The Hsu’s Views

I’ve been working through “The Great Omission” by Willard for this course I’m in. It is a collection of writings and sermons/talks on discipleship. Great stuff. Willard writes:

“Spiritual formation in Christ is accomplished, and the Great Commission fulfilled, as the regenerate soul makes its highest intent to live in the commandments of Christ and accordingly makes realistic plans to realize this intent by an adequate course of spiritual disciplines.” P. 76

Then comes a great comment that is useful in helping heal so much of the division that exists in the church today.

Christian spiritual formation understood in this way is automatically ecumenical and inclusive in the sense that those thus formed, those who live in obedience to Christ, are thereby united and stand out as the same in their obedience. The substance of obedience is the only thing that can overcome the divisions imposed by encrusted difference in doctrine, ritual, and heritage. The lamp that is aglow in the obedient life will shine. The city set on the hill cannot be hid. Obedience to Christ from the heart and by the Spirit is such a radical reality that can never be achieved by direct efforts at union. It is not achieved by effort, but by who we are: “I am a companion of all who fear you” (Psalm 119:63).

Some years ago, ecumenism attempted to center on the confession (italics mine) of Christ as Lord. Little came of it because, in the manner to which we have been accustomed by history, the attitudes and actions of real life were left untouched by such a profession. But actual obedience (italics mine) to Christ as Lord would transform ordinary life entirely and bring those disciples who are walking with Christ together wherever their lives touch. Christians who are together in the natural contexts of life would immediately identify with one another because of the radically different kind of life, the eternal kind of life, manifestly flowing in them. Their mere non-cooperation with the evil around them would draw them together as magnet and iron. Any other differences would have no significance within the unity of obedience to the Christ who is present in his people.

Two reflections from these thoughts, maybe three. First, merely confessing Christ as Lord is not enough to transform our lives and give us the peace that accompanies the spiritual life that Jesus offers us within his Kingdom rule. We must choose to obey Christ, in all he teaches us. This choice should be reflected in our pursuit of spiritual formation.

Second, within the framework of the centered/bounded set conversation, I’ve seen the importance of developing or finding people who want to gather together because of (1) their love for Jesus, and because (2) they were informed with a Kingdom theology. I would now add a third critical element, Obedience to Christ. Intending to obey Christ will lead to a “radically different kind of life” characterized by “non-cooperation with the evil around them.”

Third, I may be self-deceived, but this is what I see in the lives of those U40-ites who choose to walk and minister together in the city. We have so many different callings and foci of ministry, yet we are not drawn together because of a particular denominational affiliation, a particular ecclesiology, or worldview. We love Jesus. We want to participate in His Kingdom. We want to obey him.

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

Here are a few photos from our last U40 meeting at Point Loma Nazarene University on Jun 14, 2008. Click through for more.

Hey Friends,

I’m looking forward to connecting with you all next Saturday, Jun 14th at Point Loma Nazarene University. With next Saturday’s meeting we will be moving to an every other month schedule and meeting from 9am to Noon.

Jason will be facilitating our conversations about how we might sustain a Kingdom movement that transforms San Diego with the gospel. I look forward to sharing with you all how God seems to be using our little group and some interesting initatives that are bubbling forward from our interaction. Add some worship and fair trade coffee and, well, what more could you want?

Feel free to invite anyone who would benefit from or contribute to our network of Kingdom-minded leaders.

Please let me know how many of you are planning on attending:

- via email: at geoff@thehsus.com
- via Facebook: (Note that the title of the event still says Jun 7th, just ignore it.)

Date: Saturday, Jun 14th
Place: Point Loma Nazarene University - Colt Forum
Time: 9a - Noon. Plan on grabbing someone to fellowship with over lunch.
Cost: Please consider a donation toward Jason and Brooke Evan’s Summer Road Trip/Book Tour/Cooking demo spectacular.

Questions?

Geoff

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

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.

I’ve included two paragraphs from a portion of Wayne Grudem’s systematic theology dealing with “church.” It is interesting to me because while the title retains the two normal categories that most systematic theologies use, “local and universal,” Grudem argues that the term church (ekklesia) can legitimately be used for a group of believers at any level from the house church to the church universal. He writes:

3. The church is local and universal
In the New Testament the word “church” may be applied to a group of believers at any level, ranging from a very small group meeting in a private home all the way to the group of all true believers in the universal church. A “house church” is called a “church” in Romans 16:5 (”greet also the church in their house”), 1 Corinthians 16:19 (”Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord”). The church in an entire city is also called “a church” (1 Cor. 1:2; 2 Cor. 1:1; and 1 Thes. 1:1). The church in a region is referred to as a “church” in Acts 9:31: “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was built up.” Finally, the church throughout the entire world can be referred to as “the church.” Paul says, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25) and says, “God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers …” (1 Cor. 12:28). In this latter verse the mention of “apostles,” who were not given to any individual church, guarantees that the reference is to the church universal.

We may conclude that the group of God’s people considered at any level from local to universal may rightly be called “a church.” We should not make the mistake of saying that only a church meeting in houses expresses the true nature of the church, or only a church considered at a city-wide level can rightly be called a church, or only the church universal can rightly be called by the name “church.” Rather, the community of God’s people considered at any level can be rightly called a church. — Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology. Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1994

I’m interested in knowing what happens if we think of church at the level of the entire city or the region. What happens to passages like 1 Cor 12: 12-31 which speak of the church as a body made up of many parts? We usually think of the passage referring to individuals that use their gifting in the context of their local church. How do things change if when we think of the church of the city as the context?

Hey Folks,

Just a reminder of our next U40 meeting next Saturday, Feb 16th. We will be meeting once again on campus at Point Loma Nazarene University from 9am to 2:00pm.

In the time since we last met conversations around who we are have continued to affirm the central reasons for our continued gathering:

• We want to be participating in God’s Kingdom agenda together
• We want to be fostering missional leaders for the church
• We want to be learning, growing, exploring, dreaming and reimagining
• We want to be networking and developing partnerships, collaborations and alliances.

In our next meeting, tentative plans have us continuing our fellowship in smaller groups around several topics:

• A short description of how the language of a covenant community or an “order” is being used recently in conjunction with U40. Might this be a way to think of what we are about?
• Small group discovery around various metaphors found in scripture to refer to God’s people (ie: church, body, family, etc.) Bring your bibles.
• As we have usually done some learning around different facets of what Kingdom calls us to, I’ve asked Yucan Chiu of Ethnos Church to share a few thoughts on cultural and socioeconomic diversity as a reflection of Kingdom. My friend and CRM colleague Craig Hendrickson may be joining us from Long Beach with similar expertise.
• I’d love for us to spend time in prayer for San Diego and Tijuana.

So, get the word out. Invite other like-minded, missional friends that would be blessed to join us as we learn to represent the Kingdom together.

Date: Saturday, Feb 16th
Time: 9am - 2pm
Place: Point Loma Nazarene University at the Fermanian Business Center.
Directions: here.
U40 Annotated Campus Map: here.

Cost: $10 to cover lunch and coffee
RSVP: Please let me know if you are coming so we can coordinate food and such. geoff [at] thehsus [dot] com. Or RSVP via Facebook.

If you want to read ahead:

• My book report on “Divided by Faith.” - Written for a class, it hits a few key ideas behind this great thought-provoking book. Written in 2005 while still on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ.
• Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America - On pp 201 - 214, Roxburgh diagrams a suggested structure for missional communities that we’ll look at briefly. I’d buy the book simply for the treatment of “Kingdom.”

That should do it for now.

Geoff

(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.

(more…)

We had a wonderful meeting today reflecting on the significance of the prophetic function within the church and it’s impact on our lives as disciples of Jesus. The role of the prophets were to remind the people of God of their role in the world as representatives of his reign. Often, the prophets were those annoying folks that called God’s people from static institutionalized patterns that had slowly drifted from God’s design.

In many ways, I believe the next generation of church here in N. America is taking on a bit of this prophetic hue. They seem to understand Jesus and his mission in fresh perspectives. Looking to existing expressions or paradigms of church, there is a frustration because they do not seem to effectively further Christ’s Kingdom cause as they understand it. This fosters a hope and a longing for new contextualized expressions of being the church.

Many of these frustrations are centered around issues of inequality. Some have more resources than others, more access to clean drinking water, or better treatment because of skin color. The tragedy is that there are many ways in which the church is unwittingly contributing to the problem because of our confusion of the mission among other things.

Walk around any high school in the country today and you will find posters that seeking to draw attention to any number of causes that kids today believe are human tragedies that desire our intervention. From the crisis in Darfur, to the HIV/AIDS crises in Africa, you name it, someone cares about it… except seemingly, many of the churches in our fine land. Does that make sense?

We need to listen to the prophetic voice of the U40 crowd because it is calling us to repent and reorient our thinking, our systems, and our forms such that the church once again is in lockstep with Jesus on his Kingdom mission.