The Hsu’s Views

“…the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ. I think it is time to gather people together to do this…” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Extract of a letter written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer to his brother Karl-Friedrick on the 14th of January, 1935. (Source: John Skinner, Northumbria Community.)

Recently, in a November 07 meeting, the language of a Covenant Community or an Order has come up in describing the collection of folks that are orbiting around us in the U40 group. In the (ever-?) ongoing discovery of who we are and what God might be calling us to here in San Diego, it was noticed that:

• we are a collection of people who are longing to be with others on the missional journey.
• we have a vision/burden to see San Diego and to some degree Tijuana transformed with the gospel of the Kingdom.
• we are centered-set around Jesus and his Kingdom agenda.

I didn’t really have a good mental map of what a missional Kingdom movement would look like. But last November, after Chris Brewster and Jason Evans began using the language of being like an “order,” the conversation just took off. I left the meeting with a couple of very clear thoughts. First, this was clearly something that just about everyone in the room felt some resonance with. Second, I knew nothing about orders. I still don’t.

But the more think and read about it, I’m intrigued. I like the idea of gathering missional leaders that have a burden for the whole city to choose to covenant together. While not leaving their primary faith communities, there would be a deliberate second order choice to join with others to be the city church. It would value the unique callings that individual brings to the community/order such as church planting, marketplace ministry, arts/media, or educators, etc. At the same time, we covenant to learn from each other who are gifted and called to be involved in justice and sustainability issues, racial reconciliation and homelessness issues (to name only a few.)

So, as these ideas have been bouncing around in the back of my head, I ran across a blog by Len Hjalmarson entitled, “Missional Order - Two Lenses.” If I understand correctly, there is a group of folks associated with Allelon that are talking about forming a missional order of sorts. Len’s post seems to be after a series of meetings at “Seabeck.”

The posts were meaningful to me because I’ve been asking the same questions as these folks:

• What are the common practices that the community would gather around?
• How would a missional order relate with local churches?
• Can you just start an order? Do you need a license from somewhere?

How would something like this work when those of us thinking about this in the U40 crowd have only read about things like this? Len then quoted a passage from Missional Church that I had just been spending much time in. Chapter Seven, written by Alan Roxburgh, details a structure for missional leadership. I spent a good deal of time here because I thought I’d make a presentation for the Feb 08 U40 meeting. We didn’t get to it, but I highlighted the same passage as Len.

In commenting on the role of missional leadership:

“…The leaders’ primary skills are directed toward intentionally forming such orders within the community.

This can only happen as leaders themselves participate in such orders. Leaders must exert the greatest attnetion and energy at this point for anumber of reasons. First, it is the covenant community that witnesses to the gospel as an alternative logic and narrative within the social context, including in particular the larger unbounded congregation. Second, this area is precisely where leaders have been given almost no preparation; there are few models from which they can learn. The leaders themselves must therefore become a novitiate, embark on a missional apprenticeship, in order to give the kind of direction needed by the emerging missional community. This is a demanding task that cannot be given a secondary role in the church.” (Emphasis mine) (Missional Church, 211)

I’ve no idea where the conversation will go… stay tuned.

Aside from googling oneself, how often does something you write make it to the top of google’s search results? I wrote an article a few years back in an attempt to help reframe Campus Crusade’s strategy of Win, Build, Send, to more palatable language as we move into this new and rapidly changing world we find ourselves in today. The amazing thing is that when you google “win build send,” you will get my article (Thanks Dan Didriksen for bringing this to my attention.)

For various reasons, stated in my article, I believe a rough correspondence can be made with the words “Believe, Belong and Bless.” I say “rough” because you can’t just take new words and impose a linear, sequential, formulaic usage upon them, otherwise you wind up with the same problems.

The article entitled, Contextualizing Win Build Send, is posted at my website (ranked sixth in google). It is also at Eric Swanson’s blog (1st place in google.)

A moment of internet notoriety.

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.

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.

In a brief conversation with Alan Hirsh about movements, Alan suggested I look up work by Howard Snyder of Asbury Seminary in Kentucky. Apparently his life work has been on the topics of revival and revitalization movements. I ran across an introductory article from Snyder’s work here.

I enjoyed his observation that spiritual awakenings often occur in places that often seem off the beaten path, and not at the center of the religious universe. He writes,

One thing revivals and renewals are all about, is centers and peripheries. In 1900 the “center” of world Protestant and Protestant missions seemed to be Europe (especially London) and the United States (especially New York). But then unexpected revivals broke out in “peripheral” places: Wales, Azusa Street (Los Angeles), villages in India, northern Korea. In the century-long wake of the 1904–07 revivals, Christianity has been transformed. Renewal often begins at the (perceived) margins and sometimes its significance is recognized only later. The most promising renewals today may yet be invisible.

As a person focused on city transforming movements of the body of Christ, I see so many helpful dimensions of learning coming from many traditions and quarters. The new expressions of church prompted by the modern/postmodern shift, along with the dynamics of rapid urbanization are creating new conversations that will have profound and positive impact on the way the next generation of the church will function. The Spirit is clearly up to something… but the work is often perceived as being on the margins, unusual and different. A positive spin on our work would be to call it cutting edge.

I think it is this dynamic that draws me to movies like Luther. It helped me to understand that the “traditional” and accepted teachings of the Reformation, were not so accepted during the days of the reformers. It feels like that today for me. Not that I’m being chased as a heretic… but people might wonder. I think the conversation we are in today is on the periphery… a good place.

That day when you sent me out so boldly to change the world, did you really think there wouldn’t be a cost? - The character Martin Luther, (From the Movie Luther)

But the centers and peripheries is more than how people perceive you. Hirsh, being a more secure individual than I, makes the misiological observation:

It is vital that in pursuing missional modes of church, we get out of the stifling equilibrium of the center of our movements and denominations, move to the fringes, and engage in real mission there. But there’s more to it than just mission; most great movements of mission have inspired significant and related movements of renewal in the life of the church. It seems that when the church engages at the fringes, it almost always brings life to the center. Hirsh, The Forgotten Ways, p. 30.

“Coming together is a beginning,
Keeping together is progress,
Working together is success.”
- Henry Ford

(from a display seen at the Detroit Airport.)

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.

Bill Easum has a nice chapter in his book on how Christianity is best understood as an organic movement. He notes that many theories about congregational life are flawed because they begin with an institutional or mechanical worldview. He writes:

“Christianity is concerned with the unfolding of the Kingdom of God in this world, not the longevity of organizations. Much of the prophetic message was focused on the unfaithful leadership of those who put institutional law above bringing about change in the world…” P. 17

There are a few other “zingers” in the book, but it was written in 2001 and I wouldn’t be surprised if the critique against mechanistic approaches to church required the stronger prophetic stance that he takes here. I still suspect a twinge of modernity in his writing, but I’m thankful for his observations on organic movements.

Movements:

• Follow a leader - in our case it’s Jesus.
• Embody the spirit of the founder - it’s followers emulate the leader.
• Are guided by mission rather than rules - principle vs. rules(?)
• Are mobile rather than static - we are to be ready, willing and able to go wherever Jesus leads.
• Depend on contextual people - we are tuned in to the culture of our community.

Now, it is a bit vogue to bash the traditional attractional church. Before you jump on the bandwagon, I’d recommend “The Missional Leader” by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk. I just started it and I think I’ll recommend it to all my friends that are trying to engage the missional conversation in their institutional churches. It takes a very positive approach to the reality that the vast majority of God’s children are in these contexts. You’ll hear more about the book from me here. Stay tuned!

Krista Tippett writes about the new monastics and people like Shane Claiborne. You should read the article which describes the politics of this “gathering movement of young people known as the “new monastics.”

More importantly, you should listen to the podcast of her interview with Claiborne. Well worth the effort to hear his journey, and how his political views aren’t Right or Left. I appreciate the posture he takes.

Here is a page on The New Monastics including links to some of Shane’s writing, some music, and other resources.

You HAVE to read Claiborne’s article, “Downward Mobility in an Upscale World.”