lifeasmission » culture

Multiplying Missional Leaders by Mike Breen & 3DM (Book Review)

JR Rozko — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:53:21 +0000

The book, Multiplying Missional Leaders: From Half-Hearted Volunteers to a Mobilized Kingdom Force, by Mike Breen and the good people of the @weare3DM team was released today. As someone who’s been working w/ 3DM from the angle of the future of theological education, I was privileged to receive an advance copy, which I read last week. I think this is an important and timely book and thought I’d share a few reasons why I might say so.

1. Amidst the proliferation of “missional” everything, we have given scant attention to implications of this paradigm for church-based leadership development.

It’s not that missional leadership has received NO attention. Alan Roxburgh, Tim Keel, and Lois Barrett among others (I especially want to get to this new book by Mark Lau Branson & Juan Martinez) have all written helpfully in this area. However, and this is what Mike and 3DM does so well, none have written quite so practically, providing explicit models for leadership development along missional lines. The reason that Mike and the 3DM team (by the way, I use “Mike & the team” rather than just Mike because having journeyed w/ these folks for a while I know how truly collaborative all their work is. Much to his credit, and in keeping w/ the point of this book, Mike is a rare find these days – an experienced and skillful leader who cares way more about empowering and deploying others then he does turning the attention to himself) are able to write so helpfully here is that they are primarily drawing on their experience. This isn’t theoretical speculation for them, it’s what they’ve done and how they’ve seen God at work. We could stand quite a bit more of this kind of exposition. It’s what, in my opinion, qualifies them to say…

I would argue that our churches don’t have missional leaders, but I’d take it a step further. I also think that most of our churches have next to no leaders. Sure, we have leadership development programs. We have dinners, classes, meetings, and maybe even some training. But leadership means that we’ve been given a vision from the Lord for ourselves and given the power and the authority to execute the vision. This isn’t happening in our churches.

That’s because in most churches, we don’t have leaders; we have managers. We have people who are executing and managing the vision of the few (or the one), not people who are implementing the visions the Lord has given them. Usually we have one genius with a thousand helpers. And to plug-and-play those helpers, we have manager development programs. (3-4, pre-published version)

It’s statements like this that indicate that the kind of leadership development that 3DM advocates is intrinsically tied to an understanding of the nature and purpose of the Church that differs significantly from its dominant expression in the West.

2. The paradigm of leadership development held out in this book calls for a missional understanding of the church.

For better or for worse, 3DM isn’t explicit about their ecclesiology. But as one considers what they have to say about Building a Discipling Culture, Launching Missional Communities, and the notion of Covenant and Kingdom, you can begin to put some pieces together. Discipleship and mission are at the core of how they understand the Church and they follow this conviction through to its logical and practical implications far better than many others who remain ensnared by the assumptions of Christendom patterns of thought. Their ability to escape these, I suppose, comes from having cut their “ministerial teeth” in the context of Post-Christian Europe. From the perspective of Breen & 3DM, the Church is called to join God in his mission in the world, principally, by making disciples. It’s what compels them to join in the (increasingly common) refrain of, “… if you make disciples, you always get the church, but if you’re really about building a church, you won’t always get disciples.” (14-15, pre-published version) Incidentally, I get what they are doing/saying here, but it’s precisely at this point that I wish they’d do some more constructive ecclesiological work because if discipleship is fundamentally an ecclesial responsibility then there is no such thing as making disciples apart from it, as the quip would seem to advocate.

Nevertheless, the book offers a prophetic indictment against the Western Church’s penchant for celebrity, consumerism, and competitiveness (Ch. 3) as it calls for a a way of being the Church that leads to the creation of movements (rendered impossible by a focus on celebrity), is predicated on fruitfulness as people are invited to be producers (rather than consumers), and invites people to join God’s mission (as opposed to compete with one another over our own). Though it’s not taken up as a topic in the book, this perspective leads to a third and final reason I think this book is so valuable.

3. In holding out a practical model of missional leadership development that calls for a missional understanding of the church, this book will add fuel to the fire of those who experientially or intuitively know that our systems of theological education are largely anemic when it comes to training men and women for this sort of service.

Plain and simple, our currently dominant models of theological education (and therefore our systems of accrediting) are simply not capable of cultivating leaders who can serve and reproduce along the lines sketched in this book (and I say this as a guy well on his way to a third theological degree!). Why? I could name a slew of reasons, but the bottom line is that by and large people have to evacuate churches and other ministry contexts in order to engage in programs of theological education. As convinced that Mike is when he says,

You see, I am absolutely convinces that 100 years from now, many books will be written on the phenomenon that is the late 20th Century/early 21st Century American church. And I am fairly certain that it will be with a large degree of amazement and laughter that people, in reading about it, will say to each other:’You must be joking! Seriously? People actually thought it was a good idea to structure the church as if it were a business? Honestly? (4-5, pre-published version)

I am convinced that in the future we will find the notion of theological training apart from ministerial rootedness every bit as laughable.

Many, and I mean tons and tons, of current and aspiring Christian leaders will read this book and something inside of them will not only resonate with it, but will leap w/ a desire to be led and lead others into the vision of church and leadership development offered within it. Sadly, they will have precious few places to turn for examples, guidance, and training. Good for 3DM, bad for nearly everyone else – really bad for those places of theological formation who are without the flexibility or vision to engage and respond. The model of leadership development offered in this book, predicated as it is, quite simply, on the life and ministry of Jesus, is an invitation to us to reconsider what the purpose of theological education for church-based ministry is really all about and how we ought to be re-structuring our programs in light of it.

Conclusion

That’s really more of a personal reflection than a proper review of the book I suppose, but those were my major takeaways. The book is an easy and accessible read that really seeks to do one simple thing, encourage us to look to Jesus and the pattern of the early church as we think about cultivating leaders around principles related to discipleship and mission. On that count, I think there is a lot of good stuff to be gleaned here. This is a book I would encourage any Christian leader to pick up and work with.

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?

Non-Western Reflections on Disciple-Making

JR Rozko — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:22:44 +0000

Though I surrendered my life to Christ as a sophomore in high school, I don’t think the notion of discipleship really came on my radar until one of my college professors invited me into a “discipleship group.” While others (FCA leaders, my youth pastor, small group leaders, etc.) had definitely invested in me in significant ways, these relationships had more of a programatic nature to them. The group I was invited into in college had a much more personal and relational feel to it. In any case, I look back at this experience as foundational for the way in which life-on-life discipleship took center stage in terms of my own formation as well as with regard to my personal ministry philosophy. That is to say, contrary to all the popular trends of the time and the ethos of the particular church I came on staff at, when I launched out into the world of student ministry over 10 years ago now, I resolved that the central feature that would mark the structure and rhythms of our ministry to students would be relationally-oriented, life-on-life, discipling relationships.

Since then, I have only grown more and more interested in the issue and practice of disciple-making (little wonder it has become the focus of my doctoral dissertation Discipleship, as both the core feature of Jesus own life, ministry, and teaching as well as (albeit in a different way) the primary focus of the apostle Paul’s work and writing, has come to occupy a central place in my theological perspectives, my ecclesiology, even my understanding of the nature of salvation and the atonement (thanks Dallas!) However, it’s only been recently that I’ve begin to ask questions and look into non-Western conceptions and practices of discipleship and disciple-making.

I’d love it if anyone had more resources to share on this, but I thought I’d share a three-part article entitled, “Seven Paradigm Shifts in Twenty-First Century Discipling,” by Edmund Chan, a Singaporean pastor, that came to my attention.

I’m not quite sure that everything discussed in these brief articles really qualifies as a “paradigm shift” in the truest sense of the phrase, but I appreciate what he has to say nonetheless. As one who is convinced that one of the greatest needs of the Western church is to shut up and listen to our non-Western brothers and sisters for a while, I appreciate perspective like this. Here are the articles…

Article 1 of 2 | Article 2 of 3 | Articles 3 of 3

Dr. Richard Mouw on Fuller Seminary, Evangelicalism, & Homosexuality

JR Rozko — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:48:51 +0000

In case you haven’t heard, homosexuality is a big issue across the nation and for the American church. For most thoughtful people, there is a tremendous need to engage this issue with graciousness and openness as well as conviction. It can be difficult to find people or groups that embody the composite of those dispositions. This is why I continue to be so fortunate to be a graduate of, adjunct instructor for, and doctoral student at Fuller Theological Seminary. They have perennially modeled themselves as exactly this sort of institution. This, I am sure, is thank in large part to the leadership of Dr. Richard Mouw, Fuller’s president.

Recently, friends over at the Burner blog posted audio from a recent Presidential Forum at which Dr. Mouw addressed Fuller’s stance on (or perhaps it would be better to say engagement with) homosexuality and homosexual practice (which he helpfully distinguishes between). Mouw also speaks insightfully to some of the dynamics at play with regard to how this issue is dealt with across American evangelicalism in general.

I took the liberty of dividing up Dr. Mouw’s talk and the Q & R that followed – both are very worth of your time.

If you take the time to listen to these, I would love to hear any feedback you might have. Also, are you aware of other authors or groups that you think model this sort of engagement with this topic – showing an ability to be both graciously open as well as convicted?

Dr. Mouw’s talk (about 45 mins.) is here Download audio file (Rich%20Mouw%20on%20Homosexuality%20%281%20of%202%29.mp3)
(download)

The Q & R time (another 35 mins.) is here Download audio file (Rich%20Mouw%20on%20Homosexuality%20%282%20of%202%29.mp3)
(download)

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

JR Rozko — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:42:30 +0000

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

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

Lyrics, video, and audio are below…

Download audio file (Josh_Ritter_Girl_in_the_War.mp3)

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

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

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

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

No related posts.

The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens

JR Rozko — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:11:17 +0000

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

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

Missionary Pastors for a Missionary God (lifeasmission | Patheos)

Ministers are Mobilizers, Not Managers (lifeasmission | Patheos)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shaping Kingdom Convictions

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

Imparting Spiritual Knowledge

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

Re-framing Our Relationship to Scripture

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

Embracing the Irreplaceable Role of the Holy Spirit

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

Concluding Thoughts

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

The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Missionary Leaders

JR Rozko — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:33:49 +0000

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

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

Missionary Pastors for a Missionary God (lifeasmission | Patheos)

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

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

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

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

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

Affordable

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

Accessible

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

Prepare Cultural Pioneers

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

Cultivate Disciple-Makers and Mobilizers

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

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

The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Reflective Practitioners

JR Rozko — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:40:56 +0000

The post below (edited slightly) was offered as the 2nd in a series of 4 articles on the “Future of the Seminary” forum over at Patheos (1st article here). If you haven’t already seen it, this video will give you a good introduction to the basis for the perspective being offered.

Based on this perspective, we suggest that the task before us is to identify educational principles guided by a theological vision of the missio Dei as it relates to both the gospel and the Church that can give shape and substance to processes of theological formation that are able to help students develop Kingdom-oriented character and competency.

We will explore two additional missiological principles that we believe ought to guide this vision of theological education in forthcoming posts, but here we would like to suggest that a vision of theological education that is guided and shaped by a missional vision of God, the Gospel, and the Church will be praxeological – given to the training of reflective practitioners. While other changes are surely called for, we suggest that theological formation that is praxeological calls for elongated programs, training by missionary theologians, diversified learning environments, a high degree of attention to contextualization, and an emphasis on creating learning communities.

Elongated Programs of Theological Formation

Whereas many seminaries seem to be spending their energy trying to find ways to help students achieve degrees more quickly, a praxeological orientation calls for more integrated, and therefore elongated, programs. Obviously an elongated program delays the conferral of a degree, but under the vision of theological education suggested here, the idea isn’t getting a degree so that you can begin to do ministry, but beginning to do ministry so that you are rooted in the proper context for theological education and formation in the first place. If the end goal is not the conferral of a degree but actually becoming a certain kind of person, there simply are no shortcuts to be taken.

Training by Missionary Theologians

A praxeological orientation toward theological education will require a faculty composed not mainly of traditional academic scholars, but of missionary theologians – those whose ability to guide and shape others flows from their own praxeological formation. Again, we are not suggesting that scholarship does not have its place; we are simply saying that the right kind of scholarship will always be driven by and focused on its implications for the life and ministry of the Church. As Karl Barth has famously said,

There would be no theology if there were no ministry specially committed to the witness of the word… If we abstract its origin in the ministry of the community, all its problems are either irrelevant or they lose their theological character… (CD 4.3.2, 879)

Thus, we are compelled to ask whether or not those who are trained and formed by traditional PhD programs are the best candidates for the kind of mentors/teachers needed to equip those who embrace this vision of theological education.

Diversified Learning Environments

Learning theory suggests there are three ways we learn: the passing on of information, apprenticeship to learn certain skill-sets, and immersion. The best learning experience occurs when there is a dynamic interplay between all three. Driven by Christendom presuppositions, our current systems of theological education are designed to do the first, pass on information, but give no real attention to issues of apprenticeship or immersion experiences. A praxeological orientation to theological education will require that our seminaries create all three kinds of learning environments for their students. The issue here isn’t merely the lack of second and third environments, but the fact that that apart from them, the relevance of time spent in the first environment loses the impact it ought to have.

Issues of Contextualization

Ministry never occurs in a vacuum. Students don’t just need to learn what to apply to their ministry context, which under the current paradigm of theological education they may not even have; they need to learn how to apply it to their ministry context, which we are suggesting as a prerequisite. This implies not only the need for missiologically-driven advances in models of distributed learning, but calls for a greatly enhanced focus on the part of instructors and the designing of programs with regard to the application of theological learning to specific ministry contexts.*

*Living into this sort of vision will mean that increasingly, centers of theological education will see having a ministry context as a prerequisite for admission into its programs. In addition, this value should compel centers of theological education to put significant amounts of time and resources into establishing truly meaningful relationships and partnerships with local churches and ministry organizations in which students who don’t have their own ministry context might not just do occasional internships, but root the entirely of their educational process.

Learning Communities

A core component of a praxeological orientation to theological education is the importance of learning in community. Whereas we wholeheartedly agree that there is a unique and important place for those regarded as experts in their field who can offer their wisdom, experience, and insight as they guide students in their formation as Kingdom leaders, there is an equally important and formative dimension to theological education that is rooted within a community of learning. In line with the realities of Kingdom ministry, which always call for a collaborative approach to tasks and problems, seminary students should increasingly develop a capacity to embody an open and discerning posture towards the insights and critiques of their peers. Flying in the face of traditional assessment criteria that are nearly exclusively predicated on one’s individual academic performance, a core component of assessing the formation of Kingdom leaders will have to do with their posture toward and interaction with others in a learning community.*

*We suggest that where theological schools continue to offer residential options, they will do well to structure them around a more monastic model where students come to be immersed in an integrated program of sharing life, resources, learning experiences, and diversified endeavors in ministry and mission.

At the heart of the particular suggestion is the simple observation that, “this is how Jesus did it” – calling disciples to him “that they might be with him and that he might send them out…” (Mark 3:14)

Read the full white paper, The Missiological Future of Theological Education, here and join in the conversation below and over at thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com.

The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Introduction

JR Rozko — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:15:20 +0000

It’s been a few weeks since I posted about the groundswell of conversation that seemed to be happening around the topic of the state and future of theological education. Since then, a lot has happened.

1) I joined Doug Paul and Mike Breen of 3DM in hosting a forum on this topic at Northern Seminary.

2) We’ve launched a website that is hosting the white paper and video we produced as contributions to the conversation.

3) A number of people have begin conversations in the discussion forums on that site.

4) Dr. Craig Blomberg, Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary, offered a response to the paper that is posted on the resource blog

5) A slew of new posts, including the 1st of 4 from our perspective, have appeared in the online forum over at Patheos.

6) And we have received a couple dozen emails from people who are asking everything from, “Can you keep me informed on how this goes forward?” to “Can you come and help lead a discussion on this in our context?” Which we are more than excited to do! (inquire here).

I am actually quite a bit more interested in driving traffic over to thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com as a place where we can try and centralize some conversation and garner insight from as broad a population as possible, but just to generate some interest, I thought I would try and peak your interest with a few words from the introduction of the paper and the video that goes along with the initiative…

The American Church finds itself in a precarious position. Based on current statistics, each year 2.7 million people cease to be part of a local church community and 4000 churches close their doors. Beyond this, 85 percent of all our churches are classified as stagnant and dying…

…while we wholeheartedly agree that we are indeed in the midst of a cultural earthquake, we believe that these statistics are better read as symptoms of a deeper problem. Rather than working toward solutions aimed at helping the Church maintain or regain its position of power and privilege at the center of society, our contention is that a more faithful posture, in the midst of this cultural earthquake, is pausing to ask what God is saying and doing and how God is calling us to respond?

The missiological crisis of Christendom not only affected the Church, but also bore corresponding implications for seminaries and indeed our systems of theological education in general. As such, we believe that a massive re-imagining of the nature, purpose, and practice of theological education is in order. Simply put, the guiding thesis of this paper is that to the extent that our current systems of theological education have been shaped by Christendom presuppositions, they have lost their missiological bearings and are wholly inadequate to prepare Kingdom leaders. Incremental changes and clever adaptations to these current systems only serve to distract from the opportunity we have before us to develop a Kingdom, and therefore missional, vision of theological education. At the heart of this vision is the conviction that the proper telos of theological education is an “accreditation” of students based not merely on the degrees they earn, but on the development and fit of their character and competency for life and leadership in the Kingdom of God.

And here’s the video… Hope to follow up in coming weeks with other blurbs from the paper.

The Future of Theological Education: A Groundswell of Conversation

JR Rozko — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:18:46 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The “Mega-Problems” of Mega-Churches

JR Rozko — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:55:07 +0000

A couple weeks ago now I said that a few blog posts had caught my attention and driven me to some refelction.

The first ones were by Mike Breen – about the relationship b/t discipleship and the missional movement. You can check out his thoughts in Part 1 and Part 2. My reflection on these posts came out here.

The other post was by Ed Stetzer – a return to the whole “can mega churches be missional” debate. He still says they can, I still say they can’t. But, as I’ve reflected more on this, here are the things that have become clearer to me, what I’ll call the “mega-problems” of mega-churches.

I think it needs to be acknowledged that the problem isn’t size in and of itself. Who would possibly be against a huge church of fully devoted follower of Jesus on mission with God?! Not this guy. But here’s the thing, those of us who have icky feelings in our stomachs about mega-chuches do so because they tend to be built on characteristics and practices that actually work against this vision. Here’s a few that came to mind…

1) Consumer-Oriented Structures

Very often mega-churches are mega because they emphasize meeting the needs, or at least captivating the interest of religious consumers of all stripes. This will strike many of us as unfortunate right off the bat, but to take it a step further, I would highlight the even greater harm that is done when church leaders come right out and acknowledge that they do this (even if they prefer different language), but believe it to be in the service of the Gospel. Here, we have baptized a market-driven strategy that treats people like objects and leads them to believe that they, rather that God, are what is of ultimate significance.

2) Celebrity-Driven Culture

Mega-churches tend to be personality driven. There is generally one (almost always male) leader who leads as if they were a CEO of an organization rather than as a humble servant. These are people who reflect our culture’s desire and drive for upward mobility while leading a community whose character is to be predicated on its downward mobility – becoming less and less so that Jesus might become more and more. This aspect of mega-church culture is perpetuated as we get lulled into believing the cultural lie that a bigger platform is always a good thing for the kingdom. Sadly, in baptizing this mentality, we have failed to remember that we follow Jesus, who refused exactly this temptation.

3) Sunday-Cenricity

Mega-churches tend to put the vast majority of their time, attention, and resources into weekend services. Nothing wrong with gathering. Nothing wrong with gathering with hundreds, even thousands of other believers. Very much something wrong (from a missional perspective) with these gatherings becoming the driving point of our ecclesiology and the aspect of community life that eats up huge amounts of resources. It doesn’t matter how compellingly you preach or teach on “being missional;” so long as that message is coming through the medium of a context that engenders passive involvement, it is rendered useless.

4) Inward-Focused Financial Structures

Related to the point above, mega-churches tend to create financial structures that are designed to “keep the machine running,” thereby inhibiting a community’s ability to leverage financial resources that will benefit others – who may or may not ever be part of your church community. Mega-churches require mega-staffs, mega-facilities, and mega-ministry budgets. Once you have these things in place and people’s livelihoods become contingent on church growth, moving in a truly “missional direction,” becomes all but impossible. If it does come, it will be at tremendous cost.

5) Seating over Sending

All of this works itself together to result in an ecclesiology that is more disposed to a focus on seating over sending. And when I say sending, I mean sending – raising people up as mature disciples and skilled Kingdom leaders and releasing them… really releasing them. Most of the “sending” that mega-churches do is about continuing to build their own little empire – multiple locations, video venues, franchises, etc.

I fully recognize that you can embody all of these characteristics and not be, by definition, a mega-church. This is precisely my point – it’s not really about size, it’s about the ecclesial characteristics and underlying theology that creates and drives this sort of church system. So when I say mega-churches can’t be missional, what I really mean is you can’t continue to be a sunday-centric, celebrity-driven church that engenders a consumeristic attitude toward Christian faith by creating inward focused financial structures and building your own personal church-brand empire. Continuing to be this sort of church while using missional language and encouraging people to serve others more does not a missional church make!

Am I off here? Where’s the pushback? What else would you add to this list?

By Far, the Best Anniversary Reflection on 9/11 I’ve Read

JR Rozko — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 02:24:39 +0000

Re-posted from CT in entirety without hesitation…

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

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

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

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

(ht: imonk for the image)

My (Ana)baptism

JR Rozko — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:22:21 +0000

Wrote this post for the blog of the good people behind the Anabaptist Missional Project.

I’m an Anabaptist. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Mennonite, Hutterite, Brethren, or Amish and my name is Rozko for Pete’s sake!, but I’m an Anabaptist nonetheless. I may have been baptized in an Episcopalian church when I was a baby, baptized again in a Church of Christ in high school when my faith became my own, ordained in the Christian Church tradition, and I may be part of a church community that is part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination and work for an American Baptist seminary, but I’m an Anabaptist nonetheless.

“How’s that work exactly?” you ask. Good question. In fact, it’s the question behind this post which is itself the result of a conversation I had with my good friend Dave Stutzman (he’s my Anabaptist passport for those of you skeptics out there

Well, here’s my brief answer. It works because I’m one of thousands of seminary-trained people between the ages of 25 and 35 who have been orphaned by the Christendom-shaped theology and ecclesiology that raised us. Like many, many others, left to fend for ourselves among the cultural wilderness that is Post-Christendom, Anabaptism has provided me with the theological and ecclesiological shelter and nourishment that I needed to sustain and guide me as I’ve sought to make sense of the world and my personal and ministerial place in it.

To be a bit more specific, as Christianity has moved (been pushed?) from the center to the margins of our society, by and large, the responses of the Church have come in two types:

1) Fight – here I have in mind the typical right-wing Christian response of scraping and clawing through powerful maneuvering and campaigning to “take back America for God” in order to regain a place of power and privilege believed to be, if not rightfully ours, God’s ultimate aim for his people.

2) Ignore – here, there is either a complete lack of awareness (especially in the South) of the growing reality of Post-Christendom or an apathetic attitude toward what is simply dismissed as an inevitability.

Anabaptism, I believe, presents a third way, a posture more faithful to a biblical (at least through the lenses of Anabaptist theology & ecclesiology) vision of what it means to be the people of God living under the reign of God in the midst of a world that, while fallen, remains deeply loved and addressed by God. It was this humble and hopeful vision that drew me in.

My initial touch points with Anabaptism came through a handful of professors at Fuller Theological Seminary such as Wilbert Shenk (anyone else think Wilbert needs to start a blog already?!), Nancey Murphy, and Glen Stassen (though there’s a palpable Anabaptist current throughout much of the school) and some time at Pasadena Mennonite Church. These opened me up to the world of Anabaptist theology and (missional) ecclesiology, which has worked to powerfully shape both my identity and the contours of my life.

Anabaptist theology has had a profound impact on my thinking and practice with regard to, among many other things, missional church, politics, preaching, theological education, and the Gospel. In fact, it was these touch points and their consequent exposure to the unique features of Anabaptism that inclined me to further study with Wilbert Shenk and James Krabill as part of DMiss cohort at Fuller focused on Anabaptist Perspectives in Missional Ecclesiology.

Interestingly, the one thing that my exposure to Anabaptism didn’t do, and I suppose this might be the real point of the post since it seemed to be one of the things Dave and I talked most about in our conversation, was incline me to seek out and join a (traditionally thought of) Anabaptist congregation. I think there are 3 primary reasons for this.

1) There are only a couple “denominationally-Anabaptist” congregations near me and they are all incredibly introverted and insular – a startling reality in light of the fact that the inherently missional dimension of all Anabaptist theology was one of the things I initially found so freeing.

2) I have experienced and continue to understand Anabaptism as a theological and ecclesiological paradigm that defies denominational hegemony. This of course relates to the first point, but personally, inasmuch as I have come to see Anabaptism as a theological (as opposed to denominational) tradition, I actually feel like I would be close to betraying my Anabaptist convictions to not seek to live them out in whatever other contexts it seems God has and is directing me.

3) Lastly, I am surrounded by people who share my story – people who, while having no official exposure to or experience with traditionally thought of Anabaptist congregations, have discovered, through any number of different means (books, blogs, classes, friends, conferences, etc.), that Anabaptism is the theological tradition that best expresses their core convictions. Thus, I am far more inclined band together with these folks to see the Anabaptist vision carried forth and lived out across an array of denominational and other contexts rather than I am to isolate myself to one of the few traditionally recognized contexts.

The point I suppose is this, there is a large and growing population of Christians who resonate with Anabaptist theology and ecclesiology. It sure would be awesome if those who have been part of historically Anabaptist traditions were leading the way on this, but as of yet, that just doesn’t seem to be the case. I don’t claim to have any divine insight or wisdom on this, but I think this much should be apparent: as Christendom continues to crumble, as denominational identity comes to mean less and less, and as more and more Christians/ministers have to figure out how to make sense of the world and their relationship to God and God’s work in it, there is a HUGE opportunity for those who espouse Anabaptist ideals to speak up and lead the way. I represent a group of people who would gladly welcome the guidance!

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

JR Rozko — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:03:22 +0000

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.

Depersonalized and Taken Advantage Of

JR Rozko — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 03:43:29 +0000

I had something happen to me last week that has never happened before. I got dropped by my car insurance company, State Farm.

I received a letter in the mail that said on account of the three claims that I have reported in the last three years, they were no longer willing to insure me. I looked over the letter and thought about each accident. As I did, I couldn’t help but feel depersonalized and taken advantage of and I began to reflect on how prone we often are to do this very same thing to others. Here’s what I mean…

Accident #1, The Fence

The first accident happened while I lived in Memphis. I was driving down a busy 2 lane road and a car, probably 4-5 cars in front of me, slammed on their brakes and turned left w/o signaling, cutting off traffic that was coming the other way. The cars in front of me all braked rapidly as did I, but as I looked in my rear-view mirror, a car was barreling down so I decided to spin the wheel to the right where there was noting but grass and a fence in order to get out of the way. Good thing I did, because the car absolutely would have slammed into me. The result was a good bit of damage to the right front end of my car and a few broken slats in a fence.

Accident #2, Moving

The 2nd accident came just over a year later and happened while we were moving into our new apartment. We had rented a U-Haul truck to move all our stuff, so I was driving that. At one point I had to back the huge truck down a narrow alley and out onto a street. Once I actually made it to the street I had a friend guiding me as I couldn’t really see behind me or keep an eye on traffic. I could not possibly have been moving any slower, but as I was backing up to his direction, I heard a crunch. The rear bumper of the truck had done some damage to the bumper of a parked car.

Accident #3, The Deer

The third accident took place, again, almost exactly a year later. Amy and I were driving home to Ohio on the Turnpike. We were in the right lane of a two lane portion of the Turnpike heading east. All of a sudden, a woman in an SUV pulled up to our left and began honking her horn and waving her hands. Obviously this took our attention off of the road for a moment and on to her. As soon as we glanced back, we saw a couple deer on the side of the road very near our lane. Since this lady was directly beside us, there was no room for us to move over to the left and with another car directly behind us, slamming on our brakes didn’t seem like the best idea either. For some reason, one of the deer began running beside us and then jumped in front so that we gave it a good butt bounce. Off the deer went, but we lost a headlight and had some minor paint damage to the bumper.

In the event that you trust my recounting of these accidents, I hope you’ll agree that it would be hard to make a case for my being a bad or negligent driver. Instead, upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that my ill state (the one who had to file a claim) actually came about by external factors (bad driver in accident 1, bad navigator in accident 2, and dumb deer in accident 3).

My point in all this isn’t exactly to defend myself, but to point out how easy it is to depersonalize and take advantage of people when we aren’t willing to step into the details of peoples lives and circumstances.

We do this all the time. We depersonalize people and take advantage of them in making judgments and estimations based on appearances w/o being willing to step into the minutia of their lives, their circumstances and stories. Doing so is not only a source of great injustice, but it short circuits the fundamental work of the gospel.

Like insurance companies such as State Farm, it is so very tempting to just objectify people for our own purposes. For insurance companies, getting personal and refusing to take advantage of a flawed system would adversely effect their bottom line, so they depersonalize and take advantage of people. For us, getting personal and refusing to take advantage of the temptation to generalize and stereotype takes time, effort, and a willingness to have our most fundamental assumptions about the world called into question, so we follow suit.

In the midst of a culture which inclines us to function with the utmost concern for efficiency and our own best interests, I believe that Jesus calls us to the inefficiency of incarnational living and the freedom of a life lived for the sake of others. Insurance companies may take the bait, but I hope I/we don’t.

No related posts.