on September 27 2011

Tim Keller’s “Gospel Ecosystem”: 3 Dangers In a Noble Idea

In the last year or so, Tim Keller has put forth a bold theory of engaging the city which he calls the Gospel Ecosystem (you can read about it here, here and here). I applaud his effort!! Basically he calls for several elements to work in concert with one another to eventually reach/change an entire city. This is a model of church engaging culture worth paying attention to. These elements include:

1.) A kingdom-centered, city-wide prayer movement that is clearly not the turf of any particular church or network.
2.) Specialty evangelistic ministries, especially university campus and youth ministries.
3.) Justice & mercy initiatives, e.g. Christian involvement in local government, development of specialized nonprofits.
4.) Faith & work initiatives, particularly Gospel-centered fellowships for people with similar vocations, e.g. a regular fellowship of Christian artists.
5.) Educational and family-support organizations.
6.) Leadership development systems.
7.) Influential leaders from varied disciplines collaborating for city transformation, e.g. industry, media, government, church, education.

I’m a fan of Tim Keller. He has a heart and vision for reaching cities. I like that he is provoking a church based strategy for engaging the whole city. I like that he is pushing churches and para-church organizations to work together for the justice of the city. I like the bigness of the vision. I like his “tipping point” idea (learned from Charles Colson) that once we achieve a 10% presence, the entire culture becomes affected on a broad scale towards the gospel. I just think (and here’s the rub) that the way we get to that 10% is from the ground-up as opposed to (what might come off as) a totalist strategy implemented from above.

So I have my qualms (this is a permanent state of discomfort for Ana-baptists in order to maintain their status as Anabaptists). There are some dangers here. I pose them as questions to Tim Keller and the neo-Reformed fans of the Gospel Ecosystem. I mean this post to provoke conversation to further the cause, not as an indictment.

1.) A REDUCED GOSPEL: Is there an agreement on what the gospel is in this ecosystem? This of course is a gospel ecosystem. But is there a singular understanding of the gospel in this Gospel Ecosystem that is focused around the justification of the individual believer in Christ? Not that I don’t believe in this part of God’s salvation, but I don’t believe one can enforce a single understanding of God’s salvation in the world across an entire spectrum as large as a metroplitan city. Yet the fact that Keller calls for the use of specialty evangelistic ministries in no. 2.) and seems to separate this evangelism from justice ministry in no. 3) suggests Keller’s Gospel Ecosystem might be susceptible to a reduction/focus on this one part of the gospel (justification by faith). This could become the singular focus of church plants whereby we miss numerous other entrance points in each local context for the gospel. A reduced gospel proclamation installed theologically across the board limits the power of the gospel in Christ to transform whole structures. Over against this approach, I strongly suggest that the gospel proclamation take shape on the ground out of each specific context. Here we proclaim the victory of God over oppression, the forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with God and the many other aspects of God’s reign in Christ as makes sense (and is compelled by) each local context. I don’t see Keller reducing the gospel, yet I intuit that Keller’s Gospel Ecosystem could be used in this way. Am I intuiting wrong? Is there the danger that this system could promote a bunch of individuals being saved from hell only to go on living comfortably within the existing unjust systems?     

2.)AN IMPERIALIST IMPULSE?: Is there an imperialist impulse here that could derail the whole project? This vision of the Gospel Ecosystem is a grand vision. It imagines Christians infesting every area of life in the city. The goal of item no. 7.) is to put key influential leaders in every institution of cultural power including the arts, media, business, government, education. My problem with this is it reads like a “blueprint to takeover the city.” It approaches the city from a position above the city, as one in power. But this is not the way of Jesus. Indeed Jesus is Lord, we are not. So we enter humbly, asking what is God doing. Locally we inhabit each space. There will be times to join in seeing God at work in gov’t. There will be times to withdraw and subvert because “the powers” have taken over. We discern these things humbly as a local infestation of the Kingdom. We allow the politics of Kingdom righteousness to be made manifest and birth the Kingdom in contagion into the city. Now I know from reading Keller’s Lausanne speech on Gospel Ecosystems, that he knows the theology of “Resident Aliens” (1 Pet 2) well. But is there not a potential for some unhealthy triumphalism here in the Gospel Ecosystem? Are there the seeds of another Jerry Falwell movement here of another kind? Just asking?

A byproduct of this approach is that it subconsciously assumes these systems are in themselves good. They just need to be reformed by good Christians. That by changing leadership these structures can be directed to their God ordained purposes. In fact these structures may have to be done away with entirely. Maybe the large City gov’t system does not need to be redeemed. Maybe it needs to be dismantled entirely. It is so corrupt, taken over by the evil powers, that it must come down. It may be heresy to say, but maybe the public schools just need to end. A new system of local schooling, church schooling, home schooling would be God’s answer to the city. On the other hand, maybe pubic education can be redeemed!! Of course, these calls are not our calls. Jesus is Lord of all. But putting people in positions of power tends to assume the existing structures are from God and we just need to transform them. This is the “tell” that the Gospel Ecosystem is Reformed in impulse (Kuyperian).  Such a Kuyperianism can be blind to when the structures in power have in fact become given over to the powers. We then might have to subvert them instead of participating in them.

3.) INDIVIDUALISM: Is there an individualism here that does not recognize “the principalities and powers”? There seems to be an assumption in Keller’s Ecosystem (from no. 7.) that if we send individuals into the various spheres of power, e.g. arts, industry, media, government, church, education, that they shall become influencers instead of being influenced. But this is anathema to an Ana-baptist like moi. For we know that power corrupts. That indeed some systems (NOT ALL!!) are too far gone. That sometimes (NOT ALL THE TIME!) participation in them at all is participation in its sin and the corruption thereby.  How shall individuals not be absorbed into the systems that have become the very enfleshment of the unjust powers. Some of us are literally asking this about some of the structures of U.S. society. For sure this is an extreme, but it is becoming less and less of an aberration. Many of our systems (including church systems) corrupt us with money/salary and make any resistance from inside almost impossible. Is there a healthy awareness of this dynamic in the Gospel Ecosystem? Or will we see more Christians ala George Bush enter the system only to look more like the system 8 years later?

IN SUMMARY, I urge caution in a church’s strategy for the city. Let the words “seek the welfare of the city” (said from Exile Jer 29:7) drive us to cultivate the Kingdom humbly in each neighborhood – a local expression of the gospel on-the-ground in people’s everyday lives or work, family, government, education. These expressions, by their presence, shall then be able to call into question the unjust powers, as well as cooperate with the structures and bring life to them when they are of God and His Mission. Let us pay attention to Bryan Stone’s exhortation that ?”the evangelism of Jesus … is unintelligible apart from the announcement of a new government to which we are called to convert, embodied in such concrete practices as the rejection of violence, justice for the poor, love to enemies, economic sharing and the relativizing of national and family allegiances”(p.149) By infesting society on the ground in this fashion, God will surely bring in His Kingdom to the city.

I am sure Tim Keller’s speech at Lausanne could be seen as just this kind of strategy. Yet there lies within it, some seeds for undermining the Kingdom.  So I offer these questions with the hope of furthering the work of Tim Keller, and the idea of the Gospel Ecosystem.

BTW: I think the Gospel Ecosystem should be in conversation with CCDA. I like the way CCDA a.) centers their efforts in a wholistic gospel of Jesus Christ, a.) emphasize entering humbly within a locale, and c.) seek God’s justice in and through Christ as a communal development under the Lordship of Christ.

What say you? Over paranoid ana-baptist? Am I misreading the Gospel Ecosystem?

Filed under Neo-Anabaptist,Neo-Reformed,Post-Christendom,Uncategorized 16 Comments

on May 11 2011

Why Neo-Reformed Theology Won’t Jive With Mission: I Plead My Case

I’m hanging out at the ecclesia network’s church planter training week. Last night, we all enjoyed some fellowship at a local establishment – and a fight broke out – ok not really. But a real good discussion happened as I tried to explain to a few “Presbyterian” friends why I think Neo-Reformed theology can’t lead us into mission amidst the post Christendom cultures of the West. After we all professed our love and esteem for Tim Keller (and I’m serious here), I argued that Reformed theology, extracted out of Medeival Europe and transplanted to the frontiers of N America, (almost automatically) becomes individualistic. Without the monolith of European Roman Catholicism to reform, the Reformation’s principles – the so-called sola’s – cannot provide a foundation for the Christian life. As hard as “they” might try, such a people formed around the “sola’s” will eventually devolve (once separated from its European culture) into an internalized, transactional individual faith. OK, that’s my case. But let me try to expand with questions

The Reformation Reformed a Church that Was Already There

The Reformation’s claims for a.) Sola Scripture (Scripture alone), b.) Sola Fide (it is by faith we are saved – by no other means), c.) Sola Christus (in Christ alone, we need no other mediator including THE CHURCH!!) were assertions made over against a corrupt church. They provided a corrective to something that was already there. In relation to a.) the church’s interpretive authority needed the call to submit to Scripture. In relation to b.) the church’s excessive penitential demands upon its people (which had made salvation about works) needed the call to recognize salvation was a work of God in Christ by trust in Him, not the church. And in relation to c.) the church itself had become a corrupt controller of al things having to do with salvation including the Eucharist and absolution. The church needed to be chastened from being the controller of God’s blessings in Christ to being the servant thereof. So in simplest terms, the Reformation reinserted the authority of Scripture over (and in) the church, the role of faith in one’s participation in God’s salvation in Christ, and that the church is God’s servant not controller.

But, within medieval Europe, these “Sola’s” did not wipe away a.) the church’s interpretative role in understanding Scripture, b.) the importance of the sacraments and disciplines (the eucharist, confession, serving the poor, etc.) to lead the individual into holiness, or c.) the church as a social reality by which the witness of Christ is carried on into the world. These “sola’s were meant to reform these practices not wipe them away.

Without Something to Reform, Reformed Theology Devolves into Individualist Christianity

Many years later however, transplanted into the United States, Reformed theology has nothing to reform. The “sola’s” are left standing alone as the foundation for a Christian life together.  This worked for many years as long as the cultural consensus came along with the Reformed communities from Europe. But once the Reformed culture began to lose its hegemony within a given context (whether it be the Dutch in Grand Rapids, Swiss or Scottish Presbyterian cultures of the north etc.), the church’s life will devolve into individualism. We get a.) individualist interpretation of Scripture where I – “the individual” becomes the authority for what Scripture means, b.) decisionism – where salvation becomes an individualist transaction all about me where by faith I get pardon for sin and eternal life, and c.) the church becomes the invisible church, a collection of individuals to whom the church must now appeal to.

To me this is what happened as Reformed theology devolved into its current Souther Baptist formulations so prevalent in certain parts of the so-called Neo-Reformed New Calvinist movements. Do you agree? Do you see this in the current manifestations of Neo-Reformed New Calvinism?

What This Means for Mission

This is important for me because I contend such an individualism works against the church taking up a communal, incarnational particpation in God’s Mission in the world. In relation to a.) such individualism too often makes the church an ideologizing entity which uses Scripture as prooftexts to rally people around one position over against another. We turn into a defensive and/or antagonistic people. We do this because we no longer see the church’s role in guiding interpretation. As a result we lose our ability to come together as a people in submission to one another to discern interpretation of texts for new issues we face in the culture. In relation to b.) salvation becomes an individual transaction for me instead of something God is doing in the world to make all things right in which I participate through conversion. We make Jesus private. We lose Mission. And in relation to c.) church becomes eventually something that we must offer as appealing to individuals. We set ourselves up for attractional and/or consumer church. We lose the ability to be shaped by church into a way of life in God’s Mission in the world.  In short then, I contend that Reformed theology has much to offer and learn from. But it is eventually ill suited to shape a people in Mission within Christendom. It remains ecclesiologically functional within Christendom type cultures (like Dallas Texas, Nashville Tenn and Grand Rapids MI). This is why I’m an Anabaptist with Catholic appreciations.

BUT THIS ISN’T REFORMED THEOLOGY!

OK, so I’m asking: is this a fair analysis of Reformed theology hitting the shores of N America? I’m obviously not the first one to argue in this way. Reinhard Hutter made a similar case in Suffering Divine Things. Stanley Hauerwas recently quoted Bonhoeffer (here) saying that “American Protestantism is Protestantism without the Reformation.” Bonheoffer alludes to the conditions I’m discussing here.  But there are many, like Richard Mouw and Jamie Smith who would contend that I have described something that is not Reformed theology. Indeed they argue that the Neo-Reformed theologies are not Reformed at all, they are something else – usually described as Neo Puritan Pietism or something like that. I contend, that yes, the Neo-Puritan Neo-Reformed theologies of folk like Piper, Mohler and Driscoll might not be classically Reformed theology. But still, this is what happens when we separate Reformed theology from its reforming task within Christendom. Are we not seeing many of these individualist tendencies within the Neo-Reformed movement for these reasons?

OK, I have plead my case. I’m expecting and welcoming push back. Shoot, I’m willing to convert. I just need to know where I’m wrong. What say you?

Filed under Ecclesiology,Neo-Anabaptist,Neo-Reformed 74 Comments

on April 6 2011

We’re Asking For a Different Kind of Leadership

Recently I was talking with a guy who was attempting to lead a missional community. He had come from an established church setting. He was used to understanding church in terms of already established structures. He was constantly tempted to lead by edict. “We need to do this!” “These elders should be doing this!” “We need to ensure that everybody leading local house groups is at this meeting and learning “such and such.” So I tried to tell him this kind of leadership won’t do in the process of gathering and nurturing a community of mission. We need a different kind of leadership from you.

1.) We need a leader who puts forth ideas, vision by I saying “This is where/how I see God working. This is where I hear God calling us” and then ALWAYS submits that to the other person(s) asking – what are you seeing? Where are you going? Is this the way you are being called as well? NOT SOMEONE WHO SAYS “OK THIS IS THE VISION GOD HAS GIVEN ME FOR THIS CHURCH – CAN YOU FOLLOW ME? OR DO YOU NEED TO GO TO ANOTHER CHURCH?

2.) We need a leader who leads by listening and then knows when to ask (out of relationship) “can I speak truth into your life?” NOT SOMEONE WHO TELLS PEOPLE WHAT THEY NEED TO HEAR/DO BEFORE HE/SHE EVEN LISTENS

3.) We need a leader who never presumes authority but whose very presence and life makes people want to trust him/her and follow him/her. NOT SOMEONE WHO SEEMS TO ALWAYS BE ACTING OUT OF HIS/HER KNOWLEDGE, EXPERTISE OR PERCEIVED OFFICE.

4.) We need a leader who serves first by example, who embodies the disposition of being in everyday ministry/service to the hurting and then asks someone “can you join me on this?” NOT SOMEONE WHO RUNS THE CHURCH AS IF HE/SHE IS A CEO

5.) We need a leader who can unfurl the reality of the Lordship of Christ in the world and in each one’s life via Scripture, and then invite/challenge people to live there. NOT SOMEONE WHO USES SCRIPTURE TO PREACH A PRE-SCRIBED PRE-DETERMINED AGENDA FOR THE FUTURE ORGANIZATION OF THIS CHURCH.

6.) We need a leader who can cultivate the Kingdom in people, who can sit down with people over a cup of coffee, ask questions, and help each person see that God is “breaking in” through Jesus Christ working for the salvation of this person’s entire life and the people around him/her. And then ask, “how do you respond, how can you be faithful, how will you join in?” NOT SOMEONE WHO HAS A SET OF PRE DETERMINED PROGRAMS THAT HE/SHE WANTS EVERY PERSON TO VOLUNTEER FOR.

7.) We need a leader who can teach many more leaders how to be this kind of leader. NOT THE KIND OF LEADER THAT RECRUITS MORE LEADERS UNDER HIM/HER TO CARRY OUT HIS ORDERS.

I freely admit, that this kind of leadership is most often different than the leadership we have become used to. The other ways of leadership work within an established church systems where there are Christians already compliant and simply content to acquire some necessary Christian goods and services. I should adamently say that there will still be “programs” that develop within a church as a result of this “missional” kind of leadership. These programs however will always facilitate, indeed embody, the rhythms of life with God in His Kingdom/mission. Once we deviate from this, the other kind of leadership habits start to become default. The kind of leadership proposed here however creates certain kinds of habits, certain kinds of dispositions that open the way for God to work His Kingdom among us and around us. There is something of a renewal of this kind of leadership happening among missional communities. I believe it is a recovery of the way Jesus speaks about leadership (did he use that word?). Matt 20:17-28. Read it and take it in. It is the foundation for the revolution (i.e. the Kingdom of God coming).

Perhaps you have an addition or two to the kind of leader we need (this list could be a lot longer!). Please tell us!

Filed under Missional Leadership,Neo-Anabaptist,Uncategorized 38 Comments

on February 15 2011

Yoder’s Jeremian (dispersed missional) Ecclesiology: What Yoder got right according to Leithart

I’ve been reading Peter Leithart’s Defending Constantine lately. A lot has been said about Leithart’s bashing of John Howard Yoder. To me, it’s just not that big a deal. I think Yoder’s proposals for ecclesiology in post-Christendom are exactly right (I’m a “homer”). And since the new post Christendom cultures of N America is where I believed I’m called, I’ll follow Yoder. The squabbles over history and assessing Constantine’s Christianity are certainly interesting. But I don’t see it as much of an issue. The question is, how do we Christians be the people of God when we are not in power, or losing power, or indeed when we are in the missionary situation. I agree with Leithart that the question “what do we do when the emperor converts to Jesus as Lord?” is more complex than Yoder would have it.  And indeed there is something positive to be learned from Constantine about Christians “in power” in these ways. But we’re not there right now. And I don’t see the pursuit of the world’s power, the power of the sword, or the corporatist power that is polluted by all things Mammon, as the legitimate pursuit of Christians. So let’s get on to how we are to be Christians in the post-Constantinian cultural situation we find ourselves in (which is large parts of N. America).

And here is where Yoder got it right eh? Let me quote Leithart on Yoder’s description of how to be church. This is what Leithart describes as Yoder’s Jeremian ecclesiology based in Jer 29:1-7. Leithart says:

For Yoder, the Jeremian model of Jewish life and identity does more than simply provide a way of making sense of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels. It provides a model for the church in its relation to the powers …Yoder’s Jeremiah instructed the people to settle into the galuth, exile, not as a temporary “hiatus” before a new kingship and temple were established, nor simply as a punishment for their sins. Jews were to “seek the salvation of the culture” of Babylon by accepting their dispersion as a call to mission. They were to retain their separate identity by adherence to a peripatetic moral and liturgical life, … (they) established places of worship without priesthoods whenever ten households gathered, … (they) found the “ground floor of identity” in the common life, the walk, halakah,” and confounded kings and emperors “with the superior wisdom and power of one authentic God.”

Jeremiah’s vision for Israel in exile was neither an effort to “Hebraize” Babylon … nor a retreat from cultural engagement. Jews served “the entire ancient Near East world as expert translators, scribes, diplomats, sages, merchants, astronomers.” … Far from being a place of resignation and lament, “Babylon itself very soon became the cultural center of world Jewry.” … (according to Yoder) this is the cultural and political program that the church inherited from Judaism.” 294-295.

Leithart says that Yoder’s vision of Christian engagement is “invigorating and just right in many respects.” He disagrees with Yoder over whether such a vision is the permanent social strategy for Christians. There is the goal of history, Leithart says, to move back from Babylon to Jerusalem.” Leithart asks what happens when the emperor becomes Christian.

This is good stuff. I’ve enjoyed the book. But for right now, I want to emphasize two things that have become clearer after reading Leithart. 1.) Leithart’s critique aside, Yoder’s vision of the church is the one most apropos for the current cultural situation many of us are living in – i.e. N America’s New post Christendom cultures. It is compelling. 2.) We can learn from Constantine something similar to what we learned from Yoder – We should not seek power as dictated by “the world,” the power of the sword, or the corporatist power that is polluted by all things Mammon. This applies for in the church as well as outside. For whenever we do this, we doth separate ourselves from the gospel. We should not try to compete or win (for Jesus) against the existing people in governmental power on the world’s terms. That very second, the world has won, Jesus has been lost. Our witness absorbed into the ways of sin (Did not pres. George Bush lose his ability to rule as a Christian the moment he slung the sleaze and the mud at John McCain, nevermind Al Gore or later John Kerry.) We should never seek to exercise power in the world’s terms. Instead, the most subversive thing we can do to change the world is seek the salvation of the individuals in government, and ask them to renounce the world’s corruption at all costs. When one of these people, truly gets saved, happy days!! But as Hauerwas reminds “Yoder also encouraged Christians to believe that emperors could be Christians. He observed that if they tried to rule as Christian, it might result in an earlier death than they had anticipated- but, he observed, most emperors die early anyway.”

I think the Jeremian vision for the church is the way of the gospel for the challenges the church faces in Mission in the West. What say you? I’m off to Ambrose University for a few days, but I’ll try to chime in when time and internet allows.

Filed under Missional Ecclesiology,Neo-Anabaptist,Post-Christendom,Stanley Hauerwas,Uncategorized 19 Comments

on August 30 2010

The Welcoming and Mutually Transforming Community Among the LGBTQ: An Example and Some Questions

I’ve written enough on this subject already. But I sense a need to summarize some thoughts especially in light of this post by Craig Carter. I think Craig’s got me wrong and frankly inhabits a position that does not meet the demands of mission to a sexually broken society. I’ll respond to Craig’s post in next few days when I get a minute. For now, I’d like to put forward a summary of the whole thing by posting a comment from the last post. It’s by Jon Trott. Jon encapsulates the challenges, the practices and the shape of the “welcoming and mutually transforming community” as it seeks to incarnate the sexual redemption of Jesus Christ.

Living in an intentional community of very imperfect people, of which I am certainly one, I might add that sexuality within a Christian community ought to entail confession, transparency, and restoration. This could also be formulated as repentance / restoration, but that implies sexual failure, which is not always the case; one can be tempted without falling. But the need for others walking alongside — others who also transparently admit their own struggles sexually and otherwise — is one of the great lacks in the Church today. It startles me how dishonest we are individually and corporately about the near-universality of sexual temptation. How do we minister to one another? Living as I do, I have the amazing luxury of being able to walk down the hallway on most days to a friend’s room, pull him aside, and ask for prayer and/or counsel re being tempted sexually. These days, it is more often just “Five minutes to live by” — a quick confession of feeling weak or even entertaining sexual thoughts — followed by a prayer. Why do this? Why not just do it on my own? Because the act of becoming transparent before my brother also makes me accountable to him as a representative of Jesus. I know the difference — he’s not going to rescue me or condemn me. But looking into his eyes and telling the truth about myself sexually is a place to start facing my own struggles in a deeper way than I otherwise might.
There’s so much more to this… as someone who does believe in the work of mutability groups such as Exodus International (in part because I know people — see them daily — who have changed their orientation), I do bear witness to what the Scriptures say regarding homosexuality. But I don’t think homosexuality is where the conversation starts or ends. Rather, it is part of the human journey toward wholeness that Jesus uniquely enables us to walk into.

In this simple comment, Jon describes what I think gets at some the essential elements of a “welcoming and mutually transforming community” that I have tried to articulate in this long series of posts (you can read them all by clicking onto the Women/GLBTQ category).  Jon’s community (the JesusPeopleUSA Community of Chicago) manages to occupy the broken position thereby inviting everyone to see their brokeness not from a position of power (making public pronouncements). We’re all in this together. This hopefully becomes a place where we do not engage “the other” from platitudes which mean little in this age where the words “heterosexual,” “gay,”  “lesbian” mean any number of things. Jon’s community engages in regular concrete practices where the examination of one’s self, desires and the reshaping of those desires is all part of a communal language, liturgy and practice. Jon’s community appears to do all of this while continuing to live within the historical wisdom of the Christian tradition, that same sex unions and many other kinds of sexuality miss the purposes of God’s creation and His work for sexual redemption in our lives. I don’t know everything about JPUSA community in Chicago. I am sure there is some dirt here too. Yet Jon’s words give a little vision of what is possible through incarnationally inhabiting a context for the sexual redemption God has begun in Christ for the world.

My questions are: 1.) Is this possible in non-proximal intentional communities? say in “groups of three,” or other forms of redemptive community. 2.) Why does my brother Craig Carter have such a problem with this? If anything I expected more push back from the traditional Emergent folk who I consider my friends but have been largely silent on this particular approach I am pushing for. What’s going on here?

Filed under Incarnational,Neo-Anabaptist,Uncategorized,Women/GLBTQ 22 Comments

on July 28 2010

Why Pre-Labeling A Church Community’s Stance on Same-Sex Relations is a Bad Idea: Mission and GLBTQ Relations #2

I’ve been building an argument here on this blog for a posture I call “welcoming and mutually transforming” (WMT) towards GLBTQ peoples among us. I suggest that this is the incarnational posture of mission as we engage any culture, but especially as we seek to embody the sexual redemption made possible in the person and work of Christ in the world. I said last post that such a community would be based on three commitments that reflect this embodied (incarnational) posture in the world.
1.) We All Come Broken
2.) We Make No Pre-Set Public Statements
3.) We Embody Spiritual Disciplines that Nurture the Life in Christ for God’s Mission in the World.

This post I want to explore the Second commitment: We Make No Pre-Set Public Statements on What We are For or Against in Sexual Relations.

Here, I am asserting that as a community inhabiting a locale, we do not make any public statements concerning what we believe concerning sexual issues to people outside the community. Sexual redemption is witnessed to others through the telling of stories, humble listening and relationships. In post-Christendom cultures public statements on what we have come to believe concerning GLBTQ and any other sexual issue can only be misunderstood. Positive public statements towards GLBTQ relations (welcoming and affirming) only serve to niche the church (as a GLBTQ church). Negative public statements or public protests against GLBTQ issues only serve to be misunderstood and put the community over against those struggling with these issues. I recommend that a WMT community Make No Pre-Set Public Statements on What We are For or Against in Sexual Relations.

Of course, this is more than a policy recommendation. This is all about the incarnational missional disposition we take in a sexually broken world for the bringing in of the Kingdom. Here are three comments about this disposition

1.) There’s a difference between judging (condemning) someone and discerning alongside someone out of love for that person. To put a sign up, or announce our position against GLBTQ relations, or to somehow protest all GLBTQ issues in front of City Hall, in essence puts us in a judging position towards those we do not even know. This forecloses witness and the possibility for God’s work. I believe evangelicalism’s tendency to publicly judge and condemn on these issues forecloses the possibility for discerning alongside not only GLBTQ peoples, but the many who are struggling with sexual brokenness even inside our church communities.

1 Cor 5:12 makes the distinction between judging those in the community and those outside. Paul says we do not judge those outside the community, those we do not know. Yet Paul calls the church to “judge” those inside the community in the same passage. LET US THEREFORE QUIT JUDGING THOSE OUTSIDE THE COMMUNITY. I believe James 4:11,12 tells us not to speak evil or judge a brother inside the community. Here we are told to not take the Law under our own control, and judge our brother from a position as “judge.” The seeming contradiction between Paul and James here is solved when we realize that James’ mode is to encourage the posture of submission and humility to God.  James in speaking against the judgment out of a position of superiority. In other words, there is a difference between judgment – whose goal is to condemn – and discernment alongside someone in mutual submission to Christ  – whose goal is the restoration and redemption of one another out of love and humility (1 Cor 5:5). It is the latter position that we are called into as Christians. We cannot be in such a position when we have already pronounced condemning judgment. Jesus commands us towards this posture in Matt 7:1-5. The point of “take the log out of your own eye first” is that we approach one another out of the humility of our own sin. “Let the one without sin cast the first stone.” One of the biggest issues for evangelical mission among GLBTQ is the lack of this awareness of the log in our own eye. We come off judgmental. So let me say this – there is a delicate sense in which no judgment can be made against GLBTQ or any other sexual issues, until we have a redemptive sexual community that can humbly invite and listen and ask the GLBT to join us in repentance and renewal of all sexual desire. This is the essence of the position I am arguing for – Welcoming and Mutually Transforming. For these reasons I suggest no public statements about what we are for or against in terms of GLBTQ.

2.) Likewise, Pre-labeling One’s Church as “Welcoming and Affirming of GLBTQ” undercuts missional engagement as well. For we really have no way to know what that might mean? Are we in essence affirming all sexualities, which in essence means we are saying nothing about sexual redemption at all? Are we simply affirming sociologist Jodi OBrien’s recent statement on sexual relations – ”I support the fight for everyone to make choices regarding how they wish to author their own lives (in their sexuality) and the meaning they seek for themselves and those they wish to define as “family.”” If so, is there any possibility for incarnational transformation left in the area of sexuality? If a church community’s first allegiance is to Christ and the calling of one another and the world into following Him and His Kingdom, it is easy to see how these “welcoming and affirming” words – even if one took a pro-gay Christian stance – have no way to be defined. Instead, they serve only to “niche” the church. They in essence market the church and create an attractional dynamic that almost guarantees the loss of the transformational dynamic of the missional community.

Of course the same goes for those who wish to make public statements about “welcoming but not affirming.” Besides the obvious ways this communicates pre-judgment, there is simply no way we can communicate the positive Christian sexual vision, to those outside it. To prove my point, try to explain to someone outside the church why “celibacy” is part of the compelling Christian vision for sexuality. Of course, people inside evangelicalism can’t even get this. One of evangelicalism’s biggest problems is we have no compelling sexual vision which makes sense of celibacy as a fulfilling calling. We have little or no sexual ethic except the glorified desire of Hollywood lopped onto heterosexual monogamous marriage. We have no theology of desire formation. It is “lust,” and enjoy it, only while married to one person. We have no concept of the “ordering of desire.” This is why our witness is so vapid among the sexual brokenness of our day.  This is perhaps why we think saying “no” to GLBTQ is enough. Yet it isn’t enough. Saying “heterosexual is God’s norm” says next to nothing in the climes of post-Christendom. It does not define the sexuality Christians are called into.

Since the vision of Christian sexuality cannot be communicated outside the community in words only, since this kind of redeemed sexuality can only be offered with embodied witness, I again strongly suggest that WMT missional communities not make public gestures that pre-label the community sexually amidst the world of sexual brokenness.

3.) We hold our existing commitments humbly as witnesses to redemption not enforcers of a morality.
That we make no public pronouncements, does not deny we carry pre-existing  sexual commitments that are creation grounded, redemption filled, and desire reordering. Our community has not been brought into being ex-nihilo. We are part of a story 1000’s of years old. The wisdom in Scripture towards gay relations, pre-marital sex etc. should not be easily discarded because of science or other presumed modernist authorities. There are large parts of wisdom here which have little to do with whether Scripture actually prohibits pre-marital sex, gay sex. Protestants keep looking for Scriptural proof texts while we should be reading the depths and wisdom of the Fathers, the Pope etc… which reveal the profound meanings behind things that the world simply cannot understand (like no contraception, celibacy). It is part of being incarnational to participate in the historical development of Christ’s witness that has been given to us. We do not seek to escape history. I don’t see how we can be missional amidst the sexual brokenness of our day without a recognition that God has been working to redeem creation, and human sexuality in Christ for 2000 years.

Having said this, we must become communities that hold our commitments with a confidence sufficient to listen to those outside our commitments. We must listen and dialogue. We must so trust the Holy Spirit that Jesus is Lord that we can hear the depths of what is going on in the lives of GLBTQ peoples. Part of our problem as evangelicals is that we have been so insecure in our own sexual commitments and sexual lives that we live these commitments defensively.

Is it possible that, even while assuming the prohibition against Gay relations (which I assume), that we will discover some parts of gay sexuality that we can affirm? That there is much we can affirm about same sex friendship, never mind cross-gender friendships. Can we see understand the depths of the reasons why heterosexual relations have become so formed within gay relations, can we understand and affirm some of the qualities of love that GLBTQ peoples have searched for and found within gay relations? Can we listen? Can we search and uncover together. In the process learn about our own brokenness? All of this requires, the holding of our own commitments (those of us who are committed to the traditioned sexual ethic of Christian life) humbly, vulnerably, so as to listen. To me, such an engagement makes possible the Holy Spirit’s work in transforming us together out of submission to Scripture, mutual confession, and healing prayer.

In summary, for all of the reasons above, I am arguing that a Welcoming and Mutually Transforming Missional Community must avoid gestures that would pre-label the community’s stance of sexual relations in the neighborhood.
Is this playing games? talking out of both sides of mouth? Can there be any avoiding of pre-judgment?

My next post on the WMT community is on the Spiritual Disciplines of such a community.

Filed under Incarnational,Neo-Anabaptist,Women/GLBTQ 38 Comments

on July 22 2010

The Mission and GLBTQ Relations: Three Commitments of a “Welcoming and Mutually Transforming” Missional Community #1

Way way back last March I started a series of posts on the two issues of a.) women in ministry and b.)the normative status of Gay/Lesbian sexual relations, and their relation to each other theologically in the post-evangelical landscape. (The entire series is here) I saw the post evangelical landscape as divided between the NeoReformed missionals (NRm) and the postEmergent Coalescence(pEC). In relation to the church’s position on GLBTQ relations, one side (NRm) took what has commonly been termed the “Welcoming but Not Affirming” position while the other side took the “Welcoming and Affirming” position. I viewed both positions as inadequate for our post-Christendom times. I asked if either position was missional? See that post here. As an alternative, I wanted to explore the incarnational logic of Missional community, a logic I believe drives the Neo-Anabaptist missional engagement of culture. I called (with the help of Brad Sargent) this position “Welcoming and Mutually Transforming” (WMT).

I left off the last post by saying that the only way to witness to and to live this WMT position was through a “welcoming and mutually transforming” community (WMT) of sexual redemption that finds its very identity “in Christ” for the Mission of God in the world. I want to flesh out what this might look like in three posts, this one and the next two to follow. I want to propose that such a sexually redemptive community is based on three commitments that reflect the embodied (incarnational) posture of such a community in the world.
1.) We All Come Broken
2.) We Make No Pre-Set Public Statements on What We are For or Against in Sexual Relations (please do not jump to conclusions on this).
3.) We Embody Spiritual Disciplines that Nurture the Life in Christ for God’s Mission in the World including Listening, Reading Scripture Together, Confession of Sin, Repentance, Dependence Upon the Spirit and other practices that affirm Life, Sexuality, Friendships, Creation and place them all within what God is Doing for Restoring the world and Reconciling it to Himself (missio Dei).

For today’s post, I offer some comments on commitment  1.). Then I’ll go quickly to 2.) and 3.) in the next two posts.

WE ALL COME BROKEN.
The overriding assumption of the “Welcoming and Mutually Transforming” community is that all are welcome, and everyone who comes must come to it as broken, in need of transformation. If there is no acknowledgment of our brokenness, of our sin and need for God, it is not possible to receive the Kingdom of God. “Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” If we say we are not broken, if we have no recognition of our need for transformation, why then come?

As I said here in this post, the condition of transformation in Christ, i.e salvation, is that all of our desires are submitted to Christ for renewal, orientation transformation. This is the beginning of discipleship. This is not to say apriori that all our desires are corrupt and inappropriately ordered. It merely acknowledges that there are desires in our lives that are broken and in need of healing, and we do not always know which ones these might be. Furthermore, all desires find their rightful end in God and so all desires are in essence incomplete til they are ordered in this final way.

Yet this posture, of coming to Christ as broken, must be modeled before the world in community. We, the church must be first in the confession of our brokenness. This is not just a tactic. This is the first and necessary step towards the redemption, the dying and rising with Christ,  that births the renewal of all things. We must be living this “way” that we are inviting the whole world into.

The biggest problem with the evangelical church’s witness regarding sexuality among our society, nevermind among the GLBTQ, is that we ask others to change their sexual behavior without seeing the duplicity in our own sexual behaviors and orientations. We therefore come into a context, whatever its sexual issues are, from a power position, claiming everyone else is screwed up but us. This defies the incarnational logic of Christ, and the way the Triune God works in the world in Christ by the Spirit.

In the case of evangelicals and gays, evangelicals have typically baptized all heterosexual attraction as good and then offer “getting married” as the solution to anyone who cannot control him/herself.  We never deal with the stunning amount of screwed up heterosexual/monosexual desire that lies resident in our churches which heap abuse after abuse upon one another and sap our sexual lives of God’s purposes.
As the community of Christ, i.e. a “welcoming and mutually transforming” community, we must lead the world into redemption by first leading the way into humility, brokenness and confession. This communal embodied posture is the defining starting point for missional engagement with a culture’s sexual issues in Christ, no matter what they might be. It embodies what it is we are inviting all people into including those who call themselves “gay.”

I think the major objection to this from the GLBTQ advocates in our midst is that “this is a power play.” By saying all desire must be submitted to Christ, the argument goes, you are pre determining our sexual desire as sin. I’ll address this more in the next post. But for now, I wish to say that Jesus and the entire New Testament insists that those in power and those with the gospel must be those who give up power, in essence go and inhabit the world powerless, live in submission to one another, and to the “other” in submission to the Lordship of Christ. Instead of saying to the gay/lesbian “you must confess your sin ________, let us instead say “let me confess my sin to you” and invite you to join in with me (discerning sin in and among my life), as we seek what redemption might look like as we submit our lives to Christ. To anyone who might seek that a particular desire be classified as sacred over the supremacy of Christ, to those who are not yet ready to enter into the death and resurrection of Christ, we grieve. This, nonetheless, is what we live incarnationally as witnesses to. This is all we have to offer. The Triune work of God in the person of Jesus Christ. The way of renewal through the death and resuurection of Jesus Christ. We are not demanding that anyone follow this path. We are not pre-judging anyone. We are merely witnessing to (and offering non-coercively) to the world what God is doing and in and through Jesus Christ.

My question to y’all, is this posture of the WMT community a power play? Is the very giving up of power a power maneuver? If so, how?

Filed under Incarnational,Neo-Anabaptist,Uncategorized,Women/GLBTQ 26 Comments

on June 15 2010

On How Flat Leadership Works for Mission: The Three P.’s

Much has been made about flat leadership in the missional church. Flat leadership of course refers to non-hierarchical forms of church leadership structure. In my experiences, there are various reactions to it. Some assume flat leadership is a reaction to abusive authoritarian structures of leadership. Still others complain that flat leadership means no leadership. Some like it because, in the midst of conflict or confusion in the local church, flat leadership means we talk more or tolerate each other more. For me, all of this misses the point of flat leadership.


Three Reasons Flat Leadership Works For Missionary Communities

For me three things drive my attachment to flat leadership structures in the church. First, flat leadership pushes the church outward as opposed to a top-down leadership structure, which draws the church inward. As I have said elsewhere, with top down leadership, the activity of the church flows inward towards the leaders who give direction. They are the professionals. When a member of the body has an issue, concern, or a call to pursue in the field of mission, he or she is trained to first look inward to the leader to answer questions like:  How does this fit with our goals and visions? How can we secure resources from the church organization? How can we secure its blessing? Each member of body is passivized as he or she looks inward and upward for approval for what they are doing. The church becomes uniform as it becomes organized around a personality that people like, trust or are drawn to. There are usually a set of issues that distinguish this leader and his/her church from other leaders and their churches. People stay or leave as they are aligned with this person and the positions. In essence each church becomes a “brand” centered around its leadership. This is what top down leadership does. Flat leadership does the opposite. It decenters the life of the church from around a central leader. It pushes people outward. Flat leadership enables the church’s identity to take shape around missional activity in the surrounding culture.

Second, flat leadership structures are more dynamic flexible and discerning of new things. Conflict is important in a church. Differences, disputable matters and the discerning of sin in the body are all important “life matters” that shape a community into the mission we are called. With top down leadership, conflict usually gets litigated through the leadership as opposed to discerned by and among the community. There is very little room to move into new territory unless discerned by the said leader. But, unfortunately, the leader is often engulfed in “managing” the church’s growth now.  Conflict is discerned based on what harms or does not harm the cohesiveness and growth of the church body. This stagnates a community quickly. Decentralized flat leadership works against that.

Third, flat leadership models the disposition of Christ we need for mission in the world. With top down leadership, there is often a coercive element here. The leader is often acting out of the authority of the office, in which he or she exercises an authority of position.  He or she is set above the congregation instead of below it, as the Scripture seems to dictate for all leadership in the church. Mark 10:42-45.  Such leadership does not model the submission to Christ that following Christ demands. It does not model the vulnerability and submission to the Father that Christ Himself modeled and the epistles call all leaders into (Phil 2, 1 Pet 5. 1-6).

For these various reasons, top down leadership works against the body of Christ being incarnational, discerning new territories, entering the world humbly and in the disposition of servanthood. It passivizes the body of Christ from being an alive ministering community of the Spirit extending His Lordship into the world.

The Three P.’s of Leading a Missional Community

Having said all of this however, people still can’t see how such a flat leadership works in the church. We are so driven by a modern Christendom form of leadership which is more efficient and based in a set of cognitive skills sufficient in Christendom, but woefully inadequate for the missionary situation we find ourselves in. So, recently, I was asked, about two months ago, while we were in the midst of a conflict in our body, to describe for our shepherd board the principles of how our leadership works. I wrote three things on a napkin that I have since used over and over again. I now call them “the three P.’s.” They are

1.) Posture. All leadership is called to model the POSTURE of submission to Christ as Lord of the church and (in that) the posture of mutual submission to one another in all activities of leadership. This posture, which Yoder called “revolutionary subordination,” is the place out of which God works to reveal the truth. In dialogue with one another, in listening, and in pushing each other, a consensus is birthed. And until that time we wait and listen more.

2.) Process. The process of Matt 18:15-20 is fundamental to how we navigate issues in the church. The issues the church must deal with arise from on the ground relationships going on amidst and around the community. When sin and/or a disputable matter occurs, we begin to discern that issue/disagreement NOT BY GOING TO THE TOP DOG LEADER, and having him/her arbitrate. (Matt 18 is not just about sin, but also issues of differences as described in the words “binding and loosing”). We go to one another and in humility discuss the issue. If we believe someone is in sin we say that and then submit ourselves to that person being careful to listen as to why we might be wrong. If agreement cannot be reached, if insubordination is detected, we then bring in a third person. At the point where an issue simply cannot be agreed upon (and these issues are rare and outside the creedal orthodoxies that guide a given church), then we take it to the elders, then to the community to study and pray over the issue (Acts 15.28). The Holy Spirit at work in the community drives the issues that will determine the direction of the church, not the single chosen leader who shall determine what shall be discerned, what shall be tolerated, and what shall be not allowed.

3.) Pneumatocracy. OK it does not work phonetically, (I also have tried “Politics of the Spirit” if you’re really hung up on phonetics). Here I am trying to say that the body IS NOT A DEMOCRACY. It is a social field of the Holy Spirit where the authority of Christ is exercised in the gifts as recognized by the community. There will need to be apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists, and pastors, all recognized and in service to the body. These gifts need to be recognized, trusted and followed if the community is to flourish into God’s life together.  Often I hear that no leadership can come from such a flat leadership. I think this misunderstands flat leadership. For flat leadership will not work unless the apostles can lead, the preacher-teachers teach etc. Each one must be given authority for what gifts God has given them. Yet they must exercise that gift in grace and humility (Rom 12: 3-4).

By following the three P.’s I believe a community is formed for mission Cohesively missional communities are shaped. Top down hierarchies provide leadership for Christendom. They most efficiently manage an already existing body of Christians, They facilitate larger churches. They create brands around leaders. It’s fine for that place and time. For we who seek to be missionaries, and to be unencumbered with the attractional models of church planting, I offer the three P.’s.

I already know people think this will not work. I was so formed out of John Yoder’s writings (especially Body Politics) that I was shocked this was just not second nature to any missional types. I have learned that this way of leadership is not only Biblical but revolutionary and will take practice and continual learning. So what objections or problems does this mode of leadership present for you?

Filed under Ecclesiology,Missional Leadership,Neo-Anabaptist 29 Comments

on March 29 2010

Woman and Men in Ministry Together: Affirming Women and Transforming – The Missional Way

A couple weeks ago I began a series of posts on the post-evangelical landscape regarding two controversial issues – women inimages ministry and the normativity of gay/lesbian relations. To reiterate, I contended that how a church/movement comes down on these two issues together reveals much about the assumptions that drive their theology. The manner in which the Neo-Reformed missionals reject women in ministry and/or GLBT relations together reveals much about the way they do theology re: Scripture, authority, sanctification etc. Likewise, the way the post Emergent/emerging coalesence here in the U.S. (heretofore referred to as pEC) affirms both reveals the underlying assumptions that drive the way they do theology. As I see it, getting at these assumptions improves the conversation in the post-evangelical landscape moving us further together into the Kingdom of God.

The Missional Way I have been proposing is a third way of doing theology. It is an incarnational logic that drives much of Missional practice. It has some similarities to the pEC’s in that it is non-foundationalist, post Christendom, driven by cultural engagement and community life, wholistic in salvation. Yet there are differences as well which I tried to make clearer previously over at this post. This incarnatiuonal, post Christendom driven understanding of life and truth in the gospel leads, so I argue, to certain directions on the two issues of “Women in Ministry” and “GLBT sexual relations” – what I’d like to call Position No. 3 “Yes to Women in Minstry/ and Transforming of All Relationships” (this phrase was tipped off and influenced by Brad/futurist guy in the comments on this post).  FYI for the theologically driven reader- the transforming logic here comes from Yoder’s Authentic Transformation idea as opposed to Niebuhr’s transforming logic here which is where I see both Neo-Reformed and pEC coming from. This view a.) affirms women alongside men as equal participants in the ministry of Christ’s church in the world, and b.) calls for a redemptive community by which we explore together and witness to the sexual redemption God is working in the world in relation gay/lesbian sexuality and sexuality in toto.

In terms of the way this works out on the women in ministry issue first, according to the Missional Way, women are full participants in the ministerial authority of the church, including ordination, because:

1.) Authority by its very definition is flattened and thereby includes All! The Missional church understands authority in the church as manifested in a flattened leadership within the community – the priesthood of all believers. The Kingdom has begun. The Holy Spirit has been poured out on all – men and women alike, your sons AND DAUGHTERS shall prophesy (Acts 2:17). Men and women therefore partake together in the gifts and the authority of the Lord in the community. In so doing however, the very nature of this authority has been transformed. It is not exercised as the power of the world (Mark 10:42-45) – top down hierarchically. (This was part of what Christendom did to the church’s power). This power is exercised via the humility and vulnerability of the Incarnate Christ. In distinction from Reformed ways of thinking about authority, there is no senior pastor! Women and men participate equally. In that certain forms of church power has taken on hierarchical structure, we should not fight for women to enter authority on those terms. It is an outmoded Christendom way of authority in the church. Neither should we see authority as derived from democratic legitimation.  Communal authority emerges out of the gifts within communal discernment. There is difference and roles. Equality is based on the mutual participation in one Body (1 Cor 12). It is not an equality that obliterates our differences. This way of authority and power spreads out into the world instead of centralizing authority in a professionalized top down hierarchy. Under these terms, how can women be excluded from full participation in ministry? (The Anabaptist, as well as holiness and pentecostal influences here are obvious.

2.) Ordination recognizes those gifted and entrusted with the gift of teaching preaching. From this vantage point, ordination is still important for the gifts recognized for maintaining the theological integrity of the community (preachers, teachers, apostles and others as well). There’s a succession going on here. And yet it is not an ordination of hierarchy but of service. On these terms, there is no reason to exclude women from ordination? Of course there is the issue of Scripture’s pronouncements which leads to my next point.

3.) The Kingdom Has Begun and This Helps Us Understand the Tension in Scripture Between Roles in the Church and Roles in Marriage: The Missional Way is driven by Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom – that it has begun in Himself – His life death and resurrection and Rule as Lord. It has begun, yet it is not yet consummated.  For this reason gender and bodies have not disappeared yet (as the Gnostic Corinthians suggested). Marriage continues until Jesus returns and the new age  consummated (Mark 12:25). Gender difference and the roles within marriage continues to exist ALTHOUGH THE KINGDOM TRANSFORMS THESE ROLES OUT OF THE PATRIARCHAL ABUSES OF THE PAST! The main point I want to make here therefore is, given this dynamic at work in the NT, we can now understand many of the texts which chasten women from teaching over men in the NT to be the chastening of women who did not honor their marriages in the exercise of their new found authority in the church- e.g. women who did not cover their hair while teaching (1 Cor 11) or who took out their newfound authority against their husbands (1 Cor 14:34) etc. So whereas the Neo-Reformed tend to take Scripture as plainly outlawing women in ministry over men, and pEC’s tend to dismiss these Scriptures as culturally obsolete, the Missional appreciation of the dynamic of the inbreaking Kingdom allows for a fuller appreciation for the eschatological tension of the Kingdom that must be upheld in these dynamics. This inevitably extols the full participation of women alongside men in the ministries of the church while guarding the maintaining of the community’s marriages in “the in between” time.  Women are welcomed alongside men in the full authority of the Kingdom as long as they each maintain their God ordained marriage callings (1 Tim 3:4-5 if they are married that is, if not then this does not matter for women or men which is why Paul is always urging people to remain single and unentangled). This is all I can say on this here (I have a long unpublished paper on this). This all illustrates how the three ways often approach Scripture.

4.) The principle of revolutionary subordination. In Christ a new authority has begun and all are invited into it. Yoder called this the principle “Revolutionary Subordination.” The idea here is that just as Jesus our Lord incarnated himself, humbling himself, giving up the right to power, God exalted Him, the Truth was vindicated and empowered (Phil 2). We operate in all ways under this principle subordinating ourselves to powers, false authorities, ways of exercising power with the peaceful witness of character, truth and Scripture. God will manifest the truth.  This extends into the practice of mutual submission one to another in the community (Eph 5:20, Matt 18:15-20) Jesus himself inhabits this submitting of ourselves and works in each conflict, each leader to further His Kingdom via the way of peace. We therefore reject past ways of abusive power, and do not ask women to become part of the them. For many of us, the ways we have exercised power in the church is not incarnational and must be rejected period, not just for the ways it has excluded women.

So women are of course invited as full particpants in this new way of power. Yet there is an incredible transformation here that not only affirms women’s full participation in ministry but transforms the very power structures that have hardened the church and sucked the life out of its witness. Instead, all who come into the Kingdom as a community are empowered to participate in a way of revolution that spreads the power and leadership of the church into the world for Mission.

In the past I have complained how the bland politics of Western democracy obliterates difference. I have also complained that the NeoReformed evangelicals have excluded women from authority in the church thereby foreclosing the incoming Kingdom of God. To me the Incarnational logic of the incoming Kingdom -that drives the Missional church – is a way forward out of both of these malaises.

My next post on this subject will address how the Missional Approach of Welcoming/Transforming plays out in the GLBT Sexual Relationships Issues in the church today.

Filed under Ecclesiology,Incarnational,Neo-Anabaptist,Neo-Reformed,Post-Christendom,Women in MInistry,Women/GLBTQ 23 Comments

on February 11 2010

Stuck between Mohler and McLaren: The Incarnational Approach to Leading in Our Disagreements

We’re in the middle of some conflicts at our church. Isn’t everybody? Conflict/differences are part of everyday life.  I am a pastor alongside other pastors trying to lead a church amidst a post Christendom which isn’t entirely here yet. When we have conflicts, we view them as the point at which God works in the community to make his truth incarnate.  The epistemology (assumptions about how we know truth) I follow makes me post-foundationalist post-Christendom incarnational missional Anabaptist.  This means I seek to ground myself/ourselves in the ongoing incarnation of Christ in His community via Scripture, the Table and the “gifts of the Spirit.” Of course we submit to received orthodoxy. Yet this ongoing incarnational process of discerning truth contextually continues and extends orthodoxy. This extending does not happen through a few professional clergy deciding how we should discern the issues disagreed upon from the top down. This extending happens in the concrete lives of real communities discerning real issues. This is how our faith extends into the real lives of people. And so we must enter into disputes carefully discerning, listening to each other, studying Scripture, discerning sin, until we all “together discern the mind of Christ”(1 Cor 2;16). At Life on the Vine, we take seriously, that “whenever two or three gather and agree on a anything in my name, there am I in the midst. What ever is bound on earth is bound in heaven. What ever is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven.” God inhabits conflict as if it were a sacrament – incarnating his truth further into the lives of a people living in the world (Matt 18:20).

This goes against  two kinds of leadership so prominent in American church today. I call them autocratic and democratic. I reject both of these forms of leadership for the church in Mission.

images-1THE AUTOCRATIC APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP (typically) puts authority in one (usually a man) senior pastor figure in the church to solve conflicts. For this approach – truth is always obvious, clear and perspicuous, it just takes an expert to explain it. And so, in the midst of church conflict, the senior pastor’s job as expert is to ascend to Mt Sinai, pray, read his Bible, hear from God and then descend to the church to tell them “this is the way it will be.” Those who agree stay, and (in America) those who disagree leave to start another church. This way of truth shapes people for arrogance and exclusion instead of openness to what God is doing. We get no where in God’s Mission and where he is taking us.

This conception of truth/leadership is sometimes typified by Al Mohler – blogger and president of So Baptist Theo Seminary. For Dr Mohler – truth is absolute. It is revealed. There are some things we know because God told us. Now of course there is “truth” to this, but this fails to take into account the way God reveals truth in history via the incarnation and the ongoing work of the Spirit in the church. It cannot be that simple when the disputable matters of the church are at stake (as opposed to the core orthodox established matters of doctrine). For instance, when Dr. Mohler says here “The Bible presents the knowledge of hell just as it presents the knowledge of sin and judgment: these are things we had better know. God reveals these things to us for our good and for our redemption. In this light, the knowledge of these things is grace to us,” does he get the varied ways these doctrinal matters have worked themselves out differently in various histories? say between the Reformed, Luthern and Wesleyan? That it is not self evident that sin, hell, judgement etc. mean and function the same for all historical expressions of the church. There is history in context at work here. From reading this here, it appears Mohler is resistant to the idea that truth needs to be worked out in a context. He could often be accused of  a version of “Absolute Truth” that is devoid of a contextual hermeneutic (although I think he could ably defend himself).

images-2THE DEMOCRATIC APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP seeks to solve conflicts by a community accepting many (all?) “voices”, tolerating disagreements and letting the conversation continue. There is a core orthodoxy around which we gather, but we must tolerate the many differences around the core. There are two weaknesses to this kind of leadership. FIRST – Real conversation is not fostered because an enforced tolerance minimizes our disagreements (says they are not important) because we have already agreed that we must accept them. Since any real substance in our disagreements has been diminished, we have little to do but talk about these issues (not discern them). It should not then be surprising that people contend these conversations also go nowhere.  The SECOND weakness is that this form of democratic leadership in essence decides where the “line in the sand is”. Someone has to decide what disagreements are central to the community’s commitments and which disagreements are sufficiently benign for us all to tolerate. Someone determines that these tolerable disagreements are simply not important enough to discern. They do not hurt anyone sufficiently (a democratic value if there ever was one) to get into serious discernment over for the future of the gospel. This itself is a form of autocratic leadership. In the end, there is little difference between the autocratic and democratic because some singular leader/leader group is basically making uniteral judgements as to what affirmations and truths we will be lead by, and which disagreements we will tolerate as part of us.

Brian McLaren’s recent statement on homosexuality here falls into this category of democratic leadership. He claims that we must learn to disapprove of homosexuality while at the same time accepting it (I think he means in the church). This only other option is divisiveness in the church.

This does not really help the pastoral situation however. There are many people who see the gay/lesbian peoples as hurting, vulnerable and victumized in their sexuality. We need to invite them in the life of uncovering hurt and seeking healing and renewal that we all desire for our sexuality. Democratic tolerance covers over these issues disabling these kind of cinversations. There are people who see all desire, especially sexual desire, as the place of spiritual formation. For these folk,. not only what we accept but what place we give gay and lesbian life in the church will have profound effect on how we see the shaping of all desire (especially consumerist desire). These people argue, “to accept gay and lesbian life as “OK” within the Christian community is in essence to make a decision to allow this understanding of sexual formation to shape our kids.” In essence then, an approach that appears benign and innocent to Brian, refusing to cut off and divide, is a blatant pronoucement in a Christian community as anything the autocrat would do.

Democratic tolerance shapes the conversation to be one-sided. Perhaps this is what is happening to Brian and the launch of his new book where he is seriously getting taken to task on such matters here and here (HT Bill Kinnon). Read brad/futurist guy’s comments on this blog post. Does Brian then, as much as I like and appreciate him, end up (innocently?) making Mohler-like  pronouncements in the name of “generosity,” “inclusion” and “love.” Is he assuming an epistemology as individualistic and violent as Al Mohler. I give both Al and Brian the benefit of the doubt because of their track records in the ministry of the KIngdom of God. Yet I think they may have forgotten what it means to work out disagreements and  doctrine in a live real incarnate community (a church body) where these things matter and require contextual engagement. Of course not much of this kind of discernment actually goes on much in churches anymore. We need then to push for an incarnational approach to leadership.

THE INCARNATIONAL APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP I propose the incarnational way of leading through coflict where God works in conflict as the means to push us forward into our context for Mission. Here we do not depend on a divinely appointed hierarchical figure to ascend to the mountain and pronounce from above the way it shall be. Neither do we depend on a leader or leaders to arbitrate which issues shall be declared  “tolerable.” Instead we allow the community where God is at work to determine when a disagreement is important enought to discern for the will of God among us. When such a disagreement has occured, the pastors invite those offended or in disagreement to go to the person – one on one. If there is not an agreementhere they bring thr disagreement to a third and/or fourth person. If still no agreement, take it to the church, which at Life on the Vine means the shepherd board, those recognized leaders of the community. If after several sessions, this issue remains unresolved proving it is too important for who we are and the people/problems we are engaging, we call a “Council” of all the people in the church interested in this issue, to pray, listen, to hear those recognized in the study of Scripture, to submit to one another, to die to ourselves and recognize our own sin, and out this discern together for a common agreement – so that we can say to the church ..”It seems good to Holy Spirit and to us ……”(Acts 15:28). In this way, the community of the Spirit where He is Lord determines the issues concretely that need to be discerned, because they perculate organicly to the surface becoming an issue for the whole body. Here orthodoxy cannot be defied only extended into new terrotory – new orthodoxy. Here the gifts are listened to, those who are gifted in wisdom, reading Scripture, teaching etc.. And  with prayer and charity and courage we discern what God is calling us into. And wherever two or more agree on anything in His name, there He is in the midst of us. What is bound here is bound in hevane, loosed here, also in heaven (Matt 18:15-20).

Conflict is crucial to the community in Mission. Because Mission pushes us into new territory, new things we’ve never faced, there will be new conflicts. As we all submit to each other in prayer we resolve to do this or that into the world. Jesus inhabits thee conflict (“there am i” Matt 18:17) Their resolution pushes the community forward into Mission. We who come together to live as Christian incarnational community in the world should therefore welcome conflict as the place where God works to incarnate us into new territory, to discern what Christ looks like here anew. And if we have no conflicts, no differences and no disagreements, we have become stagnent.

All of this requires real relationships and concrete communities living our disagreements, not only talking/writing about them.

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