Church Unique – Book Review

Summary: Church Unique by Will Mancini is a comprehensive book on creating a mission oriented church that clearly understands where it is going and how it is creating a unique impression that only it can offer.  Mancini has crafted a process for looking deep into the nuts and bolts of mission, vision, values and communication and making that real in the church.

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In a world of cookie cutter models of church that invite us to follow the next guy, just because it’s working over there, Church Unique offers a process for church leaders that carries them through a unique path to creating God’s unique expression for each church.  For this reason alone, every church pastor should pick up and read this book.  It is a clarion call to discover the harder path that allow each church to resonate in a distinct way.

The book is broken up into four sections that all deal with vision: Recasting Vision, Clarifying Vision, Articulating Vision, and Advancing Vision.  Each section offers a detailed understanding of Mancini’s process for creating this unique expression.  My favorite section was Mancini’s concept of “Thinkholes”.  This section alone was worth the price of the book (my copy was a gift by Auxano but I wanted to read it).

Mancini offers a quote that resonated with me for days and one of the central reasons for discovering the Unique DNA of each church.  He says,

“The dramatic irony is that what happens at the conference is the exact opposite of what propelled the host church to be effective in the first place.  Each of these leaders endured a process of self-understanding and original thinking that helped in articulating a stunningly unique model of ministry.”

That is brilliant my friends.  It is essentially the trial and error process, hard work, and resolve around a unique expression imparted by God that makes churches grow.  And those leaders/pastors willing to take that risk usually end up on the stage.

The rest of the book identifies Auxano’s process for helping churches discover their own Unique expression.  These include: Discovering your kingdom concept, Developing your vision frame, and delivering your vision daily.

Mancini’s process is dense and would obviously benefit from Auxano’s help through the process.  I have a background in marketing, communications and business in Silicon Valley and I found I had to set the book down at times to chew on what was said.

There will be those who would easily bash the book for it’s emphasis on the business structure it proposes.  But I would suggest that any church needs to understand it’s own unique expression, the vision and mission it wishes to follow and how to communicate that effectively.  Mancini offers a “unique” process for discovering that.

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The Tangible Kingdom – Book Review

Summary: The Tangible Kingdom, Creating Incarnational Community, by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay is a great starter book for those looking to create the initial framework for a missional type community that goes beyond the walls of traditional Sunday church.

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The Tangible Kingdom begins with a rather compelling story of Hugh finding his own transition out of traditional church and into a more missional approach.  He engages what many would call an epiphany moment of being Jesus to the least of these.  Hugh recounts meeting Fiona and the rest of a late night crew in a Irish Pub and realizing that it takes love to reach people.

This beginning captures me right from the start.  Hugh’s own journey out of traditional community and into what it looked like to start his own “incarnational” community took time and patience.  The book will serve as a practical reminder of not just the tangible expressions of this type of community but also the emotional roller coaster that those who attempt it will encounter.  But Hugh makes it very clear that it was definitely worth the ride.

Most of the book is Hugh’s journey in starting Adullum. Adullum appears to be an emerging community that is really taking to heart what it means to be missional in a community. Matt is referenced but seems to contribute only the questions at the end of the chapter.  Hugh has some great conversations about what it means to be missional that serve as great starting points to reaching out to those in your community.  His ideas on “posture” and “missionary as advocate” should be Reading 101.

Hugh makes it very clear right from the beginning that he is confrontational in style.  His critique of Christendom is well founded but will, as even he admits, rub many the wrong way.  If you let this get in the way of the book, you’ll be missing some real juicy stuff.

The one critique I have of the book is the lack of perspective on discipleship.  Hugh does little to let us in on how he is helping people follow in the the footsteps of Jesus in a smaller context.  But, many would rightly argue that just created an incarnational community as a church context is a great start.  My hope is that Hugh would address this in future books.  And let me be clear that this in no way a knock on the book.

The target of this book, which was published by The Leadership Network is clearly pastors. Hugh and Matt are talking about a model for churches.  But I would offer that those who are leading small groups or communities could learn just as much from the book.

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The Great Emergence Book Review – 2

This is the second part of a book review, exploring Phyllis Tickle’s, The Great Emergence. Part 1 is here.

Chapter 4 explores the agent of change in the Great Emergence we’re experiencing: science.  She points to Darwin’s theory of evolution and Faraday’s discovery of magnetic fields as the lines of demarcation for peri-Emergence.  I would offer that Tickle’s choice of Darwin is obvious but her choice of Faraday is brilliant.  Without Faraday’s breakthrough’s in electricity, the industrial revolution and the subsequent knowledge and Internet revolution would likely never have occurred, both of which have been pivotal tipping points to the Great Emergence.

Darwin on on the other hand is well known.  His work in biology led to the churches response, ultimately giving us the rise of fundamentalism.  Tickle states:

“That which has held hegemony (assumed leadership), finding itself under attack, always must drop back, re-entrench itself, run up its colors in defiance, and demand that the invaders attack its stronghold on its own terms.”

Sound familiar to anyone who has been attacked for being emergent?

This impact of science also extended to Freud and Jung in psychology, shedding light on the collective unconscious, asking what it really means to be human.  It was further pushed along by the radio and television, which propelled Joseph Campbell’s work to challenge some of the central themes of fundamentalism.

“A challenge that would have been rejected by believers as clerical heresy had it been delivered from the pulpit was now being listened to and thought about and talked about around water coolers and over backyard fences.”

The radio and eventually television allowed people to process valuable ideas and information in the comfort of their own home, as opposed to the “sacrosanct” space under the watchful eye of smarter people and religious leaders.  This served to fuel the collective imagination, freeing people to think and process ideas that were once off limits.

These freedoms eventually led to the cognitive sciences.  People began to ask:

“What are we/what am I?  Is there even such a thing as the ‘self’? … More to the point, how can ‘I’ be held responsible for anything anywhere anytime?”

This collective questioning then as Tickle states, reasserts “the same central question: Where, now, is authority?”  The process of reforming is then under the new authority established over time in the new expressions of religion.

Chapter 5 is the longest and by far my favorite chapter and essentially continues chapter 4.  It explores the central tipping points of the last 100 years, each seeming to build on each other.  It begins with Einstein’s special theory of relativity on, which then led to Heisenberg’s theory of uncertainty.  Heisenberg’s theory suggested that the act of observing something changes that very thing.  This called into question any notion of fact because the scientist observing fact is always changing the very thing he is observing.  Now apply this principle to the Bible and everyone gets scared.

“Enter the battle of The Book.  Enter the warriors, both human and inanimate, who will hack the already wounded body of Sola Scriptura into buriable pieces,” Tickle states.

This theory led Reimarus to ask if the Jesus of Western History is the same Jesus of the Nazareth.  This question spurred on the work of Crosson, Borg, and Pagels in the Jesus Seminar.

I find Tickles words fascinating here.  She says,

“Literalism based on inerrancy could not survive the blow (though is would die a slow and painful death); and without inerrancy-based literalism, the divine authority of the Scripture was decentralized, subject to caprices of human interpretation, turned into some kind of pick-and-choose bazaar for skillful hagglers.  Where now is our authority?“

This question of authority pervades the book.  It almost feels like a grand theme invading history. But Tickle offers the first possible insight into this question in Pentacostalism, which relied on the leading of the Holy Spirit.  “Here is our authority,” Pentacostalism suggests.  This shift even comes at the expense of the authority of Sola Scriptura and pastors.

It was also interesting to hear how the automobile, Marxism, and AA significantly affected the role of the grandmothers as a defining force in the family and the pastor as a guiding force for leadership.  I was also really surprised but impressed that Tickle included the drug culture as a force in culture and on our perceptions on what is consciousness.

Tickle also tackles the issues that have given significant blows to the concept of Sola Scriptura.  These include slavery, women’s rights, divorce, women’s ordination, and gay rights.  She says,

“When it is all resolved-and it most surely will be-the Reformation’s understanding of Scripture as it had been taught by Protestantism for almost five centuries will be dead.  That is not to say that Scripture as the base of authority will be dead.  Rather it is to say that what the Protestant tradition has taught about the nature of that authority will be either dead or in mortal need of reconfiguration.”

That is a million dollar statement if true.  And remember, Tickle is a staunch Calvinist and 65 years old.  But it is the following sentences that caught me as just as important, for it is the reaction to this statement that we will likely experience in strong measure.  She says,

“And that kind of summation is agonizing for the surrounding culture in general.  In particular, it is agonizing for the individual lives that have been built upon it.  Such an ending is to be staved off with every means available and resisted with every bit of energy that can be mustered.”

I know people who are going through this and to watch it is sad to watch.

Tickle does agree that there are many concepts she does not or cannot touch that were significant in leading up to the Great Emergence.  The ones I believe were deeply significant that she did not touch on include the shift from agrarian culture to industrial culture (an outcome of Faraday’s work).  This shift took the father out of the home as a dominant force in the family.  Tickle does mention the loss of the mother with the advent of the pill, but misses the first shift that took place some 100 years earlier.  I was also surprised she didn’t mention the assassination of the Kennedy’s or MLK as watershed moments in emergence.  These three assassinations were reasonably considered some of the defining moments of my parents (and Tickle’s) generation.  The third event I would have highlighted was the Vietnam War.  This was the first time an large portion of a generation rebelled against their parents for reasons of trust, and in a way that was broadcast in the media.  The affects of it were revolutionary to say the least, causing a radical divergence (or emergence) in thinking from one generation to the next.

Section 3 – Where Is It Going?

One of the things I appreciate about Tickle’s approach is that she is humble in her approach to being a prophet.  But she does use existing developments to begin reading the “tea leaves” of where the church is going.

Chapter 6 explores the history of moments that gave the reformation its name and asks the same questions about the Great Emergence, suggesting there has yet to be such a catalyzing event such as the Protestatio.

I would only suggest that the events surrounding the Young Leaders Network explored in The New Christians will eventually be considered such a shifting event.  Out of this rose important people (McLaren, Kimball, Pagitt, Jones) who could began to wrestle with what was emerging and what it meant to emerge.

Tickle continues with the issue of definitions, exploring what the potential distinctions are and wrestling with the generous orthodoxy and overlapping nature of these distinctions.  Most, I would imagine find thesmelves in more than one box.  She even says,

“And so it goes–semi-permeable lines of division that mean to suggest places on a spectrum rather than absolute boundaries.”

I kept thinking of McLaren’s Generous Orthodoxy and the mashup of music that occurred over the last twenty years.  Good things came out of learning from each other and expressing it in creative ways. But the cost of this is also the purity that is derived from the original form and tradition.  And some are just simply not going to like or agree with this.

Tickle clarifies the distinctions of orthodoxy and especially orthopraxy, calling it, “(An) emphasis on (correct) religious action.”  I was struck by the notion of the tediousness she placed on orthopraxy.  It kind of struck me as odd.  But I also get that.  Orthopraxy, in a religious sense can feel tedious.  I think this is why I prefer Rollin’s understanding of “believing in the right way.”  The emphasis isn’t on the specific action, which can become an unnecessary burden in itself, but instead on the heart and motive of the action.  To me, love and trust are the central motives, not just actions of the Gospel, and thus are not specific religious constructs in that sense.

For Tickle, and I would share this, the Great Emergence is blurring the lines between the traditional categories we place ourselves in, which also find their identity in specific and historical, orthodox opinions and practices.

I also appreciated how Tickle brought out the shift from rural to urban living as playing a large part in this blurring of the lines of religious conversation.  The move from isolation in the outer areas to the city where people live on top of each other, shifted the conversation and took religion to the watercooler.  She explores how this conversation created a center of communication and thought.

“American religion had never had a center before, primarily because it was basically Protestant in its Christianity; and Protestantism, with its hallmark characteristic of divisiveness, has never had a center.  Now one was emerging, but that was emerging was no longer Protestant.”

Tickle then explored what came out of these conversations: the emerging expressions of people gathered together in conversation.  She says,

“All however share on shining characteristic: they are incarnational.  Not only is Jesus of Nazareth incarnate God, but Christian worship must incarnate as well.”

I deeply appreciated this and have stated so here.  She continues,

“There is enormous energy in centripetal force, especially as it gathers more and more of its own kind into itself.   Centripetal force, though, is usually envision by us as running downward, like the water in a bathtub drain.  The gathering force of the new Christianity did the opposite.  it ran upward and poured itself out, like some bursting geyser, in expanding waves of influence and nourishment.   Where once the corners had met, now there was a swirling center, its centripetal force racing from quadrant to quadrant in ever-widening circles, picking up ideas and people from each, sweeping them into the center, mixing them there, and then spewing them forth into a new way of being Christian, into a new way of being church.”

This one paragraph so aptly states the nature of the emerging movement. The backlash to this was that the purists (Tickle’s word, and for lack of a better term) of each camp would resist all change.  But Tickle suggests that this reaction is actually good for everyone involved acting as sort of a ballast so the “boat” doesn’t tip over.  She suggest change is good but only so much and over time.

I liked this idea and agree with it.  The conversations I have had with my friends who argue vehemently against the emerging church have been good for me.  They have allowed, even required, me to question my own thoughts and intentions and come to some great conclusions.

Tickle also explores the new expressions of the traditional movements.  These include traditionalists, re-traditionalists, progressives, and hyphenateds.  Each serves a valuable purpose in the four original quadrants. I particularly liked the metaphors she used to describe each expression, which I leave to those who read the book.

Chapter 7 reiterates the basis for all transformation is the question, “Where is the authority?”  It explores the new abstracts that emerge in the Great Emergence: orthonomy and theonomy. These terms describe the tension between the left and right camps to answer the ultimate question.

Where we are going is thus answered in the expression of where the authority lies.  Will it include Sola Scriptura in modified form?  Will in be subject to the influences of community?  Tickle also offers the idea of crowd sourcing to explain why conversation is so important.  But within this idea lies a brilliant analysis.  What is appears she is saying is that the ultimate question will be answered not by one source but by a conglomeration of sources (Scripture, community, Holy Spirit, circumstance, priesthood), all designed to keep authority from being aggregated and controlled by a small group of people.  This will not sit well with some people.

What is interesting is that Tickle seems to suggest that the Quakers had it right all along, willing to be open to multiple forms of authority and community context all along.  This fascinated me.  She also looked briefly into the history of Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel (which I attended in the 80’s) and Wimber’s Vineyard fellowship, highlighting the tensions with emergence in the former and the embracing of emergence in the latter.  She credits Wimber with the rally cry of “authenticity”.

Tickle does touch on center sets and bounded sets, narrative theology and Constantine’s impact on the Hellenization of Christianity, and our revisiting of key elements of doctrine and theology, but her mentions are only brief if well thought out.  She concludes with a statement that I found fascinating.  She said,

“If in pursuing this line of exegesis, the Great Emergence really does what most of its observers think it will, it will rewrite Christian theology-and thereby North American culture-into something far more Jewish, more paradoxical, more narrative, and more mystical that anything the Church has had for the last seventeen or eighteen hundred years.”

How you feel about this statement will likely coincide with how you feel about the Great Emergence itself.

Conclusion: I cannot overstate the importance of this book on the church.  It’s a simple, elegant book that takes about four hours to read, but will give those looking for a clear understanding of the history and complexity behind emergence a big piece of the puzzle.

You can also continue the conversation with Tickle and many others at The Great Emergence conference.

Well done Phyllis.

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The Great Emergence Book Review

Summary: Phyllis Tickle’s, The Great Emergence is my choice for book of the year in 2008. Tickle carefully crafts the historical shifts and tipping points leading up to what she calls a rummage sale on the church.  She answers three questions: What Is It, How did it come to be, and Where is it going?  The defining question of all reformations is clear: Where is our authority?  The book takes an important look at the events leading up to Sola Scriptura and the current events leading away from it.

The value of this book cannot be understated.  It helps us understand not just what is happening but also why it is happening within our previous history and current social-religious systems.  It’s much more than a history book.  It’s a clear and concise look into the strings that moved and are moving the system.

Part 1 – What Is it?

Chapter 1 explores the idea that ever 500 or so years, the world encounters a huge rummage sale of ideas and thoughts.  Tickle’s context here is in the church suggesting that the Great Reformation, The Great Schism, and even Gregory the Great were pivotal events in this cycle.  The rummage sale is the idea that everything gets looked through and put up for sale.  What is then birthed is not just a new expression of Christianity but also a much stronger previous version that grows.

Chapter 2 explores the human constructs/systems that essentially “tether us to the shore.”  I appreciated Tickle’s use of graphics to literally illustrate her point.

“The business of winding sufficient duct tape around the casing to make it hold takes us about a century or so, as a rule.”

This line intrigued me because humanity has never had as much power to communicate as today (in a wired world). How will this speed things up?  How will it affect the transmission of ideas when we’re no longer reliant on birds or horseman to deliver letters, instead receiving them instantly in email?  How will idea viruses take root in this new Great Emergence when blogs (or any new media outlet) can easily dispense, mash up, chew on and dispense iterations of these original ideas at light speed?  How will a new generation, one born into light speed adapt to these new ideas?  Suffice it so say, I wonder if one dominating aspect of the Great Emergence will likely be how fast it emerges, as much as any new theology or ideas that change our worldview.

Section 2 – How did it come to be?

Chapter 3 explores how the Great Reformation came to be asking a fascinating question.  Where is the authority?  As people tether to the shore, we need consensus of thoughts and ideas, validated from an authoritative group.  For those in the 16th century, this was the Pope.  But what happens when there is three Popes, as in the 14th century. Chaos ensues.

“Always without fail, the thing that gets lost early in the process of a reconfiguration is any clear and general understanding of who or what is to be used as the arbitrator of correct belief, action, and control.”

People want a leader to make decisions for them.  Luther and others shifted the fundamental authority from the Papacy to Sola Scriptura, which was a massive shift in terms of system because it put the emphasis back on humanity to engage the priesthood of all believers and become literate in the process.

The cost of this was obviously divisive denominationalism, infighting (bloody at times), individualism, and eventually capitalism.  Tickle rightly asserts the cost of Sola Scriptura.

“We begin to refer to Luther’s principle of ‘Sola Scriptura, Sola Scriptura’ as having been little more than the creation of a paper pope in place of a flesh and blood one. And even as we speak, the authority that has been in place for five hundred years withers away in our hands.  ‘Where now is the authority?’ circles overhead like a dark angel goading us towards disestablishment.  Where indeed?”

This responsibility and subsequent individualism eventually became “the common illusion, our shared imagination as Westerners about how the world works and how the elements of human life are to be ordered.” Tickle then argues that the shift in the Great Emergence is a rummage sale of those Reformation practices of individualism, the nuclear family, and even capitalism.  Selling the old makes way for the new.

As a side note: Tickle asks about the origins of the Renaissance, suggesting that the fall of the Byzantine Empire is that point.  I would offer that the rise of the Medici family in world banking was THE very reason for the Renaissance.  Their huge investment in art, science and architecture was deeply important. From Lorenzo , who gave us DaVinci, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi Dome and even Savanarola’s the Bonfire of the Vanities to Pope Leo, whose widespread use of indulgences were pivotal in Luther’s 95 Theses, no family had more influence on affairs of the world during the 14th to the 17th century.  No worries though.

Tickle also explores the impact of people like Copernicus and Columbus, who very actions challenged and later shattered long help teachings of the church.  But more importantly, these events created questions of authority.

“Could the church be wrong?  Yes.  It was that simple and devastating.”

These realizations produced not only bloodshed but also reform in both the Protestant expressions and the Roman Catholic Church. Tickle offers a caution that if we don’t learn our history we are destined to repeat it.

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Tomorrow I will post the second half of this book review.  It will include chapter 5 which is by far the best chapter in the book, from my perspective, and explores the events that led up to the Great Emergence.

You can also continue the conversation with Tickle and many others at The Great Emergence conference.

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The Emerging Church – A Book Review

It would be easy to read the title of this book and think I would automatically recommend it.  But you would be wrong.

The Emerging Church, by Bruce Sanguin was sent to me to review.  I picked it up hoping it might provide some fresh insight into the Emerging church conversation.  It did not.  It delves into the nature of “emergence” and applies it to the church.

Sanguin makes it very clear that he is influenced by Dominic Crosson and Marcus Borg.  I have nothing against them per se but there approach to Scripture is deeply influenced by a scientific standpoint that does not accept miracles, or anything that breaks the laws of science, thus rendering certain parts the the Scripture narrative obsolete.  This divide is very clear in Sanguin’s defense of an evolutionary perspective on “emergence” (which is a scientific principle) that only made me more confused.

Sanguin’s desire and focus from what I could tell was good.  But I kept feeling he and I came from entirely different paradigms.  Sanguin even begins the book by creating a distinction between the “so called Emergent church movement” or earlier paradigm/church, and his, which he calls an “emerging paradigm/church”.  What was funny was hearing that the emergent church is considered old school already.

I have to admit I kept thinking I don’t know anyone (which doesn’t mean they don’t exist) who begins with Sanguin’s foundation.  Yet I could imagine people reading it and easily assuming that this book is what the emerging church movement represents and immediately disregarding it, which is sad.

If you can get past this concern, Sanguin does offer some keen insights on the nature of emergence, which is a scientific process of organization.  He considers that nature of chaos and living in the tension which I appreciated.  He also shares some insights on the idea of mission and vision that I resonated with.  He also offers some interesting dialog on color coding the human value systems in history, but at the same time he offers them in an evolutionary framework.  Sanguin does reveal his Jesus Seminar influence here.

But then Sanguin offers an interpretation model of the Christ figure based on these color codings.  In other words, our view of Christ is deeply influenced by our values.  I get this but kept wondering what his view of Christ was but he did not define it.  I also realized that it would be easy to have a green/orange/red view, which would throw a whole new wrench in the works.  But more importantly I kept looking for my image of Jesus, and couldn’t find it.  There was no color for a Jesus who is the true humanity or a true image of the Father.

Sanguin makes it clear that he embraces and supports multiple worldviews.  His centre holds multi-faith experiences.  And it is here that his book will confuse a lot of people.  He delves into fairly deeply about the nature of the universe as a energy field.  This is a deeply interesting scientific conversation but will make a lot of people squirm, wondering when they crossed into a new age world.

I have to say this book was one of the more interesting books to read in a long time.  Not because of the content, but because it felt like a carnival ride.  He would say something really interesting and then something that I knew would make people cringe.  And maybe I read it to closely to the chest, wondering how many people would assume this is what I beleived. Oh well.

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What Are You Reading?

What book are you currently reading (or have just finished reading) and why?  If you want, tell us what you think so far.

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NT Wright On Women

I’m reading Surprised By Hope, by NT Wright. To be honest it is not the easiest read but it is good.

NT brings up a fascinating quirk in the story of Jesus’ resurrection.  Women were the first to see Jesus the morning of the resurrection. But Paul, in his account, almost glaringly leaves out the women.

1 Corinthians 15:3-8: For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

I could imagine Paul’s reasoning. NT comments extensively that women were not considered credible witnesses in the ancient world.  But Wright actualy suggests that this lends deep credibility to the stories in the Gospels BECAUSE the writers include the women’s accounts.

I’m wondering if Paul missed an opportunity here.

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The Two Camps

I’m reading what I think will be one of the more important books written in the next ten years. My opinion. It’s Walking With God by John Eldredge. For those who haven or haven’t read John before, this is almost a complete departure from his previous works in masculinity and a return to his earlier works. Much broader in terms of spiritual formation. I’ll post a review when I’m done.

But in the Summer section he highlights an intriguing dialog on two traditional camps.

“The first is the the holiness or “righteous” crowd. They are the folks holding up the standard, preaching a message of moral purity. The results have been…mixed. Some morality, and a great deal of guilt and shame.”

This is the group I grew up on. Suck it up, dig in your heals and just do what is right. It was deeply shameful and full of a tremendous amount of hypocrisy. When someone falls (my pastor was caught in an affair) restoration is virtually impossible.

The other camp is the grace camp.

“Their message is that we can’t hope to satisfy a holy God, but we are forgiven. We are under grace. And praise the living God, we are under grace. But what about holiness? What about deep personal change?”

These two camps appear to mimic the fight or flight responses we see throughout humanity. One posits an unreasonable burden that we cannot possible accomplish on our own. The other simple abandons any responsibility for the self.

But as John points out, neither is wholistic. He points to a third way found in whole restoration that embraces grace but seeks wholeness. This is for me true spirituality, a grace that seeks restoration found in surrendering to His Spirit.

Which camp did you grow up in?

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Book Review – The New Christians Part 3

This is the third part of the book review. You can find part 1 here and part 2 here.

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Chapter 5 – The paradoxes of our faith.

The section continued a dialog of what it means to engage a humble hermeneutic. He cites the issues of women’s suffrage and slavery as example, ones in which we now have a different opinion than 100-200 years ago. What was really strange was reading the name Daniel Henderson, the very man who baptized me, and now a pastor in Minnesota. Weird.

Tony does a good job of bringing out the slippery slope issue. He says,

“Based on his comments, he fears that humility – at least in the interpretation of the Bible – will lead to meaninglessness, to an inability to stand for something.”

He calls out the problem of certainty, which can lead to imperialism and instead offers Newbigin’s “proper confidence”. He brilliantly offers,

“While an emphasis on interpretation does preclude the many propositions about eternally “right” and “wrong” answers, it doesn’t mean that there’s not truth. Instead, it means that there are inherently better interpretations – that one interpretation can trump another.”

History clearly reveals that we have had better interpretations based on new information and dialog. The tension lies in the fact that we don’t like it when there are different interpretations than ours. Tony offers that this intellectual bravery to engage conversation and not settle is founded throughout history in Luther, Assisi, Day and Bonhoeffer.

Tony offers the idea that we can learn from any text in the library, not just the ones deemed “approved” by the church or written by Christian authors. This practice is one of the critical tensions between the traditional church and the emerging streams. To me, one is based on fear. The other is based on trust.

His dispatch #13 I would offer sums up the heart of the problem surrounding the misconceptions that Emergents don’t believe in truth. It says,

“Emergents believe that truth, like God, cannot be definitively articulated by finite human beings.”

What most people will probably hear or read or say when talking about Emergents is what amounts to an edited version of this statement; “Emergents believe that truth cannot be known by human being.” I appreciate Tony putting it into such a succinct, articulate statement.

Tony also explores a really good discussion on the nature of paradox and our desire to constantly solve the paradox. He shared his encounter with a physicist who explains that paradox is inherent to nature. An example is that a electron is both a particle AND a wave. He quotes the physicist as saying,

“I just think, if there are paradoxes in physics, then why shouldn’t there be paradoxes in theology too?”

Good food for thought for those who want to box God in. I would offer that the willingness to live in the tension of the paradox is one of the strongest traits of the emerging church.

Chapter 6 – Emergent community in the new world or “Do you trust me?”

In this chapter, Tony explores different ways emerging communities are exploring a generous orthodoxy. He profiles Tim Keel’s Jacob’s Well and shares what it’s like. He then offers an intriguing insight into how Wikipedia, an open source community of share concern can offer much to the emerging church communities. I must say that I really, really liked this idea of open source church. The concern for church heresy is mitigated by the group’s desire for truth. Messiness will occur but so will a burgeoning community. I love this section. At the heart of emerging churches is the willingness to fail and learn. We’re not afraid to grow from failure. Isn’t this real life anyway.

Tony provides a very short section on Binitarianism (the belief in the two of the three parts of the trinity). The point was that we have lost the Holy Spirit. This to me could have been a much larger section, especially in regards to interpretation. It is my sense that much of the emerging church stems from a desire to discover what the Holy Spirit is doing organically and participating where God is already working. His critique is that we do what we think works and then wonder why we’re burned out.

One of the pervasive notions of this section is the question, “Are we going to trust people?” This extends the generous orthodoxy to a generous orthopraxy, which is essentially what Jesus did when he left humanity and gave us the Holy Spirit to follow.

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Book Review – The New Christians Part 1

Summary: Tony provides a deep historical account of how and why the emerging church and emergent movement arrived and is what it is today. This is a must read book for those interested in the emerging church, or anyone who wants a clear picture of the emerging/emergent movement. If you are unwilling to read this book, you have no real leg to stand on in your critique.

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Note: Tony blends the use of Emergent and emerging church, where I would not. Emergent is an organization that coordinates activities and conversation, where the emerging church is the natural organic movement of God within the world today. It’s not a big deal but it helps to know the difference if you are reading this as a new comer.

Chapter 1 – Summary: What it means to deconstruct.

Tony created a valuable distinction for me in three words: reactionary, resolutionary, and revolutionary. Instead of jumping to the left/right, us/them mentality of the first two, Jesus chose the third way, staying in the tension of not demonizing the other.

I especially appreciated his quote from Anthony Smith in describing his view of the emerging church. Anthony said,

“First…there is an epistemological humility with this particular movement.”

That’s it. He gets it. So much of the emerging movement is a move a way from the arrogance that has pervaded Christianity, the run to know it all. I don’t know it all. And it’s nice to have great conversations with those who don’t know it all. And as we share together we can discover how God is moving.

Chapter 2 – Summary: The history of the emergent movement.

First I want to say that this chapter was worth the price of the book alone.

I really appreciated the metaphor of the lava flow. No matter how hard we try to contain it, creating hard, crusty shells on the surface, God finds a way to break through. This metaphor adequately describes the tension of any movement to break free from the chains that history always creates. That we don’t see the chains, when history is filled with examples, is a testament to the human condition.

Tony creates another distinction of Gospelism, which is mans desire to control or put rigid forms around what God is doing in our midst. To me, that’s religion.

He also continues the dialog on the natural human instinct to polarize, right/left, us/them, etc. He brings out the cultural swings from secularization to fundamentalism, and again draws us to the third way of Jesus. He finds describes it as,

“It’s what might be called the postmodern posture: an attempt to both maintain one’s distinctive identity while also being truly open to the identity of the other.”

The problem as Tony describes is that this living in the tension doesn’t fit into neat little packages.

I also appreciated reading the deep history of the initial Young Leaders Network and how it got started, the UK history with Jonny Baker and NOS, and the background to the interactive process of the web. It puts it in a framework that is larger, more global than just evangelicals.

Tony succinctly draws the distinction between bounded sets (unity based on membership), centered sets (unity based on beliefs), and emerging (unity based on relationship). I appreciate this distinction because it draws us into relationship not based on commonality but in our humanity.

Continue on to Part 2 here…

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A Book You Can’t Put Down

Recently I wrote about the books that have been very meaningful to me. And then I was thinking about this. What was the last book I read that I couldn’t put down? I mean the type of book that I really had to finish. And that book would probably be Exiles by Michael Frost. I devoured this book and highly recommend it.

What about you?

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Books That Changed My Life

I was tagged by Brad over at Mission Church Network. Awesome site by the way for those looking for a great conversation on missional living. The question was, what are the books that changed your life. So here goes.

One Book That Changed Your Life

This would have to be Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards. This to me is the best book every written on the nature of God’s kingdom and learning to trust.

One Book That You Read More Than Once

A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer. I have read the first chapter at least twenty times. This book was for me one of the best conversations on wholeness.

One Book You Would Want on a Desert Island

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky. If I’m on a desert island I would want this book. It’s all about stress.

One Books That Made You Laugh

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. Donald is one of the most gifted writers of conversation. I love his style and ability to share his heart.

One Book That Made You Cry

No Future Without Forgiveness by Bishop Desmond Tutu. This is the most powerful book on reconciliation I have ever read. It is impossible to walk away from what happened in South Africa and not see hope.

One Book You Wish You Had Written

This was the most intriguing question so I chose one of pleasure. The Firm by John Grisham. Still his best book and a great movie. I could have been wealthy.

One Book You Are Currently Reading

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. This book could be considered one of the first emerging philosophy books written for the post modern age before anyone had heard the word post modern. Brilliant read on love.

One Book You Have Been Meaning to Read

The Divine Embrace by Robert Webber. I’ve heard very good things about this book, which Scot McKnight reviewed.

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The New Conspirators – Excerpt 3

The following is a question from Tom Sine’s book, The New Conspirators.

 “Therefore, in choosing to follow this God, revealed in Jesus, we are to become people for others; we are to enter into the “fellowship of his suffering.” The call to follow Christ is a call to look beyond our narrow self-interests and give ourselves to the “otherness” of the gospel of Jesus, to join him in making God’s shalom homecoming a reality in the lives of others right now.”

Nice. When all is said and done it still comes down to love.

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The New Conspirators – Part 4

This is a book review of Tom Sine’s book, The New Conspirators, by IVP. Part 4 is a review of Conversation III: Taking the Future of God Seriously. There are three distinct sections to this conversation.

The first section is entitled, Coming home to the life of God. This conversation explores the nature of coming home in more detail. It looks at the possibilities of adopting a narrative eschatology that seeks to return home to the kingdom of God. He explores the dialogs of NT Wright and Brian McLaren who share alternative views on the kingdom conversation. He explores stories about what it means to come home and even the poetic language of Revelations.

He points to what is essentially a missional comment when he says,

“These images remind us that God cares not only for us but for all those with whom we share this earth and, indeed, all of God’s good creation.”

The second section is entitled, Another world is already here. This conversation explores the nature of a bodily resurrection and its implications for coming home. He looks at some of the passages in Scripture that detail the Second Coming and its coming home theme. He also explores the nature of God’s mission to restore, which includes the poor and the oppressed. You can just feel Tom’s love the for the themes he’s presenting. They resonating with me as well.

It is this section that delves deeper into Mission Dei exploring God’s intention and desire to restore his creation and bring people home. I loved reading his prose about the subject.

The third section is entitled, Coming Home to a Transformed Human Future. Tom opens the section with an interesting quote that invites us into the process. He says,

“Did Jesus come simply announcing the new empire of God, or did he come inviting us to join him in making it real in the turbulent world where we live?”

He provides an insight into the purpose of Jesus which was to restore. But in that process we must take evil and judgment very seriously to understand the full meaning of what God is doing. We need and understanding of evil and judgment to understand our own need for restoration. His framing of the conversation in this way was really refreshing.

He also explores the reality that it is very easy to just miss God in the everyday life, assuming that he is somehow disinterested or unaware of our situation. And yet nothing could be further from the truth. God is to be found everywhere when we look.

Tom ends each section with an invitation to join in the conversation.  But the invitation inevitably leads to the idea of joining God in His beautiful restoration project, his Missio Dei.

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The New Conspirators – Excerpt 2

The following is a question from Tom Sine’s book, The New Conspirators.

“Really tough question: Is it possible we got our eschatology wrong? Is it possible we have embraced an eschatology that has very little connection to the urgent issues that fill our world or to the important decisions of our daily lives? Is it possible that many of us have subscribed to an eschatology that has very little influence in defining our sense of what constitutes the good life and better future?”

What do you think?

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The New Conspirators – Part 3

This is a book review of Tom Sine’s book, The New Conspirators, by IVP. Part 3 is a review of Conversation II: Taking the Culture Seriously.

In this second conversation, Tom provides insight into a Post 9/11, consumeristic, global economy and the Global Mall. He provides deep insight into some of the more underlying global conversations facing New Conspirators, things such as borderless youth, global consumerism, universal economies and their effects on each other. The conversation is broken up into two sections.

The first conversation was about global politics. To a great extent this section felt like a deviation from the previous conversation, almost a non-sequitur. The conversation is very specific to current world events and he relies on a presentation he gave to Lebanon to shape his views. His concern is that religious views have been sharply influenced by Western McReligion, one that focuses on excess and consumerism.

This first section sets the stage for the second, which begins to look at the affects of that global economy, which he calls the global mall on the Christian story and a meta-theme of coming home. He questions its affect on our eschatology. He asks:

“to what extent have we allowed modern culture, as magnified through the global mall, to define our notion of what constitutes the good life and better future”

It’s a very important question. As the global mall becomes pervasive we as a body find ourselves in direct tension with the story it creates. At what point does the story of the global mall eclipse our ancient stories? He begins to create the very intriguing point that the global mall is deeply influencing our story by creating an alternative, western, secular salvation that uses God’s provision simply as a means to the here and now, a prosperity gospel, mostly defined in economic terms.

He also said one thing that really caught my attention.

“A number of missional church scholars offer thoughtful intellectual critiques of modern culture and the ways that economic globalization influences the values of believers everywhere. However, very few churches that fly under the missional church banner seem to feature discipleship resources any different from those used by either traditional or megachurches”

That’s troubling to me.

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The New Conspirators – Part 2

This is a book review of Tom Sine’s book, The New Conspirators, by IVP. Part 2 is a review of Conversation I: Taking the new conspirators seriously.

In this first conversation, Tom provides an overview of what he sees are the four streams or expressions of the New Conspirators. These four are emerging, missional, mosaic, and monastic.

• The Emerging Stream: Tom’s review here is cursory and he even says so. A clearer and much more detailed review was provided by Gibbs and Bolger in Emerging Churches, or Frost and Hirsch in Shaping of Things To Come. He does provide some of the history that leads up to the emerging expressions, which were more prominent in the UK.
• The Missional Stream: Sine provides an insight here that I was not really aware of. He points to the missional as arising out of academia. He points to the work of Leslie Newbigin, Darrell Gruder, Frost and Hirsch, and Alan Roxburgh.
• The Mosaic Stream: This stream arises out of the reality that the church must embrace each expression of God’s creation. He points to the urban hip/hop church as example of new expressions that are coming out of urban areas. They are decidedly multicultural and using multiple forms of art and culture to renew.
• The Monastic Stream: This stream arises out of the desire for social justice and the call to the poor. This stream has several expressions within it and is the most focuses on social justice. Monastic communities have little interest in church planting and provide deeper theological arguments for their way of life.

Overall, I found the conversation broken down into four streams evocative. I found myself identifying with each in a fresh new way, saying, “That’s me.” The four streams are somewhat like personalities in the crowd. Each is just different and each can learn from each other. The review is cursory, but this doesn’t really matter. There are already well written works on each stream.

The conversation is also different in that it is not a theological observation. There is not real breakdown of what each group believes. I found this actually refreshing. The four streams are not active breakdowns of beliefs but actions. This has already done well here by Jason Clark.

I would place myself in the emerging missional stream. Although I am not monastic in the traditional sense, I would hold that the missional church is very interested in both inward and outward mission, of which the poor are specific call. Another thing is that I guess I just always assumed that the church is mosaic. In fact some of the most interesting expressions typically are new and come from unexpected places.

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The New Conspirators – Excerpt 1

During this project of reviewing Tom Sine’s book, The New Conspirators, I’m going to be pulling certain excerpts to dialog on. I invite you to join with me.

The following excerpt caught my attention. Tom, who is in his sixties but came out of the radical hippie Jesus Movement in the sixties and seventies, said the following:

“(Johnny Baker) and others helped me to rediscover the gospel as narrative, filled with mystery and wonder. Yet in spite of all I learned from them, I was still having a difficult time getting my head around postmodernism.”

When I saw that remark I am reminded of how much culture has shaped both Tom and the postmodern world. Tom viewed the world through a modern lens for most of his life and has experiences and conversations that shaped it in a way that was defined by truth as certainty. The problem is that the postmodern world doesn’t have those experiences and conversations. And Tom can’t see the world without those experiences and conversations. They are part of him.

And I realized that part of what the New Conspirators need to do is help those outside of this paradigm see inside. We need to create fresh ways of seeing what we are seeing the communicates in a way that bridges that gap. But we also need to resist the arguments that instantly destroy that conversation. We need to be love in a way that allows those who don’t see what we see, a re-framing of the Gospel that is true.

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The New Conspirators – Part 1

I’m reading Tom Sine’s book, The New Conspirators, by IVP. The cover you see is the UK version. Tom and his wife Christine run Mustard Seed Associates in Seattle, WA. Tom is an excellent story teller, weaving idea with experience. It provides a nice blend that is engaging in many ways.

Tom provides his vision for the book on the second page,

“…we see the Spirit of God working largely through the vision, creativity and initiative of a new generation—through emerging, missional, multicultural and monastic streams—as well as in traditional churches that are hungry for a more authentic, vital, mission-centered faith. This book is written to invite you, not only to support what God is doing through these renewing streams, but also to join this conspiracy of compassion”

He invites readers to consider four new streams (emerging, missional, mosaic, and monastic) that are popping up all over the world. These expression provide the framework for five conversations in the book.

1. Conversation I: Taking the new conspirators seriously.
2. Conversation II: Taking the culture seriously.
3. Conversation III: Taking the future of God seriously.
4. Conversation IV: Taking the turbulent times seriously.
5. Conversation V: Taking our imagination seriously.

Over the next month, I’ll be looking at these five conversations in further detail.

One of the things I immediately like and appreciated is Tom’s engaging style. He is humble in his presentation and is constantly inviting his readers into the conversation without being overbearing. His idea is to explore the content with you. Each chapter does come with a study guide for further exploration in small groups as well.

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Redeeming The Church 2

Jeromy asked me to post a more detailed response to my everything comment about what I would redeem in the church.  But Kamp Krusty has a book review about Pagan Christianity that pretty much sums up my feelings.  And it ain’t pretty.

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