Today in our last day of class for the quarter, we went over our case study drafts once again with our small groups. This again was very helpful. My group members gave me some very helpful advice that should aid me in improving my final paper to an 8. I need to add more theology, and more references to our readings. My organization is good, and I have good ideas for my context, I just now need to incorporate better support directly from what we have learned in class. I have not been explicit enough in backing my paper with support. We also filled out class evaluations today, and wrapped up the quarter by reviewing what we learned about church and mission.
Today in class we discussed the topic of “following Jesus in culture.” I believe God created cultures. There are seeds of God in every culture. But because of the fall of Adam and Eve, cultures have become fallen too. Our fallen cultures now are often responsible for oppression and domination. What then do we do about culture? We looked at how Jesus acted in his own culture to see how we should act too. Jesus was non-conformed within culture. He was fully in culture and fully pointing to the kingdom of God at the same time. Can the Church do this today? I don’t think it has, but it definitely should. Barry Taylor says, “Culture is having a conversation about God and churches aren’t invited.” Church and culture have not had enough interaction in the past. This needs to change. God is actively restoring this world (it’s cultures, it’s people, and all of creation) through His mission, and church has the privledge to join in. God wants to reach humanity. Humanity resides in culture. How can church, join God’s mission in reaching out to all humanity if it doesn’t actively engage in culture? It can’t be done. Transforming the world can’t be done at a distance. The church needs to seek a close, intimate relationship with culture, and to always be pointing it to the kingdom of God.
In class today we discussed a possible way that our action plan for our case study could be put into motion. We shouldn’t expect our plan to happen immediately or even in a month, or even 6 months. Change takes time. The first step to initiate change is to build awareness of reality, secondly it is important to develop understanding of the alternate, better reality, thirdly you must evaluate possible ways to attain the new and improved reality. Fourth you must experiment with one of your community’s new ideas (usually an easy one), and lastly the community must decide as one consensus group on the action plan. The plan must be facilitated by the leaders but not imposed. Change must be wanted. Dr. Bolger said we can expect a 1-2 year process to get through all five of these steps. I do not necessarily think that my case study needs to go through all five steps in this exact order to accomplish what it is setting out to do. But it will take a team of people all wanting the same thing. And it will take time. This list gives me something good to think about as I make an action plan for my church plant.
I appreciated Dr. Bolger’s explanation about why the class is formatted the way it is. Personally I learn better from lectures than I do group work. I would have liked to hear more of what Dr. Bolger had to say about missional churches and their place in America. But now knowing why Dr. Bolger has been stressing the case studies so much and our open discussion with peers about our studies, I understand what his intentions are. It would have been nice to know that from the start. After this we discussed Bill McGavern’s missional ideas derived from his time as a lifelong missionary, and developed upon his return to the Western world. McGavern realized that the “mission station” approach (where the church community is the hub of spiritual services, and non-believers are invited into this station in hopes of their conversion) is not the best way. True it has worked on some level in many cultures, but it is not optimal in maintaining culture of origin for new Christians post-conversion. McGavern proposed a new idea; the “people movement.” Recognizing that ideas, ways of life, and beliefs are best passed on from people to people amidst their close relational ties. This is how church should approach evangelizing in America today. We need to shift the focus on inviting others to our place, rather we need to focus on living compelling lives as followers of Jesus, that our friends and families, and then their friends and families, and then their friends and families all can’t help but join in. I think this is kind of what Jesus was getting at with the whole yeast in the bread parable.
Today in class we discussed David Fitch’s book, The Great Giveaway in relation to our case studies. Ryan was gone but J.R. and Wess took over and we didn’t even miss a beat. It had been a while since I read the book so it was hard to remember all his arguments, but our group discussion ended up being pretty good anyway. We talked about the importance of moral education for children and about how/if the church should be the sole provider of that. We also discussed the ways the church can take back what it has given away to culture. “Taking back would include freeing worship service from its cookie-cutter structure that many contemporary churches use, so that it draws people into transformation. And we talked about how having an attitude of imagination and creativity in ministry is a good way to communicate hope in the kingdom of God and to restore the mystery of God’s goodness and grace for this world.
Today we went over our case studies with our group. My fellow students offered helpful insight and gave some very good critiques of what I have written so far. I like that we get to share our thoughts with our peers throughout the entire writing and imagining process for our case study. However it is difficult to write it the way we are being asked to do it. I think it would be better to write it one section at a time instead of cramming all our ideas for all three sections into 500, 1500, 2500 words prior to turning in our final. It is just very hard to write, and then insert new ideas into previously crafted paragraphs. I will probably have to start fresh each week, and this will be difficult. So a little suggestion for next time this class is offered: keep the paper writing in stages, but focus on one section per week, NOT all three.
For the case study development assignment I am envisioning a new church plant in my hometown of Holland, Michigan.
Holland is a very conservative and largely Christian community. There are literally churches on every corner (sometimes two). This is of concern to my church plant. All the other churches are well established and have been in the community for many years. However, the older churches are made up of almost all baby-boomers. These baby-boomers are very kind and caring people who want to do some good in the world. But I’m afraid that they have not been equipped and empowered about how to do this. Most of the current churches in Holland are very self-serving. The majority of the tithing money goes right back to serve the church. There is not much missional drive for the church members. It is not their fault, they just don’t know any better. As for the many baby-boomer children and grand children, they do not have the same affinity for the conservative, well established churches. Many of them are bored with this kind of faith, and they are beginning to feel a pull to look beyond their own congregations to the poor of the community and the poor of the world. But again, this group is has not been well equipped, empowered, or informed about how to do this. There is a desire for something new in Holland.
For my church plant, I would like to emphasize the kingdom of God and the way of Jesus as much as possible. I believe this is where transformation will take place. If my church can do this faithfully I think Holland will become a hub of missional Christians who actively seek transformation in the world. The people here are already good people. They are intelligent, generous, and loving. They just need to be pointed to the best place that they can use their kingdom characteristics for the good of the world. I can see Holland breaking down cultural barriers between white and Hispanic. I can see joint worship services and service projects involving the rich and the poor, the old and the young, the reluctant and the passionate. I can see interdenominational networking and a community united together for the redemption of the world. I truly believe Holland has the potential to be a community that other Christian communities look to for ideas and support.
Now to foster the kingdom of God in our church plant my community will need to begin by helping the poor and outcast; the migrant Hispanic families. We can serve them by helping with their groceries, childcare, finding them affordable housing, and better jobs. We also need to partner with the public school to help improve our children’s education. We can volunteer at the school, set up tutoring and mentoring programs, and support the kids in extra-curricular activities. It will also be necessary to work with the established ministries who are already doing good work in Holland. The Teen Pregnancy Clinic, the men’s shelter, and the hospital all provide great services for the community. We would also need to share love with the elderly in the community who live in houses or in the nursing homes. It is important to not forget about the people who established Holland and made it the city it currently is. (More ideas to come next week!)
Starting a church that operates holistically and passionately is something that will not happen over night. It will take time, hard work, and a team of people committed to this goal.
In class today we discussed what our case studies would look like if we were to incorporate a Trinitarian perspective on mission and then we compared that to how our case studies would look if we were to have a kingdom perspective on mission. After our discussion I had a difficult time distinguishing the difference between the two perspectives. They both seem to seek to attain the same ideas, they just use different language to describe their methods. For example, the Trinitarian perspective seeks “inclusion” while the kingdom perspective seeks “hospitality.” These are the same basic idea. Further examples include: “peacemaking/rehabilitation” vs. “love for enemies/healing activities”; “speaking prophetically and listening” vs. “announcing/denouncing”; and “mutuality/communion in mission” vs. “egalitarian community/generosity.” Both perspectives have valuable ideas for my church plant idea. In order for my new church to be a Godly, Christ-like, fruitful, serving, community we will need to live as people passionately committed to the kingdom and Trinitarian ideas. However, beneath both of these ideas lies one thing: love. Both the Trinitarian and the kingdom perspective on mission give us different descriptions of how to consciously seek to act out love individually, communally, and systemically. To love humans in this threefold way is difficult. However, love is powerful. And so is God. Therefore we should not only try our hardest to live and love in this way, but we should expect it from ourselves and from our churches.
Today’s lecture was about the ideological shift from missio eccesiae to missio Dei. This is Latin for “mission of the church,” and “mission of God.” Christians and church leaders have begun to realize that mission is God’s thing, not the Church’s, but Church can participate in it if it chooses to. God has a mission that is much bigger than the Church’s. This missional movement is not something that is exclusive to only one kind of Christianity. Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians are all beginning to unite on this idea and to make changes to how they do church accordingly. Theological leaders in this missional movement include Karl Barth, and Leslie Newbigin. With the new theological idea of missio Dei comes the Trinitarian view of mission. The Trinitarian view changes our Christology, our eschatology, our ecclesiology, our soteriology, our anthropology, and our culture. The Trinitarian view reframes how we view each of these important aspects by centering them all on the Trinity. Dr. Bolger said that if the Church is sent to follow the work of the Holy Spirit and to participate in it. If this happens the church will be a place of inclusion, diversity, unity, peacemaking, reconciliation, giving/receiving, speaking prophetically/listening, justice, service, communion with creation, and bearing the divine life. I think this all sounds pretty good.
Recently I have been bombarded by numerous books and lectures that have unanimously described the present era in which we live as the “postmodern era.” The term “postmodern” means “beyond” modernity, “responding to” modernity, or “shaped” by modernity much in the same way adulthood would be “post-adolescence” or shaped by adolescence. Other scholars have more creatively called our present era “post-Christian,” “post-Christendom,” “post-evangelical,” “post-secular,” “post-liberal,” or even “post-postmodern!” AAAAHHHH!!
I am becoming sick of all this post-whatever language that is flooding academia, more specifically, Christian academia of late. I think the awareness of a new paradigm is great! It has forced us to consider why we think the things we think and why we do the things we do. We are now conscious of the effects our cultural systems have had on our behavior, attitudes, and understanding of the world. Our newfound awareness has shined light on the necessity for Christians to reimagine and reinvent our practices in this quickly changing world.
However, I do not like how our current place in history is described in relation to what we have already been through. No other time period has been described in relation to other eras i.e. ancient, medieval, enlightenment, or modern. (Probably because no era had a name until people from the modern era named all the other ones.) So why can’t the present era be named not for what already has been, but for what is happening now, or better yet, what is next? Maybe if Christianity weren’t so busy trying to respond to what paradigm culture is creating, and instead figured out its own paradigm from its midst in God’s plan for this world, then culture would have to respond to it instead. Christianity then would not have its current problem of attempting to remain relevant in today’s world.
With all this in mind, I (with inspiration from conversations with friends) came up with a new term, a new mindset for Christians to embrace and to live out and towards. This term is “PRE-REDEMPTION.” This is fitting for where we are in God’s creation narrative. Since the fist sin of Adam and Eve, and now more forcefully through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God has been in the process of redeeming this world from pain, sorrow, tears, death, lying, violence, sickness, and evil. God promises us in Revelation of a new heaven that descends down onto earth. God is going to redeem what He started here. Heaven is not some mystical place but a physical reality that we get foretastes of here and now. Jesus said that the kingdom is at hand! He also said that when the time comes the wicked and foolish would be swept up and taken away. The righteous will stay. We want to be left behind (take that Lehay and Jenkins!) because God will finish his story of creation with His people in THIS world!
Living a Christian life that eagerly awaits and groans for God’s redemption of earth is a life of hope, of love, of social-justice, and environmental stewardship. Living a pre-redemptive life would naturally inspire us to value our relationships, to seek emotional healing, to care for the sick, to feed the poor, to live humbly, to forgive, and to give thanks to the God in whom our hope lies. We are all agents of redemption for this world. God taught us what we need to do through Jesus, and now He is awaiting our participation. God has always worked through people to carry out His will on earth. I believe he is still doing this. And we can all be one of these people in whom God uses for redemption.
