Missional Movement?

There hasn't been a lot on this blog recently, but every so often something turns up that it seems important to take note of.  This latest post from Mike Breen is one such item.  He's discussing the effect of Western individualism on the missional framework. He begins this way:

Since we began experimenting with discipleship, Missional Communities, and the like in England in the 1990s, we have been partners and friends in what you might call the missional movement. It has been fantastic to see all that God has done through what we believe is a work of his Spirit in remobilizing the church for mission.

.....However, I think if we’re honest, it’s not producing the kind of church we see in the book of Acts. At worst it stirs up guilt that we’re “not doing enough,” and at best it produces people who have a vague conviction that they should be “missional” at work, at school, in the neighborhood, etc, but who don’t really know how to do it in a non-weird way, so we either end up saying something awkward or we say nothing at all.

This isn't a long blog post, but it's well worth visiting.

Leaving Church? Why?

Two blog posts about why people are leaving church have turned up this week, and it's worth noting them here as part of an ongoing conversation about the question: Why are people leaving the church (in 'droves' as one of these writer's notes). 

The first blogger is Joshua Graves - he's the preaching and teaching minister for the Otter Creek Church in Nashville, Tennessee.  One of his points is: Church and community are very difficult. Church is a great idea until people get involved. Bonhoeffer consistently warns us in his various writings that we destroy community when we try and create it. Meaning–community, in and of itself, cannot be the goal. Rather, community is the space in which we communally seek to experience the resurrected Jesus. That being said, anyone who’s been a part of a church community knows that relationships will suffer, endure disappointment because this is true in any community...

He has more to say on the topic. but the following paragraph perhaps sums it up: I think the real cause of disillusionment with church is self-disappointment. Pain birthed anger, now solidified in cynicism and apathy (funny how those two always go together). Frustration with “the church” is first about frustration with self. We tend to, in the wisdom of Donald Miller, judge others based on actions while judging ourselves based upon our intent. We are harder on “the church” so we can be “easier” on ourselves. This is why some Christians literally demand more from their church than they do from their own family, their own personal lives (money, time, etc.).

The whole post is called Leaving Church?

The other post is from Bradley Wright, whom I've mentioned on several occasions on this blog.   In a post called, Why do Christians leave the faith? the fundamental importance of apologetics.  Wright begins his post by writing: Several colleagues and I recently finished a study of why Christians leave the faith, and we were surprised at what made a difference as well what didn’t seem to matter. 

The post begins in outlining the sociological aspects of their study (and this post is the first of several that will be appearing) but it soon gets onto looking at some of the reasons people bring forward for why they left the church.   For Wright, many of them hinge on a lack of understanding of apologetics, which of course basically goes back to a lack of understanding of the Bible and God Himself. 

V.I.M.

Len Hjalmarson's latest post summarizes an article written by Dallas Willard in which he puts forward an approach to spiritual growth that's worth thinking about. It's not a 'method'; however the three stages are all necessary for any kind of change or learning, as Hjalmarson shows.

Vision – Intention – Means – this is the pattern that Dallas Willard uses to talk about a framework for spiritual growth. He defends this frame very well and it's a convincing bit of work. I discovered on the weekend that he has a lengthy article online that pulls much of the core material from his book “Renovation of the Heart.”

Perhaps these things don’t interest you greatly – one more system to try to work through. But consider for a moment that this same framework can be applied to the formational agenda of a faith community. Do you know where you are going? Do you understand the working of the system you are attempting to change? Are you ready to commit to going there? Will all your key leaders commit? Do you have a means worked out, step by step, to practically move forward?

Hjalmarson goes on to give some good examples of how Willard's framework works out in ordinary matters, like learning a language, or overcoming addiction.

Why bother with church?

Next time one of your congregation says they're thinking that it's hardly worth bothering to go to church, point in the direction of Lisa Colón DeLay, who calls herself a writer, artist, impromptu humorist, and spiritual formation provocateur (certainly sounds more trendy than a Spiritual Director).

She's recently written a post entitled, So, You wanna ditch your church? Top 5 Mistakes. It's not heavily theological, so it won't cause anyone to say 'that's too hard for me to understand.' It begins:

Sometimes going to church doesn’t seem worth it. For heaven’s sake, wouldn’t it be better to just have breakfast with some family or friends, and forgo irritating people, scheduling problems, overblown or petty dramas de jour, personality conflicts, politics, dodgy doctrinal positioning, and the rest of machine the local church can be? Is the Cracker Barrel growing a bit more more alluring each Sunday morning?

Seems like a no-brainer, right?
If this is kind of thing is happening for you, in your local church, maybe church shopping is around the bend? Well, wait just a minute. Here are 5 Mistakes you can make (or have made) regarding your local church.

1. Making theological judgments for what are personal preferences.
2. Mistaking the “local church” for The Bride of Christ.
3. Misunderstanding the idea of “community.”
4. Implementing a consumer approach with the spiritual and transcendent.
5. Overlooking what is happening in the sacraments.

Old age outrage

One of the areas of ministry - or lack of it - that has come increasingly to my attention during my time in National Mission is the way in which many elderly people are regarded as surplus to requirements in the average congregation. This isn't true of all churches - some of whom do very well in regard to older people - but it is true of many churches were the focus is almost entirely on children, youth, young families....

Here's a quote from an essay entitled, Fitness and Outrage, by Sherwin B. Nuland, who is himself now 80 years of age:

“Too many of the elderly do not have the family or the communal attachments necessary to feel valued; too many are widowed or otherwise alone; too many live in surroundings where they are essentially without the companionship necessary to stimulate a mind in danger of deteriorating. Too many are so poor or unable to obtain social services that they cannot remain in their own homes, and are certainly without the wherewithal to live in an upscale retirement community or assisted-living facility. Too many have passed their entire lives without the level of education and general knowledge necessary to take advantage of what is available to their peers raised in circumstances of greater awareness. For the vast majority of such men and women, so often socially and even physically more or less isolated, modern gerontology and its discoveries might as well not exist.”

Eyes wide shut?

Jordon Cooper has recently written a blog post entitled, Losing My Religion. It becomes plain from what he says that it isn't Christianity that he's losing so much as the form, the endless theological debating and a bunch of other things. The blog post is more of a thinking-out of his position than anything, and a huge concern that churches are often more like a Kiwanis service club than a community belonging to Christ - and therefore belonging to their neighbours. Here's the final paragraph, which comes after he's told us more than once just how many prostitutes, druggies, pimps, gangs and traffickers there are in his neighbourhood....

Over fifteen years ago, columnist Paul Jackson wrote in The Star Phoenix that the church had abandoned it’s role of social services provider – taking care of widows and orphans – to the government during the 1960s and 70s. As the economies in North America struggled to pay for their new obligations, Jackson felt the church needed to step up again. It hasn’t happened yet. In fact most trends show churches walking more and more away from those difficult tasks and instead continuing to move to younger and younger suburban neighborhoods and therefore away from the problems. It may be great church growth doctrine but what about the neighborhood and that you left behind. The east side of Saskatoon has twice as many churches per person than then west side does. Guess which side of the city has the higher concentration of wealth and guess which side has the core neighborhoods in it. I’ll let you figure it out.

A mission question

What is God saying? How will I respond? These two questions - or one combined question, depending on your point of view - are the basis of a reasonably long post by David Fitch. It isn't a post that answers the questions as such, but it's a post that gives the reader a chance to reflect on whether these two questions are the most important mission questions we can ask....or not.

Fitch begins by looking at the way in which all churches come to a somewhat stagnating point - and even those who come to faith during that time and join the church don't quite come alive, but drift off.

Fitch says we need to keep asking ourselves what our purpose is - or rather, perhaps, what our purpose is within God's purpose. And he's not looking at this from an individual approach, but from a community (church community, that is) approach.

This is a thought-provoking article that deserves careful reading.

Self-restraint in the community

Usually I put quotes in the Daily Writer blog, but the following one seemed particularly relevant here in light of this incident reported in the Otago Daily Times today.

A community identifies itself by an understood mutuality of interests. But it lives and acts by the common virtues of trust, goodwill, forbearance, self-restraint, compassion, and forgiveness. If it hopes to continue long as a community, it will wish to--and will have to--encourage respect for all its members, human and natural. Such a community has the power--not invariably but as a rule--to enforce decency without litigation. It has the power, that is, to influence behavior.

Wendell Berry
Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community

Belonging to a community

Community: The Structure of Belonging, by Peter Block.

“Modern society is plagued by fragmentation. The various sectors of our communities–businesses, schools, social service organizations, churches, government–do not work together. They exist in their own worlds. As do so many individual citizens, who long for connection but end up marginalized, their gifts overlooked, their potential contributions lost. This disconnection and detachment makes it hard if not impossible to envision a common future and work towards it together. We know what healthy communities look like–there are many success stories out there, and they’ve been described in detail. What Block provides in this inspiring new book is an exploration of the exact way community can emerge from fragmentation: How is community built? How does the transformation occur? What fundamental shifts are involved? He explores a way of thinking about our places that creates an opening for authentic communities to exist and details what each of us can do to make that happen.” [From the book’s blurb.]

The list of contents may prove interesting (certainly more interesting than the cover design!):

Intro: The Fragmented Community and its Transformation...

Part One The Fabric of Community
1 Insights into Transformation
2 Shifting the Context for Community
3 The Stuck Community
4 The Restorative Community
5 Taking Back our Projections
6 What it Means to be a Citizen
7 The Transforming Community

part 2 The Alchemy of Belonging
8 Leadership is Convening
9 The Small Group is the Unity of Transformation
10 Questions More Transforming than Answers
11 Invitation
12 The Possibility, Ownership, Dissent, Commitment and Gifts Conversations
13 Bringing Hospitality into the World
14 Designing Physical Space that Supports Community
15 The End of Unnecessary Suffering

Peter Block is a proponent of servant leadership, a concept initiated by Robert Greenleaf.
Block has a newer book out, The Abundant Community.

Reggie McNeal interview.

Reggie McNeal's book, Missional Renaissance, has been out for some time, but it's still gaining attention in various quarters.   Harold Fickett notes at the beginning of an interview with McNeal that he calls for a "new alignment of evangelical Protestantism with Christ's mission to restore creation. McNeal writes about how local churches should reorient toward having an impact on society. He praises the recent phenomenon of "missional communities"—small groups with a dedicated purpose—springing up to address particular social ills. He claims that what's happening today in the church may change the institution as much as the Reformation."

You can read the whole of the interview here; it appeared online in 'High Calling.'   The interview is valuable in giving an overview of McNeal's thinking about mission, and also an overview of the book.

[Harold Fickett writes full-time. He is the author of The Living Christ, Dancing With the Divine, and a forthcoming biography of Albert Schweitzer. He is also a contributing editor of www.godspy.com, where he contributes columns on world Christianity and spirituality. Harold lives in Nacogdoches where, as a latter-day facsimile of a Southern gentleman, he takes care of his mother, his children, and a dog named Roxie and a cat name Gracie. (His wife, Karen, actually takes care of everybody but allows her husband his illusions.) Harold is a member of the Chrysostom Society.]

Obligated....?

Why is rock solid community impossible for us? Because solid community is based on obligation, and obligation is a dirty word for those of us living in late modernity. Community cannot be community where individual free will is king. Community demands that I give up my own freedom for the good of the group. Therefore, lasting community asks that I see myself obligated to these people (my belonging is deeper than my job, education, place of residence, or personal identity—I choose the community over it). But we don’t see things this way; rather, we expect our communities not to come before these personal things, but to serve us by enhancing them.

The paragraph above comes from an adaptation of chapter three of The Promise of Despair: The Way of the Cross as the Way of the Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 2010) by Andrew Root. The excerpt was extracted and edited by Jonathan Davis.

This is a very good article on community and the reasons why we struggle with achieving it in our contemporary setting. It provides an 'answer' but the question is whether we're willing to go with the answer and change our way of thinking/living.

Andrew Root (PhD, Princeton Seminary) is assistant professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary (St. Paul, MN). A Fuller MDiv grad, Andy is the author of several books, including The Promise of Despair, Children of Divorce, and Relationships Unfiltered. He has worked in congregations, para-church ministries and social service programs.

Gardens as Community

In a recent post on her blog, Christine Sine asks Is this a Move of God? What she's discussing is the idea of community gardens, the way in which they help with sustainability, with learning how to feed yourself by the work of your own hands, the way in which many people feel more at home in the garden than in church, and the way in which non-church people get involved - even ask for community gardens to be set up so they can be involved. But most of all the word that stands out is community.

Read the full post for the details, but one particular detail attracted my attention and will be intriguing to older New Zealand readers of this blog. I quote:

Even our good friend Graham Kerr, once known as The Galloping Gourmet, has become involved planting his own garden and working with his church at Mt Vernon on a huge garden project. Graham tells us that he has never before cooked anything he has grown or grown anything he has cooked and it is delightful to watch him enthusiastically discover the delights of this.

If you'd ever wondered what happened to him after he vanished from our TV screens, this tells you. Six degrees - or less - of separation?

Life Together

LIFE TOGETHER: A Conversation About the Challenges and Opportunities of Christian Community with Dave Andrews.

SATURDAY 8 MAY, 2010

LIFE TOGETHER FORUM: 9.30-4.00pm, at Spreydon Baptist, with Dave Andrews, and friends from Urban Vision, Servants, and the Addington community. Sliding scale entry ($10-30, incl. morning and afternoon tea).

DINNER WITH DAVE ANDREWS: 6.00-8.00pm, at Addington Coffee Co-op, 297 Lincoln Rd, Chch. ($20)

As capacity in both venues is limited, please email lifetogether@spreydon.org.nz to register, indicating which events you will be attending. Registration closes May 5. For more info, contact Ants (awatt@spreydon.org.nz) or Jono (jono@servantsasia.org).

Proudly hosted by the Addington Coffee Co-op, Spreydon Baptist, and Servants to Asia's Urban Poor.

Dave, his wife Ange, and their family, have lived and worked in intentional communities with marginalised groups of people in Australia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal for more than thirty years. He now lives in a large joint household with his wife, children, grandchildren and others in an inner city community called the Waiters Union in Brisbane, Australia. Dave also works with TEAR Australia, and is a teacher for the Bible College of Queensland and the Brisbane College of Theology.

Church of Facebook

The Church of Facebook: how the hyperconnected are redefining community, by Jesse Rice.
Some people think social networking fosters community. Others think online networking is superficial and competes with deep human interaction. Whichever side of the fence you're on, the Wi-Fi, worldwide movement is changing how we interact with others.
Jesse Rice believes that Facebook offers a profound look at our deepest needs. In his new book, he explores social networking and its impact on culture and the church.
"Facebook has become part of our lives, and we're just beginning to learn how to be human in it. Online, we have power over how we express ourselves. You can take the time to choose your words carefully, edit your responses, PhotoShop a picture until you get it just right. Real conversations, real relationships don't allow that. They include awkward silences."

Read a review by Brian Orme.

Read the first chapter online.

Building Community

After nearly a decade of work, Mike Riddell's book, The Insatiable Moon, is finally being filmed in Ponsonby.
It's been a long journey which Mike has written about in various places, including the earlier parts of the blog relating to the film's coming to birth.
Being a person myself who is often involved in stage productions, whether musical or theatrical, and knowing how communities are formed during the rehearsal and performance times, it was interesting to read the following in the post dated November 19th.

At the core of the process is the willingness for all involved to trust each other's abilities. It's a great exercise in temporary community building. Author Scott Peck wrote about communities that they require the relinquishment of the temptation to control others. Ironically, in the highly structured chain of command of filmmaking, this is as true as anywhere else.

Every person brings something special and unique to the process, without which the entire enterprise would fail. The secret is a deep trusting and respect of those around us as we work in highly pressured situations. It allows the love to flow, and the wonder to be captured.

The Church-going Habit

Two advantages of going to church (or going back to church, as the case may be) from Mark Vernon, in his comments on Back to Church Sunday, in a recent Guardian article.

A first is a community. Paradoxically, community is vital if you want to work on yourself. It is only with others that you can properly take the risk of not just reading about ideas but making them your own. That's why visiting art galleries, or listening to music, isn't really enough. It's too passive. Instead, as any educationalist will tell you, an active stance is required. Hence, a rich learning experience doesn't just involve studying, but writing your own work and reading it out to others too, in preparedness for their critique. It's rather like the risk an artist takes, or a writer of blogs for that matter.

It's also why educational establishments are highly ritualised, shaped by ceremonies and etiquette. The first universities in the west, like those at Oxford and Cambridge, took that from the medieval madrassas. They were places designed to leverage the business of studying together in order that it might shape lives. An engaged community is a crucial asset.

A second advantage that the church-going habit can exemplify is the very desire to be changed at all. Of course, many who go to church do so for the opposite reason: they fear the "changes and chances of this fleeting world" as the old prayer has it, and see the church as a kind of conservative refuge. However, I went to Greenbelt for the first time this year, the liberal Christian festival, having been invited to talk about agnosticism. What struck me was how open folk there were to ideas: they put themselves on the line when they engaged with what was said. They weren't defensive, but rather desired to see whether they might be changed in the process. This must be one of the positive aspects of a thinking evangelical faith: such evangelicals believe in the power of words, because they believe in God's word; and they believe the power of words is transformational, because they believe God's word changes everything.

Church Growth Principles Remain

In an article entitled The Top Five Church Growth Principles, by Charles Arn (the son of Win Arn), briefly discusses the five main reasons why churches grow. It isn't programmes (we knew that, didn't we?); it isn't sound and light and huge displays of talent (of course!); it isn't a host of other things we've come up with over the years.

The five things are simple, and have been with us for a long time:

1. Disciple-making is the priority. Yup, that's what churches are there for.
2. Social networks are the vehicle - and while Mr Arn probably doesn't mean virtual social networks, it's that old connection of people to people that counts.
3. Felt needs are the connecting point. Starting where people are at...
4. Relationships are the glue. Being connected to people in the church is what stops people sliding out the back door.
5. Transitions provide the window of opportunity. When someone's going through a crisis, then they need Christ.

The links throughout are people, community, friendships, caring for others, love. Pretty simple, really. Now, go forth and multiply!

Generosity

The Office for the Community and Voluntary Centre (no, I didn't know they existed, either) in a paper entitled, How do New Zealanders Give? Ethnicity and Income Research Supplement, tells us that:

No matter their ethnicity or income level, approximately three quarters of New Zealanders support the community and voluntary sector in some way.

In 2007, three quarters (75.4%) of people 10 years and over supported the community and voluntary sector. This was by any combination of giving, volunteering or other support (such as purchasing products). When compared to this population average, the differences between ethnic groups or different personal or household incomes are relatively small.

Besides this paper, which gives some extensive information on who gives to whom, there are four reports on Generosity by the same department. These have been coming out over the last couple of years, (the latest arrived only last month) and can be found here. The papers ask:

What do we mean by generosity?
What value do we place on generosity?
What do we know about generosity?
What can we do to promote generosity in New Zealand?

None of the papers are lengthy, but they have some interesting things to say about the state of generosity in NZ (pretty good) and our attitudes towards it.

Arguments against planting a church

David Fitch says you don't go out these days to plant a church by providing a host of 'goods and services' in the way in which a church in the 'modern' era did. (I'm not sure that he's entirely right here: I suspect church plantings have always had to start small and grow the 'goods and services' in due course.)

He lists three things that people tend to say when they're arguing against being involved in a church plant.

1. My life (and my family's life) would be consumed if I went and planted a church with some other people. Notice the assumption that building a church is a 24/7 job: no rest, little sleep, no time for the family, no reading (for fun), no recreation and so on.

2. I will be leaving behind relationships and starting all over again.

3. There will be a leadership rift - people will get mad, break up things, leave us hanging out to dry.

Fitch has sensible and realistic arguments for each of these. Planting a church is a slow growth process, one where you live - along with other people you already know - in a community. It takes time to grow a church, just as it takes time to grow roses. No church starts up ready-made in a new community; or if it tries to, it's likely to fail quickly.

The relationships won't be left behind because you will be taking people with you who are already your friends, and the leadership (he recommends a leadership of three) will be mutually accountable to each other.

But read it in detail here (and read the comments and his responses too)...he puts it much better than my summary does.

When they will not come

David Fitch always seems to have some good things to say - whether you agree with them or not. In a recent post he discusses When They Will Not Come, and the whole matter of the attractional/non-attractional church. He also looks at whether you should chase people who visit a couple of times and don't return. Should visitors necessarily feel 'instantly' at home? It's not likely, he says, given that they're coming into a formed community that has history, relationships and a host of other connections. Are welcome teams really an ideal way to greet newcomers/visitors? He talks about the value of the Sunday morning gathering, and the way in which people who come to church eventually have to decide whether they'll make a commitment there. And he talks about hospitality.

It's not a long post, but it's worth a read.