The Hsu’s Views

I enjoy a great spiritual formation study with a handful of men on Monday mornings at 6am. We have been working through Dallas Willard’s book, “Renovation of the Heart.” We have been talking about the need to have our mind (thinking, images, ideas) transformed. This is especially important as we work to identify false ideas of God that lead to us live defeated lives. Willard writes:

Ideas and images are, accordingly, the primary focus of Satan’s efforts to defeat God’s purposes with and for humankind. When we are subject to his chosen ideas and images, he can take a nap or a holiday. Thus when he undertook to draw Eve away from God, he did not hit her with a stick, but with an idea. It was with the idea that God could not be trusted and that she must act on her own to secure her own well-being. -Willard p. 100.

We must then work to have a correct understanding of God. Tozer writes:

That our idea of God corresponds as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God… I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.

I’m quite stimulated by this book.

Books, Quotes, Theology

The author of this book, David T. Olson, has collected a database of over 200,000 churches and has apparently done a good job of comparing and contrasting those numbers with Census data to present some alarming facts about the state of the church in America.

You can find additional information at the book’s website, including Powerpoint presentations specific to cities like our own, San Diego.

For a six-minute glimpse into the research watch the YouTube teaser below:

Books, Church Planting, Cities, San Diego

In “Leadership and the New Science,” by Margaret Wheatley, we are introduced to the relatively new learning that is occurring in life sciences and fields such as Quantum Mechanics and Chaos Theory. As a consultant to large businesses and organizations, Wheatley has created a niche for herself by applying knowledge from these new sciences to help lead organizations with new paradigms. Read parts of the book online for free at google books.

In Chapter 8, the focus is change in livings systems. In contrast with a Newtonian world where laws, principles, and a mechanical paradigm shapes our thinking, the first lesson we learn from living systems that it is more important to look at the whole of the system even as we work with individual parts or isolated problems.

The second lesson is that to be effective in change, we must “leave behind the imaginary organization we design and learn to work with the real organization, which will always be a dense network of interdependent relationships.” I’ll blog on that elsewhere.

For today however, the focus will be on the third lesson of the chapter. We must look for the “invisible processes rather than the things that they engender.” We need to look “behind the things of organizations to work with the processes that gave them birth.” I think this is a call for us to drop the preoccupation with structures whether a big building, house church, or missional communities in a coffee shop. We must pay attention to the processes instead…

Read more…

Books, DMin Stuff, Leadership, Movements, Organizational Theory

(This book report was written in 2005 for a DMin class at Bakke Graduate University. I was still on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ at the time. I’m posting it now in the event it is useful for the upcoming U40 meeting.)

Thesis and argument of the authors
This book is an assessment of the influence of white evangelicalism on black-white relations in the United States. The authors of Divided by Faith, Michael Emerson and Christian Smith argue that evangelicals want to stand against racism but due to several aspects of the way they understand their faith, they are limited in their ability to see the real problem and actually contribute to the perpetuation of racial division and inequality.

Presentation of the argument
The authors begin with a historical overview of evangelical thought from the time of slavery in America (1700’s) to the Civil Rights era. During this time, we learn that evangelicals have held many positions, from deciding that slavery is consistent with scripture and that slaves should be Christianized for their own good to support in the North to end Jim Crow laws. We learn that while there has been some progress in racial thinking, we have still only moved from enforced separation to voluntary segregation.

The contemporary situation has seen some movement toward racial reconciliation, but the authors identify several reasons why evangelicals cannot make much progress in genuine racial reconciliation. The first of these is a focus on the individual or what is known as a freewill-individualist tradition . Evangelicals see individuals as independent moral agents that must personally take responsibility for their sins and accept Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour. With this perspective, evangelicals see only individualized solutions. They are unable to see larger systemic or structural issues that perpetuate racial inequality.

Read more…

Books, Culture, Social Concern, U40

Willow Creek Community Church has been one of the most influential churches in the United States in recent history. The way they have “done” church has been considered so “effective” that people around the world have been flocking to their doors to learn how to do it in their own communities, or countries. Their work on cell groups, spiritual gifting and leadership development has been so influential that their programs have spread around the world.

During my early years in seminary, I had the opportunity to attend many of their leadership conferences. Simply walking into their buildings was mind numbing. As a North American, with my preferences for bigger and better, it was impossible to think that Willow Creek was not successful, and was not “doing it right.”

However, with the release of a multi-year study published as a book, Bill Hybels says:

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

What is so powerful in the findings of their new research is that they are admiting that they were relying on a highly programmatic approach toward doing church. They believed that as long as you got people to more worship and service events, people would automatically grow in their faith. They inadvertantly created a bunch of consumers that expected the church to do all the work of bringing them to maturity.

Did you see what Hybels said? They need to teach people how to do the spiritual practices more more agressively on their own. This completely squares with a study I’m in on Monday mornings. We are working through Dallas Willard’s, “Divine Conspiracy” where he argues that we have somehow lost our way. As disciples of Jesus, the curriculum we should be following to be Christ-like, is simply to do what Jesus did. This is a plea to return to the simple yet profound spiritual disciplines that have been employed over the ages.

As you watch the video of Greg Hawkins (recommended) it is interesting to see how readily he acknowledges their over dependence on a heavily programmatic approach to doing church. Oddly, and this is seen in Hybels video as well, the solution still seems to be some sort of programmatic approach to helping people be self-feeders. I’m wondering if this will become the next big product/strategy that gets pushed out the door.

Links:

Read Chapter One: Are You Really Making a Difference?

Blogs on the topic:

Willow Creek Repents? - Out of Ur (Christianity Today)
First-Person - by Bob Burney at Baptist Press

Books, Leadership

In Street Signs, Bakke makes a comment that helps put into words some thoughts I’ve been hearing come from my lips when talking about the various forms that might (or ought) to proliferate for the coming generation of church.

While I have a preference for the small and intimate environments of small faith communities, I think I sincerely believe that the form is really not the question we should be asking. It strikes me (today) that when we ask the question, “What is the form that will take us into the future?” we are looking for a somewhat formulaic answer. We are looking for the new magic pill.

If however, we ask who is Christ, and what is the mission that he calls his followers on, we are closer to asking the right question. The issue of church forms should be driven by the nature of the mission.

In exegeting our cities, Bakke writes,

There is no one city; but there are many sectors to a city. Here are some to think about: a commercial city, media city, ethnic city, political city, convention city… Huge diverse populations live in these sectors. Add the mix of languages, cultures, religions, and the 24-hour reality of modern economics, and you begin to understand that one size does not reach all. We need “Tall steeple” first churches and classic churches that speak to poor and organize on behalf of the powerless. We need churches to be family for the lonely and clinics for the wounded, abused, and broken. We need all the expertise emerging in the body of Christ, and we need professors in our schools who can organizes cities as laboratories where our newest pastors and missionaries can imbibe those kingdom specializations.

We need all the different forms, despite some the inherent weaknesses of each of the forms that exist. If we allow that all the forms exist, is that all we need to say? Do we just need more churches of every kind? Or, do we follow Redeemer Presbyterian Church’s lead in seeking to plant more “gospel preaching, Kingdom-minded” churches, regardless of denomination. My understanding of Tim Keller’s gospel let’s me say “yes” to Redeemers approach, but there seems to be more.

It seems that the many different forms of church in a city must also develop an appreciation for all the other forms: simple church, high church, networked organic movements. There needs to be a sense of being the church in the city which is neither an understanding of church that is local church or (universal) the Church, but church of the city (with a middle-case “c.”)

So, I don’t want to say, “all kinds of church forms” are necessary and by those comments communicate and all forms are justified and business as usual can continue. That is the last thing I want to say. I want to say all kinds of church forms are required because with a common Kingdom vision, missional outlook, and sense of being the church in the city, then we will be closer to being the transformative Kingdom agent that I hope the church can be.

Books, Cities, Movements

This book is a collection of the knowledge and the approach that Bakke and Sharpe have been espousing after years thinking about cities and how to help unfold the kingdom through the work of the church in those cities. Central to their approach is to recognize where God is already working in any given city to embrace, celebrate and come alongside that work. These signs of God’s working help to point a new direction in urban ministry.

One idea from this book that is particularly useful in my work here in San Diego is viewing the city as one’s parish. During the 2007 wildfires of San Diego, I noticed a difference in how our church, Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church (www.transformedlives.org) seems to approach our community, versus many evangelical churches. The parish mentality allows a church to see an entire geographical region as their area of responsibility. In contrast many evangelical churches see their audience as a subset of this region, namely those who have made a decision for Christ and joins our community to worship.

During the fires, our church identified 70 families from the church who lost their homes to the fire. Many of those 70 are people whose names have made it onto the attendance rolls of the church somehow over the years. Many of those we are seeking to be a blessing to are not involved in the same way we might expect from an evangelical church. Nonetheless, because of our church’s parish mentality, we view a much larger subset of people affected by the fire as our own. In fact, the number of families we are seeking to bless in our community is now 140, fully one-third of the 400 affected homes in our community.

I see firsthand how this parish mentality changed the boundaries of who gets ministered to in the church. The somewhat exclusive category of those who are “in” is much larger with the parish mentality. Those who are “marginally in” but ministered to in a parish mentality church, might be considered “out” in a non-parish mentality church. It seems that we should err on the side of ministering to those on the edges rather than only those clearly “in.” But need to be clear that the parish mentality that we are to develop must include both the immediate community as well as the whole city as the parish. The parish mentality must be coupled with broader sense of the church in the city.

Books, Cities, Kingdom, Mercy, Missional

I’ve been looking at the The Celtic Way of Evangelism again. Here are a few more thoughts to add to the first post:

Apparently, when St. Patrick arrived among the Irish Celts, there were probably some Irish Christians, but what Patrick and his people did was launch a movement. This movement had a very different feel from Roman Christianity largely due to the distance and isolation of these lands. “This movement, compared to the Roman wing of the One Church was more imaginative, and less cerebral, closer to nature and its creatures, and emphasized the “immanence” and “providence” of the Triune God more than his “transcendence.” (26)

Celtic semi-monastic communities formed consisting of some who chose a more traditional monastic path, but the communities also included scholars, artisians, craftsmen, and families including children. These communities were typically under some sort of lay leadership, seeing little need for ordained priests. “They were essentially lay movements.” (28)

It is clear that as the church begins to navigate into the challenging waters of rapid discontinuous change and a shifting worldviews, it really needs to recover a sense of being a movement. Not just movement in name or by way of a label. It must be a lay movement that allows Jesus’ gospel of the Kingdom to be good news to the new pagan world that we find ourselves in today. There needs to be a freedom to operate “far from Rome.”

Hunter is doing a good job showing how Patrick’s isolation from Rome allowed him to contextualize the gospel in such a way that its expression was both Christian and Heathen. It did not utilize institutional ways, but took on forms that made sense for the Celtic settlements. It took on forms that were shaped by an understanding of mission, and not the extension of an institution.

Books, Evangelism, Missional, Movements

Now that I’m on vacation, I get to read!!! I’m finally working through “The Celtic Way of Evangelism” by George G. Hunter III. Subtitled, “How Christianity Can Reach the West… Again.”

Since I come from a tradition in ministry that values quantifiable numbers, I appreciated the following paragraphs talking about St. Patrick’s missionary efforts to the “barbarian” Irish Celts.

What had Patrick and his people achieved in his twenty-eight-year mission to the “barbarian” Irish Celts? The question cannot be answered with mathematical precision, but estimates are possible. We believe there were some Christians, perhaps Christian slaves or traders and their families, already living in Ireland by A.D. 432, but there was no indigenous Irish Christian Movement before Patrick. Patrick and his people launched a movement. [Emphasis mine] They baptized “many thousands” of people, probably tens of thousands… The tradition has Patrick engaging in substantial ministry in northern, central, and eastern Ireland, with some forays beyond… Louis Gougaud offers this assessment:

Most certainly he did not succeed in converting all the heathens of the island; but he won so many of them for Christ, he founded so many churches, ordained so many clerics, kindled such a zeal in men’s hearts, that it seems right to believe that to him was directly due the wonderful out-blossoming of Christianity which distinguished Ireland in the following ages. (p. 23)

Later in the book, Hunter notes that Celtic Christianity took on a different “feel” from Roman Christianity largely due to the distance and isolation of these lands.

What would a visitor from Rome have noticd about Celtic Christianity that was “different”? The visitor would have observed more of a movement than an institution, . . . This movement, compared to the Roman wing of the One Church was more imaginative, and less cerebral, closer to nature and its creatures, and emphasized the “immanence” and “providence” of the Triune God more than his “transcendence.” (P. 26)

As the Celtic “monastic communities” formed, these semi-monastic communities included some monks and nuns who pursued a traditional monastic track, but also included scholars, craftsmen, artists, families and children. “all under the leaders of a lay abbot or a lay abbess. They had little use for more than a handful of ordained priests, or for people seeking ordination: they were essentially lay movements.” (P. 28)

I’ve written elsewhere that as the church begins to navigate into the challenging waters of rapid discontinous change and a shifting worldviews, it really needs to recover a sense of being a movement. Not just movement in name or by way of a label. Instead a movement that takes its model and leadership in Christ.

Hunter is doing a good job showing how Patrick’s isolation from Rome allowed him to contextualize the gospel in such a way that its expression was both Christian and Heathen. It did not utilize institutional ways, but took on forms that made sense for the Celtic settlements. It took on forms that was shaped by an understanding of mission, and not the extension of an institution.

Books, Evangelism, Movements

I know, you’re thinking that my posting pace has already indicated a vacational posture…

I’m literally running out the door, but ran across a couple of cool posts that I just have to connect you with.

First, The Great Giveaway. Here is Alan Hirsh’s review, and one at NextReformation which is more extensive.

Second, I ran across a nice article by Drew over at goodmanson.com on the “Missional” definition that we’ve been playing with here.

Here is a bit of the firestorm set off in anticipation of Ed Stetzer’s article on the term “missional.”

Finally, I just added the JollyBlogger to my RSS reader. There are some very insightful posts and I look forward to reading over there.

Books, Missional