lifeasmission
exploring the mystery of life and mission as one and the same
-
Archive of "God" Category
God is as God Acts
I once heard a story of a man who was speaking with Dallas Willard. In the course of conversation, the man divulged a sin, but commented that it was, “completely out of character” for him. To which Dallas replied, “No it wasn’t. If you did it, that IS your character.”
I listened to that and thought to myself,
This expresses well why I love God so much. Because God is as God acts.
God doesn’t get to be called “loving” if God doesn’t love. Nor does God get to be named “just” if God doesn’t act justly. We are as we act and God is as God acts.
Instead of taking this in my own personal direction, I was wondering how others might respond to the idea that “God IS as God ACTS.” What are your thoughts? What does it mean for how you live your life and interpret your reality?
Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: Cultural Pioneering
Previous posts in this Series:
Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem | The Fruit of the Problem | New Soil | Community Rootedness | Character Formation | Conviction Shaping | Contextual Training
Christendom bore no real need for leaders who were cultural pioneers. After all, if the culture is already Christian, what do we have to pioneer? It would be logical to conclude then, that as Christendom crumbles, the need for leaders with the skills for cultural pioneering would increase. This would be true and mistaken at the same time. It’s true that we have a greater and greater need for cultural pioneers, but the crumbling of Christendom isn’t the reason. Rather, a missional vision of the church carries with it an inherent need for leaders who serve as cultural pioneers which means we need a vision of theological education capable of equipping men and women for this task.
Allow me to offer just 2 basic points to support my argument for this need.
First, missional churches operate out of the assumption that mission is part of God’s very character and nature. God sends the son, the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit, the Trinity sends the Church as the Body of Christ. Little wonder then that missional church leaders lament the modern phenomenon of churches playing the role of vendors of religious goods and services that spend the bulk of their time, energy, and money trying to get people to come. Missional churches are not those who focus on offering the best “Christian” stuff (teaching, programs, groups, etc.), but those who focus on engaging with world’s darkest and toughest needs.
Second, missional churches tend to be marked by their attention to Jesus’ announcement of the good news of God’s Kingdom, the new reality inaugurated in Jesus. Just as Jesus stood at odds with the culture of his day on account of his allegiance to God’s Kingdom, so too the missional church of today will find itself at odds with the culture of our day as we seek to embody God’s Kingdom through faith in Jesus. To understand the local church as an expression of a new reality, however, means that we recognize the need for leaders capable of cultural pioneering.
Current models of theological education seem to come up short in terms of their fit to equip male and female leaders on both these counts. How then are we to go about doing so? I offer three ideas for the training of cultural pioneers.
1) Deep involvement in a missional community
There is no better way to learn how to be a cultural pioneer that to participate in a community that is seeking to do this very thing. My hope and expectation would be that to a great degree, the various aspects of this missional vision of theological education that I have been describing would all serve to produce leaders who think and act in terms of cultural pioneering. I have a hard time imagining that someone could give themselves to a process of formation that is rooted in community and centered around character formation through the shaping of Kingdom convictions and contextual training and emerge as someone who would rather manage a program driven group of individuals than lead a community into the world as an expression of God’s alternative reality.
2) Encourage Cultural Creation & Cultivation
I am indebted to Andy Crouch and his book, Culture Making, for my thinking (and language) on this. The power and trajectory of Christendom resulted in a church that, at various times, thought of “culture” as some monolithic thing that it could condemn, critique, copy, or consume. Only now, as we increasingly find ourselves on the margins of society, are we rediscovering the postures of creating and cultivating culture. We create culture through values, practices, and imagination. However, as Crouch says,
We cannot make culture without culture. And this means that creation begins with cultivation – taking care of the good things culture has already handed on to us. The first responsibility of culture makers is not to make something new but to become fluent in the cultural tradition to which we are responsible. Before we can be culture makers, we must be culture keepers.
This leads us directly to the third ingredient in forming cultural pioneers.
3) Practicing Discernment
The need for skilled discernment is going nowhere but up! Never before in human history has so much information and so many opinions been so easily accessible. Add to this the pervasive individualism and relativism of Western culture and you are left with a cultural nightmare for those who believe in such a thing as contextual faithfulness to biblical truth. As Jesus’ disciples were, we must be taught to see, hear, and feel with eyes, ears, and hearts attuned to the reality of the Kingdom of God in our midst. How are we ever to create culture unless we can discern our way through it as followers of Jesus? This takes years of practice within community and remains a lifelong discipline.
Are there other aspects of cultural pioneering that you think I’m missing? How else might we equip others to this end? Anxious for your (end of the year and end of the series!) thoughts.
Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: Conviction Shaping
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.
The “Greatness” of the United States
I was reminded on Wednesday night in the midst of a discussion with some friends about the wrath of God about something else Soong-Chan Rah said at CCDA during his talk. I may not get this verbatim, but it’s close enough.
We often talk about the “greatness” of the United States. Afterall, when you consider that we are a nation built on free land (which we robbed from the Native America people by killing and displacing them) and free labor (which we secured by enslaving Africans), it is little wonder we have managed to become so “great.” But one wonders what happens when those sins return to visit us? Perhaps an economic crisis?!
This quote returned to me as we were thinking through the idea of God punishing families to the third and fourth generation. It’s the idea that just because you don’t directly reap the consequences of your actions, that doesn’t mean someone, perhaps those who mean the most to you, your family, won’t.
Biblically, it would seem that the wrath of God is precisely what we experience when we turn away from God and God’s ways. It’s not so much God doing stuff to get even or settle the score. It’s more like what we are left with when we choose against living in harmony with God’s design for the world. Afterall, what could be more awful that the gradual (and for some, the eternal) distancing from the Spirit of God who constitutes the image of God in humanity?
… the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Lots of People in Hell Have Perfect Doctrine
I was listening the other day to a message given by a teaching pastor that I respect. He was teaching on baptism, specifically whether or not aspiring members needed to share the official doctrinal stance of the church before being accepted as members. Rather than addressing that question directly, he decided to take a round-about approach.
He spoke of how important it is for the church to create a
relational culture…that is more intentionally and radically servant-like, other-oriented, thoughtful, outgoing, humble, thankful, aggressively concerned and caring, moving into the lives of others rather than moving away from them, committed to the hard work and sweet rewards of loving other people in the church.
He drew these characteristics from Colossians 3:12-17. And his point was essentially this; it is in this sort of context that wisdom flourishes and when wisdom flourishes we can hope to come to agreement about baptism.
And here was my first thought. If you have successfully created a relational culture of the sort mentioned above, who in the heck cares if you are in agreement about baptism?!
Do you see what I mean here? It’s like finding ways to mutually inspire love, affection, connection, commitment, and excitement in marriage and then, when you do, thinking that it would be a good idea to talk about how you define love. Who cares how you define it if you ‘re already both experiencing it? In fact, defining it might be the most sure-fire way to kill it as you nit-pick at nuanced differences.
I am not in the least bit saying that there is no connection whatsoever between doctrine (what we say we believe) and praxis (how we live). I am just saying that if you are living out a faithful Christian witness and example where God is glorified, your doctrinal stances matter very little.
Another problem. At another point the pastor said,
As a member of this church, you can be wrong on election, wrong on the power of sin, wrong on the extent of atonement, wrong on the power of grace, wrong on perseverance, and wrong on the sovereignty of God… [but you can still be a member]
Man, I chafe under this sort of mentality. “We, as the pastors and elders, have all the important doctrinal stuff worked out, and you don’t have to agree with us to be a member here, but this is the way it is, and we will pray for you to come around.” I can imagine nothing more inhibitory to what Chritian community is all about than this sort of mindset. How is the church supposed to listen to the Holy Spirit and fall in love with God through Scripture together if it’s a 1-way street?
I seriously pray for myself that I would always be more passioante about God than my limited ability to understand and articulate God.
My Heaven or God’s Heaven
Lost in ponderings of Heaven this afternoon, I had this thought…
The “Heaven” held out to us in Scripture is not a place or state where everything is finally the way I want it, but a place or state where everything is finally the way God wants it. It is the fulfillment of all that God ever intended for all of creation.
This, I think, makes all the difference in the world in terms of how we live our lives. What if our desires and our affections never become more aligned to God’s? What if things like selflessness, sacrifice, generosity, patience, and love never take root in our lives, and then we come to Heaven only to find these to be the most fundamental expressions of life. How great would our suffering be in a place where, for all of eternity, life was made truly enjoyable only by virtue of these ways of being – when we have no capacity for them?
It seems to me that our experience and enjoyment of this sort of Heaven, if this life is to be at all meaningful, corresponds directly to the degree to which God’s heart takes root in our own. A humbling thought to say the least.
Hi There…
Hey, I'm JR - welcome to the blog.
I'm just an average guy trying to shape his identity around God's dream for the world and his place in it. This blog is a place for me (and you!) to reflect on and discuss all that might mean. Looking for a bit more on me? Check out the about me. Peace.
tweets
- via the lifeasmission ARCHIVES: A Living Theology #FB 8 hrs ago
- I like Bazan's newest album, but am reminded that we need God's grace to have "eyes to see" and "ears to hear" #FB 14 hrs ago
- Completed (Run): Distance 3.17 mi, Duration 0:30:37, Pace 09:39 min/mile, Speed 6.2 mph. / early spring dusk run! #FB #iMapMyRun 14 hrs ago
- via the lifeasmission ARCHIVES: The Defining Majority http://bit.ly/9VBhor #FB 1 day ago
- Commented on What is the Emergent Church? / lifeasmission http://tinyurl.com/yhsuhuo 1 day ago
- More updates...
