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I’ve taken to biking to work at the church again, whenever possible.  It’s a lot cheaper than gassing up the car all the time!  I used to get some flak for biking to church, but, you know, I’ve got to do what’s best here, rather than listen to that.

Our congregation as a whole is becoming more environmentally conscious - partially because it’s more economically feasible right now.  I truly believe that sustainable agricultural and fuel usage is an essential Christian response in these days. 

So, we’ll save some money, help the environment, get some exercise and set an example.  Sounds good to me!

I was surfing around this evening and this caught my eye:

In case that’s too small to see, it says, “Church Trailer Thief: Stealing from God… Ballsy. kineticchurch.com”

Here’s the summary story:

One weekend in early March, our portable church trailer containing about 75% of Kinetic Church’s equipment was stolen; leaving our church with virtually nothing.As a result, Kinetic Church created five billboards and multiple web banners in hopes of grabbing the attention of the thieves (and everyone else for that matter).

Their website is here: www.kineticchurch.com.  And here is their forgiveness video.

All I can say is, “wow.” 

Can we do this?  Can we be like this?

Church budgets are often the hardest parts of a church to transform in a process of congregational change.  Budget categories are notoriously resiliant and resistant to change.  Even groupings of line items often stay together in configurations that must have made historical sense at one time but are now baffling to the present.  Even more significantly, it is hard to translate the traditional budget categories (personnel, building, utilities, office supplies and other operating expenses) into categories that reflect the vision of where the congregation is going matched to the ways in which the vision is going to be carried out. 

Today, I designed a model to help our congregation begin to measure our budget along missional lines.  At this point, all of our active programs and activities have generally fallen in line behind the vision:

Our vision is to be a community of disciples of Jesus Christ, who invite, equip and empower others to be Jesus’ disciples. 

We desire to be a community of disciples through seven basic areas:

Worship, Proclamation, Formation, Service, Prayer, Care and Fellowship.

Thus, I began to divide up my time and the use of the building along those seven lines plus Administration.  The math on the building use has been quite complex, but it ended up coming out pretty well today.  These numbers were all tied in with the more obvious stuff - like BIble study guide costs, etc., and linked to form a missional presentation of the budget. 

In the end, I was able to create a pie chart based upon the seven aspects of our mission plus administration, that showed our budget distributed according to our vision.  As we grow, we will make adjustments to the various parts of the budget to try to reflect our visionary priorities.

Any feedback?

Today, our congregation had a potluck.  This is the second of such in the same number of months.  As recommended by some congregational consultants who reported to us in December, we were desperately in need of time together just having fun and enjoying one another’s company - time when we weren’t trying to get anything done.  Granted, we are trying to use this time to build relationships with one another, so it is accomplishing something. But it’s not a meeting.

In Leading Congregational Change: A Practical Guide for the Transformational Journey (San Francisco: Josey-Bass/Wiley, 2000), Rev. Dr. James Harrington places a congregation’s Spiritual and Relational Vitality at the center of his model for congregational change.  (13)  In Herrington’s model, the strength and the depth of this piece is the constraining factor for any change that operates in a congregation to move it toward any positive change.  The relational vitality aspect is based in the ability of the congregation to carry out the “love one another” aspect of Christian life. 

Fellowship events, such as potlucks and other more social settings are often downplayed in church planting and church renewal, but they are essential.  They enable people to build relationships outside of the politics of church.  Next to service projects that involve a broad spectrum of the congregation, they are often the key missing ingredient to building the relationships necessary to bring about positive transformation. 

Beyond the theology, though, today was genuinely fun.  We genuinely enjoyed one another’s company - with people mixing and mingling with no hint of cliquishness.  Suffice it to say that we are taking positive steps toward a healthy congregational life, based in the life of Christ, expressed in love.  I believe we are starting to see the kind of joy and “don’t want to miss it” of the kind seen in the ancient Christian practice of communion.  And that makes this thing all worth it!

 As I walked through the neighborhood this afternoon, I ran across this curious garden.  Actually, what first drew my attention was the clump of daffodils all by themselves (in the upper right third of this picture - the darkish green blotch).  Clearly, a house used to be there.  And despite whatever destruction occurred to bring the house down and to clear the lot, these plants are persistent.  They survived the house’s removal, and still bloom.  I’ve walked past this lot almost daily for over a year, and just now noticed them. 

Clearly, there is an illustration for perseverence here.  But I’m going to let that one ride for now, in order to look at something else.

One of our local issues is that economics are such that houses are abandoned and are either arsoned or fall down on a regular basis.  Not a week goes by without an arson being reported on the news, it seems.  Many neighborhoods deal with abandoned houses or vacant lots.  It is a symbol of the urban decay so prevalant in the area.  No one seems all that interested in redeveloping these properties. 

One of our local issues is the attitude of “there’s nothing we can do about it.”  Added to that is “why try - someone will just wreck it before it has a chance.”  Yet, an infusion of the hope of the Gospel, in the shape of the transforming power of Christ, could really work through the fabric of our community and bring about genuine positive change. 

In fact, since the promise of the Gospel is not just transformation but re-creation - New Creation - there is hope even in neighborhoods with abandoned properties.  And I think this leftover garden demonstrates that it only takes ordinary stuff to bring hope to bear. 

Other thoughts?

Yesterday I promised some thoughts reflective of the contextualization issues presented. 

So today, let’s begin with my context:

Living in a city of around 40 000 in a self-declared rust-belt area, bereft of its once-prosperous steel mills and automotive industry, the economic issues weigh on everyone’s mind.  Those with the will to leave are doing so - looking for work elsewhere.  The younger generations who have stayed have compounding social issues including lack of education, early family starts, with non-traditional families being the statistical norm, and rates of substance abuse higher than the national average.  There are still siginificant racial divides and the rich and poor are worlds apart.  The governments in the area, in the popular mindset, are hopelessly corrupt and self-serving, and incompetent to solve the ills of the area, or even to salve the wounds of the people.  Despair infects much of daily life.  The way people talk around here a lot of times, you’d think they’re stuck in the worst place on earth.

But when God speaks to those issues, when God transforms despair into hope, hatred into love, poverty into abundance, corruption into justice, then the message of Christ truly may take hold here in this Mahoning Valley.  The contextualization issues are not so much social customs or language (although the church is a foreign concept to increasingly significant numbers of people), but more the attitude and approach to life in the society that has those serious issues.

How we contextualize the message of Christ in this environment is an essential question.  Do it well, and the community turns around.  Do it poorly, and God will send someone else.  Of course, N.T. Wright’s comments about taking on the powers that call themselves “Lord” in this community will create a ruckus, when they discover what is really meant by “Jesus is Lord,” just like it has everywhere for all time since the days of Christ. 

The first step here is to acknowledge injustice, despair and powerlessness over economics, politics, etc., and invite people to invest faith in Christ’s transforming power.  The power of Christ will change nations. 

Any other thoughts?

This evening I read several articles about issues of Contextualization, the missiological concept of bringing the Good News of Jesus to bear on a culture other than one’s own.  From the missiological angle, we had Andrew Jones’ series of three articles (here, here and here), interacting with some rather obtuse comments by some serious theologians and relating it to actual mission work.

The context of his last article is this:

I am writing from an internet cafe in the downtown city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. All the men around me are in turbans and are smoking Sheeshas. I have just drunken a long fruit drink as I contemplated what would happen if I just stood up and starting sharing about Christ without any regard to context. How would I communicate it? What have they heard already? If they decided to submit to Isa and follow him, would they still remove their shoes to pray or wear them like the westerners? Could they call him “Isa” as in the Quran, or should they use the English name “Jesus” and would he then be a blue-eyed blond-haired Jesus?

Much to think about. Carelessness kills.

(from part 3)

Jones contrasts this with that causes-us-to-wince-these-days way of doing things:

When some missionaries went to Africa with complete disdain for contextualization, they brought pipe-organs with them so the natives could worship God properly, without their nuances of culture.
When some missionaries went to North America with complete disdain for contextualization, they took away their native dances and forced the converts to learn English so that they could worship God properly, in the correct language, and without their nuances of culture.

(from part 1)

The contrast in thought-patterns is amazing.

Then, in the worship context, we had Steve Taylor, the Emergent Kiwi:

I’ve been thinking about worship this week. I’m feeling stuck in a loop that goes like this:

Most contemporary church worship I experience simply invites me to sing songs. Up the band comes, away they play and down I sit. I’m tired of this limited vista.

Most alt.worship I experience invites me into stations. Out comes the art, in comes the creativity and down I sit. I’m tired of the individuality of it all. Me in my small experience.

At least when you sing, it’s corporate. At least when you sing, it invites you out of your head and into your intuition and emotion.

So here’s the question that’s bugging me: what are ways that we might connect with God that are corporate and non-rational, that are NOT sung worship?

From his article here.

The struggle to engage people in a way that truly connects them to God’s life, as Steve is struggling to do, is truly the driving force behind contextualization in missiology.

And then, via Paul Fromont (another NZ [Kiwi] writer), the Right Reverend Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright:

If the church is to be shaped by mission, mission is to be shaped by eschatology, and eschatology by the Bible itself… Ecclesiology, in other words, is not simply the extrapolation of a historical community from the first apostolic foundations: it is also the anticipation in the present time of what God intends as the summing up of all things in Christ [i.e. Eschatology].

So far, so good… but then the real gem, also quoted by Fromont:

Let the Bible shape your eschatology; let that biblical eschatology shape your mission; and then let that eschatologically-shaped mission shape your view of the church; and you’ll find that, instead of the shrill functional pragmatism of today’s muddled left, insisting on breaking old rules because they’re outdated, and the equally shrill and functional pragmatism of today’s muddled right, insisting on keeping old rules because they’re the old rules even at the cost of unity, you will have a robust, biblical, Christ-centred, Spirit-led, costly ecclesiology that will be in good shape to take forward God’s mission into the next generation.

Of course, Wright is wrestling with the Anglican Communion issue, but this, I believe shapes the church of today.  I’m still forming my own thoughts on all of this, but all of these writer-practitioners seem to be drinking of one and the same Spirit.  As I process my thoughts I’ll try to put them here.

But, as usual, your thoughts first.

Today I spent some time developing my Vital Faith Discipleship Curriculum.  It’s a huge project, really.  I’ve split it into smaller parts so I can work on it bit by bit.

The two parts I’m trying to focus on right now are the “Basic Belief” and “Basic Lifestyle” sections.  I see these two sections as interlocking for giving people a basic understanding of the faith as we express it. 

In the discipleship process, I emphasize that we learn basic Christian theology to get to know this God we are coming to love, serve and live with.  In the Vital Faith Discipleship setup, we use the Nicene Creed as an outline of the Faith for basic Christian Theology.  As we work through the issues of Christian Lifestyle, I emphasize that we are learning both God’s “likes and dislikes” and “commandments to live according to how God has created us.” 

I’ve started trying this on with a few people, and I think it still has more work needed before I really spread it around much.  But it’s getting there.  Stay tuned.

This Sunday, I preached on John 10:1-10.  As I have said, there was strong connection with the congregation this week. 

This evening, I ran across this comment from Brother Maynard over at www.subversiveinfluence.com. 

In John 10, the thief is anyone who claims authority they don’t have — they look at the sheep for their own ends. These are those who would call to the sheep as if they owned them… yet they do not.

This makes a lot of sense in the greater context of John 9:1 - 10:21, which is the story of Jesus healing the man born blind.  It’s interesting to see the Pharisees saying to Jesus what he can and cannot do - and when - with the blind man.  They seem to declare that “this is our synagogue, and we won’t have this kind of stuff going on here.”  They have taken ownership of the people under their care. 

Jesus comes with the natural authority of Creator and Son of God, ruler of the Kingdom of God.  Like it or not, Jesus has the authority to do as he pleases.  Yet, he declares himself to be the Good Shepherd.  Moreover, thoughout the book of John, he declares that he is there not to do his own will but the will of the one who sent him.  (See John 6:38, et passim.)

It seems that in this passage Jesus lays claim to God’s people over against the claims of authority by the Pharisees.  When faced with opposition, Jesus declares that he is following the Father step by step.  This is where the other phrase Jesus uses comes in: he says anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs over the wall is a thief and an insurgent.  Anyone who does not follow the Father here is actually working against him. 

It seems that Jesus uses these two words, thief and insurgent, to describe how his opponents are behaving relative to the people he has come to save, and relative to their own relationship to the Father.  Since they cannot claim “son” or “disciple,” these leaders are left with “thief” and “insurgent.” 

If this were not Jesus, many Christians would be uncomfortable with the polemic nature of much of what Jesus says in John.  We must take care, though, to take his words to heart: let us collaborate with the shepherd, or become sheep, not thieves and insurgents.

Today, I really think I connected with a large portion of the congregation.  At the end, someone stood up and told me it was the best sermon he’d ever heard me preach.  The congregation applauded.  I didn’t quite know what to do. 

All I can say is that God is at work to transform our congregation into a missional community of disciples who reach out to those who normally get left out of what God’s up to.  And that was the content of the sermon, basically.  Since that’s connecting now with the whole group, that means we’re on the right track.

Praise God!