The Hsu’s Views

Hey friends,

Save the date, Aug 23rd. Our next U40 meeting will explore the centrality of spiritual formation to the reimagined church. In the last year, there have been a good number of conversations in our circles regarding shared shared spiritual practices, a rule, and other elements that have often been captured with the term “neo-monastic.”

I too have been on a bit of this journey, initially reluctantly, but now with conviction that we should try to connect the dots and, like most topics we cover, figure out what the Lord is doing and get on board.

At our next meeting, we will connect, share a bit about what God is doing in our lives and ministry. I was planning on sharing a bit about my learning from journey in recent months. Mostly thoughts from Dallas Willard’s “Renovation of the Heart,” and a current course on Celtic Spirituality.

I also wanted you to hear from my friend Father Gary Crandall. His church has been neo-monastic for 25+ years. Their fellowship emerged from the Catholic charismatic movement. Their journey led them to begin a series of churches in the U.S. that have a charismatic protestant theology, yet the church also has a monastic element in the Franciscan tradition. We’ll have a chance to interview some members of the community as well.

I thought it would be interesting to learn and compare ancient (Celtic), old neo (with Father Gary), and new neo (some of us?).

More info to follow, but essential details are below.

I’ll also mention that we have been graciously invited to stay after for some lunch to fellowship some more, ask questions, etc. If you are interested, bring $5 and RSVP with me so we can get it figured out.

Essential bits:
Date: Aug 23, 2008
Time: 9am - Noon, optional lunch with community following.
Location: Resurrection Community Church
http://www.resurrectioncommunitychurch.org/
12730 Elm Park Lane
Poway, CA 92064

Geoff

I’ve been paying more attention to spiritual formation recently through a book that our ministry is reading together called, “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality,” by Peter Scazzero. He talks about the importance of growing emotionally. He writes that “Emotional health and spiritual maturity are inseparable. It is not possible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.

The second half of the book describes some of ancient spiritual practices that can be employed to help one develop an emotionally healthy spirituality. One of these includes the Daily Office. The “office” is a liturgical aid that contains bible readings and prayers that are intended to be used by a community to keep people focused on the Lord together. It provides a rhythm or an order to ones life that centers it on Christ.

I’ve been using “The Missio Dei Breviary” for a bit now, and will be switching to a printed version of the Northumbria Community’s daily office.

The prayer for this morning’s reflection was/is called The Methodist Covenant Prayer. I enjoyed it’s message and included it below for your benefit.

THE METHODIST COVENANT PRAYER
I am no longer my own, but Thine.
Put me to what Thou wilt,
rank me with whom Thou wilt;
put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for Thee
or laid aside for Thee;
let me be exalted for Thee,
or brought low for Thee;
let me be full, let me be empty;
let me have all things,
let me have nothing;
I freely and heartily yield all things
to Thy pleasure and disposal.

And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Thou art mine, and I am Thine.
So be it.
And the covenant
which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.

Here is a good article by Tom Sine that lists four approaches that people are taking as they work to reimagine or redefine a Christianity that makes more sense to the world today. The four streams are emerging, missional, mosaic, and monastic. You can read his definitions which are just sketches, and are a bit too distinct, but the categories can be useful. I especially liked the links to churches or movements that represent each of these streams.

As I read the article, I could identify San Diego locals that might be a good representation of the different streams. The reality is, at least with my friends in town, we can fit in several of these streams at the same time. So, I don’t want to put anyone in a box, but if you want to connect with someone in town that would be knowledgeable in a stream this list might be useful.

• Emergent: Sarah Ferry (I just reconnected with) and Erin Martinson (who I’ve not met yet) lead the SoCal Emergent Village Cohort for San Diego. Perhaps churches like MissionGathering would be a good representative.
• Missional: I think I would put myself in this camp, along with friends over at Harbor Presbyterian Church. Jason Evans with the Ecclesia Collective fits here as does Steve Denney of CityWalk Church.
• Mosaic: Yucan Chiu of Ethnos is doing a great multi-ethnic work. Roberto Shim of Harbor Presbyterian Church is beginning a new church plant. My friend Luke Chen of Lord’s Grace has been burdened for multi-ethnic work for some time.
• Monastic: Rob Yackley with Nieucommunities in Golden Hill has tendencies in this direction. For many in the U40 group, there is interest in this stream because of the streams priority on spiritual formation/development as a community on mission.

As I reflect on the creation of this list, I realize how unsatisfying it is to try an attach a label to someone’s ministry or church. Comments or additions?

Hey Friends,

Our next meeting will be on June 7th 14th, from 9am to Noon at Point Loma Nazarene University. We’ll be in Colt Forum. (Note the change from the 7th to the 14th.)

We are making a few changes beginning with this upcoming meeting. In response to input from you all, we will be meeting for fewer hours (3), eliminating lunch (and the cost), and moving to an every other month frequency. Our desire is to make things a bit more accessible to a broader audience of people. Plus, if you miss a meeting, you won’t be going half a year between seeing people.

For this coming meeting, our friend Jason Evans will be teaching and facilitating our learning around the topic of sustaining Kingdom communities. From Isaiah to Acts, Jubilee to Kingdom, how can we understand our calling as disciples of Jesus and how do we participate in the gospel of the Kingdom today? From my conversation with him, I think we will be covering some interesting ground including some thoughts regarding the neo-monastic and the ideas of orders/rhythms.

With the new shorter format, I think this is a great opportunity to invite others to network and journey with us. Invite away!

Please RSVP directly to me at geoff [at] thehsus [dot] com or via Facebook.

Geoff

Preacher’s Magazine over at Nazarene Publishing House has published an article by Hal Knight called “John Wesley and the Emerging Church.” Knight does a good job at trying to tentatively define “emerging church” in an effort to make the case that the Wesleyan tradition would do well to embrace this emerging development in the church.

He make several observations about the emerging church and then comments on parallels with Wesley.

1. Emerging churches understand discipleship as “following closely and emulating the person and ministry of Jesus.” Knight comments that many of these emerging post-evangelicals “are actually very much in the spirit of an earlier evangelicalism that was rooted in Wesley’s vision of holiness of heart and life… This evangelicialism was committed to ministries with the poor, abolition of slavery, and women’s rights as well as fervently evangelistic.”
2. Emerging churches are pre-eminently missional. They seek to be communities who participate in the mission of God in the world. They understand church structures not as ends in themselves but as means to mission. Wesley believed God had raised the “people called Methodists” “to reform the nation, particularly the church, and to spread scriptural holiness over the land.”
3. Emerging churches are radically incarnational. They see all of life as being holy, rejecting the dualisms of sacred/secular, public/private, mind/body, faith/reason that are so central to Enlightenment thought.
4. Emerging churches are alternative communities. The church is seen as a people who do not “go to church,” because they “are the church.” They are frequently networks of small groups seeking mutual accountability as a central practice. “The parallels with Wesley are obvious: a network of small groups, mutual accountability, transformed lifestyles, relationship in community and living for mission.”
5. Proclamation and teaching in emerging chruhes finds truth more in bibilical narrative than a rational/propositional reading of scripture.

Knight also notes one other feature of emerging churches, namely their generous orthodoxy. Read the article. It is good stuff.

“…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.