lifeasmission
exploring the mystery of life and mission as one and the same
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Archive of "consumerism" Category
Christmas Video Comment Extravaganza Winners!!
Click through to the site of you don’t see the video announcing the winners of the Better World Books gift certificate and Live by Giving donations.
Make a Video, Win a Prize, Do Lots of Good
Lifeasmission Readers,
Just a quick reminder of the video comment extravaganza I posted about last Sunday. So far we’ve got just two video comments – from my friends Ben and Joel (be sure to check out Ben & Joel’s blogs).
If you have a webcam or a way to make a short video, you can participate. You can get all the details in the short video below, but here’s the gist of it.
1) In the original post, leave a video comment (or link to a video) where you’re mentioning some way in which you are trying to make God’s desire for this season more important that the world’s.
2) As long as you leave the comment by midnight (CST) this Friday, you’ll have a chance to win 1 of 3 Christmas gifts that benefit others.
3) You’ll make my Christmas merrier by convincing me that this blog is not TOTALLY self-serving
Don’t forget, you are can make comment here if you want, but leave your video comments for this “contest” over on the original post.
Peace.
Christmas Video Comment Extravaganza: Post & Win!
If you don’t see the video, click through to the site for the lifeasmission Christmas video comment extravaganza!
Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education: The Fruit of the Problem
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.
Bi-Vocational Ministry & Support Raising
Earlier this month I began a series of posts on Bi-Vocational Ministry. I talked about Bi-Vocational Ministry and the Missional Church and then the relationship between Bi-Vocational Ministry and Spiritual Formation.For the last few days I have been participating in a seminar on “Ministry Partner Development,” led by my friend JR Woodward through Ecclesia, a missional church planting network. So, naturally, I have been thinking about the relationship between bi-vocational ministry and support raising. I am coming away from the seminar with 2 firm convictions.
1) Support raising is a ministry in and of itself. As a nation, we give 1-2% of our annual income to charitable causes. As a subset of American Christians, conservatives slaughter that statistic at a whopping 3%! Sad, really sad. Those who raise support to do works of ministry are ministering to those that they ask to be partners simply by saying, “Hey, would you actually like to do something of eternal significance with your money?” For a people that ought to be known for our generosity and our refusal to store up for ourselves treasures on earth, we’re pitiful and I am all for more and more and more people who have the courage to take steps of faith and ask others to financially support them.
2) Inasmuch as it is a ministry in and of itself and because I think our current model of theological eduction is largely missing the mark in truly preparing Christian leaders for the future landscape of the Church in Western culture, I think support raising is a necessary consideration. Leave aside for a moment the idea of support raising as a ministry to those who choose to partner, what other choice do people whose training is theological and ministerial in nature have if they want to practice bi-vocational leadership? They aren’t really marketable in most of the non-church world and it will take some time if they are to acquire additional skills and training. Perhaps worse, they take jobs in churches that are spiritually dead, but have some money, or they cave into the forms of church that are successfully marketing religious goods to a quasi-religious, Christendom population. This is where I think support raising comes in.
Aside form the personal benefits of learning how to humbly depend on others, being able to pursue what God has put on your heart rather than choosing from the given options, and developing the disciplines necessary to do the work of support raising, developing a team of ministry partners can be a great way to free someone up to minister to those who have no concept of supporting pastors or those who, even if they “get it,” don’t have the means to do so anyway. And it should go without saying that cultivating a ministry team that is supporting you not only through finances, but by diligent prayer and accountability is a blessing that far too many are missing out on.
When it comes to church ministry, I think support raising makes the most sense for apostolic and prophetic types of people.
Apostles are always on the move, charting new territory and plowing new ground. Having a ministry team that sees and affirms that and says, “Here, we’ll pay your bills, you just keep on following where God leads!” are saints in my book.
Prophets get stoned and killed. The quickest way to short circuit the ministry of those who God has called to point out how the Church is failing her calling, is to make them dependent on the giving of one congregation. Like apostles, they do well to cultivate a team that acknowledges the church’s need for prophetic voices and says, “Here, be free to speak truthful words how the Lord leads.”
When it comes to bi-vocationality, I think one of the marks of a healthy church is its desire to financially support its leaders. So, while I think support raising is a good idea in general for many and an excellent idea for some in particular, ultimately, for all the reasons I mentioned in my first post, I still think church leaders working in the community where they minister while being supported by the church they serve is something great to aspire to.
Bi-Vocational Ministry & Spiritual Formation
In my last post about bi-vocational church leadership, I tried to make the point that this approach derives its theological significance from a truly missional approach to theology and ecclesiology.I wanted to winnow that thought down a bit further and suggest that the biblical appeal for a bi-vocational approach to leadership (and in my opinion, the biblical appeal for anything that has to do with the church and Chirstian life!) has to do with spiritual formation.
Far too often people seek to defend their church structures and practices because of their supposed ability to, “grow the church,” “meet people where they’re at,” or “reflect people’s cultural expectations.” These have a ring of nobility to them but are far off the mark biblically speaking. Far worse is when we are forced to admit that we do what we do because, “that’s how it’s always been done,” “if we try to change things people will leave,” “so and so will stop giving if we stop doing things that way.”
As the Body of Christ, we should have a singular defense for everything we do, namely, its power to spiritually form people and communities into Christlikeness.*
Here’s why…
There’s a battle going on. The Church, as a foretaste of the Kingdom of God, through its formational practices and structures, wages war against the principalities and powers at work in the world which seek to “steal, kill, and destroy” all that God would have us be and do.
In Christendom, the Church equipped itself to fight the wrong battle. Within Christendom, so much is assumed about the nature and purpose of the church, that we tend to ask pragmatic questions. Does it work? But, for those of us who realize that Christendom is crumbling and/or think that it was never a good thing to begin with, these questions aren’t good enough. We need to ask deeper questions.
Biblical faithfulness is about mission, not models. As one helpful commenter pointed out
in a previous post, the Bible does not prescribe one way to lead churches. There are several examples of what that looked like in the New Testament, but even these are not simply models to be copied as if we could then say, “We just do it like they did in the Bible.” The better way to understand biblical faithfulness is as an honest pursuit to join God in mission, not copy models. The Church is charged with the task of making disciples and is not given an exact blueprint for how to go about it.This brings us full circle. Those churches whose structures and practices mainly serve the ends of church growth, cultural relevance, and even conversion, miss the mark. They are fighting the wrong battle biblically speaking.
I am advocating for a bi-vocational approach to church leadership, not because I can defend it as THE RIGHT biblical model or because it’s most effective (Christendom approaches), but because the tendencies in our culture toward consumerism and individualism are so thick that faithfulness to the mission of making disciples, forming people and communities into Christlikeness, make it the most appropriate option (missional approach).
Hopefully that serves to clarify my thoughts and intention some.
*I was greatly encouraged today while viewing this seminar online to hear Dr. Darrell Guder comment that, “It was not the mission of the apostolic church to save souls! The apostolic mission was the formation witnessing communities.” This is a far cry from how we commonly envision the role of church leaders, but something we badly need to recover.
Hi There…
Hey, I'm JR - welcome to the blog.
I'm just an average guy trying to shape his identity around God's dream for the world and his place in it. This blog is a place for me (and you!) to reflect on and discuss all that might mean. Looking for a bit more on me? Check out the about me. Peace.
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