Archives for category: emerging church

Some Thoughts on “Organic Community”

June 27, 2007 //

Having enjoyed and been challenged by The Search to Belong, I have been looking forward to reading Organic Community by Joseph Myers for awhile. While I was a little bit sore at DFW for not having free wi-fi access (do people really spend ten dollars to get online for an hour?), I was glad to have a couple of hours to finish up this book.

One of my favorite chapters is about coordination and the difference between cooperation and collaboration. I have been a part of many top-down, master-planned, vision-casted church communities where falling in line is spun as “cooperating.” I love this idea of people actually working together and contributing in meaningful ways in church communities. Recently, I have been asked to take on several additional ministry responsibilities, including developing a college ministry and preaching in our afternoon EM service from time to time. I have been doing my best to print, copy and fold the bulletins for our EM worship services — a task previously performed by a couple of EM members — to free them for the more important ministry of relationship building. Eventually, when we need to print more than forty or fifty Sunday bulletins, we might need volunteers to come in and take care of it. For now, though, I really want to see our people invested in the things that really count — not just plugging them into our church’s perceived “needs” (folding bulletins, parking lot attendants, etc.). Having a big vision for the church is great but, if we’re not careful, it can lead us to love the idea of church more than the reality of where we actually live.

Myers gives a couple of interesting analogies about forging a new way forward in building communities:

We can be as intentional with community as we are with going to sleep. It is almost impossible to make yourself go to sleep. In fact, the more intentional you are, the less likely it is that you will fall asleep.

A more helpful way forward is to create an environment in which there is a good chance you will fall asleep… The same is true for community. We can have some control over the environments in which community usually emerges, but we have little or no control over community actually emerging. We can intend for the process of community to begin, but we cannot create community intentionally.

Think about the last party you hosted at your home. Did you offer a guarantee to your guests that they would have a good time? That they would make new friends? Of course not. But I’m sure you did try to create an environment that would help your guests feel comfortable and relaxed…

You would put food on the table, imagining perhaps that people would linger there… You probably played some ambient music in the background, soften enough that people wouldn’t have to compete with it, but loud enough that it might alleviate awkward pauses in conversation. You might have grouped chairs together in such a way to facilitate conversation. And so on.

Once I get beyond my tendency to jump right to the best-practices/takeaways (“Yes! At church we will now group our chairs in a certain way and play perfectly balanced ambient music in the background. And then we’ll grow our numbers. Thanks, Joe Myers!”) I am both challenged and relieved. Challenged, because I think most pastors have a certain amount of stubborn confidence in their leadership that is necessary at times (forging ahead in obedience to God’s will when it is difficult for others to see it) but can often lead to unnecessary conflict and hinder the leadership of others. But mostly I an encouraged, because this frees me from being solely responsible for the growth and health of our community (not that I ever had any control over these things).

I don’t know if I have ever really felt connected in a small group setting. I have had wonderful friends with whom I have grown, laughed, cried and prayed — but, somehow, when we formalize the relationship into an “official” small group it feels sterile and cold. Myers writes a little bit about this in his chapter on partnership and the difference between accountability and what he called edit-ability. The focus of many small groups is pretty bleak. As Myers writes,

There is such an underlying expectation of failure phrased in a language of absolutes and either/ors. If you truthfully answer any of these questions (e.g., “What one sin plagued your walk with God this week? Is your thought life pure? At any time did you compromise your integrity?”) with a less-than-perfect response, what happens?

We definitely need help in living for Christ, but all too often we interpret “iron sharpening iron” as, “You’ll be sharpened when I get all up in your grill and bust you for your long list of sin and failure.” This might work for some people, but the vast majority of people I have known cannot be coerced or shamed into loving God more deeply.

We can build a more positive ethos in our communities if we see accountability as a kind of author/editor relationship — thus, “edit-ability.” Here is the way Myers puts it,

This is how a good author-editor relationship works: The author submits a rough draft. The editor makes suggestions, even disagrees at times with the author. The author considers the editor’s suggestions, and will often make adjustments. The author and editor continue to go back and forth until the project is complete. The entire process is one of give-and-take collaboration.

The title of the book, “Organic Community,” calls to mind images of farming — not the pesticide-laden, hormone-added mass production kind, but the slow-food, small-scale local farmer. It is time to move away from the pastor as CEO concept (although this is still necessary for some large-scale operations), where one person stands before the entire group and hands down “the vision” to the masses. It might be a little too nostalgic, but I think there is some merit to the idea of pastor as farmer. We must cultivate the land; we must work with the conditions we are given (not as we would have them, or as our weather plug-in tells us); we must be willing to get our hands dirty as we attempt to steward new life; we must be aware of the overall balance of the farm — not pushing so hard that the fields become fallow, but not underutilizing our resources either.

We just received our first installment of our CSA membership. Though I missed the momentous occasion of picking up the produce, my wife called me to tell me all about it. The produce was fresh and tasty — and extremely natural. Upon shucking one of the ears of corn, my wife and daughter discovered some kind of corn bug in there. But instead of being grossed out, my wife was kind of happy to find the little critter in there because it showed that the food was not being bombarded with pesticides but was grown with care, naturally. When we lead an organic community, we might not get the slick production of excellence to which we’re accustomed but we just might find the friendships we’re looking for, corn bugs and all.

Categories books, church, community, emerging church, ministry, reviews

Caring for Creation

May 12, 2007 //

Over the past couple of years, I have written a handful of articles for the online edition of Relevant magazine (you can find them archived on the sidebar under “My Writing). As their tagline suggests, the articles are categorized under the headings of God, Life and Progressive Culture. One might find articles from established authors such as Scot McKnight and Doug Paggitt alongside many other, lesser-known voices. Some articles come and go quickly and quietly, while others (which, for example, might be based on misquoting a famous rock star) generate some boisterous discussion.

One recent article about the environment caused a bit of a stir among some readers. While some might not have understood the format (“You can’t write a letter to the environment, you idol-worshiper!”), the most off-putting objections created a false dichotomy between being a good steward of God’s creation and sharing the Gospel with non-Christians. In a stunning display of logic, one commenter argues that caring for the environment is a slippery slope, inevitably leading to acceptance of homosexuality and abortion. Interestingly enough, this commenter also claims that creation care is a political, not kingdom, agenda — though this person’s politics are readily evident.

I recently completed Serve God, Save the Planet by J. Matthew Sleeth — it’s featured on my “Currently Enjoying” page. Sleeth does much to dispel the myth that people who care for creation must be mother earth-worshiping pagans. Just the opposite — for those of us who love Jesus and take seriously His command to love God and others whole-heartedly, we are compelled to care for His creation. As the title implies, the greatest command is to love and serve God — but we must recognize that responsible living and creation care are expressions of deep, genuine love for God.

Sleeth argues that living an environmentally responsible lifestyle is a biblical mandate. He warns us not to equate “dominion” over the earth’s resources as a license for wastefulness or greed. Far too many Christians have justified their harmful lifestyles with faulty theology. Picture the Bible-belt businessman who was caught dumping toxins into the water from which local residents drew their drinking water. His response? Well, Jesus is coming back anyways, so what does it matter if we trash the place?

For those who worry about elevating the care of creation over care for human beings, Sleeth writes, “Being pro-stewardship is not a case of valuing forests more than people; rather, it means valuing human possessions less, and God’s world more.” Indeed, if we genuinely want to love our neighbors as ourselves, then we must be conscious of how our lifestyles affect them — especially the poorest among the world’s poor. Sleeth writes from his personal experience:

This honest inventory (a personal assessment of the environmental impact made by his family) is what the Christian faith required of me. How could I say that I was being a good steward when I was causing so much damage to God’s creation? How could I say that I cared about my neighbor when the poorest people are most affected by the climate change that I was causing?

In essence, caring for creation and being a goods steward is part of our response to the central command to love God with everything we have and to love others in the same way. We love God by caring for what He has created and partnering with Him in its stewardship. We love others by recognizing that our lifestyles have a direct impact on them. Even for those who argue that a Christian’s only responsibility is to share the words of the Gospel with others, we cannot witness to people if they have already been killed because of the climate change, drought or famine that was dropped on them.

This has been a slow process of small changes in my life. For example, my wife pointed out to me early in our marriage that I would let the water run the entire time while I brushed my teeth and washed the dishes. I shudder to think of how much water I have wasted in my lifetime, especially given how limited access to clean water is in many parts of the world. So now, I shut off the water while brushing or washing dishes. Recently, we have begun trying to drive our cars less. In Southern California, it would not be uncommon for a person to drive down the block to see a friend instead of walking. So these days, if I need to pick up a coffee while I’m at church, I will take the ten-minute walk instead of the thirty-second drive.

One of the things I am very excited about is the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) we just signed up for. Through the Tierra Miguel Foundation, we will be picking up about fifteen pounds of fresh produce every two weeks for less than $17.00 a week. In this age of mass production of food, we are glad to be able to support a local farm. The food is organically grown using environmentally-sound principles, so it is good for the earth. And it is locally grown, so it reduces the negative impact of shipping food across long distances (exhaust from the long-haul trucks, wasteful packaging, etc.).

We might take our daughter to visit the farm during one of their volunteer days. Although learning about creation care can be a bit stressful for her at times, we want her to develop a God-centered perspective early (which is not easy in our princess-obsessed culture for little ones). After all, it makes more sense to start with simple living rather than trying to combat years of having a materialistic perspective.

I have been encouraged and challenged by the many communities who have seen that creation care is an integral part of God’s message of redemption for the entire world. I hope this thread also runs through my life and the communities of which God calls me to be a part.

Categories books, emerging church, environment, family, health, hope, reviews, stewardship

Off the Beaten Path

April 26, 2007 //

A note of disclosure: As viral marketing is all the rage these days, publishers will often send out free copies of books to bloggers in exchange for a review on their site. One such title that I recently completed is Off-Road Disciplines by Earl Creps.

Earl Creps, by his own description, is a 53-year old man who takes Lipitor. Not exactly what a person might expect from someone who writes extensively about the emerging church. Now, just hearing any variation of the phrase “emerging” might send some readers into either a fierce attack mode or equally fierce defensive mode. Throughout the book, Creps speaks with a very humble voice that, hopefully, can serve to bridge the ever-widening expanse between these two camps.

Though much of the book seems to be written with the intent of helping baby boomers understand upcoming generations, I found that much of Creps’ writing actually gave me (an Xer serving Millennials) insight into the boomer perspective. His purpose in writing this book is to develop missional leaders. As he writes in the introduction,

Missional leaders see the world through the eyes of Jesus and see Jesus in the world. They assume the role of helping the body of Christ understand itself and make of it much more than a missionary sending agency, as if the “mission field” existed only somewhere else to be reached by someone else. Rather, these leaders cannot conceive of the Church apart from living the mission of God to touch the world with redeeming love in Christ… For missional leaders, then, mission does not refer to a framed paragraph hanging on the wall in the lobby… it refers instead to the Church’s very reason for being. To remove it or replace does not just make the Church less effective; it changes the Church into something else…

Creps structures his book into two parts. The first deals with the personal spiritual disciplines a missional leader should develop; the second with organizational disciplines in which such churches must engage. Creps is extremely well-versed in the language of leadership — from both within the church and outside of it. I must admit that I found myself lost, at times, in some of the vocabulary he borrows from the business world. He shares relevant personal anecdotes throughout the book to highlight major points.

When writing about the discipline of spiritual friendship with those who do not follow Christ, Creps creates a new vocabulary for the Church. Instead of referring to such people as souls with ears (yuck), pagans, sinners, or even seekers or pre-Christians, Creps encourages us to think of these people as the sought. This, he writes, “puts the emphasis on God’s mission in Christ on a wayward planet. A missional person, then, cultivates “Seeker-sensitivity” by staying attuned and cooperative with God’s efforts to reach the sought by expressing the power of Christ’s death and resurrection through the Church in its many forms.”

In some ways, this reminds me of efforts by Louie Giglio, Matt Redman and Chris Tomlin to replace our language of “worship leader” with “lead worshiper.” More than just clever wordplay (like the Sphinx in Mystery Men, who loved to reverse phrases), these re-workings of familiar phrases force us to reconsider our perspective on significant issues about which we probably would not give a second thought.

Toward the end of the book, I found Creps’ discussion about Timothy as a “third culture” leader to be very insightful. Third culture people, according to Creps, “bond both to their homeland and to their adopted nation, creating a virtual citizenship that does not exactly represent either.” This exegetical work on the relationship between Paul and Timothy has an important impact on both emerging and Asian American church leaders, who routinely find themselves walking a fine line between two vastly different cultures.

Categories books, emerging church, reviews

set phasers to stun

February 21, 2007 //

i just picked up sex god by rob bell today. quite a title, no? i have to admit, the fundie in me gasped a little bit when i saw it. and there are plenty of others, burning torches in hand, who are doing more than just gasping. it’s funny how rob bell incites such strong reactions from people: people either really love him or really hate him. while i can’t say i agree with everything he writes, i do believe his voice is a refreshing – and necessary – one.

i’m sure there is some shock-value intent in that title, but i’m very interested to see where this all leads. the subtitle is, “exploring the endless connections between sexuality and spirituality.” i might try to trek out to ucla for his q+a session — hopefully, there will be some fruitful conversation there.

Categories books, controversy, emerging church