Resonate

We have walked through the first four chapters of Gary Nelson’s book.  It is one of the three or four books published out of the Canadian context in the last five years that pulls all the pieces together within a missional framework.  We need this kind of analysis, leadership and passion in Canada in order to move forward.

Chapter 5 follows on the chapter on leadership, and now focuses more narrowly to strategic considerations. This one is titled, “Herding Cats: Leading a Church into the Borderlands.”

Gary opens with a strong metaphor, recalling the western style commercial that was designed for Vanderbilt University’s IT department.  Herding cats may be messy and chaotic.. but the point is getting to a certain end together.  Or, as Roxburgh and Romanuk put it, “The key to innovating new life and mission in a congregation is not so much a strategy for growth as it is cultivation of people themselves.” (87)  “Cultivation” gets at the issue of soil as well as the ethos. Leadership is about atmosphere, and what we are now talking about is culture. read more »

The fourth chapter in Gary Nelson’s book is entitled, “Landscapes and Tool Kits: The Challenge of Borderland Living.” Every chapter opens with a “Compass Point” paragraph, and this one gives a very solid sense of the chapter. Gary writes, “Leaders of today’s borderland churches are living on a new pastoral landscape and require a new toolkit of strategies comprised of a new understanding of their role, an honest evaluation of themselves, and the ability to create a variety of secure places of relationship. They image their leadership in the frames of apprentice-pastor-theologian-missionary.”

Gary’s first turn is to examine the pastoral landscape. The context of ministry has changed drastically, and thus the pastor’s role in the community has shifted. A sense of irrelevance is common. But this anxiety around identity colors pastoral experience and assessment.

Moreover, ambiguity is now the norm. Expectations have changed and may be amorphous. Congregations are often living in the past, yet pastors are attempting to live in the new world in order to connect. But how to make the shift? The problem is not that information is lacking, the problem is that we are buried in it. We are overwhelmed.. what to prioritize?

Meanwhile, our beliefs about and images of the church are themselves in transition. The interplay of community and institution can be daunting. Are designed structures or emergent structures the starting point? How do we do discipleship in a consumer culture? Is the church a business or a community — we live in a world of mortgages and multiple staff where it seems to be both. read more »

The third chapter in Gary Nelson’s book is entitled “Recovering Our Roots: God’s Intent for His Church.” This chapter opens with a case study from the book of Ephesians and the question, “How do we lose our first love?” He proceeds from here to work at recovering a biblical ecclesiology.

Gary asks us to consider replacing the word “theology” with the word, “image.” Just as every church has an implicit theology, it also has a dominant self-image. (And as I am reading this, I am thinking of a similar approach articulated by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost around “story” — we story our experience and what we notice and articulate says much about who we are. To bring change requires us to change the story).

One of the inevitable challenges, and this is true also within the framework of narrative therapy, is that our dominant image of who we are as a community may have little to do with God’s intention. Gary contrasts our need to theologize with the need for grounded reflection. God’s redemptive work in the world is not about creating theology, after all, but creating a living people, a new community, living in the shalom of the coming kingdom. “We get sidetracked into focusing on the activity of the church rather than its purpose,” and as a result we focus on models that will bring us success without asking deeper questions. Gary pushes us back to the questions, “who, what, how and why” of God’s purpose. read more »

On the RESONATE list recently morning Dave King shared some insight into the context of Jesus birth. At the time, Israel was under Roman rule. But the situation was much, much worse. The priests, the Sadducees and the Pharisees were all caught in a religious system, and the priestly and Temple system was corrupt. The dynamics of Empire, over an extended period of time, had gradually subverted Israel’s faith. Dave writes,
“Herod, when he realized that the scholars had tricked him, flew into a rage. He commanded the murder of every little boy two years old and under who lived in Bethlehem and its surrounding hills. (He determined that age from information he’d gotten from the scholars.) That’s when Jeremiah’s sermon was fulfilled:

A sound was heard in Ramah,
weeping and much lament.
Rachel weeping for her children,
Rachel refusing all solace,
Her children gone,
dead and buried.

“I was thinking about the above passage this week. It seems to me to echo the decree of Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every boy that is born [b] you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

“I’m sure I’ve heard that pointed out before, but I can’t cite a reference. What struck me this week was that Herod was also the power behind the temple. So at the beginning of Matthew we’ve come full circle.

“Having been rescued from Pharaoh to come to the promised land and having a temple of their own, now the power behind the temple is killing young boys as Pharaoh had done.”

How depressing! When once our light has become darkness, how great the darkness! The coming of Jesus was literally the coming of a new Moses, a new Deliverer to lead God’s people out of bondage. And I can’t imagine a more relevant message for the church in our day.

When Israel was delivered from bondage they followed God in the desert. They following the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. They had a living relationship with a living and active God.

They were a nation on the move because God was on the move. But once the Temple was built by Solomon, institutional power grew and combined with the Royal reality, the people learned to follow human rulers. Justice was compromised in favor of national priorities. Similarly in our own day Walter Brueggemann argues that we moved from text to Temple, and only now as we fall away from the power we had under Christendom are we moving from Temple to text. We are rediscovering that we are not called to comfort, but to follow a God on the move (missio). We are discovering that the good news of the Empire (peace and prosperity) is an alternate gospel than the vulnerable, liberating shalom of God’s just reign.

Moses cry to Pharoah.. which was really God’s cry to the Powers through Moses .. is sounding again.

LET MY PEOPLE GO!

“A time is coming, and now is, when those who worship the Father
must worship him in Spirit and in truth.”

The second chapter in Gary Nelson’s recent book is titled,  “Crossing Over.” It’s an appropriate title and contains a certain poignancy: while every church and every leader wants to make this crossing, like Moses, some will not make it…

Gary begins by noting that Joshua’s experience of moving across the Jordon to the promised land serves as a framework for today’s church — we are invited out of the security of the familiar into the borderlands. For Gary the Hebrew word, ‘abar will define this experience. It is translated “crossover,” and this is the first time it appears in the Old Testament. It describes a decisive moment, perhaps a “kairos” time. The people of God will cut themselves off from what has been and move into the unknown world. Like the Latin word “limina” it describes a threshold — we can’t go back and we may not want to go ahead — and it conjures the anxiety that we experience in those moments that require us to intentionally leave our comfort zones behind. read more »

Borderland Churches
Author: Gary Nelson
Publisher: Chalice Press, 2008
166 Pages

In seven chapters and seven appendices Gary Nelson offers a Canadian take on what it means to live in the borderlands. Or, more precisely, he challenges us to embrace the borderlands where we live. These really are two different things, because like our American brothers to the south, we have largely failed to live in the communities where we dwell. The borderlands are a place where faith and unfaith intersect, and a place decidedly outside the comfort zone of Christendom structures.

Gary is the General Secretary for Canadian Baptist Ministries. He brings a wealth of experience to this task, and the book straddles an academic and practical line with ease. While Gary works at a theological task, his emphasis is on practice and to that end he stories this journey very well. Moreover, he is passionate about his purpose, and the stories he tells help us to envision a new kind of church and a new level of engagement in our communities in Canada.

The book is comprised of seven chapters, as follows:

1. Learning to Sing the Song
2. Crossing Over
3. Recovering our Roots
4. Landscapes and Tool Kits
5. Herding Cats
6. Missioning the Church
7. Mapping the Journey read more »

For those of you in the Greater Toronto Area and are looking for a place to discuss theology in a casual setting, you will want to check out Toronto’s Theology Pub.

Theology Pub is a monthly gathering of Christians in Toronto. We gather for fellowship and to discuss theology with a desire to grow in our love for God and obedience to him; to sharpen and encourage each other; and to pray for the city of Toronto.

It’s hosted by our friend Darryl Dash and looks like a great night out for all of you theologians out there.

Andrew Jones was laid off by Church Mission Society today.

Anyway. Its a hard thing to receive a redundancy letter, despite how nice your employer has been about it. Its like getting dumped by a girlfriend. Its a blow to your ego. It whispers insulting challenges to your accomplishments, It highlights the ‘dunce’ part of ‘redundancy’ when you say the word too many times in the same sentence.

You can support his ministry and the Jones family over on his blog.

Michael Krahn has been blogging and posting extensive notes of the sessions he has attended, as well as referencing other bloggers who attended the Congress.

One of the more interesting discussions is on the whole question of a “social” gospel as opposed to regeneration as the heart of the issue. Mike quotes from Jonathan Dodson that “social action doesn’t create [the] new community:”

Although social action mission creates community, it doesn’t create new community. Regenerated, new creation is the unique work of God the Spirit (Tit. 2.11; Gal. 6:15) through faith in the Son (Tit. 3:6-7; 2 Cor. 5:17). If we convert people to community and social mission alone, and not to Christ, we offer a very incomplete gospel. Regeneration is both social (Matt. 19:28) and spiritual (Tit. 3:5). The Spirit, not social mission, makes men new.

This is both helpful, and incomplete…

It is helpful because it is important to know what we mean by regeneration, referencing the work of the Spirit in the heart of a believer. It is incomplete, because it tends to push us away from the frame of missio Dei – which is the movement toward shalom, a wholeness of God in action in the world, where there is no “spiritual” gospel as opposed to a “social” one. It is abundantly evident in the Old Testament that justice and economic issues are near the heart of the gospel. It is equally clear in Jesus defining statement of his ministry in Luke 4.

However, Jonathan is right that social mission alone does not produce shalom. It may create the conditions that make shalom possible, and it certainly makes shalom visible. But to say that it does not PRODUCE shalom does not mean that it has no value in this world. These last points are really important. The Gospel becomes visible in the new community, through signs of the kingdom, foretastes of the shalom that God will one day bring in fulness. The new community performs and proclaims the word in its shared life in the neighbourhood.

And this life and work for justice has real value — God genuinely loves and cares for this fallen world, and will love and care for the world in spite of its response. If nothing else, Matthew 25 should instruct us that God’s care for the poor has no conditions attached. God in Godself overflows with self-sacrificing love, pours himself out for this world knowing it might reject him. Ultimately we embody the love of God in our communities not because we know that love will transform the world, but because this is the nature of God. Ultimately mission appears as the self-unfolding of contemplation.

It struck me that there is nothing comparable to this Calgary gathering occurring in the United States. Seven hundred people from across the denominational spectrum and from rural, urban, and suburban settings across Canada coming together for a single missional agenda – to impact our country for Christ by seeding missional communities. And it is equally amazing that nearly half of this group have come to a Congress for the first time. Something is stirring in Canadian hearts — a work of the Spirit.

The Thursday morning session again featured Stuart Murray and Juliet Kilpin — really a great combination of reflecting, wondering, and putting forth theology and frameworks: a great blend of academics and on-the-ground but in-process experience. It leads me to hope that Urban Expressions might publish a book about what they are learning. read more »

This is the first in a series of reports written while attending Renov8. Hopefully others will post their thoughts, reflections, questions and frustrations also.

After a day in meetings with the Forge Canada National Team, and with the first plenary session on its way, we arrived at a restaurant not far from Center Street. We were to meet another group which included Stuart Murray and Juliet Kilpin of Urban Expressions UK.

As it turned out, the restaurant had lost our reservation, and we didn’t have a lot of time to spare. Hmm.. isn’t that a pub next door? We checked it out.. no line up and not crowded. Why not?

It’s surprising how consistently good the food is in pubs, and the portions seem generally larger. I ordered one of the best chicken club sandwiches I’ve ever had. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get BC Cider in Alberta, and I don’t like beer 

I sat at a table with Mike Frost, Glenn Smith and Anthony Brown. Mike was first up last night for the plenary last night and did a great job sharing his heart for the kingdom and God’s redeeming work in the world. At the pub I heard about his fondness for the beer produced by the micro-brewery in his home town of Sydney in New South Wales. read more »

Well our experiment as Wiki was shortlived and in the end was brought down by spambots.  We tried blacklists, locking down pages, and in the end, it was going to be more work keeping MediaWiki secure than it was worth it.  The site is moving for now to Wordpress and over the next week we will be adding new content, voices, and ideas to the site.

I’m excited about this workshop taking place right here in Vancouver:

Grandview Calvary Baptist church, home to a number of new monastic communities, and Carey Institute are partnering to present a workshop on New Monasticism on May 2nd, 9:30am – 3:00pm.

Speakers include:

Jonathan Wilson (Carey Theological College)
Craig Greenfield (Servants Vancouver)
Tama Ward Balisky (Kinbrace Community)
Dave Diewert (Streams of Justice)
Tim Dickau (Grandview Calvary Baptist)
Aaron White (24/7 Prayer & 614)
Amy Wilson-Roberts (Nieu Communities)

Worship will be led by local musician Tom Wuest.

Email newmonasticism@gcbchurch.ca for more information.

Download an insert here, and an article here.

I’ve been reading in Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community. The collection of essays is uniformly very good, but the final essay is the title of the book, and it is quite outstanding. Anyone with a serious interest in ecology should read it; in fact, anyone with a serious interest in community and the economy and the survival of our planet should read it.

As I began reading, the question foremost in my mind was this: “How are the ecological problems we face related to sexuality?” The answers will surprise you.

One of the essays in the book was published elsewhere. Wendell Berry writes in CrossCurrents:

“I want to begin with a problem: namely, that the culpability of Christianity in the destruction of the natural world, and the uselessness of Christianity to any effort to correct that destruction, are now established cliches of the conservation movement. This is a problem for two reasons: First, the indictment of Christianity by the anti-Christian conservationists is, in many respects, just. For instance, the complicity of Christian priests, preachers, and missionaries in the cultural destruction and the economic exploitation of the primary peoples of the Western Hemisphere as well as of traditional cultures around the world, is notorious. Christian organizations, to this day, remain largely indifferent to the rape and plunder of the world and of its traditional cultures.

“The conservationist indictment of Christianity is a problem, secondly, because, however just it may be, it does not come from an adequate understanding of the Bible and the cultural traditions that descend from the Bible. The anti-Christian conservationists characteristically deal with the Bible by waving it off. And this dismissal conceals, as such dismissals are apt to do, an ignorance that invalidates it. The Bible is an inspired book written by human hands; as such, it is certainly subject to criticism. But the anti-Christian environmentalists have not mastered the first rule of the criticism of books: you have to read them before you criticize them… It entails, furthermore, the making of very precise distinctions between biblical instruction and the behavior of those peoples supposed to have been biblically instructed.”

More…

Related: “Domination or Delight?” in the latest issue of The Journal of Contemplative Spirituality

Related: Ecological footprint

I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to the Amahoro Gathering this year, which takes place in South Africa from June 8 – 15. The theme this year is The African Reformation. Coming at this from a belief, as I have stated here before, that I believe Africa will someday save the West, and not the other way around, I am particularly excited.

Last year in Rwanda I met some incredible people from all around the world. That being said, it was the Africans I will never forget. My previous interactions with “the African church” had left me distressed – It seemed to me that colonialism was alive and well in the church, in that we had exported the worst of the church to Africa, where it still exists, while we ourselves have tried to move on. But this is not exclusively the case. I met many, many African leaders who are thinking differently. (In fact, if you read the first chapter of Brian McLaren’s book Everything Must Change, you will see that it was an African woman who came up with that title. And it was at an Amahoro Gathering in Burundi where that exchange took place.)

This is your opportunity to participate. Times are tough, I know. But you must come anyway. Forget logic, forget prudence, forget even financial responsibility. Just come. I’m looking for Canadians in particular. Last year there were two others besides me–one who lived in the US, and one who lived in Burundi. It’s time for Canadians to venture out again and re-enter this conversation.

Here’s a message from my friend Claude Nikondeha that arrived in my inbox yesterday:

As we look toward The Gathering in South Africa this year, we are anticipating a great time of connection, conversation and transformational opportunities as we come together from Africa and beyond in the name of Jesus. Our African friends, innovative leaders from across the African continent, are already gearing up for this time together. Our South African team is vigorously planning the many details for our time together, eager to host friends and create a space that is rich soil for new friendships to grow. We all are aware that when we gather, good conversations happen, good connections happen and we are all transformed!

So we want to, once again, invite you to consider joining us in South Africa for The Gathering. So many good things await you in Africa! The presence of Western friends at The Gathering is a deep encouragement to our African leaders, a tangible reminder that they are not alone, that they are not invisible in their Kingdom endeavors. When you come, the most wonderful gift you bring is your very presence, your voice joining theirs in worship, discussion and laughter. But you will also be encouraged by these leaders, you will confront new realities, learn new lessons about following Jesus and be inspired to be part of God’s repair of the world – in Africa and in your home community. We are all enriched when we come together in Jesus!

These are times that stretch us economically. It would be easy to delay coming to Africa until there was more money in the bank. But it is good to remember that Jesus did not work from a mentality of scarcity, He moved about in generosity, and He taught His disciples that where He was, there was ample provision, enough to feed crowds if necessary! So for those who are feeling the draw of Africa, who are longing to connect with African leaders, please come.

Registration is still open! In order to confirm your spot, you will need to send your $200 non-refundable deposit in to African Liaison Group / Amahoro Africa (p.o. box 5394, Bend, OR, 97708). We are now encouraging people to purchase their plane tickets as well, so we are definitely getting ready to gather in South Africa! Please join us, come and be part of the conversation!

P.S. For more information on the Gathering – Please email us at: gathering@amahoro-africa.org

Amahoro,

Claude Nikondeha

I’ll add my own “Amahoro” to Claude’s, and encourage you to think very seriously about this… but don’t think about it for too long.