A few weeks ago I kickstarted a review of Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, by Dallas Willard (part 1 here).

After a comment by my friend Josh on that post, I thought I’d hop back in with some further reflections.  Josh asked about Willard’s reflections on knowledge and their connection to virtue, to truth/Truth, and the works of Polyani and MacIntyre.  To my recollection, Willard is not interacting with other contemporary philosophers (at least not directly), but he does speak to the matters of virtue and truth/Truth.  Regarding virtue, Willard says,

We today live in a curious period when almost no one is willing to discuss the question of how one becomes a truly good person.  There is now a widespread tendency in American culture to think that everyone is already good.  This probably arises out of confusion concerning the dignity of the individual or the equality of all people.  It seems to many that all you have to do to be worthy is just to be.  They mistake worth for worthiness; the most unworthy of persons still has worth, value, a certain dignity to be respected.  On the other hand, as we shall discuss later it is now widely thought that there is no objective difference between a good and bad person, or at least that we do not know what that difference is.  So, if that is true, a method for becoming a really good person would be presumptuous and pointless.  (49)

Willard is saying that there is such a thing as objective virtue, but more provocatively, he is saying that we can know it.  Let me trace his argument briefly by noting his comments on Jesus’ answers to the 4 core worldview questions.

1) What is real? Jesus’ answer, God and his Kingdom.

2) Who is well-off, blessed? Jesus’ answer, Anyone who is alive in the Kingdom of God.

3) Who is a really good person? Jesus’ answer, Anyone who is prevaded with love.

4) How do you become a really good person? You place your confidence in Jesus Christ and become his student or apprentice in Kingdom living.

The key to Willard’s line of argumentation here, I believe is found in this passing comment he makes – one that I think he would ave done well to devote an entire chapter (if not a book!) to.

… ‘knowledge’ as the biblical tradition speaks of it is always interactive relationship.

If indeed the sort of knowledge that the Bible is concerned with is characterized by interactive relationship, then it, by nature, has a dimension of subjectivity to it.

The apologetic value of this sort of knowledge therefore is found not in intellectual argumentation, but in inviting people into a relationship with the risen Jesus, manifested (uniquely though not exclusively) in and through the Church as the Body of Christ.

Let me stop there for now and see if anyone wants to engage with what Dallas is doing/saying here.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I recently finished a few books that I think are worth discussing.  I started with a review of Deep Church by Jim Belcher and though I’d try to tackle Willard’s book next.

Reviewing a book by Dallas Willard is a formidable task.  The guy is nothing short of brilliant.  Add to this his personal humility and Christlikeness, and we have no choice but to take his words to heart and call ourselves, not him, into question if we think we disagree or have come to understand him fully.  Such is my stance as I offer my reflections on this excellent book.

The fundamental issue Willard aims to grapple with in, Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, is this,

In the Western world, a great historical struggle between what might be called ‘traditional’ knowledge, represented by the church, and modern knowledge, represented by science, has brought us to where many can only think of religion as mere belief or commitment. (23)

From here, Willard goes on to explain how both conservatives and liberals, in their own unique ways, managed to divorce knowledge from their versions of Christian faith and life.  To summarize, on the left, the removal of Christian teachings from the domain of knowledge “was largely a defensive move, designed to insulate Christian faith and practice from any possible negative impact of the results of scientific and historical studies.” (24)  On the right, “knowlege was pushed away as inessential to saving faith, having nothing to do with it.” (25)

What willard is after is a vision of Christian faith that ushers us beyond profession (what we say we believe, even if we’re not committed to it or don’t actually believe it), commitment (what we do regardless of its correspondence to reality), and belief (which doesn’t necessarily correspond to truth or knowledge – “we can believe what is false and often do” (16)), to the realm of Christian knowledge.  Of Christian knowledge Willard says,

We have knowledge of something when we are representing it (thinking about it, speaking of it, treating it) as it actually is, on an appropriate basis of thought and experience. (15)

He goes on to say,

Knowledge, but not mere belief or commitment, confers on its possessor an authority or right – even a responsibility – to act, to direct action, to establish and supervise policy, and to teach… Knowledge also confers upon belief and action a stability and communicability that other sources of action do not.  This is because knowledge involves truth: truth secured by experience, method, and evidence that is generally available. (18)

Let me go ahead and stop there for now.  I will jump back into what Willard is after in this book and its relevance for the lives of disciples and the Church in forthcoming posts, but at the outset, does anyone have initial thoughts on Willard’s project or observations at the outset?  Is “Christian knowledge” something you think much about and if so, for what purpose?

The guys over at Homebrewed Christianity recently posted an interview they did with N.T. Wright.  The interview was full of some really great sound bytes that I went ahead and divvied up to make your life easier

You can listen to or download the interview in its entirety here.

On being a bishop. Download audio file (wrightbishop.mp3)

On the unfortunate split between church and academy. Download audio file (wrightpastorwriter.mp3)

On returning to fulltime academic work. Download audio file (wrightteacher.mp3)

On Bart Ehrman. Download audio file (wrightbartehrman.mp3)

On John Shelby Spong. Download audio file (wrightspong.mp3)

On Luke Timothy Johnson. Download audio file (wrightjohnson.mp3)

On Marcus Borg & John Dominic Crossan. Download audio file (wrightborgcrossan.mp3)

On Jurgen Moltmann. Download audio file (wrightmoltmann.mp3)

On E.P. Sanders. Download audio file (wrightsanders.mp3)

On Karl Barth. Download audio file (wrightbarth.mp3)

On Stanley Hauerwas. Download audio file (wrighthauerwas.mp3)

On his most recent book, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters and why he chose to write about eschatology before ethics. Download audio file (wrightafteryoubelieve.mp3)

On the difference between Aristotelian virtue and Christian virtue. Download audio file (wrightchristianvirtue.mp3)

On the role of character and virtue in other religions. Download audio file (wrightreligiousvirtue.mp3)

On cultural virtue. Download audio file (wrightculturalvirtue.mp3)

On the renewing of our minds when they have become largely detached from the rest of who we are. Download audio file (wrightrenewing.mp3)

On Christianity Post-Postmodernity. Download audio file (wrightchristianitypostpostmodernity.mp3)

On the after-after life. Download audio file (wrightafterlife.mp3)

What NT Wright is reading, thinking, and planning for his “big book on Paul” as the next in his Christian Origins series. Download audio file (wrightreading.mp3)

What we can expect from NT Wright in his new role. Download audio file (wrightfuture.mp3)

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.

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

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

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

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

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

1) Networks

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

2) Apprenticeship

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

3) Civic Engagement

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

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

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

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

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.

When I was a sophomore in college, I helped to lead a high school mission trip to Russia.  On the plane, I was reading a book someone had recommended, “Desiring God,” by John Piper.  Through the first 1/2 of the book, I was looking for a way to throw it off the plane – I thought it was crap.  By the end of it, I was transformed.  I had a completely different take on the nature of Christian faith and discipleship that has stood the test of time.

Once I started to get into Podcasts, Piper’s was one of the first ones I subscribed (iTunes link) to.  I still listen to it with some regularity and commend it to you.

When I was contemplating resigning my role as a student pastor in 2004 to pursue more theological education, I decided to take some time off to think, pray, reflect, and ask questions.  I traveled to Minneapolis, visited Bethlehem Baptist Church where John Piper preaches, and had the chance to talk with him for a while after one of the services.  An alum of Fuller Theological Seminary, I expected him to be encouraged that this was one of my options.  He wasn’t.  He said that they had gone down a dangerous to path toward Christian liberalism.

I went to Fuller anyway and discovered that John was wrong.

My idolatry of Piper broken, I began to notice some other aspects of his theology that I had a really hard time with.

I think he gets the issue of God’ sovereignty wrong – not because I believe the opposite, but because I think the whole Calvinist/Armenian debate is flawed at its core.  Both positions assume that salvation is something one can have and therefore argue about who secures our having it – God or man.  With good intention, some will attempt a middle road and say it’s a both/and issue.  It’s not.  It’s a neither/nor issue.  When you begin to understand that “salvation belongs to God” (Rev. 7:10) and is therefore something we can only participate in, never have, the whole debate changes.

I also lament Piper’s view on women. Again, he will argue the “conservative” side of the complimentarian/egalitarian debate, which I think begins with flawed premises.  Do men and women compliment each other or are they equal?  That question isn’t nearly biblical enough to be of any real value.  A more important question, at least as the Bible is concerned, is, how do men and women, who only together image God, as couples and singles, function together in doing and equipping others for ministry.  And the plain answer is that they serve as co-laborers – that each and every aspect of ministry, from preaching and teaching, to caring for children, suffers when not practiced by both capable and gifted women and men.

There was much bally-who in the blog-o-sphere last week when Piper connected a tornado in Minneapolis to a meeting the ELCA was having regarding the issue of homosexuality (here’s the original article and a follow up one).  I have listened to Piper enough that I think what he meant to say was that whenever natural disaster strikes it is an opportunity for us to remember and turn to God, but he seemed to be saying quite a bit more than that and it calls for some accounting.

Lastly, he’s got a bad take on the woman at the well (John 4).  Like perhaps the majority of preachers, he is quick to assume the moral degradation of the woman Jesus encounters, frequently noting that “she’s sleeping with her boyfriend.”  As I take into account the cultural factors at play in this passage as well as the fuller scope of Jesus’ ministry, I find this interpretation to be maddening.

Women had not rights in Jesus’ day; they had not power to divorce a husband; they were property.  Unless they were from a royal or extremely well off family, they had almost no hope of being able to provide for themselves.  As the Bible makes clear, the ability to produce children more often than not determined a woman’s worth.

While we might trip over some of the translated language, I think it’s much more faithful to the text to understand this Samaritan woman, not as a whore (essentially what Piper and others tend to d0), but as a shamed and broken victim of injustice.  When Jesus notes that this woman had had five husbands, he’s not digging her for her sin – when did Jesus ever do that except for the religious leaders?!  And when he says that the man she now has is not her husband, he’s not some *&$%^&# calling her out for “sleeping with her boyfriend”  – again, just doesn’t fit the Jesus of the gospels.  He is calling out the source of her shame and injustice so that he can heal it – something he did all the time.

I love John Piper as a brother in Christ.  His passion and zeal for the supremacy of God captivates and inspires me.  But here’s the final thing about John and this gets me more than anything else.  I have never heard him say (and he’s really public!), “I might be wrong.  There are other followers of Jesus who believe differently than me and they just might be on to something.”  Even if he has said something like this at some point – it is quite definitely not a theme in his teaching the way I wish it was.  I’m not talking about being wishy-washy.  I am taking about some good ol fashioned humility and firm trust in God’s work over his theology.

I am not writing this to disparage.  Beginning with myself, I would ask anyone who has some theological issues with another brother or sister in Christ, to think first and foremost about who they really are and what they have done for the sake of the gospel.  I am no anti-Piperian. I consider John a true partner in the gospel and would run to his defense on most occasions.  But this is just some stuff that I really struggle with enough to hope that others would as well.

As I have mentioned before in a post on “What is Missional?,” Western Christians are bifurcated into two main groups – those who emphasize believing the right things (classic conservatives) and those who emphasize living the right way (classic liberals).  Thankfully, there are people like Pete Rollins who desires to help people embrace not a middle-ground, but an altogether alternative paradigm, believing the right way, illustrated in this blog post of his from this past January.

Without equivocation or hesitation I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no matter what some people may think…

I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an unjust and corrupt system.

However there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed.

His perspective shows both the short comings of language and the shallowness of the things we typically consider most important.  This is indeed the sort of belief that I think the Bible calls us to.

Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete. (Lk. 6:46-49)

Some years ago, discussions and arguments regarding the inerrancy, infallability, inwhatever of Scripture ceased to be all that meaningful to me.  It’s difficult to see this as an incredibly meaningful debate to Jesus.  On the other hand, it’s easy for me to imagine God caring deeply about the extent to which we are seeking to bring our lives into harmony with the reality held out to us in the Bible.

I wonder who truly has the “higher” view of Scripture – the one who contends for its inerrancy or the one who demonstrates its truthfulness by the way they live?

If you’re really into this sort of discussion, feel free to have a glance at a paper I wrote on the topic of the opportunity afforded the Christian faith by the cultural turn toward Postmodernity here.

My friend JR Woordward has put together a fun line up of people to submit brief blog posts answering the question…

If you local city newspaper asked you to describe the Good News – what would you write?

Here’s my submission and I encourage you to check out the other posts offered between now and Pentecost.  Feel free to offer your comments here if you like, but there are already several good ones over at JR Woodward’s site that you can add to as well.  I will be checking and responding over there too.

The Commercial Appeal is the place where countless Memphians turn for news – some of it good, much of it, not so good.  We are a city divided by race, stricken by generational poverty, plagued by crime, and disadvantaged by socio-economic stratification.  Good news for us usually comes in the form of an absence of bad as opposed to the presence of beautiful surprises.  For those with eyes to see, these problems are far more than the result of individual human errors and failings; they also stem from firmly entrenched systems, paradigms, and powers, which create a broken culture that produces broken people.  There is a cycle at work here more insidious than we realize or could hope to finally defeat on our own.  But there’s good news.

I’m a Christian and Christians are good news people.  In fact, a central manta of the Christian faith is, “Repent and believe the good news.”  This isn’t about saying you’re sorry to God so you can go to Heaven when you die. It’s Jesus’ invitation to, by grace and through faith, escape the consequences of our capitulation to a world gone wrong by joining him in the ways he sees and engages the world.

See, God plans to recreate all that has been tainted and lost by evil and darkness.  The sphere in which this happens is known as the Kingdom of God.  Jesus embodied this Kingdom in his life and sealed it in his death and resurrection. That’s news, but it’s not quite good yet; cause news is only really good when it’s experienced.  This news becomes truly good for us when God’s plan for the future intersects with our present.  Ours is not good news that God will do, but good news that God is doing.

Jesus was the bearer of good news par excellence and those of us who bear his name but fail to similarly bear good news to the world around us have a share in the guilt and misery of the city and people we are called to lovingly serve.  This is where the Church comes in.  God means for the Church to be a unique body though whom Jesus actually continues freeing people from harmful things and reconnecting them with God and others. The Christian God is one of relationship.  Therefore, God’s Good News to the people and city of Memphis is purposefully intertwined with communities of people gripped by it.

Fellow Memphians, if you’re like me, grieved over the many sad circumstances of our city, if you are desperate for a new start, for healing and wholeness, I hope you will consider the news of God’s desire and plan for the world including the tiny metroplex of Memphis.  The news might not be the sort you’d expect, maybe not even the sort you’d prefer, but it’s good in the truest meaning of the word.

It’s not a new conversation, but there has been some recent discourse & interest around virtual community and the use of video venues for church communities. I wanted to point you toward a few resources of interest.

© Oleg Gerasymenko | Dreamstime.com

Bob Hyatt has written a great piece entitled, Video Venues: The Death of Preaching.  And I wholeheartedly agree with his thesis as well as closing remarks

…just because God honors our silly methods occasionally doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look for better ways, perhaps less silly, perhaps ones with fewer unintended consequences.

Shane Hipps, an acquaintance from Fuller, has caught some heat for his take on virtual community and in a recent podcast, “The Papacy of Celebrity,” had some good things to say about video venues as well.  The great thing about the perspective Shane is coming from is that he doesn’t need to demonize anything, he’s just trying to be honest about the full scope of these things.

I wouldn’t presume to speak for Bob or Shane, but as I have followed the various discussions and listened to what is being said, it’s because of my heart for spiritual formation that I lament the idea that connecting with people virtually could ever be God’s full intention for community.  More saddening, is the way in which we fail to see how the medium of video venues disfigures some of the most precious characteristics of the gospel and the Body of Christ – not because God can’t show up, but because of the adverse formative effect they have on people.

If my kid steals some money from my wallet, I can probably fix the problem by crushing his hand with a wrench, but the point isn’t just fixing the problem, it’s fixing it in the wright way.  There is no room in the Christian faith for being connected in community “at all cost,” much less for, good preaching “at all cost.”  That just misses the bigger point.  The medium really is the message, they are bound up with one another, which is why, in terms of discipleship, it’s not just about doing the right things, but about doing things the right ways.

Perhaps for utilitarians, the means justify the ends, but for those who follow Christ and his invitation to “pick up your cross and follow me,” the means and the ends are indistinguishable.

Yesterday – Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Today – the inauguration of Barack Obama as the first African-American President of the United States, are two big days.

Especially as a citizen of Memphis, where Dr. King was assassinated, the importance of all he stood for comes powerfully home.  Memphis is in many ways a broken and hurting city.  Racial division (if not tension) remains thick.  Systems and structures which perpetuate generational poverty and crime continue to plague us.  And the dominant expression of church here in the mid-south seems unable or unwilling to powerfully engage this sort of brokenness.  Memphis is a city desperate for the good news of God’s Kingdom breaking forth into the world.

I caught a glimmer of this hope the other day as I was remembering King’s famous, “Paul’s Letter to American Christians” and came across this quote (from that sermon) on one of the walls of the downtown YMCA where I workout…

Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.

I am happy to stand with those who are excited about the progress we have made as a country, evidenced in our election of a black President.  I am even happy to stand with those inspired by the hope that this new President and administration aim to offer to a nation that has lost its way in war, economic crisis, and poor international reputation.  Yet I long for more.

Yesterday we celebrated a man and his legacy of striving for racial reconciliation, care for the poor, and justice for all.  Today we celebrate the dawn of a new era for our country, an era (perhaps) to be marked by change for the better.

But I long for the day that only God can bring about, a day when all our human striving and labor will be tested as with fire.  The chaff of our striving will be burned away and the precious stones of our striving will be even further refined.  On 2 days when it is so easy for me to get caught up in the acclaim of two good men, one who had a dream and another who represents, in part, the evidence of that dream coming to pass, I pause to remember the supremacy of the one man, who, at the height of his glory, was abandoned by all as he hung on a cross and proclaimed, “It is finished.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The church is by nature a community which exists by faith and faith is inherently risky.  Sadly, most churches are structured and run in a way that aims to minimize risk and keep people comfortable.  Of course we do this with the best of intentions, like a mother who refuses to let her children go out and play for fear that they might get hurt, but all we are really doing is ensuring that they will get hurt when life finally catches up with them and robbing them of great joy in the meantime.  Those who have aspired to positions of leadership in the church need to call and release our people to risk much and live by faith.  We need to spark imagination, give away power like it’s going out of style, and embrace suffering and failure as normative. The call to follow Jesus is a call to die.  It is a sin every time the church invites people to anything other than that.

These thoughts sparked by Neil Cole’s words which I caught over on Jonathan Dodson’s blog…

We ask for volunteers all the time. We offer spiritual-gift assessments to see where people fit best in our program, but we never really offer very challenging experiences for people. Handing out bulletins, directing traffic wearing a bright orange vest, chaperoning a youth function, or changing a diaper in the nursery may be helpful for the church program, but none of it is a task worth giving your life to. Many who struggle to do these things have a nagging unspoken question: “Did Jesus come so I can do this?”

We must transition from seeing church as a once-a-week worship event to an ongoing spiritual family on mission together. Then people will see church as something worth giving your life for. Honestly, people need one another more then they need another inspiring message. You would be surprised what people will do for Jesus, or for a brother or sister, that they will not do for a vision statement and a capital giving campaign.

Of course there is nothing wrong with serving in any of these ways above, but Cole here articulates a fundamental difference between attractional churches (oriented around ME and my desires) and missional churches (oriented around God and God’s desires).

Especially in cultures where “going to church” is the norm, we need to work overtime and go far out of our way to help people reimagine what it means to be the body of Christ in the world. And this is no mere intellectual exercise, “Here, let me explain this to you so you understand and then assume it will just happen.”  No, we must decide to adopt the structures, patterns, and practices which will create an environment for this new reality to flourish. When we invite people to be on mission, to risk much and live by faith, we are inviting them to experience the fullness of life that Jesus came and died for.  To deviate from this is compromise the very integrity of the body of Christ.

I am really proud to be part of a church that is participating in Advent Conspiracy this holiday season.  We have been talking and praying as a community about rethinking gift giving, generosity, and remembering the poor.  Here’s a short promo video for the movement.

And here’s something a few folks from Living Hope put together for our community.