• Archive of "leadership" Category

    Younger Missional Leaders, the Lausanne Movement, and the Shape/ing of the Church

    April 24, 2012 // 1 Comment »

    A College Memory

    For about a year and a half during and right after college, I got to live in a house w/ a group of guys, most of whom I still consider good friends and interact with regularly. This was one of the most formative (and fun!) times of my life. One memory in particular has come back to my attention recently.

    A few of us were sitting around on the front porch talking and the conversation turned toward the future. One friend commented on how he had had a personal epiphany recently. He said that he realized that he had developed, in no specifically methodical fashion, a vision of the man he would be someday. He went on to offer a litany of characteristics that he believed would accurately describe him when he was, say, 40 or 50 years old. That wasn’t what struck him however. The epiphany sprung forth from the idea that he was not just going to magically wake up and be this person that he imagined at some point, but that he was right then and there, in the present, either moving closer toward or further away from actually becoming the kind of man he envisioned. It’s probably characteristic of college-age students to disassociate who they are from the person they hope to become, but in the midst of an impending graduation, my friend, and through him the rest of us, began to wake up to the reality that there is no such thing as the person we imagine we will be someday, only the person we are actually becoming.

    The Inevitable Changing of the Guard

    This realization has important implications for how we think of our own formation for sure, but it begs the consideration of another reality; namely, that like it our not, in terms of Christian leadership, the younger generation inevitably becomes the older generation. The sad passing of people like John Stott and Chuck Colson bear this out.

    At 33, I feel like this is beginning to be important. I occupy something of a shared liminal space. Whereas I could rattle off a long list of Christian leaders that I and others have looked to for theological guidance over the last 15 years or so, the fact of the matter is, in another 15 years, many of these people will have offered most of what they have to offer and a younger generation of emerging Christian leaders will be looking to (gulp!) my generation for the same sort of theological guidance. Which compels me to ask the question, “What kind of Christian leaders are those of my generation becoming and how will these men and women serve and shape the Church?”

    I was insanely fortunate to have had the opportunity ride my wife’s coattails all the way to South Africa back in the fall of 2010 for the Third Lausanne Congress. I am equally grateful that I will get to participate in the upcoming Consultation for North American Younger Leaders. The Lausanne movement doesn’t need to be seen as THE locus for a quest to discern the future shape of the Church, but I have to agree with Dave Dunbar, the President of Biblical Seminary, when he supposes that perhaps Lausanne, and especially the Cape Town Commitment, hasn’t really received the attention it deserves (it’s a pivotal document for the initiative I’m working with, the Missio Alliance). They seem to have managed to bring a more globally and ecumenically representative tribe of Christians together than any other endeavor, and for the fact alone, I think it’s a worth-while point of reference. I think this brief video of my friend and Lausanne’s International Deputy Director for North America, Tom Lin, gets at some of this.

    From the Experience and Questions of “Wilderness” to the Experience and Questions of “Exile”

    Another friend, Geoff Holsclaw, and I have discussed that while Christian leaders of our generation (those under 35) have benefited greatly from the example and writing of many missional theologians and pastors, our actual experience has been quite different than theirs. They have had to navigate a ton of terrain on the journey from modernity to postmodernity / Christendom to Post-Christendom / denominational stability to denominational irrelevance, leading them to ask certain questions in certain ways with certain expectations and assumptions. By and large, this isn’t a shared experience for those of my generation. For most of us, the destination of our theological mentors has been the beginning point for us, leading us to ask (even if not altogether) different questions in different ways with different expectations and assumptions.

    To generalize, we don’t wonder about the shift of Christianity to the global south, we take it for granted. We don’t feel the same sense of Western (missionary) guilt, because colonialism wasn’t our project. We aren’t all that interested in conversations about restoring Christianity to the center of culture, because, for the most part, we’ve never known it, or, in a more theological sense, we reject it as not befitting the nature of Christian faith anyway. This list could of course be added to and argued with (as it should be). It also obviously wouldn’t resonate with the experience of everyone across the board (what does?!) But, my sense is that it nevertheless outlines some of the generational realities that shape and inform not only the questions we’re asking, but the way in which we ask them and, consequently, the shape the Church will inevitably take as younger leaders begin to take on more and more responsibility.

    I’m curious. Regardless of what generation you happen to find yourself in, what are your thoughts or impressions on the qualities, characteristics, and perspectives of younger Christian leaders and how do you suppose these will influence the future shape of the Church as these leaders shoulder more and more responsibility over the next 30 years or so?

    Posted in christendom, church, conference, culture, evangelicalism, lausanne, leadership, missio alliance, missional, modernity, post-christendom, postmodernity, spiritual formation, theology, western culture, young adults

    A New Era of Theological Education May Be Dawning

    March 1, 2012 // No Comments »

    OK, that title might be a little over the top, but a guy can hope right?!  Time, as it always does, will tell!

    Last summer I started to talk about a partnership that was brewing between Northern Seminary and 3DM (Part 1, Part 2).

    Well, at long last that partnership has been officialized as Northern now offers a masters emphasis in Discipleship & Mission as well as a DMin in Discipleship and Mission, while 3DM is able to offer those who journey through their Learning Communities as part of a “Scholar Track,” seminary credit for doing so.  You can read Northern’s announcement here and 3DM’s here.

    I think this partnership embodies an important and concrete step toward one way to get at the new models of theological education that I’m convinced we so desperately need.

    While it’s not a full program – the masters emphasis is equivalent to 9, 3 credit-hour courses and the DMin track leaves only 3 additional “core courses” – what is being presented here seeks to make theological education…

    more accessible - through regionally, or ever nationally accessible intensive courses

    more affordable - by bringing the support of churches and ministry organizations more centrally into the mix and allowing students to remain where they live and work

    more integrated - as all learning is structured around its relevance for and application to actual ministry contexts and diverse subject matter (biblical studies, theological reflection, and ministry training) is interwoven amongst all modules as opposed to segmented out into their own courses

    more sustainable - as these options are deigned for those who take a longer-term view to their theological formation

    more formational - as students aren’t just offered content, but are invited into mentoring relationships with content experts who are also ministry practitioners

    more robust - as students root their education in a community of learning as opposed to simply tackling it primarily on an individual basis

    These are the sort of advances and initiatives that those of us who launched thefutureoftheologicaleducation.com and contributed to the production of the video and white paper hosted over on that site get really excited about!

    Of course I hope that this partnership and these program options are fruitful.  But even more, I am anxious for what will be learned as schools like Northern open themselves up to models of theological education that are simply better suited for preparing men and women to serve the Church as reflective practitioners, missionary leaders, and Kingdom citizens.

    Posted in 3DM, christendom, church, discipleship, individualism, kingdom, leadership, missiology, missional, missional theology, Northern Seminary, post-christendom, sustainability, theological education, theology

    A Quick Hop Back Into the World of Student Ministry

    February 14, 2012 // No Comments »

    As a college student at Malone University, I majored in youth ministry.  I did internships as a handful of different kinds of churches, the last of which actually led into a full-time role as a student pastor at a large church, overseeing separate junior, senior high, and college-age ministries.

    When I was a grad student at Fuller Theological Seminary, I continued to serve in the world of high school student ministry as an interim director at yet another kind of church.

    Later, after some time working in a seminary context, I launched into yet another pastoral position at a new church, this time working exclusively with college students and other young adults.

    However, I haven’t really done much in the way of student ministry since the spring of 2009.  So, after nearly a 3-year hiatus, I was excited when my college buddy, Scott, who’s been a long time youth pastor at The Chapel in North Canton, asked me to come back into town and help lead a retreat for his high school student leaders.

    As you might expect, the topic of the retreat was leadership.  There were to be three main sessions over the course of our time together Friday night and through the day on Saturday, plus a final sermon on Sunday morning.

    The theme for Friday night was, “Leadership as Followership: Jesus’ Plan to Destroy Your Life.”  Here, we focused our discussion around Matthew 20:17-28 and reflected on how Jesus’ role as a leader was located not so much in clever skills and abilities, but a central focus on following where and how God was leading him.  We talked about how a relinquishing of our personal ambition and agenda is fundamental to receiving what it is that God might have for us.  I also sought to pass on a discipleship framework for leaning how to get better and better at recognizing where and how God is at work and responding faithfully.

    On Saturday morning our theme was, “Leadership as Discipline: It’s Always Easy… Until You Have To Do It.”  We moved our attention to Matthew 26:36-46 and we spent some time talking about how, contrary to the aberrant Celebrity Culture that seems to mark contemporary Evangelicalism, Jesus-shaped leadership is anything but glamorous.  Rather, a commitment to lead like Jesus did will nearly always take you to a place of utter desperation, disappointment, and dependence upon God.  In terms of discipleship, we focused on what it might mean and look like to structure our lives around practices that intentionally root us in relationship with God, fellow believers, and others who are hurting and/or far from God.

    The final session of the retreat on Saturday afternoon revolved around the notion of, “Leadership as Mission: Death as a Way of Life.”  As we spent time working through Matthew 28:16-20, we discussed what actually drove Jesus as a missionary-leader, namely submission to the unique role he was to play in God’s mission in the world.  We also reflected on Jesus’ commitment to equip and send others as opposed to keeping everything isolated to his direct (human) endeavor.  This led naturally into presenting a process for discipling others toward maturity and mission.

    On Sunday morning, in sharp defiance to the notion the Piperian notion that, “God has designed christianity to have a masculine feel to it,” Amy and I preached the sermon, “Leadership as Partnership: Embodying a New World Order,” as partners who together, as male and female, reflect the imago Dei!  We spoke out of Acts 2 and Ephesians 4, calling attention to the primary role of the Holy Spirit in constituting a body of people who, against all worldly convention, seek to lead one another out of their unique giftedness in partnership for mission.

    Seeing some family and friends was a highlight as always, but man, getting back around high school students for a while was a blast.  I was super-appreciative of just how seriously they took our time together and how much creativity and passion they brought to the discussions.

    Shame on youth pastors (Scott’s not one of them!), who sabotage their opportunity to shape a generation of students because they are so focused on growing a huge, cool youth group.  Double shame on senior/lead pastors who, out of their own insecurity, put that kind of pressure on youth pastors to do it!

    Posted in Amy, church, discipleship, God, Jesus, leadership, preaching/teaching, sermon, travles, young adults, youth ministry

    The Ecclesia Network: Some Reflections and Resources

    February 2, 2012 // No Comments »

    Amidst the polarizing, fragmenting, and empire-building forces that seem to be rearing their ugly heads throughout evangelical Protestantism lately, the Ecclesia Network remains for me something of a refuge.  Ecclesia, as both a context and a family, is committed to and united by a modest, yet deliberate and substantive engagement with the various facets and issues of North American Christianity.  It’s this sort of posture that I believe sets Ecclesia apart in terms of its unique contribution to the lives of leaders, churches, and, through various initiatives and resources, the broader evangelical community.

    To point to just a few things that excite me about Ecclesia, consider the following…

    A yearly national conference (the next one being just about a month out), that seeks to help church planters and pastors wrestle with some of the most pressing issues of mission and ministry from the perspective of those who take seriously the challenges (perhaps better understood as happy opportunities!) of Post-Christendom.

    Over the last 4 years, we’ve brought together leading voices, including those of women and minorities, to help us wrestle with the practical issues of incarnational expressions of ecclesial life.  In each instance, this has been done without pomp and circumstance, opting instead for a subdued environment where the focus is on encouraging one another, building relationships, and giving a good deal of attention to God’s presence and work in our midst.  In this way, our national gathering remains vitally connected to the rest of our lives, relationships, and ministry.

    A leadership podcast that offers listeners a window into the lives and thinking of local church planters and pastors who are either in or connected to the Ecclesia Network.  Backed by the genius and savvy of Mr. Todd Hiestand and John Chandler, esquire, this podcast is just getting going, but there’s some good ones in there already.  Check out the latest podcast w/ Chris Backert, who, at long last, is offering to the world (in multiple parts no less!) some blog posts.  In part of the podcast, he talks a bit about Missio Alliance, an initiative I’m privileged to be a part of and will no doubt be writing more extensively in regard to in the future, but the rest of the podcast is a great introduction into the way Ecclesia has come about and what it “feels” like.

    Aside from those things, Ecclesia is also involved in church planter training (here’s a bunch of great audio from the most recent training session), coaching, and publishing.  Ecclesia also initiates and sponsors regional events like this one in the Northeast, this one in the Northwest, and the Missional Learning Commons here in the Mid-West.

    This is all good stuff.  None of it is completely unique; others seek to offer similar resources and opportunities.  What means the most to me, and what is simultaneously the biggest encouragement to me as something like the Missio Alliance gets underway, is the manner, character, and quality of all this work.  Like I tried to communicate above, as I look around and see so much discord and angling for influence across the evangelical landscape, I’ve just never gotten that taste from the people and work of Ecclesia and I’m grateful for this band of brothers and sisters.

    Posted in church, church planting, Ecclesia Network, evangelicalism, leadership, missio alliance, missional, missional learning commons, post-christendom, western culture

    The Missiological Future of Theological Education – Training Kingdom Citizens

    December 9, 2011 // No Comments »

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

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

    Missionary Pastors for a Missionary God (lifeasmission | Patheos)

    Ministers are Mobilizers, Not Managers (lifeasmission | Patheos)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shaping Kingdom Convictions

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

    Imparting Spiritual Knowledge

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

    Re-framing Our Relationship to Scripture

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

    Embracing the Irreplaceable Role of the Holy Spirit

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

    Concluding Thoughts

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

    Posted in 3DM, anabaptist, bible, christendom, church, culture, discipleship, doctrine, God, gospel, Jesus, justice, kingdom, leadership, missiology, missional, missional theology, narrative theology, post-christendom, preaching/teaching, spiritual formation, theological education, theology, truth, western culture

    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

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