the pitt 15: Respect the Roots

Being a "church-planter" is a unique experience, to say the least.  All of the sudden you notice and are engaged by many things across the spectrum, from theological tendencies to practical issues.  One issue that many fellow church-planters and other leaders have engaged me a lot in is the rising engagement - in such a great way - of learning from other traditions and streams in our common deep church (some might say big "C" Church).  Particularly popular (if I can use that term) is learning from the Anabaptist tradition.  And I think there are definitely things to embrace and learn from them.

At the same time, as I prepare for the Society of Vineyard Scholars conference in February 2011, I've been reading and reflecting a lot on material from James K. A. Smith.  In an interview with Jamie Smith had with James Davison Hunter, they talk alot about what they call the "neo-Anabaptist project."  Practically-speaking, think Shane Claiborne-Greg Boyd-David Fitch, with a tipping of the proverbial theological-hat to Stanley Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder. 

While I deeply admire Yoder and his writings (his book The Politics of Jesus impacted me greatly about seven years ago), as well as being inspired by Claiborne's trouble-making tendencies, Boyd's worldview expositions and Fitch's ecclesiological meanderings, I wonder if Hunter's critique of this so-called neo-Anabaptist project isn't close to on the mark.  Hunter says it this way: "So the neo-Anabaptist vision would foster a Christianity that is gentle and appealing in many ways but that is unwilling or unable to "go into all the world" - in the structural sense I talk about in the book - and engage it toward human flourishing because they don't have the theologies to do so.  As a consequence, Christians would continue to be absent from most of the important questions facing communities, nations, and the world as a whole."

Now I am deeply committed to being missional.  Missional - as Fitch has continually pointed out - has become a by-word that anyone can fill it with whatever they want it to mean nowadays.  So that we're clear, I'm using "missional" in the Frost-ian way:

Yet, while deeply embracing the Frost-ian missional/incarnational paradigm, for myself, I have become interested in a neo-Quaker project (which of course would be missional and incarnational).  I mentioned before that I believe this endeavor to foster and cultivate a faith community in urban Pittsburgh will "bring out" some of the Quaker roots in the Vineyard - some might say that the Vineyard Movement is a neo-Quaker project! 

You see, historically, the Society of Friends and the Anabaptists have been great friends (especially given their common roots) and have cooperated on many projects, one that I've noticed is religious education.  Still, they have obvious distinctions; and what I see as one distinct advantage of the Quakers - and hence my call for a neo-Quaker project - is their engagement missionally and incarnationally in the world...simply we might say they have a depth of practice and experience of "being in the world, but not of it."  Besides that, of course, I also think their "direct-experience/relationship of God" value is one of the biggest underlying essences we have inherited from the Quakers in the Vineyard.   

So any Vineyard-ites (and whoever else this might want to engage - because I want to be radically inclusive) interested in a neo-Quaker project that embraces the increasingly embraced missional/incarnational paradigm, while "respecting the roots" not only of the Vineyard but of our deep church tradition?  To me, this would be a 'both/and' project, engaging our best theological thinking and our practices of the Reign of God as yeast mixed into the lump, or as Smith and Hunter might say: a faithful and persistent witness.  Anyone...anyone at all? 

[to be continued...]