the pitt 18: Bearing the Consequence of God

Last time, I began to consider the linkage and interdependency of vision and essence as we prepare to join what the Father is doing in Pittsburgh.  My own reflection took me back to something I wrote for Jason Clark's Deep Church blog earlier this year while we were in a conversation about "Vineyard Distinctives": Bearing the Consequence of God.  You see, in the connection between vision and essence, I have begun to think of it this way: incarnational community and missional initiative are linked, mainly because Incarnation and Mission come together in the person of Christ Jesus.  I also I think a re-engagement with eschatology is necessary to re-center us on Christ fully, as Jürgen Moltmann says, eschatology “is not one element of Christianity [as many theology books portray it], but it is the medium of the Christian faith as such, the key in which everything in it is set, the glow that suffuses everything here in the dawn of an unexpected new day.”

We need an eschatology that permeates our mission and worship and engenders more hope than fear.  Because this hope we have is dangerous.  As the character ‘Red’ proclaimed in the movie The Shawshank Redemption: “Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing.”  Hope burns and comforts.  It can see you through the most difficult times and is there to rejoice in the best of times.  Hope can threaten the status quo and the ‘powers that be’.  Hope can get you crucified.  Too often we are fooled into thinking of hope as mere ‘wish-fulfillment’, but it is so much more.  Walter Wink once said: “Hope envisages its future and then acts as if that future is now irresistible, thus helping to create the reality for which it longs.  This hope drives us to prayer and it propels us…” into the the intimate worship of God.  It also invites us into a life of “living sacrifice” where with our simple lives we take up hope and bring it to others through rescue, reconciliation and transformation in Christ.  He is our Saviour, yet in deep humility He invites us into His work of holistic redemption because we participate in the on-going life of Christ. (I'm sitting here for at least 20 minutes just pondering the words I've just written...I'm just struck by the humble Creator who let's us participate in His Life....breath-taking, really, when you consider it.

Yet the organizing principle of our eschatology is the Reign of God in Christ Jesus and with it – as my friend and fellow missional church-planter Jason Coker previously put it  in a post on Re-building Tomorrowland – we retain the biblical sense of apocalyptic intensity, while also retaining the sense that history is meaningful and central and not to be disdained in some sort of Gnostic way.  It is not just apocalyptic in an other-worldly sense, but also concrete and active.  Beyond death, judgment, heaven and hell as final stasis, we want to re-imagine an eschatology grounded in hope, possibility, mystery (awe and wonder and beauty), and redemption.  But equally it will be based in suffering love, critical and honest loyalty, facing the shadows that populate the hearts of all people, and struggling against the profoundly and deceitfully twisted ways of this present circumstance.  We must live the hope of the resurrection in a life of daily taking up our cross to be a disciple of Christ.  Yet if we embrace attentiveness to the Presence of God while living incarnationally the promises of the future in the contexts and reality of where we presently live, I believe there will be two primary responses: worship of God, rescue of others.

As Spohn and Byrnes have noted: “H. Richard Niebuhr, like Jonathan Edwards, believed that the attractive possibility of a “life aspiring toward and impelled by an infinite purpose” was disclosed in experience. The religious dimension opens up through an act of divine self-disclosure is called “revelation” because it unveils a pervasive presence which was obscurely realized before. The healing of fragmented faith comes from One who enters into interaction with selves by demonstrating its trustworthiness and disclosing its cause. This event is a gift which evokes gratitude, confidence in the source of the self’s existence, and fidelity to the cause of the One who has shown itself loyal to the self. Revelation of this Other decenters the self and invites a response not only of worship but of taking on the mission of this Other to rescue others.”

Thus, what is the consequence of God that we bear?  Worship and Mission.  Both eschatologically-grounded in the hope we have (and that we impart to others) of both the fulfillment of God’s promises someday and the present tastes of the future we get to experience as the future continues to break into the present in Christ Jesus – sometimes quite forcefully but with such beauty that inspires us all.  Both are our experience: we are rescued, and we live our lives in worship and further rescue of others.

[to be continued...]

great hope pierces the horizon

wordcraft for advent:

candles brightly shining
in a season of advent underlying
the scandal of incarnation and joy

for many years ago
in birthpangs to-and-fro
a chosen girl births life into the world

and as angels sound the praise
of the Ancient of Days
and Immanuel, God born among us, comes forth

great hope pierces the horizon
in this Child with mother lying
the scene of tranquility and rest

a future glimpse is that moment
quiet cooing of an Infant
whose Life shines out beyond time and space

Greg Boyd and Critical Historical Analysis

I realize I was trained in History at Purdue University, and I also realize I work in a History-oriented career at the National Archives and Records Administration, but it's this kind of critical historical analysis that endears Greg Boyd to the Historian in me:

the pitt 17: just what the hell are we supposed to be doing, anyway?

One of the most difficult things about my own situation as a church-planter - and I'm sure there are plenty of others who've been in the same situation - is the waiting.

•  We've heard and responded to the call.
• We've been assessed.
• We've gathered some friends to join us.
• We've begun bonding in a "on-going, shared experience" (read: fellowship) kind-of-way.

Yet, we still have months before we actually move to Pittsburgh and join what the Father is doing there...

In a similar "waiting and preparation" situation, one church-planter I know asked: "Just what the hell are we supposed to be doing, anyway?"

Ugh, patience...whatever for that, right?  Yet in the waiting, God is moving deeply, almost secretly in us. There is a community being birthed here all ready...but it isn't community for its own sake, we have come together because of a calling.  So, at present, I'm wrestling with vision and essence - community and mission - and the balance between them.

The essence of a faith community is an important topic for us right now.  I believe as we wait together essence will be borne in this waiting...but what is essence?  Essence is important, so let's be specific and define it: at the bottom; absolutely essential; critical; crucial; the basic, real, and invariable nature of a thing; while we're at it, let's define Mission as well: an assigned or self-imposed duty or task; calling; vocation; a sending or being sent for some duty or purpose; act of sending and those sent;

As our little team wrestles with essence and vision in the waiting, the words of the wise Gordon Cosby - one of the principle founders of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC - ring true, “…The essence of church is not its mission statement. [The “vision statement” is not what its about.] It’s not a matter of a group, battling homelessness, or working with at-risk children or people who don’t have jobs or people who are addicted or working with issues of justice or peace…the soul of the church is a gathered people whose only reason for gathering is Jesus. The church is a people who gather because they want to know Jesus in a deeper way. The focus must not be on the vision first but on the relationship with the one who gives the vision. The vision will not ultimately sustain us, but the one who gives the vision will…”

Now, we'll mis-understand Gordon - and you'll mis-understand me because I line up with Gordon here - if you think we put mission aside or that mission is an add-on.  In fact, Gordon did away with "Small Groups" at Church of the Saviour years ago because he couldn't get them to be anything but inward and they never got around to doing mission.  Thus he lead his community into forming "Mission groups", where each group had a mission, but developed community in that shared mission, while leaders helped newcomers to understand their call and vocation through which they could see what Mission Group to enter and live out their calling. 

Surely, the essence of Church - the basic, real, and invariable nature of it - is Jesus...a Person, and as He was on His Mission, He gathered and formed a community.  We fall out of the radical middle if we make it all about community or we make it all about mission.  It can become the proverbial "chicken or the Egg" which comes first question.  But it's both, it's interdependent...Michael Frost moves toward the interaction of mission and community in a significant way:

 

So, to my thinking and based on my own limited experience, essence and vision are linked.  I have begun to think of it this way: incarnational community and missional initiative are linked, mainly because Incarnation and Mission come together in the person of Christ Jesus.  They interact and are interdependent.  Gordon Cosby points to the problem nowadays in many churches: vision engulfs and supplants essence.  Doing supplants being and we many end up burnt out.  Again, Cosby says it simply: "Vision is the destroyer of essence."  And he's right, we usually run to vision, so that we can do more and show a "return on investment" quicker.  Why is that?  Perhaps, just perhaps, we are being formed without realizing it. 

The basic structure of American church is the 501c3 corporation, which is a not-for-profit business enterprise.  Former Chaplain to the U.S. Senate Richard Halverson provocatively comments in this direction, ""Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise."  In America, the 501(c)(3) business is the essence of church and that status "forms" churches too often without much thought given to it: church becomes a business; run like a business with a board of directors and a CEO and a senior management staff that "manages" ministries, and the corporate "bottom-line" becomes our overwhelming (but understated) goal.  The benefits of the essence of church being a 501(c)(3) corporation can be an undermining issue if we don't discern our use of "corporate status well.  This isn't something new, for instance, Baron de Montesquieu once said:

“A more certain way to attack religion is by favor, by the comforts of life, by the hope of wealth; not by what reminds one of it, but by what makes one forget it; not by what makes one indignant, but by what makes men lukewarm, when other passions act on our souls, and those which religion inspires are silent. In the matter of changing religion, State favors are stronger than penalties.”

The Spirit of the Laws, Baron de Montesquieu (1748)

You see, discernment and wisdom in how we are engaged is really, really important; otherwise, we might just swallow the favors of the State hook, line and sinker.  And thus we must remember, the "form" we take equally "forms" our thinking - I know people who think that if this 'person' or this 'outreach program' or this 'mission activity' isn't participating in the activities sponsored by the 501c3, then they aren't part of the church.  But what if our essence comes back to Jesus and his paradigm?  Are they a member if they have lots of relationship with the church (church understood not as a 501c3, but as people)...and are they doing the stuff with the faith community, and not merely "sponsored" activities?

In a recent conversation with another would-be church-planter about experiencing God and inviting people to 501c3-sponsored activities, particularly the Sunday church services, I struggled with his questions, because I think Jesus definitely hangs out at church on Sunday morning and all, especially when we create space for Him to do what He's doing...and I believe there is a momentum-creating dynamic with hanging with the Jesus people gathering on Sunday morning, no doubt; yet I also feel like this begs a bigger question: why can't he (and anyone) experience God more "out there" as "in here"? Does it have to be Sunday-centric?  Can it be 'both/and' or is this 'either/or'?

  

In that conversation, Dave Schmelzer - senior pastor of the Boston Vineyard - with a nod to Scott Peck as a frame-of-reference, said: "Stage 2 folks require a church, if they're religious. But it seems to me that Stage 4 also requires an actual community, that it's just impossible to connect with God and others without it. That community can often be hard to find, to be sure...It strikes me that part of a conversion to Stage 4 is a conversion to community." This is where I am landing right now, although I would say conversion to community and mission...

[to be continued...]

the pitt 16: Open up the G...

As the initiator of this endeavour to cultivate a spiritual community in urban Pittsburgh, I have to tell you, there are up-days and down-days; there are a lot expectations and pressure people bring on you.  I can no longer count on one hand the number of people who have asked: "So, have you recruited a worship pastor yet?"  I've actually enjoyed getting into this particular conversation so far, because I tease it out a bit.  "No, we haven't as yet...do you know any good worship leaders?" I say.  Then they begin the litany of what they are actually thinking: "I know a lot of great musicians and guitar-players, but..." 

That's when I turn their perspective upside down in order to join me in my world:  "Oh, well, I thought we were talking worship leader/pastor people, not just frontman for a band.  Y'know, I'm not really looking for someone to front a band, I'm looking for someone who can lead people into worship incessantly, inspire us to connect with God for the first or the 101st time in gatherings together and in life altogether, whether its through music, other arts, silence..."  And it hasn't failed yet to elicit this response:  Blinking...Blank look...Uncomfortable Moment. 

I can't say that I blame them, for when another person did that to me, my initial response was blank stare...wheels-turning-inside...bigger-perspective-coming-into-focus moment.

OK, so I don't let them suffer too long after calling out their prejudice and pulling the rug from under them, because I actually know a lot of people who front bands and lead worship at Sunday services, which is a really great thing.  These are really great people.  But is that our baseline of what 'worship' in a spiritual community is all about?  Well, here's the thing: I want more...and I think worship is something much, much more than what we usually think of.  Worship forms us, it "desire-creating" and "love-forming" in us.  So I'm not just looking to recruit someone to front a band.  I want a poet laureate to pique our conscience and inspire us with our association with Glory; a sculptuor who can give us shape and a bard who can give voice to our common story.  I want an inspiring artist called to engender hope in the midst of suffering and who can gather a community of creative artists; an architect familiar with posturing people in sacred spaces to encounter the Most High God.  This is something that has lingered and grown in me since I articulated it when I wrote 'What is Past is Prologue' at Jason Clark's Deep Church blog.

Now, I also want people around...musicians around who can 'open up the G'...people who I can bleed before the Lord with as we sing all our blues and all our hopes before the Throne. 

I do-so love the sounds of the "now-and-not-yet" age where we neither withdraw from the world, nor get lost and co-opted by it:

...because I believe the Blues (as a genre of music and as a spiritual heritage) expresses an authenticity of Christian spirituality.  In its African-America heritage, the blues were the go-to genre when we are mired in the 'now'...while spirituals were for when we were enraptured with the a taste of the 'not yet' of the Reign of God or reaching with hope into the future. 

These two aspects kept-it-real, and are still keeping-it-real, because we do everso need to make place for both; the blues as a practice of our common lamentation of our present inhabitation and wrestling with our common theodic experience and spirituals as praise and acknowledgment of great grace given.  As Jon Michael Spencer once said: "The blues are truth-telling in the black prophetic tradition."  Telford Work, in his wonderful work Songs of Zion: Eschaton and Blues in African-American Faith, adds to this: "I see the blues (and their successors, such as rap) as practices of lament and imprecation that can inhabit and enrich orthodox Christian faith of black (and non-black) America.  These practices...respect the practice of doubt...and the need to rediscover that respect...the blues are an ache for human (and divine) community..."

But Oh those sweet spirituals, they help and inspire as well.  They help stir the hope that smoulders deep within as they abound with apocalyptic visions of redemption drawing nigh.  I want to be evermore caught up in a 'being amazed/awe/caught-up-in-wonder' kind-of texture to my life (much like what is described by Abraham Joshua Heschel in his wonderful book with probably the best title ever: God in Search of Man)...the kind awe that pervades and invades my whole existence...and puts me in a place of child-like trust

...but life seems like it is more trudgery than amazing...more process than encounter...


(admission: maybe just my perspective this morning)...

yet maybe what I need to add to the recipe of the day is just a dash of faith and the honest expression of the blues...

I'll let you know how it turns out...

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...]

the scent of lightness

rustling leaves scuffle together

marked with a firm yet restful resolve

swirling with spirit to-and-fro

awash in this wind

i catch the scent of lightness

in an unburdening breeze

joining the blazing  leaves of autumn colour

i raise my sail to catch this current

yielding in delicate surrender

a fragrant foretaste that renews this wreckage

the pitt 14: all we ever do is talk-talk

Devin Odean continues from last time:

Lately I feel that we live in a world where talking without actions, where we seek praise from our theories, and yet show no actions. Lately I’ve been trying to envision a different approach to conversation. One that stops the talk-talk and starts conversation.

How can we begin to move somewhere beyond our discussions, instead of being frustrated and opinionated with each other? We have to engage in a new way, because this old version of “talk while no one’s listening”, just isn’t cutting it. Are we actually conversing? I enjoy simple conversation and engaging with people, but what happens when that conversing moves nowhere? Not into deeper relationship. Not into deeper understanding. Not into a solution. Not into anything. It just stays put.

Simply, what I keep suggesting is this-- Love Jesus, Love others.

So, simple suggestion: instead of conversation being “I”-centered, we need to make it “us”-centered. Instead of living life “I”-focused, we should be “us”-focused. We need to come together.  Instead of theorizing on how the church “should be”, on how christians “should act”, we should go forth in the Way we believe. OK, I admit: it’s not all easy, this choice.  It’s not all understandable -- but it is this mysterious thing called love.

It is the loving thing to do. While we’re not all knowing, we do know this- Love conquers all, love carries all, love It is the perfect antidote to pain, to suffering, to loss, to emptiness, to loneliness, to destruction, to darkness, to sin, to all the things that just aren’t cutting it. Loving others, being loved. Its so simple. We want rules. We want specifics. How much? When do we stop? When is it too much? Who?-- But this is my deep hope while cultivating a faith community in Pittsburgh, and the answer is simple: Do as Jesus did. Follow his teachings. Jesus did what the Father instructed. Listen to the Father, and then do as the Father says...

[to be continued...]

Stalking God

Today I'm guest blogging at the not-the-religious-type blog with Dave Schmelzer (Dave is also lead pastor of the Greater Boston Vineyard)

Feel free to check it out and join the conversation...my post today explores people's perceptions regarding the relational-orientation with God, as opposed to being a God Stalker.

Lectio for Feast of All Saints

Today I have a guest post at the Sustainable Faith blog.

It is the Lectio portion for the Feast of All Saints: Luke 6:20-31 

peace