have been, “when will be a good time?” “and “where might we adopt from?”  We are still talking, praying, and asking questions about the various factors to consider in terms of domestic vs. international adoption, but at this point it’s fair to say that this is something we feel committed to and will perhaps formally begin the process of here in 2012.  Potentially, this could even mean moving to another home in Elgin that offers the kind of space that we might need as we consider getting a home study done.
    ——

    I’m sure that I’ll be posting much more about all of these things through this next year, but for those of you beautiful people that regularly ask what’s going on and how you might pray for us, near as I can tell, these are the things that will factor most substantively into the shape of life for the Rozko’s for the next 12 months.

    Posted in Amy, blogging, chicago, church, church planting, decisions, discipleship, Ecclesia Network, elgin, family, kids, LOV, missio alliance, missional, missional theology, Northern Seminary, parenting, post-christendom, theological education, theology

    The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens

    December 9, 2011 // No Comments »

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

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

    Missionary Pastors for a Missionary God (lifeasmission | Patheos)

    Ministers are Mobilizers, Not Managers (lifeasmission | Patheos)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shaping Kingdom Convictions

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

    Imparting Spiritual Knowledge

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

    Re-framing Our Relationship to Scripture

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

    Embracing the Irreplaceable Role of the Holy Spirit

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

    Concluding Thoughts

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

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

    The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders

    December 5, 2011 // No Comments »

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

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

    Missionary Pastors for a Missionary God (lifeasmission | Patheos)

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

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

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

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

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

    Affordable

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

    Accessible

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

    Prepare Cultural Pioneers

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

    Cultivate Disciple-Makers and Mobilizers

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

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

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

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