DanSheffield

the oddity of the arrangement

still reading Elton Trueblood in my morning reflection time...

William Temple reminded us: "Christ wrote no book; he left in the world as his witness a body of men and women on whom his Spirit came." It is a great insight to realize that the primary witness to Christ is a living society. Whenever we meditate upon the inadequacy of the individual members of this society, including ourselves, we are always shocked and humbled by the oddity of the arrangement. We are wholly accustomed to the existence of various forms of organizations and institutions, but the Church defies classification as one of them...

the word 'parish' comes from a Greek word (paroikos) meaning 'stranger, sojourner,' i.e., "a body of aliens in the midst of a community." ... the earliest Christians used similar language to indicate the peculiar status of their separated fellowships (1 Peter 2:11). A parish, then, was inevitably an enclave...

the church must exist in the world, but, paradoxically, it must exist, at the same time, apart from the world. What occurs, when the little fellowship gathers, need not be irrelevant and it is never irrelevant if it strengthens men and women for their inevitable encounter with world principalities and powers. The witness, must be made in the metropolis, but the preparation for the witness is best carried on in the society of those who know that, as "parishioners," they are sojourners or aliens in the metropolis and elsewhere.

...we gather in order to scatter! The church is a particular fellowship of men and women involved in common life, sharing the life of Christ, who assemble with one another for the purpose of sending. Christians are perpetually being 'sent out', but they cannot be sent out unless they have already been drawn in.

generosity, power and culture

applying cultural intelligence to our cross-cultural engagement... from my recent readings...

There are aspects of Oprah's approach that seem to mimic our tendency in our service projects and missions trips. We love to go in with our programs and ideas to help people. And whether we realize it or not, to many of those we are serving, it comes off as if we're the "Great American Saviors" who have come in to save them from themselves.

What if Oprah had gone in with a commitment to help existing schools in townships throughout the country rather than developing her own school with her name on it?

Are our own faith-based service projects really all that different? Pictures that portray us in the midst of down-and-out people lavishing us with praise run the risk of appearing to be our own version of trying to pull off a blockbuster service project. Can we be more excited about partnering with a group of local people, never getting any attention for it, but instead talking about the great things they're doing? Can we come home with stories that speak honourably about the good things going on in the places we visit rather than all the horror stories and what we did to fix those atrocities?

Generosity has power, and it isn't all good power... We can't necessarily choose to be with or without power, so its prudent to use the power we have in ways that are empowering to others. But do we do so in ways that lift up and share the power with 'the other.' or do we use 'the other' to further validate ourselves and further reinforce our positions of power?

from Cultural Intelligence: improving your CQ to engage our multicultural world by David Livermore

canadian folkie awards

2009 Canadian folk music awards were announced last weekend

these are four performers that I have heard and really like

Vocal Group of the Year
Madison Violet – No Fool For Trying (Toronto)

Ensemble of the Year
The Deep Dark Woods – Winter Hours (Saskatoon)

Solo Artist of the Year
Catherine MacLellan – Water in the Ground (Charlottetown PE)

Catherine has become a friend of my extended family, partly through my brother's Dave's research into the life of her father, Gene, another great Canadian singer-songwriter. here's great little tune from her

here's another little clip of her singing Snowbird in my brother's backyard in Cobourg this past summer.

New/Emerging Artist of the Year

The Good Lovelies – Good Lovelies (Toronto)

the church exists for the kingdom of God

A couple weeks ago, some of us spent a day with Howard Snyder interacting with us on how local church and movement (denominational infrastructure) work together. here is one gleaning from him...

Remember that the church exists for the kingdom of God, not for itself, and needs to incarnate a comprehensive mode of mission, being an agent by the Spirit for the reconciliation and restoration of “all things.” A healthy church is one through which God’s Spirit is actively working to heal the alienation between God and people, people with one another, and people and creation (including all aspects of culture and the physical environment). It is an instrument of reconciliation (shalom) between God, people, and the land.

David Fitch on 'multi-site' and Levinas

David Fitch always has some good thoughts for those of us on the missional journey...

Can Missional be Multi-Site? David says NO

if missional is about  "the church mobilized for incarnational (as opposed to attractional) ministry occupying the place of Christ’s humble servant presence in a locale (as opposed to a place of coercion and presumption) whereby we live (visibly) an entire way of life that witnesses to the salvation of God (His Kingdom) birthed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is natural, it is concrete, and it is above all local. In this witness, people are invited out of their lostness into a vital relationship with the Triune God and all He is doing to make the world right through Jesus Christ.

Accepting this definition of missional (admittedly this is assuming a lot. I don’t have space to unpack this definition here or defend it. I have done this elsewhere however in numerous blog posts and writings), my question is “can preaching within a multi-site venue strategy be missional?”

read more (much more) at the click above...

And he distills some great insights from one of my favourite French philosophers, Emmanuel Levinas.

Levinas complains that the modus operandi of the West has been to reduce the Other to the Same. It is what our individualist autonomous universalizing modes of reason do as we encounter someone. We all know that feeling, when getting to know someone new, of being categorized by him/her as this or that – of being shoved into someone else’s categories before we have been truly heard. This is what Levinas means by “reducing the Other to the Same.” In the process, the Other – is objectified – “deprived of its alterity” (Totality and Infinity p.42).

1) We Reduce the Other to the Same WHEN WE ATTRACT PEOPLE TO COME TO US:

2) We Reduce the Other to the Same WHEN WE APPROACH INDIVIDUALS FROM A POSITION OF POWER:

3) We Reduce the Other to the Same WHEN WE ASSUME THEY KNOW OUR LANGUAGE

Elsewhere on this blog, and in my speaking, I have proposed that we seek to do evangelism in the rhythms of everyday life, not through attractional means, that we become onramps for the gospel as opposed to transaction salesman, that we look for ways to inhabit our neighborhoods as Christ, incarnating the gospel in our ways of life within the contexts we serve (not asking them to come to us). The image of “the Other” helps us understand why this kind of reorientation of our evangelism is so important. Thank-you Levinas.

more from David on Levinas here...

to gather and scatter

a couple more little nuggets from Elton Trueblood...

"The renewal of the Church will be in progress when it is seen as a fellowship of consciously inadequate persons who gather because they are weak, and scatter to serve because their unity with one another and with Christ has made them bold."

"According to our common proverb, a chain is not stronger than its weakest link. The aphorism may be true, when applied strictly to the realm of the mechanical, but it is absurdly untrue when applied to a social organism such as the Church of Jesus Christ. All the links were weak, yet the chain survived! Ignorant men and women, united in Christ, produced a kind of wisdom. This is clearly miraculous, but it ought not to be rejected for that reason, since miracle is intrinsic to the Gospel."

manage differently now

this morning I attended a leadership seminar and had a chance to listen to Gary Hamel's talk (via dvd) at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit this past August. Hamel is an important business strategist guy, as well as committed to the notion that Jesus is the hope of humanity.

For those of us who have been watching our Canadian context over the past few decades he wasn't saying anything new: church is a weekly convocation of the converted and the content; most things about how we do church these days is man-made, therefore expendable; we are in a time of unprecendented change where the pace of change has gone hypercritical -- and the church is typified by inertia (i.e., treading water). 

Hamel makes the point that in the business world, most companies have followed one model of how to do business -- for most of the 20th century, and it is this business model that is failing in the times we live in presently. Churches having been following one model, for a lot longer than one century.

Hamel suggests four key imperatives for christian communities as they seek to engage, rather than be tossed about by, our times.

1. Conquer denial; every organization is successful, til its not. Cultivate unflinching honesty; speak about the most discomforting facts you can find and share them with everyone. treat every belief you have about church as a mere hypothesis, forever open to disconfirmation. Make sure you are listening to the renegades and dissidents.

2. Generate more options. Churches get stuck in old models; tend to cling to the familiar because we can't see enough compelling alternatives. The job of the leader is to make change more exciting than standing still. The process of generating more options should be open and participatory, where everyone brings an idea and joins the conversation.

3. Challenge orthodoxies. to create new, we have to first of all deconstruct (pull apart so as to understand) what we already believe about how church should be done.

4. Reinvent management. none of this is feasible in a top-down, autocratic power structure. leaders' mental models cannot keep pace with the change around them. if renegades/outliers are regularly leaving your organization, it means they aren't being heard, empowered, and released within the present leadership structure. It is not enough to be efficient, focused and disciplined, now we have to dynamic, malleable and experimental.

Interesting congruence with a statement from Elton Trueblood in the little book I am reading...

"it is possible for the Church to exist, with a show of success, and still fail in its essential function. It is always failing when it becomes an institution which is bent on saving itself." [written in 1967; seems to be an age-old challenge]

a different christmas

For the past six years I have been a member of the board of directors at World Relief Canada. This is their newest little video teaser...

freedom/liberty, at what price?

picked up a copy of Elton Trueblood's The Incendiary Fellowship at a used book sale recently. The book by Trueblood, a Quaker author, theologian and educator was written in 1967.

...the love of liberty is a very great thing and it has always been part of the Christian faith, but the liberty of the Christian has been vastly more than a concern for one's own freedom in isolation from the structures of society and the Church. It is the Christian concern for freedom that has produced such remarkable results as the emancipation of women and the legal cessation of human slavery. But the Christian philosophy of freedom has always involved discipline as its price.

The original statement of this philosophy appears in the words of Christ which are frequently quoted in part, but seldom quoted in their totality, "if you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" John 8:31-32. In other words, freedom is not a starting point, but always a conclusion; it is something to be earned. And the participation in the life of the disciplined and committed group is part of the price

the ekklesia project

came across an interesting discussion group and set of resources...

The Ekklesia Project is: 

a network of Christians from across the Christian tradition who rejoice in a peculiar kind of friendship rooted in our common love of God and the Church. We come together from Catholic parishes, Protestant congregations, communities in the Anabaptist tradition, house-churches and more as those who are convinced that to call ourselves Christian means that following Jesus Christ must shape all areas of life.

They are particularly influenced by the writings of Stanley Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder, and Mark Lau Branson is presently on their Board of Directors. The Project is expressed through two activities: the yearly, 3-day Gathering in Chicago where conversation is focused around church, community and discipleship, and the Congregational Formation Initiative, a resource attempting to develop a formational process for congregational discipleship, including the development and use of a new formational curriculum, and the use of pastor-scholar teams to resource each pastor and congregation. [they use Bonhoeffer's Life Together as one of the core resources in their model, so I like them!] Their website also has a set of helpful articles in this area of discussion.