Here is an idea that works. For pastors who are wanting to encourage the members to find their places in God’s mission field, and for members who are trying to envision what that might be like, this worship activity fulfills both concerns. The idea is simplicity itself.

Just before I lead the worshipers in the “prayers of the congregation,” I walk into the center of the worship area and invite people to give their “reports from the field.” I prompt them with two or three questions, so they know what I am looking for.

“Did you have a conversation with someone this last week that seemed to be “pre-arranged” by God? Did an opportunity for serving someone open to you this week, and you knew this was God’s doing? Do you find yourself thinking about a problem, or a person in need, and you’re pretty sure this is the Lord nudging you to pursue this?”

Then I wait. Before long someone will raise a hand and then tell a brief story. One teenager said, “I saw someone drop his entire lunch tray. Then he went to a table and sat by himself. I sat down with him and shared my lunch with him.” Another worshiper told of going to a next door neighbor who was struggling with a health problem in order to pray in person with the neighbor.

I do my best to keep these accounts brief, and I draw it to a close at three reports, so that there is time for our congregational prayer.

The cumulative effect of asking for “reports from the field” about three times per month is powerful. People hear these stories and think, “Well, I could do that.” More effective than reading five books on missional “whatever” is the inspiration and practicality of everyday illustrations that are local, current and doable.

Could a large church do this? They would probably have to organize it in advance, by recruiting members to tell their stories up front, behind the mic. They would have to work hard to keep the stories down to earth and simple. And in doing it that way, they would lose one of the chief values of these reports: that these spontaneous expressions help to prevent passivity in the pew.

Well, for now, Faith Church doesn’t have to worry about having too many people in worship to engage in this kind of activity, and neither do most American churches. We’ve hit upon a worship practice that is showing ordinary Christians how to be missional.

Last week, I didn’t ask for reports from the field. Two people told me after worship they were disappointed, because they were eager to tell their story.

Music to my ears.

I’m back. I have wanted to resume this web log for a long time, but this blogging activity is hard to work into an already full life.

I’m going to try again to write fairly regularly because I want to record my journey in leading Faith Church through an incredibly difficult transformation. I hope many folks from Faith Church will resume reading. They did a great job of keeping up with me in my sabbatical. And I hope I can regain a larger readership, because the insights of others outside my viewpoint will be invaluable. So here goes.

God is in the business of remaking Faith Church (and most of the other American churches as well). The first phase feels like loss; the second phase feels like confusion; and the third phase feels like possibility. Faith Church is not at phase three yet.

The losses take us by surprise because they are so easily masked. Just as economists are unwilling to declare a recession until long after the country has experienced subtle signs of downturns, churches can miss the early signs that conditions have changed. Once the evidence is unavoidable that conditions for ministry have altered considerably, we can look back and say, “Well, this trend started six years ago.” Or, “We had an uncomfortable feeling but didn’t know what exactly was going on.”

I think the reason I could hardly stand to blog these last four months is because it is so uncomfortable being in this unknown territory. Today I shared my malaise with a group of local pastors. I described my spiritual struggle against anxiety and my resolve to try to live for now in the present, and leave the uncertainty of how to lead the church into new forms of ministry in God’s hands. “Please pray for me to abide in Christ and to be content in that relationship.” To a person, as we went around the room, every other pastor said, “Ditto. I need the same prayer, because I am just as anxious and uncertain as Rick.” It is consoling to know I am not alone.

Although I resume this web log in the dark, I am totally confident how things will turn out in the End. It’s the next couple of decades that are so perplexing. I think it will be a wild ride, and, once we get beyond the discomfort of loss (phase one), maybe even exhilarating, as we experiment under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I am writing in order to record what will likely be a fascinating journey, for me and for the church.

Some of you are going to be very happy reading this. You have been watching the world shift dramatically toward digital communication – email, web sites, Facebook, where does it end? – and you are reluctant to get on the boat.

Your reasons are varied. Some are at that point in life where you can successfully ride out the remainder without having to learn a complex new technology.

Others have to work with digital communication all day, which is why you are more than fed up with it by the time your workday ends.

Then there is the strongly held opinion by some that digital communication is inferior because it is impersonal. This is the category of people who actually still write letters, and who refuse to leave a voice mail message.

You know that I am not in any of those categories. You watched me set up my web log so that I could share with you the insights and discoveries of my sabbatical. When I returned I let it be known I intended to continue writing, and I have urged you to check in regularly.

While I was away, I set up a Facebook account, and now I have quite a few “friends” within Faith Church. I like it.

Then there was the introduction of the online forum for worship planning, in which I encourage people to dialogue with me, before and after each worship service, regarding the themes and content of the worship. (http://faithchurch.freeforums.org)

I’m still bullish on all this stuff, but you may have noticed that I have dropped off in the frequency of my entries on my web log. I haven’t run out of things to say, but I regularly run out of time to write.

So I was relieved – and perhaps you will be relieved – when I read a web log entry entitled, “Why I Don’t Blog Much.” The writer, Hugh Halter, is a church planting pastor in Denver, author of The Tangible Kingdom, and leader of an organization that helps train people in the missional church movement. In short, this is a busy, accomplished person. And here is why Hugh doesn’t blog much: “I prefer to spend my time with people. . . I haven’t got time to be a good husband and dad, let alone a good writer.”

But we might be misled if we think that Hugh Halter won’t spend much time blogging because he is so “productive.” As a missional Christian, Hugh logs lots of hours accomplishing very little. Like endless numbers of other Christians I have met this past year, who have pushed themselves out the doors of their churches in order to engage with people who haven’t yet become followers of Christ, Hugh Halter believes that hanging out can be kingdom work.

So do I. I told some folks this fall that I want to make one new acquaintance with a non-churchgoing person per month. That means I have to find a way, and find the time, to cultivate friendships beyond Faith Church.

After two months, I have one name. I’m slipping behind schedule. So, as I head into 2009, I am renewing my decision to be a missional Christian. If I have time to write about it, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, you can figure that I’m out on the field.

Emergent Village sponsored a regional event in Philadelphia on Nov. 8, with Peter Rollins as the main speaker. There was no way I could miss this, since I had spent an enjoyable morning with Rollins in Belfast last May while on my sabbatical. Rollins has become something of a celebrity among serious devotees of all things emerging, with his provocative books, How (Not) to Speak of God, The Fidelity of Betrayal, and soon to be released, The Orthodox Heretic.

Rollins is an entertaining and stimulating speaker, inundating his audience with waves of philosophical reflections on what it means to be authentically Christian, all delivered in a delightful, thick Irish tongue. He was in Philadelphia on a six week speaking tour in America.

As I strained to follow the rapid discharge of existentialist, postmodern, deconstructionist ideas of this unconventional follower of Christ, I reminisced on my experience last spring of the polarized Christian community in Belfast. Rollins is so much a product of that polarization that I had to wonder how his approach to radical Christianity would play out in Philadelphia.

At the same time, in attending this event I was taking stock of Emergent Village, which attempts to be a leading voice in the ever-evolving emerging church movement. The first thing to notice was that I was easily the oldest person in the room; second, that there didn’t appear to be many pastors of conventional churches present; third, that this crowd was far more interested in ideas than in application. And I think these three observations are related.

There is a certain luxury in being young, open and uncommitted. Exploring ideas wherever they may go can be captivating and energizing. And even for me, no longer young, this past year of reading and observation has thrust me up a steep learning curve, and I have loved every minute of it.

But now I am getting a little impatient. I want to take these ideas and run with them. And if they turn out to be worthless in practice, I’m ready to move quickly toward something else that might advance the kingdom.

And that is what disturbed me about my second encounter with Pete Rollins and my day with folks in the Emergent Village. It’s one thing to dislike the traditional church because of its ineffectiveness and inadequate presentation of the gospel. But are these folks going to showcase a better way or just theorize about what might work? It brought to mind D. L. Moody’s famous retort, when someone complained about his evangelistic approach, “I like my way of doing evangelism more than your way of not doing evangelism.”

Exactly.

It feels sort of like arriving at a party just as the guests are leaving. In the past month, two of the best known champions of the emerging church have announced they have stopped using the term. Their announcement comes as I have just completed a sabbatical in which I immersed myself in emerging churches. Here I am now, exploring with my church how this creative approach might guide us into new and more faithful ministry.

Except that, before we can even understand or assimilate the ideas, they are being abandoned. Or are they? Here’s what I am reading. Dan Kimball, pastor of an innovative California church and author of the 2003 book, The Emerging Church, finds that the meaning of emerging church has broadened from when he began using it. His definition is “evangelism and mission in our emerging culture to emerging generations.” Because the meaning no longer necessarily centers on evangelism, and because the theology driving the movement now includes views he cannot accept, Kimball is dropping the word from his vocabulary.

Same thing for Andrew Jones, British champion of all things emerging. Now that some evangelical churches are boycotting any speaker who supports the emerging church movement, Jones is walking away from the term, but not the ideas, and certainly not the people associated with emerging churches.

Url Scaramanga, in his blog, “R.I.P. Emerging Church,” says that the leaders of the emerging church movement are now discovering their mistake: they failed to “define purpose and doctrine early so your identity doesn’t get hijacked.” But of course, that analysis is wildly off the mark. The emerging church movement has succeeded precisely because it is a world-wide phenomenon that no one owns or controls. Its strength lies in multiple experiments, embedded in varying cultures, and benefiting from rapid cross-fertilization on the internet.

The current backlash is driven by strong reaction among some evangelical leaders. It’s ironic, actually. The emerging church was born by evangelical Christians leaving their home base in pursuit of a more effective and biblically faithful way of being church. Now, those left behind are reacting to the reactionaries.

It gets confusing right at this point. Within the larger emerging church movement is an organization called Emergent Village. Some of the ideas proposed by the organization – and widely disseminated in books and blogs – surpass the tolerance of more traditional Christians. The whole emerging church movement is being defined by some of these outspoken mavericks.

So, is the emerging church over already? No, and I think the name will endure as well, even if it is somewhat tarnished. The movement itself is still emerging, and I have my own opinions of what aspects will survive and what won’t. But the bottom line is that there remains too much pent up dissatisfaction with conventional churches to allow a return to former ways of being church.

When I sat down for lunch with Thomas Daniel, I was eager to hear all about Kairos, a four-month old emerging church he and his wife Beth were leading in Atlanta. And one question I had for Thomas was based on the fact that I couldn’t find the new church’s web site. If someone had heard about a new church called Kairos, shouldn’t they be able to check it out in advance on the internet?

Thomas answered my question before I could ask it. “Kairos intentionally has not developed a web site.” Why not? “It is not interactive; it is managed communication; and it is one-way.”

Instead their first communication tool is a group networking site. Anyone who identifies with Kairos is invited to register online. When they log on, they read news about people and events, they can ask a question to the group, and they can participate in planning upcoming activities.

This interactive form of communication is increasingly common. The term Web 2.0 was coined several years ago to describe the ability for the viewer of a web site to post a response. That has led to all sorts of shared communication tools: Wikipedia, where any number of people contribute to the topics; various social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook, where “friends” can chat; and web logs, which invite dialog on various topics.

These multi-user forums have changed people’s expectations for how the individual connects with a group. We don’t want to hear; we want to converse. We don’t want information without the opportunity to respond. And this new expectation raises the question of the value of all the conventional tools churches have used to get the word out.

What do church bulletins, newsletters, mailings, and sermons have in common? They are one-way communication, and they are less and less effective. Among some subgroups these one-way messages are becoming counterproductive. To them a barrage of information doesn’t seem like communication at all, but rather the imposition of someone else’s message in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion.

That is why the folks at Faith Church have seen a shift in how I am trying to participate in ministry with them.

* They have seen me attempt to make our worship more interactive, including the sermon.

* They have heard my plea for artists to join in crafting each worship experience.

* They have been invited to participate in shaping the sermons and the worship services, and to respond and evaluate after the fact, at http://faithchurch.freeforums.org/

* I have welcomed them not only to view this web log, but to post their comments on what I am writing.

* I am enjoying keeping up with a growing number of people on Facebook, for lighthearted banter and sharing personal anecdotes.

Of course, email has become a standard tool with multiple uses, but that is one-on-one. I’m talking about group interaction.

Here’s the point: the Western church is in a time of uncertainty, as God leads us from one way of carrying out God’s mission to another. The conventional way of “doing church” is less effective than before. But what should we be doing instead?

Because no one has the answer, I believe God intends for us to discover the way forward together. God will show us – not me, but us – how we need to evolve. And so these new tools are precisely what we need to be able to contribute toward a shared discovery.

Shane Claiborne

About six hundred young adults crowded into a hot sanctuary in Philadelphia on Saturday night, July 26, for the final presentation of “Jesus for President.” Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw were completing a national tour of their show consisting of readings, visual messages and music. Traveling in their “veggie bus,” a converted school bus running on used vegetable oil, they were promoting a stance toward politics based on a radical reading of the Bible. The Jesus for President message (www.jesusforpresident.org) was reinforced by the dynamic music duo, The Psalters, (www.psalters.com), who provided musical interludes of unusual intensity and creativity.

Based on their book by the same title, which they bill as “a book to provoke Christian political imagination,” Claiborne and Haw offered an alternative reading of the biblical story as a challenge to every nation that exalts itself and thereby misses God’s plan for the world. Says Claiborne, “Our greatest challenge is to maintain the distinctiveness of our faith in a world gone mad. All of creation waits, groans, for a people who live GOD’S DREAM with fresh imagination.”

In their view, the Christian message gets hopelessly tangled when the state coopts the faith for its own ends. Referring to the historic moment when the emperor Constantine declared that Rome was now a Christian empire, Claiborne asks, “What is the Jesus-follower to do when the empire gets baptized?”

It is a question many in the emergent church community have struggled with. If Constantine’s declaration spelled the beginning of a seventeen centuries-long era known as Christendom, it appears that with the advance of secularism, we are now in a post-Christendom age. That presents new challenges and new opportunities for Christians. For Claiborne, it requires a new stance by Christians toward politics. “Jesus is forming a new kind of people, a different kind of party, whose peculiar politics are embodied in who we are. The church is a people called out of the world to embody a social alternative that the world cannot know on its own terms.”

“This whole project is about the political imagination of what it means to follow after Jesus,” Claiborne said. “The language of Jesus as Lord and savior is just as radical as it would be to say ‘Jesus is our commander in chief’ today.”

“This is not about going left or right; this is about going deeper and trying to understand together. Rather than endorse candidates, we ask them to endorse what is at the heart of Jesus – and that is the poor, or the peacemakers – and when we see [candidates promoting] that, then we’ll get behind them.”

It was a remarkable evening, not only for the stimulating political vision, but also in what that Saturday evening represented.

* There was hardly a person over thirty in that sweltering sanctuary. It’s as though a new generation of Jesus people has appeared, forty years after a similar occurrence in the early 1970s.

* We met in the former sanctuary of the Chambers Wylie Presbyterian Church, a congregation with a 200 year run and a strong evangelical stance. Nevertheless, when the last few elderly members decided to throw in the towel a few years ago, they undoubtedly thought, “Of course we can’t continue on as a church. There aren’t any young adults living around Broad Street anyway.”

* But there are lots of young adults in the area, and Broad Street Ministries, an emerging church that took over the Chambers Wylie building, has a vision to reach them. That hundreds of young adults would spend their Saturday night in a steamy sanctuary is testimony not only to interest in the Jesus for President tour but to the network of young adults in Philadelphia who are finding new ways to follow Jesus.

* And this is the final point: these young adults adopting the Jesus for President approach are formulating a plan for reshaping America, and their views are seldom echoed in the traditional church. Jesus for President is giving voice to a world view that will outlast this year’s election.

Paul Thomson’s frustration as a young Church of Scotland pastor led to a far-reaching search. Paul was serving a state-recognized church, in a nation where the vast majority are baptized, where Christian principles are taught in the schools, and a Christian world view and values are deeply rooted in the culture. . . yet only a small minority of the population ever shows up in church, and all the social and moral problems common to other Western nations afflict Scotland as well. What’s wrong with this picture?

It was not until he had distanced himself from the church that Paul could begin to see Scotland’s spiritual plight with new eyes. He surveys Scottish history, offering a penetrating socio-spiritual analysis of what went wrong, and illustrating the spiritual devastation that affects every aspect of society, including the church. Paul sees three main elements in the breakdown of Scottish culture, all of which are the result of alienation from creation. The Scots lost the majority of their land in centuries past, to the wealthy, to the church, to conquerors. A profound sense of dislocation, loss of dignity and rootlessness resulted. This alienation manifests itself today as:

1. Addiction – to alleviate the pain of disruption and loss; an addiction showing itself not just in substance abuse but psychologically, in addiction to power and influence.

2. Masochism – rage against injustice expressed in violence toward the self.

3. Sectarianism – as historically manifested in the clans, and now in the sacred/secular split fostered by the church.

The Church of Scotland, in Paul’s view, shares an unwitting complicity in the alienation that pervades the nation. As the established church, it has enjoyed the benefits of empire, power and wealth, and it has lost its soul and its saving message. The church needs to be saved. “We have modeled 300 years of sectarian, addictive and self-harming forms of Christianity, while in bed with empire, in the full gaze of Scotland and half the world.”

What to do then? “Start building a new future from the rubble of a failed, Scottish Christian empire, a game of releasing a ‘new Scottish Christianity,’ that loves not its old empire-lovin’ self, that will let go of the dark desire to manage God and his people… and run … into the arms of a rather more wilder Christ who seems to have no interest in congregations, services or leaders, but is full of dreams for and is passionately, intimately involved with His land of haggis, neeps and tatties… to re-find their faith in his warm friendship in the healing of his land.”

And what about church? Paul redefines it entirely. “Church is no longer a wee clan or a kind of religious primary school or some thing you idolise or upkeep or visit or manage, but church at its depths, breadth and height stretches and becomes an ontology, a whole way of being, 24-7. It is a covenant with God and with the land and its people in that particular locality – a covenant to see it through to the bitter end no matter what it costs, ’til all people, all the powers that be and all of creation itself in that specific locality come to perceive the height and depth and breadth of God’s love in Christ Jesus.”

Because the institutional church itself needs to be freed from its cultural captivity, Paul is convinced the place for the gathering of God’s people for the time being must be outside the structures of the traditional church. Sitting in an outdoor coffee shop, Paul looked at the urban landscape of Edinburgh and declared, “This is my church.”

Paul Thompson, former Church of Scotland pastor, now has a larger parish than ever before.

Paul Thomson has traded in sermons and session meetings for a cosmic re-engineering project. After ten years as a Church of Scotland pastor, Paul has left the church in search of a larger parish. Now he spends his days initiating community improvement projects for a nonprofit organization, and on the side, hanging out in coffee shops and pubs, looking for allies in the re-recreation of his beloved Scotland.

Paul is pretty sure he won’t find many allies in reconstructing his corner of the world from within the established church. Years earlier, working as a pastor, he began to sense that Scottish churches were part of the problem. Looking over the city of Edinburgh, viewing all the church spires, he heard a voice saying, “It’s over.” What was “over” was the church era, the time when institutional churches would be of any use in Christ’s redemptive work.

That’s because Paul, like a number of theologians today, sees the scope of Christ’s redemptive work as far more comprehensive than what takes place in church. It’s a significant shift in emphasis to say that Christ’s redemption is not merely focused on saving individuals, nor on creating a people who will enjoy their release from sin, but on releasing all of creation from the dominion of evil so that it can shine in the glory of its creator. In this view, the redemptive work of God is relocated from the doctrine of salvation to the doctrine of creation. Creation has been ruined, and when Christ’s work is complete, creation will be restored. No, not restored but recreated, since the new heavens and new earth will be even better than the original creation.

It’s a larger vision of God’s saving purpose, and so the focus shifts from making things right in the church to making things right in the world. The mission of God is redefined: it is more comprehensive and more earthy. Restoration will take the form of an immersion once again into creation, rooting our lives in our bodily existence, and celebrating our creatureliness. Artists are essential to this restoration, because they can awaken the senses and draw people into a more holistic way of being.

In Paul Thomson’s view, the people of Haggisland, his folksy nickname for his homeland, have been alienated from the land. (Details of his fascinating analysis are in Part 2 of this web log.) Paul appeals to his native Scots to join an “incarnational revolution of saints and their dreams moving into the land.”

“There are tons of colourful ways of doing this,” he declares. “… loads of ways of incarnating Christian community without defaulting to congregations, and loads of ways of transforming the land without defaulting to setting up Christian organisations, and tons of colourful ways of Christian practice that don’t involve knee jerking into colonial style ‘ministries.’… Prayer, worship and teaching [are] already happening around us very differently in people’s lives.”

(More in “Restoring Haggisland – Part 2”)

Here is a snapshot of my inner world as I stand between a transformative sabbatical and my re-engagement with the ministry of God’s people in Faith Church.

I’m not coming back the same person.

 

* I’m restless.

* I’m less interested in some things that used to require lots of attention.

My vision of how God is at work is greatly expanded.

 

* The kingdom of God is advancing in surprising ways outside the church.

* The missional paradigm is right on target.

The future of the church lies somewhere in the mix between traditional and emerging churches.

 

* The emerging church is both reactionary and progressive.

* From these widely varying experiments, a new understanding of church is forming.

The church has lost almost all social capital (the ability to influence the culture).

 

* I think the Western world is in a period of profound social transition, one result of which is that the church and its message have been marginalized.

* Much of the cultural upheaval will turn out to benefit the church, even though in the short-term the dislocation may require difficult adjustments, some repentance, and lots of relearning.

* I have an increased sense of urgency concerning the major shifts needed for the church to fulfill its mission.

I have seen the future, and it is very good. (Hint: the future is revealed in the resurrected Jesus.)

 

* We can trust God as we launch out in the adventure of following Jesus.

* The bad news for the church: “Behold, I am about to do a new thing.” (Isaiah 43:19)

* The good news for the church: “Behold, I am about to do a new thing.” (Isaiah 43:19)