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In my last post, Alan Creech asked about traditional apologetics and how it differs from new forms of presenting our faith. In that post, I shared the impressions of a campus minister friend of mine, that traditional apologetics are no longer the way to “reach” people on college campuses. That represents a sea change, for when I went to university, a rational, systematic, linear, and reasoned approach was the only conceivable way to share one’s faith with one’s neighbor. With those on my campus “quad” and in my dormitories, I shared the “Four Spiritual Laws”. If my hearer accepted the reasoning I provided for the faith, I expected them to concede and yield their lives to Christ. Not just for me, but this way of sharing the “gospel” worked for many, many, people, and not just on my campus, but on campuses throughout our country and beyond. But that was then, and times have changed. Over time, many found that winning the argument did not necessarily translate to an increase in number of the followers of Christ.

Hospitality apologetics does not focus on the verbal argument at all, in fact it is way down on the list of priorities. Rather than presenting an argument, these communities present a life. They do not concern themselves with presenting a gospel formula, but rather their focus is on whether the gospel was demonstrated in the recipients midst. How do they go about that?

Primarily, these communities extend hospitality to the recipient, i.e. the outsider becomes an insider, and the outcast is included. These acts are not performed so that the gospel can later be presented — these acts constitute the gospel. These outsiders are invited to a join in God’s movement to redeem the world, to bind up the brokenhearted,to set the oppressed free, to join God in creative activity. This is a lived apologetic — it is a “taste and see” rather than a “think and decide”.

Tasting and seeing might take a while. However, as time is spent with these very hospitable people, discussions ensue about deeper issues, e.g. why is it we do what we do? It is then that faith issues are discussed. But these conversations come in a context where the gospel is embodied in a community, not in abstract philosophical discussions divorced from hospitality. Without a deep and gospel-rich hospitality, discussions of faith have little purchase in our culture.

In our culture, it used to be, “whoever has the best argument wins”. Now, for many in our societies, it is whoever creates the most creative, spiritual, generous, peaceable, just, and servant-like community “wins”.

And ultimately, even if hospitable apologetics didn’t “win”, if we strive to be followers of Jesus, must we attempt anything less?

Technorati Tags: Alan_Creech, apologetics, hospitality

Those were my first thoughts after interviewing Brian over a morning cup of coffee in Minneapolis in the fall of 2002. I was struck by how pastoral Brian was – he was just as concerned for me and how I was doing as he was to communicate his answers to my questions. I felt completely disarmed, and at one point I put my questions away and just connected with him. I’ve been a big fan ever since.

At Fuller, we were familiar with Brian’s first book back (Reinventing Your Church/Church on the Other Side) in 1998. We (those of us dealing with church issues in the School of World Mission) felt that it was the best practical church book on the market – one that took our context seriously and struck the right tone of humility given the great state of flux the American church experienced at that time.  Our learning community of professors, administrators, and students had deep suspicions that the Seeker/Purpose movement, the New Paradigm churches (Vineyard, Calvary Chapel) and the Gen X movement were incapable, on their own, to address the daunting missional task required by our transformed context. On a side note, Eddie Gibbs’ book (ChurchNext) flowed out of this learning community at that time, a work quite consistent with Brian’s thought, and in-synch with missiological thinking in general.

Brian’s works on apologetics (Finding Faith) and evangelism (More Ready Than You Realize) plowed new ground in refreshing and creative ways. I talked to a college campus minister last week, and he confessed that traditional apologetics no longer make sense on college campuses – rationalistic approaches to the faith hold little sway with their audience. This campus minister shared with me how he had benefited from Brian’s works on apologetics and evangelism. With More Ready Than You Realize, Brian demonstrated his ability to weave narrative and theory together, a skill he develops with great success in his later trilogy.

“Can you recommend one book that will introduce me to the whole postmodern/emerging church scene?” This question has been posed to me many, many times. I follow up with a question: “are you interested in churches per se or do you desire an introduction to our current cultural shift?” For those who answer a yes to the latter, I respond, “have you read A New Kind of Christian?”

A New Kind of Christian created more “ahas” for my students and friends, both young and old, than any other book I have had them read. Some of the most common reactions are: “I feel hope for the church for first time in a long while”. “I feel like someone just voiced all my doubts”. “I finally understand what this postmodern thing is all about”. “This is the kind of faith that has some integrity to it.” Not only my students, but I was deeply impacted by A New Kind of Christian as well. Brian’s work hit me at a gut level and I was moved to tears throughout this book.

Postmodernity was discussed in church circles in the UK in the early 1990s, but it wasn’t until the late 1990s that those discussions hit the popular church scene in the US. At Fuller, a growing number of students and faculty discussed these issues at the same time, in the mid-to-late 1990s. A few years later, A New Kind of Christian came on the scene, brilliantly bringing together postmodern theory, missiology, and current church practice through a set of conversations between a pastor and a high school science teacher. Again, McLaren wove narrative and theory together seamlessly. In effect, Brian connected the dots in a way that we in the academy did not or could not do.

With the sequel, The Story We Find Ourselves In, McLaren provides a full narrative apologetic, one that invites us to serve in the Story of God. I remember interviewing Todd Hunter, former director of the Association of Vineyard Churches. After much soul searching, Hunter realized he was living in the wrong story: the story of modernity — not of the gospels. In McLaren’s fictional account, he provides a compelling picture of God’s story that beckons the reader to join in this work. McLaren’s thoughts coincide with the works of Dallas Willard (Divine Conspiracy) and N.T. Wright (Jesus and the Victory of God). Much of our current evangelical practice works on the idea that we invite God into our personal story – The Story We Find Ourselves In, along with these other writings, works on the much more radical idea that we join in God’s story.

McLaren innovates in his more recent writings as well. With The Last Word and the Word After That, McLaren challenges our modern evangelical assumptions about reality by offering thoughtful alternatives. With A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian overcomes the many dualisms of modernity (both fundamentalism and liberalism are flip sides of the same modern coin) as he offers a both/and faith.

Recently, McLaren has taken a lot of ‘hits’ from unfriendly critics, primarily from those who are resistant to missional change. In a peacemaking gesture, Brian has told his own story, and for those who have not heard it before, I highly recommend you give it a read. I am impressed by Brian’s gracious responses to those who attack him, and I find McLaren to be a worthy (if not reluctant) ambassador for the emerging movement as a whole.

Pioneer thinker, practicing pastor, missional innovator, and community storyteller, Brian McLaren is a great gift to the church today. He gives thoughtful expression to the many new challenges the church faces. Because of Brian’s deep love for people, both inside and outside the church, he continues his writing and speaking tasks. I applaud Brian and pray that God gives him great strength for the journey ahead. May those like him increase in number!

Technorati Tags: Brian McLaren

The Fremont Abbey aka Abbess Karen Ward and Church of the Apostles are hosting an Emerging Church Learning Party. It sounds great.

In my mission strategy class today, we discussed how mission was faithfully carried out by monks for 1500 years (basically from 300-1800), i.e. the Benedictines, the Byzantines, the Irish, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and Jesuits, just to name only a few. Even though there were those outside these orders doing mission at this time, they were the exception and not the rule.

When we ponder the total history of Christian mission — the period of the monks takes up a sizable part of that history (no, mission did not start with William Carey in 1792), in other words, 1500 of the 2000 years or 75%.

However, if we change the question to be about mission to the West, and not simply about traditional mission (outside of Christendom), the percentages change dramatically. Mission in the West has almost been exclusively performed by monastics or those strongly mirroring the monastic lifestyle. Until the last fifteen years, most Protestants did not consider the West a mission field, rather, it was a place for renewal for the largely Christian culture, primarily through an emphasis on church membership or inward experience. The monastic movements, on the other hand, called for a much more radical commitment, where faith was lived in community 24-7 and combined with a shared commitment to the poor, to simplicity, and to various forms of spiritual service.

As I explore those Christian communities that engage Western culture in signficant ways, such as Karen Ward’s community in Seattle, I find that they strongly resemble these historic monastic communities. And why should this fact surprise? As we discussed in class, throughout Western history the monastic approach to mission has been a primary way if not the primary way in which Westerners have been challenged to  serve the world…

Technorati Tags: Karen Ward, monasticism, Western Culture

In reading an excellent book on a narrative history of mission, Constants in Context, the authors offer their advice to those wishing to do mission cross-culturally. Their encouragements equally apply to those moderns who seek to do (or support) ministry to postmoderns (those who live within an artistic, communal, holistic and spiritual way of life).

Bevans and Schroeder encourage a spirituality that allows faith in Christ and non-faith to encounter each other. It is a spirituality of  ‘letting go’ and ’speaking out’, and it functions differently for outsiders (moderns) and insiders (postmoderns).

“For outsiders, the main spiritual task in the inculturation process is letting go — of superiority, of power, of illusions they understand a culture, of illusions that theirs is the true understanding of Christianity. Only after years of listening, learning, and being evangelized by the context in which they live as strangers and guests might they dare speak out with suggestions for inculturation or with critiques of the context.”

In my interviews with senior leaders and Emerging Church leaders, I have seen this to be the case — where modern leaders came with a teachable and supporting spirit, allowing new expressions of church to exist for several years with very few questions, emerging leaders thrive. Where modern leaders think they understand postmodern culture, or that their modern perspectives of Christianity are absolute and superior, or that leadership is not to be shared with those of different perspectives, then emerging leaders are forced to deny their culture, oppose their pastor, or leave.

This word equally applies to those moderns who are planting churches within postmodern culture — they must come humbly, recognizing that much of their understanding of their faith is cultural. They must listen for years before speaking, with the understanding that that they are guests.

Bevans and Schroeder also have encouragements for insiders to the culture. “The main spiritual task is to speak out — to have confidence in themselves and in their own understandings of their cultural and/or social context, and to risk ways of encounter between gospel and context. Only very slowly should they heed criticism of their culture and let go of their intuitions and instincts.”

Insiders must feel free to create within that culture, to speak out from within. As insiders, they can push hard on the sides, offering prophetic embrace and critique as those who are truly part of that community. Outsiders may offer support to insiders in this creative task.  Where this kind of rare support happens, amazing ministries within postmodern culture are planted.

Bevans and Schroeder conclude, “It is in such prophetic dialogue (between faith in Christ and non-faith) that local communities and their leadership — whether insiders or outsiders — will discover new ways of living, witnessing to and proclaiming the good news of healing, reconciliation, and new life.”

Amen, let it be so!

Technorati Tags: Constants_in_Context, Emerging_Church, Leadership, power

I received a request for Emerging Church books in Spanish…I’m at a loss here — any ideas? Part of me wants to say ‘no’ — don’t let the English speakers influence the ongoing formation of your churches in Latin America and elsewhere. As a Southern Californian, I am saddened by the fact that so many people travel great distances to make pilgrimage at some of our megachurches. They later discover, after much expense, that these forms of church work with Anglo suburban baby boomers in America and not back home. My word to them is always, please, save your money, we need you need to teach us!!

However, I am ambivalent — as Emerging Churches are urban and multi-cultural and connected globally, it ceases to be an Engish speaking movement (if it ever entirely was), at least that is the hope. It may not necessarily be oppressive to translate these works but perhaps liberating. So, I return to my original request — any ideas on Emerging Church books in Spanish??

Technorati Tags: Emerging_Church, Languages

I’m preparing to teach a course next week, and for the first time I will be switching my pedagogical approach from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning. Taking my cues from adult education guru and Maryknoll sister Jane Vella, I will be forming the course around learning tasks/activities as opposed to lectures (but lectures may take a subordinate and chastened role). She has pioneered an approach to education that maximizes the ‘aha’ experiences of those participating in the seminar by assigning them tasks to perform followed by extensive dialogue.

I have learned from emerging church leaders that participation and dialogue are highly important in gatherings. Karen Ward calls this Montessori church, and our Alt. Worship friends in the UK have pioneered this approach to highly interactive gatherings. Even those communities where the preaching task has remained, it has transitioned from a one-man (sic) show to a much more dialogical process.

Jane Vella models an approach to teaching/learning that resonates with the impulses of the emerging church, taking the voice of the other seriously. Her teaching approach can be summarized as a way to structure dialogue, thereby creating deeper learning experiences.  She may be a good resource for those looking to do teaching that takes the ways of the kingdom (e.g. including the marginalized) seriously while connecting to the egalitarian sensibilities within the culture. A great book to start with is her first, Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach.

Technorati Tags: alternative worship, dialog, Jane_Vella, Karen_Ward, preaching

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

In January of 1998, I signed up for a course on Mission in Modernity/Postmodernity to be offered by Dr. Wilbert R. Shenk, mission historian and world-renowned scholar in “Missiology to the West” as well. As one who had been part of numerous church plants and ministries, I expected the class to be a good review of Christian evangelism in America and the West. I couldn’t be more wrong.



Wilbert Shenk, himself a devoted student of Lesslie Newbigin, went about deconstructing my notions of mission, Christendom, church, evangelism, and the list went on. He demonstrated how my understanding of Christian life was derived more from a culture called modernity than it was from the biblical narratives. My whole world was shaken by the end of the course.

I started a quest at that time for a faith that was not held captive by a particular culture, namely Western culture of the years 1600-1950. That journey has not ended, as each day I realize how unbiblical my view of reality truly is.

My passion to understand our current predicament led to my pursuit of a Ph.D. As I looked at the various programs in the US and UK, I could not find the level of conversation on “Mission to the West” that I enjoyed here with Dr. Wilbert Shenk, Eddie Gibbs, fellow student Barry Taylor, not to mention the contribution of Nancey Murphy, Jim McClendon, Glen Stassen, and others, and so I stayed.

Wilbert Shenk served as my mentor, and for the next few years I was his Teaching Assistant and occasional co-instructor. He always surprised me with his vast understanding of missiology and Western culture. I never tired of hearing him speak, because what he said continued to stay fresh and cutting edge.

Wilbert Shenk announced his retirement after ten years here at Fuller. It is with great sadness that I say good-bye to him. Professor, mentor, later colleaque and friend, he serves as a role model for me.

As I begin to teach classes in ‘Missiology to the West’ and start moving my boxes into Wilbert’s old office, I realize that this quiet Mennonite scholar from Indiana turned my life upside down.  As I ponder my own teaching vocation, I hope to create contexts for radical transformation in my students’ worlds. I’ve sat too long at Wilbert Shenk’s feet to try for anything less.

Technorati Tags: Fuller Theological Seminary, Wilbert_R._Shenk

A worried student asked me the above question –

That student elaborated by asking — can I be politically conservative, economically pro-capitalist, theological conservative and still be postmodern, i.e. emerging?

My initial response to the latter question was, well, yes — and no.

I would give the same answer to one who is politically liberal, economically a Marxist, and theologically liberal: ‘yes — and no’.

No, because from a postmodern vantage point, both conservative and liberal are modern positions. They hold up single ways to view things while excluding other perspectives.

Yes, because a person cannot leave his/her own culture. Modernists have a whole way of life built  around their beliefs and it is not like they can leave those practices behind. However, they may be able to hold them more lightly and recognize the other side of things, especially in regard to the gospel.

The gospel critiques modernity (conservative and liberal) and postmodernity, as it does all cultures. Because of this, all of our positions we must hold tentatively as God’s ways hold ultimate priority. Therefore, taking my cue from many emerging churches, I hold the Sermon on the Mount as my primary ‘constitution’ or authority if you will (as it was for the first few centuries) and believe it trumps all other allegiances including governmental ones (all across the political spectrum).

These were my initial thoughts on my students question…

Technorati Tags: Emerging_Church, politics

Well, I’m back from my many adventures a bit more refreshed and energized!!

Technorati Tags: vacation