Over the last eight years I’ve been exploring how we gather together in intentional community.  We ended up calling it the Jesus Model, which is the idea of twelve people gathering together for three years to intentionally practice the Way of Jesus together.  The journey has been utterly amazing, thrilling, hard, and painful but in the end worth every ounce of investment. I would do it all again if I could.

In this process many people started asking us how we do what we do.  So we started taking notes, writing down ideas, developing teachings, and creating exercises on spiritual formation.  The end result was the Thrive Leadership Manual and a series of workbooks designed to help intentional communities work through the process.  The new Leadership Manual describes the process, the ethos, and dives deeply into the Jesus Model.  It provides a framework for not on how we gather but why.

If you are looking to create an intentional space of grace and find your tribe, I want to invite you to explore the Thrive process.

So a construction friend asked, “Wouldn’t it stimulate the economy better by sending our mission trip $$ and have locals build houses?” The idea being that mission groups commonly go to orphanages, and villages to build stuff.  The average trip includes airfare, and hotels for a group of people.  The heavy expense is not actually in the building project but in the cost to get there.  My friend was suggesting that if churches adopt these projects remotely, they could stimulate the local people’s job by giving them work, which would go a long way towards solving the problem. I attached the video as an alternative dialog (ht) by seeing mission trips as relationships.

Interested in your thoughts.

The first Transform Network Podcast is finally here. The official name is the Transform Round Table.  The first dialog was on missional.  This was one of the funnest things I’ve done this year and I really look forward to the next one in March.

Click here to add the Podcast to your iTunes.

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.

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?

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.

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.

I need your help…and I’m also curious.

I’m working on a project and am doing a little research on what it means to be missional.  This is totally informal but I’m doing it anyway.  Hopefully my question gets to the heart of much of our frustration with what it means to be missional.  My question is this:

“What does your tradition tell you is the central problem being solved in the Christian story?’

Much of my wonder is around how we solve the problem in the human story.  In order to solve the problem, we have to know what problem we’re actually solving.  So the theory is that if we attempt to solve the wrong problem it will create new problems.  And if different traditions teach different understandings of the problem, new problems are essentially inevitable.

Feel free to elaborate as much as you need in the comments below.  Don’t feel like you have to prove or justify what your tradition teaches.  I simply want to hear what you hear your tradition teaching.

I wonder if someone ever said to Isaiah or Jeremiah, “How dare you criticize the what we’re doing!”  I’m serious.

If ever there is a thankless job in the Ecclessia, it is the prophetic voice, the one that has the very thankless job of reminding the church, “This is not who you are.”  Prophet have a terrible job.  They have to tell people things they don’t want t hear.  Prophets were God’s loudspeaker and they got killed for it.  The problem is, nobody ever knows who the prophet was until after they were likely dead.  It just works that way.  When God is speaking to us loudly, we just don’t like to hear it.

There is a delicate tension in criticizing the church in any of its forms.  People get attached those forms.  They actually work for some people.  For others they become idols and need reminding to tear them down. I guess one man’s treasure is another man’s junk.

About four months ago, some friend of mine got together to share the idea about starting a network around the idea of creating missional communities.  It was the next logical step after cohorts.  The original thought was, “What would it look like to create communities of practice, as a natural extension of the conversation.”

The purpose of TransFORM is to bring together men and women who are on the verge of starting new communities (i.e., community catalysts) or are already cultivating new communities and to give them the encouragement and resources they need to get started and be sustainable.

There is already a first event planned.  Brian McLaren is scheduled to be there. – East Coast Gathering http://www.transformnetwork.org/events/transform-east-coast-gathering

There is already an impressive list of endorsements for the network: http://www.transformnetwork.org/page/endorsements-1

Come join us.