My friend Jason Coker and his family have made some significant sacrifices in order to do some much needed Kingdom work.  Part of that work, for Jason, is blogging regularly.  He does interviews, book reviews, offers insightful theological reflections, and facilitates much needed conversation about some of the most important topics in the world.  He does all of this for free!

Recently, Jason made the decision to offer memberships to his blog.  He still plans to publish all of his content for free, but he is looking to those people who benefit from his work to return the favor in supporting his family with a modest $25 yearly donation.

I’m going to support Jason and I’d invite you to do the same.

Though I hesitate to mention it, the fact of the matter is that he’s trying to sweeten the pot by offering some giveaways.  Every member gets a free t-shirt with some original artwork and is entered into a drawing for an iPod Touch, an iPad when 500 members are reached, and a MacBook Pro when 1000 members are reached.

I hope you’ll join me in becoming a member of Jason’s blog as a way to support him, his family and the projects they are a part of.

Amy and I are both networkers through and through.  Each of us has enjoyed cultivating networks and communities of friends in the various places we have lived across the US and abroad.  These are people who have helped, encouraged, shaped, and loved us.  Because we want to do what we can to stay in touch with these people (you?), we’ve decided to compile a 1-page letter about every other month that highlights what’s been going on, what’s coming up, matters in which we hope you will rejoice with us, and others in which we hope you will support us in prayer.

We got our first one out in the last few days.  If you didn’t receive it, there are 2 possible reasons.

1) We had no idea you might be interested in receiving it.

2) We tried to send it to you, but must have had the wrong email address.

In either case, if you didn’t receive our letter and would like to, leave a comment or drop us an email via the contact page and we will add you to the list of folks that we email these letters to.

Thanks for continuing to allow us to share our lives with our – nothing means more.  We’re also hopeful that this might be a pathway to more of you sharing what is going on in your lives as well.

Click the image below to download our first letter.

My wife, Amy, works for an organization that we both love, International Teams.

Their main aim is,

Bringing People Together to Help the Oppressed.

To this end, they recruit, train, and mobilize people to serve on teams all around the world who are working to address some of the greatest challenges in the world today – things like urban poverty, human trafficking and slavery, and the needs of refugees.

On occasion, I have the opportunity to use some of my skills and abilities to help them out with small projects.  In a couple cases, they have asked me to help build websites for various events and communication needs.  This is something I enjoy doing, but by no means am I professional.  The platform I know best is WordPress, so that is what I am inclined to use.  But, WordPress is designed to be a blogging platform, not as a website builder per se.

So, what do you do when you’re doing work for a non-profit, but don’t have much of a budget to work with?  You look to network in the hopes of discovering people of generosity.

Two groups have come through big time!

iThemes, who builds premium WordPress themes, was kind enough to donate their Flexx theme to assist in the creation of the sort of sites that I am looking to build.

A couple guys also got together and wrote a book called, “Digging into WordPress.“  It’s a tremendous resource for those who are looking to get to know WordPress from the inside out.  They were gracious enough to donate a PDF copy of their book.

For a networker like me, who loves to help other people out when he can, it’s a huge encouragement to receive the help of others when it’s needed.  If you are in the market for a stellar WordPress theme be sure to visit the people at iThemes.  If you want to do some self-instructing in the world of WordPress, this book, “Digging into WordPress,” is a must have.

Thanks to both these groups for being generous with their products.

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.

A bit of background to this post…

I used to want to be the next Rick Warren or Bill Hybels.  What student pastor in the late 90′s didn’t?  As I look back, my misaligned, youthful arrogance was fueled in large part by the national conferences I was attending.  Predicated on the modern notion that bigger is always better, these conferences communicated and celebrated the paradoxical and lamentable reality of “Christian celebrity.”

These conferences sprang up from and in turn sought to facilitate the modern megachurch phenomenon.  And, in my opinion, did/do more harm than good.  In the Christian world, when it comes to conferences, the national variety tends to capitalize on the “cool factor,” something that seems grossly out of place to me now for those who follow a crucified Savior.

At national conferences there are typically big name speakers, higher attendance and more bells and whistles.  (Maybe even a dude jumping into a foot of water from 35 feet up?)  National conferences, at least the better ones, can have value for inspiring people I suppose, but I would venture to say that regional gatherings possess far more power and value in terms of their ability to help shape and equip the church and her leaders.  Here’s just a few reasons why I say that.

• Relationships are more easily cultivated and sustained
• With greater ease and interest, topics of conversation move from the theoretical to the practical
• Traveling costs are much lower
• Conference costs are much lower (if not free like Verge LA which my friend JR Woodward (@dreamawakener) is helping to put together
• Conversations regarding context and culture gain more immediate traction
• The loss of the “cool factor” translates into a higher caliber of fellow attenders
• Virtually everyone gets to participate in meaningful ways
• There is greater access to gifted people who would probably never get invited to present at a national gathering because they are w/o book deals and cult followings
• There is no hype to distract from the more important issues being addressed
• Young and impressionable leaders aren’t made to feel inadequate or handed delusions of grandeur

For these reasons and still others, I am hopeful that we will see more and more groups who exist to strengthen the missional church and her leaders investing in regional gatherings.  And where and when national gatherings continue, my hope is that they will focus on supporting regional networks, leaving the hype behind.

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.