lifeasmission
exploring the mystery of life and mission as one and the same
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Archive of "western culture" Category
We Need WAY More Missional Conversations: A Response to Ed Stetzer
I regret that I’ve never med Ed Stetzer face to face. I’d like to believe we’d be fast friends who share a mutual passion for people coming to know Christ and joining in God’s mission in the world. At the same time, we’d disagree about a lot. For starters, a blog post he published yesterday critiquing the need for missional (among other) conversations.
Ed seems worried about missional conversations that don’t…
involve men and women being redeemed, changed [sic], and transformed by the gospel.
I read that and think to myself, “What? Where in the flip is he getting his definition of missional and who is he talking to? These are the things that are at the very center of missional theology and ecclesiology.” I have worked hard over a healthy number of years to stay involved in every way I can imagine in the missional conversation and outside of the very fringes that you find in any population, I simply don’t know of any missional people or groups that would merit this kind of concern.
Ed says,
It is never a good thing to be defending our lack of converts to Christ while we are busy converting people to our cause. To me, it is the difference between complaining and creating a new (and better) way.
He goes on to say,
I don’t want missional to mean attacks on mega and fast growing churches who are reaching people “wrongly,” while missional churches are reaching few “rightly.”
I think I get Ed’s heart here, but these statements are FAR too simplistic. One of the main reasons for the lack of converts in missional and emerging churches is the popularity of churches who are, in fact, “reaching people ‘wrongly’.” For those who embrace missional theology and are trying to cultivate missional communities, especially in contexts where Christendom still exists, we are fighting an uphill battle… and wearing a 100 lb. pack… and it’s raining… and we’re barefoot… and… You get the point. In a culture which still features the cheap grace of individualistic salvation and consumeristic church involvement, guess what – the message of dying to yourself, submitting yourself to a community and joining in God’s Kingdom mission that will, in all likelihood, threaten your identity and lifestyle is pretty unpopular. When given the option, would-be converts will of course respond,
Thank you very much, I think I’ll just attend St. McDonald’s where I get saved by raising my hand, I can disappear in the mass of people, and the entertaining music & speaking gives me warm fuzzies every time I’m there.
The fact of the matter is that those who identify with missional theology engage in this fight for the very reasons mentioned above – because the converts made by the dominant expressions of Christianity in the US are in no meaningful way redeemed, changed or transformed. I doubt many people are more aware of the crisis of nominal Christianity in the US that Ed, so I find this a surprising oversight. So, albeit with the character and concern of Jesus, I think this is very much a biblically justifiable fight for missional people to be engaged in – the fight for biblical faithfulness and fulfilling of the command to make disciples.
Ed goes on to say,
I am not willing to say that a lack of converts is a sign of unfaithfulness. But, I am willing to say that too many change movements are not seeing lost people’s lives changed.
Fair enough, but this reality is far more poignant and dire when we consider the lack of disciple-making happening in long standing traditions that aren’t thinking about change at all!
Stetzer rounds out his post by saying,
So, let’s continue conversations about being “missional” or whatever, but let’s not do so if it distracts us from the mission. Instead let’s talk about these issues but not let them distract us from our main focus–showing and sharing the love of Jesus to a desperately lost world that needs a message of hope.
To this I say a quick and hearty AMEN! But I am also quick to resist Ed’s false dichotomy by pointing out that having “conversations about ‘missional’ or whatever,” aimed at the faithful practice and witness of the church is VITAL to the manner in which we show and share the love of Jesus. Not having these conversations, or having them poorly, is far more dangerous than seeing them as a distraction.
Between the promise I believe missional theology and ecclesiology hold for the trajectory of Western Christianity and how incredibly misunderstood both remain, I submit that we need WAY more conversations, not less.
Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: Cultural Pioneering
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.
Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: Contextual Training
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.
Toward A Missional Vision of Theological Education: Conviction Shaping
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.
Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education: Community Rootedness
Previous Posts in this Series:
Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem | Fruit of the Problem | New Soil
A hallmark of theological education within Christendom is the primacy of the individual. Individual choice, individual abilities, and individual achievement; these are the prized marks of Christian leaders within systems of coercive power.
This conflicts however with a missional vision of Christian leadership in which community is the most basic point of reference and choices, abilities, and achievements are all products of the Holy Spirit’s working amongst a community of people on mission together. Thus, I am firmly convinced that the most faithful and helpful forms of theological education will be those rooted in missional communities.
Think for a moment about how our current system of theological education favors the individual.1) While others may be consulted, basically, individuals make up their own minds to pursue theological education. They choose the school they find most desirable and go through the academic motions as individuals (a class does not a community make!)
2) More often than not, whether by working, soliciting random scholarships, or taking out loans, individuals are on their own to fund their education. They bear enormous amounts of responsibility for not only their finances, but their own decision to embark on an often terrifying and difficult educational venture.
3) These individuals have only their individual experience and knowledge as a grid through which to process the new information being thrown at them. They may enter into dialogue with other at a superficial level, but again, this is a personal choice with no real consequence if not practiced.
4) Once students have made it through the process of theological education, they are once again basically on their own in terms of deciding what they want to do with their degree (mine is hanging on my bathroom wall!).
That theological education favors the individual is only 1/2 of the issue. The other 1/2 is that those leaders who go through this process are formed by it – they will have a bent toward leading individualistically and lack the skills to help form missional communities.
My Proposal:
If helping people learn how to make decisions, live their lives, and find their identity not on their own, but in the community of the Body of Christ, is central to the task of Christian leaders, then their training must take place in that same context. This has implications for how we identify potential leaders, how we commit to and support them, the nature and structure of how we train them, and for what follows the completion of the training.
Identifying Missional Leaders…
Rather than being self-selected, in this vision, our pool of missional leaders are identified by people who have known them over the course of years of personal experience and can affirm their areas of giftedness.
This is part of the reason that missional communities embrace sustainable sizes – for this to work, people need to be known. When this is the case it is much more realistic for those entrusted with leadership responsibility to be looking for others that seem gifted and inclined toward leadership. Once they are, they can be shepherded toward a more intentional process of leadership formation.
Commiting to and Supporting Missional Leaders…
I cannot underestimate the importance of local communities committing to and supporting leaders in training. Leadership training is (if it’s any good!) hard. There is just no substitute for a leader in training having the constant reminder that what they are a part of is no mistake; it’s not just their idea, but an entire of community of people has affirmed their giftedness and potential and they have said publicaly, “whatever you need, we are here for you.”
More than this, the local church should bear 100% of the responsibility for funding whatever aspects of theological education are necessary for the leaders they themselves have identified. It is a great sin that any church should say to a young man or woman that they God has placed a call on their lives to leadership in the local church and then not say, “we’ll do whatever it takes to help you pursue that dream.” Please keep in mind I say all this in light of what I have already said about the practice of bi-vocational leadership.
Training Missional Leaders…
Leaders in training become part of a community within a community. There is the local church community that has done its job of identifying future leaders and committed themselves to those people, and a smaller community of gifted leaders, committing themselves to each other and the larger body that has committed to them.
The various aspects of leadership training within this vision would all be rooted in community. From reading and writing to praying and serving, the point of each and every dimension of leadership development would be suited to helping those who participate in it understand its place in the formation of people in community.
Commissioning Missional Leaders…
Modern church leaders graduate, missional church leaders are commissioned. At the end of the more intentional process of leadership formation, it is the discernment between the leader and community, not the desires of either alone, that serves as the vehicle through which the leader is commissioned into leadership. Commissioning is inherently relational. It is a community saying, “As we have identified you as a leader, committed ourselves to your formation and supported you, we now send you affirm a calling on your life and support you in it.”
In the next post, I aim to address character formation as a second central mark of a missional vision of theological education. Looking forward to your questions, comments, etc. till then.
Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education: New Soil
Previous Posts in this Series:
Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem | Fruit of the Problem
After laying what I consider to be some necessary groundwork for this conversation, I’m excited to begin moving us in a more constructive path of conversation as we try to get at what a missional vision of theological education might entail.
A missional vision of theological education differs from our current one, not as a reaction to it – the classic pendulum swinging in the other direction sort of thing, but as a completely alternative paradigm. For the same reasons that megachurches can’t be missional, methods of theological education rooted in Christendom systems of coercive power are not designed to equip missional leaders. Thus, at least two different kinds of work are needed.
One, binding up that which is broken and doing what we can to restore it to health.
And two, planting new trees in new soil.
To the best of my knowledge, in the first instance, centers of theological education are…
1) Making missional adaptations to their curriculum: offering courses in missional hermeneutics, missional ecclesiology, missional theology, etc.
2) Offering more creative program options: utilizing online methods of delivery, developing intensive based courses, moving to cohort-based programs, etc.
3) Trying harder to actually partner with local churches to offer students more opportunity for in-service learning.
These are all good, helpful, and necessary changes within the current system. We need to see more and more schools moving in these directions.
But. These remain changes within a system that I am saying is flawed at its roots. It’s kind of like painting the walls, fixing the plumbing, and replacing the electrical systems in a house that has been irreparably eaten by termites. You may as well do what you can as long as the house is standing, but if you’re not also working on building yourself a new house, you’re gonna be in trouble.
This leads us to the second sort of work that needs to be done, not so much mending, but tilling and planting. To use biblical metaphors, I think of it in terms of wineskins (Lk. 5:36-38) and kernels of wheat (Jn. 12:23-25). Now is not a time for repairing old wineskins, now is a time for new wineskins and new wine. To go further, our current system of theological education (not unlike the dominant expression of church in the West) has a God-ordained opportunity to count its loss as gain in Christ. If they would only spend themselves fully on behalf of those that are coming after by being wiling to die rather than move into survival mode at all cost (a patently un-Christian stance for sure), what an explosion of Kingdom power we might see!
Whether this happens or not remains to be seen, but as we move toward a missional vision of theological education, I suggest that it will be marked by the following:
1) Community Rootedness*
2) Character Formation
3) Conviction Shaping
4) Contextual Training
5) Cross-Cultural Pioneering
In the coming weeks, I hope to deal with each one of these in turn. I’m anxious for your comments and insights on this and future posts.
*I changed this from Communal Discernment to Community Rootedness as a more encompassing term.
Hi There…
Hey, I'm JR - welcome to the blog.
I'm just an average guy trying to shape his identity around God's dream for the world and his place in it. This blog is a place for me (and you!) to reflect on and discuss all that might mean. Looking for a bit more on me? Check out the about me. Peace.
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