I spent last Friday and Saturday at Wesley Park United Methodist Church in Michigan leading their governing council through a discussion of the why’s and how’s of reorienting a church to the Mission of God in the world. It was a great time and thanks to all there who welcomed me and entered the dialogue with me. I spent yesterday and Monday at my own District Conference. Although I was one of the speakers, I got to listen to other pastors talk about changing from an “attractional” focus to a missional one. We heard some amazing stories and confessions of the temptations and failures of building a big church for (some of) the wrong reasons. Of course, I was one who had plenty of confessions of temptations and failures.

There was a theme in both of these meetings which can be summed up by what Will Clegg said at the close of our meetings together there at Wesley Park. The question was, “ok, where do we go from here?” Will Clegg said, “I think it really starts right here (with the council).” We need to take a year and just live this ourselves before we go to the congregation with anything. Let’s decide to take small initiatives towards arranging our lives to live missionally together, from whence we can then inhabit the church body with the stories we tell and our examples.” Simple but profound (I hope I quoted Will half way accurately). At my own District Conference, as I listened to leaders of churches that once were on the seeker-church, attractional model track as recently as two to five years ago, with larger buildings and budgets, I heard almost the same words. It has to start with the leaders/pastors doing it – living their lives missionally, in the places and lives of those who are lost, hurting and without Christ.

There is always the temptation to lead from the top on down. To use some sort of technique to create a program. But this is an ethos – a culture – we are nurturing: a culture of Mission and Christian community. This cannot be instituted as a program although it can be nurtured through instruction. This cannot be enforced top down although it can be led by those in leadership modeling the kind of life we are leading others into.

There will be fear for a lot of pastors who have been routinized into serving Christians and having the needy come to them always putting the pastor in a position of power. These habits are hard to break but must be broken if we would lead our churches into the Mission of God. I offer these texts below, ironically read by one the leaders at Wesley Park at the end of our meeting. Thanks to Wesley Park and the Midwest District of the C&MA – you all encouraged me and inspired me and blessed me this past week.

You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia – your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. 1 Thess 1:6-9.

Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. Phil 3:7

(These two verses, by the way, are quoted by Alan Hirsch in The Forgotten Ways p. 115 in a discussion of this topic which is very worth reading!).

Last week, around the Eucharist, our community was praying the following prayer. An individual would say: Jesus – with regard to my ________, I submit to your obedience. And then the whole community would respond with Jesus’ words in the Garden  “Not my will, but thine be done o Lord.” I said something about my desire to excel in academics.  I could have said other things as well. In the process we were all putting to death our own desires and  pet dreams to follow in the obedience of Christ so as to be raised into new life.  I have found this spiritual discipline to be absolutely essential for staying grounded in the work of church planting and my ministry of teaching.  I think it’s a discipline essential for all church planters who wish to flourish in post Christendom.

As Lent moves to the finality of Jesus’ obedience in Gethsemene, I have to constantly remind myself of this call to submit the day’s work to God and His Mission. From the smallest things that are so important (like a visit to someone’s bedside, or an administrative task, or the making arrangements for a breakfast) to the big things I have committed to that seem to get squeezed out from getting done. If I let my large grandiose goals take over my life, and see everything else as frustrating them, I become worthless and depressed. These too are the lessons I learned in church-planting: daily little seeds are planted – they are nurtured in the smallest of ways. And over time they are what God uses over time to grow something marvelous. But most often I’m afraid this takes many many years of consistent gardening. It’s wonderful work if you like gardening but you have to continually die to self aggrandizing visions of grandeur. For me, I have had to regularly return to the Lenten turn to obedience that happens on Palm Sunday.

I recently saw the following prayer (HT Ben Sternke) originally attributed to Oscar Romero. I first learned of Romero through the work of William Cavanaugh.  Romero was the Catholic priest who protested the torture regimes of El Salvador and was shot while performing the Mass. Ironically I don’t think he actually wrote this “observation,” but instead was written in his honor. It is an appropriate reminder for all church planters, pastors and leaders .. and all Christians as we enter these days of Holy Week. It is kind of like a prayer I think well suited for me in the final week of Lent, for Holy Week. For it reminds me of my proper place in the Kingdom, and that I must serve out of a certain posture of humility tiwards God. Lord knows I need this again and again. So I offer it to especially to all church-planters, missional community gardeners everywhere. Many blessings on your of walking the way of death and new life with Christ during this Holiest of Weeks.

Archbishop Oscar Romero

Tony Jones asks in this article “are academic theologians useless?” The picture above is not of Tony, but from his article. He accuses theologians “of falling asleep at the wheel, of giving up the populist agenda, …of caring more about tenure and academic guilds than about changing the minds of the people in the checkout line at Wal-Mart.” He dared to suggest that the academic theological guild is becoming irrelevant and challenged theologians to market themselves and learn how to reach/affect the broader public.

I think Tony is right to raise this issue. In relation to Tony’s challenge, I have three comments for those entering academic life who wish do serious theology yet impact the concrete life of the church and culture.

a.) The problem of the Tweener book. The tweener book is a book which is neither an academic monograph nor a trade book written for a broader untrained audience. These ‘tweener’ books are written for pastors, the theologically interested and well read, the leaders in the church who communicate regularly to the lay person/ who is not theologically trained or motivated. The problem is these ‘tweener’ books don’t sell 40,000 copies, never mind 20,000 copies. They cannot be priced as a monograph reference text for other professors/libraries that usually buy these books. They fall in between. They are risky and not as economically feasible for a lot of traditional publishers. Yet they fulfill probably the most important educational task. For it is among this audience of leaders – pastors-theologically interested readers where the significant changes are cultivated through books. The economics of these books make it imperative that serious theologians become more creative in marketing and writing publications that are in essence tweener publications.
b.) There is a need for more Ph.D. pastors. There is a need for people who think, lead and pastor out of the church context and then write seriously out of this same context. These pastor theologians are in the position to write some of the most impactful theology. (Think Augustine (bishop of Hippo), Luther, Wesley, Barth (early on), Yoder (ecumenical engagements, post WW 2 Europe reconstruction peace church activities) theologians who were active pastors. But too often, too quickly, academic Ph D’s are swerved into pursuing an academic job at all costs. Yet in a time when seminaries, and religious departments in universities are shrinking, there are less and less of these jobs available. And those that get those jobs find them suffocating and extremely inhibiting in terms of offering little time to think, write and minister. Writing theology then becomes a task reserved out of the guild for the guild. I therefore urge Ph.D.’s to consider ministry and adjunct teaching as a vocation. You can still participate in the guilds as much as before. Seminaries need these kinds of teachers. And you’ll get more time to write, a better context from which to write and you’ll also probably (all-tolled) make more money .
c.) The Publishers Have Become the Pope and we need to deal with it. It bothers me that for the reasons cited above by Tony, that the church in America is being theologically led more and more by the publishing houses who can market their books to the most people in a young age group. The new pope of especially American evangelicalism and progressive evangelicalism are the publishers and the media empires behind them. They are dictating theology and direction of the upcoming church. Meanwhile the history of the church’s theology and Scriptural interpretation, the understanding of the history of doctrine, is too easily left to the side. We have gurus who travel and write on the fly. They write well, some do excellent work, but many never engage in the dialogue and conversation that has gone before them in the history of the church. What results is unreflective blundering into many of the same dilemmas we’re writing to correct or advance beyond. And then, the academic theologians end up wining about it. We need more theological academically trained pastors/writers who can enter these conversations and subvert the publishers from always equating good theology with what sells.