An interest event

SNU is hosting a sermon planning workshop on Monday, 07 Jan 08 with Dr Steve Green as presenter. This should be good! If any are interested in attending, perhaps we could carpool. They also said that if five or more go there will be a group discount. So, if five people from a particular area go and go together, will that get the discount? It's only $29 (and that includes lunch) so it's not that much...but a discount is a discount!

Christ the King

Yesterday was Christ the King day, the festival celebrating the last week of the liturgical calendar. As I was getting ready for church I was listening to the classical radio station because they broadcast much better preachers than the Christian radio stations. I was excited to hear a broadcast on the lectionary readings for the day...and in it I heard one of the best thoughts on this great day, Christ the King--looking back at the whole year, but also looking at the Kingdom of God that Jesus was pointing to in his life and death. I don't know how long it'll be online, so I hope you get to hear it. I was blown away!

Peace,

Michael

Living in the Tension? or Jingle all the way?

We are approaching Advent...and sooner the encompassing cultural “Christmas” season. It seems that the Christmas season is now starting before Thanksgiving. I saw holiday commercials starting on All Saints Day, Walmart put up their Christmas decorations on that day. Christmas music has been playing and started two weeks ago. I know that the Christmas season has taken on a cultural identity outside of the faith (commercialism, etc) and I’m okay with some of that. But I find myself asking the same question I did last year around this time: How do we balance the tension of the already and the not yet of Advent? I find myself wanting to wait to sing and even hear the carols. I want the Advent hymns and content to be given space and place. But, it’s so hard to hear it in a culture that blares those sacred songs everywhere with no meaning. And, once the clock turns past Dec 25, the larger culture takes down the trees and lights and moves on...and a large chunk of the American church follows with it. How do you foster the Advent season in singing “O come o come Immanuel” when others are singing “Joy to the world the Lord is come?”

Could I be bifurcating something that doesn’t need to be separated? Does the liturgical season of Christmas encompass Advent? The Easter season doesn’t encompass Lent, right? But, I guess in a way Christmas would encompass Advent because of the focus of the first two weeks—the second advent. But, Advent has to do with anticipation, hope, waiting, longing...maybe even silence (ha! Try that one in the culture!) in expectation of redemption and the coming of a savior (Savior) to bring us back to where we belong. And it is journeying through this time of waiting and longing that we can sing boisterously Joy to the world the LORD is come! Let earth receive her King! And, I’ve come full circle because the King has come already.

I some how find myself wanting to call this time from Thanksgiving to Christmas the holiday season, because of the cultural content of Santa, reindeer, sugar plums, and candy canes, Frosty, and all the fun songs that go along with it. But I don't want to call it the Christmas season. And I don't want to sing the carols..."because it's not time for them yet."

I don't want to be legalistic about it--I just want Advent to be given space and place in a very crowded and loud season.

Peace,

Michael

Emerging into difference?

Dear Unknown Voyeur
I am an old guy in an emerging world. When I started planting churches it seemed like everything I did and said was emergent, even though I had never heard of the movement. Now that I am in an established church some in the emergent world have grinned at the thought that we are an emergent church.

With that said: I do agree that the whole emergent movement has been turned into Starbucks. Starbucks was a cool alternative in a landscape of mediocrity. Now they are lowering standards and have in essence become the proverbial corporate "MAN."The emergent church is heading in that direction at break neck speed. I think what we as Nazarenes need to realize is that from our inception we had the foundations of this movement engrained into our theological DNA.

Ol P. F Bresee said "In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, in all things love." The main problem I see with the "Conversation" is the sacrifice of good theological discussion. I just thank God we don't burn people at the stake because allot of emergent want to be's would be crispy today. I think that ministry amerced in the reality of peoples lostness and disconnected theology, will give us enough ground to be emergent without ever really having to try or point it out to people.

There comes a time when we make the church more comfortable, but then there is a time when we have to make the church very uncomfortable. Well that is my 2 cents for now. I hope I am not uninvited and banned from the conversation. O, and I do know I can't spell my way out of a wet paper bag. Me and P. F have that in common.

I think they're on to something...

I've known of Allelon for a couple of years (I think) and have found it to be an invaluable resource for thinking and engaging missionally, and just what that means. But today, I listened to one of Roxburgh's Journal Netcast entries and was really moved by what Pete Atkins described. It's different. It's not what we're used to. But they are discerning where God is at work and orienting themselves, and those around them in their community, to the in-breaking Kingdom reign of God. I was arrested by the line Atkins said along the lines of, We're praying that God would reveal to us what he's doing, not that he'd bless what we're doing." Man--that's soooo right on.

May the LORD reveal to us here in West Texas where he's working and woo us to join him!

The Lord be with you!

Michael

COTN and World Vision

I read this article this morning and it really gave me a shot of hope. It is in and through this creative work where we see glimpses of the kingdom breaking in!

A groundbreaking partnership between one of America's high-profile denominations and World Vision will soon be providing desperately needed food assistance to thousands of poor families in southern Africa.

Church of the Nazarene is teaming up with World Vision to walk alongside those struggling to pull themselves out of poverty in Mutendere, a rural community in northern Malawi — one of the world's poorest nations. Through this partnership, Church of the Nazarene congregations are adopting World Vision's youth-focused 30 Hour Famine as their own. Now, Nazarene congregations will participate in the Nazarene 30 Hour Famine, powered by World Vision. Funds raised through the Nazarene 30 Hour Famine will support World Vision's ongoing work in Mutendere. Read more.

A Prayer from St Benedict

O gracious and holy Father,
Give us wisdom to perceive you,
intelligence to understand you,
diligence to seek you,
patience to wait for you,
eyes to see you,
a heart to meditate on you,
and a life to proclaim you,
through the power of the
spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.
-- Saint Benedict

I think on these words and find them becoming my own. Perception and discernment of the in-breaking kingdom, the prevenient presence of God the Spirit enabling and empowering us to live and lean into the kingdom, and a holistic life that is shaped by the Father's mission in the Son.

A fad or the future?

I've talked with some and heard others discussing this emerging shift. It's interesting the range of discussion and agreement within the conversation, from those within and those outside of it. I heard some say it's a passing fancy, like the Jesus Movement of the sixties or the Seeker-Sensitive Movement of the 80s-90s.

With all this "newly" forming thought of doing and being church within a postmodern context, I've begun to hear people calling themselves post-postmodern or post-emergent....like they're already sporting the "been there done that and here's my t-shirt to prove it" attitude.

A friend of mine told me that they were starting a postmodern service at their church and he talked about it being really no different from their contemporary traditional "Nazarene" service. He said that the music is different but it's pretty much the same.

I have an idea but I'll refrain from giving it right now in attempts to spur some conversation on here. So, what do you think? Is it different, is it a fad or is it something that is going to be a round for a long while?

Peace.

What are you reading?

I like to read. Sometimes it takes me a while to get through a book. I've always been jealous of those who learned how to speed read. I tried to learn back years ago when I entered seminary...but I felt like I wasn't retaining what I read...anyway.

I'm curious what others are reading. What have you read in the last year, six months that was really insightful or has made an impact on your outlook, theology, thought processes, etc?

Irenaeus on Pentecost

From Against Heresies

This is why the Lord had promised to send the Advocate: he was to prepare us as an offering to God. Like dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture, we who are many could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven. And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become one body; through the Spirit we have become one in soul.

"The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of God" came down upon the Lord, and the Lord in turn gave this Spirit to his Church, sending the Advocate from heaven into all the world in which, according to his own word, the devil too had been cast down like lightning.

A different starting point?

As I've read blogs, books, and thought through this "phenomena" of emerging, it appears to me that the paradigm shift, the reform, the reaction to the approach of "doing church" in what was considered to be THE way, is based on a move past a pragmatic efficient model that finds itself couched in a modernist framework. The work of Alan Roxburgh helps us see that the church in the western hemisphere finds itself being pushed out of the position she used to hold: the cultural (music, art, etc), moral, and scientific center of society. We now find ourselves on the margins, the periphery of society, along with the outcasts and the has-beens.

It is interesting how Robert Webber led us to see that we find ourselves in a world, that while it's unfamiliar to us (coming out of a Constantinian framework where the church plays a significant role in culture) it is not unfamiliar to the church. Webber said that our culture is not far removed from that those beginning few hundred years in the infancy years of Christianity.

I think what is different about this emerging thing from what some might call the mega church model is the starting point. I don't want to be disrespectful to this approach because it has been helpful and has done amazing things to help bring people into relationship with God. They took (and take) the call of the Great Commission seriously. Their focus is different. It seems to me that these churches have taken the approach that the church is a business and draws examples and direction from marketing and efficiency found in the business world. It seems to me that this emerging movement's domain is different--it "operates" with a different set of values. Rather than business as a deep foundation, it seems that the emerging movement returns to a theological foundation that the mega-church approach seems to take for granted. Maybe it was so "dumbed down" that theology wasn't seen as a really important matter or issue. Well, maybe just not their starting point--who understands theology but churched people, right?

But in recovering a theology of God, particularly seen through the lens [hermeneutic] of God's mission (missio dei) we see how we choose to cooperate and partner with God in his mission. That shapes the direction the church takes, forming all that the church does. If it doesn't connect with this theological understanding, then it is questioned as whether it is an important factor for the church. Worship is moved past a focus on pre-Christians and to return to Christ and a strong Trinitarian focus. Discipleship moves from individual piety to how the personal fits with communal Christian spiritual formation in the way of Jesus. Evangelism is different. It's different in that it's not about saving souls for heaven and from hell, but it's about pointing people and orienting them to the coming Kingdom of God's gracious and loving reign.

Because we are in this in between time and are on the early stages of this shift we find ourselves in, there's still the need for the mega church and their model. But because fewer people are finding that approach valuable, this new approach is taking a significant step forward in helping connect people's spiritual desire to God, and not the many other things they use to try to satisfy it.

What do you think? Does this make sense? Is this short-sighted? Is it fair?

A Genesis

Here's to a beginning. There's a whole lot we have behind us. It has shaped us, directed us, moved us. Where we have been is directly linked to where we are going, as well as where we are going is directly linked to where we have been. Robert Webber was well known for saying, "The road to the future runs through the past." I agree. An important question that needs to be asked is, "which past?" We are creating space for a place to discuss what it looks like to be connected to a matrix of relationships (Church of the Nazarene, evangelicalism, Protestantism, catholic orthodox Christianity, modernity, post-modernity, post-everything) and how that plays out in West Texas and a more localized context of our communities. Finding ourselves in the 21st Century, we are awakening to a major geographical change, like Dorothy coming out of her house to find that she's not in Kansas anymore.

I remember a Mickey Mouse Cartoon that was connected to Walt Disney's animated version of "Robin Hood" called "Brave Little Tailor." In it Mickey is misunderstood to be a giant killer and is recruited to kill the giant in the kingdom. Mickey does his best and in a brilliant orchestration he tangles up the giant, pulls his feet out from under him and he goes down with an enormous earth-shattering fall--creating a swath of land upheaval around him. He's out cold. The town decides to celebrate by putting up a carnival around him. They're playing around, having fun in this new place, powered by the sleeping giant. But I wonder about something Disney didn't take time to address, what will happen when the giant wakes up?

Anyway, the land around them changed and they adapted and used it to their benefit. Now, my mind is wandering about the metaphor of this new land and the giant. I kinda like the Wizard of Oz one better, because there is no sleeping giant, only a wiked witch looming in the background that is easily "liquidateable."

Maybe this is where the call in Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon to make their selves at home in this new land speaks to us. Our goal, our aim, is NOT to return to Kansas, but to see our way forward in this new land.

Peace,

Michael