The TransFORM Missional Roundtable
Over the last 9 months I’ve been working with Steve Knight and so many great people in the development of the TransFORM Network. It’s a missional community formation network. It birthed out of the idea of taking the conversation to another level. As part of the networks development we’re creating a new podcast called the TransFORM Round Table. The idea is simple to gather a group of practictioners together and engage a conversation. We recorded our first Round Table on Saturday and it was awesome.
This Round Table included Pam and Don Heatley, Kathy Escobar, Stephanie and Phil Shepherd, and myself. We explored three questions: What drew you to the missional conversation? What does missional mean to you and look like in your present context? Is missional simply a stereotype of engaging social justice?
Thee conversation was awesome. There is something good that happens when we explore what it means to engage God’s mission in community. I’m currently in the process of loading up the podcast to the server and setting up the RSS. I’ll let you know when its up.
Interesting Stuff
Has the Sundance Film Festival finally become what it has long worked against? Sad.
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Pope John Paul II use to flagellate himself for Christian perfection.
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Currently, only 8% of churches have women teachers.
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Our brain is likely to invent patterns that aren’t there.
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This is a hilarious video that seems to capture how I feel about political parties right now. And reactions on the SOTU.
What Are You Chosen To Suffer For
How do we redeem the suffering in our lives? A central part of The Adventurous Way is discovering a different story about the nature of suffering.
Recently I was reminded once again of the tragedy within Steven Curtis Chapman family. His own son accidentally killed his younger sister. The tragedy of this is almost blinding. What do you say to your son, to the one who kills his own sister? What do you say to your family, to the one’s who are intimately tied to the tragedy? What do you say to yourself, as you ponder the rage towards the crushing evidence that is thrust upon you.
Steven recently responded in probably the best way he knew how, in song. His new CD offers a raw and brutal conversation with God in the midst of tragedy. One reviewer described it as so raw that in fairness to Steven he could not even review it.
We cannot help but ask, “Why does God allow us to suffer?” Its a central question in the human story. But how often do we fail to take the more courageous step and actually discover the answer, to ask, “Who am I being chosen to suffer for?” Suffering is obvious, but the pathway through is not. When we chose to embrace the second question we take on the amazing opportunity of revealing the way through.
The beauty of what Jesus did was show us a way through death, not just into it. He found his courage in the idea that death is not the end, it is a way stop in the process of transcending it. When we hold onto the idea that we are suffering for someone, even ourselves, we give our suffering meaning. We inform it with possibility, with story.
Suffering in this way gives us hope for something that can only be discovered down the road. But in the end what we really discovered is that we were not captive to something. We could overcome.
Missional Community Formation – Part 3
This is a short paper I wrote on missional community formation for the Transform Network. I was trying to reframe the conversation around missional community. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
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The Larger Framing Story: The kingdom of God
What if the narrative of Scripture provides the answer to the larger framing story? It would be fundamentally sound and thoroughly robust. It would allow for different expressions and at the same time call us back to unity. And finally, it would be deeply rooted in God’s mission of restoration and call us to participate.
For Jesus, the larger framing story was the Kingdom of God. Using Tickle’s original concept, the larger framing story is already embedded in the diagram. It just needs to be drawn out.
Jesus understood the larger framing story. He framed the overall conversation not around individual or even corporate expressions of church but around kingdom.
“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33)
The word church appears only 2 times in the Gospels, but the word kingdom appears 116 times. Jesus offered the rather stark possibility that when we focused on Kingdom, we got everything else. If we focused on Kingdom, Jesus could build his church.
“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18)
What if Jesus understood that church was not possible without the larger framing story of Kingdom? What if He understood that one required the other? Historically what has drawn people together is the deep reflection of God in our midst. That’s Kingdom and the larger framing story that is needed. When we begin with our individual expressions, we can easily miss the larger story. But when we begin with the larger story, it is inclusive of our individual expressions.
Kingdom allowed the original framing stories to becomes exactly what they were always intended to be: God’s different, resonating expressions in the larger framing story. One wasn’t better than the other. The contrast didn’t make one right and the other wrong. Each was like a different facet of the diamond.
Jesus: The Original Authority
Kingdom answered one of the central questions of Emergence by placing Jesus as the central authority for everything. This authority was consistently contrasted with those who thought their interpretation was correct.
“The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.” (Mark 1:22)
By placing Jesus as the authority, we re-centered back on fundamental truth. It assumed that He was the answer to the questions.
“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (John 14:6)
This realignment invited each person to go directly to Jesus and to seek out answers. It invited them to participate in their own restoration process. It also gave them responsibility for their faith.
The Cross: A Basis For Unity
Within this larger story is still the tension for the basis of unity. How could each category discover the permission to cross traditional lines and see the bigger picture? Once again, we return to Tickle’s concept to illustrate the answer.
The dividing lines reveal the cross. And it is through the cross that we see the humanity of each category. Before we ever believed, said, or practiced anything, we were originally human beings created in the image of God. We literally see in the “other” what God sees: Jesus. Restoring that image becomes the central mission of the Gospel.
The cross was not something we earned or made true by our belief. It was something aligned ourselves with so we could see what was already true.
The cross reminded us that as broken eikons we could sometimes get it wrong. History would reveal that we often got it wrong and would even stubbornly change our minds over time. It reminded us to hold our individual understanding of truth with humility.
The cross revealed that the central operating structure of the larger framing story was grace. The Apostle Paul conveyed this over and over again in many of his letters.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
No matter how far we traveled and explored within each category, we were covered by grace. No matter how much we questioned, deconstructed, reconstructed or tried new things, we were under grace. Nothing could change that.
Grace allowed us to live into the tension of taking responsibility for our faith and growing. It allowed us to fail as much as we succeeded. Grace revealed that nothing could separate us from the love of God.
Grace revealed that our faith was not in our own interpretations of what is right but that Jesus would be right for us. It allowed our belief to shift and change, grow and blossom in ways we had never experienced before. No longer was it a question of in or out but growing or not growing.
A Missional Approach
Kingdom freed us up to ask not, “what are we doing”, but “what is God doing?” The larger framing story released us to engage God’s mission and to partner with Jesus in the renewal of all things.
“The Spirit of the lord God is upon me. For he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.” (Luke 4:18-19)
Jesus understood that humanity was captivated. His mission was to release people from that captivity, to bring restoration and freedom, to reveal vision and favor.
He also clarified everything by simplifying orthodoxy and orthopraxy down to one truth: love.
29″The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)
In the act of love we were revealing the Kingdom of God in our midst. We were becoming Jesus to the world around us. In love we were participating with God in the restoration of all things. In love we were revealing that truth had revealed itself in our own lives.
A Vision For A New Network
This larger framing story suggests, and even demands the need for a new way of thinking and organizing. It leads us to ask some very important questions. What would it look like to gather together under the larger framing story of the Kingdom? What would it look like to participate with Jesus in God’s mission of restoration for all creation? What would it look like to create and support missional communities that begin with participation in God’s Kingdom mission?
We believe the time is now to create something fresh and new, a missional community formation network. The network would gather together those individuals, leaders and organizations already participating in the larger framing story. It would also seek out those looking to participate in the Kingdom. It would develop missional communities of practice much like the current church planting networks. It would also foster training and development in missional practices and activities.
It would create a basis for unity founded on grace, and centered on the authority of Jesus. It would advance robust theological conversations across the traditional borders. It would include opportunities for each expression to continue to flourish, knowing that God works in different ways for different people.
Care to join us?
Missional Community Formation – Part 2
This is a short paper I wrote on missional community formation for the Transform Network. I was trying to reframe the conversation around missional community. You can find Part 1 here.
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The Great Emergence
Tickle also documented the idea of The Great Emergence, a process that occurs every 500 years that fundamentally shakes up the church. Tickle suggested a series of historical events began to expose many of the deeply held assumptions of each framing story. Individuals began to re-examine and listen to not just their own assumptions, beliefs and practices but also those of the other categories as well.
Tickle described this exploration process as, “the cruciform.”
Some of those within each category begin to explore the practices and ideas of other framing stories. For example, Conservatives began to explore the world of leading of the Spirit. Renewalists began to explore the world of liturgy. Liturgicals began to explore the world of social justice, etc. The traditional barriers were beginning to fade and virtually nothing was off limits.
Brian McLaren explored this tenuous process in his several of his works. In A New Kind Of Christian trilogy. He offered the fictional narrative journey of what it meant to face a spiritual crisis by questioning one’s faith background, and even deconstruct it for the sake of one’s own faith. What emerged was a more robust faith that revealed the underlying grace in the question process.
In A Generous Orthodoxy, McLaren made the radical claim of that he could comfortably live and flourish in every category at the same time, which questioned the hard and fast but unwritten boundaries of each category. His conclusion was that each framing story had something to learn from each other.
Tickle called this exploration process, “the Rose”. The center became gathering point for those re-examining their faith.
Tickle described this unique occurrence in history by stating, “the old, natal divisions were beginning to melt away, especially where their four corners met.” Tickle further defined the process inside each category. The closer to the center the more likely the person was to shift towards a hyphenated approach. Individuals were beginning to find their faith expressions in multiple framing stories.
This exploration, deconstruction, and subsequent reconstruction process revealed the freedom to discover own one’s faith and to take responsibility for it. To “emerge” was to take the risk to live in the tension of the question and seek out answers.
But the process also put it in conflict with one’s own original authority structures. At the heart of the Emergence process was the underlining question, “Where is now our authority?” To wander into other framing stories was to suggest that something was incomplete with the old one. It revealed the tension that categories were fundamentally based on limited and often changing human interpretation.
This emergence process suggested the need for larger framing story, one that was inclusive of the rich history and expressions of each category but was anchored in something more robust than the limited human interpretation of right belief or practice. What was needed was a framing story that was conscious of the origins of faith and provided a deeper basis for unity.
Missional Community Formation – Part 1
Many of your know that I am part of The Transform Network, a missional community formation network. This spring we’re having our first gathering on the East Coast. I’m going to be speaking at the event. You should consider coming. It’s FREE. And yes, we are hoping to have a West Coast gathering.
As we were in the early stages of development, I wrote a short paper on missional community formation trying to reframe the conversation. Much of it has been a long dialog I have had with many who participate in the Emerging church dialog. I am grateful for the work of Phyllis Tickle who opened this up for me.
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Missional Community Formation Network – A New Framing Story
Summary: There is little doubt that the church is experiencing a dramatic and well-documented shift over the last fifty or more years. With the advent of science and technology, the world is rapidly changing. Denominations are in overall decline and church attendance for those under 35 is significantly waning.
Yet what if this process is opening us up to the possibility of a larger framing story, one that requires a new way of thinking about how we organize and engage God’s mission of restoration in community?
The Traditional Framing Story
In 2008, Phyllis Tickle released The Great Emergence. It documented the radical shifts that were occurring in the church over the last 100 years with the advent of science and technology. It suggested that the fundamental assumptions of the church were being exposed, examined, and potentially re-organized.
Tickle offered a language for understanding and communicating how the church organized itself into four dominant frames or categories: liturgicals, social justice, renewalists, and conservatives.
Each category had a primary but not entirely exclusive framing story: Liturgicals around the framing story of liturgy; Social Justice Christians around social justice; Renewalists around gifts of the Spirit, and conservatives around The Word.
Each category gathered together under its own building, and church authority, belief sets, and rules flowed out of the organizing body. Unity was based primarily on a specific interpretation of doctrine or beliefs, or practices within the category. Within each of the four quadrants were smaller organizing bodies around subsets of these principles.
- Social Justice Christians: (Traditionally mainline Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Lutheran denominations)
- Conservatives: Evangelical denominations
- Renewalists: (Charismatic and Pentecostal denominations)
- Liturgicals: (Roman Catholics and Anglicans denominations)
Embedded within the four categories was the idea that our identity was found inside the category. Historically, crossing boundaries was typically frowned upon from within the category. The lines between each were often considered hard and fast, especially within more traditional circles.
The inherent problem of the four categories is that they reveal the historical nature of how we deal with conflict of opinion through schism and disunity. The unfortunate legacy of both the Great Schism and the Reformation was permission to divide. Each claimed to be the “correct” form of belief and practice.
But the very presence of four categories revealed a problem. How can four categories claim to be right if they believe and practice something different? Finding a basis then for unity amidst diversity becomes deeply important to the health of the church at large.
Courageous In The Face Of The Enemy
Today we celebrate one of my true heroes, Martin Luther King Jr. What I love about Martin was his courageous sense of willingness to face his fears. The cost of fighting for the “less than” ended up being his his own life. Martin understood this and in his biographies expressed to those around him a keen sense that his life would be taken.
And here’s why we celebrate Martin. Deep down we understand that to face death is where we find life. To face our fears and still walk forward into the fire hoses, into the bullets, into the beatings and the hate filled speeches, for the sake of human dignity is one of the greatest acts a human begin can do. To fight for the God image in each person, regardless of race, creed or color is an act of love. And it is this love that we celebrate.
A Fearless Belonging
Perhaps no element of my faith has changed more over the last ten years than my understanding of belonging.
Tony Jones recently highlighted a post by Jeff McSwain, who was fired by Young Life over what he describes as “theological differences.”
“In November of 2007, I was dismissed by Young Life for what was termed “theological differences.” Since 2001, I had been preaching the gospel with an emphasis on theological belonging, the idea that humanity belongs to Jesus Christ by virtue of creation and redemption. Rather than splitting Christ as Creator from Christ as Redeemer, I was keen to preserve the gospel symmetry proclaimed by Paul in Colossians 1, where he speaks of the Christ who created and reconciled all things (Col. 1:16, 20). This is the gospel “that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven” (Col. 1:23). This is the gospel that declares that every person is included not only in the first Adam but also in the second (Rom. 5:18).
My point was that preaching this kind of a Christ-centered message actually brings congruence between our incarnational work and our proclamation message.
This story hit me because my wife spent five years in Young Life. It was one of the more important experiences in her faith development. When we were dating, I got to spend countless hours following her to meetings, singing songs, and going to ice cream with the kids afterward. The central idea of Young Life was to hang with the kids and love them…period. Very little Scripture was provided. The dominant means of communication was through belonging.
What surprised me even more was that if Young Life took its current policy to its conclusion, Jim Rayburn the original founder would likely have been fired too. The irony of this whole incident is humorous on so many levels. Rayburn founded Young Life on the idea of belonging. Jeff provides a remarkable story about Rayburn’s original ideas.
In 1957 at the Young Life Staff Conference Rayburn taught on 2 Corinthians 5:19, which explains “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.” Said Rayburn:
“Reconciliation. Every single person in the whole wide world is now reconciled to God. [. . .] It’s been true for nearly two thousand years. I wonder what they [high school kids] would do if they knew it [. . .]. God has reconciled us, all of us, it’s already done.”Universalism? No, but definitely universal belonging. I italicized that last phrase, I wonder what they would do if they knew it, because the inflective anticipation in Rayburn’s voice on the recording of this talk is unavoidable. He is talking about how Young Life was founded “out of theology”; he relates how these great truths regarding the reconciliation and redemption of all people “rang the bell” in his heart and he became increasingly zealous to get the good news to his thirsty young friends.
What didn’t surprise me is that it worked. Young Life consistently drew kids in because they began with belonging. They began with the idea that each kid was God’s valuable child, even if they didn’t know it yet.
McSwain calls out our historical approaches to the mat and reveals the contradiction in both forms. But his quoting of Barth is fascinating. He shares:
When Barth was asked, after all that he had written about the gospel, to summarize it as succinctly as possible, he responded with the familiar, simple words to the song “Jesus Loves Me.” We teach our children these words—“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, little ones to him belong, they are weak, but he is strong”—are we to tell kids that when they get to be a certain age this is no longer the case? Are we to tell them they belong to Jesus if . . .? Is belonging with an if really belonging at all?
It made me think that one of the deepest theological issues of our time is a fundamental shift back to belonging, beginning with the idea of the reconciliation of all things. This will be a central component of my book coming out. What if we began with the idea that God actually has reconciled the world.
I wonder if our fear of actually living into the idea of belonging is not that it is true. I would argue that we already do begin with this idea, we just dont’ admit it. Our fear resides in what we think would happen if people accepted it as true. Would it make much of our institutional structures and activities obsolete? Would it transform culture in a way that we’ve dreamed of but can’t get to because we can’t seem to get out of the way?
Embracing The Adventurous Way
What are you running from that is meant to transform you?
About eight years ago I made the intentional decision to face my fears. My mentor told me a very important story of a man who had been running from his fear for ages. My mentor had worked with this man for a while and finally told him to reimagine the fear once again, to call it up. When the man did, his face became flush with the same emotions that had troubled him for so long. The fear always took the form of a lion and it had repeatedly chased him. Each time it did, he would run away, fall just as the lion was about to pounce and then wake up from fright. As the lion once again chased him, my mentor asked him to finally turn and around and ask the lion his name. Deeply afraid the man finally turned to the lion and asked, “What is your name?”
What happens next changed my life. The lion says to him, “I am your courage. Why are your running from me?”
I’ve often wondered how many times I’ve run from my courage, thinking it was something that would kill me. My mentor helped me begin the process of embracing my courage to face my fears and rediscover their purpose in my life. When I run from something I’m often missing out on its intended purpose.
I made a decision the day I heard that story. I decided I was going to face my fear. I was going to confront the lions in my life in order to discover their purpose. And what surprised me is how many were actually paper tigers, invention of my own imagination. My fears had ruled my life in ways that were destructive and even oppressive. Others were deeply important messages God was trying to communicate to me. Yet it was not until I faced them that I could remove them or transform their meaning.
The Adventurous Way is about facing our fears in order to discover their purpose. The call to follow Jesus is essentially the adventurous path to life. Jesus confronted the all encompassing fear of death and transformed our understanding of it. But it was not possible until he chose to face it, address it and transform its meaning.
I invite you to join me in this adventurous way. What are you afraid of that is inviting you to turn and rediscover its meaning and purpose?
Overcoming Adversity
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It’s so easy to get bogged down in our daily troubles isn’t it. Sometimes we just need a little perspective, a comparison to jar us out of our own self pity. I dare you to watch this video. It will remind you that courage begins with overcoming adversity.
Living the Adventurous Way begins with discovering not what are our limitations but what are our gifts in the midst of them. I appreciate the father’s honesty to ask, “Why me?” But I honestly love his willingness to find out the answer. Our limitations keep us from finding the answer. And the people who inspire us are the ones who were willing to take the risk of going beyond our limitations.
