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.
Cultivate is a learning party which is taking place on Saturday, May 16, 2009 in Hamilton, Ontario, featuring missional practitioners like:
Steve Taylor – pastor / author / blogger
Pernell Goodyear – church planter / trainer, speaker & coach
Jared Siebert – growth director / thinker / blogger
Joe Manafo – church planter / filmmaker / resourcer
More coming soon…
Cultivate is for anyone who is interested in missional church, and is happening because of numerous conversations between different people, organizations, networks and churches in Canada that long to see new forms of church thrive and relational networking happen. We are tired of the same old, same old conferences and just simply want to be friends, inspire each other, and swap stories, ideas, and encouragement.
Cultivate has taken place twice a year (in the Spring and in the Fall) since 2006.
In The Solace of Fierce Landscapes Belden Lane describes habitus. Habitus denotes the intimate connection between spirit and place. Belden writes that this connection,
“..is hard to grasp for those of us living in a post-Enlightenment technological society. Landscape and spirituality are not, for us, inevitably interwoven. We experience no inescapable link between our “place” and our way of conceiving the holy, between habitat and habitus, where one lives and how one practices a habit of being. Our concern is simply to move quickly (and freely) as possible from one place to another. We are bereft of rituals of entry that allow us to participate fully in the places we inhabit.
“We have lost the ability even to heed the natural environment, much less to perceive it through the lens of a particular tradition. Modern western culture is largely shorn of attentiveness to both habitat and habitus. Where we live – in what we are rooted – no longer defines who we are. We have learned to distrust all disciplines of formative spiritual traditions, with their communal ways of perceiving the world. We have realized, in the end, the “free individual” at the expense of a network of related meanings.
“Without a habitus – particularly one that is drawn, at least in part, from the rhythm of the land around us – our habitat ceases to be a living partner in the pursuit of common wholeness. We become alienated from an environment that seems indifferent, even hostile. Habitat turns into scenery, inconsequential background. Habitus is reduced to a nonsacramental, individualistic quest for transcendent experience. We lose any sense of being formed in community, particularly in a tradition that allows us to act unconsciously, with ease and delight, out of a deep sense of what is natural to us and to our “milieu.” We are, in short, a people without “habit,” with no common custom, place, or dress to lend us shared meaning.”
Some call this “disembedding,” others “disengagement.” We often have to disengage in order to engage. We “retreat” in order to advance. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, writing about the new monastic movement from his location within it, tells of his time in Iraq.
“What I learned about relocation in Iraq is what the monastic tradition has known for hundreds of years: sometimes you have to relocate in order to really see the world and reimagine your role within it. That’s why Antony went to the desert and Francis took to the streets. They knew something was wrong with the church, but they couldn’t see any alternatives from where they were. Their location blinded them, holding their imagination captive. The monastics needed to see the world from a different place if they were going to see it anew. So they moved, and when they did, they started movements. The renewal of the church depended on relocation.” New Monasticism, 76
Perhaps much of the relocation we are seeing in our Christian sub-culture today is this same movement. Many of us left the comfort of the pew and went into the desert.. into exile. From this new location, everything looks different. And this disengagement, for some of us, offers the possibility of a new kind of engagement.
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This past weekend I opened two new books: Punk Monk, and Inhabiting the Church. Both are engaging and both are current. Punk Monk documents the 24/7 prayer movement and the birth of monastic communities around prayer and mission. I found the early chapters both confronting and hopeful, challenging and invitational. It’s hopeful to me that when I see my own falling short rather than feel condemned as I once did, I feel challenged and invited forward. And it’s hopeful because it is evident that there is a hunger awakening worldwide, and an awareness of the God who calls, that is new.
It’s the second title, Inhabiting the Church Biblical Wisdom for a New Monasticism, published in Oregon by Wipf and Stock (122 pp), that provokes a deeper emotion in me. I would dearly wish that anyone with a serious interest in the new monasticism and missional orders would read both these books. But Inhabiting the Church is not for the feint-hearted. The chapters read as follows:
Vows / Conversion / Obedience / Stability
The first and last chapter are authored by Jon Stock, the middle two by Tim Otto and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. As one might expect, these three men all participate in covenanted communities (Tim at Sojourners, Jonathan at Rutba House and Jon at Church of the Servant King).
I found this book pushing my buttons for two simple reasons: it is a compelling argument for entering missional orders, and in particular for participating in an ordered life in community; reading the arguments and narrative, I am in touch again with my own internal resistance to this movement — to a radical obedience to Christ. There is an inner sensation of teetering on the edge of a cliff… and thus the relevance of the call to “conversion.”
I opened the book to the TOC and decided to launch into Tim Otto’s chapter on “Obedience.” I was fairly sure, judging by my own internal response, that this is the great stumbling stone for many who are seeking a more disciplined life in community. I was curious to hear Tim’s reflection. Tim brings us immediately to Augustine and St. Benedict, who inherited from Augustine the idea of a rule. He writes,
“Augustine, after a decades-long argument with his mother, Monica, eventually concluded that she was right and wrote a book called The Confessions. In it, Augustine laid out why he came to see obedience as so important. Augustine told of being caught between the goods and goals of his culture, such as status, money, and pleasure, and the goal that his mother urged him toward: the love of God.”
“Augustine diagnosed himself with the disease of dispersion. It was not that he had no interest in God: he did. But Augustine also wanted status, money, and sex. Augustine would have argued that.. we find obedience so hard because we want so many things at once… Because we all have multiple loves and desires… we end up feeling scattered, fragmented, disjointed, ill at ease, and restless. For this reason a key concept for Augustine is continence.. [of the will]… Continence enables the will to be direction toward a single goal.” (In particular, Conf. 8.7.18 and 10.29.40).
Human beings have an end, a telos. We are made for God. “For Augustine, holiness meant wholeness.” Kirkegaard approaches the issue similarly when he writes, “purity of heart is to will one thing.” (p 58-59).
To me this is a compelling argument. Tim addresses the broader issue of the relationship of law and grace, as well as our common objections. He uses Chaim Potok’s “My Name is Asher Lev” to demonstrate the cultural tension between individual “good” and communal good (also referencing Bellah, of course), and then reflects on the role of the rule. Like Nouwen and Vanier, he reflects that there is no growth without discipline, and that freedom is always freedom within a form. In effect, we all live within a rule but usually it is implicit, which allows us the wiggle room to ignore it when we choose. But for most of us in western culture, the implicit rule is that “I” come first and good ends are defined by how they affect me and my concerns.
Tim is also clear that the rule is not the goal; rather, God is the goal. The rule is simply a tool to help us grow as disciples, helping us keep our feet to the fire as we move beyond our internal resistance.
This is an outstanding piece of work, and if the rest of the book measures up I’m afraid I’ll be forced to order a few more copies…
In Reaching Out, Nouwen describes the three movements of the spiritual life. The first movement is from loneliness to solitude. The second movement is from hostility to hospitality. Within this second movement Nouwen describes the importance of poverty as we go out (Luke 10:4).
“Poverty makes a good host.”
Nouwen writes on poverty of mind and poverty of heart. Poverty of mind calls us to a learned ignorance. Poverty of heart allows us to maintain open hearts, free from fear and anxiety. Nouwen writes, “when our heart is filled with prejudice, worry, jealousy, there is little room for a stranger” (75). He continues,
“When we are willing to detach ourselves from making our own limited experience the criterion for our approach to others, we may be able to see that life is greater than our life.. [and] we can receive the experiences of others as a gift to us. Johannes Metz described this disposition when he wrote,
“We must forget ourselves in order to let the other person approach us.. We often keep the other person down, and only see what we want to see, then we never really encounter the mysterious secret of his being. Failing to risk the poverty of encounter, we indulge in a new form of self-assertion and pay the price for it: loneliness.” (76)
This need for control is driven by fear. But as we dwell into Christ we move from the house of fear to the house of love. Prayer is the vehicle that moves us to the house of love and offers the ability to live with an open heart. Elsewhere Nouwen writes,
“To die to our neighbours is to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus become compassionate. Compassion can never co-exist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.” (The Way of the Heart, 35).
In Reaching Out Henri Nouwen talks about the importance of weakness and poverty as we go out (Luke 10:4). He writes on poverty of mind (slightly adapted here),
“Someone who is filled with ideas, concepts, opinions and convictions cannot show hospitality. There is no inner space to listen, no openness to discover the gift of the other. It is not difficult to see that those who “know it all” can kill a conversation. Poverty of mind as a missional stance is a growing willingness to recognize the vast mystery of life.
“To prepare ourselves for mission we have to maintain an articulate not knowing, a docta ignorantia, a learned ignorance. This is very difficult to accept for people whose whole attitude is toward mastering and controlling the world. We all want to be educated so we can make things work according to our own need. But training for mission is training not to master God but to be formed by Him.”
Nouwen recalls the story of a Methodist minister who was called to work in a parish without any formal training. He was so convinced of his insight that he had no problem giving long sermons and great lectures. After two years, he was sent to seminary for training. Reflecting on that time he recalled,
“During those years I read theologians, philosophers, plays and novelists. Whereas before everything seemed so clear-cut and self-evident to me, I now lost my certainty and developed many questions.”
Nouwen writes that this formation for ministry gave the man ears to listen. People formed for mission are those “whose articulate not-knowing makes them free to listen to the voice of God in the words of the people, in the events of the day and in the books containing the life experience of men and women from other places and times. In short, learned ignorance makes one able to receive the word from others and the Other with great attention.” (74-75)
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Carman asks,
“How would you explain the difference to someone between a missional order and a local church. In speaking to someone about initiating a missional order, how would you describe the primary differences between the two? How would starting and becoming involved in a missional order differ from starting and becoming involved in a local church?”
She notes that we are all novices in this journey. Few of us have experience with missional orders, which makes us dependent on other explorers, on the few who have gone before us (even long dead explorers in the Benedictines, Ignatians, and Celts) and on the Holy Spirit.
It might help to start with a logical distinction. All horses have four legs, but not all things with four legs are horses. So, all churches involve a component of implied covenant or shared practices, but not all structures that involve covenant or shared practices are churches. A missional order, or a rule of life (a rule forms the heart of an “order” – “order” means “ordered” and is shorthand for rule, from “regula” which means rhythm) is a means to an end, the lens that focuses intention, and through which we gain new perspective on all of life.
Northumbria amounts to a church within the church, yet they speak of their order as a community. When Pete Askew addressed this at our meeting, what I heard was this: “we use the language of community within our group because we are significantly related to one another. But in relation to the larger church, we are an order.”
What interests me about that perspective is just that: it is perspectival. A good analogy is light: under some conditions it is a particle, but under others it’s a wave. It depends on the observer. Or, it depends on the question you ask. But light remains light, and its function doesn’t change. Perhaps a missional order will at times appear to the observer as just that: a rule, a guide, something that provides cohesion and empowers a people and a purpose, a structure that transcends location. Perhaps at other times it will look more like a community all its own.
A covenant is at the heart of the gospel, and while the word only appears a few times in the New Testament, it defines who we are as the people of God. In our shared practice, a covenant is not a vehicle for control but provides a focus and center. Henri Nouwen writes, “A Rule offers ‘creative boundaries within which God’s loving presence can be recognized and celebrated.’ It does not prescribe but invite, it does not force but guide, it does not threaten but warn, it does not instill fear but points to love. In this it is a call to freedom, freedom to love.”
This connection between structure and freedom, love and transformation is a critical one to make. Nouwen tells a story of one of his mentors describing this relationship. He writes,
“When Jean Vanier speaks about that intimate place, he often stretches out his arm and cups his hand as if it holds a small, wounded bird. He asks: “What will happen if I open my hand fully?” We say, “The bird will try to flutter its wings, and it will fall and die.” Then he asks again: “But what will happen if I close my hand?” We say: “The bird will be crushed and die.” Then he smiles and says, “An intimate place is like my cupped hand, neither fully open nor fully closed. It is the space where growth can take place.” (Lifesigns, 22)
A missional order is described by a set of shared values and practices. Many “vision statements” stop at values, or describe outward and programmatic practices but do not agree on shared spiritual disciplines. A missional order describes a rhythm of outward and inward life and embraces a structure of accountability toward those rhythms.
Many churches can participate in a missional order, but they are still churches when they do not have such an order. Many individuals can participate in a missional order, but be members and ministers of distinct churches. In this sense the order transcends geography or local commitments and is something like a larger umbrella. Perhaps it is similar to a denominational structure, except that it is defined by purpose and common practice and not so much by theological distinction and territory. Perhaps a missional order is the post-colonial replacement for denominations, just as it existed long before denominations were conceived.
As for initiating such an order, I would encourage you to think of joining an existing order. The ALLELON network will initiate a missional order soon, and we have been in conversation with the Northumbria Community as well as UNOH in Australia. There are a number of reasons I suggest this, but primarily because in these days it is important that we find means of connecting with the larger body rather than further fragmenting. All our practices should move us toward recognition of our real peoplehood, our shared identity and shared purpose. Affiliation is the movement of the Spirit. We need each other, and we need to find ways to embrace wider diversity. In this way we grow stronger and we learn to listen to the Spirit as a community.
But you might create your own rule and still join an existing order. The process of creating a rule may be as shaping as the practices you embrace. Initiating this covenant structure will require some kind of ceremony, and probably the use of a symbol to anchor memory. Turner’s thoughts on rites of passage are helpful here (also rehearsed by Roxburgh, The Sky is Falling ch. 6), and you can find examples of covenant ceremonies at places like the Order of the Mustard Seed.
By now you might be able to answer your own question: how would starting and becoming involved in a missional order be similar to.. and different from.. joining a church community? Joining a missional order and joining a church — these are not mutually exclusive, but neither are they usually connected. While churches tend to run classes for new members — you can join in a weekend — missional orders often have novitiates that extend for years, and often involve graded entry. The Church of the Savior is a well known example, but there are others, like Rutba House or UNOH.
I have tended to use “missional order” and “rule of life” interchangeably, which hasn’t been helpful. The order embodies the rule, and is better thought of as the group who embrace and embody the particular practices.
A helpful way of thinking about the relationship of a missional order to a traditional faith community is described by Alan Roxburgh in chapter 7 of Missional Church, pp 201-214. The structure he describes is a bounded set at the center (the order or rule) and a centered set for the larger congregation. If you have or can obtain the book its well worth the time and effort.
Metaphors can really help here, and Frost and Hirsch in The Shaping of Things to Come use some great ones..
“In the bounded set, it is clear who is in and who is out (fences, not wells), based on a well-defined ideological-cultural boundary –usually moral and cultural codes as well as creedal definitions.. but it doesn’t have much of a core definition beyond these boundaries. It is hard at the edges, soft at the center.”
“The centered set, on the other hand, “is like the Outback ranch with the wellspring at its center. It has very strong ideology at the center but no boundaries. It is hard at the center, soft at the edges. We suggest that in the centered set lies a real clue to the structuring of missional communities in the emerging culture.
“The traditional church makes it quite difficult for people to negotiate its maze of cultural, theological, and social barriers in order to get “in.”.. and by the time newcomers have scaled the fences built around the church, they are so socialized as churchgoers that they are not likely to be able to maintain their connection with the social groupings they came from…
“We propose a better and more biblical way.. is to … sink wells. If you sustain your connection with the water sources, you will find a whole host of people relating to Jesus from different walks of life. We allow people to come to Jesus from any direction and from any distance. The Person of Jesus stands.. at the center.”
In Leadership Next Eddie Gibbs writes on the twilight of hierarchy.
“The fragmentation of society into a multiplicity of subcultures and interest groups, and the widespread availability of information, has contributed to the current questioning of traditional authority… The turfism of traditional organizations can especially frustrate younger people because .. they are sensitive to the fact that ‘the system of measurement and control .. impedes cooperation and the free flow in information that is necessary to achieve productivity in the information age.’” (95-96)
Further contributing to the breakdown of traditional boundaries is freedom of access to information, and the corresponding formation of new social networks. Gibbs mentions a young leader in urban ministry in Miami who has the traditional denomination ties but his peer mentors are in California and New Zealand. Neither of those individuals are in his denomination, but they have attended emergent conferences and they blog.
Other forces contributing to the breakdown of denominational boundaries are the differences between cultural creatives and the older generation. Many of the generation currently in positions of authority feel increasingly threatened by forces they do not understand. As a result, they entrench and resist change. This only further alienates younger leaders, who look for mentors and encouragement elsewhere, frequently outside their own circles.
There is paradigmatic shift occurring. Hierarchy limits options because it limits connectivity, and we live in an connected world. Information that has to flow from the top down through rigidly defined chains has limited effect. Information that is randomly distributed and readily available creates collaboration. These more open structures are by nature empowering and generate change that works from the bottom up as well as from the top down. And change and transformation and inclusion are implicit in body life.
Boundaries in traditional settings are used to determine who is in and who is out. In new communities boundaries are not protective walls but are porous and become meeting places. In living systems boundaries are where information is exchanged and new relationships take form. Boundaries .. edges.. are the places of emergence and the frontier for engagement. (100)
Gibbs rightly points to a tension between the interconnected and flexible ethos of networks and the nature of the body Paul describes in the New Testament. What forces generate cohesion that will survive the tensions that occur in community life? Strong commitments are not made within alliances of convenience, and only within a secure environment do we drop our personas, the defensive masks we wear to ensure acceptance. Gibbs writes,
“The covenant community provides a context within which individuals can find affirmation and learn to truly forgive… In community we also hold one another accountable, because affirmation that lacks discernment and integrity is destructive to the person.” (99)
The networked church has more in common with the life we see in the book of Acts than does the hierarchical church. William Bridges writes,
“Networked technology takes power from the head of an organization and distributes it to the hands.”
This practice can be tainted with paternalism. Empowering does not mean giving power to people who had none, but rather recognizing and freeing the power that is there. When we are “in Christ” we are already empowered, but frequently our structures have impeded rather than invited the participation of the gifted community and have thus constrained the Holy Spirit and limited growth.
“There are no straight lines in nature.” A friend made this remark out of the blue in a conversation about vocation and the kingdom of God some years ago. It was helpful at the time, because my own journey to date has been a wandering path, often shrouded in thick fog.
I took comfort in a wider perspective when he made the remark, because I have a love of tall ships. If you have ever been on a sail boat or if you know anything of that romantic history, you will recognize that sailors never travel from one point to another in a straight line. Instead, in order to keep their sails to the wind and the ship moving through the waves, they travel at angles toward their destination. But viewed from a distance above, their tack might appear as nearly a straight line.
In modernity we were greatly fond of straight lines. Straight lines smacked of mathematical precision and efficiency. It took modernity to invent the three point sermon, four spiritual laws and the seven year plan. We assumed we understood all the variables and could account for them sufficiently to chart a course. It’s a rational and Hellenistic approach, highly analytical and somewhat comforting. Unfortunately, it was sometimes void of faith.
I am both a mystic by bent and a fan of structure and frameworks. In classical terms,I want to embrace both the apophatic and kataphatic. Belden Lane writes that the paradox of the apophatic (negative) way is that it always points back to affirmation. Apophatic and kataphatic continually critique and revitalize each other. Thomas Merton wrote,
We must affirm and deny at the same time. One cannot go without the other. If we go on affirming, without denying, we end up affirming that we have delimited the Being of God in our concepts. If we go on denying without affirming, we end up denying that our concepts can tell the truth about Him in any sense whatever. (The Ascent to Truth, 94)
This is always the dilemma of theology and prayer – we want to speak, but we struggle with the inadequacy of our language and our lenses.
Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation
Charles Taylor reviews the title by Jonathan Lear. He writes,
“Radical Hope is first of all an analysis of what is involved when a culture dies. This has been the fate of many aboriginal peoples in the last couple of centuries. Jonathan Lear takes as the main subject of his study the Crow tribe of the western US, who were more or less pressured to give up their hunting way of life and enter a reservation near the end of the nineteenth century.
“The issue is not genocide. Many of the Crow people survive; but their culture is gone. Lear takes as his basic text a statement by the tribe’s great chief, Plenty Coups, describing the transition many years after in the late 1920s, near the end of his life: “When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.”
Some of you are aware that RESONATE has a first book in process, which will likely be published as a collaboration with our friends at ALLELON. The working title is Fresh and Re:Fresh – Church Planting and Urban Mission in Canada Post-Christendom.
David Fitch generously agreed to contribute a chapter based on his experience as a church planter, theologian and observer of Canadian culture. (David spent his younger years in Ontario). He has blogged his contribution in two parts and its worth reading. The second part is “some observations concerning missional leaders.”
He writes that “they will be survivors.”
“Enduring missional leaders learn how to survive financially and spiritually for the long term. They must be able to hold down a job that does not consume him/her, merely enable them to live simply for the long term. In Christendom, the denominations used to pay someone to go plant a church [and this is going to change]. They must have a mental image of how they are going to sustain their lives financially, relationally, spiritually and personally. It all must take the shape of a sustainable rhythm. “
They will be communal shepherds.
“I have found that missional leaders are most often shepherds of an overall ethos of a community. They are not starting and managing an organization. They may not even be good at organization. Instead they are cultivating a communal sense of mission identity among a gathering people “for this time and place”. He or she will listen to people, discern the needs, articulate where we are going, knit the community together in a common struggle with gentleness, encouragement, listening.”
They will be interpretive leaders.
“Rarely do missional leaders lead their communities as a feature Bible teacher who dictates the a.’s and b’s of Biblical doctrine. Rather they are interpreters of what God is doing communally through the teaching and preaching of Scripture. They read Scripture in community and preach looking for what God is calling us to in the neighborhoods. It used to be that every church planter would be this high-towered charismatic gifted preacher [but not anymore]. This kind of leader often does not come from our (all too often) modernist seminaries. They are grown in a community who gathers to worship the Triune God so as to discern Him at work in our midst.”
They will be directors of spiritual formation.
“I believe that missional leaders must know how to guide the community in a spiritual formation. Admittedly, this kind of leadership is not common among younger evangelicals at least. Yet I still believe that the development of communal worship liturgies that are historically thick yet still local and organic, is crucial for these times. An individual alone cannot resist the forces of desire that tell us a five bedroom house, two new cars are more important than Mission, the life itself we share with the Triune God. Our communities therefore must be places of spiritual formation, of resistance to the forces of distraction, unsatiated desire and exploitation of those we choose not to know.”
They will be leaders who give away power.
“Missional leaders that have served for any length of time have learned how die to their ego’s and allow God to use every man and woman’s gifts in the community for the furtherance of His Kingdom. Hierarchy is the product of Christendom. It hails to a day when Christianity still held power in society.. If we even try to operate out of the old hierarchical ways, missional communities will flounder and their leaders will die from exhaustion.”
Alan Roxburgh series on “missional mapmaking” is now in its fourth chapter. In chapter One he writes,
“When driving, we see through the windshield but not the windshield itself. Most of the time we are unaware it is there. Maps work the same way. Most of the time we imagine the ‘maps’ of the particular city where we live in our heads and just take them for granted. We use them to move about easily and freely but hardly ever stop to think about the maps themselves.
“Cultural maps enable us to navigate our worlds. They are in our imagination so we tend not to recognize them as our cultural maps. These maps shape how we make decisions and act, but we take them for granted because [they have become transparent to us].
“Modernity is the cultural map that has shaped us in West… Central to this “map” are convictions about a) the sources of truth and knowledge and b) the method for attaining truth and knowledge. The self is the center of modernity’s imagination. Inside this map, an individual can and should generate his/her own independent meanings.”