Dan Sheffield: The Multicultural Leader: Developing a Catholic Personality, Second Edition
Reflecting God's Glory Together (EMS 19): Diversity in Evangelical Mission
Paul W. Chilcote: Making Disciples in a World Parish: Global Perspectives on Mission & Evangelism
Thanks to the media team at Storyboard for bringing this vision of the journey toward wholeness in Jesus to fruition. It's intended as a tool for helping a faith community encourage Jesus-followers toward maturity -- making the pathway clear, as both Jesus and Paul sought to do. "Pick up your cross and follow me" was a clear call to a deeper walk with Jesus, addressed to masses who came to have their ears "tickled" by him.
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reading through Howard Snyder's essay, "Church Renewal and the Mission of God"...
The true church is a community of disciples, not just of believers. The church is to look like Jesus Christ. It should visibly represent Jesus and his kingdom in the world. But this will not happen unless churches pay careful attention to disciple-making.
The goal of disciple-making is to form a community that looks and acts like Jesus Christ; that shows forth the character of Christ in its social context. The church does this by being a reconciled and reconciling community. It does this most effectively when it gives visible witness to reconciliation between rich and poor, men and women, and people of different racial and ethnic identities, as well as with the land.
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Over the last few years the Christian community that I am a part of, UnCrowded House in Hamilton, ON, has been experimenting with ecclesial identity. That is, what does it look like to be a community of Jesus-followers in a neighbourhood where Christians are looked upon poorly and most residents have no religious affiliation? [yes, that's the fastest growing dimension of Canadian society -- no religious affiliation and think poorly of Christians.] Because interestingly people are still looking for answers to the questions people have always asked; but they just really don't want the answers to come with "Christian" packaging.
Recently I came across a helpful article in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research [IBMR] -- the only journal I read from front to back every time it comes. The article is called: "Ecclesial Identities of Socioreligious "Insiders": a Case Study of Fellowships among Hindu and Sikh Communities" by Darren Duerksen. The article highlights this very same concern, of how to be a Jesus-follower in a social context where being "a Christian," socially, is highly detrimental and destructive to the notion of Christian witness. Christians have such a negative image in the context of north India where Duerksen did his research, that people don't want to identify with them in any way, even if they have discovered that Jesus is the answer to their questions. New forms of Jesus-following communities are being explored and experimented with, led by Indian social insiders.
If Jesus is/has the answer to the brokenness of human lives and in him healing and renewal is to be found -- people want that. And Jesus said "make disciples" of those who desire to follow him, with the promise of ongoing renewal and renovation at the deepest sources of our self-centredness. So these Indian communities are seeking to "shape a distinct, Jesus-focused ecclesial identity... that transcends and mends identity fragmentation." That is, can you be Indian and a Jesus-follower rather than becoming something "other" -- with all the stigma of Western Christianity or 200 years of mixed-bag Indian Christianity?
So the question in my context becomes, "can we develop a community of Jesus-followers that is rooted in biblical faith and practices, but sets aside some of the stigma that 'being a Christian' has come to mean in Canadian society?" This involves becoming attuned to the "identity markers" that have come to be associated with, and stigmatized as, "Christian identity"? How much of that Christian identity has nothing to do with Jesus and biblical faith?
If someone meets Jesus and their life is transformed by that encounter, do they have to set aside their whole present web of relationships? Or should we maintain those webs of relationships and seek to express God's presence and activity within them? Is the "Jesus-disciple-otherness" of our new life sufficient, or do we need to be "Christian-other" as well? Do our present forms of "Christian" community aid or hinder our continuing engagement with our families, friends, neighbours, and colleagues?
Again, its the toolbox of cross-cultural witness that stimulates engagement with my own context.
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Alison shares a bit of her reaction to discovering that my wife Kathy and I had a general idea of how we would like to encourage her journey of faith -- four years in!!
“Do you mean to say you guys had conversations about me and my walk with Christ? Like you had a plan for me? A napkin diagram of how things should go?” Yup, this little bomb was dropped a couple of weeks ago at Jared Siebert’s Church Plant Design Shop. Perhaps a bit of back story is required here...
...The following day Jared asked us to discuss how people would become fully devoted followers of Jesus in our church. Dan mapped out my journey and that of fellow planter Mandy Parr on a piece of paper including everything from our first study group to our baptisms to leading worship and so on. It was all there in black and white. I learned that Dan and Kathy had discussed my journey with Christ at every stage. This went beyond strange to the point of freaking me out a bit. This was my private, personal, intimate walk with God so what were they doing in the middle of it with their napkin doodles?
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Thomas Groome, in Will There be Faith?, suggests several convictions that disciple-makers need to come to terms with:
1. To trust that the Holy Spirit continues to be present to people, revealing God's will and mediating grace in the ordinary and everyday of life.
2. To trust in the Story and Vision of the Christian faith as the normative and life-giving source of spiritual truths and wisdom for life -- for all Christians.
3. To trust that people can discern how to take the Christian Story and Vision "to heart" and to appropriate such spiritual wisdom into their lives.
4. To trust that the Holy Spirit can work through such a process and that people have the ability, by God's grace, to come to their own decisions for lived, living and life-giving faith.
5. To trust that people can be agents of their own knowing in Christian faith; that they are not only recipients, but agents as well. This asks disciple-makers to let go of "teaching as telling" and to invite real conversation among participants.
6. To trust that community is the best paradigm for making disciples in Christian faith and to build up community within the teaching/learning process.
7. To trust that people can learn from one another and that their own stories and visions can be a source of God's present revelation in their lives.
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This summer I have been working my way through two books, Desiring the Kingdom by James Smith and Will There be Faith? by Thomas Groome. Both books deal with the challenge of forming Christian disciples in the midst of a post-Christian society that has already shaped and formed us.
James Smith is a prof at Calvin College (philosophy); he was born in south-western Ontario; functions in the Reformed tradition (don't worry, I don't have many Reformed authors on my bookshelves); and apparently likes Patty Griffin and Nickel Creek (which almost balances the Reformed bias!)
Thomas Groome is a prof at Boston College (theology and religious education). Groome functions in the Catholic tradition (of whom I have many authors on my bookshelf!). I first read his classic book Christian Religious Education about 15 years ago, as part of my master's program.
Both authors believe that we need to rethink Christian education/disciple-making practices for these post-Christendom times. Both authors heavily reference Charles Taylor's work (Catholic) in The Secular Age and Modern Social Imaginaries. Both like the thinking of Alexander Schmeeman's work (Orthodox) in For the Life of the World. In the end, the conversation is about re-orienting our lives, which have already been shaped by the culture around us as self-oriented consumers, via the habits, values, attitudes and practices of the Kingdom of God.
Smith has us thinking about habits and practices of Christian liturgy which shape our imaginations, first of all, about the possibilities of life in Jesus. Then that imagining of the possibilities of life in Jesus ontinues to shape our way forward. (Smith likes Augustine, MacIntyre, Hauerwas and NT Wright)
Groome wants us to examine the lives we are living in light of the possibilities of life in Jesus and then let that life in Jesus inform our attitudes, habits, values and practices. (Groome likes Friere, Aristotle, Aquinas and Lonergan).
Two thinkers, practitioners, from different Christian traditions, saying the same things about necessary adjustments required for the times in which we live...
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Howard Snyder had some interesting thoughts on Christian community at this blog.
What is “Fellowship” in the biblical sense? This question was posed in Christianity Today. Here is my response.
How do we learn the deep “one another” community of Scripture without being in close proximity?
– Karen Shepard, Wheaton Illinois
Community in the New Testament sense of koinonia assumes and requires face-to-face communication, whether in a horse-and-buggy age or an Internet age...
read more this short article here
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in Romans 12:2 the apostle Paul challenges the believers to "not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
In particular he seems to be speaking of the cultural patterns that shape worldview rooted in beliefs and values that produce resultant behaviours. In addressing his letter to believers in Rome, the heart of the Roman Empire, Paul is not only referring to the Jewish worldview that has shaped the Jewish-background Christians (that he has been addressing in chapters 9-11), but also to the Roman empirical worldview that has shaped the Roman-background Christians.
Paul has been talking about a new life that is 'dead' to a prior, self-oriented life that was shaped and constructed by interacting with the patterns of life-in-the-world, of which most of us are largely unaware (unconscious). His suggestion is that we should now "be transformed" by "renewing of the mind." Paul's use of the language of metamorphosis (transformed) is directly related to a process of mind renewal. We might think of this process as a kind of deconstruction of old patterns and ways of thinking/acting that allows for the construction of new ways of thinking and practices/behaviours.
I am convinced that we have something to learn in this work of "transforming" from the theories of phenomenology, social construction and neuroscience... [I have written in a variety of places about the work of Hubert Dreyfus, Lev Vygotsky, Emmanuel Levinas, Peter Berger & Thomas Luckman]
Most recently I came across some insights from Eric Kandel, a neuropsychiatrist. He was a co-winner of the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his research on the cellular basis for the process of learning.
Kandel "showed that when people learn something, the wiring in their brains changes. He demonstrated that acquiring even simple pieces of information involves the physical alteration of the structure of the neurons participating in the process. Taken broadly, these physical changes result in the functional organization and reorganization of the brain. This is astonishing. The brain is constantly learning things, so the brain is constantly rewiring itself." [Medina, Brain Rules, p57]
So disciple-making -- the renewing of mind, body and soul around the values and practices of the kingdom of God -- is literally a reconstruction process centred around "how we learn" and how that learning changes the way we think, act and remember. Our disciple-making practices therefore need to pay attention to "how we learn." Maybe even our worship gatherings could pay attention to "how we learn." Especially if that is the only time that some believers give to the 'transforming/renewing" of their minds.
Interesting interview in CT with James K A Smith touching on these issues and interacting with phenomonology philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
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so, more thoughts from Brain Rules...
Variability Selection Theory predicts that there will be interactions between two powerful features of the brain: a database in which to store a fund of knowledge, and the ability to improvise off that database. One allows us to know when we have made mistakes. The other allows us to learn from them. Both give us the ability to add new information in rapidly changing conditions. (p38)
Effective learning requires both functions. One requires the personal development of a database of information and knowledge that has already been acquired from human learning up to the present day. This requires memory and a storage system with appropriate tagging/categorization for retrieval. The other requires creative application of that learning/knowledge to ever changing circumstances. This requires improvisation and new combinations of the existing knowledge (just as computers require humans for applications beyond the existing database).
In Christian development there is a tendency to overemphasize one function or the other -- learning all that has been passed on from Scripture and our various traditions, so that direct cause and effect applications can be made, or resisting connection to Scripture and the traditions, so that freeflowing 'riffs' can respond to new circumstances. Effective learning requires both functions. We need a foundation of acquired, learned, memorized, organized knowledge as well as the capacity to reflect and make creative, discerning applications based on that knowledge, which, in turn, creates new learnings. This combination is often referred to as 'wisdom.'
My education prof Dr Joyce Bellous communicates her thoughts on this phenomenon in Educating Faith. She calls Christian educators to "found memory and build reason."
Thomas Groome and John Westerhoff offer further insights for this deeper conversation around disciple-making.
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wisdom, power, personalities, character & alternate kingdoms
In our house church gathering this morning we will dwell on 1 Cor 3:10-11, 16-23, one of today's readings from the Common Lectionary. It's paying attention to the strife in a network of house churches in Corinth over leadership personalities - who is doing the building and what kind of buildings they are making. Paul takes them completely off the issue of personalities and refocuses their attention on God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The passage concludes with thoughts on wisdom, foolishness and power.
On Friday evening I joined in with the True City conference here in Hamilton, ON; a yearly event that helps focus and inform the collection of lower city churches that have been working together as a missional movement for the past 10 years. Brian Walsh opened with a great reading on the grand narrative of God's purposes in history. Jeff Strong, on staff at one of the partner churches (Grindstone Creek), gave a talk on "Empires of Brick and Kingdoms of Stone."
Strong shared a device from Walter Brueggeman about the nature of empire -- striving for unlimited knowledge, unlimited power, and unlimited wealth. Strong contrasted that with the biblical vision of love, justice and righteousness.
It struck me this morning of the significant overlap with the Corinthians passage. Paul contrasts knowledge, wisdom and foolishness -- we need truth and love together, not unhindered knowledge; we need power tempered by love which produces justice; we need to turn our attention away from wealth and comsumption (outer) to righteousness, virture and character (inner). In I Cor 9:10, Paul talks about "a harvest of righteousness" or spiritual character (a thought from Howard Snyder in Yes in Christ).
Posted at 09:15 AM in Books, Disciple-making, Missional Church, Social justice commentary | Permalink | Comments (0)