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When I hear of ambitious church planting strategies in the West, mainline denominations are not the first to come to mind (Fresh Expressions within the Anglican Church in the UK serving as the main exception). Happily, this week, I heard of another exception to the rule.

I had lunch with Jim Milley, Outreach and Equipping Pastor at La Canada Presbyterian (PCUSA). Jim is creating a network with the vision to plant 100 churches in the Los Angeles area and 1000 churches on the West Coast. A Fuller grad with mission experience in Africa, he thinks missionally about new expressions of church in the US. Instead of strategizing about ways to bring people back to traditional Presbyterian churches, Jim hopes to see new expressions of church created in the many cultures of LA and the West Coast.

If you are interested in planting churches on the West Coast or interested in talking to Jim further, he is gathering leaders together on February 14 for a first meeting. You can contact Jim at jmilley (at) network1000 (dot) org.

From the Vatican yesterday, the Pope announced the topic of his talk for World Communications Day on May 16, 2010. His talk, titled “The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word” will discuss the role of the Christian leader in social media. The specific focus of the talk will be on digital social media — given the growth of new forms of media in the last few years. A few takeaways for me:

Web 2.0 Ministry — A Priestly Calling
The Pope states that priests have as their duty to proclaim Jesus Christ, and because the church is the sign and instrument of communion with God, each priest must build up this communion. How? By responding as pastors, preaching the gospel within new forms of social media. The Pope quotes Paul in Corinthians, ““Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:16). He clarifies that the message of Christ is a contemporary one – it is not a relic from the past but speaks to us now, “God is near”.

Web 2.0 Ministry Requirements
The Pope establishes the priority for the web priest: first a priestly heart (closeness to Christ), then media savvy. Fruitfulness in ministry comes from Christ himself — formed by in prayer. This encounter provides a  “soul” to their outreach.

The Pope cites the importance of those ministering on the Internet. “Consecrated men and women working in the media have a special responsibility for opening the door to new forms of encounter, maintaining the quality of human interaction, and showing concern for individuals and their genuine spiritual needs.” He goes on to say that these ministers have three tasks: to help others sense the Lord’s presence, grow in hope, and draw closer to the Word of God. He makes it clear that there is no secular space — that even on the web, “the Lord can walk the streets of our cities.”

Web 2.0 Ministry Location
The Pope clarifies he is not simply talking about having a web presence (Web 1.0). Instead, priests are to be faithful witnesses, leading communities of “different voices” on the web. They are to use “images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites” to open up “new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis”. To what end? So that people will understand the life of the church and “discover the face of Christ.”

The church is called to offer a “diaconia of culture” within the digital world. We must prepare ways for people who seek to encounter the Word of God. The web offers a space for those of all religions and those searching for truth to encounter a sensitive pastoral presence from the church. It is here where the Christian may “embody the universality of the Church’s mission, to build a vast and real fellowship, and to testify in today’s world to the new life which comes from hearing the Gospel of Jesus”.

I’m impressed by the integration between theology and social media demonstrated in the Pope’s announcement. We do not see web ministry listed here as a second-rate ministry calling. We do not see the fear-mongering and warnings that the Internet is a scary place to dwell for Christians. We do not hear the message that because this technology mediates our presence on the web, we cannot mediate Christ’s presence in a significant way.  What we do see is a request for ministers to remain close to Christ so that the church might mediate Christ to others, as the people of God. We do see the church creating a space, a real space, on the web to serve others in humility.

The Pope finishes with an exhortation that speaks to me and hopefully to you, “I renew the invitation to make astute use of the unique possibilities offered by modern communications. May the Lord make all of you enthusiastic heralds of the Gospel in the new “agorà” which the current media are opening up.” Amen.

Perhaps the question I receive most from church leaders is how to connect the insights of emerging churches to the challenges facing denominational churches. Most of the US stories in our book Emerging Churches deal with new church plants and so existing denominational leaders desire examples closer to their own tradition. When we had the opportunity to host an issue of Fuller Seminary’s theological journal, Theology News and Notes, we decided to address that very question. We titled the issue “Emerging Churches within Denominational Structures,” and we focused primarily on US churches. Spanning nine articles and twenty-seven pages, the current issue features nine leaders who create alternative expressions of faith within traditional church structures. These change agents embody transformation while working within their particular faith tradition. Here are the titles of the articles:

Eddie Gibbs and I wrote The Morphing of the Church;
Walt Kallestad, Lutheran pastor, Community Church of Joy, wrote Redefining Success, Moving from Entertainment to Worship;
Ryan Bell, pastor, Hollywood Seventh Day Adventist, wrote From the Margins: Engaging Missional LIfe in the Seventh-Day-Adventist Church;
Nadia Bolz-Weber, mission developer of a Lutheran church plant in Denver, “House for all Sinners and Saints”, wrote Confessions of a Sarcastic Lutheran;
Troy Bronsink, PCUSA pastor and community organizer in inner-city Atlanta, wrote Of Dying Breeds and Swelling Hopes: A Mainline Emergent in the Reformed Tradition;
Eugene Cho, pastor of Quest, Seattle, wrote Quest and Its Relationship with the Evangelical Covenant Church;
Phil Jackson, pastor of The House in Chicago, wrote A Reciprocal Connection: The Surprising Convergence of Hip-Hop and the ECC;
David Fitch, pastor of “Life on the Vine”, in outlying Chicago, wrote On Being an Emerging Christian in the Christian and Missionary Alliance;
Liz Rios, founder for Center for Emerging Female Leaership, and Luis Alvarez, pastor in the AG, wrote Will a New Church Emerge? Las Raices in the Assemblies of God.

You can read all the articles online. Or you could email Fuller and they would happy to send you a snail mail version free. We believe these articles demonstrate that great creativity and vitality are possible (but not inevitable) within enduring traditions.

I know this book review is a little late out of the starting gate. Revolution is required reading for my students this quarter, and I thought, if they need to review it, then it is only fair that I review it too! So here goes. I begin with an overview of what I see Barna saying followed by some interaction with his thesis.

Overview of Revolution

George Barna, in Revolution, touts a new form of church that recently developed in the United States. Dissatisfied with local churches, twenty-million “revolutionaries” created forms of spirituality outside organized religion. This spiritual revolution came about because of seven trends in society: the increase of Busters and Mosaics, moral relativism, dismissal of the irrelevant, advent of technology, priority of relationship, participation, desire for meaning.

Technorati Tags: book review, George Barna

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I was interviewed yesterday for a possible documentary on Mission in the Twenty-First Century by a ministry in Asia. Here are their questions followed by my initial tries at an answer:



What is a major theme of what you see God doing in your particular area of the world?

We see the first efforts at intentional mission within Western Culture. When Lesslie Newbigin labeled the West a mission field after returning to a secularized England from a very spiritual India in the early 1980s, his words rang alarm bells in Christendom. Why would a ‘Christian’ nation need mission? It is still controversial, even today. For example, missional churches raise great concern in the US, the Gospel in our Culture Network and Emergent in the United States serving as prime examples.



How is “missions” changing?

Missions are becoming more urban, more spiritual, more holistic, and more understanding of culture (both inside and outside the church). Mission organizations are looking less like the large company and more like mobile monastic communities.



In your area of the world, what major trend characterized missions in the 20th century?

In my part of the world, mission did not exist until very, very late in the century. Mission in the sense of a church looking to embody all of its practices within the host culture is still quite the exception.



From your vantage point, what trend(s) do you see developing for the future of missions during this 21st century?

Just as some of the best missionaries served and facilitated the development of local theologies overseas, 21st century missionaries in the West need to facilitate self-theologizing communities rather than impose 16th century responses to current questions. I see less a focus on the church service and more on the mission. These will be ‘activist’ communities — no spectators allowed. Churches will become more like highly committed monastic communities. The producer/consumer dualism of clergy/laity will become less obvious. Churches will not adhere to the sacred/secular split — they will all areas of reality as spiritual — even social justice work.



How do you feel about these changes/developments?

I‘m excited. It represents a sea change for the western church. It is also a huge challenge, because many evangelicals are unaware of the deep cultural indebtedness of their particular traditions — they see their particular cultural answers as absolutely and ahistorically true. Thus, their mission takes the form of converting outsiders to a particular historical interpretation of the faith rather than a dynamic, incarnational interchange. On the other hand, missionaries must hold their particular theologies lightly, knowing that their theological answers and questions might change in the interplay.



What do you see is the role of the Church in the West in missions? In your opinion, how can the Western Church most effectively contribute to the missions enterprise and make long-term impact? In what way(s), do you see “partnership in mission” as a developing trend?

The West must leave its Christendom assumptions of mission behind. The West must serve as advocates, as facilitators, as servants of other local expressions of Christ-following communities. They must be willing to let go of power. Partnership is the only way that the West can give voice to the other — to give space to the less powerful at the table. But it will be a big challenge for Americans who are used to calling the shots.



How can the Western Church be impacted by the Church in other areas of the world? What lesson(s) does the Western Church need to learn?

Western churches need to learn how to be a faithful church without constant access to political power. How to live at the margins as salt and light. We need to stop fighting the culture wars and look to where God is at work within the culture. We need to become 24-7 spiritual/secular communities. We need to serve our neighbors in meaningful ways. We need to live the gospel and not simply adopt the metanarratives of our culture or our faith traditions.

Technorati Tags: mission, Western Culture

A friend of mine (and former student) asked me recently about conversing with older people in his church about emerging practices. He asked if I had any guidance. I think he already had his answer. Conversations. I believe that many emerging church practitioners leave their church because the conversation has stopped. And sometimes it needs to, if it is toxic and brings death. However, we have glimmers of what can happen when the conversation continues. At Tribal Generation/St. Tom’s in Sheffield, UK, Eddie Gibbs and I saw “80-somethings” sitting around the dance floor supporting the club culture worship environment. How inspiring! Somehow, bridges were built and conversations continued in that community. These ‘gray-hairs’ (as they are called) understood that these younger people were faithful adherents to Christ within their culture. Someone translated these odd and peculiar practices to them, and the church conversed about the many ages in their midst. To the older people, what might have seemed like pagan idolatry in their understanding of world became faithful and contextual indigenous worship. Unfortunately, St. Tom’s is currently an exception, but it is a community that gives Eddie Gibbs and I hope for a multi-generational community that engages the future.

Technorati Tags: denominations, Emerging_Church, Leadership, worship

I’m teaching a 30 hour course on ‘Mission Strategy’ this summer. I did not name the course and the title raises all sorts of red flags for me. My interviews with emerging church leaders revealed that strategy has seen better days. These leaders are highly skeptical of strategy, and for good reason.

Strategy is a military term and the word has often been used within the church with strong military metaphors. Institutions, perhaps more neutrally, perform strategic planning in order to create possible scenarios so that action in the present may be taken with the future in mind.

One could argue that churches, as institutions, must do this same sort of planning. But what about mission movements? Emerging Churches often fall into this second category, as they are movements within postmodern culture rather than churches that maintain a ‘come to us’ Sunday meeting/building focus. Ought emerging churches to perform strategic planning?

Jason Evans started a new community in the San Diego area just this last year. When I asked his plans beforehand, Jason asked rhetorically, how much planning can I do if my focus is on embodying the kingdom rather than planting a church? What Jason understood is that the gospel is a response to a particular context and not a set of abstract ‘truths’. In other words, if the gospel is always embodied and incarnational, thereby taking the context seriously, then how much planning can we do beforehand? Jason’s understanding builds on the works of Dallas Willard and NT Wright who asserted that the gospel is that we get to participate with God in the redemption of the world and does not only refer to the work on the cross. Our gospel is one that welcomes others to share in the joy of this inbreaking movement of God rather than existing as simply a verbal message…

Emerging Churches plant themselves in the midst of culture and respond with practices of the kingdom such as hospitality, generosity, and humility. In contrast, modern strategic planning objectifies the other as a ‘means to an end’ (e.g. planting a growing church, penetrating an area, advancing the kingdom). Hospitality and other kingdom-like practices treat the stranger as a gift, to be welcomed, as the ‘end’ and not the ‘means’. The very next step or direction for the community is likely to be discovered not by a preset plan but in the least likely of places through the most uncommon sorts of people. Strategic planning cannot foresee this.

Incarnation rather than strategy is scary, ad-hoc, and relies on the Holy Spirit.  As Chris Matthews, of Red Cafe, Swansea, Wales said, “Throw us into the midst of culture, and see what happens!”.

Abstract plans objectify ministry recipients and are inherently hostile to incarnation. Thus, they have no place in emerging churches. Incarnation – yes, strategic planning, no.

Technorati Tags: Emerging_Church, Jason_Evans, kingdom of God, Mission_Strategy

Alan of Vine and Branches commented here in the thread on "Emerging Churches and Denominations and I think his ideas warrant another conversation.

Alan responded to my comment that there are some hopeful signs of change within denominations in the US, but examples of emerging churches within existing churches are few. He asked why one would be hopeful if existing churches had signs of change? If a person has indeed had a new glimpse of an emerging kind of church, he/she would only stay within existing churches because of fear or money (Alan, hopefully I have characterized your thoughts accurately).

Technorati Tags: Emerging_Church, denominations

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