lifeasmission » modernity

Younger Missional Leaders, the Lausanne Movement, and the Shape/ing of the Church

JR Rozko — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:31:06 +0000

A College Memory

For about a year and a half during and right after college, I got to live in a house w/ a group of guys, most of whom I still consider good friends and interact with regularly. This was one of the most formative (and fun!) times of my life. One memory in particular has come back to my attention recently.

A few of us were sitting around on the front porch talking and the conversation turned toward the future. One friend commented on how he had had a personal epiphany recently. He said that he realized that he had developed, in no specifically methodical fashion, a vision of the man he would be someday. He went on to offer a litany of characteristics that he believed would accurately describe him when he was, say, 40 or 50 years old. That wasn’t what struck him however. The epiphany sprung forth from the idea that he was not just going to magically wake up and be this person that he imagined at some point, but that he was right then and there, in the present, either moving closer toward or further away from actually becoming the kind of man he envisioned. It’s probably characteristic of college-age students to disassociate who they are from the person they hope to become, but in the midst of an impending graduation, my friend, and through him the rest of us, began to wake up to the reality that there is no such thing as the person we imagine we will be someday, only the person we are actually becoming.

The Inevitable Changing of the Guard

This realization has important implications for how we think of our own formation for sure, but it begs the consideration of another reality; namely, that like it our not, in terms of Christian leadership, the younger generation inevitably becomes the older generation. The sad passing of people like John Stott and Chuck Colson bear this out.

At 33, I feel like this is beginning to be important. I occupy something of a shared liminal space. Whereas I could rattle off a long list of Christian leaders that I and others have looked to for theological guidance over the last 15 years or so, the fact of the matter is, in another 15 years, many of these people will have offered most of what they have to offer and a younger generation of emerging Christian leaders will be looking to (gulp!) my generation for the same sort of theological guidance. Which compels me to ask the question, “What kind of Christian leaders are those of my generation becoming and how will these men and women serve and shape the Church?”

I was insanely fortunate to have had the opportunity ride my wife’s coattails all the way to South Africa back in the fall of 2010 for the Third Lausanne Congress. I am equally grateful that I will get to participate in the upcoming Consultation for North American Younger Leaders. The Lausanne movement doesn’t need to be seen as THE locus for a quest to discern the future shape of the Church, but I have to agree with Dave Dunbar, the President of Biblical Seminary, when he supposes that perhaps Lausanne, and especially the Cape Town Commitment, hasn’t really received the attention it deserves (it’s a pivotal document for the initiative I’m working with, the Missio Alliance). They seem to have managed to bring a more globally and ecumenically representative tribe of Christians together than any other endeavor, and for the fact alone, I think it’s a worth-while point of reference. I think this brief video of my friend and Lausanne’s International Deputy Director for North America, Tom Lin, gets at some of this.

From the Experience and Questions of “Wilderness” to the Experience and Questions of “Exile”

Another friend, Geoff Holsclaw, and I have discussed that while Christian leaders of our generation (those under 35) have benefited greatly from the example and writing of many missional theologians and pastors, our actual experience has been quite different than theirs. They have had to navigate a ton of terrain on the journey from modernity to postmodernity / Christendom to Post-Christendom / denominational stability to denominational irrelevance, leading them to ask certain questions in certain ways with certain expectations and assumptions. By and large, this isn’t a shared experience for those of my generation. For most of us, the destination of our theological mentors has been the beginning point for us, leading us to ask (even if not altogether) different questions in different ways with different expectations and assumptions.

To generalize, we don’t wonder about the shift of Christianity to the global south, we take it for granted. We don’t feel the same sense of Western (missionary) guilt, because colonialism wasn’t our project. We aren’t all that interested in conversations about restoring Christianity to the center of culture, because, for the most part, we’ve never known it, or, in a more theological sense, we reject it as not befitting the nature of Christian faith anyway. This list could of course be added to and argued with (as it should be). It also obviously wouldn’t resonate with the experience of everyone across the board (what does?!) But, my sense is that it nevertheless outlines some of the generational realities that shape and inform not only the questions we’re asking, but the way in which we ask them and, consequently, the shape the Church will inevitably take as younger leaders begin to take on more and more responsibility.

I’m curious. Regardless of what generation you happen to find yourself in, what are your thoughts or impressions on the qualities, characteristics, and perspectives of younger Christian leaders and how do you suppose these will influence the future shape of the Church as these leaders shoulder more and more responsibility over the next 30 years or so?

Reviewing Deep Church by Jim Belcher

JR Rozko — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:24:26 +0000

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

We both did masters degrees at Fuller Theological Seminary.

We both have a heart for church planting.

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

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

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

He is right when he says,

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

He is also correct in noting,

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

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

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

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

Belcher sets himself on this course in stating,

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

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

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

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

Transitioning Traditional Churches into Missional Ones

JR Rozko — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:29:51 +0000

A little over a week ago, my cousin-in-law Josh, asked how one might go about transitioning traditional churches into “something more missional at its core.” Since I have banged my head against this wall for years in several different churches, my response will be a mixture of, “here’s where I failed,” and “here’s what I think is most helpful.” For anyone who might have missed them, my posts on, “The Move: The Journey from Attractional to Missional,” and “What is Missional?” would be really helpful in understanding where I am coming from.

I should say a few things at the beginning to help frame my thoughts.

1) This is a wine skins issue (Mt. 9:17). Anyone considering this topic who thinks (whether they realize it or not) that this is basically about getting new wine into old wine skins is destined for frustration and failure – I speak from experience! Missional churches represent brand new wine skins, not just new wine.

2) This takes a long time. The most experienced people will tell you 8-10 years minimum. When we are talking about changing the core identity of, not just a person, but a community, we have to expect a long hard road. An apt analogy – God got Israel out of Egypt in pretty short order, but it took another 40 years to get Egypt out of Israel.

3) No one person is capable of maneuvering this transition. Solo pastors are dead in the water in this regard. And this isn’t to say that the better way is having a team of top-down leaders – this will end up being damaging as well. One of the keys to instilling missional DNA in a church community is inspiring and encouraging new imagination from the bottom.

Those things being said, what does it take? What might the process look like?

My short answer is,

A Spirit-guided intermingling of communal practices, teaching, and prayerful reflection.

Here’s my slightly-longer expansion on those three things.

I take for granted that fundamental to the distinctions of “traditional” and “missional” is a vision of what it means to be the church in Post-Christendom vs. Christendom. My personal opinion (others may disagree) is that there is no point in talking about what it means to be a missional church until Christendom has been rejected as a cultural value. Thus, transitioning traditional churches to missional ones is a non-linear process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Communal practices, teaching, and reflection are the tools which assist in this ongoing task. It would be a (classically modern) mistake to think of this as a mainly intellectual enterprise. Instead, in the integration of these things, deconstruction and reconstruction happen alongside one another.

Since there is no universal model to apply to this topic, we are better served by asking general questions that need to be answered in specific contexts. Here are some questions which I think would serve us well in maneuvering this sort of transition.

– In both small numbers as well as large, what are the practices we can engage in as a community that will shape us into people and “a people” who think and act like Jesus?

– As we try to be honest with ourselves, what things are we doing as a community that don’t seem to be contributing to our spiritual formation?

– How do we incorporate space in our times together (in homes, in meetings, in gatherings) to intentionally reflect on and respond to what we sense God is speaking and doing in our community?

– Who are those in our community who seem most gifted to teach (identified by the fruit of their teaching helping people become more like Jesus)? How can we encourage these people to engage with authors and speakers who are dealing with the subject of missional ecclesiology on our behalf?

– How do we make incremental yet strategic changes in the percentage of money that goes to those things which ensure our security as opposed to those things which necessitate faith in the midst of great risk?

Over and above questions like these, I would also suggest these sort of biblical principles for those who shoulder the responsibility for a transition like this:

– Find people of peace who can be trusted and are willing to commit to the journey. Ask for their help.

– Demonstrate servant leadership by being open, transparent, and broken.

– Commit to structures of biblical conflict resolution. Entrust to God’s care those who choose to leave (there will be many and this is not necessarily a sign of poor leadership).

OK, there’s some initial thoughts. I’m sure I’ll have more so I hope to continue the discussion by way of comments.

Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: Cultural Pioneering

JR Rozko — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:08:51 +0000

Previous posts in this Series:

Christendom bore no real need for leaders who were cultural pioneers. After all, if the culture is already Christian, what do we have to pioneer? It would be logical to conclude then, that as Christendom crumbles, the need for leaders with the skills for cultural pioneering would increase. This would be true and mistaken at the same time. It’s true that we have a greater and greater need for cultural pioneers, but the crumbling of Christendom isn’t the reason. Rather, a missional vision of the church carries with it an inherent need for leaders who serve as cultural pioneers which means we need a vision of theological education capable of equipping men and women for this task.

Allow me to offer just 2 basic points to support my argument for this need.

First, missional churches operate out of the assumption that mission is part of God’s very character and nature. God sends the son, the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit, the Trinity sends the Church as the Body of Christ. Little wonder then that missional church leaders lament the modern phenomenon of churches playing the role of vendors of religious goods and services that spend the bulk of their time, energy, and money trying to get people to come. Missional churches are not those who focus on offering the best “Christian” stuff (teaching, programs, groups, etc.), but those who focus on engaging with world’s darkest and toughest needs.

Second, missional churches tend to be marked by their attention to Jesus’ announcement of the good news of God’s Kingdom, the new reality inaugurated in Jesus. Just as Jesus stood at odds with the culture of his day on account of his allegiance to God’s Kingdom, so too the missional church of today will find itself at odds with the culture of our day as we seek to embody God’s Kingdom through faith in Jesus. To understand the local church as an expression of a new reality, however, means that we recognize the need for leaders capable of cultural pioneering.

Current models of theological education seem to come up short in terms of their fit to equip male and female leaders on both these counts. How then are we to go about doing so? I offer three ideas for the training of cultural pioneers.

1) Deep involvement in a missional community

There is no better way to learn how to be a cultural pioneer that to participate in a community that is seeking to do this very thing. My hope and expectation would be that to a great degree, the various aspects of this missional vision of theological education that I have been describing would all serve to produce leaders who think and act in terms of cultural pioneering. I have a hard time imagining that someone could give themselves to a process of formation that is rooted in community and centered around character formation through the shaping of Kingdom convictions and contextual training and emerge as someone who would rather manage a program driven group of individuals than lead a community into the world as an expression of God’s alternative reality.

2) Encourage Cultural Creation & Cultivation

I am indebted to Andy Crouch and his book, Culture Making, for my thinking (and language) on this. The power and trajectory of Christendom resulted in a church that, at various times, thought of “culture” as some monolithic thing that it could condemn, critique, copy, or consume. Only now, as we increasingly find ourselves on the margins of society, are we rediscovering the postures of creating and cultivating culture. We create culture through values, practices, and imagination. However, as Crouch says,

We cannot make culture without culture. And this means that creation begins with cultivation – taking care of the good things culture has already handed on to us. The first responsibility of culture makers is not to make something new but to become fluent in the cultural tradition to which we are responsible. Before we can be culture makers, we must be culture keepers.

This leads us directly to the third ingredient in forming cultural pioneers.

3) Practicing Discernment

The need for skilled discernment is going nowhere but up! Never before in human history has so much information and so many opinions been so easily accessible. Add to this the pervasive individualism and relativism of Western culture and you are left with a cultural nightmare for those who believe in such a thing as contextual faithfulness to biblical truth. As Jesus’ disciples were, we must be taught to see, hear, and feel with eyes, ears, and hearts attuned to the reality of the Kingdom of God in our midst. How are we ever to create culture unless we can discern our way through it as followers of Jesus? This takes years of practice within community and remains a lifelong discipline.

Are there other aspects of cultural pioneering that you think I’m missing? How else might we equip others to this end? Anxious for your (end of the year and end of the series!) thoughts.

Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: Contextual Training

JR Rozko — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:19:20 +0000

Previous posts in this Series:

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

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

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

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

1) Networks

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

2) Apprenticeship

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

3) Civic Engagement

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

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

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

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

Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education: Character Formation

JR Rozko — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:13:38 +0000

Previous posts in this Series:

Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem | The Fruit of the Problem | New Soil | Community Rootedness

In my last post I tried to make a case for the necessity of theological education of missional leaders being rooted in missional community. With this as a contextual prerequisite, I would further suggest that the ultimate aim of a missionally oriented process of leadership training is the formation of Christlike character.

It is too naive to suggest that Christendom was wholly uncritical of the character of Christian leaders. It is more accurate to say that there’s an inherent assumption within Christendom that if we can only ensure that our leaders believe all the right things, their character will follow suit. This has turned out to be a deeply lamentable mistake.

It may be necessary for me to reiterate at this point that I am no anti-intellectual. You would never find me downplaying the importance of continuing study, exposure to new perspectives and ideas, or deep, thoughtful reflection. Instead, I would suggest that a missional vision of theological education will only value intellectual dimensions of training inasmuch as they contribute to the formation of Christlike character in missional leaders. Therefore, we might expect a missional vision of theological education to…

1) Train leaders how to think as opposed to telling them what to think. This is only possible when we humbly buy into the reality that our systems of truth are all fallible and trust that encouraging leaders to follow Jesus is preferable to warning them of the dangers of venturing outside of a particular theological grid. Thus, through books, articles, media, speakers, discussions, conferences, etc., we may freely (and wisely!) expose leaders to various biblical/theological traditions and perspectives. Where the rubber meets the (missional) road, so to speak, is in the questions we encourage students to ask of what they are being exposed to. I won’t go into them here,* but I submit that a missional vision of what it means to be the Body of Christ inclines us to ask different questions of all that we learn than that of Christendom.**

2) Conjoin all intellectual study with missional practice. Only given the assumptions of Christendom could we have divorced religious study from community based missional practice and witness. A missional vision of the church and theological education is characteristically and relentlessly incarnational. Missional theology is nothing if not that which we come to know about God as we participate in God’s mission in the world through the Body of Christ. In this light, I would suggest that each and every aspect of intellectual study find its place within a structure of missional practice which includes both personal and corporate spiritual disciplines.

3) Develop a community based assessment of a leaders process of character development. When character formation is the central issue in the equipping of missional leaders, time frames are perfunctory. It’s not one’s ability to make it through a process that qualifies them as a leader, but the manner in which they participate and their holistic development from start to finish. It takes a community to discern these things. As valuable as having the commitment and support of a community is to a leader in training, their willingness to speak the truth in love regarding their development is every bit as essential. Incorporating various means of mentorship and scheduling regular checkpoints between leaders and communities are key components of a missional vision of theological education.

What we know and what we can do as leaders isn’t just meaningless w/o Christlike character, it’s actually negative, destroying the very nature of what it means to follow Jesus and participate in God’s mission in the world. As Jesus was only worth following inasmuch as he said and did as God said and did, so too are his disciples w/o power and authority if they are not leading out of this sort of Christlike character.

This is all relates to the subject of my next post, the shaping of convictions. Hope to have some helpful dialogue before then though, so let’s have at it!

*You can find a very helpful article on this subject here.
**In proposing this I readily (and happily) admit that we will always be coming from a particular (hermeneutical) vantage point. I will explore this further in a future post, but the notion of some completely objective posture in the formation of leaders is neither possible nor desirable.

Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education: New Soil

JR Rozko — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:56:49 +0000

Previous Posts in this Series:

Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem | Fruit of the Problem

After laying what I consider to be some necessary groundwork for this conversation, I’m excited to begin moving us in a more constructive path of conversation as we try to get at what a missional vision of theological education might entail.

A missional vision of theological education differs from our current one, not as a reaction to it – the classic pendulum swinging in the other direction sort of thing, but as a completely alternative paradigm. For the same reasons that megachurches can’t be missional, methods of theological education rooted in Christendom systems of coercive power are not designed to equip missional leaders. Thus, at least two different kinds of work are needed.

One, binding up that which is broken and doing what we can to restore it to health.

And two, planting new trees in new soil.

To the best of my knowledge, in the first instance, centers of theological education are…

1) Making missional adaptations to their curriculum: offering courses in missional hermeneutics, missional ecclesiology, missional theology, etc.

2) Offering more creative program options: utilizing online methods of delivery, developing intensive based courses, moving to cohort-based programs, etc.

3) Trying harder to actually partner with local churches to offer students more opportunity for in-service learning.

These are all good, helpful, and necessary changes within the current system. We need to see more and more schools moving in these directions.

But. These remain changes within a system that I am saying is flawed at its roots. It’s kind of like painting the walls, fixing the plumbing, and replacing the electrical systems in a house that has been irreparably eaten by termites. You may as well do what you can as long as the house is standing, but if you’re not also working on building yourself a new house, you’re gonna be in trouble.

This leads us to the second sort of work that needs to be done, not so much mending, but tilling and planting. To use biblical metaphors, I think of it in terms of wineskins (Lk. 5:36-38) and kernels of wheat (Jn. 12:23-25). Now is not a time for repairing old wineskins, now is a time for new wineskins and new wine. To go further, our current system of theological education (not unlike the dominant expression of church in the West) has a God-ordained opportunity to count its loss as gain in Christ. If they would only spend themselves fully on behalf of those that are coming after by being wiling to die rather than move into survival mode at all cost (a patently un-Christian stance for sure), what an explosion of Kingdom power we might see!

Whether this happens or not remains to be seen, but as we move toward a missional vision of theological education, I suggest that it will be marked by the following:

1) Community Rootedness*

2) Character Formation

3) Conviction Shaping

4) Contextual Training

5) Cross-Cultural Pioneering

In the coming weeks, I hope to deal with each one of these in turn. I’m anxious for your comments and insights on this and future posts.

*I changed this from Communal Discernment to Community Rootedness as a more encompassing term.

Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education: The Fruit of the Problem

JR Rozko — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:41:20 +0000

Previous Posts in this Series:

Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem

In my last post I made the claim that our current model of theological education, in assuming a Christendom context, is better-suited to train managers of Christian religious institutions than it is to prepare missional leaders. If the root of the problem is Christendom, the binding of Christian witness and mission to systems of coercive power, we do well to ask what the fruit of the tree of our current system of theological education has been?

The version of Christianity which is bound to systems of coercive power within modernity has been powerless to resist the trajectory of that era. Thus, features like individualism, consumerism, and reductionism have been uncritically adopted by local churches and systems of theological education alike and have had mutually related effects. On top of this, there has emerged a rift between theological education and the ministry of the local church.

I’ve talked up a storm on this blog about what this has meant for the structure and ministry of local churches, but what about our systems of theological education?

Individualism.

For the most part, people make individual decisions to attend seminary and they are trained as individuals. I’m not saying you can’t experience community in seminary education or benefit from peer interaction, but largely, you choose your courses as an individual, study as an individual, get assessed as an individual, and then decide where to go and what to do as an individual. Not very good training for people who will then go on to be part of a staff team! Even less conducive to a truly missional ecclesiology in which the theology, spiritual practices, and Christan life are all rooted in community.

Consumerism.

Seminary is freaking expensive! I know I got some amen’s on that! That’s because there’s a market for it. Think about that for a second… There is a market (a system of coercive power if there ever was one) for being trained as a Christian leader. Now, make sure you’re not hearing what I’m NOT saying. I’m not saying it’s wrong for people to earn a living from educating others. Nor am I saying that buying and selling is in and of itself a bad thing. I am saying that this business of people needing to spend (or worse, go into debt) huge amounts of money to get a religious credential at an accredited institution is not only unsustainable as Christendom unravels, but has a negative effect on Christian leaders and those they lead.

Reductionism.

There are a number of ways we could go with this dimension of modern Christendom, but what concerns me the most is how we have reduced theology to information and the leadership of local churches to those best able to convey it. How else are we able to account for a theological system so heavily slanted toward lecturing, book reading, writing, and testing? It’s nearly all about the grasping and repeating of concepts. I’m not saying at all that there’s no place for this, but this feature of Christendom-based theological education has resulted in a form of Christianity that lives as though it’s possible to really believe something without embodying it. The Bible knows nothing of disembodied belief, but this is the very thing that our current system of theological eduction allows for.

These are a few of the most obvious fruits of theological education rooted in Christendom that I am thinking of. Are you thinking of more? What are the angles and nuances that you see from your perspective that I’m missing?

In my next post, I aim to take a stab how a missional vision of theological education differs from one rooted in Christendom.

Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: The Root of the Problem

JR Rozko — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:26:00 +0000

Previous Posts in this Series:

Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem

There is one sure fire way to undermine the character of Christian witness and mission – bind them to systems of coercive power. To the great detriment of the Body of Christ, this is precisely what has happened in the cultural phenomenon of Christendom.

To understand what this has to do with theological education, we must first see what it has to do with the Church out of which our current system of theological education was born.

The dominant expression of Christianity in the West takes Christendom for granted. We expect the average person to have familiarity, if not empathy, with Judeo-Christian morals and values. We vie for our government to embrace and enforce Christian sentiments and practices. We expect “going to church” to be received by others as a vitally, if not at least potentially, important thing to do. We operate out of the assumption that our biggest problem is getting people to believe the right thing in the intellectual sense. All of these expectations stem from Christendom as a social power structure within modernity and they have served to (mis)shape the Church as we know it.

It is from this sort of Church history that our institutions of theological education have grown. They are Christendom-shaped feeder systems for Christendom-shaped churches. Assuming the centrality of Christianity in the broader culture, students are educated more as managers than missionaries. Managers and missionaries are two different sorts of leaders. Whereas managerial leadership is predicated on positional power marked by knowing more than others, missional leadership is predicated on Christlike character, marked by holistic discipleship. Thus, the ultimate problem with our current system of theological education is that it is not designed to make holistic disciples.

Discipleship is a life-long battle of allegiances. For the missional church and for a missional vision of theological education, the battle is largely between Christendom, attempting to use systems of coercive power for good, and participation in the Missio Dei, a way marked by humble obedience, uncomfortable faithfulness, and hope in the midst of death.

Like the ring from Lord of the Rings, many well intentioned Christians have sought to use Christendom for good, but it doesn’t work like that. Without doing irrevocable damage to what it means to be a disciple, we can’t use systems of coercive power for good. They are firmly and always in opposition and this is why trying to cultivate missional leaders inside of Christendom-shaped systems is a lot like trying to drink ocean water to quench your thirst. The thing you need is there, but there is something which permeates it that ends up having the opposite effect.

Like the wizard Gandalf refusing to take and use the “ring of power,” or Jesus refusing Satan’s offers to achieve his purpose in more convenient ways, missional churches do well to resist the temptation of leveraging the powers of Christendom ideals and systems to achieve their goals. Though they would have the best of intentions, they know and submit themselves to the truth that there is no shortcut.

That being the case, missional churches require different sorts of leaders – those shaped more by a missional vision of theological education than a Christendom one.

In my next post, as a way of moving us toward this missional vision, I want to make some observations on what the fruit of this sort of Christendom-rooted system has been. But for now, what do you have to add to this? Where would you push back?

The Power & Promise of Regional Gatherings for the Equipping of Missional Churches

JR Rozko — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:04:39 +0000

A bit of background to this post…

I used to want to be the next Rick Warren or Bill Hybels. What student pastor in the late 90′s didn’t? As I look back, my misaligned, youthful arrogance was fueled in large part by the national conferences I was attending. Predicated on the modern notion that bigger is always better, these conferences communicated and celebrated the paradoxical and lamentable reality of “Christian celebrity.”

These conferences sprang up from and in turn sought to facilitate the modern megachurch phenomenon. And, in my opinion, did/do more harm than good. In the Christian world, when it comes to conferences, the national variety tends to capitalize on the “cool factor,” something that seems grossly out of place to me now for those who follow a crucified Savior.

At national conferences there are typically big name speakers, higher attendance and more bells and whistles. (Maybe even a dude jumping into a foot of water from 35 feet up?) National conferences, at least the better ones, can have value for inspiring people I suppose, but I would venture to say that regional gatherings possess far more power and value in terms of their ability to help shape and equip the church and her leaders. Here’s just a few reasons why I say that.

Relationships are more easily cultivated and sustained
With greater ease and interest, topics of conversation move from the theoretical to the practical
Traveling costs are much lower
Conference costs are much lower (if not free like Verge LA which my friend JR Woodward (@dreamawakener) is helping to put together
Conversations regarding context and culture gain more immediate traction
The loss of the “cool factor” translates into a higher caliber of fellow attenders
Virtually everyone gets to participate in meaningful ways
There is greater access to gifted people who would probably never get invited to present at a national gathering because they are w/o book deals and cult followings
There is no hype to distract from the more important issues being addressed
Young and impressionable leaders aren’t made to feel inadequate or handed delusions of grandeur

For these reasons and still others, I am hopeful that we will see more and more groups who exist to strengthen the missional church and her leaders investing in regional gatherings. And where and when national gatherings continue, my hope is that they will focus on supporting regional networks, leaving the hype behind.

Cultural Gravity (Part 2)

JR Rozko — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:54:56 +0000

In my last post, I tried to unpack a basic understanding of what I was calling cultural gravity and said that I wanted to offer a few thoughts on what this has to do with missional churches.

In general my thoughts flow from the main idea that missional churches are those whose basic ecclesiology and structure are predicated on the reality of cultural gravity. To say it another way, given the post-Christendom framework of missional churches, they tend to think of “Christianity” & “church” not as a part of culture, but rather as an alternative culture. This being the case, missional churches…

1. emphasize spiritual formation. Sin is never the result of simple and immediate decisions – it grows out of the experiences, paradigms, and structures that make up the worlds we live in. The cosmic significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection notwithstanding, sin is most powerfully overcome not by making individual decisions, but in faithful devotion to the way of Jesus – the entrance into a new world of cultural gravity.

2. are inherently incarnational. There are those who would maintain that the church should be both attractional and missional. If they are really astute they attempt to correlate this to the biblical notions of centripetal mission (the world being attracted to the people of God) and centrifugal mission (the people of God going forth in the world embodying and proclaiming the gospel) – thereby causing all those who deeply care about the true nature of missional ecclesiology to cringe, tear there clothes, and gnash their teeth for 2 reasons.

A) Attractional churches are not practicing centripetal mission. Mimicking culture and slapping a Christian label on it, pandering to the wants and whims of a chosen demographic, making people as comfortable as possible so that they can “hear and respond to the gospel,” etc. are not examples of centripetal mission, but they are nearly universal practices of those who seek to defend attractional approaches to ecclesiology and mission.

The centripetal mission spoken of in Scripture has to do with God so blessing his people for their covenant faithfulness that others take note and want to participate.

B) Being missional is not a counterpart to being attractional. It’s not a tactic. We don’t seek to be attractional to effectively reach one segment of the population and missional to reach another. To be missional is much deeper, more inclusive, and theologically holistic than this pop understanding.

The centrifugal mission spoken of in Scripture has to do with the people of God seeking to love and bless the world around them – to bring light where there in darkness, healing where there is brokenness, and peace where there is discord.

Centripetal and centrifugal mission are not two things to be held together in a both/and sort of way. They are two effects of a sole commitment to being incarnationally faithful to participating in the Missio Dei.

What has all this to do with cultural gravity? Missional churches seek to embody a cultural gravity predicated on a biblical vision of God’s Kingdom that emanates out as it transforms peoples lives.

3. have an affinity for multi-culturalism. Having an understanding of and appreciation for cultural gravity is not threatening to missional churches, but embraced as an opportunity for growth and even conversion. Missional churches find mono-culturalism unfortunate, limiting, and generally boring. They will seek to be as cross-cultural as possible given their context and will do what they can to facilitate cross-cultural experiences as a vital aspect of spiritual formation.

Just a few thoughts on the matter. More than open for additions, clarifications, or push-back.

Equippers as Environmentalists

JR Rozko — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:49:07 +0000

My friend JR (great name right?!) Woodward has recently finished up a series of blog posts on “Equippers as Environmentalists: Re-Imagining Leadership in Today’s Western Church.” I have been following it all along and sharing each post thought my shared feeds so I hope other have been catching it. In case you haven’t, he has provided a summary post with an outline of each individual post.

His thesis is that

…if the church is to faithfully rebirth herself in the Western context and cultivate a fruitful missional ethos, she must awaken the five equippers to live as environmentalists instead of master programmers.

As one vitally concerned about the state and future of the Western church as we experience the move from Modernity to Postmodernity and Christendom to Post-Christendom, I am despearte for us to embrace this season of cultural transition as an opportunity to reconsider and rediscover the nature of the church, which is precisely what JR sets out to do. Leadership, of course, is a major piece of that puzzle and JR has some great stuff to say on the topic. Hope you’ll head over there and give it a read. He is also planning on posting it in pdf form soon in his writings page.

Attractional/Missional: From Pragmatics to Formation

JR Rozko — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:03:30 +0000

Beginning with Dan Kimball’s “Missional Misgivings,” there has been a recent flurry of discussion over the whole missional/attractional thing in the blog-o-sphere. Responses by Hirsch here, Cole here, Fitch here.

A good bit of what is being said in response to the topic (much by patently reformed folks) has to do with “cultural appropriateness.” Some seem to be suggesting that the seeker-sensitive/mega-church model of the church was a culturally appropriate model within Christendom and in a modern framework. By implication, this would then be the preferred model of church for areas which still fit this description. There is also an addition to the discussion pertaining to models for preaching and gathering. Again, the argument seems to be that we need to allow the culture to determine the right model. I submit that this the wrong approach to this discussion. It may appear to be an incarnational approach, but it is anything but.

My friend Sam reminded me of a quote by Lesslie Newbigin recently,

…if we begin with culture we are never taken back to gospel, if we begin with gospel, we ourselves are transformed and enter into culture to put flesh on the gospel.

This is the way we need to understand what it means to be incarnational – gospeling a culture, not culturizing the gospel.

The primary question church leaders need to always be asking is not, “What is the culturally appropriate way to be the church?” but “What is the most formational way to be the church?” The first question lends itself to our ingrained consumeristic tendencies and begets attractional churches; the second invites us to consider a different goal altogether and serves to cultivate missional communities.

We ought to always do what we do as the church specifically because it helps people to become more like Jesus. Willowcreek was probably the best example ever of a church that did everything right in terms of cultural appropriateness only to announce to the world how horribly they had failed to actually help people become disciples (my thoughts on their REVEAL study here and Fitch’s here).

I hope this makes sense. It is not my intention to question the motives and hearts of my well-intentioned brothers and sisters, but I beleive this to be a pivotal conversation for the future of the Church in the West and when the questions we seem to be asking have more to do with cultural pragmatics than faithful formation, I get nervous.

Let me end with a quick story. I recently attended a church planting conference where a supposedly “missional” church planter told those in attendance,

…the south is home to some of the greatest preachers in the world. If you are not a great preacher or teacher, you have no business trying to plant a church in the south.

I can’t even dream up a better illustration of what it means to so completely miss the point of everything missional is about. For this guy, it’s the culture, not the gospel that determines what you do, how you do it, and who exactly it is that does it. I just don’t think this is the best way forward for us.

The Probem of Church Shopping

JR Rozko — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:28:36 +0000

Church shopping is an unfortunate reality of our time. Made possible by a Church divided and disunited, and complicated by a culture of hyper-individualism and hyper-consumerism, we tend to form our ecclesiologies around what will attract those who are looking for a church home.

We’ll put aside for a second the fact that those who are far from Jesus are the least likely to shop for a church so that I can ask your opinion on a question I have been wrestling with.

It can be argued that Christians, at least those of the evangelical persuasion and who have been shaped by modernity, shop for churches based on whether or not they “preach the gospel,” or “believe the Bible.” Therefore, these churches get evaluated based on peoples experience of attending a handful of worship services.

Conversely, younger Christians, who are more shaped by postmodernity are more inclined to shop for a church based on whether or not it is actually attempting to live out the gospel and seeking to enter the story of Scripture. The only way to evaluate a church using these criteria is to actually enter into community – to get to know, have conversations, and share life with the people who make up the community.

To me, it seems that this is not a good postmodern strategy, but is actually more in keeping with biblical faithfulness of what it means to be the church- that we want to attract people to how we live and not what we say. Some would say, “We need modern churches to reach modern people and postmodern churches to reach postmodern people.” It seems to me that this runs the risk of taking our cues from culture rather than from the gospel. Incarnation, in my estimation, is not an attempt to play by the rules of culture, but to enter into culture and subvert it with the ways of Jesus. Ok, please, your thoughts.

Walter Brueggemann’s 19 Theses

JR Rozko — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 19:17:00 +0000

This is a bit old by now, but I am just running across it. Taken from the 2004 Emergent Theolgical Conversation, these are 19 theses from Dr. Walter Brueggemann which, in concise fashion, sum up the grand scope of the “cultural problem” for the church in the United States. These 19 theses, especially number 12, also pertain to the short comings of systematic theology, and the importance of narrative theology. You can find the audio of the talk as well as some great Q&A here, but I will reprint the theses below. I hope to say more about some of the points he is making here in conjunction with the idea of a missiology of the midwest, so I hope we can get some conversation going here. Enjoy.

1. Everybody lives by a script. The script may be implicit or
explicit. It may be recognized or unrecognized, but everybody has a
script.

2. We get scripted. All of us get scripted through the process
of nurture and formation and socialization, and it happens to us
without our knowing it.

3. The dominant scripting in our society is a script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism that socializes us all, liberal and conservative.

4. That script (technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism)
enacted through advertising and propaganda and ideology, especially on
the liturgies of television, promises to make us safe and to make us
happy.

5. That script has failed. That script of military consumerism
cannot make us safe and it cannot make us happy. We may be the
unhappiest society in the world.

6. Health for our society depends upon disengagement from and
relinquishment of that script of military consumerism. This is a
disengagement and relinquishment that we mostly resist and about which
we are profoundly ambiguous.

7. It is the task of ministry to de-script that script among us.
That is, too enable persons to relinquish a world that no longer exists
and indeed never did exist.

8. The task of descripting, relinquishment and disengagement is
accomplished by a steady, patient, intentional articulation of an
alternative script that we say can make us happy and make us safe.

9. The alternative script is rooted in the Bible and is enacted
through the tradition of the Church. It is an offer of a
counter-narrative, counter to the script of technological, therapeutic,
consumer militarism.

10. That alternative script has as its most distinctive feature,
its key character – the God of the Bible whom we name as Father, Son,
and Spirit.

11. That script is not monolithic, one dimensional or seamless. It
is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent. Partly it is ragged and
disjunctive and incoherent because it has been crafted over time by
many committees. But it is also ragged and disjunctive and incoherent
because the key character is illusive and irascible in freedom and in
sovereignty and in hiddenness, and, I’m embarrassed to say, in violence
– [a] huge problem for us.

12. The ragged, disjunctive, and incoherent quality of the
counter-script to which we testify cannot be smoothed or made seamless.
[I think the writer of Psalm 119 would probably like too try, to make
it seamless]. Because when we do that the script gets flattened and
domesticated. [This is my polemic against systematic theology]. The
script gets flattened and domesticated and it becomes a weak echo of
the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism. Whereas the
dominant script of technological, consumer militarism is all about
certitude, privilege, and entitlement this counter-script is not about
certitude, privilege, and entitlement. Thus care must betaken to let
this script be what it is, which entails letting God be God’s irascible
self.

13. The ragged, disjunctive character of the counter-script to
which we testify invites its adherents to quarrel among themselves –
liberals and conservatives – in ways that detract from the main claims
of the script and so too debilitate the focus of the script.

14. The entry point into the counter-script is baptism. Whereby we
say in the old liturgies, “do you renounce the dominant script?”

15. The nurture, formation, and socialization into the
counter-script with this illusive, irascible character is the work of
ministry. We do that work of nurture, formation, and socialization by
the practices of preaching, liturgy, education, social action,
spirituality, and neighboring of all kinds.

16. Most of us are ambiguous about the script; those with whom we
minister and I dare say, those of us who minister. Most of us are not
at the deepest places wanting to choose between the dominant script and
the counter-script. Most of us in the deep places are vacillating and
mumbling in ambivalence.

17. This ambivalence between scripts is precisely the primary venue
for the Spirit. So that ministry is to name and enhance the ambivalence
that liberals and conservatives have in common that puts people in
crisis and consequently that invokes resistance and hostility.

18. Ministry is to manage that ambivalence that is crucially
present among liberals and conservatives in generative faithful ways in
order to permit relinquishment of [the] old script and embrace of the
new script.

19. The work of ministry is crucial and pivotal and indispensable
in our society precisely because there is no one [see if that’s an
overstatement]; there is no one except the church and the synagogue to
name and evoke the ambivalence and too manage a way through it. I think
often; I see the mundane day-to-day stuff ministers have to do and I
think, my God, what would happen if you talk all the ministers out. The
role of ministry then is as urgent as it is wondrous and difficult.