Uh oh… looks like a big hole has just been shot in the “facts” (a.k.a. “well-researched scholarship”) presented by Barna and Viola in their book Pagan Christianity?.

“We have uncovered what we believe to be the first church in the world, dating from 33 AD to 70 AD,” the head of Jordan’s Rihab Centre for Archaeological Studies, Abdul Qader al-Husan, said.”

Is there an upcoming retraction?

(ht: bob.blog)

The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community
Hugh Halter & Matt Smay

Jossey-Bass—Church Ministry | Leadership
179 pages

[part 2]

The issue of contextualization has seemingly reared its head again as John MacArthur and others have continued their rampage against the idea of contextualizing the gospel. Which, honestly, makes absolutely no sense to me—I can’t imagine what vacuum the gospel would have to be in in order to be considered pure, but that’s a separate issue. What Halter and Smay discuss in chapter 6 is the idea that it’s in our contextualization, it’s not solely about the context you are entering but rather the posture in which the telling/embodying is done.

Often times we are stuck in the idea that it’s okay to teach/train missionaries how to contextualize because we’re are sending them to “go over there” into the foreign land. But when it comes to our own culture and context, we often times do a very poor job of teaching people how to create entry points for the gospel in their own worlds. This is the beginning idea of missional living. Halter & Smay make a great distinction here between missional and incarnational (often times they’re seen synonymously).

Missional sentness is focused on leaving and everything related to going, but incarnational represents how we go and what we do as we go… God could have sent his son by asking him to set up a website and download spiritual information to every billboard in the world. But apparently he knew that information about him doesn’t help people understand or love him So the only option for the Father and for us is to embody the concept.

Unfortunately, in modern day evangelicalism, we’ve mastered the idea of going… but we’ve fallen way short of embodying the gospel and being the gospel to people. Instead, “we’ve prioritized the verbals over the nonverbals, the message over the method… the proclamation over the posture.” This is why the church is in such trouble in our society—we’re not living out the values of the gospel. We’re all talk and no substance. We’ve mastered the idea of belief-ism, but have yet to actually live out in tangible ways as a united community what that belief-ism is really all about. Our operating principle, our little cities seem to revolve completely around the idea of believing the right way. Those are the lines we’ve drawn (denominations) and the walls we’ve erected.

In the reconstruction of the church, it is essential that we re-discover and embody the ideals of incarnational ministry… otherwise we’re in for a long ride potentially seeping into a new “dark age” of the church.

The church is the greatest preserver of the status quo in human history… I can conclude that the church, in its present state, is not the hope of the world. I believe that nothing has so persistently and effectively blocked the way of salvation as the church.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

King first wrote this in the early 50’s and now over 50 years later I wonder how much has really changed… has the church really moved very far forward, or are we stuck in the same rut? Honestly, I think we’ve traded one set of problems for another as we continually walk in this static, circular existence.

One of the things that is hard about being in a healthy, growing, and absolutely amazing church, you tend to lose some of the perspective regarding the struggles of the church-at-large within America. In fact, if you are in a church that is growing and people are enthusiastic and excited about what God is doing in your midst you should consider yourself lucky (I know I certainly do), for this isn’t the norm… we are a part of the exception.

There is a growing population within the church-at-large that is increasingly growing dissatisfied with “church-as-we-know-it” and are walking away, trading old institutions for new forms and practices of “being the church”. Unfortunately it doesn’t just end with a growing sense of dissatisfaction, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, nearly 25% of adults have not just walked away from the church, but have traded their faith for a different religion. People are leaving the church and Jesus in their wake.

So, the question remains… is the church really all that different from 50 years ago or are we simply trading problems as we remain in our cycle of sameness? Is there a way out of the cycle, and what does that look like? Because as King so poignantly observes: to do nothing will persistently and effectively block the way of salvation.

The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community
Hugh Halter & Matt Smay

Jossey-Bass—Church Ministry | Leadership
179 pages

[part 1]

Deconstruction towards reconstruction… this seems to be one of the greatest sources of dissent in the church today. There are those that are actively seeking a deconstruction of the norm in order to explore and experience a new reconstructed norm that is positioned to speak prophetically into the culture and then there are those who grip tightly to maintain the systems and functions that are currently being deconstructed. It seems that this is what the emerging church truly introduced into the mainstream of ecclesiology… however the attitudes behind the movement were often times less than gracious (and even though it has tempered as of late, the undercurrent still remains.) I myself still struggle with a gracious attitude to those that have gone before me, preparing the way for the future. Halter reminds us:

As I speak for many in the budding missional church world, I have to share that I no longer judge the faithful, fervent work of so many pastors who have pastored well but who struggle to find their place in this new world. They deserve to be honored instead of belittled. Without their legacy, we would have nothing to build upon.

Therefore, it would behoove us to begin treading graciously with those who have paved the way—honoring them, yes, but also providing them the grace and mercy as they too struggle to find their way in the new world.

Reconstruction can only begin by starting with Jesus… and it’s through Jesus that we can begin coming together as a unified church. “By starting with Christology (the life of Jesus), which informs our missiology (how we live), we’ll have a better chance of finding common ground with our ecclesiology (how we do church).” (pg. 20)

These chapters took a great turn in tone. There has always been a very gracious tone, however the tone shifted from a deconstructionist viewpoint to a re-constructionist viewpoint and a presentation of hope that can be had throughout the emerging church as we move forward for change. The final question for reflection that was asked: “If Jesus were to trim down your Christian experience to his essentials, what would he remove? What would be left?” I’m not sure the wording of this question was truly indicative of the re-constructionist tone and so I’d rather answer a new question… a better question: “If Jesus were to trim down your Christian experience to his essentials, what would you keep? What would you start with?” This is probably an easier question, not to mention a shift in thinking away from deconstruction and onward towards reconstruction.

As I thought through this question of what would I keep… I’m not sure it would be a very long list. In fact, the only thing that immediately came to mind was Jesus. I think as a church we have lost focus and sight on Jesus as the bridegroom, as the head of the church, and instead have supplanted ourselves in his place. In this reconstruction it is my hope and prayer that we rediscover the supremacy of Jesus in the church, getting away from paying him lip service and move towards a new understanding and reliance upon Him. “By starting with Christology (the life of Jesus), which informs our missiology (how we live), we’ll have a better chance of finding common ground with our ecclesiology (how we do church).”

By starting with Jesus we’ll soon enough be able to reconstruct a new “norm” that can speak prophetically into our culture because of the influence that will be gained in our missional ways… but we shouldn’t expect this new “norm” to last forever… a new wave of deconstruction will come about in the decades to come as once again we will have to figure out how to present the gospel to the culture that we interact with.

The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community
Hugh Halter & Matt Smay

Jossey-Bass—Church Ministry | Leadership
179 pages

The Kingdom of God is not the property nor the sole possession of the church (institutional or organic), rather the church is the property of the Kingdom, and it is the church’s responsibility not to exploit but to extol the Kingdom in all of its glory. Could it be that this is where the church (institutional and organic) lose the focus? That somehow we see the Kingdom as a means to our end, the purveyor of our own self-fulfillment residing completely within the church as opposed to our residence within the Kingdom that is revealed throughout the world? These are the initial questions that I am wrestling with…

At the end of chapter 1, Smay posses the question: Describe some times in your life when you’ve wanted to tap out on God and the activities of the church. Talk about a loaded question! As I thought through my time as a “professional” Christian, there are three distinct times that I have felt a strong, strong desire to simply throw my hands in the air, say “f*ck it all!” and walk away. I have not had the easiest time in ministry, however at each and every stage, through every single turn, I have found God sitting with outstretched arms simply beckoning me to “come” and rest. And I am extremely glad that I have listened, fallen into his arms and allowed him to challenge me once again to continue on in his grace (”my grace is sufficient!”). This isn’t the end of the journey, and it certainly won’t get any easier… however He will continually be there at every step, waiting.

It’s not hard to understand why so many are walking away from the church, the statistics are startling, and as Clegg & Bird state (as quoted on page 12)

The inescapable conclusion is that we must throw out any notion that God is truly at the center of the church’s heart in North America. The shift in society’s view of the church has resulted in the marginalization of the church and the secularization of society. Christianity has lost its place at the center of American life. Christians must learn how to live the gospel as a distinct people who no longer occupy the center of society. We must learn to build relational bridges.”

I love that line: “Christians must learn how to live the gospel as a distinct people who no longer occupy the center of society.” (emphasis mine) I find that absolutely fascinating, brilliant and eerily similar to St. Francis, “Preach the gospel always and if necessary use words,” the mantra of the incarnational church. Talk about the need to understand the issues of contextualization! Halter continues: “…something must change to reverse the trends. We need to start by doing some of the things we haven’t been doing, and we must stop doing some things that we have been doing. The world around us is growing increasingly disinterested in our Christian story.”

Smay asks the question for reflection: “What are some of the ways you believe we’re losing our saltiness?” Now, honestly this could be an entire blog post, but for the sake of brevity I’ll narrow it down to the issue of evangelism. I believe the way we “communicate” the gospel (skywriters scrawling “Jesus loves you” in the sky; tracks that look like money left as tips to waiters and waitresses; bullhorns on the corner shouting “You’re going to hell!”; etc.) although they are the extreme cases, they are the picture our culture has of Christians. When we boil the gospel down to a “Get-out-of-Hell Free” card it begins to lose its effectiveness as a beautiful way to live amidst the destruction, pain and horror the world has to offer. The gospel is more than eternal destination—it’s about living beautifully… it’s about shalom.

Smay then concludes his reflecting questions with this dandy: “What do you think of the increasing disinterest of the culture towards church means for the future of the church?” My instant response was “GOOD!” I think it’s a good thing that culture has become disinterested in the church for one simple reason. It should (and I believe has to an extent) force the church to eventually begin understanding and dealing with contextualization issues! I believe that this could be the beginning of a re-awakening of the church, a great revival of sorts, right here in our midst—if and only if we are attentive to and receptive of the Spirit who is working among us. I truly wonder what this re-awakening and re-emergence of the (American) church will look like, and the amazing things that God has in store! We’re in store of a re-awakening or we’ll simply go the way of the Dodo… I’m hoping for a re-awakening!

The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community
Hugh Halter & Matt Smay

Jossey-Bass—Church Ministry | Leadership
179 pages

While at the Exponential Conference I stumbled across this book and was immediately captivated by the title: The Tangible Kingdom—Creating Incarnational Community: The Posture and Practice of Ancient Church Now. I had never heard of the authors, Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, but with the endorsement of Reggie McNeal (who wrote the forward) and The Leadership Network, I figured it’d be worth a shot. So, I picked it up and began reading… I haven’t been able to put it down yet! It’s an absolutely fascinating book full of exciting and thought provoking lines that have made me realize that instead of flying through the book and moving on, I need to savor it and truly spend some time reflecting on the content and questions at the end of each chapter. I truly want to learn and explore this idea of incarnational community.

So, in order to truly savor this book I’m going to blog through the book. (I’m not sure I’ve ever done this before—and if I have it’s been quite some time!) So, in order to take it slow I’ll only read 2 chapters a day (there are 21 chapters total) and spend the next two weeks posting a segment a day of my reflections of the chapters and questions at the end. I’ll post quotes and thoughts and hope that you’ll interact with me throughout. If you feel so inclined to run out and buy the book and join me that would be fantastic! I’ll be posting the first reflection on Wednesday, so join me in this journey of learning and attempting to understand a bit more about this thing called incarnational community.

The April issue of Next-Wave is now online, and if you scroll down you may notice an article on there written by me taken from a blog post written a few weeks ago.

I will admit, it’s a bit strange to have something “published” alongside of names like Andrew Jones, Brian McLaren, Todd Hunter, and others… but at the same time it’s a pretty neat experience… Check it out and the other articles in this issue, they’re pretty good.

Revolutionaries Syncroblog.
(Read introductory post for details and more great posts on the subject)

As I looked back over 9 years of ministry (a “professional christian” as some may say) I am amazed that I’m still at it. You could say that I’m a glutton for punishment, that I tend to find myself, more often than not, in some of the worst ministry situations imaginable each progressively worse than its predecessor. It feels as if I have been continually battered and beaten, each time progressively cutting deeper and deeper into my ravaged soul. The stories of pain, and trauma becoming more and more unbelievable with each passing season. It feels as if my spirit, my heart, and my passion have been consistently abused in an attempt to destroy the fiber of hope that lay deep within. In fact, a dear friend and mentor once made the hard observation/comparison that my relationship to the traditional/institutional church is like the woman in an abusive relationship that keeps going back determined that he is going to change… So why have I stayed?

I have found myself in some of the worst situations not because I actively seek them out, but rather, because I long to see change in the church. I desperately want the traditional/institutional church to be the fully-realized, incarnational hope of the world—the beautiful bride of Christ that she was intended to be! There is a deep desire and an everlasting sense of optimism within my soul that has never quite shriveled up no matter how tough the circumstances; this keeps pushing me to see the traditional church for what she was meant to be… the embodiment of Christ on Earth revealing the mysteries of the Kingdom.

Although this eternal optimism has driven me to stay, it’s been a few key relationships in my life that has given me the proper perspective in making it through the hard times. If my friend Gentry hadn’t been there to listen and offer his prayers, allow me a place to get away from the situation and explore my dark night of the soul; if it hadn’t been for my mentor Hank and his “kick in the pants”, the constant encouragement of my parents and the support from so many others I’m not sure I would have stayed… I’m not sure I would’ve made it. The people that I allowed in, the people that I allowed to experience these things with me have been the greatest God-send of all. If it hadn’t been for them, I wouldn’t have experienced the greatest season of healing and ministry of my life.

For nearly a year I have been at Community Christian Church being allowed to heal from the past, serve on my own terms and timetable, and prepared for a new phase of ministry… planting a reproducing church in San Francisco. My experiences here have given me a new, broader sense of hope in the church, a feeling of excitement in what is next and what is possible, and a belief that the institutional church can change the world. These are the experiences that I hope to carry with me as I continue this journey in the institutional church.

Ultimately, this is why I have stayed.

*//update 2
i’ve decided to consolidate the three threads into one so that it’s easier to find everything and i’ve placed it once again at the top of the page… what else have you got?
——
*//update
alright it’s been a few weeks since posting my paper on the emerging church and i’d love to get the conversation started… some of your thoughts, critiques, etc.my friend glenn, posted the paper on his site as well calling it “fair and scholarly”… so, that was great, but i’d like to get some discussion started about it. so, if you haven’t read it take a look!
——
Well, it is completely finished. The Extended Research Paper (mini-thesis) that I have been working on for Seminary is finally finished, and it finished with a bang! Not only did I get a good review of the paper from Dr. Castelein, I didn’t have a single re-write! This was amazing, exciting and brought about a great sense of euphoria to my home…

The introduction of the paper starts with a brief history of the movement before moving on to the more controversial elements of the movements. I think as a whole it turned out really well, but I’d love your feedback and a discussion if you’re up for it…

The Emerging Church

Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to catch Brian McLaren lecture at Dominican University just outside of the city as he lectured on Truth-Telling in “Christian” America: Globalization, Poverty, and the Environment (I feel that ‘Truthiness in “Christian” America’ would have been a better and more appropriate title but I digress…)

As I walked into the room before he spoke I really didn’t know what to expect but I certainly didn’t expect the scene that I walked in on. The room was at about 70% capacity with 65% of the audience being over 60! I guess I didn’t realize that McLaren had that sort of readership, of following. There were maybe a dozen or so people that were my age or younger and one older gentleman behind me quipped, “There are more young people here than I thought would be. A professor must’ve assigned them to come.”

McLaren lectured for a little over an hour and left us with a rather interesting thesis considering much of the missles that are fired at the Emerging Church. His thesis (paraphrased) was/is that in our society—both Christian and non-Christian—we use truth as a weapon and by doing so we completely miss the entirety of truth that is out there. Because truth has become a weapon we only use the portions of truth that will help us with the battles and wars that we are facing and completely neglect the other side of the truth coin. The Emerging Church has often been vilified as watering down truth, or wanting to completely disregard truth altogether but McLaren’s assertion and thesis stands in direct opposition to this and instead flips the tables to say, “No, we believe in truth, but your actions show that you believe otherwise.” Instead, it is the self-proclaimed ‘defenders of truth’ that are essentially watering down and disregarding the truth that is really out there.

This was an absolutely fascinating argument which served as the backbone for how we currently deal with Globalization, Poverty, and the Environment (a focus on only one side of the issue). The arguement shifted from our current dealings to, “Let’s take a look at the rest of the story and instead shift our understanding to a fuller reality that encompasses all of truth and not just our own version/story/comfortable understanding of reality. Maybe one of the best arguments that McLaren put forth to illustrate this point was based upon world consumption. He said that it takes 2.5 acres of land to support one human life—this would support space to live, agricultural needs, water, waste, etc. However, the current world usage is 4.5+ and here in America we currently use 23.5 acres of land. Our understanding of truth towards this reality is completely lopsided and we remain blind to what our consumption means for other people around the world.

This is why I think the lecture would have been more aptly titled “Truthiness” in “Christian” America… our view of truth and reality is completely skewed.

As the lecture wrapped up, I had the pleasure of meeting Helen Mildenhall, a self-described “almost athiest” who works with Off the Map, and if you’re interested in reading some more in-depth notes from McLaren’s lecture she did a great job of blogging a lot of his lecture, which you can find here. My friends Jason and Glenn also attended with me and they also shared their experience and thoughts…

john macarthur vs. doug pagitt… they couldn’t have gotten 2 more extreme views than this.

(ht: joshbrown)

Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives
Robert Webber, ed.

Zondervan—Church & Ministry/Theology/Emerging Church
219 pages

I must confess that I read this book several months ago and am just now getting around to writing the review for it, but I will say that it was a very interesting book. The premise of the book is to be a conversation between 5 emerging leaders and theologians who are writing on their perspectives of the Trinity, Atonement and Scripture. Those 5 leaders are: Mark Driscoll, Doug Pagitt, John Burke, Karen Ward, and Dan Kimball.

After entering into the conversation it was quite easy to discern that not everyone was on the same page, in fact you could say that Driscoll is a part of a completely different conversation and came across rather obtuse instead of as a willing participant in the conversation. Despite the disagreements that the other 4 had, you could tell that there was a sense of respect despite their differences… but this was not the case with Driscoll. Now, don’t get me wrong I like Mark Driscoll and I listen to his sermons and lectures quite frequently while reading his blog posts and books as well—although I don’t completely agree with everything he’s saying and sometimes flat out disagree with him—but I do respect him.

I very much enjoyed the different perspectives that all of them brought to the table, and I very much fancied the words of Dan Kimball and John Burke. Karen Ward brought a twist to the table by opening the dialogue to members of her community and including their insights into the mix (a wonderful stroke of genius I might add). Although there were some things that I found fascinating, there were others that I wished were further fleshed out in her thinking. Quite possibly the most confusing to read, and most “concerning” was Doug Pagitt. Giving him the benefit of the doubt is easy because of how he approached the book—it’s a conversation and here are the things I’m wrestling with at the moment.

This was a great book, and a great introduction into some great theological discussion that is and has been taking place in the emerging church for some time now. I’d recommend picking it up and getting a taste of the conversation—especially before judging it as a heretical sect of evildoers.