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    The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Introduction

    November 9, 2011 // No Comments »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Posted in 3DM, anabaptist, bi-vocational, christendom, church, culture, discipleship, God, gospel, Jesus, kingdom, leadership, missiology, missional, missional theology, Northern Seminary, post-christendom, spiritual formation, theological education, theology, video, western culture

    The “Mega-Problems” of Mega-Churches

    October 5, 2011 // 17 Comments »

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

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

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

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

    1) Consumer-Oriented Structures

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

    2) Celebrity-Driven Culture

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

    3) Sunday-Cenricity

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

    4) Inward-Focused Financial Structures

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

    5) Seating over Sending

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

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

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

    Posted in capitalism, culture, discipleship, Jesus, kingdom, missional, missional theology, money, preaching/teaching, theology

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

    July 26, 2011 // 6 Comments »

    I am one of those people who happens to believe in the importance of words.  While it’s a good thing to have a broad vocabulary, that’s not what I mean.  I mean that I think words are powerful.  Words aren’t just symbols and they certainly aren’t neutral.  Words actually DO things when we use them or hear them.

    Ever been called an idiot?

    Ever made a verbal promise?

    Ever double-dog-dared someone to do something?

    Yes?  Then you get what I mean.  Words are powerful tools.  I would even go so far as to say that words contribute to the shaping of our realities.  Just ask any teenager whose parent has told them on a consistent basis for years that they’re worthless.

    This is why I have abandoned the language of “going to church.”  This language reinforces a false reality.  A reality in which church is understood to be a place or an event rather than a Kingdom community or family of disciples.  I would submit that the idea of “going to church” is a chief hallmark of cultural Christianity, the sort of thing that, while having a ring of sincerity to it, actually reshapes our imaginations and our reality in ways counter to the biblical narrative and the purposes of God.  So, a few weeks ago, as Amy and I prepared to take our daughter to a gathering of our church community, she and I had one of our first father-daughter chats.

    I began to speak the kind of words to my daughter that I want her to grow up hearing – words that I want to shape her into the sort of person capable envisioning and receiving the story into which she has been born and invited – words that I hope will instill in her the sort of sorrowful/sick feeling that her father gets when he hears people relegate the Church to something we merely “go to.”

    I said to her,

    Daughter, you are a part of our family and our family is part of a very special group of people.  This group of people has a long, long history, filled with incredible stories that you will get to hear as you get older.  But here’s what you need to know.  God loves this world – everyone and everything in it.  He loves it more than we can even possibly imagine.  He loves it so much that he actually gave himself up for it – can you believe that?!  He did.  But lots of things are wrong.  Not everything is quite the way that it is supposed to be.  But don’t worry, God is at work.  He will see to it that in the end, all things will be made right again.  And guess what, God has invited us to join him on this mission.  He wants us to be a part of it with him as his people.  With God’s help we try to live out God’s dream for the world.  And because God’s own son, Jesus, did this better than anyone else ever did, we always try to follow his example.  That means that in many ways, the way we live is very different from the ways that other people live.  In fact, and this is difficult for me to say to you because I love you so much, it means that the more you live your life for God, the more likely it is that some people will not like you, maybe even hurt you like they did Jesus.  Even still…

    Like Jesus, we talk to God and listen as he speaks to us rather than living life on our own terms.

    Like Jesus, when people do mean and bad things, we offer forgiveness rather than hold grudges or try to get even.

    Like Jesus, when people are hurt or in need, we offer to help rather than let them suffer or assume that it’s their own fault.

    Like Jesus, we go out of our way to be friends with people who don’t like or make fun of rather than ignore them or do the same.

    Like Jesus, we give our money and things to people who need them even if they can’t pay us back rather than keeping everything for ourselves.

    Like Jesus, we will lay our lives down for our enemies rather than try to injure or destroy them.

    And that’s just the beginning!  These are just some of the ways that we get to enjoy God’s dream for the world.

    Now listen, there’s a special name for people who live this way together, they are called “Church.”  They are the people who have been called out of the ways of the way the world is, in order to live out God’s dream for the way the world should be and will be someday.  Some people think that Church is some thing that you go to, like going to a movie or a restaurant, only religious.  But that’s not what it is, not at all!  I know you won’t really understand all this quite yet, but the Church is a group of people who embody a whole new world!  Nothing you ever do will be more important than being part of this people and adventure.  Now, let’s go meet some of the people we’re on this mission with.

    The first of many more conversations I hope to have with my precious daughter along these lines.

    Posted in Amy, christendom, church, culture, discipleship, God, gospel, Jesus, kingdom, LOV, love, narrative theology, parenting, reconciliation, salvation, spiritual formation, stories, theology, truth

    The Emerging Guild of Missionary Theologians

    March 6, 2011 // 5 Comments »

    An interesting thing was taking place when I began my graduate studies at Fuller back in 2004.  A surprisingly large number of students in the School of Theology, of which I was one, were either switching their degree program or restructuring it as best they could to take advantage of courses that were being offered out of Fuller’s School of Intercultural Studies, the school which has traditionally trained missionaries as opposed to pastors and theologians.  The reason was simple – more and more of us were realizing that if we wanted to be equipped for a future of ministry in and to Western culture, we needed to learn how to think and function as missionaries.

    As Christendom continues to crumble and as the United States increasingly becomes a microcosm of the globe (it is predicted that by 2050 over 50% of our population will be comprised of minority groups), the work and supporting skill set of Christian leaders will undergo seismic changes.  Actually, I hate to say it that way.  It’s not that the work we should have been doing or the skill set we should have been operating out of all along will objectively change, but the shifting of our culture and context will smack us so hard upside the head that we will have no choice but to wake up to how we’ve gotten off track.

    I want to suggest that the people we will most desperately need to help guide us into a faithful engagement with this sort of future are Missionary Theologians.

    I say “missionary theologians” as opposed to “missional theologians” to differentiate between those who do theology out of their cross-culturally oriented lives and witness as missionaries as opposed to those who might simply articulate theology from a missional perspective (however masterfully).  The Bible, I believe, is the product of this sort of perspective.  The books, letters, and poetry of the Bible, and the theology they communicate, emerge from the missionary encounter of God’s people with God’s world.  We err when we read the Bible in any other way.  Our work is no different.  It is as we engage the world as the people of God that we actually develop the capacity to see God at work and the proper vantage point from which to do theology.

    My friend Doug likes to say that “The Church in Western culture doesn’t primarily have a leadership problem or a missional problem, it has a discipleship problem.”  Inasmuch as a disciple is someone who seeks to know God by joining in on God’s mission in the world by following Jesus in the power of the Spirit, I couldn’t possibly agree more.  And who better to help us step forward into that future than missionary theologians?!

    I don’t think my experience at Fuller was unique.  I think this guild is on the rise.  2 questions seem to stand out however.

    1) Will we encourage and facilitate the rise of missionary theologians or stymie it by persisting in outmoded paradigms of education and formation?

    This question will be answered, in large part, by whether or not schools increasingly make the field of missiology standard fare in terms of equipping Christian leaders for ministry in Post-Christendom.

    2) Will we recognize and incorporate the unique contributions that missionary theologians can make in the equipping of leaders?

    Here, I think we must look to whether nor not schools (or other training organizations) are making principle use of missionary theologians to train future leaders.

    Bottom line, we still have a lot to learn from Mr. Lesslie Newbigin!

    Posted in bible, christendom, culture, discipleship, Fuller Seminary, God, Jesus, missional, missional theology, post-christendom, theological education, theology, western culture

    Epic Fail Pastors Conference

    February 2, 2011 // 4 Comments »

    I learned a long time ago as a young Christian leader that the best way to learn how to become successful and great was to attend conferences led by high-profile, celebrity type pastors and authors.

    I have been struggling to unlearn that travesty of a lesson ever since.

    The most valuable lessons I have learned in ministry, have come by way of failure – mine, and that of others.  This isn’t meant to glorify failure in and of itself, but to remember and recognize that while we inhabit a culture that revels in the glory of one person/group triumphing over others, we worship a God who calls us to follow a savior who, from that same way of thinking, failed.  We are called to faithfulness not results, and very often, faithfulness will look like failure in the eyes of the world.

    In that spirit, I am thrilled to let you know that a different sort of conference coming up in April, catalyzed by my friend J.R. Briggs, the Epic Fail Pastors Conference.

    All the relevant information is available on the conference site so check it out there.  It’s unique, it’s inexpensive, and it very well may change your who outlook on ministry in the way of Jesus.

    Posted in conference, Jesus

    The Digital Story of the Nativity

    December 21, 2010 // No Comments »

    This was just too clever and well done to pass up.  Enjoy!

    Curious to see what you would have added if you were the one who made this.

    Posted in funny, Jesus, social networking, video

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