The Hsu’s Views

My friend Cari Jenkins informed me about a new book and documentary entitled, “Lord, Save us From Your Followers.” It is a humorous/incendiary documentary that explores the question, “Why is the Gospel of Love dividing America?” Though interviews, “Bumpersticker man”, and confessionals, this documentary can really stir some great conversations.

I’d like to see it. Let me know if you book it. In the meantime, click below to view the preview.

Visit the website for interviews, short clips, and a host of other things associated with the movie.

Hear the author and director Dan Merchant on a Today Show interview.

How do you balance an understanding of the gospel that calls for individual response, with an understanding that includes the redemption and transformation of creation? Or put another way, is the gospel just about saving souls, or is there also a transformation of the ills of society and creation as suggested in a Kingdom theology?

Tim Keller sets out a few of this thoughts in this article for Leadership Journal. No surprise in my response. I enjoy the analysis and the attempt to proclaim both aspects of the gospel.

In this podcast from the folks at Audio Ur, Skye Jethani , David Swanson , and Matt Tebbe discuss Tim Keller’s article.

Here is a great talk by Michael Frost given in 2007 at the Global Presbyterian Fellowship meetings in Atlanta. He does a great job of detailing how we must calibrate everything in our churches around the organizing principle of mission.

If you can watch into the first 15 minutes, you will also be treated to a reminder that God is one that chases, seeks and pursues us. This understanding of God as one who is not far away, but here and at work in our cul de sacs and workplaces has a profound impact on helping us think missionally.

I had a chance to listen to Francis Collins’ presentation at Stanford on Feb 5, 2008. Entitled, “God and the Genome,” Collins presents his reasons why he believes in God as well as insights on why he believes in evolution.  Fascinating.

He will be speaking in San Diego at Point Loma Nazarene University on April 11, and a daylong seminar the following week on April 19th. Details.

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.

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.

I think this Bounded/Centered set framework is incredibly useful in a discussion of how to bring together wildly different entities of the body of Christ. I studied under Paul Hiebert at Trinity Evangelical Divinity school. I even have notes of him talking about this in class, but it really didn’t make sense until I began seeing it employed in the emerging church conversation. (Dr. Hiebert just passed away of cancer on March 11, 2007. In Memoriam.)

Stated simply, we have different ways of determining who or what “belongs.” Employing set theory, we might describe a bounded set as anything inside a clearly defined set of criteria, a boundary. Based on how one might satisfy the requirements, you are “in” or “out.” A centered set is different in that “members” of the set are not defined by a boundary, but rather by its proximity to a central object.

Frost and Hirsh, in the Shaping of Things to Come, (p.47) do a great job of illustrating the difference by ranching in Texas as opposed to ranching in Australia. In Texas, ranches are defined by barbed wire fences that keep the cattle from roaming too far away and help define which cattle belong to whom. In Australia, it is not necessary to build fences. Instead, you just need to sink a well. Since water is scarce, cattle will not roam far, rendering fences unneccessary.

Perhaps we could say bounded-sets define by containing, centered-sets define by attracting.

Darrell Guder, in Missional Church, has a great chapter (Chapter 7) that applies this organizational principle onto the church. It used to be that the defining sense of “who belonged” was dictated by a denomination (Baptist, Lutheran, or Presbyterian), or a theological framework (Reformed, Dispensational, etc.) Rules of belonging were very clear and had an effect of separating the body of Christ. “I believe this, you believe that.”

Both books suggest that church should be centered set, and I would argue that this should be so both when thinking about church as “local” or “citywide.” Guder writes:

“that the centered set organizaton invites people to enter on a journey toward a set of values and commitments. For example, in the model that we have been developing in this book, the direction toward which people would be invited to move is the gospel’s announcement of God’s reign that is forming a people as God’s new society.”

This is very useful in thinking about a city reaching movement especially when a common denominator such as Jesus’ gospel of the Kingdom of God is the “well” that we do not stray far from. I see how this Kingdom commonality is increasingly the piece that can faciliatate a harmony of the body of Christ in places like San Diego. Harmonizing around Jesus, Kingdom and Mission allows for the different “notes” (churches, organizations, callings, and focii) to sound stronger as a chord. I’m thinking harmonizaton (centered set) is more suitable then homogenization (bounded set) as a metaphor for today.

A great thread can be found at this bulletin board. (I love the little re-mixed Matrix clip at the top.)

My friend Eric Marsh of Long Beach pointed me to a piece called “Missional Buzz,” written by Tim Conder that is in the winter issue of Leadership. It deals with the word, “Missional.” I agree with him that it has reached the status of buzz word with many churches, parachurches, cell groups and home fellowships calling themselves missional.

He offers a few common commitments of missional churches:
- They align themselves holistically with God’s theme of redemption.
- Programming and finances are directed outward.
- They are discontent with spiritiual formation as primarily cognitive assent.
- Embrace ethnic and social diversities of local communities is becoming a moral expectation.
- They are passionate activists when they find the pathways and trajectories of God’s redemptive presence.

I like the list and agree with it in many places, yet I’ve noticed that everytime someone creates a list in an effort to define what “missional” is, it differ from others. Here is a brief list from a paper by Tim Keller entitled, “The Missional Church,” dated June 2001 and found in an older version of the Gospel and Heart course used by Redeemer at some point in their ministry.

- Discourse in the vernacular - the missional church avoids “tribal” language, stylized prayer language and pious “jargon.” The missional church avoids ever talking as if non-believering people are not present.
- Enter and re-tell the culture’s stories with the gospel - To engage is to show sympathy toward and deep acquaintance with the literature, music, theater, etc. of the existing culture’s hopes, dreams, ‘heroic’ narratives, fears. To re-tell means to show how the gospel engages that human drama offering freedom. (or something like that.)
- Theologically train lay people for public life and vocation - training lay people how to renew and transform the culture through all vocations (callings.)
- Create Christian Community that is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive - Christian fellowship must be more than just friendly supportive relationships, but must also embody a ‘counter-culture,’ showing the world how radically different a Christian society is with regard to issues like sex, money, and power.
- Practice Christian unity as much as possible on the local level - We should have a bias of cooperation in support of other congregations. In-fighting plays in to the common ‘defeater’ that Christians are all intolerant.

Other useful books include Darrell Guder’s, “Missional Church,” in which you won’t find a nice and tidy list defining missional. Ed Stetzer has a great book called, “Breaking the Missional Code.” It also avoids a neat list, but has tremendous insight on the shift of the church from our focus from Church Growth to Church Health, and now Missional Church. (found on p. 48-49 of his book.)

What can we conclude about what it means to be missional? Perhaps it is one of those things that is OK to leave in postmodern ambiguity. Maybe we should be talking about missional fuzziness. I’ve got my eyes looking for everyone elses definitions. I suspect over time I’ll get a clearer sense of all the many facets of what it means to be missional, but in the mean time, all of the above pieces work for me.If I’m pressed into a corner, I use the distinction I first picked up from Frost and Hirsh in “The Shaping of Things to Come.” There “missional” is held in contrast to “attractional” which was the standard paradigm the church employed during Christendom, but is no longer as useful in today’s context. Read the book.

Just like the blog entry below, this quote is from Keller’s Gospel and Heart course. It comes from a book by sociologist Rodney Stark called, “The Rise of Christianity - How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries.”

It is an awesome book that details the powerful ways that the Christian community lived radically different, and attractive lives. Stark believes the selfless care believers offered plague sufferers was a significant factor in the growth of the church. He offers a different interpretation on just how quickly the early church grew (not explosively but steadily, comparable to the growth of the Mormon church today). It is great source material.

Here is the quote:

“Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world… Christianity revitalized life in… cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christinity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fires and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective…services.”

Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, (Harper, 1996), p. 161.

This morning during a staff meeting with my Campus Crusade team, I ran across this quote in Redeemer Presbyterian Church’s Gospel and Heart course:

“God in our time is moving climactically through a variety of social, political, and economic factors to bring earth’s people into closer contact with one another, into greater interaction and interdependence, and into earshot of the gospel. Through worldwide migration to the city, God may be setting the stage for Christian mission’s greatest and perhaps final hour… now that a majority of the world’s unreached populations live in cities… To ignore the plight of the urban masses or refuse to grapple with the trials and complexities of city life is worse than merely a strategic error. It is unconscionable disobedience to God, whose providence directs the movements of people and creates missionary opportunity.”

Acts 17:27-28: “He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him…”

- Roger Greenway, “World Urbanization and Missiological Education” in Missiological Education fo rthe Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of Paul Pierson (Orbis, 1996)