• Archive of "Fuller Seminary" Category

    3DM, Learning Communites, and the End of Celebrity-Driven Christian Gatherings

    March 31, 2011 // 10 Comments »

    Not so long ago I reviewed, Launching Missional Communities, by Mike Breen and Alex Absalom.  Then, some good conversation ensued, both on my post as well as on a post that Mike offered in response to my review. (Incidentally, Mike has recently followed up on this conversation with another post.  You can see my engagement with his ideas there.)

    Mike helps to lead a ministry called 3DM (more on them here) that a good number of my church ministry/planter friends have been impacted by.  One of those friends, Doug Paul, and I have recently been having conversations about the relationship between the philosophy behind 3DM and the future of theological education.  In fact, you should check out a brilliant interview that Mike did with Dave Kludt of “The Burner Blog” through Fuller Seminary, especially question 5, on that subject.

    A couple weeks ago, as a representative of Northern Seminary, where I work, I was able to participate in the first gathering of a new Learning Community that 3DM launched.  Essentially, this was a gathering of about 40 church teams (3-5 leaders/church) who were beginning a 2 year journey of learning together what it might mean to build a discipling culture, multiply missional leaders, launch missional communities, and establish centers of mission.  The structure of the event (Monday afternoon through Thursday afternoon) was unlike any other Christian conference/event I have ever been a part of and quite frankly, was more helpful than any conference/event I have ever been a part of.  This was the case for one simple reason, it took seriously the idea of praxis – engaging in an intentional rhythm of reflection and action.

    The event was structured largely around a rhythm of “idea-driven” corporate times and “application-driven” community times.  Interspersed throughout the week were additional times for even smaller group engagement, shared meals, and prayer/ministry time.

    I won’t belabor the point by going into a detailed description of how all these times looked exactly, but suffice it to say, the centrality of praxis (learning/engaging, ideas/skills, or hearing/responding), which drove our time together, set this gathering apart from anything else I’ve been a part of.  Whereas a good many Christian gatherings are predicated on drawing people to celebrity speakers or to a purely intellectual presentation of ideas (not that these are bad in and of themselves), I would hope that more and more Christian gatherings might choose to restructure themselves in the way described above.

    3DM is doing good work.  I would go so far as to say they are doing some of the most needed work in helping people/churches get a handle on what it might mean, practically, to embody a missional ecclesiology here in the US as Christendom continues to crumble and we are led (forced?) to ask new questions about the nature and purpose of the church.

    If you represent an existing church or are engaged/thinking about church planting, you should absolutely consider being part of a future learning community.

    If you are reading this and have been part of a 3DM Leaning Community, please feel free to offer your thoughts and reflections for others.

    Posted in 3DM, christendom, conference, discipleship, Fuller Seminary, missional, Northern Seminary

    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

    (More) Things I Never Thought

    January 27, 2011 // No Comments »

    Way back in May of 2006 I wrote a blog post titled, “Things I Never Thought.” It was basically my own reflection on how the trajectory of my life had taken shape in ways that I didn’t expect or plan for. I had a number of friends mention that they appreciated the post when it was randomly retweeted from the archives so I thought I would do another post along the same lines, almost five years later now.

    In May of 2006 I was in the Spring quarter of grad school. I was taking Pentateuch w/ Dr. John Goldingay, Theology of Christian Community w/ Dr. Ray Anderson and doing a Directed Study in Narrative Theology w/ Dr. Ryan Bolger. I had just one more quarter to go and then I was going to graduate. As I thought about my future, I imagined heading in one of two directions. Either I would move back to Canton and re-establish myself in the community I had left behind and missed like crazy, or, if God didn’t direct that way, I would look for a pastoral position in either the Pacific NW or in the Northeastern part of the US – some place that was further along in terms of being a Post-Christian context.

    I never thought I would wind up working for Fuller’s MAGL program. I didn’t even know we had an MAGL program, but the opportunity presented itself and it radically altered my life. This will come into sharper focus below, but suffice it to say here, the model of theological education espoused by the MAGL and the relationships I made internally have had a tremendous impact on the contours of my life through to today.

    I worked with the MAGL program for most of 2007 and then various circumstances combined to lead me back to Canton. As I tried to discern a future related to engaging the missional church conversation in the Midwest, I connected with Dave Fitch for the first time and visited Life on the Vine. I was giving serious consideration to simply moving to Chicago just to be a part of LOV as the first church I had been exposed to that I felt like was actually expressing missional theology in its communal life, rhythms, and practices.

    I never thought I would get a call from a young church in Memphis, TN asking me to consider taking a position down there.  And I certainly never thought that despite my best efforts to dismiss it, that God would actually lead me to embrace the opportunity.

    I had a good experience at Living Hope.  I loved the staff, enjoyed connecting and working with young adults, and made some life-long friends.  I moved into mid-town, close to the part of the city where it seemed like some people from the church would think about relocating to, and anticipated a long future of investing the future of the newer church community that was seeking to embrace a missional identity and a heart for the city of Memphis.

    I never thought that I would reconnect (let alone marry!) with Amy Garrington, who had been a student in one of the MAGL cohorts that I was responsible for.  (See, told you that MAGL job was a big deal!)  But, as she was contemplating leaving Pasadena for a position at International Teams near Chicago, that’s exactly what happened.  We’ve been married for about a year and a half, have a baby on the way this June, and love where we live.  Amy and I both have some family that lives in the Chicagoland area, but…

    I never thought my brother would leave NYC and join us here in Chicago!

    There’s probably a bunch more “I never thought’s” that I could list out, but these are probably among the most significant of the last five years.  They serve as both a humble reminder and constant encouragement that when you’re more focused on listening and responding to what God is saying and doing than on ensuring the fulfillment of your own ideas and plans, life-changing surprises await you.

    I simply can’t wait for the next series of, things I never thought!

    Posted in Amy, decisions, Fuller Seminary, God, living hope, LOV, MAGL, marriage, midtown, missional, missional theology, post-christendom

    Dr. Rozko?

    August 30, 2010 // 30 Comments »

    I have a decision to make.  Several months ago I wrote a post about Fuller pulling together a DMiss cohort around the topic of Anabaptist Perspectives in Missional Ecclesiology.  I applied to this program and it is scheduled to begin this November.

    In the meantime, I accepted a job here in the Chicagoland area at Northern Seminary which is pulling together its own DMin cohort around the topic of missional leadership.

    Of course each program comes with its own features and benefits.  Both programs are cohort-based and non-residential, but let me lay out some of the distinctives of each program and see what sort of thoughts and advice you might have to offer.

    The DMiss…

    The DMiss, like a PhD, is a research driven program.  The program moves from theological/missiological considerations to issues of context and culture, and finally, to leadership and change dynamics.  The final year is given to integration, assessment, and dissertation writing.  The cohort will be led, primarily, by Wilbert Shenk and James Krabill.

    The DMin…

    The DMin is a course driven program, the topics such as, “The Church in Post-Christendom, The Gospel and Culture, Missional Theology, and Misional Leadership.”  The program culminates in the writing of a thesis.  David Fitch is leading the cohort while Al Roxburgh and Craig Van Gelder will be involved as well.

    I think very highly of both of these schools and their programs.  I think both programs will do immeasurable good in equipping men and women for service in and to missional churches, but I go back and forth on which one is the best for me, at this time, given the larger scope of all that God is doing in my life.

    What sort of questions would you be asking if you were me?  What aspects of doctoral level education do you believe are most important and relevant?

    Posted in Fuller Seminary, leadership, missional, Northern Seminary, theological education

    Reviewing Deep Church by Jim Belcher

    May 19, 2010 // 6 Comments »

    Jim Belcher, the author of Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional, and I have much in common.

    We both did masters degrees at Fuller Theological Seminary.

    We both have a heart for church planting.

    I teach a class on the Emerging Church based on the intensive that he references in his book. (35)

    We get frustrated when people talk past one another, defaulting to caricatured stereotypes rather than embracing a posture of openness.

    And we both value looking for a “third way” to approach dichotomistic thinking.

    He is right when he says,

    It seems that every time someone criticizes the emerging church, they pick the worst-case scenario or the most extreme statements. (49)

    He is also correct in noting,

    It seems the emerging church, for rhetorical purposes, uses sweeping generalizations about the traditional church that are unfair. (76)

    The larger Body of Christ would indeed be served well by discourse that is deeper, more specific, and marked by a sense of humble openness.  Belcher’s chapters on Deep: Truth, Evangelism, Gospel, Worship, Preaching, Ecclesiology, and Culture, are essentially his attempts  to facilitate just that – a worthwhile enterprise in my opinion.

    While Belcher’s book is truly helpful in this regard, I’m not sure he really hits the mark in terms of articulating a true “third way” as a means of engaging these topics.  Very often, his conclusions in these chapters are a combination of a chastened version of the EC position he articulates and an expanded version of the traditional position he articulates (usually w/ reference to Tim Keller and his church!).  I suppose this is a kind of “third way,” maybe even precisely the one Belcher desires, but I’m not certain it’s the most helpful kind of third way for the Church to pursue.

    The mistake, I believe, comes in the assumption that one can simply pit the positions of the EC against the positions of the traditional church.  The main problem here is that many in the EC camp are themselves trying to articulate and maneuver a “third way” between the modern categories of conservatism and liberalism, a feature that Belcher seems to either overlook or discount w/o comment.  An indication of this is his quick dismissal of the Anabaptist tradition from which many in the EC draw as one which is able to circumvent many of the dichotomies addressed in this book on account of its fundamentally, Christendom-rejecting, stance.  Belcher never seems to ask, “How might people in the EC camp already be searching for a third way in response to classic approaches to these issues?,” but assumes that their positions are simply reactions against the positions of traditional churches.

    Belcher sets himself on this course in stating,

    We need to define it [the emerging church] as a movement, particularly its theology.  The best way to do this is to look at what the emerging church movement is against – the things they are protesting and the rasons why they are calling for change. (38)

    For the life of me, I can’t grasp why someone would want to define a movement by what they are against (even it it is a protest movement) rather than what they are for.  We certainly regard what the classic reformers were for as far more more important than what they were against!  But more than this, Belcher fails to identify missiology as a core motif for the EC.  For many, if not most, in the global EC movement, it is an attempt to participate with God and God’s mission in the world that is reshaping how they understand the sorts of topics that Belcher raises in his book, not vice versa.

    These criticisms notwithstanding, I am glad that Jim wrote this book and don’t doubt for a second that it has an will continue to help many.

    **Jim has recently decided to resign from his position as lead pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA.  You can read a letter he wrote to the congregation regarding this transition here and some additional discussion about this sort of trend here.

    Posted in bible, books, christendom, church, church planting, culture, doctrine, emergent, emerging church, evangelicalism, Fuller Seminary, gospel, kingdom, modernity, post-christendom, postmodernity, theology

    Letters to Brian McLaren from Emerging Church Students

    April 29, 2010 // 9 Comments »

    I am fortunate to get to instruct an online course entitled, “The Emerging Church in the 21st Century,” for Fuller Theological Seminary each year. Based on current discussions and publications, I try to make appropriate and helpful updates to the course each time around.  This year, I decided to make Brian McLaren’s newest book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith, an optional book choice (students have to read something by McLaren).

    After I made this decision, a flurry of reviews of the book were published all over the blogosphere.  I was disappointed that a great many of them paid no mind to the life and ministry of the author and were virtually completely devoid of charity, something which ought to mark all Christian discourse.  More than this, I was thwarted in my effort to find reviews that offered reflections that were practical in nature.

    Convinced that there is a better way to engage with the material of Christian authors, I created an alternative assignment, which about half of the class has chosen to participate in.  I created a blog, dearbrianmclaren.wordpress.com, and invited students to write a personal letter to Brian.  Here’s the criteria for the assignment and grading:

    1) Letter must be addressed to Brian as the author of the book and should be between 500-600 words.
    2) You must speak to the practical implications of Brian’s content for your own life and ministry – no abstract, hypothetical or theoretical speculation.  If taken seriously, what are the implications of Brian’s points and proposals for your church or how you live and minister?  Obviously, you will have to be selective and won’t be able to address everything in the book, that’s fine.
    3) The degree to which you write with Christian charity.  You are welcome, even encouraged, to disagree with anything (or everything!) Brian has to say, that’s not the point.  The point is showing that you can disagree and respond to an actual person with Christian charity.
    5) Included within the letter, or at the end, you should pose 2-3 questions to Brian that you are left with after reading the book.
    4) Provided enough people are reviewing the book in this manner, you must comment on at least three other peoples letters/posts within a week of their being posted on the blog.

    These letters have been posted and Brian has even been gracious enough to give some time to reading and responding to them. Though this is primarily a class assignment, the blog is public and I’d encourage you to read the letters and offerer comments if you choose.

    Even better, if you’ve read the book, I’d invite to you respond along the lines of the guidelines above and leave a link to your letter in the comments below.

    Posted in blogging, emerging church, Fuller Seminary

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