• Archive of "LOV" Category

    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

    Beautiful Things

    September 21, 2011 // No Comments »

    I’ve been a fan of Gungor ever since I came across “God is Not a White Man” a year ago. Since then, we have incorporated a number of their songs into the services at Life on the Vine. The latest of these is “Beautiful Things.” I find it incredible.  Enjoy!

    Posted in LOV, music, video

    “Going to Church” Is Not A Reality I Want For My Daughter

    July 26, 2011 // 6 Comments »

    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.

    Posted in Amy, christendom, church, culture, discipleship, God, gospel, Jesus, kingdom, LOV, love, narrative theology, parenting, reconciliation, salvation, spiritual formation, stories, theology, truth

    (More) Things I Never Thought

    January 27, 2011 // No Comments »

    Way back in May of 2006 I wrote a blog post titled, “Things I Never Thought.” It was basically my own reflection on how the trajectory of my life had taken shape in ways that I didn’t expect or plan for. I had a number of friends mention that they appreciated the post when it was randomly retweeted from the archives so I thought I would do another post along the same lines, almost five years later now.

    In May of 2006 I was in the Spring quarter of grad school. I was taking Pentateuch w/ Dr. John Goldingay, Theology of Christian Community w/ Dr. Ray Anderson and doing a Directed Study in Narrative Theology w/ Dr. Ryan Bolger. I had just one more quarter to go and then I was going to graduate. As I thought about my future, I imagined heading in one of two directions. Either I would move back to Canton and re-establish myself in the community I had left behind and missed like crazy, or, if God didn’t direct that way, I would look for a pastoral position in either the Pacific NW or in the Northeastern part of the US – some place that was further along in terms of being a Post-Christian context.

    I never thought I would wind up working for Fuller’s MAGL program. I didn’t even know we had an MAGL program, but the opportunity presented itself and it radically altered my life. This will come into sharper focus below, but suffice it to say here, the model of theological education espoused by the MAGL and the relationships I made internally have had a tremendous impact on the contours of my life through to today.

    I worked with the MAGL program for most of 2007 and then various circumstances combined to lead me back to Canton. As I tried to discern a future related to engaging the missional church conversation in the Midwest, I connected with Dave Fitch for the first time and visited Life on the Vine. I was giving serious consideration to simply moving to Chicago just to be a part of LOV as the first church I had been exposed to that I felt like was actually expressing missional theology in its communal life, rhythms, and practices.

    I never thought I would get a call from a young church in Memphis, TN asking me to consider taking a position down there.  And I certainly never thought that despite my best efforts to dismiss it, that God would actually lead me to embrace the opportunity.

    I had a good experience at Living Hope.  I loved the staff, enjoyed connecting and working with young adults, and made some life-long friends.  I moved into mid-town, close to the part of the city where it seemed like some people from the church would think about relocating to, and anticipated a long future of investing the future of the newer church community that was seeking to embrace a missional identity and a heart for the city of Memphis.

    I never thought that I would reconnect (let alone marry!) with Amy Garrington, who had been a student in one of the MAGL cohorts that I was responsible for.  (See, told you that MAGL job was a big deal!)  But, as she was contemplating leaving Pasadena for a position at International Teams near Chicago, that’s exactly what happened.  We’ve been married for about a year and a half, have a baby on the way this June, and love where we live.  Amy and I both have some family that lives in the Chicagoland area, but…

    I never thought my brother would leave NYC and join us here in Chicago!

    There’s probably a bunch more “I never thought’s” that I could list out, but these are probably among the most significant of the last five years.  They serve as both a humble reminder and constant encouragement that when you’re more focused on listening and responding to what God is saying and doing than on ensuring the fulfillment of your own ideas and plans, life-changing surprises await you.

    I simply can’t wait for the next series of, things I never thought!

    Posted in Amy, decisions, Fuller Seminary, God, living hope, LOV, MAGL, marriage, midtown, missional, missional theology, post-christendom

    Launching Missional Communities (Book Review)

    December 6, 2010 // 13 Comments »

    Like many others, I received a free copy of Launching Missional Communities: A Field Guide by Mike Breen & Alex Absalom to read and review here on my blog.

    I should probably say upfront that I have a ton of 3DM (the training network behind this book) friends.  I love them, their hearts, and their ministries, so as I come to this book, I’m already biased in favor of it.

    The easiest thing to say about this book is that it’s practical.  While it’s easy, even fun, to read, it almost can be treated more like a resource manual than a book.  It doesn’t need to be read straight through and it’s easy to reference bits and pieces depending on your interests.

    Before diving into all the good stuff I want to say, let me go ahead and get my one major criticism out of the way.  There is a small chapter entitled, “Attractional vs. Missional” in which the authors attempt to argue that we need both.  My opinion, however, is that the argument fails on both theological and analogical fronts.  They use the pre-Reformation phenomenon of Roman model churches (if you build it they will come) and Celtic model churches (more outward focused) to suggest that we need attractional and missional kinds of churches playing off of one another.  The analogical problem here is that what is generally meant today by attractional and missional does not at all correspond to the realities and circumstances in which these models of churches existed.  As for the theological problem, I can probably best articulate that by sharing the last sentences of the chapter and my notes in the margin.

    The quote…

    We just need to understand what Attractional does well and do it.

    We need to understand what Missional does well and do it.

    My notes…

    Impossible – attractional and missional churches are such because they have divergent understandings of basic Christian doctrines.  What we need is a theologically robust understanding the relationship between the the Missio Dei, the gospel of the Kingdom of God, and the Church.  This will lead us not to the ‘best’ of these two models, but to a cohesive vision of a missional ecclesiology.  This is the great error of ‘AND’ thinking; you never get to core issues because you spend all your time trying to artificially hold incompatible things together.

    The saddest part of this is that the underlying genius of the book actually does this work.  It undercuts the errant theology and philosophy driving attractional churches.  I just wish they had been more direct in stating it.

    UPDATE: Be sure to check this post Mike Breen offered in response.

    OK, on to the far more substantive praise.

    The authors fully communicate their heart for the life and ministry of local churches in their various forms.  They offer not just a proposal, but a methodical plan for churches of any size (though it seems pretty obvious that they have in mind mainly new, smaller communities and then more established larger communities in mind) and kind to begin to incorporate missional communities into the life of their larger church community.

    Discipleship, leadership and mission are the driving themes of both the book and the entire philosophy of missional communities.  To get the point of the book, you have to understand that from the author’s perspective, the task of the church is discipleship – period – the end.  And they are right.  You also have to embrace the idea that the replication of leaders is imperative to the larger task of discipleship.  If you don’t equip and empower leaders, you can kiss your changes of exponential discipleship bye-bye.  Again, I’m totally with them here.  Finally, mission is the context in which leaders are equipped and disciples are formed.  Amen!  If you can embrace and own these three things, then you’ll love this book and what it offers.

    A few final things.  I deeply appreciate that they didn’t skip over the tough (practical) issues like kids, schedules, and finances.  they address these things as only those who’ve lived through the ins and outs of the details could.  They also interspersed quotes and stories from those who have gone through their 3DM training and others who have implemented missional communities (or some derivation thereof) into their larger church context.

    Seriously, it was a great book – something that we are finding valuable at Life on the Vine even.  The guys behind 3DM are doing a good work and the people who contributed stories to the book are the ultimate testimony of that.  I highly recommend you pick up a copy or two to read through with a group that’s interested in the whole idea of missional communities – you won’t find a better practical guide for sure.

    Posted in books, church, discipleship, God, kingdom, leadership, LOV, missional, review, stewardship, theology

    Midwest Missional Learning Commons

    September 21, 2010 // 4 Comments »

    My first experience with the missional community in the midwest was through a somewhat random collection of pastors and leaders that met at Life on the Vine over 2 days in January of 2008.  That was what has become known as the Missional Learning Commons…

    A collaborative day for missional churches to exchange ideas, support, and encouragement on how to incarnate the gospel in their contexts.

    We gathered for the 3rd time in January of this year and loved the time so much that we just had to bump the next gathering up to this fall – Friday, Oct. 29 – Saturday, Oct. 30!

    (click image for PDF)

    I’ve said before, there is a lot of power in regional gatherings.  So, if you are a pastor or leader who lives in driving distance of Chicago and is at all interested in the learning/participating in the missional conversation in real life, rubber-meets-the-road, kinds of ways, you should definitely join us.

    This event has always been free in the past, but in an effort to make sure that we have all kinds of voices at the table, we are charging $10 to help cover the cost of childcare during the event.

    Lots more info and banners/posters courtesy of one Mr. Benjamin Sternke can be had over at missionalcommons.org.

    Northern Seminary has offered to host the event for us and Ecclesia is helping to sponsor it.  Spread the word!

    Posted in chicago, conference, culture, discipleship, leadership, LOV, midwest, missional learning commons, networking

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