PostLiterate Culture

The god Nike, in Ephesus (note the swish shape)

Christian Cross in the ruins of Ephesus

So many ways to communicate Good News. I love the proclamation, the word of mouth, even as I remember the challenge of St. Francis of Assisi: 'Preach the Gospel -and, if necessary, use words.'

Beyond that joy and sometimes also the discipline of writing words, I welcome the privilege of living the Gospel as incarnationally and holistically as possible and - even further, the opportunities in our day of utilizing art and symbol, music and story.

Movie, anime and photo too can take the Church back - and forward, to where it was/is before Gutenberg's creation made ubiquitous the spreading of the printed Word.

'Apple' and 'Nike' know the power of symbol. The ancient 'forbidden fruit' (just as via Eden's apple, if just tasted) will transport one (one hopes) to a powerful, insight-full world. And even to a place beyond information, to inspiration and transformation.

At first Nike used both the swish and the name; now the symbol only is enough to 'take you there.'

Similarly, Eddie Gibbs, in ChurchNext, writes that many GenXers learn by being involved, not by passive observation. "Their spiritual appetites are more likely to be whetted by life situations that leave the involved onlooker grappling with an unsolved problem because they know that life is not tidy or filled with predictable, happy endings. Their spiritual awareness is triggered by symbols and rituals both ancient and relevant.

"If the Christian church fails to rediscover its own rich heritage, created in pre-literate societies, it will find it increasingly difficult to hold a generation shaped by a postliterate culture."

Ancient Flower - Living Faith

I am pleased to note the many new and emerging expressions of Christian faith and community. I like the ancient ways and paths too, but something is happening, some of it disturbing, mysterious. I think some of it must be - of God. Leaning into the still-thin but warming February sunlight, our kitchen African violets remind me as I muse that although not long ago they may have been mere slips and cuttings, they have now grown to be healthy, green, soon-flowering plants.

Not every cutting set in water will grow white whisker roots to be newly planted in rich soil, or poor, to find there purchase in humus black and brown. Some slips will rot, wither, die; others flourish into new, living, perhaps quite different, expressions of the ancient flower.

Thousands there be, believers who do not 'go to church' Sunday by Sunday any more. The narthex does not see them nor the pew or cushion feel their weight. They do not think, you see, they can any longer, with integrity prop up dying expressions and no longer relevant modes of the local ministry incarnation (or god) of wood and stone. Idol mawl of buildings, non-enabling governance structures, limit and restraints of shrinking budgets and irrelevant constitutional fetters will hold them back no longer, they vow.

So the church, with expressions ancient and true - and ways of Faith, Community and Service new - perhaps not yet found - will we try, in clay failing, some thriving. In new expressions, new manifestations, new ways of being - worship, love and service, the Church will live, the Kingdom come: though churches die - or never take root.

Minding My A’s and B’s

Dan Webster of Authentic Leadership, Inc. spoke recently at a pastor’s conference I attended. He helped us to begin to look within to see if we were really ‘leading from the pages of our life.’
He also shared about the importance of leaders knowing the difference between A issues and B issues in their ministries — issues and actions that, simply put, are those things one has got to get to, and get done, in the days and weeks of months of involvement.

B issues are those things that must be done and yet, even when done, will at best keep your ministry or organization treading water, staying abreast – copacetic. Left undone they will lead to problems, harm, dissension, mess. But done - even, well-done, they will not advance the cause and move it forward farther to where you want to go.

A issues are the things that matter, that need to be done, should be done, must be done - and in your leadership role, you are the only one who can do them. The doing of A issues will result in significant advance towards the goals and fruitfulness that is our aim.

It is very difficult to prioritize, and sometimes even to discern and weigh the differences between A and B issues and actions – particularly when you are the only person around or responsible to do all the necessary things inherent in your job and ministry. But we must figure this out.

I must take some time in my own life and ministry to discern the differences - in my tasks, my relationships in the home and with friends, my wider opportunities and plans for leisure, holiday, travel – the spending of my year. What are my A priorities and B priorities?

I must find the four or five primary things to do (again that only I can do) – for this day, week, month, year – the A issues — and I must learn what are important, but relatively speaking only B issues, and learn how to fit them in, if at all. I should spent 80 % of my time working on the A issues.

The necessary B issues that I do not do because I have prioritized my actions and time in following through on the major A issues – I must learn to delegate to others: to team members if I have any, or to those contracted or hired to with me to advance the mission, or other volunteers who have time, gifts and abilities to assist.

Humble Spirit of Inquiry

Missional churches and missional people seek to learn from wise observers of missioners in cross-cultural situations, historically mostly from overseas stories of identification and service - but today, wherever we are as we seek to live the Gospel.

There may be a subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) superiority that inhabits many of us at a level that we do not recognize. Our schooling sometimes leads us to believe that we have the answers for the rest of the world. So, we go with answers, rather than with a spirit of inquiry to understand and engage local realities. Usually the income level and technological resurces of missionaries are superior to that of the local people. . . .

We think we can solve the world's problems. These messages easily seep into our subconscious as 'We are superior.' Anthropologists would call this 'ethnocentrism' - the belief that my way is better than yours. Every culture in the world is ethnocentric, so we are all guilty. As Christians, however, we ought to be characterized by a spirit of humility, not superiority. It is in our humility that we are most like Christ, who served the world.

-- Dr. Duane Elmer, author of Cross-Cultural Servanthood (InterVarsity Press, 2006)

Transforming Communities

There’s got to be a point or a ‘so what?’ aspect beyond our having good leadership and healthy churches as a Convention. And surely that is to understand ourselves as ‘sent’ ones, individually and together – all of us in mission, thereby becoming both sign and witness of Kingdom-present and Kingdom-coming.

My neighbours should know I’m a Christian not so much because they observe my going off to church (usually somewhere else, every Sunday), but because I am more of a neighbour where I am living with them, near them – perhaps the most helpful, caring person on my street, or in my apartment or townhouse, or for miles around on rural concession roads.

The church exists for the world, not vice versa. The church in community should be helping us know how to better the community where we spend most of our lives, most of our time. It is there (not in church work so much), that we faithfully join the Saviour in interacting with people — in all those places of human existence, passion and concern that make up every ‘room’ of Creation.

As the image of God is being restored in each believer, and as believers together form baptized and communal groups of missional-endeavour the world around us is very much in danger (!) of being transformed too into the purposes of God. Yes! We will not ourselves, just yet, bring fully the presence of His Kingdom, but we can certainly by God’s grace and Holy Spirited enablement make people even more hungry and thirsty for His Presence and Power amongst us, incarnate in and through this-here Body of Christ in this-here day.

A church takes seriously how to enable its people to be missionaries Monday through Friday where they live, work, play, travel and dream – that is, in terms of both affinity and geography. Christians live and move among ‘normal’ people, ‘preaching the Gospel’ (as St. Francis put it) ‘and when necessary, using words.’

Whether we have ‘come strategies’ or ‘go strategies’ as local churches, we are to consider ourselves ‘sent’ (that is, in apostolic ministry) following with the Saviour and His apprentice-disciples of every age. Sometimes simply in showing up and living incarnationally among people, as did Jesus, being immersed in their world and culture, loving, living God’s truth, revealing there His mercy and grace and plans for restored and right living, people will be drawn to ask why and to respond with a desire to join this new Way of living and being.

As they do so, whole regions, towns, villages, cities and suburbs are utterly transformed. Out of the dark woods of present existence, God knows, we may yet clear out a wide area for full and abundant living, as the Son-shine brings new growth, healing, clarity and provision for communities living together on this planet, in the watch and care of the Father.

Dreaming

Any saint with a dream for your part of the nation ? - your province, your city: say, for Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Burlington (add your town, your village, your region) - in media, law, arts, agriculture, culture, education/science, business, health, social justice ?

Are these not all God-rooms of Creation ? - (with so many more) which He originally called 'very good!' and which will be ultimately gathered up and together into a Kingdom: fully cleansed, restored and perfectly functioning to God's glory and a new world's good.

Might we have a 'dreamDay' to which Christians gather to share Holy Spirited dreams, perspective and vision of what's happening, what's coming ? - as Jesus draws, compels and leads us.

Local Incarnational Mission and Ministry

The following thoughts, I have adapted a little from an interview of Baptist Pastor, Graham Old of Daventry, England - part of an emergingchurch. info blog. Another helpful blog about rediscovering mission and ministry in our own backyard is: backyardmissionary.com

Graham Old is seeking to build a home-group-based congregation seeking to creatively incarnate the good news of Jesus through groups specifically focusing on individual streets, apartment buildings, town house complexes.

His group has been helped by a small booklet by Stuart Murray-Williams and Anne Wilkinson-Hayes entitled, Hope From the Margins: new ways of being church. It reveals how they look at a number of different expressions of Church and ask themselves, What is the mission that God has called us to? What kind of church do we need to be to fulfil that mission? And What spiritual disciplines are needed to sustain that kind of church in that kind of mission?

Churches may fail to come up with any strategies for effective evangelism. The above questions are applicable for many. We don’t need a strategy as God had already come up with one: Church. What is needed is not a super-clever method for blitzing a town, but a way of being church that effectively embodies the gospel for the people living here. That would obviously be different according to the people we are trying to reach.

What if a church released small groups of disciples across its communities, with each group spending time and energy discovering what it means to embody the grace of God on their street, in their apartment or townhouse complex? Of, if in a rural context - then as best could be defined as the ‘home-area’ within their regional area.

This may involve sacrifice and 'dying' to what is comfortable - but that is what being the body of Christ is all about. It would give opportunity for people to move from spectators to servants. It's easy to preach the priesthood of all believers, but this would actually create an environment where it can become a reality.

This might also help people who have given up on church to decide to give it a second go. We have given up on people because we thought they rejected Jesus, when what they were actually rejecting was the monolithic and monotone way that Jesus was presented by the Church.

We (Baptists) used to be known as radicals, but - like so many cutting-edge movements of the past - we institutionalized and have become stagnant. Conservatism is great if you want to sustain external structures or guarantee the same results you've always been getting. What is needed today is people who are willing to risk it all - money, reputation, their very lives - to see the mission of God come to fulfilment.

The concept of incarnation captures so much: it includes the idea of being sent on a mission - of actually ‘being’ that mission - as well as sacrifice and service, being a means of grace, pointing to God and showing the way, flexibility and more.

The Church in Winter

The 'modern age' assumed that we could control, predict and pressure into conformity all that we wanted to be and to do, pressing foward as we have been toward preferred outcomes for the life, measure and fruitfulness of the Church. Even 'purpose-driven' thinking, at least in my view, betrays a world-view (mostly from the West) that is still in captivity to this modern consensus of progress - as long as we work hard having found the right things, the right technique, the right resources to marshall towards victory. But emergence comes from evolution - from a long time of faithful obedience in the same direction. And the direction comes from a Word for our day and time that probably we have not yet heard.

Living on the margins (liminality), living faithfully, doing what we can with what our hands find to do, living in hope and knowing we yet have a future, we wait. This is a period of a long 'advent time' for the Church - beyond the normal Advent Season of the Church Year that precedes the feast of Christmas. A new incarnation, a new manifestation of the Word in the 'flesh' of new and transformed churches is yet to come.

Kester Brewin writes - "Somewhere between the freedom of being able to do nothing, and the patience of having to do something, is the sort of mysterious waiting of the saints and the prophets - a combination of catharsis and contemplation, of clearing the decks for the new, while being content to exist in unknowing. As we wait for the Kingdom to break through again now, we are not called to inaction, to do nothing but lie back and wait for glory. But neither are we called to frenzied activity, which will leave no space for newness to be sown and grow. We must have the courage to stop. To prepare the ground for the new, and wait."

-- The Complex Christ: Signs of Emergence in the Urban Church