Too often the efforts of church planting and evangelism in unreached places, goes by the term ‘missions.’  But when a group of believers is sufficiently gathered, we then say that a ‘church’ has been established.  The linking of terms in a before-after type of relationship has often been propagated by mission agencies themselves.

But is this a good way of talking about things? When mission grows up, does it become a church?

The problem with this is well considered by Hoedemaker’s summary of a missiologist from the last generation,

“Can a development of mission into church really be considered a maturing? Is it not, rather, a betrayal of the fundamental missionary meaning of “church” (the church happens as the Gospel of the kingdom is brought to the world)? “The Legacy of J.C. Hoekendijk (International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 19 no 4 O 1995, p 166-170)

Don’t many of us feel that way now, after the explosion of the missional church, after the critique of the inward focused church?  It’s the church really always already mission?

But it seems Hoekendijk, and others who follow him, overreact.  Not in their criticism, but in its result.

The criticism is right.  We ought not separate the church from mission, and mission doesn’t create a church entity, but rather the church is such as engaged in mission.

But the result of this theological emphasis tends to absolutize, or abstract, from the real, historical processes of, dare I say, actually planting a church.  While mission isn’t some great big arrow that points toward a church building (like the picture above), there is a necessary process of maturation and development.  It is this process, that while unfortunate, mission agencies hope to convey in describing a shift from a ‘mission’ to a ‘church’.

We must understand that while everything is mission, or that the church is missional, there still is the initial planting, the reaping, and the sending out to plant some more.  In the past the first part was considered missions and the latter parts a maturing church.  Does this mean a selling out to institutionalism?  Maybe.  Does it always mean this?  No.

It just means that some plant (a missionary, an evangelists, one gifted with apostolic fervor), and others reap (a shepherd, a prophet, a teacher).  All the gifts are used toward the maturing of the church for mission.  And at some point, a new church will begin to send out mature missionaries to plant somewhere else.  But to affirm this process is not to deny the missionary nature of the church.

Indeed, as Hoedemaker states concerning Hoekendijk,

there may be traces of an original evangelical spirituality in this suspicion, akin to the revivalistic mistrust of all ecclesial establishment.

I’m all for revival and pray for them myself, but I too worry of this too oft knee-jerk reaction against the establishment as a pietistic impulse.  And certainly, while John Wesley was saved by pietists, he also organized his movement and changed English-speaking ecclesial landscape.

Ok, yes, it might sound extreme.  But let’s be sober-minded.  As Todd Hiestand (and the comments) notes in his great post, “10 Suggestions/Thoughts on Bi-vocational Ministry”, being a missional bi-vocational pastor is hard, it takes commitment, it takes faith.  But in this post-Christian context (or at least outside of the ever shrinking Christendom pockets), the option to be a bi-vocational is not an option at all, it is a missional necessity. I want to frame the discussion here with this image of guerrilla warfare exactly because I don’t want bi-vocational ministry to sound merely like a life-style choice, good for some, but not for others, or some kind of fashion accessory for missional pastors.

But I want to clear up one thing.  I’m not taking about guerrilla warfare against the more established church, or mega-churches or anything like that (although I think they perpetuate bad pastoral habits, or better, addictions).  But to think narrowly that way is just not helpful.  I’m thinking that our battle is within post-Christian, post-modern, consumer-theraputic-individualistic culture.  The warfare is in the terrain of our neighborhoods and families, our calendars and wallets.

So, to start this off, here are five thoughts.

Bi-vocational ministry is necessary:

1) not because missional churches are poor, but because they are rich. Some of the literature on bi-vocational ministry point to it being an option when churches are little, too poor for a full-time pastor.  In this scenario church finances are the determining factor.  Well, it know many missional churches that are small, and probably too poor for a full-time salary plus health insurance.  But the missional church is rich in resources, resources that are flowing outward into the neighborhoods and communities.  They are rich in leadership and talents that would go untapped if they was only one person (a man usually) who did everything and got paid for it.  My own community is actually big enough to support a full-time pastor, but we choose not to do that because we believe it would make us poorer as a community.  This is, then, is to use what the culture sees as a weakness (money, resources) as a strength, and therefore is a necessary attribute of missional guerrilla warfare.

2) not because missional churches have little work, but too much work. Sometimes you hear the complain from a bi-vocational pastor that there is so much work and too little time (oh, wait that was me!).   But we all know what the truth is.  There is always too much work.  No matter what.  But instead of allowing ourselves to believe (which doesn’t really happen), or worse, allowing our congregations to believe (which almost always happens) that one or several “full-time” people can basically cover the work of the kingdom, missional churches know that there is always way too much work for one (or even some), but that all are engaged in the mission of God’s kingdom.  Bi-vocationalism is an automatic safe-guard against thinking the work is manageable when really it is totally unmanageable outside of all entering the fields to bring in the harvest.  Therefore, missional churches use another perceived weakness (lack of impact or results by a visible few) as a strength because the mustard seed is growing.

3) not because we battle outside, but within ourselves. This one gets tricky, but follows from #2.  Too often people, organizations, nations, and yes, churches, come to think that the battle is outside, that all those in must conform to a certain image or idea, and then move outward and attack (this happens even for laudable causes).  Many churches have implicitly or explicitly adopted this organization/operational structure, and even for those churches that haven’t it is a constant temptation perpetuated by full-time ministry.  But we must always remember that the battle is within our churches, and within ever leader (I referred to it before as a power addiction).  I’m reminded of the lyrics from U2′s “peace on earth”: “And you become a monster / So the monster will not break you.”  Ministerial bi-vocationalism is the necessary spiritual discipline to ward off this temptation toward consolidation, and not just spiritual discipline, but relational, financial, and temporal discipline befitting those on the front lines (which are never front but always shifting) of the missional battle. In this sense you don’t fight fire with fire.  We must creatively resist.

4) because the culture is already fighting a guerrilla style war against us. Advertising, opinion polls, new television shows, iPhone apps, American Apparel, and on and on it goes.  They culture is an ever evolving parasite on others beliefs and practices, always moving toward how to make a dollar off you (see kinnon’s post regarding FB), or spin something a propoganda.  So it is necessary for missional churches to be just as nimble and creative, culturally creative even.  In this way it is necessary to fight fire with fire, guerrilla warfare again guerrilla warfare.

5) not because the missional church is against formal leadership, but because we seek to form proper leadership. I will not as much time on this because de-centralized leadership has been a common enough theme, especially in regard to actual guerrilla warfare, cell groups, and house churches.

So, those are five reasons off the top of my head that missional bi-vocational ministry is not a cute lifestyle decision, or something that we try for a little while but then abandon, or a missional accessory that so like an others don’t.   But I truly believe that if the kingdom is to fruitfully gain ground in this post-Christian context that we must adopted strategies for the long run.  Anything less will perpetuate the stagnation of the American church.

(p.s. I know I could qualify this a little and mention all those in larger churches who are legitimate following God’s call in a full-time ministry and such [many whom I know and love]…but I prefer to just let this start out more black and white without fading everything to gray too quickly).

Here is an interesting piece by NPR on Evangelicals, spurred on my McLaren’s book.  Listen to it below, or read it at NPR.

It is often claimed that the missional church might be loosing the high standard of expository preaching.  And often we don’t exactly help to clarify this when we rail against individualized, overly rationalistic, disembodied information dumps which masquerade as the worst of expository preaching (love ya Dave).  And when we claim that interpretation is a communal activity not reducible to a grammatical-historical method, many think we, the missional church, have given up on the Word of God.  Well…we haven’t.  In fact, we do the real expository preaching!

In our worship gathering the question is not if exposition happens, but where exactly it happens.  Someone new to our gathering, steeped in the traditions of expository preaching, commented to one of our co-pastors that while biblical exposition didn’t happen in the sermon (as classically understood), it instead happens throughout the entire service. I think this is absolutely correct.  Let me explain by walking us through last week’s worship gathering.

Our preaching text was Romans 8.1-8, 12-13, celebrating that for those in Christ there is therefore now no condemnation.  The rest of the lectionary was Isaiah 43.16-21, Psalm 126, and John 7.53 – 8.11 [the woman caught in adultery].

The Life on the Vine Liturgy (03/21/10):

• Before the service, at 9am, we have a teaching class which lays out the basic framework of the morning text to be preached.
• In the service, after the time of silence and invocation we sang the call to worship, Wake Up, (which we recently wrote based in the text of Roman 13), calling us to attend to the work of Christ.
• Then comes the Scripture readings, read from the four walls of the sanctuary symbolizing that we are being surrounded by the words of God, ending with a reading from the Gospel of John and how Christ did not condemn the woman caught in adultery. .
• Between the readings and the sermon is what we call the Liturgion (a litany and motion icon), which in this case was a guided meditation on the painting, “Christ and the Adulterous” by Jan Brueghel, focused on Christ’s non-condemning spirit.  The questions asked were: why is Jesus the lowest in the painting?  Who is at the center of the painting?  What is the significance of that?  Why is the crowd fading into darkness?  Notice that man who dropped the stone…notice that he is the second lowest.  What does his posture resemble?  Notice the shape of the woman’s hands.  What does all this tell us about Jesus?
  
• Only after all this comes the sermon (which for us is only one aspect of the dual apex of the service), which we conceive as a focused time of displaying the gospel of Christ and drawing everyone into the Kingdom of God.  In the sermon there of course will be information conveyed and reference made to grammar and genre.  But the true reference of exposition is always Christ himself and his saving work towards which all our preaching must speak.  This week’s sermon focused on living in the hope that while we are guilty, in Christ we are not condemned.
• After the sermon is a time of response through congregational prayer and two worship songs (Grace Flows Down, Wondrous Cross).
• Then comes the second apex of our service, the Eucharist, or Communion, or the Lord’s Table, which is itself a fully participatory exposition of the non-condemning hospitality of Christ, and a fully participatory congregational response in faith and hope.
• During this time of coming to the Table we celebrate the non-condemning love of Christ in three songs: You are My King, Kyrie Eleison (a song we wrote on Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension), and Let us Love and Sing and Wonder.
• Finally, in the Benediction, we are sent out as the non-condemned people of God, the Body of Christ, offered for the life of the world.

Of course, reading this pails compared to experiencing it.  But for us, at Life on the Vine, exposition happens throughout the entire service, not just in the sermon.  And it is done is a fully biblical, artistic, and immersive situation.  Instead of a 30 minute exposition of the grammar, structure, and meaning of Romans 8, we have a 75 minutes exposition engaging the heart, soul, mind, and spirit, rather than just the mind.

So let it not be said that this missional church doesn’t care about biblical exposition, but rather that we care so much that we make and entire service out of it!

So, then, where does biblical exposition happen for you in your context?  Is it similar or different?

Last week I was in LA at the Wesleyan Philsophical Society.  I presented a paper on “Christ in Circulation: The Eucharist and Money.”  The abstract is below and then after the break is the paper.  If you are interested then you should definitely also check out Jason A. Coker’s post on a similar topic: The Begging Bowl, Toward a Kingdom Economy of Gifts, Power, and Justice.

Abstract:
This paper explores the convergence of the Eucharistic gift and the theory of money.  It will argue that the gift of grace enacted in the Eucharist actualizes an alternative economy to that of the dominant exchange of commodities via money, otherwise known as capitalism.  This convergence will proceed between the realms of sacramental theology and political economy, represented by the French sacramental theologian Louis-Marie Chauvet and the Japanese philosopher Kojin Karatani.  Specifically, this convergence will move between Chauvet’s ‘sacramental reinterpretation of Christian existence’ centered on the symbolic exchange of the gift of grace, and Karatani’s critique of the trinity of the capitalist nation-state and its circulation of money.  It will show how Chauvet deploys the anthropological notion of the symbolic exchange to explicate the formation of Christian identity enacted in the Eucharistic.  Through the symbolic exchange of the Eucharistic participant are transformed into graced subjects through the circulation of the historical, sacramental, and ecclesial Body of Christ.  Set alongside this circulation of Christ, this paper will offer a reading of Karatani’s understanding of the four modes of exchange and the circulation of money, and how one might practice resistance to the capitalist nation-state.  In this way Karatani’s explication of the modes of exchange will enhance, by explicitly politicizing, Chauvet’s understanding of symbolic exchange, even while showing that Karatani’s project is untenable without the gracious and gratuitous circulation of Christ in the Eucharist, forming graced and gratuitous subjects.

Paper posted after the break.

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Sin is nothing masquerading as something.  Sin merely preys on something, on anything, but itself it is nothing.  Sin produces desire for what doesn’t exist.  It takes what is good, adds NOTHING to it, nothing but disordered desire, and, BAM, now there is something new, something disfigured and ugly.  Wanton desires warp creation (what is good) and makes something less of it (which is evil).

This is the gist of the sermon on Sunday, at Life on the Vine, on Romans 7: 7-13.  Sin took the good Law and produced disordered desires, covetousness.  But of itself it could do nothing, because it is nothing.  God only created what is good.  And sin is turning away from what actually exists, for what we want to exist. It is Nothing that wants to be Something.

Sin says what actually exists is not good enough.  That God is being stingy in His gifts.  That He is unfairly withholding from us the knowledge of good and evil.  The original lie of the Serpent is not “You will surely not die,” but rather, “What exists is not enough for you.  Desire more!”  In this way the Devil is the originator of the infomercial.  But the truth of the gospel is that God is enough for us, that what exist is good, and that if we could only see what is right before us that we could indeed live with God.

But the problem is that we can’t see what exists, and so the author of existence entered existence, and endured the Nothing of Death, so that we could re-enter the Something of Life.  And this is the great mystery of Lent, and the life of Christ, that now, after the Fall, the only way back to the fullness of life, the only way back to the abundance of all Something, is through the passage of Nothingness, the daily dying to the disordered desires and our false selves, the picking up of our crosses which make nothing out of our mis-created somethings.

It has become somewhat fashionable again to claim that Paul ruined the Gospel of Jesus by making it all bloody and such, for getting that Christ came proclaiming the Kingdom of God, not some atonement theory (yes, I’m referring to the Brian McLaren’s new book).

Well, this afternoon I came across this and thought it worth of spreading around.  It is from Albert Schweitzer‘s “The Mysticism of St. Paul.”

The inner character [of Paul's thought] is determined by the fact that Paul has thought out his concpetion of redemption through Christ within the sphere of belief in the Kingdom of God.  In Paul’s mysticism the death of Jesus has its significance for the believers, not in itself, but as the event in which the realisation of the Kingdom of God begins. For him, believers are redeemed by entering already, thorugh the union with Christ, by means of a mystical dying and rising again with Him…, this state being that which they are to possess in the Kingdom of God. (p. 380)

Is the alternative “Jesus or Paul” a real alternative, or should the phrase run, for us, “Jesus and Paul”?

Paul Preaches the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and of Jesus as the Coming messiah in the form which it must necessarily take in consequence of hte death of Jesus having already occurred, and of the assigning to this death of the significance of the initial event of the Coming of the Kingdom.  In the mystical redemption-doctrine of Paul the Primiteive-Christian faith discharges the task it had been set of bringing the belief in the expected kingdom, and the redemption which goes with the Kingdom, into logical connection with the belief that Jesus who had died was the Coming Messiah. (p. 390)

Schweitzer connects the death of Christ with the eschatological atonement through which the Kingdom of God comes.  Anyway, it just seemed like coming from a non-evangelical, German scholar, that at least we should be a little more thoughtful about how Paul and Jesus relate to each other, not assume a corruption or disjunction too quickly between the two.

Well, back to studying…

At least that is often what happens, isn’t it?  Most people want community, until it starts to actually happen.  Most people want to feel welcomed, have a place to belong and fit in, and they want the pastors to visit them when they are sick, or help out with finances when times are tight.  But people generally don’t want to test their convictions in a community, the don’t want to submit their discernments to a community, or let the community be a mirror by which to see themselves as they really are, beyond the self-protective delusions in which we all engage.

But when a serious dispute arises, all that wonderful talk of community disappears and people just want to kill each other, at least in their hearts, but usually also in their words, and actions (although hopefully not extending to physical harm, but I’m sure it sometimes does!).  When conflict arise we stop submitting our discernments, we stop testing our conviction, we begin to feel justified and pious, and often always attempt to bring in the pastoral cavalry, the Authorities, to make a judgment on our behalf.  Has anyone else experiences this?

But Jesus leads us into a new community, a community of reconciliation where there aren’t just winners and losers in a conflict, where there aren’t merely those who are right and those who are wrong, but where restoration of relationships can occur.  In Matthew 18 Jesus give us a process for church reconciliation, not a process of church discipline. And in this process the ecclesial authorities come in last.  This process is what John Howard Yoder calls “reconciling dialogue” where each person commits to continue talking to each other (“just between the two of you”).  If that doesn’t work, then broaden the conversation with a mediator (“so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’”).  If that doesn’t resolve the dispute, the offense, the sin, then bring it to the “town-hall meeting” (the meaning of ecclesia, not “called out ones”), so that it, the community, can decide (“binding and loosing”) the issue.  And the entire purpose is the reconciliation of those involved, not the public shaming of sinners, or an example for youth about the consequence of sin!

To sum it up, here are three ‘P’s.  The purpose/product of Matt. 18 is the reconciliation of one to another when there has been an offense.  And this reconciliation is lived as peace in love for each other and God.  But this product of peace, of a loved unity-in-diversity cannot come about through the pronouncements of various leaders or authorities regarding the disputed matter.  Pastors can’t just jump into a dispute and pronounce the virtues of tolerance, of diversity, of loving acceptance at the beginning because these can only truly be a result. So instead of making pronouncement for/against the people involved, which inevitable creates a class of victimized losers and righteous winners, we must all commit to the process of reconciling dialogue, submitting fully to this Christ-ordained process so that we can become a real community which lives into and between all the diversity, differences, annoyances, and blessings of each other.  So the product of reconciliation can’t be short-circuited by authoritarian pronouncements, but must enter into the Spirit directed process of where care and clarification can occur.

So can we just stop killing each other and/or stop playing the victim, and get to the work Christ has put before us?

Things still to cover:

1) In more concrete terms, what is this reconciliation we are after?
2) How does this not turn into a tyranny of the community (group think)?
3) How does the larger community of God relate to a local community?
4) What about 1 Cor. 8, 10, and Rom. 14?

Now that I am hoping to blog more often I would like to resurrect or re-boot an older blog series: Science Fiction Fridays. I don’t promise to write something every Friday, but I will try (and some will be updated re-posts).

Science Fiction vs. Sci-Fi: So, what is the difference between Science Fiction and Sci-Fi? (I’m basically using a distinction my cousin, Kevin Reed, proposed to me.)

Science Fiction: A form of social critique or investigation set in the future (distant or near), or set in the present amid highly anomalous circumstances. Science Fiction is what you see in Cyber-Punk books, the Dune series, and Philip K. Dick (and the movies based on his stories).

Basically, science fiction offers a utopian/distopian vision of the future as a critique of the present, and therefore is not supportive of the status quo (I also also Fantasy but that was going to make my series name too long, and I don’t read/view as much of it).

Sci-Fi: Roughly state, Sci-Fi is strictly entertainment of the futuristic type (somewhere in space) or concerning dangerous scientific research (think Mutant X or X-Men), and it is not different than the status quo. Just about everything is Sci-Fi now on film and the tv; there are few view science fiction movies or tv show which actually critique rather than support the current system of thought.

So, basically, I want to commit to a regular reading of the difference between Science Fiction and Sci-Fi, in literature and film. Through this series I’ll engage in ideological and theological critiques of the consumer american lifestyle in which I live and minister.

I have recently just finished The Sparrow, A Canticle for Liebowitz, and a border book, Foucault’s Pendulum, all of which will receive some reflection, as well as some recent films.

But to get started, and to add to my reading/viewing list, what are your favorite science fiction books or movies? And why?