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.

I have to admit, I am really struck by just how fervently conversations about the plight of seminaries and theological education in general seem to be bubbling up to the surface right now.

A few weeks ago my alma mater, Fuller Theological Seminary, went live with its, “Seminary of the Future” project that Andy Crouch (of Christianity Today) and Rich Mouw (the President of Fuller) have been collaborating on for the last year and a half or so.  You can follow the rolling out of their various Discussion Points at future.fuller.edu.  You can also follow them on Twitter @futureseminary or join a broader conversation using the hashtag, #futureseminary.

Then, yesterday, as I was running and getting caught up on my Homebrewed Christianity listening, I was struck by the closing discussion between podcast host Tripp Fuller and my friend, guest, Dr. (yeah, he finally finished) Tony Jones on the lingering problems of “residential seminary education.”  The whole podcast is worth a listen, though this wasn’t the topic throughout.  They just touched on it at the end.  Tony is nothing if not straightforward and provocative.  Check out this 4 minute clip.

Then, stuck in traffic on my way in yesterday, I noticed that Patheos, one of the most highly trafficked religious websites is convening a two-month online symposium on “The Future of Seminary Education.”  They have already solicited contributions from some great bloggers with more to be added.  This promises to be a fruitful conversation.

Clearly, this is an important conversation for a growing population of people.

As someone who has written on this topic from a missiological point of view (see sidebar on the blog), whose role at Northern Seminary gives me the opportunity to help develop programs, partnerships, and other initiatives along these lines, and who has been working with 3DM as they attempt to offer what they can to this conversation, I am really excited to see just how much momentum this conversation is gaining.

So here’s a final reminder about an event I mentioned a couple weeks ago, for those of you who are in (or who care enough about this to make your way to) the Chicago area, Northern Seminary is hosting a 3DM event on Thursday, October 27 from 7-9PM that will feature the presentation of a paper and video on the future of theological education.  These presentations will be followed by responses by those who can contribute from different perspectives (pastoral, student, academic), and then open discussion and dialogue.  The event is free, but you need to register here.

And feel free to stick around for the (also free) workshop that 3DM is hosting the next day on issues of discipleship and mission, and then the annual Missional Learning Commons.  More info and registration options for these events availabvle at missionalcommons.org.  I think God is going to do lots of great stuff during these events.  Hope you can join us!

Re-posted from CT in entirety without hesitation…

On 9/11 I thought, For the most powerful, militarized nation in the world also to think of itself as an innocent victim is deadly. It was a rare prophetic moment for me, considering Presidents Bush and Obama have spent billions asking the military to rectify the crime of a small band of lawless individuals, destroying a couple of nations who had little to do with it, in the costliest, longest series of wars in the history of the United States.

The silence of most Christians and the giddy enthusiasm of a few, as well as the ubiquity of flags and patriotic extravaganzas in allegedly evangelical churches, says to me that American Christians may look back upon our response to 9/11 as our greatest Christological defeat. It was shattering to admit that we had lost the theological means to distinguish between the United States and the kingdom of God. The criminals who perpetrated 9/11 and the flag-waving boosters of our almost exclusively martial response were of one mind: that the nonviolent way of Jesus is stupid. All of us preachers share the shame; when our people felt very vulnerable, they reached for the flag, not the Cross.

September 11 has changed me. I’m going to preach as never before about Christ crucified as the answer to the question of what’s wrong with the world. I have also resolved to relentlessly reiterate from the pulpit that the worst day in history was not a Tuesday in New York, but a Friday in Jerusalem when a consortium of clergy and politicians colluded to run the world on our own terms by crucifying God’s own Son.

Will Willimon, presiding bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church

(ht: imonk for the image)

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 mentioned a couple weeks ago that as part of my role at Northern Seminary, I was in Pawley’s Island, SC working w/ the good people of 3DM to flesh out how those who participate in a 3DM Learning Community can apply that experience toward a seminary degree. Let me describe Learning Communities briefly. (check here for more)

Learning Communities are open to church planters and small (3-5) church staff teams. LC’s are structured around 4 intensives:

1) Building a Discipling Culture

2) Multiplying Missional Leaders

3) Leading Missional Communities

4) Establishing Centers of Mission.

During these intensives, church planters and teams have the opportunity to learn from the experience and insight of church leaders drawing on decades of ministry experience in Post-Christian England, work through the details of this teaching for their specific ministry context, and build 6-month strategic ministry plans that members of the 3DM team will mentor and coach them through during weekly “huddle” calls until the following intensive. That’s just a basic sketch, it doesn’t even begin to get into the ways that they intersperse worship and ministry time with social time for connecting and building relationships. It’s really an all-around incredible experience as I’ve said before.

So, we’ve been working on pairing this existing paradigm of training and formation with additional course work, i.e., books, writing (reflection & research) projects, and assessment exercises, to create something of a “Scholar Track.” Guess what excites me most is that as I have shared this with a number of people, including people who are thinking about seminary, are in seminary, or have finished seminary, the response has been the same, “Man, that’s what all of theological education should look like!” (By the way, if you’re one of those people, drop me a line directly via the contact page and I can share a little more about how you might be part of a growing initiative in this regard).

On Northern’s end, we hope that new and existing students will want to take advantage of the opportunity to participate in a 3DM Learning Community as way to, on the one hand, bring the issues of discipleship and mission to the forefront of their education and formation, and on the other, to benefit from a learning experience that is rooted in community as well as a local ministry context.

On 3DM’s end, we are hoping that making this option available will be not just an added incentive to those who are interested in working toward a seminary degree, but will bring a dimension to their experience that proves additionally valuable and formative. In either case, doing so will result in 9 courses that count as…

1) The completion of an entire Certificate Program
2) An emphasis of courses that count toward the completion of an MA or MDiv at Northern (or which can be transferred to another school’s program)
3) The focus section of a DMin degree

Maybe just me, but I happen to think this is a pretty exciting opportunity. Anyone have any thoughts or reactions?

It’s interesting how things come together. I’ve been cultivating a growing interest in the future of theological education, especially under the direction of missional approaches to theology and ecclesiology since about the time I started into my own seminary experience, almost seven years ago now. Shortly thereafter, through a handful of professors and some involvement in Pasadena Mennonite Church, I was introduced to the Anabaptist tradition and its unique approach to theology and ecclesiology. I was especially taken with the way in which, for them, discipleship wasn’t something extraneous to “being saved,” but was the way in which we fully receive and participate in the good news of God’s salvation. Personally then, I’ve got these two passions, missional approaches to theological education and the centrality of discipleship for how we understand and practice being the Church.

Working at Northern Seminary, a school that is radically committed to exploring the best ways to come alongside the Church and Christian ministries to equip men and women for service and leadership in an increasingly Post-Christian context, sometimes affords me the opportunity to bring these two areas of passion together. This is especially true as I am in Pawley’s Island, SC working with my pal Doug Paul and other members of the 3DM team as we develop a partnership that will 1) Make it possible for participants in 3DM Learning Communities to earn seminary credit for the work they do over the two years of that journey and 2) Bring discipleship front and center as the focus of earning an Certificate, MA, MDiv, or DMin from a seminary.

Northern, in my opinion, has gotten quite good at creating partnership-driven programs that afford students the opportunity to craft degree programs that are both rooted in concrete ministry contexts and directly related to the area of Christian ministry and leadership that God has called them to. This partnership with 3DM is no exception. Over the course of two years, 3DM guides pastors and leaders through not just the ideas of creating a discipling culture, multiplying missional leaders, launching missional communities, and establishing centers of mission, but the nuts and bolts of those endeavors as well. This is what makes them so unique. They are not just content providers, they serve as mentors and coaches through two years of implementing these ideas. The nature and fruit of this process is more than enough to make someone scratch their head when comparing it to traditional models of theological education, which are almost always class based rather than ministry based. This partnership is a deliberate attempt to begin to rectify this shortcoming by creating a definitive bond between theological reflection and ministry experience with a view toward spiritual formation.

Crafting syllabi and shaping the contours of these various degree programs is just a part of what I’ll be spending my time on while I’m down here with the good people of 3DM We’re also working on a couple side projects that I think will add some value to the conversations and initiatives related to the reshaping of theological education and the place and practice of discipleship in the Church.

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.

In the midst of this reflecting and writing that I’ve been doing about missiology and theological education (The Emerging Guild of Missionary Theologians, The Missiological Future of Theological Education: Part 1 and Part 2), it occurs to me that I personally exist in the midst of the tension between two major battles that beset many emerging missional leaders.  They are not unrelated battles, but they are truly different.

Battle 1: Seeking a Sustainable Vocational Life

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

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

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

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

Battle 2: Bridging the Gap Between Church and Academy

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

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

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

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

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

Alright, so at the beginning of March I offered some thoughts on what I’m calling, “The Emerging Guild of Missionary Theologians.”  Then, a full month later, I followed up w/ “The Missiological Future of Theological Education,” which was little more than an attempt to say that my thoughts on this subject are largely tied to a series of posts that I offered at the end of 2009 entitled, “Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education.”  I’ve finally got a little bit of breathing room and wanted to flesh out some further thoughts I’ve had.

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

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

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

Come Alongside the Church…

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

Identify…

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

Educate…

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

Train…

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

Mobilize…

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

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

A couple weeks ago I offered the post, The Emerging Guild of Missionary Theologians.  I am planning on following up with that post more substantively very soon.

In the meantime, it’s probably worth noting that my thoughts there and those that will come out in the next post on the subject, are vitally connected to a series I wrote at the end of 2009, Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education.

I get emails and feedback on those posts often enough that I thought it might be worth making them a bit more accessible to lifeasmission newcomers.  So, for those of you who typically just read these posts in a feed reader, if you click through to my blog, you’ll find a list of the 9 posts in that series as well as a PDF of the entire series in the right sidebar.

These posts continue to be important for me personally and vocationally and it would seem that plenty of others are desirous to have dialogue about the ideas there.  So, hopefully keeping them a bit more front and center will aid in that regard.

Not so long ago I reviewed, Launching Missional Communities, by Mike Breen and Alex Absalom.  Then, some good conversation ensued, both on my post as well as on a post that Mike offered in response to my review. (Incidentally, Mike has recently followed up on this conversation with another post.  You can see my engagement with his ideas there.)

Mike helps to lead a ministry called 3DM (more on them here) that a good number of my church ministry/planter friends have been impacted by.  One of those friends, Doug Paul, and I have recently been having conversations about the relationship between the philosophy behind 3DM and the future of theological education.  In fact, you should check out a brilliant interview that Mike did with Dave Kludt of “The Burner Blog” through Fuller Seminary, especially question 5, on that subject.

A couple weeks ago, as a representative of Northern Seminary, where I work, I was able to participate in the first gathering of a new Learning Community that 3DM launched.  Essentially, this was a gathering of about 40 church teams (3-5 leaders/church) who were beginning a 2 year journey of learning together what it might mean to build a discipling culture, multiply missional leaders, launch missional communities, and establish centers of mission.  The structure of the event (Monday afternoon through Thursday afternoon) was unlike any other Christian conference/event I have ever been a part of and quite frankly, was more helpful than any conference/event I have ever been a part of.  This was the case for one simple reason, it took seriously the idea of praxis – engaging in an intentional rhythm of reflection and action.

The event was structured largely around a rhythm of “idea-driven” corporate times and “application-driven” community times.  Interspersed throughout the week were additional times for even smaller group engagement, shared meals, and prayer/ministry time.

I won’t belabor the point by going into a detailed description of how all these times looked exactly, but suffice it to say, the centrality of praxis (learning/engaging, ideas/skills, or hearing/responding), which drove our time together, set this gathering apart from anything else I’ve been a part of.  Whereas a good many Christian gatherings are predicated on drawing people to celebrity speakers or to a purely intellectual presentation of ideas (not that these are bad in and of themselves), I would hope that more and more Christian gatherings might choose to restructure themselves in the way described above.

3DM is doing good work.  I would go so far as to say they are doing some of the most needed work in helping people/churches get a handle on what it might mean, practically, to embody a missional ecclesiology here in the US as Christendom continues to crumble and we are led (forced?) to ask new questions about the nature and purpose of the church.

If you represent an existing church or are engaged/thinking about church planting, you should absolutely consider being part of a future learning community.

If you are reading this and have been part of a 3DM Leaning Community, please feel free to offer your thoughts and reflections for others.