Missional Church

Last Week I read Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One (good book, you should read it).

Scot McKnight on his Jesus Creed Blog gives a good summary of the heart of the book:

Alan Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren are onto something: in their new book called Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One (Allelon Missional Series) , contend there are three central issues and questions and topics at the center of the missional theology of the Church:

First, understanding that the West is now the mission field.

Second, rethinking the gospel itself in terms of what God's dream is and what God is doing in this world instead of the gospel that satisfies my needs and meets my issues.

Third, recasting the church itself as sign, witness and foretaste of God's dream for this world. The church must become a contrast society if it is to become missional.

Read it all

New Phase in the Journey - Benedict

Last Sunday I stood before the parish where I am rector and made my first profession as a Benedictine. I joined an order called The Company of Jesus. The Company is an ecumenical religous order whose canonical residence is in the AMiA under the episcopal oversight of The Rt. Rev. David Loomis (he is St. Pat's bishop BTW). The Company has members who follow both the way of Benedict and the way of Francis. Because both streams combine I am able to be a third order (Franciscan concept) Benedictine. I am not and will not be cloistered - I am seeking to live the way of Benedict in regular, everyday life.

Pray for me as I seek to live into this charism. I do so under what I believe is the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I think God has led me into the Company so I might live more fully and faithfully in him.

The Politics of Health Care Reform

If I wasn’t a priest, I would really like to be a pundit or political editor at some news division. I enjoy politics. I like pondering the abstractions of political philosophy, I like political history and I especially like the horse-race of politics; it’s one of my favorite contact sports!

I have been thinking and reading a lot about the health-care reform debate going on right now and have pondered why there has been so little traction in getting a bill put together and passed. Here are some thoughts. Oh, and by the way, this is non-ideological analysis. I am not wanting to or trying to make a point for or against health-care reform in general or any version of that is currently on the table. I am really interested in the politics.

My take is this. The key to understanding why no bill has been crystallized or passed – and likely won’t be until the end of the year – is found in pondering a quote from Will Rogers, “I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!” Apart from the humor of the statement, there is a nugget of truth here that applies to the current situation. Right now, today, the Democratic Party has 256 members in the house and 59 members in the Senate (60 until Senator Kennedy passed away). In other words, the party holds a strong majority in congress. They would have no problem in passing a bill. They do not need the Republicans to get this done. So, why haven’t they? Bottom line, the Democratic Party is divided on the issue. The leadership is from the left wing of the Party and wants a bill that largely reflects the values of President Obama. But even though the Democratic Party is the natural home of the left liberal, it is not a left liberal party – even in congress. Part of the reason is the last two elections. The Party did a bang up job of regaining seats in both the House and the Senate. It did so by getting moderates to run in traditionally Republican or at least moderate/populist districts. In the face of the disastrous record of the Republicans in Congress and a very, very unpopular President, these folks won handily. It was a masterful strategy.

The problem is there are now a number of Democrats in Congress who are not liberal and who are not excited about the Health-Care reform proposed by the President and the Congressional leadership. If you want to get a feel for this think Jim Webb. Webb is a Democratic senator from Virginia. He is a populist and deeply against the war in Iraq. But he is not a left liberal. He used to be a Republican and worked in the Reagan Administration! Go figure. He is an example of a number of Democrats in the Congress who are moderate and some who are even conservative.

Okay, back to my point. While the “tea-partiers” and “birthers” make great copy on CNN and Fox, I don’t think that they and things like them are the real story here. The story is Democrats who have to go back to voters in their states and districts that, while not hard right wingers, are not left liberals. These Democratic representatives and senators have to get re-elected. They have to be attentive to their constituents. They have to dance with who “brung” them. As Tip O’Neill once said, “All politics is local.”

My prediction: when Congress passes a health-care reform bill it will be a compromise. But it will not be a compromise with Republicans – it will be a compromise within the Democratic Party. This will be a disappointment for ideologues, but this is exactly how the founders envisioned our system working. Everyone gets some of what they want, but no one gets all they want. This creates cross-cutting cleavages across party lines and ideological lines. These cross-cutting cleavages are part of what contributes to the stability of our Republic and the protection of civil rights.

Oh, I am not dismissing voter sentiment. It was Abraham Lincoln who said, “With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.” He was right. But one must remember that for the President national sentiment matters. But for members of congress it is the sentiment of districts and states that matter. A Democrat from Rhode Island and a Democrat from Arkansas have very different constituencies. But what must be remembered is that in Congress public sentiment is gauged district by district and state by state.

Thanks for humoring me!

Disciplemaking 3 - St. Benedict

Again, I am approaching these topics as they come to mind, not any logical order.

When Benedict of Nursia launched his monastic movement he set out to establish schools of discipleship. A couple of key strategic realities characterized these schools. First, was the principle of scripture immersion. Benedict's love for scripture and the need to be reading, meditating and praying it many times during a day makes him sound like and old fashioned Bible loving Southern Baptist! He grasped that the journey of discipleship involves re-making one's imagination. Immersion in scripture is central to this. Second was commitment to community. Simply being in committed relationship to others has the effect of forming one as a disciple. This is an example of the more is caught than is taught principle.

The Rule of Saint Benedict is a great manual for Christian discipleship. Benedict was a strategic, missional thinker. We do well to learn from him.

Disciplemaking and the Liturgy

Sorry to miss a few days. Now I am back in the saddle.

Disciplemaking is moving someone into a new manner of life or a new manner of being...the way of Jesus Christ. The Jesus pattern is a baptismal and eucharistic pattern. Since I am writing these posts in no particular order, today I write about Eucharist.

A friend of mine says disciplemaking is forming people who can say amen at the end of the eucharistic prayer. A disciple understands what the Triune God has done for him/her in Jesus and says amen to living into that life in worship and taking that life back into the world for the sake of others.

I suggest a disciple is one who has learned to live the poured out life of Jesus. At our liturgy, a lay catechist sets the table in preparation for Holy Communion. One of the actions involved is to pour wine out of a karafe into the chalice. That movement reminds me that Jesus poured out his life for me and reminds me I am to pour out my life for others. So disciplemaking is about forming people who can say amen to the liturgy; people who can live the poured out life of Jesus.

Disciplemaking 2 - More Is Caught Than Taught

While in college I was discipled by the director of my campus ministry. He had a stock set of aphorisms he repeated to me during our three year disciplemaking relationship. One of them was, "More is caught than is taught." What he meant by this is that the most important thing a disciplemaker does is model what following the way of Jesus looks like. Also, as in the rest of life, people are most shaped by who they spend time with and tend to pick up habit patterns from those persons whether they be friends, family or co-workers.

Disciplemaking is a life on life process rooted in friendship. It is in the context of friendship that the way of Jesus can modeled and imitated. Time together in the context of everyday life is a huge part of disciplemaking and should be factored into any disciplemaking strategy.

This doesn't mean content is unimportant -- it is important, very important. But content needs to be embedded in a life on life process whereby disciples can model for one another how to follow the way of Jesus. Why? Because...more is caught than is taught.

Disciplemaking 1

In a month I will travel to Rwanda to teach at a week long pastor's training school in the Anglican Diocese of Kibungo. My job is to teach my fellow priests how to develop discipleship in a local church. Needless to say, I have been thinking about disciplemaking. I need to crystallize my ideas and plan to do so by splashing my thoughts on this blog. Hope some of my readers find these posts helpful.

My first thought is this -- too many churches make disciplemaking way, way, way too complex. The Kingdom of God is a movement. Movements are driven by simple ideologies that are transferred easily and quickly. Highly institutionalized methods of disciplemaking often undermine this reality and end up not acheieveing their intended goal.

In the biological realm the simplest things are often the most dangerous. Think of a virus. It is small, virtually unnoticeable and yet can kill millions in a short time. Biblical disciplemaking is a viral movement. I want to spend some blog posts thinking about how this is so.