I was asked today to join with a meeting the new way of being church The Passion of the Christ rip community. A mixed bunch of faithful radicals that have been exploring new ways of being church long before the term emerging church became trendy. Lots of connections, it was interesting how we shared many links, basic eccelesial communities, friere, alinsky, jim punton, fyt. They have lots of resources online and worth a visit.
I was revisiting some of Off the Beaten Track today and this story hit me again as I thought about church and change.
The prison walls had become the home they had forgotten, so long had they been there amongst the dust and dirt that any memory of the outside world was but a dream to them.
One day, which started like any other, they huddled together to talk. Having the same conversation they’d had every day for as long as any of them could remember, talk of escape. In the middle of this discussion something unusual happened. The cell door swung open.
The prisoners cowered against the back wall, shielding their eyes from the bright sunlight. A man stood there, someone they didn’t recognise, for had they not seen or heard anyone for these long years? The man spoke to them saying;‘You are free to go.’ The group sat in silence, for though they had planned to leave; now they were too afraid to do so. What world was out there? A place that surely must have changed beyond recognition. The prison walls suddenly seemed appealing, for hadn’t it become their home? No one moved, until one man, cautiously making his way to his feet, crossed the small cell and averting his gaze from what lay beyond quietly closed the door.
I have been exploring the issue of bounded and open sets, one thing that is often talked about is about being committed at the core and open at the edges, yet I wonder if we are missing an opportunity for growth here. I am part of a network that describes itself as A network of mission practitioners and communities who are restlessly trying to follow Jesus in the midst of a changing contemporary culture. The Ugly Truth full I cannot underestimate the support I have found within group and how important the space to be open and vulnerable with like minded people is. In many ways this group is not fully open (nor should it??) but this is what I am questioning. At one level all open groups are self selecting and will attract people around the ethos of the group etc, but open set groups for people exploring spirituality will mean the members come into contact with those they disagree with, those they think are off the wall etc, all of which if processed worked through, dialogued about, motives, passions and actions searched and questioned help us on the path to enlightenment. You can hear a talk on patience a 100 times but try living with someone you think is a Muppet, what has the greater benefit for the soul?
Over the weekend I am facilitating a conversation on Church on the Edge with the subtitle Emerging church gets missional. So I will be introducing the concept and process via a handout and as part of the session asking the following questions, and would appreciate any comments.
1. Is the emerging church in missional mode?
2. Are EC’s still a bounded set model but just with better PR?
3. Is community development a core part of your mission approach?
4. How does the church on the edge model/process fit your situation?
5. Where should church on the edge go from here?
Our front garden has been a veg plot for several seasons now. If I spend time there I meet the neighours, and passers by. This is part of a deliberate choice, to provide opportunities to connect with those around me. The garden, our parties, sunday lunches are all have personal implications of being missional or seeking to live a missional life. I use the word missional over mission here in a simular to Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk do in their introduction to The missional leader – equiping your church to reach a changed world.
“God is about a big purpose in and for the whole of creation. The church has been called into life to be both the means of this mission and a foretaste of where God is is inviting all creation to go. Just as its Lord is a mission-shaped God, so the community of God’s people exists, not for themselves but for the sake of the work. Mission is therefore not a program or project some people in the Church do from time to time (as in “mission trip”, “mission budget” and so on); the church’s very nature is to be God’s missionary people. We use the word missional to mark this big difference. Mission is not about a project or a budget or a one-off event somewhere; its not even about a sending missionaries. A missional church is a community of God’s people who live into the imagination that they are, by their very nature, God’s missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all of creation in Jesus Christ.”
As outer personal impliations these parties, gardens lunches etc are fine, on another level there are other personal implications – for tuffty, clive and smiler my children (12, 10 and 1 yrs old and not their real names) – They don’t get to go to sunday school or learn about about Christ in traditional ways, which at times I think is great and at times causes a mild panic. They get used to various people in the house, going away for random chaotic weekends with random chaotic young people, they put up with us stopping to chat to people in the street, and they get used to living on a lower income than we could have as a family. They find themselves in conversations around the nature of church that may be beyond their understanding. Whilst there are some real benefits – at times they could see it as a pretty raw deal.
When we use the word missional in this way it also has to have organisational implications on how we do church or how we run the organistion and structural implications on what is church. Firstly how do we maintain a missional impetus and dna in our organisational structures? What started me thinking about this was the number of agencies that call themselves mission agencies but don’t employ people who aren’t christians or who when running mssion trips only allow people people of a certain level of faith to go along. How do we as a missional group use the whole of who we are and what we do in a missional way. By using volunteers who have no faith aligence or of other faiths, we create opportunities to connect, to learn, to dialogue. I am not saying we shouldn’t be discerning about who we work alongside, or that we should hide our faith afflilations from those who may be ale help us but don’t share our worldview but that we should value others in a way the doesn’t exclude and ask ourselves serious questions about what it is to be mssional in our organisational structures and the way we do things. This leads in turn to structural issues. Structually how do we position ourselves to be missional? Can we work inside systems and processes and what are the implications of change coming from the edge. How can emerging churches that use the word missional to describe themselves maintain bounded set approaches.
I wonder how many agencies that define themselves as missional or mission centred could meet the definition of being missional when applied to their organisational or structural make up.
I have been into this idea of a question to hold for a few weeks now since I posted this The Brood rip Napoleon Dynamite download
short reflection. Being unconvinced of the set time for God approach and an in-disciplined person when it comes to the blog I wondered what I could do through lent, that didn’t mean a daily reflection, but was more in line with connecting with God through the concepts of living your life as a life of worship, and praying constantly. So I hope to post some questions to hold as way to help me focus, and I wonder if anyone out there also wants to offer any questions to hold. No answers just questions!
A question to hold, for me is a pathway of prayer, it connects with images of prayer that are about silent connection rather than rambling words. They are questions that cannot be answered by intellect or study or theology but by the practice of holding and living, and discovery. My favourite question to hold and one that sustained me and help me survive our the years has been “what does it mean to be still and still moving?”
As we move from Ash Wednesday deeper into Lent, I have been exploring Luke and one commentator sees in Luke’s gospel the God who is in the connections we cant make. I love this concept particularly challenging is the idea that God is in the connection or process when we are often conditioned in seeing God in the person (which is also true) So my first question to hold is
Who is the God who makes the connections we cant make?
I recently read a book by Simon Parke called Desert Depths, which is the story of a vicar visiting a desert monastery. Each of the brothers/sisters has a name that they have come to own and this is the theme I want to use
First – A question to hold – by this I mean it is not a question that you should seek to answer by logic or theology but simply to hold, in your heart.
How do you approach mission – a desert or oasis?
As we pray today spend time reflecting on the names given to the residents of the monastery in the book
Peter the fool is the abbott, “seeks enlightenment above grace, expertise above mercy, wisdom above love,”
Dalip the empty – who cared, gave advice, and felt he was put on the planet to help others, yet in the desert came to realise it masked an inner emptiness, and though he got to know his soul and changed he didn’t change his name because “instincts remain” and “the desert likes accurate names”
Santos the flighty the hermit called so as he searched from one idea to another for enlightenment never realising the depths any.
Bernadette the chisel – in her there is “a critic a judge, who judges her and others, it drives her to do but never says to her ENOUGH”
Lets pray for one another and the journeys we face, our defaults and the surfaces of our lives that this week God may show us new depths.
Finally when you reflected on the names was your instinct to identify yourself with their names or the reasoning for their names? As you hold the question we first set How do you approach mission – a desert or oasis? Remember the “the desert likes accurate names”
Blessings
ASBO Jesus put up a great image the other day and by the time I got to look there were over 100 comments. My comment was on the nature of ambiguity in communication, something that we severely miss in the church. Jesus rarely explained the parables, and left room for discussion and interpretation. Often when I leave a service I have been speaking at it takes me ages to get out the door, people want to know the answers to the questions I have raised, they want to know where I stand, what i really believe. This dialogue is really important, but people still want to pin things down. On the one hand this is part of human nature and natural, the difference comes from the level of relationship you have with those with whom you dialogue. People who have travelled with me can cope with the ambiguity and lack of answers as they understand the journey. My initial conclusion about this is because people want us communicate orthodoxy but people who have been on the journey can live with the ambiguity because they have seen something of the orthopraxis along the way.
Tightrope movies
First Richard’s news if you missed it. Now…
A bunch of us were Christmas shopping last night after which bro-in-law told me that he had had his presents wrapped for free by people outside a church in the high street. I said I couldn’t bring myself to do that as it was cheating – I was a Christian already!
OK, I’m making a few assumptions which are really about myself and not about the people doing the wrapping:
The questions that now go through my head are:
I don’t know – I think that there is more to this than meets my eye.
Anyway, I’m going to give bro-in-law the benefit of the doubt: He is single and perhaps he was trying to meet some generous Christian females from our nearest big town!
I was discussing how missiology shold come from our christology and then give shape for our eccelesiology. We were discussing church on the edge and how do we maintain the mission dna in what we do and what arises. The conversation moved on to some of the initial conversations about part of the reason for establishing church on the edge was due to questions about the emerging churches approach to mission (or lack of it) and that missiological approaches to youth had a lot to learn about church from the EC and likewise EC about mission. (I am aware of the generalisations used in the last sentance). Anyway we wondered if, for many in the EC, the primary revelation/ focus on God was around creativity through the Trinity hence the lack of missionary impetus.Great Expectations movie full