I am in Orlando Florida for a few days at the General Conference of the C&MA. I am here to do (among other things) a talk about the theme "postmodernity as good news for the church." The point I am trying to explore is put well by Dwayne Brothers (on his blog) who attended this same seminar I led at the Grow Center a couple weeks ago. Dwayne states my basic point as:

Postmodernity allows for a critique of the way modernism has captured the church. In essence it frees the church to be the church. We are free from the attractional model of church - producing goods and services for people shopping for services - to embrace a missional paradigm - that we are participating in the mission of God.

Now I have done this talk a few times. The idea that postmodernity is good news for the church is nothing new for surely James K A Smith did a version of this idea in his book Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? My book The Great Giveaway takes a different approach (an ecclesiological approach) to the same end. What I am trying to do in these seminars is find a space to deconstruct the way we do church in America and reveal the sources of power, influence and rationality behind the ways we do things. Then I want to show a.) how these ways of being church are indeed (often) unfaithful to our calling (ekklesia), b.) tied to the cultural assumptions of modernity - not Christian ones, and c.) why they might be worth giving up because this culture of modernity we so esteem is in the process of a major crash and burn.

I would summarize the presentation like this. There are three broad shifts in the culture that postmodernity accentuates:

THE SHIFT in how we know: From … we know through universal processes of reason to … we know through participating in a community and its stories. I go into Lyotard here.
THE SHIFT in the way language works: From language represents reality to language being reality. I go into Derrida here.
THE SHIFT in the way I understand my-self in the world. From radical individualism to relational selfhood. I go into Foucault here.
My goal here is not to dazzle with postmodern analysis (couldn't do it if I tried). Rather I wish to use postmodernity to do some "psycho-analysis" on the evangelical church revealing why we are the way we are. And then as with all good psycho-analysis … let us be freed to pursue being the church under the reign of Christ participating in His mission.

In the session …
I describe why there are no credible metanarratives (Lyotard). I then show why this means we must then more faithfully live our story. The expression of that is a more Missional church, a church driven by participating daily in God's Story. Matt 6:33. 2 Cor 5:14-21.
I describe why truth is textual, communal. In a sense reality is created via community and language (Derrida). I then show why this means we must more intentionally reject violence for hospitality as our way of life in the world. The expression of that is a more Communal church. Acts 2: 41-47
I describe why our "selves" are always being technologized by the culture industries and multi national corporations (Foucault). I then show why this means we must reject consumerism in all its hideous forms for monastic practices of resistance in spiritual formation. The expression of that is a (more intentionally) Transformational church. Rom 12:1-2.

Notice, to all who would jump to conclusions, my primary drive is NOT to contextualize the gospel to a so-called postmodern culture. My first drive here instead is self-analysis of our own (evangelical's) modernity. In fact for me, contextualization is a modern move that must be deconstructed. For so often contextualization assumes there is a message which can be extracted from a given culture and translated into another culture's language and cultural practice. Yet this move in itself is naïve to the pitfalls of modernity. For it sets us up to repeat the errors of commodifying and/or consumerizing of the gospel. Instead I subscribe to a much slower approach (if indeed I am called to enter a foreign culture with the gospel). Let us as a church understand our own allegiances and cultural formation first. Then, with who we are and what God has given us (historically) let us take up (incarnational) residence in a different culture and allow God to build relationships in mutual submission out of which God works through hospitality, humility and love. Allow God to transform the relationships we participate in as we live the gospel in historically continuous enScripturated ways which shape those very relationships. Out of this, a community forms which indeed takes on its own cultural (Christian) identity forming a bridge into the new cultural context.

Each time I have done this seminar, the conversations, the irruptions and the rants have blown my mind. Today’s seminar was quite calm in comparison. Nonetheless, what is striking is the differences between the young and the not so young (those in ministry twenty plus years). And the openness of many pastors in smaller congregations (even some in the mega) is encouraging.

As always, in the search for improving my presentations, I welcome any comments, criticisms, and suggestions for improvement or things to add.

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Tommorrow (Sunday a.m.) we'll be speaking with the gathering at Watermark, an emerging church gathering in Tampa Bay. Looking forward to it!

I read a recent post by Al Hsu, the author of The Suburban Christian which confirms much of the data I have been mentioning on the new suburban poverty. This poverty is even more insidious because of the way the suburban context hides the poverty, isolates people in their poverty and leaves people in despair in ways somewhat different than in urban contexts. I would even argue that new forms of poverty are taking over the suburbs as thousands have been talked into sub-prime mortgages and various other enslavements which leave them with little or no money for other necessities despite having a suburban home to live in.

This new context of poverty draws attention to the impotence of many church structures in the suburbs where poverty cannot be dealt with through another program. People won't know or come to such a program in the suburbs. And the programs will not address anything but short term needs (which is necessary but not sufficient to be called God's justice). We need to find ways of becoming communities of justice in the suburbs just as the neo monastic folks have been pioneering inthe cities. It will look much different in the suburbs for the cost and structure of the burbs is completely different. Yet intentional communities are just as important: communities that seek and teach the ways of simple living, loving people, sharing peace and restorative justice to those caught up in the cycles of suburban impoverishment.

There are other people writing on this stuff . My good friends at Allelon just posted my article (a condensed version of what I presented at the Evolving Church Conference last March) as a first stab at what it is a very complex and important discussion for our times.
What do you all think about suburban poverty? In what ways is it different than urban poverty? And in what ways can intentional community in the burbs take up some of the same principles as neo monastic community in the urban contexts?

I've been grieving the loss of Bob Webber, both on the faculty here and in my own personal day to day engagements. And so I wasn't particularly looking forward to going to last nights's funeral/memorial service for Bob Webber. Anytime you go to a funeral of someone you care for, who you feel like you were with just a few days ago, it is sobering. You're letting go of some good times. You're confronting mortality.

Yet as I processed down to the front with the Northern Seminary and Wheaton Co. faculty, I got that I was in for something much more. For this service in true Bob Webber style, placed Bob's death unabashedly into the context of God's Story and where God is taking the world (Bob an Joanne planned the funeral before his death). It was in Bob's words, about the magnitude of God and what He is doing. One of the highlights was participating in the Eucharist while singing together "I am the BREAD OF LIFE." I came away from this memorial-funeral with a sense of courage towards death and uncertainty.

Another highlight was opening the memorial program and seeing an "almost personal" note from Bob written to all of us gathering for the memorial. It was heartening. Here are these words from Bob to us on the occasion of his funeral.

Dear Friends,

As a Christian I have always believed in Christ as the Victor over sin and death. I believe that Christ was the Second Adam, sent to this earth as God Incarnate, suffered death, was buried and rose from the dead to restore the entire creation. I believe that it is God who narrates the entire world and creation, from start to finish. Consequently, I have no fear of death although I do fear the process.

Today, there are literally hundreds of different styles one can follow and model for a funeral. However, historic Christian funerals were always about God. I was able to think about my own funeral and truly want it to be about God who created this world, defeated Satan at the cross and rose victorious over death and grave.

Today we begin with several eulogies, then when those are done, the real funeral begins and it's all about God. I want my funeral to be a testimony to the God who raises us from hopelressness and blesses us with new life in Him.

I hope these few words help to explain why my funeral is being done in a more ancient than modern way.

Bob Webber
The Lord be with you!

I read blogs. I have a steady diet of blog reading although I do try to diet (not spend too much time reading blogs). Every once in a while I strike gold. Here's some gold from the blogosphere with a comment or two.

ON MONEY: Mark Van Steenwyk tells us here why tithing is wrong. Instead we should LIVE SIMPLY and GIVE AWAY the rest. Mark writes about this and other ways we can live more faithfully in relation to money and the economy. Van Steenwyk and his JesusManifesto is worth reading.

ON OUR CHILDREN: Neil Cole wrote this about children. In my years of church planting the question of how do we care for our kids is one of the top two or three questions we as an intentional missional community have had to respond to. There have been many times I've needed what Neil Cole said right here.

ON DECONSTRUCTION VERSUS DOCTRINE AS (WITTGENSTEINIAN) GRAMMAR OR (MCINTYRIAN) NARRATIVE. Tony Jones gave a courageous and engaging presentation at the Wheaton Theology Conference in April. He talks about it here. I was there and believe me, it took cojones to do what he did because power point and pictures of Jesus holding the bat of a boy baseball player are not the stuff of this kind of academic conference. Having said that, I think Tony provided the right diagnosis to the problem of modernity,Orthodoxy and evangelicalism's lack of resourcement of the Ancient traditions. But his answer to the issue, "Orthodoxy as an event" ala Caputo/Derrida, provides little help as D. H. Williams revealed in his questioning of Tony afterwards. Because afterall, is not what Tony described as "the strike zone," a "rule" that is part of a game (within a rulebook/grammar ala Lindbeck) with a tradition/culture (cultural linguistic ala Lindbeck), a history, carried on by a community of interpretation. This sounds like Wittgenstein and McIntyre. Hauerwas and friends are famous for using baseball analogies like this. Has Tony been sneaking over to "Duke" country? I believe all the moves Tony wants to accomplish can be better accomplished over there without giving up on any of the insights and help offered by the French Continentals. This is not the time and the place, but I would love to hear Tony Jones and Brian McLaren engage Zizek and Badiou's complaints about Derridian descontruction as leaving us with nothing to move a politics forward (into revolution). Good job Tony! And waiting for more.

ON THE HAZARDS OF INDETERMINACY AND LACK OF COMPASSION. Jamie Arpin-Ricci tells us in a courageous post why stating what we believe in relative terms might sometimes put those who are struggling with homosexuality in a torturous position. He also states beautifully why the church has miserably failed at being the kind of people who can minister to the gay or lesbian person facing such struggles and decisions in their lives. This great post revealed to me once again the weaknesses inherent in both Brian McLaren's famous Out of Ur Post and Mark Driscoll's response last year. I responded to these posts here (you have to scroll down). I'm not Jamie. I don't pretend to speak from the vantage point of those who are, who have been or ever struggled with the issues of being gay in any way. But from my perspective, I believe I was close to where Jamie is on the issue although he'd have to answer that. Thanks Jamie for putting yourself out there and calling us to be the kind of people we need to be in order to both welcome and minister to gay and lesbian peoples.

ON MISSING THE POINT OF CHURCH. Bill Kinnon wrote a great piece on the dangers of church becoming built around a personality and then becoming an enterprise of the same personality and/or ego. It is rebellious and irreverent and a bit angry at what this does to people who allow themselves to be called the congregation in this situation. Thanks again Bill.

ON INDIVIDUALISM IN THE CHURCH. Scot McKnight writes a great piece for Out of Ur on how individualism has destroyed the gospel in our churches. How does this guy do all the writing he does? And still grade papers?

And lastly, ON WHEN I DON'T HAVE TIME TO READ I read Len Hjalmarlson's blog always full of highlights and comments from his voracious reading of blogs and books. He keeps me up to date when I don't have time to keep up to date.

These are just a few of the highlights. I've got to update my blogroll! Any other suggestions?