My colleague and friend, Robert E. Webber died yesterday evening after a long, courageous and faithful struggle with pancreatic cancer.

Bob was past seventy, maybe seventy two, but he had the vigor of someone twenty-thirty years younger. Back in the nineties when I started writing in obscure journals and talking about issues post modern, post liberal, post Christendom, he was already on to it all. He encouraged me, supported me, pushed me on. Bob Webber blew my mind in the way he would humbly help and shepherd scholars, pastors coming up. I owe Bob Webber. He looked at my earliest writings and told me they were great. He gave me helpful suggestions on the Great Giveaway that really worked. And although we came from different generations, I was always amazed at how quickly he moved to understand the latest theologians.

These past months as Bob's struggle worsened, he always struggled with hope, grace, perseverance eeking out the very most out of his every breath, reading, writing, meeting with people telling them how much he loved them, and was blessed by them (I know of these encounters thru stories told to me). He died so well in the knowledge and hope of the resurrected Lord.

I have learned that in times of death, that there are two extreme ways to die in our society. One extreme way is to die technologized, put out of our misery, where we expire in the company of machines. The other extreme is to put suffering and death into the context of the whole story of our lives and what God has done in and through us, so that the meaning of suffering and death takes on a quality of holy struggle in witness to the ultimate victory of Christ over sin and death. Here, all the time is redeemed. Here, love, reconciliation, and appreciation are shared in a community. Suffering is borne with grace as somehow these sufferings take on the very task of entering Christ's sufferings for our salvation. Tragically many in our world die close to the first extreme. Rarely do we see alot of saints die in the second extreme. Bob Webber, and Joanne his wife and partner, showed us how to walk faithfully in this second way. For this I thank God.

"Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world; in the name of God the Father Almighty who created you; in the name of Jesus Christ who redeemed you; in the name of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you. May your rest be this day in peace, and your dwelling place in the Paradise of God. Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Bob. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen."

We'll miss you Bob... until we meet again in Christ's glory.

Pray for Joanne and the family. And I'll reserve the comments here for any other prayers, tributes to Bob.

Ernst Troeltsch The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches vo. 2 (NY McMillan 1931) p. 610 … made a distinction between the Lutheran account of vocation and the Calvinist account of vocation. For Luther, according to Troeltsch, Christians were called to a particular work and were to exercise Christian faith in vocations. Work was thus regarded in the more traditional way (Medieval) as extraneous to the kingdom itself. For Calvin, Christians were to serve the cause of God through their vocation, to exercise Christian faith per vocationem. That required the particular work to be transformed, ordered to the mission of God. (I was reminded of this thru a footnote on p. 325 of Allen Verhey's Reading the Bible in the Strange World of Medicine- I'm teaching a course on Medical Ethics this quarter)

This means a couple of things.

One - We must resist allowing work to be formed by capitalistic versions of success. Too often evangelicals have been Lutherans (in Troeltsch's terms) - not seeing the need to order work itself towards mission. Instead, we make work something separate from our Christian lives which we might use if we choose for Christian purposes. We compartmentalize work and put it alongside other parts of our life that we participate in alongside our church activities. Everything (family, work, church, neighborhood) gets separated into compartments to be balanced by our Blackberry as we sit on the throne of our lives managing it all towards (what financial services professionals call) "balance." In the mean time, we get swallowed up into our jobs without the means to resist the powerful forces of job, mortgage and success as accumulation. Our lives are virtually rendered useless for the Kingdom.

Therefore, secondly, we must have the means to redefine success at work via Calvinist terms (as defined by Troeltsch.) In other words we must see success at work not as ascending to the top of the sorporate ladder or accumulating millions (a.k.a. success in terms of capitalism.) Rather we must resist describing people as "successful" business men/women in church under these terms? This kind of success may indeed happen to Christians (and often does). But this is an aside to the success by which we followers of Christ's mission seek to be measured. Instead, we seek signs that this workplace has become ordered towards His purposes of righteousness, justice and reconciliation, a field for mission and the extension of the mission of Christ. Our success will have little to do with accumulation or ascent to the top of the corporate ladder. Work thus becomes subordinated to the mission of Christ.

Stunningly however in some quarters, I still see the gospel preached in terms opposite to this ( and I am not just talking about Christian television). God wants you to be happy and successful, he wants you to find your job fulfilling in itself. Following Jesus can help you climb to the top "for His glory." Huh? Do you see it? Jesus has become subordinated to success in terms of capitalism! We are seeking the promise that work will bring us the fulfillment we seek in this life. It is the mythology of late capitalism that pulls us in. Preaching in this way is equivalent to preaching "Jesus, the secret to a great sex-life" or "Jesus, the life you've always wanted."

Of course the only way we cannot give in to these powerful shaping forces of capitalism upon our identity and life, the only way we can escape allowing years of our lives being devoured by the black of hole of seeking capitalistic success, is to be part of a reordering reality, the worshiping community of God's mission in the world. This is what the missional communities must seek to be.
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Of course this does not mean we renounce work either. In my opinion missional pastors must learn how to navigate survival in a hostile capitalist world. I have noticed many missional pastors who are particularly skilled at navigating survival in the capitalist world without succumbing to the drive to accumulate or achieve success in the terms laid down by carnivorous capitalism. This skill is especially important to missional pastors who seek to do our work in the suburbs.
I hope to discuss this issue more at the seminar May 9th at the Grow Center at Northern. We'll have a morning of discussing postmodern theory for pastors and then an afternoon of working on the practical living of missional life in light of what modernity is trying to do to us. Hope to see some of you.

Bill Kinnon did a marvelous rant about a month ago. Our conversation together last month over the big church superstar mentality (when I was up in Toronto area for the Evolving Church Conference) spurred me on to think of my own experience of church planting. I have often pondered the church planter's tasks versus the mega church pastor's. To me, what the smaller more organic missional community leaders do is much more difficult. Here's why.

It is more difficult to take 10 people and grow a living organic body of Christ to 150 than it is to transplant 200 or 300 people (or I have heard even 600-800) and then grow that congregation to 5,000. Because a crowd draws a crowd. And if you have all the bells and whistles, 5 full time pastors and a youth program, all from day one, and a charismatic speaker with spiked hair (no shot intended at anyone in particular) and you don't mind putting the smaller less flashy community churches out of business, it will be harder to stop attracting a big crowd from all the people who want Christianity to be more fun and mesmerizing. BTW did you know that the statistics say that small church growth (from 10-150) is where the true conversions (as opposed to transfer growth) come from? Why then do evangelicals exalt the mega congregations as the answer to reaching those outside of Christ?

It is more difficult to build a community of people who know and care for one another, who when they speak, they are heard, who when there is conflicts, all participate in reconciliation and growth, than it is to put on a production and provide religious goods and services where if some people don't like it they can just go shopping elsewhere.

It is more difficult to preach a sermon to 100 people than it is to 8,000 people. Of course, there are some of my emerging co-laborers who don't believe in preaching per se. I believe in proclamation of the new reality, the calling of truth into being, and my thoughts on expository preaching are already out there. My point here is that to preach for 100 people you know and live with is a lot harder than to preach to 8000 people, 99% of whom you don't know. It is not that it is harder be vulnerable in a larger crowd. It is that in a space of 100 people you are more vulnerable when so many know you. In many ways you are naked. And I might add, I've preached for our own congregation of 100+ and I've preached for 1000+, and my experience is that a joke is 10 times easier to pull off in a large audience than in a small congregation (not that I should be trying to tell jokes in my sermon but you all know what I'm talking about).

It is more difficult to deal with conflict and leadership in a small organic church where our conflicts, our vision, our weaknesses must all be talked about, worked through. In small church organic leadership we must do the hard work of owning our weaknesses and speaking truth in love to other leaders. It's hard but we grow. In mega-sized corporate churches leadership and organization is much easier. BECAUSE YOU CAN JUST FIRE PEOPLE.

It is more difficult to build a live body of Christ, the social space of His Lordship, where his powers are made manifest and his mission is sent forth, and poor people are actually recognized and loved, and where a politic takes shape which subverts the consumerist depersonalizing forces of our day than it is to build large mega churches that play on the consumerists forces that rule our culture and play right into church marketing programs.

It is more difficult to organically engage people's lives where they are at than it is to become a media figure over night through some large publishing house by which those Christians looking for the next hip thing buy your book and drive to your church. Then you do not have to deal with everyday details of people's lives. You take the show on the road to promote the illusion that you started this church from 8 people and overnight it turned into 4,000 people and you couldn't stop it. But nobody asks the question how did this ACTUALLY START, so the mythology grows and all the young church planters with visions dancing in their heads become depressed and defeated when the same things do not happen to them.

It is more difficult to build a gathering that is a mission in the world, than it is to build a gathering that comes to see the show. It is more difficult to build a gathering into being the Body of Christ in the world than it is to build a crowd into a bigger crowd around a personality. Yes it is more difficult, but in the end so much more satisfying. And when you're gone this community will keep reproducing the love of Christ, the fruits of the Spirit and the leader(s) to carry on the transformation of the world until Christ returns.

FOR THESE REASONS, TO ME THE REAL HEROES ARE THE MISSIONAL PASTORS WHO RAISE UP THE ORGANIC COMMUNITIES THAT TAKE DIFFERENT SHAPES AND MANIFEST THEIR ACTUAL PRESENSE IN NEIGBOURHOODS. Yet status quo evangelicalism knows no other way but to extol the virtues of the mega-sized personalities at mega-sized conferences. In the process those who would be missional church pastors are demoralized, leave the pastorate or just give up.

Have I overstated my rant? If so I apologize ahead of time. May the Holy Spirit burn away any chaff that I have written and use the rest to encourage any discouraged missional community leaders for the glory of His Kingdom. Amen

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P.S. I will try to defend this and many other of my blogisized rants in intelligent and theologically informed conversation at the workshop I am doing for the Grow Center at Northern Seminary. If anyone cannot afford the 24 bucks they are charging, and wants to join me there, please let me know and I'll find a way to pay your way!

To everyone who's nearby, there's some outstanding things coming up at Up/rooted.

This Friday nite at 7 p.m. Mark Van Steenwyk is at Up/rooted North at Life on the Vine. Mark is a founder of Missio Dei, a missional, neo-monastic community on the West Bank of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. You can read about Missio Dei, their rule of faith, and their gatherings here. He blogs at jesusmanifesto.com, and is a member of the Twin Cities Emergent cohort. Are you interested in talking first hand about neo-monasticism, the idea that we can live as a community, engage in community practices that center our life in Christ while engaging the local community for gospel transformation, then you'll enjoy this evening. I long have wondered how to do intentional Christian community in the suburbs. Can this guy from the city help? Oh yeah! I'll be there, hope to see you!

Monday April 23rd, 7 p.m. Up/rooted west will be having Annie Gill-Bloyer from Bread for the World and the ONE Campaign join us and speak to us about how we can all be involved in the fight against global AIDS and extreme poverty. We're meeting at at Northern Seminary on Butterfield Rd. in Lombard, conveniently located off of I-88 & I-355. The presentation will be in the chapel at Kern Hall at 7pm. I'll be teaching that night at Northern, but I'll be sure to pop in.

This summer Up/rooted (with the help of several other Midwestern Emergent cohorts) will be hosting the first-ever Midwest Emergent Gathering. Mike Clawson and friends have done a great job of pulling this together. I urge you check it out if you're seeking to engage the emergent discussion first hand. I plan on being there!

Lastly, May 9, 10-4 p.m., I am doing an all-day seminar conversation on Post Modern Post Christendom and why it is good news for we seek to be the church more faithfully in our times. I hope to articulate clearly what these cultural phenomenon are (is that possible?) and then talk about going organic church when it comes to worship, mission, spiritual formation, leadership, justice and preaching. What can the church look like versus the mega-sizing that seems to drive church in the consumerized, individualized culture that is killing us all (was that too dramatic?). You can read more here.

If anyone is coming in overnight for one of these events at Northern, I can get you a good rate (through Northern) at the Hyatt right next door! Feel free to E-mail me.

This question has interested me for at least three years and here is why. I entered the door to postmodernity in the mid-90's (in Doctoral work) through a whole different response than the deconstructionists, a.k.a McIntyre, Hauerwas (who never uses the word postmodern), Lindbeck, Milbank etc.. Personally I learned much from Derrida, his followers, and the rest of the Continental thinkers that have grounded the postmodern critique. I have read them with fascination. I have in large part embraced their critique of modernity. I must admit however that appreciating their critique of modernity has not led me to then embrace their work as the means for doing theology that can lead us in a new faithfulness to Christ for our time. I want the critique, but I have found one or two of the other trajectories (that respond to the demise of modernity) much more promising for theology (Hauerwas, Lindbeck, Milbank and the many derivatives flowing from the Yale, Duke and Cambridge streams). At first, whenever I would talk about this in "emergent" circles I would get "blank stares" like I was some kind of sectarian fundamentalist. It wouldn't be the first time. But I am far from it. Based on these experiences however, I think some of the reaction to Hauerwas et. al. within the emergent circles is too quick. Perhaps this sector of the emergent crowd lacks an understanding of how these thinkers are respondents to the postmodern malaise of our time before it even became a prominent topic for the N. American theological scene. I don't know. Now I hear through the grapevine that there is a "Hauerwas mafia" in the emergent theological gatherings. If so, can I be a member?

All of this background is why I was pleased when Geoff over at "Church and Pomo" asked me to write a response to this question "Why is the emerging church drawn to deconstructive theology?" My post can be found here. Preceding me on their own take on this question were LeRon Shults, , Carl Raschke, Tony Jones, Jason Clark. I was honored to be included in the conversation. The conversation provides excellent background to the upcoming Emergent Theologians Conversation 2007. Wish I could be there! But even if you can't be there, this whole discussion is worth reading for the philosophically oriented thinkers among the emerging church. If anyone goes over there to read it, I'd be interested in hearing what you're thinking on this question.

Holy Week has arrived. At Life on the Vine we try to keep it simple, organic, beautiful, true. We try to remember respectfully yet thankfully. On Good Friday we do a Tenebrae. Then our vigil service really starts at sunrise on Sunday morning (Some year we hope to start on Saturday evening). Early Easter Sun. a.m. we go thru a shortened version of vigil, the lighting of the fire, a breaking of the chains and the opening of the sanctuary and the great Hallelujah. We baptize and re-commit to our baptisms and share the Eucharist together. Then we celebrate by eating an awesome breakfast love feast. Then the service of the Word, the proclamation of the new reality of the resurrection. Wow. It is the ultimate practice of Spiritual Formation for we really must be shaped by the Word and Response and baptism to truly understand and live into this new life we have been given in Jesus death and resurrection.

I'll be back posting next week. Until then. God be with you as you walk through the steps of Christ's passion into life.