theo|digital

So here’s the problem:  I’ve moved to Orlando, Florida.  I was a campus minister for eight years, I have a seminary degree, and now am a manager in a Christian missions agency that serves missional leaders throughout the US.  But I don’t have a local body of believers to call my own—to serve or lead or embody redemption with.  And the biggest barrier to me finding one?  Probably myself.  (Part 1, Part 2)

Part 3—Chris’ Ideal Church

I still hate the idea of trying to define this: there’s a looming consumerism in the tone. But given my situation, I’ve finally decided to write down… What is My Ideal Church?  This is not a carefully constructed theological list: just the thoughts as they hit me.

Missional. By this I mean the sense the church is the hope for the world… not by simply spreading a message, but by being it.  I mean a church that thinks of itself as the Body of Christ of whom everyone has a part, and who live as active emissaries of the peace of Christ in their own context.

Not attractional. Doesn’t think that the way to reach its context is first by bringing people within its walls. In fact, a building really doesn’t matter too much to me at all. I’d love a church that is meeting in a theater or a community space, and doesn’t constantly hope to soon upgrade to its own mortgage. Services should and could reflect the expressions of the community (i.e. good art is cool), but to the extent that the show is oriented toward “new customer retention”… sigh.  Not interested.

Doesn’t have multiple services. This is a more specific way of saying “not too large,” and while a church with momentum feels good, a church that can’t fit all into one room at once feels too big.  How in the heck are we supposed to show hospitality to the stranger if we have no idea who the stranger is??  I sometimes think a church of 100-300 people is probably about right.  Bigger, and it’s time to make a new church.  All that, and this:  there’s nothing like adding your first additional service that suddenly changes the gathered, participatory church to movie attenders.  (ps – strong statements should be taken with a grain of salt and probably more humility:  see Part 1)

Defines the gospel holistically. Thinks of the gospel as Matthew 4.17: “repent, for the kingdom of God is near.”  Sees discipleship as dropping your nets to follow Jesus.  Is okay with not framing everything in terms of the Protestant Reformation works vs. free gift (e.g. does not constantly say “theres nothing you can do to earn God’s favor.” I agree with this.  I just don’t think it always applies). Sees types of sin that’ are bigger than just personal sin. Thinks the gospel is initiated by and modeled after Jesus’ life, death, AND resurrection.

Embraces plural leadership. Completely weird to most of the American church is the idea that a senior, charismatic leader can be a bad thing. I believe strongly in the “plurality of leadership” which requires multiple equals to agree together to lead. It not only saves the church from potential one-headed blindness, but blesses the church with multiple leadership gifts and the MODEL of multiple leadership gifts:  DNA that can be reproduced at every level.

Meals together in homes. The theology of the table has gotta be one of the most neglected but potent possibilities for the church today.  For years, our home fellowship group of 25 got together on a Tuesday night and cooked dinner together:  chopping in the kitchen, setting the table, praying and eating, and especially cleaning together.  The team character dynamics were hard to overestimate: laughter and service and sacrifice and goal accomplishment.  The biblical symbolism leads straight to Eucharst/communion.  Not the mention the amazing stand-out hospitality guests felt when they were invited to share the love.  For me, this is the image of discipleship and evangelism in a postmodern world.

Encourages art for arts sake. Embraces creative expression of its members, but not simply “in order to reach unbelievers” but because the biblical community models always seem to do this.  Regular use of artistic talents reflections both creation and mission.

Serves the poor. Because of the central role of the this metric whenever God speaks of whether his people are faithful or not.  I hope for an American church that recognizes its significant wealth relative to the world’s Christians, and tries to like one “who is given much.”

Liturgical-Historical Sense. Realizes that the “band and the talk,” can be a relatively anemic approach to gathered worship.  Is willing to think about the historic patterns of the churche’s worship and include silence, creeds, loud and clear reading of scripture (where we listen, not read along in our NIV study bibles), and see communion/Eucharist as a crucial “we-ness” that be part of our regular rhythm.

Yep.  So there’s at least part of an ideal sketch. Next thought? How even writing this out partially undoes it.

Ridley Scott’s fascinating new digital-native project is today, Saturday June 24th. It’s another great example of what Marshall McLuhan called “the collapse of the author and reader.” Funny thing is, McLuhan was thinking of the photo-copy machine, which he thought of as a “self-publishing” platform, making everyone a content creator, not just consumer. Not sure if he could have imagined YouTube, or this:

So, recently I bought at TV.  It’s the first TV I’ve ever owned in my life.  (People stare at me when I say that… it’s a whole ‘nother story).  And I don’t have cable or anything—just doing Netflix, Hulu, and over-the-air digital.  But that last one means I see commercials now… something that’s been absent for many years in my life.  And not that I’m excited about that. But I did see a fascinating commercial last week that continues to be a comment on digital cultural integration.

The commercial is a whole new campaign from Esurance (I looked it up)—formerly the province of that cheesy pink-haired super-hero computer insurance lady.  The new campaign has a tag-line that I think strikes a surprisingly perfect chord for the digital-native generation:  ”People when you want them, technology when you don’t.”

The commercials are designed to be funny (and do a decent job), but what catches my eye is the continually evolving cultural snapshot on the relationship between “people” and “computers” (i.e. information/digital space).  Digital immigrants still grumble that e-mail or Facebook are replacing people and creating “false community,” while digital natives are starting to turn the bend to express what they really live:  task-digital or social-digital activity does not replace people interaction—it extends or augments it.  Digital culture is a meta-layer on human interaction.

Incredibly practically, Esurance realizes that sometimes the website is more efficient and sometimes a person on the phone is, and we generally want the choice.  And they’re not even an either/or proposition.  For instance, we’ll finish our 1-800 call and expect an e-mail sitting in our inbox with a summary, receipt, or appropriate links. Or we’ll use the website to drop a note to an agent at 1am in the morning, but will expect a personal response the next day. Observationally it’s better to say that we naturally choose one mode as primary, but never exclusively.

In fact, for a digital native, this switching of “mode preference” has little decision-work behind it. It’s about as seamless as the previous generation deciding between picking up the office intercom or walking down the hall. We use the media form which seems right for the situation.

It’s just that digital natives are very, very good at media switching without blinking. Esurance (or their ad agency DuncanShannon) is getting it.

So here’s the problem:  I’ve moved to Orlando, Florida.  I was a campus minister for eight years, I have a seminary degree, and now am a manager in a Christian missions agency that serves missional leaders throughout the US.  But I don’t have a local body of believers to call my own—to serve or lead or embody redemption with.  And the biggest barrier to me finding one?  Probably myself. (Part 1)

Part 2—My Past Churches

I suppose part of the church search should be knowing what you’re looking for.  This part already bothers me a little bit.  Do I have strong, over-educated opinions about what the church should be?  You bet.  But do I know that no church is anywhere close to perfect?  Yes.  In theory.

So the picture of what I’m looking for may not match to Reality.  But what would it be, if I did?  (Let’s set aside my nervousness about me being the sole-definer of what I’m looking for… I’ll deal with that in a separate thought somewhere).  What is Chris’s ideal church?

There’s probably a pre-question:  knowing where you’ve come from is important.  I’ve had a strong variety of church experiences.  Growing up conservative reformed gave me the Westminster Confession lens on life, where theology reigned king. I’ve got baggage here from what I now think was an over-narrow definition of orthodoxy, but I still respect deep study and careful thought.

The church that most affected me was my student church that grew me up and I eventually helped lead. Part of a small network of

chuches started in the 70s and 80s, my church was characterized by, among other things: house churches of ten to thirty people, emphasis on the Great Commission, an informal and participatory worship style, high relational intimacy, plurality of eldership, the priesthood of all believers, scripture memorization, and discipleship marked by principles of mentorship, multiplication, and leadership development. Our network was partly the unlikely mating of Plymouth Brethren and Campus Crusade for Christ. So there’s that.

My most recent church was Life on the Vine, in which I was only just barely beginning to be able to serve, yet felt like home very quickly.  This missional/liturgical/community oriented fellowship extended much of what I believed and lead in I-Life, but added a significant historical-liturgical dimension in practice and kingdom-gospel theology that embodied much of what I had spent the previous five years coming to advocate for.  Think loud reading of scripture, icons, and Eucharist as the climax of every gathering together.

Believe it or not, those are my total church home experiences.  Since I’ve raised financial support as a missionary for many years, I’ve met tons of other churches:  from Assemblies of God to Bible Baptists to Anglicans to large seeker-oriented boxes.  But I’ve had relatively few I’ve ever belonged to.

So now, what do I want to belong to?

I think, however much it bothers me, I’ve gotta make a list. As soon as I can write some more.

Ugh. There’s can’t be many more phrases that make me sicker than “we’re church shopping right now.” It’s like all the things that cause me sorrow about the broken American evangelical church (just “Jesus and me” except when we’re an “audience,” ”attendance” to hear “great teaching” followed by “great worship”) are neatly stacked into one phrase that layers the Body of Christ and the Mall into a food court spinach wrap that’s “right for our family.”

Before I become boringly and repetitive on the Church Cynic scale, let’s be clear that I’m certain there is a growing mass that laments the same things I do, yet struggles in reality to effect change. This is not simply lack of organization or the right logo, but partially that incarnational, missional sketch of church is uneasy with the kind of crowd-gathering media approach that champions the large video screens (now in HD) you’d need to share the vision with more than a few at once. Jumbotrons mean consumerism, technopoly and a power dynamic that we natural post-moderns cringe under.

But the larger reason for being humble on the consumerism/individualism rant is that this is simply the story of the church in every age: she a guaranteed reflection of her surrounding culture with both its sins and graces.  Yeah, the role of redemption in the life of the church is undoing both cultural and personal sin, but while a lot changes, a whole lot stays the same. To employ the classic metaphor: the church in culture is like a fish in water. Once you’ve finally noticed its there, it’s still hard to see and even tougher to clean your own tank. At their best, missional critics identify how difficult large-scale cultural change really is, for the church or the culture she lives in.  Simply put:  it’s easier to complain than to change things.

Which brings me back to church shopping.

Humility in theory sounds great, but there’s nothing like a bit of practicality to nail it home. Since my recent move to Orlando, FL, I’ve become the very thing I want to strike out with a big Sharpie:  a church shopper.

Granted, it’s taken me months to admit it. There have been phases of denial—probably more of those than anything else, actually. But I find myself in that unenviable position of absolutely loving the mission of the local Body of Christ, yet not even being part of it. My spare hours have been absorbed by Netflix and couch shopping (better than sitting?), and when I do make the effort to investigate a church, it’s typically been what everybody else does: a chip-on-my-shoulder visit to a 10:45am service where I absorb custom video, a worship drum solo, a charismatic story told from a stool, and a clapping send-off where I sulk out with my church full-color church brochure.

Ugh.

I’ve got more desperate thoughts on this. More to come.

Viral Hope

Woodward, JR, editor. Viral Hope:  Good News from the Urbs to the Burbs (and everything in between). forward by Scot McKnight. Los Angeles:  Ecclesia Press, 2010

The hip way to do conferences these days is to ditch the big entrée speeches (along with those big entrée egos) and make a sushi roll of what used to be the keynote. One session becomes many—five-minute slices in rapid succession—and the time is devoted to as many innovative voices that can be rolled and packed on the plate (wasabi on the side).

This is the format of Viral Hope , the new collection that gathers 40 contributors in quick slices to answer one question: “What is the gospel for your city?” Begun as a series of guest posts for missional-church blogger JR Woodward (www.jrwoodward.com), they now jump from the screen to the page in the first effort by Ecclesia Press, a non-profit offshoot of the young Ecclesia Network. The result is a TED-like presentation that gives us a fresh face at every turn of the page—pastors and church planters and Christian thinkers that (refreshingly) aren’t generally part of the Christian conference circuit.

And it gets a bit more clever. Each short article is introduced not only by bio and ministry focus, but identifies the writer’s local newspaper. From the NY Times to the Caviler Daily (that’d be the student paper at the University of Virgina), we are offered a definition of the gospel for each of forty fifty local neighborhoods—or as Woodward puts it, the “from the Urbs to the Burbs—and everything in between.”

These days, the simple topic like the “Good News” is an increasingly murky target regardless of the audience—churchy or not at all. For the former (and particularly evangelicals), the definition of the gospel can be the subject of some real angst as conversations have recently found people (wittingly or not) in two camps. Bloggers wryly noted last week (April 2010) that each faction appeared to host their own rally gathering. The Together For the Gospel (TG4) conference with John Piper and friends defines the group that is concerned the center of the gospel is being lost. The emphasis here is on justification by faith in the cross. Meanwhile, Wheaton College (WTC) gathered the followers of Biblical scholar “rock star” NT Wright, who has been a champion of the gospel focused on the kingdom of God and “the renewal of all things.” Theologically astute readers will quickly notice that Viral Hope largely represents the second crowd: representative quotations are from Frederick Beuchner, Stanley Haurwaas, Mirsolof Volf and Leslie Newbigin. Greg Larson (Los Angeles) directly mentions the divide as he writes, “”For many of us who rejoice in the classic gospel of ‘grace, not works,’ we have largely ignored the implications of the gospel that have to do with the renewal of all things.”

Yet, while this crew is well-read, they’d clearly prefer that the theological dialogue rise from the streets rather than the library. Christine Sine speaks of her Seattle-green compost pile; Dustin James laughs with his Hispanic friends at Los Angeles IHOP; and Jon Tyson in New York deftly identifies his multi-layered city, including “the poor and marginalized,” the “struggling artist,” or even the “hipster… tight black jeans, trust fund and all.”

A few take the cultural description to deeper waters, addressing the gospel directly to the sin issues of their local culture. Jason Clark challenges the fear and greed emanating from London’s hard-hit financial district. David Fitch says the “well-kept lawns” and high-achieving schools of the Chicago suburbs “disguise the brokenness of life.” These and similar moments resonate as poster examples of the missional gospel, retaining (if its still possible) the efficacy of the word.

And while a few of the articles miss the incarnational impulse, submitting contributions that don’t carry any distinguishing local features beyond their title—maybe this just reminds us that the gospel itself is both contingent and coherent. Or said with less high-brow: the gospel is locally unique yet wonderfully the same, no matter where we land in the wide world of God’s coming Kingdom.

Congrats to other friends who participated in this project, including: JR Rozko, Noel Heikkinen, Jim Pace, Matt Rogers, Ben Sternke, Dave Fitch, Chris Backert.

I’ve been able to wing my way up to Chicago and am excited to attend the 19th Annual Wheaton Theology Conference entitled Jesus, Paul, and the People of God:  A Theological Dialogue with N.T. Wright.  Despite N.T Wright’s presence, the conference is packed with other notable theologians and biblical scholars, and I’m even hoping it may be a bit lively (as much as academics can tend to be).

Assuming essentials like power and connectivity, I’ll be live tweeting the conference here:

Here’s the thing. I’m still the same political nerd I’ve always been, and while others are updating their brackets (poor Kansas) between commercial breaks, I’ve got my TV tuned to exciting late-night coverage by: C-SPAN. What could be more exciting than political 3-pointers (“kill this bill!”) tossed in buzzer-beating fashion (“The gentleman’s time is expired!”)?

So, it’s Sunday Night Congress for me… in another sports season it would probably include a theme song by a blonde country diva and maybe some rotating 3-dimensional logos.

And without getting into the real politics of the thing (full disclosure: I tentatively support the majority, especially disbelieving that we are somehow snapping the constitution in half with Marxist hands… but still concerned that the total bill as presented is marred by the process so much that it isn’t close to a great solution)… I have another more basic question.

Where is the part of health care reform bill that promotes and enforces digital health care information?

This was one of my favorite parts of Obama talking about reform as a candidate. He identified the problem with the antiquated information systems used by hospitals, and the lack of a common standard that allowed your medical record to be instantly and seamlessly accessible to any health care organization in the country.

The Recovery Act included money for this, but (and here I’m speaking from memory), not necessarily centralized standards and not tons of regulation.  Honestly, the best solution would be to create a robust central standard equivalent to IEEE anything… and then let private companies hack at that to create software packages that are usable, robust, and can interact with the standard.  This article, however, argues that more stringent oversight is needed because of potential safety issues in data management (“whoops, didn’t know she was taking THAT drug!  Did it just not show up on my screen?”).  Still, I’m a little more economically conservative on this one, thinking that competition between software houses is the best way to go:  you’ll get faster implementation of new features.

The single standard is important, because even if forward thinking doctors offices adopt new technologies now, if they can’t share with the hospital down the street, we’re giving up most of the benefit:  like the Personal Computer vs. the Internet.

But the key barriers are probably the practical ones.  When I did IT consulting for a large health system in Illinois, I discovered exactly what this article points out.

1. Doctors, especially older ones, can be surprisingly curmudgeonly about technology.  I realize this is a general overstatement, but even if it’s true for a few key doctors, it screws the whole thing up.  Plus, I’ve sat personally in doctors office trying to teach them how to use Microsoft Exchange… phew.  That’s tough work.
2. Hospital IT departments have the tendency to be staffed by… well, let’s say the system I worked for was mostly flowered-turtle-neck middle-aged women who didn’t know an API from a power supply.  A whole department of them attempting to support 4,000 employees. This is not a sexist thing, though I might be a little bit age-ist.  Seriously.  Hospitals need to hire some nerdy kids straight out of school, and fast.

Okay, rambling point done.

Some might have noticed that I just got my new domain www.theodigital.com sorta off the ground and then subsequently stopped talking. Phew. It’s been the craziness of life: mainly my transition to my new job in Orlando Florida from Chicago. I haven’t had a “normal” day in 3+ months, in fact, I realized that I had lived out of suitcase from 20 December until yesterday, when I slept in my new apartment for the first time. It’s been hotels and guest rooms for three months. Yowza.

So even though my new place is trashed with partly-opened cardboard boxes, it feels good to land a little bit.

Meanwhile, my e-mail inbox is full of “tips” from friends and readers on theo-digital type topics. All stuff I’d love to think and write about… and mostly stuff that will probably still wait for a bit. Some things still need to happen. For instance, living normally will still required that I buy some things. Like milk. And a bed.

I’ve been telling people for the last few years that e-mail inboxes have become the to-do list manager of the active person, and it’s true. Funny how media fill prior functions/needs. For me, e-mail is both “To-Do” and—since Google’s ability to archive everything—also “Life History.” That first one is why I can be slow to return e-mails. If I’m in a mode where I can’t “do anything else right now”—even short messages become shoved aside and sometimes forgotten.

On the other hand, you can text me and you’re likely to get an instant response. Media-shifting (from phone to text to e-mail to face-to-face) doesn’t just repackage the same message, it seems to modify it completely.

Okay, off to Ikea.

A few months ago I noted this TED talk by anthropologist Stefana Broadbent (dated Nov 2009, but given July 2009), but my friend Ty recently reminded me to watch it again:

Broadbent has interesting points and shares my optimistic, curious view. Some of her (loose) key quotes and my comments:

Fundamentally, people are communicating on a regular basis with five, six, or seven of their most intimate sphere. Research shows people have an average of 120 friends on Facebook, but communicate with four to six regularly. 80% of cell phone calls are made to 4 people. When you go to Skype it drops to 2 people.

Question: does this change dramatically for younger generation? An average friend count of 120 seems really low in my experience. 450 seems more like it. Does this increase the intimate circle or does it remain the same?
Theological sidenote: Jesus had the masses, hundreds, the twelve, and the three.

“Some sociologists actually are quite disappointed. … all this deployment just for 5 people? Some feel it’s a closure, it’s a cocooning, that we’re disengaging from the public. And I would actually like to show you that if you look at who is doing it and from where they’re doing it—actually there is an incredible social transformation.”

Examples:
- Guy at factory who sneaks away to text his girlfriend good night.
- Brazilian couple who eats dinner with their parents every couple weeks by placing the laptop on the table.
- Best friends who install IM on work computers so they can be together during the day despite working at different places.

The cultural norm has changed, and not only in new technologies. Phones have been here for much longer. But the expectation of connection on phone has increased… of being connected throughout the day.

Question: doesn’t this reinforce our way of thinking church as “doing life together?” Small groups not as once-a-week bible studies but as soccer games and leftovers and crying and daily rhythms?

Some institutions have tried to block this. $15 fines for some kids in Texas schools who are seen with their phone out. There are arguments of security and safety… which in fact have always been the argument for social control. The question is: do we have the right to self-determine our attention? Do decide whether we should be isolate?

Exactly. These “blockages” have always been short-sighted, and, in the long-run, ineffective. Institutions need to learn how to flow with the social trend, not swim upstream.