I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Alan Hirsch.  The book he co-authored with Mike Frost, The Shaping of Things to Come, was the first I read that began to help me understand the angst I felt with the attractional model of church so prevalent in the US.

This is why I was so thrown a few days ago when I read that Alan Hirsch had asserted that American Christianity is the great hope for the Church in the West.  He made comments to this point in the opening remarks of his talk at a conference called “Verge” in Texas.  You can view the video (Session 2) here.  At one point he said,

If we don’t win the battle of the decline of the church here in the states, then it’s not going to come from anywhere else.  We will win or lose the battle over here in the states.

His rationale seemed to be that 1) the Church is the rest of the West is all but dead and 2) that Americans have a built-in entrepenurial (apostolic) sort of spirit.

On this count, I was surprised and disappointed on 2 levels.

First, he seemed to communicate a latent assumption that “the West” maintains a position of superiority in terms of global Christianity.  He admitted that Christianity is growing in non-Western parts of the world, but never suggested that our hope might lie in learning from what God is going there.

Secondly, he referenced the American entrepreneurial spirit as the key factor in our ability to “win the battle of the decline of the church.”  I was blown away!  I was immediately reminded of a quote by Einstein, which, even more surprisingly, he referenced later, but totally misused,

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

It is American entrepreneurialism that got us into the mess of creating a church system predicated on the cultural values of individualism and consumerism.  Relying on the same characteristic is hardly a promising solution.

Over and above all these disappointments comes a more biblical/theological one, namely, that putting our hope in anything except for a willingness to sacrifice what is most dear to us, to listen to the voices of those on the margins, and to trust God with our future (which may very well mean the increasing marginalization of the church), is, in any sense, in keeping with God’s desire for the Body of Christ.

There was a 2nd major part to Hirsch’s presentation that really made me nervous.

He made the claim that the dominant expression of church in America, that of the seeker-sensitive/attractional model, has a market appeal to about 40% of the American population.  This yields what Hirsch called a “strategic problem” and a “missionary problem.”

The “strategic problem” is that 95% of the churches in the US are seeking to become the kind of church that appeals to this same 40% of the population.

The “missionary problem” is that 60% (and growing) of our population is being virtually ignored.

So far so good, but at one point Alan was commenting on attractional types of churches that are “reaching” the 40% of the American population and said, “Those who do this well should strive to do it better.”  Not change what they are doing, just do more of the same, better.

In affirming an attractional (or what he is now calling ex-tractional) model of church simply because it succeeds in drawing a crowd, he fails to critique the most devastating reality, namely, that these churches, on the whole, don’t make disciples. By and large, they facilitate the already pervasive nominal christianity that pervades at least 40% of the American population.

Let me try to summarize my push back on what I am hearing and seeing from Alan Hirsch as of late.

1) Putting our eggs in the basket (Easter week!) of the American church is futile, if not sinful.  This is exactly how we got where we are and trying harder ain’t gonna cut it.  It may very well be that God is at work killing off a defunct ecclesial trajectory and we would do better to repent and ask for mercy than to rely on any ability we think we possess to save the day.

2) Alan is right, there is a descent portion of the American population that has some natural affinity with the sort of church which thrives in Christendom.  But, merely because people will respond to an attractional model of church does not make it ok.  A pragmatic victory is almost never a biblical one.  Attractional models of church are built on the cultural values of individualism and consumerism and, save for the grace of God, are incapable of yielding the sort of disciples the world desperately needs.

I have a serious and growing concern regarding the temptation to make missional marketable.  The temptation is especially seductive to those who, like Alan, have a deep love for the church as the Body of Christ and want to see it thrive.  But, if God means for missional theology/ecclesiology to benefit the church, it will remain an invitation to repentance, sacrifice, and death.  This sort of invitation has never had much market appeal, especially in the US.

Previous posts in this Series:

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

One of the greatest needs of missional churches is leaders who have been trained how to think as opposed to what to think, who are able to equip others for deep incarnational witness, and whose character and giftedness has been practiced and affirmed in the context of a local community. This was the point of my previous post – the centrality of character formation in a missional vision of theological education.

From here, I want to go on to say that a missional vision of theological education will emphasize the shaping of Kingdom convictions in leaders.

No one is more responsible for my appreciation of this dimension of a missional vision of theological education than the late Dr. James Wm. McClendon.  His work was the center of my masters thesis and continues to shape my life as a disciple of Jesus is all its forms.

The most admirable Christian leaders are not those men and women who have sought to do great, big things for the Kingdom, but who have faithfully responded to that which God has done in their lives.  They were and are men and women of conviction and as McClendon points out,

Convictions are not so much things we have, but things which have us.

Christendom, as a system of coercive power, naturally emphasizes control.  This emphasis has resulted in two dominant emphases in the shaping of leaders – the passing on of systems of belief and/or the training in particular models of ministry.  I am against neither of these things in themselves.  I am merely suggesting that they need to be peripheral, not central to the training of missional leaders.  I advocate for the centrality of conviction shaping for three main reasons.

1) The shaping of Kingdom convictions is primarily the Holy Spirit’s work.

We have fooled ourselves into believing that the passing on of right doctrine or refined training in ministry models are of prime importance in theological education.  When these are our emphases, not only do we create one-dimensional leaders, but we run the greater risk of making Christian leadership development primarily a human enterprise – like training a mechanic or a sales person.  The shaping of convictions in correspondence with the reality of God’s Kingdom is much more fluid and finally contingent on the work of the Holy Spirit.  We need leaders who not so much “get God,” but ones “God’s got.”

2) The shaping of Kingdom convictions is more in accord with missional theology.

We all see and interpret things through various lenses depending on our background, experience, education, culture and so on.  Thus, missional theology is never fixed, but exists in constant interaction with Scripture, our community & its tradition, and our broader context & experience.

As I’ve said before, theological convictions are not the same as theological foundations.  Churches built on theological foundations and hell bent on being right are brought low when those foundations are assaulted. Missional churches on the other hand, more concerned with being faithfully responsive, embrace the notion that,

The convictions that cohere within any community are in principle always subject to rejection, reformulation, improvement or critical revision, and the church is no exception to this principle.

We desperately need leaders who are more convicted about a way of believing, living, and following, than they are a way of knowing or structuring.

3) The shaping of Kingdom convictions naturally flows from community rootedness and character formation.

Convictions are the result of the work of the Holy Spirit in the midst of our community-rooted character development.  As McClendon has shared, the shaping of Kingdom convictions are not

…so many ‘propositions’ to be catalogued or juggled like truth-functions in a computer, but are inextricably interwoven with ecclesial practices such as baptism and eucharist, hospitality and reconciliation, peacemaking and the mutual bearing of burdens, where they ‘give shape to actual lives and actual communities.’

They are,

generated by ‘a shared and lived story, one whose focus is Jesus of Nazareth and the kingdom he proclaims.

This is what we see when we look at the relationship of Jesus to his disciples.  The cultivation of a community of followers who, dense as they were, and prone to weakness, were convicted of Jesus’ Messiahship, his judgment and triumph over the evil powers at work in the world, and the beginning of the renewal of all things in his resurrection.

Think for a moment about the people who most inspire you and you enjoy following.  Chances are the reason is that something has gripped them, you sense it in all they say and do and you’re interested, if not desperate, to know it for yourself.  This is what I am saying, for the Christian leader, is the work of the Holy Spirit in accord with a missional theology that finds its home in the midst of community of people following Jesus on mission together.

Can you offer examples of this?  Anyone who has counter-examples?  How have traditional approaches to theological education helped or failed you in this regard?

Next up – the place of contextual training in a missional vision of theological education.

Some quotes and ideas stem from: Harvey, Barry.  “Beginning in the Middle of Things: Following James McClendon’s Systematic Theology. Modern Theology 18:2, April 2002.

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.

more of this artist’s amazing photography here

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.

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.

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.

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.

Life on the Vine practices what we (I feel a bit more justified in the “we” since Amy and I officially became members last Sunday!) call bi-vocational ministry and a number of us met last Friday to discuss it.

Some may take issue with the phrase bi-vocational, arguing that followers of Jesus, who may have multiple occupations, actually have a singular vocation – living as a Christian witness or something like that and I’d say that’s understandable.  However, if it passes to understand vocation as “a compensated way in which our singlular calling gets lived out” I think it’s just as easy to defend an argument for bi-vocational Christians.

That’s all actually kind of beside the point.  Here were our main talking points and my summary from our time together last Friday (via an article written by DF)…

1) Bi-vocational ministry breeds congregational participation in the life of a church.

When those who lead a church community are bi-vocational, they are more easily seen as those entrusted to guide and direct, as opposed to “get everything done.”  This returns ministry to its rightful place, the corporate body.

2) Bi-vocational ministry guards against excessive organization and programming.

Without full-time people to create and maintain all sorts of programming options, the life of a congregation is able to be more relational and organic, drawing on the heart and commitment of the community.

3) Bi-vocational ministry fosters a church culture that is outward focused.

Bi-vocational ministry affords those who lead local church communities the opportunity to invest more of their time and energy in the marketplace.  This, in turn, serves as a model for the rest of the congregation of living out a faithful witness in all areas of life.

This didn’t come up, perhaps because it’s so obvious, but when those who serve church congregations as leaders can supplement their income with alternative sources of revenue, more money is freed up for the community to meet the needs of others.

I tend to agree with these statements, but as a friend brought up in the course of discussion, embracing an ecclesiology which practices bi-vocationalism probably makes for all-around healthier churches and healthier pastors.  The reason is that the inverse of these marks is typically true.  Having full-time paid pastors stymies congregational participation in the life of church communities (why do it when you have people that you pay to do it?), encourages excessive organization and programming (afterall, if you’re paid full-time, you have to come up with stuff to do), and fosters an inward focused church culture (because apparently being a ‘professional’ minister is what those who are really serious about their faith do!).

Can you practice an ecclesiology predicated on one or multiple full-time paid staff that accomplishes the same ends as this bi-vocational vision?  I am quite sure that many people will read this and try to make the case that multiple full-time paid staff just have that much more time to give to doing just that.  The problem is that the medium doesn’t match the message.  I think this is what we are after at Life on the Vine – embodying a style of congregational leadership that itself communicates (if not necessitates) our commitment to fostering a church in which the responsibility for equipping people for ministry to one another and the world falls to the body and not paid professionals.

Lots of discussion to be had on this topic, so I am interested and anxious for feedback, pushback, and further thoughts and questions.

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.

Quote from Christianity Today article, “A Deeper Relevance“…

It is precisely the point of the liturgy to take people out of their worlds and usher them into a strange, new world—to show them that, despite appearances, the last thing in the world they need is more of the world out of which they’ve come. The world the liturgy reveals does not seem relevant at first glance, but it turns out that the world it reveals is more real than the one we inhabit day by day.

This statement about liturgy, a term we could easily replace with, “corporate worship,” is perhaps a perfect remedy to arguments we so often hear over cultural relevance.  Churches who seek to be “culturally relevant” in their worship (as opposed to incarnational in their lives and witness) have flipped the gospel on its head by beginning with the world the gospel addresses rather than the world the gospel call us to.  This is a call for the corporate worship gathering to be first and foremost a means of formation and discipleship for those who comprise the body of Christ as followers of Jesus.

Disclaimer:  This post is not (really) about cars.

On the heels of that last post, I thought I would throw this out there and say how glad I am that most of the folks in my life seem to be those who are really trying to press into the full implications of what following Jesus means and looks like right here and now.  They are not, for the most part, Christian Escapists – those whose value for Christ primarily has to do with their get-out-of-hell-free card.  They want to live out lives of discipleship for the sake of their neighbors and the world.

Anyway, that being said… I caught this in a parking lot the other day, read it, kept walking, and went back to take a picture once my internal annoyance-o-meter reached its peak.

This bumper sticker perfectly illustrates the degree to which a subtle neo-gnosticism has seeped into how we understand the Christian faith.  The idea of gnosticism is simple: eternity has nothing to do with here and now.  Therefore, for example, I can “have my treasure in heaven,” and live however the heck I want.

I am reminded of my friend Wess’ post, “How Do We Look for the Theology of a Church?“  One of his suggestions was to check out the cars in the parking lot on Sunday morning.  Now, this may not be a perfect gauge (and Wess doesn’t suggest that it is), but in terms of a non-gnosticized version of the Christian faith, it is a valid point.  That point being, if we understand the good news of God’s Kingdom as something we get to participate in and live out for the sake of the world here and now, then guess what, it will envelop every aspect of our lives, including (perhaps especially including) the economic dimension.

The gospel aims to get a grip on not just our hearts, but our whole lives.  Imagine the visible impact of church communities which aimed to live well below their means because of their rejection of consumerism and materialism, or, even better, because they so badly wanted to experience the blessing of sharing and giving – of living lives unencumbered by extravagance and luxury.  That seems like a way of being the church that is more worthy of a crucified and risen Messiah.

I turned 29 this past Sunday. I had the opportunity to visit my family in California right at the end of February and got to celebrate with them. Then, this past week my brother Alex came in from NYC to see me, or maybe it had something to do with his girlfriend down in Columbus, but either way I got to spend some time with him and my mom. Then, my friends had a little birthday/going-away gathering last Friday night. “Going away?” you ask. Yes.

29 marks probably the most significant new season of life to date. A newer missional community from down in Memphis contacted a friend and professor from out at Fuller, Ryan Bolger, looking for someone to join their team. Ryan connected us, and to skip over some of the pretty fun, but lengthy details, they invited me to join them as a young adult pastor. Not really thinking that I wanted to re-enter the world of paid church ministry, and certainly having no real ambitions to move to the South, I didn’t really think that much of it initially. But, as we started having conversations and then visits, I was overwhelmed by what it seemed like God was doing amongst this community. Living Hope is the sort of church community that I would move merely to be a part of. That I’ll get to do full-time what I midst want to do anyway – relational discipleship and community formation amongst young adults – is really just a pretty awesome bonus. Though there’s definitely a flood of emotions to wade through in something like this, mainly what I feel is a sense of excitement and anticipation.

The other big news is that I apparently get to teach an online class with Fuller! I am working right now on writing up the course – The Emerging Church in the 21st Century and it’s scheduled to run this summer. I have had the opportunity to TA a whole slew of courses, but this will be my first crack at being an instructor (that title doesn’t scare me as much as – gulp – professor!). I had the opportunity to take this course with Dr. Eddie Gibbs, and then worked through a lot of the material with Ryan. With so much discussion happening about the emerging church and the group Emergent, it should prove to be a pretty interesting experience.

I think that’s pretty much all the big stuff. I am still trying to nail down something with my house and making all the moving arrangements, but that stuff will all sort itself out I guess.

So, thus begins year 29!