Gifts often obscure the giver, when we are more interested in what we are receiving.  This is never more clear than in our lives of faith, when we celebrate the grace and gifts of God, but often we never move back toward the giver.

Can we learn again to say, with Tagore,

…raise me from
the still-gathering heap of your gifts
into the bare infinity of your uncrowded
presence.

Here is the entire poem (by Rabindranath Tagore [trans. from Bengali], in Fruit Gathering, XXVIII).

Time after time I came to your gate with raised hands, asking for more and yet more.

You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess.

I took some, and some things I let drop; some lay heavy on my hands; some I made into playthings and broke them when tired; till the wrecks and the hoard of your gifts grew immense, hiding you, and the ceaseless expectation wore my heart out.

Take, oh take–has now become my cry.

Shatter all from this beggar’s bowl: put out this lamp of the importunate watcher: hold my hands, raise me from the still-gathering heap of your gifts into the bare infinity of your uncrowded presence.

So I’ve been reading Scott Boren’s new Missional Small Groups, not a book I would normally pick up because, well, let’s face it, anything with “Small Groups” in the title is suspect.  But after I got over that bout of snobbery I dove in, and it’s been quite compelling.  I found chapter three very helpful, not just for understanding my own small group, which we call ‘Missional Orders’ here at Life on the Vine, but for understanding the different stages or places of groups all over our community, and for understanding what different people are looking for when they want “deeper” community.

Scott says that when you listen to people, they typical are telling one of four stories regarding their own community life.

1. The Story of Personal Improvement
2. The Story of Lifestyle Adjustment
3. The Story of Relational Revision
4. The Story of Missional Re-Creation

Let me explain what he means by these.

The Story of Personal Improvement: This is the story where we are all coming from tough and busy lives, we are all short on time and energy, but we know that it is good to gather every once in a while (doesn’t it say that somewhere in Hebrews? [Heb. 10:25]).  Really, nothing essential changes about the rhythms of our lives except that we go to the group, but only when it is convenient and beneficial to ME, only when I see it contributing to the improvement of my life. I’ll attend when I like the leader, when the material is good, when it’s interesting.  If not, then I’ll probably fade away.

Now we may sneer at a such a conception of communal life, but this is where many are coming from, and really, this is what our culture trains in us.

The Story of Lifestyle Adjustment: Community has become a priority for me.  I actually change the rhythms of my life and commit to a group, to a place.  Room has been made in my life for community, for a weekly meeting.  Rather than thinking of my own improvement or health, I’m adjusting to a life in community and organize around it more, at least I’ve organized to a weekly gathering, even if the rest of my life is unchanged.

This communal story is more prevalent for those actually committed to community.  But is this really community?  No, not really.  I feel it is either a bridge to deeper relationships, or the slippery slope back to mere personal improvement.

The Story of Relational Revision: In this phase, or story, my meeting with a group is really just the culmination of the rest of the week that I have spent in community.  I’m already regularly in the lives of those in the group.  Here I’m actively learning to life a different rhythm of life together with others.  I’m beginning to wonder how I ever thought of community before this, and now there is no going back.  Nothing less will do. It is not just that I’ve added something to my life.  Now I’ve totally changed what is central to life.

This communal story is rare and precious.  And if we haven’t experienced it, we probably seek after it without being able to put this longing into words.  I think this is actually the kind of community people usually long for, they either just don’t bother to pursuit it enough, or they just haven’t found a group who also shares that deep of a vision.

The Story of Missional Re-Creation: Moving pass just revising my daily relationships, I have not intentionally re-created my life around a community, a place, a people for mission.  I and another family decide to move into the same apartment complex, next to a neighborhood when another group member lives.  We start having block parties, or just begin to minister to the people around us.  We don’t need to organize around ministry, we just live together and out of that flows God’s mission through us.

This type of missional community is indeed rare.  Many don’t even have the imagination for it…isn’t that Jesus People kind of stuff? some might think.  But really, when you read about what Jesus did with his disciples, isn’t this story of missional creation what we find?

If you were honest, those of us leading church, ministries, or groups, were does our group fall?  And how do you feel about it?  Are those involved frustrated because they don’t see the improvement the group offers their lives (Story 1), or do frustrations point to a deeply long for community (something more like Story 3 or 4)?

I know for myself, I get frustrated with people lacking commitment, thinking they are just stuck is the first story.  But is it possible they too are sick of thin community and don’t bother with anything less that story three or four?

What do you think?

(Part Two will discussion how you move a group/community forward toward Relational Revision and Missional Re-Creation.)

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
[Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk]

No matter your view on evolution, this is an amazing artistic feat. The time and execution are outstanding in this urban artistic adventure from blu.

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.

I think not. But that is the buzz that I’ve been hearing?  And it get’s me all rankled up.  Really?  Are people beginning to think this.  I’m probably hot and bothered because I’m part of a team planning the next Missional Learning Commons here in Chicago in a couple of weeks.  I just don’t get it.  But if I were to guess, here are some of the reasons why some a concerned that the unconference is becoming the next Big Conference.

An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered on a theme or purpose. The term “unconference” has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.~wikipedia

1) The unconference is becoming more common and more common: Anti-Cool Reflex. I think for many on the edges of the church, who for good reason engaged in the emerging church conversation or are interested in missional theology, we have created an anti-cool reflex, or dare I say, hipster reflex, that says once something starts catching on we must immediately distance ourselves from it.  Now that unconferences are catching on, many people just hit the cynical button and start poo poo-ing. So I’m calling this the Anti-Cool Reflex.

2) The unconference is connected to some ‘sponsor’: Anti-Sellout Reflex. Yes, note the scare quotes.  This I believe is a very selective knee-jerk reaction.  Just because an unconference is sponsored by something doesn’t mean it is selling out.  Sure the sponsor is hoping to gain something by sponsoring, but often they are also interested in helping, and maybe are themselves acting out of certain values or convictions.  I believe this is a very selective (self-righteous?) criticism because the money/marketing potential for a missional/emergent sponsor of an unconference is so minimal compared to the money/marketing info racing in/around/through all the technology that these critics are probably using (FB, Android/Google, Twitter, Apple, MS, etc…).  If we are so worried about being ripped off or controlled then logically we would need to unplug from most social networking and the internet. “But those things are essential carriers of my anti-sellout message!”  Yeah, exactly.  Case closed.  Can we please put the Anti-Sellout Reflex to bed.

3) The unconference takes so much organization: Anti-Institutional Reflex. Now, if you couldn’t tell, I have no time for the previous two reasons to be against the rise of unconferences.  But this one does have some merit.  There is certainly a link between business/organizational models and how one plans a conference.  And I’m all for have a different organizational model when it comes to being the church, and therefore you would think this would roll over to how one plans an unconference.  But having a different organizational model doesn’t mean not being organized.  Sometimes it is good to be anti-institutional, but that can’t be a general rule, and it certainly shouldn’t be a reflex that one throws around without first investigating.

The real question for me is, What are we for?

Well, moving from the abstract to the concrete, I would say the unconference I’m helping to plan (Missional Learning Commons) is attempting to be

1) for families.  Most church conferences are not geared toward having entire families participate.  Well, this is taking quite a bit of organization, but we felt the need to offer some form of childcare because we believe the missional church should engage families, not just men who typically leave their family to attend a conference. For this reason we have actually attached a fee (kryptonite for unconferences) to this year’s MLC. But the fee doesn’t go to speakers of rental fees, but toward offering childcare so that entire families can participate.  So if we are selling-out by charging a fee because we want families to come then we are guilt.  Of course I’d like to think it is us being innovative in sharing the cost of participants.

2) for places. We believe that place and embodiment are important, so when Northern Seminary offered use of their conference center we accepted.  Certainly Northern is hoping to associate their brand to the missional movement and maybe attract students, but they are accessibly located by several Chicago freeways, have local hotels, and other conveniences.

3) for hearing from ordinary people. I think the biggest benefit of the unconference is the typical use of local, engaged people rather than big names.  The unconferences I’ve been part of seeks just to hear what God is doing on the ground in and through ordinary communities.  The age of disconnect big names who ride in to inspire the masses are over.  Let’s learn from each other.

4) for relationship and networks. The MLC is also connected to Ecclesia Network because we believe in the formation of organized movements, of creating a web of local/regional/national relationships for the furthering Christ’s kingdom and the reformation of the church in North America.

Basically, if you are not for these thing, the please feel free not to come to the MLC or any other unconference.

But if you are for these things, and many others, we would love to see you on Oct. 29-30, and I would love to hear of your unconference too.

—

This post sponsored buy some caffeine (homemade double-shot), air, a desk, a comfy chair, electricity, Ben Sternke (donated the poster and MLC site), fb, twitter, google, wordpress, wikipedia, apple, Wadle and Silvy Show (radio) and other people and stuff.

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).

I’ve just started teaching a class at Trinity on “Issues for Men in Ministry.”  I’m taking the angle that really it is manhood that is the mystery here, not not ministry.  That unless men learn (maybe for the first time) what manhood is then it is impossible to function as a man in ministry.  Indeed, many pitfalls and failures in ministry come from this lack of male initiation. But before I get into all this I wanted to start things off with a brief talk by Richard Rohr.  Do you think Rohr goes too far?

(Disclaimer: for those who don’t know me as well, I’m very supportive of women in ministry and breaking male dominance, but I’m not dealing with that now not because I’ve forgotten, but it’s just not what I’m thinking about right now).

The Catch 22 of Male Initiation
by Richard Rohr, O.F.M.
February 1, 2008

Catch-22 is a term coined by Joseph Heller in his novel Catch-22, describing a paradox in a law, regulation or practice in which one is a victim regardless of the choice one makes.  It has become rather clear to many of us that both top leaders in the church and leading politicians in society are largely made up of men who wanted to get there.  They pursued roles and positions of power for any multitude of reasons, some of which are even praiseworthy.

At the second level of “management” you find priests, ministers, civil employees, and corporate bureaucrats who have rightfully sought their own career goals, but unless there has been some influx of wisdom, suffering, or mentoring from life itself, their ego structures tend to be pretty well intact and self serving. “My personal upward mobility, but for the sake of the kingdom of God” is the best we can hope for!  They have done even good things, but the underlying motivations of self image, security, status, and self aggrandizement have never been looked at or seriously questioned.  In fact, they assume this is what life is all about.  This creates a major spiritual blindness at both levels of leadership, and of course in all men who have not stumbled, fallen, and been raised up (the central paschal mystery).

What is lost to our society, however, is much needed wisdom and the common good, and often just basic spirituality.  Such patriarchy becomes a self perpetuating machine at an arrested level of consciousness.  Uninitiated men appoint, affirm, and promote other men at their same level of moral development, because their own ego standards are all that they have to judge by.  In other words, the water never rises, levels of consciousness do not naturally proceed by attraction and promotion from the top, which is what we all hoped for. This is the meaning of eldership, seniority, and mentoring, but it only really works in “wisdom based cultures”, which we now have very few of (Tibet, Bali, and small, hidden pockets, especially in remaining native cultures still found on all continents.)

So wisdom often has to come from the outside, the bottom, or the edge.  Is it any surprise that Jesus was not a priest, a scholar of the law, or a leader in his society?   He was an uneducated layman.  The systems of this world do not evolve from the top down, as we expected, except in rare cases like Abraham Lincoln, John XXIII, and Nelson Mandela (but who originally came from the edge and the bottom in all three cases).

The only way to break into such a watertight and self perpetuating system is through the failure, suffering, and humiliation of those on their climb upwards or those who begin their climb downwards.  Initiation rites were preparing a society for such leadership, by encouraging, allowing, and guiding the wisdom and necessity of falling—either from your high perch, or before you make the mistake of climbing too high in the first place.

Thus, it is alright to climb into social position and to seek power.  But you better know: That is what you are doing, it is merely a “first half of life” concern, why you are doing it, be honest about your real motivations, who you still are, and really are (Your True Self) all of its many and specific dangers, listen to both Jesus and Buddha here, so you had better compensate for these dangers in very practical ways,  and know that it does not mean anything in and of itself anyway!

Such is the significance of the central and necessary wounding at initiation time.  It repositions the male inside of real success, and takes away his love affair with false success.  That is why we say that a man is not initiated until he has seen through the illusions and pretenses of his false self, and has had at least one enlightening encounter with his True Self.  Without such initiation, we have societies built almost entirely on illusion, arrogance, and ignorance.  No wonder we have the problems we do with war, greed, ambition, and pride at every level.

So the reason I call it a “Catch 22” is that you have to build your tower of success, even though it is the every thing that can destroy you, and will destroy you if we do not see through it.

We will lose if we do not find our power.  But we will also lose if we find our power and then do not “unfind” it!

So you must let go of the very thing that you have supposedly found.  But the trouble is you are very identified and attached to it by then!  So someone must warn you ahead of time, or it is often too late.  That is initiation.

The first finding is not the real finding.  The letting go is not losing at all.  This is the utter counter intuitive nature of Jesus’ teaching and of Buddha’s practices, and what has been modeled by all those we call saints and mystics and holy men.

This is surely what Jesus meant when he said, “Anyone who finds his life must lose it, and anyone who loses his life will find it.”  (Mark 8:35)  It was his own Catch 22, and most of Christianity has never named, accepted, or lived this central paradox.

No wonder many do not take Christianity seriously.  What a wonder it could still be if we did!

I‘m looking to hire some staff.  Let me know if you are interested.  I don’t ask for much…just your souls!

But thankfully my family is much more exciting than this.