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.

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:

I’m attending the Ecclesia National Gathering with Dallas Willard and others. I’ll be live tweeting on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. For more live content from the time, see the Ecclesia LiveBlog.