emerging mosaic

I came across this post a mustard seed church over at some strange ideas It has some interesting thoughts about the mustard seed being an appropriate metaphor for church growth and multiplication. Since our church Mosaic Life has been exploring possibilities of growing beyond addition I was engaged by the idea.

One of the recent challenges of around church planting and growth has been the growing sense that bigger isn’t always better. But how to stay committed to growing the church for the kingdom? I have never felt comfortable the either being a large church or a house church which are the two options that are most commonly presented. So this mustard seed church which grows to a certain size and then propagates itself through multiplication is intriguing. As much as I hate the idea of another adjective based church, this is definitely worthy of further exploration.

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Technorati Tags: church, church growth, church multiplication, mustard seed church

Recently i discovered a voice in the emergent conversation that I was not aware of, melvin bray.

His bio reads

I  am a professional speaker and aspiring author. I am contributing the chapter “Reading the Prophets for Justice: How can we read the prophets to learn justice?” to An Emergent Manifesto of Justice [Baker Publishing: Emersion Books, February 2009]. I am seeking to broaden my audience with my regular contributions to God’s Politics blog (beyond those blogs I manage myself).

I am founder and director of Kid Cultivators, a missional youth development nonprofit.

I am an active participant in the local/global Emergent conversation and also participate in the Emergent Village national coordinating group.

He has commented several times on the EV blog post on race. I am really interested to hear more of his perspective.

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Technorati Tags: diversity, emergent, emergent_village

So here’s another set of reasons why we can’t ignore the issue of race if the church is to emerge into something other than refuge a disgruntled white intellectuals. There is a credibility gap in our society and it strains belief. Were it not for the history of race and class in this country it would be unbelievable.

• Last week a judge acquitted NYC police officers black and white people of power in the case of the shooting of a young man fifty times because they thought they were in danger. The witnesses (all black and some of whom were also shot) the judge said were not credible.
• Jeremiah Wright former pastor of Barack Obama’s church has been reviled and called everything from unpatriotic to a loon and even worse. This because he expressed a perspective of the black community on a national tragedy. Remember black folks died that day along with people of other races. While white pastors who support current presidential candidates express their extreme opinions without impunity.
• Hillary Clinton wins a primary based on the notion that she (who was raised with privilege and has been in the highest seat of power in this country) has more credibility with working class folks than a black man raised by a single parent who worked his way through college and passed up a big time law office for working with the very class of people he now has no credibility with.

The thing is that Jesus brought credibility to the incredible. He brought God’s credibility to a poor and oppressed. He brought God’s credibility to disenfranchised. He brought God’s credibility to those who were outside of the status quo. He brought God’s credibility to people on the margins. He brought God’s credibility to an pregnant young girl, a motley crew of twelve followers, an adulterous woman asking spiritual questions. He brought God’s credibility to all human beings by breaking down the barrier between us and calling us to reconcile to God and each other. His first followers though they stumbled initially followed his pattern (after being prompted more than once by the Holy Spirit.)

So how will the church today, the church emerging deal with the credibility gap? I am fast losing hope that the church emerging or has the guts to take on this critical issue. We will tackle gays rights, worship wars, poverty in other countries and gender equality but race and by virtue of our cultural reality class right here in the USA, not so much.

Check out this post on the EV blog

The church not speaking out strains its credibility but then this is the church which increasing has less and less credibility anyway.

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Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, church, class, Clinton, credibility, diversity, Jeremiah Wright, race, Sean Bell, why race matters

Well I don’t know how I represented the emerging/post-emergent/missional world view at the Baker forum two weeks ago. It was fun to hear the thoughts of the other participants all of whom I know; including my friend Steve Argue, who argued articulately for the need of the church to look again at how we practice what we preach. A colleague John Frye, who spoke with some pastoral compassion about the important contribution of the emerging church to the church. And Michael Wittmer who was brilliant in raising an appropriate cautionary question about what we do believe. I spoke about my experience with emergent and what is means to be embracing missional values pastoring an urban emerging church. I talked about the false dichotomy between belonging and believing. orthodoxy and orthopraxis, and the lack of diversity in the conversation. It was cool to have a recently connected couple from Mosaic Life there. The moderator Sarah Cunningham did a great job guiding the conversation.

 

One the one hand the folks at Baker thought it went well. (thanks for the pics guys). On the other hand someone who attended, warned a student working with me that they should careful working with me with me because I do yoga. I don’t know if much changed as a result I only received one letter about what I said I supposed there could have been more. The strangest thing was the one person who came up to afterward to tell me that he had friends who were Muslim and Indian who were good people but they were lost. I’m not sure why he thought that was important to tell me but so be it.

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Technorati Tags: baker-books, conversations, emergent_church, emerging church, faith & culture, forum, urban-church

Wayne Squires congregation coach over at Volunteers in Service had been blogging about his work ECN with helping some church in my neck of the woods to tart thinking and working together missionally. Her are a couple clips from his blog

What might change if we designed worship for the sake of others?
What might change if we taught the Bible for the sake of others?
What might change if we thought of discipleship as for the sake of others?
What might change if we created fellowship for the sake of others?
What might change if we used our gifts and resources for the sake of others?
What might change if we established budgets for the sake of others?
What might change if we considered vocation as a call for the sake of others?

Yes what if we look at all our practices and ministry from a missional perspective how would they change?

The church is not so much a rescue station for the lost as it is a demonstration of God’s saving purposes in Christ. She is a servant of the Gospel, chosen to bless the whole world and be a sign of God’s past, present, and future activity. This implies followers of Jesus are not called to go on a mission for God, they are called to join God in his ongoing mission.

This is exactly what I tried to communicate to the seminary students in the class I taught

On learning to be incarnational and do ministry with the community instead of to or for

It is not good for the church to be alone. Like Adam, who needed a partner to fully appreciate his identity and calling, the church has been designed for relational engagement with its immediate cultural context. Its sense of purpose (i.e. mission) is directly tied to this engagement.

God really is at work in the world bringing restoration and hope and invites his friends (his people) in particular neighborhoods and communities to join him. This means that partnership with God leads to appropriate partnership with others, and when local congregations try to conduct ministries on their own, in relative isolation from their communities, they are operating outside of their God-given design.

Check out Wayne’s blog and the VIS website

Technorati : ECN, VIS, missional church

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Technorati Tags: conversations

As the some says “Its been a long while” since I’ve been blogging anyway. Besides leading my young church plant I had the privilege to teach a class on the missional church at a local seminary Missional Church GRTS MIN567. Still humbling asking why me? Teaching students at a seminary in intimidating enough but teaching about the missional church which I’m still developing and growing in my understanding was truly a great responsibility.

As I reflect on the experience there are some things I discovered along the way that I want to share here.

1. Many people think of the emerging church and the missional church as the same thing.
2. Mission is still seen as a program of the church rather than the function of the church
3. Mission is often discussed separate from the mission dei as if the mission is something the church develops rather than being some thing that God is doing that we join in.
4. There is a tendency to try to separate being missional from being incarnational and contextual
5. It is major paradigm shift for many of us raised in the church to begin to think missionally about the church, the scriptures and our lives

Well that’s a start on my observations I’ll probably have more in the future

BTW required reading for the class was

• The Mission of God:Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative - Christopher J. H. Wright
• The Shaping of things to Come - Frost and Hirsch
• The Missional Church: A vision for the Sending of the Church in NA - Darrel Guder
• Shaped by God’s Heart: The Passion ans Practices of Missional Churches - Milfred Minatrea

Technorati : contextual ministry, emerging church, incarnational minstry, missio dei, mission, missional church

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Technorati Tags: conversations, emerging church

emergent, new monastic, emerging, organic, ancient future, missional church. I haven’t been completely comfortable with any of these current labels for evolving ways of being the church. As I have been re-imagining what it means to be a follower of Jesus in my current cultural context  (urban,racially and socio-economically diverse) I’ve moved beyond emergent but had not named what that beyond was.

I was recently been asked to teach a class at a local seminary on the missional church. As I’ve been preparing for that I find myself growing increasingly more comfortable with identifying what I’m doing as missional. To be sure the missional label is not perfect and I can’t say I agree with every expression of missional but here are some things that appeal to my post emergent sensibility.

My developing view of the missional church is

• Cross cultural in its efforts
• intentional indigenous - culturally engaged but not culturally absorbed
• connecting with God who is already at work in our world
• incarnational proclamation of the gospel
• realigning or re-imagining all aspects of church life around God’s purposes
• culturally engaged but scripturally orthodox
• transforming community
• church planting reproduction
• creative and culturally relevant but connected to the historically church

Some language derived from  Friends of missional

So as I move toward the missional future I’ve taken the huge leap of posting a friend of missional button in my side bar. A  first of any kind of identifying button for emerging mosaic.

Share your ideas or thoughts on the missional church

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Technorati Tags: ancient_future, cross_cultural, emergent, emerging church, missional, missional_church, my life, post_emergence, post_emergenct, urban_church

It may be self serving but I am encouraged when I see others speaking out for a post emergent future for the emerging church. Here is a snippet of a review from a talk given by Jason Clark titled The Emerging Church: Another Dead-End or the Hope of the Church?

First, it must become a deeper church by valuing old, new and even Christian faith.

Second, following the example and work of such theologians as Stan Grenz, Jon Franke, Scott McKnight, and Ray Anderson, it must become a theological church by developing a theology robust enough not to be either threatened or co-opted by postmodernism.

Third, it must become a Biblically-informed church by reading and re-reading the Bible as the church- and culture- critiquing set of authoritative texts that it is.

Fourth, following the ancient church on the road to depth, it must become a creedal church, checking the individualistic impulse towards fashioning the church in the image of ourselves.

Fifth, it must become a confessional church, not to celebrate sectarianism, but to show the richness and vitality of a deeper church. “Maybe then,” says Jason, the emerging church’s legacy will be that it was “the response of the church catholic to our emerging culture … known for it’s vibrant ecumenical depth, with a life giving theology, rooted in a new Biblicism, growing counter to our individualized culture, as it affirms the creeds, with a plurality of local confessions from communities growing in faith, with new Christians handing their lives over to the way of Christ.” We can only hope the emerging church will have such an impact.

I couldn’t agree more with Jason’s assessment of an emerging future for the church. His observations address the tendency of many in the emergent conversation to act as it they are inventing the church all over again. Furthermore that re-invention tends toward the image of those who are doing the re-inventing that is to say white, liberal, male and academic. While there is nothing inherently wrong with any of that it has not created space for the richness of the church which comes from its history and the diversity of its members.

That has unfortunately caused some to step out of or beyond “the conversation” having become frustrated with perceived the intransigence of the emergent hierarchy, (yes there is a hierarchy) around these issues. Thanks to Jason for being a bold and prophetic. Maybe his voice will be heard and stimulate where others have not. 

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Technorati Tags: ancient_church, church_catholic, emergent, emerging church, emerging_church, faith, jason_clark, postmodernism, post_emergence, theology

I came across this recent in the The Christian Century. The description of Jacob’s web does not seem to fit the usual prescription of an emergent church. Which is supposed to be small and democratically led. (flat leadership model)

This neighborhood is also home to a thriving church called Jacobs Well, which attracts about 1,000 people each week to its various services. The church is led by Tim Keel, who, along with author Brian McLaren, is a founder of the Emergent movement. I went to JW hoping that it could help me understand a phenomenon that remains elusive—the Emergent church.

The innovative JW is housed, ironically, in a classic church building that Presbyterians erected in 1930. The building is the envy of the numerous congregations in the neighborhood, including two that have exchanged their denominational labels for more jazzy names and logos—one Southern Baptist now River City Church and one Evangelical Covenant now City Church.

So can a church be emergent and large, and led by a charismatic leader?

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Technorati Tags: Brian_McLaren, christian_century, emergent_church, emerging church, jacobs_well, keel

I am preparing for a couple of worship messages based on Act 2:42-44Act 2:42-44
English: Contemporary English Version (1999) - CEV
42 They spent their time learning from the apostles, and they were like family to each other. They also broke bread g broke bread: They ate together and celebrated the Lord's Supper. and prayed together. Life among the Lord's Followers ⁴³ Everyone was amazed by the many miracles and wonders that the apostles worked. ⁴⁴ All the Lord's followers often met together, and they shared everything they had.

and while browsing the religion section of a local bookstore I came across a great book find. A couple of dusty feet caught my eye.  They were on the cover of a book called dust off their feet- lessons from the early church by Brian McLaren and Chris Seay. The title doesn’t fully describe this gem. I describe it as a postmodern reading and commentary of the book of acts. The back cover asks the question, “Did you know the first church in acts was the original emerging church?”

I’ve already  got some good insight from this retelling and commentary on Acts and I recommend to all of those seeking to reclaim the passion and purpose  early church and rebirth it into our emerging contexts.

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Technorati Tags: acts, bible, books, Brian_McLaren, chris-seay, emerging church, emerging_church, post_modern_world, spiritual-practice