theo|digital

Welp, now having searched, I now realize this was new in the theology blogging world last week, but I just last night happened to stop to watch the The Colbert Report (silent “t”) and was surprised to hear that his guest was biblical scholar and Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright.The interview itself was typical of Stephen Colbert:  the only promise to guests is that they get the picture of their book on-screen:  no expectation that they’ll be able to get a rational sentence out without Stephen jumping in with comments about Republican heroes.  But Wright did rather well, able to hit the one main point that he’s been hitting for a little while now:  that a Christian conception of heaven as the soul floating off to another place is not Biblical.  Instead, Wright emphasized that the final stage after this creation is the “new heavens and new earth.”  (transcript by Jake Bouma)It’s a point that originally heard from J.R. Woodward, and have further heard from Wright and others, and one I’m fairly certain I’ve come to agree with, in my slow progress to de-spiritualize everything (which has the ironic effect of making “everything spirtual.”).   Essentially I mean that in all aspects of my theology, I’m less seeing the “world” and the “body” and the “flesh” as the opposition to the Christian life I once caught in language from pastors all over.  I still believe sin has damaged and tainted these, but that their re-making is the wonder of the Kingdom both now and later.

NT Wright:…the Middle Ages is when it started to go wrong. If you go back to the very early church, yes, resurrection was the standard doctrine. I’m not saying anything radically new that wasn’t in the New Testament in the early church. In the Middle Ages there’s a lot of stuff [that] comes from the Greek philosophers — people like Plato — which says that actually you have a soul and the soul ends up going off.. and so you don’t need a body anymore.

NT Wright: Yeah, well, absolutely. I mean the whole point about this is that most Christians have this vague idea of going to heaven. It’s something that may happen to you –Stephen Colbert: — No, mine’s very specific. You get a harp, and I’ll have a mint julip, and I’ll ask Ronald Reagan questions.

  (Again thanks to Jake Bouma for his transcript)

On 24 Feb ’08, Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church (Seattle) spoke on the topic of the emerging church. Mark is often quoted — especially by general-audience news media (doing feature articles in the religion section) — as an “emerging church leader,” though I don’t think I’d agree (despite the wide breadth the term covers). Really he’s simply a younger conservative evangelical pastor who wears Urban Outfitter t-shirts.

But he does have a past association with Emergent Village types, which he can be pretty negative towards. Because I wanted to look more closely at what he had to say, I went ahead and transcribed his entire talk. The audio and video of his talk were already publicly available, but sometimes it’s easier to read it. I did it for myself but then figured others might want it as well. So here it is, the full transcript of his talk. It was part of a sermon series entitled Religion Saves & Nine Other Misconceptions.

Full Transcript (pdf – 379kb) Mark Driscoll Ask Anything Question 2: Emerging Church

The above is my unmarked transcript of his talk. If you’d like to see the copy I was using to mark up, including my personal (biased) comments, you can download that instead. Maybe I’ll be able to get back around and put up some quotes later.

2008 hit fast, and I got so caught up in politics blogging, that I never said more about Ignite 2007. While there, I taught a breakout workshop entitled “What is the Emerging Church?” If you missed it, you can download audio directly , or visit www.igniteconference.info to listen there.

The seminar was my first hack at short description of the post-evangelical theological and mission conversation I’ve been trying to follow for almost eight years – (before anyone was using the word “emerging/emergent church” – a term that’s only five years old!). My audience was members of GCM churches who have heard the term “emerging church,” and maybe have read an associated book, but find themselves wanting to know more or wonder what it might mean. (ps – yep, the photo isn’t me… didn’t get a photo of me talking. It’s my friend Jon Dillow, who was teaching simultaneously down the hall at the conference center).

Meanwhile, a blogger I was previously unfamiliar with, C. Michael Patton, has a series of posts on the same topic (what is the emerging church?) that are getting attention – mostly because of a chart he drew that makes it look like is calling writers like Tony Jones a heretic. Reading him carefully though, I think he’s distinguishing between heterodox and heretic. In general, this chart is really interesting to spark discussion. And he has follow-up posts p2 (orthodoxy), p3 (definition), p4 (fundamentalism, evangelical), and p5 (emerging streams). Scot McKnight also noticed it.

My comments? For one, adjustments: I think Brian McClaren should be slid more outward, Erwin slid more center, and Tony Jones brought in a tad as well. And second, I still tend to view separation of “emerging” and “emergent” as somewhat artificial – in practice they’re still used interchangeably. At best, they’re confusing.

Maybe more later.

One idea that comes up in missional church planting is the idea of “bounded set” vs. “centered set” church philosophy. The idea is often credited to social systems theory (not talking about math here), although if you google for it, you’ll get more hits on church blogs than anything else. It’s buzzy right now, I guess.

First, what’s the difference? Bounded set communities seem to describe most churches. Membership in a group is defined by an assent to a shared set of beliefs and behaviors. The mission of members is to ask people to belong by conforming. By contrast centered set thinking defines a group by its center. In this case, placing Jesus at the center, and allowing for the fact that all humans are at various distances from that center. The role of the group becomes to draw people closer to the center, not to define who is in or out.

The problem is, I still can’t decide whether it is Biblical or not.

Alan Hirsch’s wife Deb, was presenting this model at the Ecclesia gathering in DC, and asked “which of these in more Biblical?” loudly with the implied answer of “centered-set.” It was too simplistic for me.

The centered set is very attractive to me, and fits with my consistent idea that discipleship and evangelism are really very much the same thing – taking people closer to Jesus no matter where they are. And the Graham Tomlin (The Provocative Church) idea that a leader is to “keep the center hot not guard the edges” has rung true for me for years.

Yet don’t the sacraments – baptism and the Lord’s Supper – have a mandated? role of helping define who is in and out? Committed or not? Don’t they provide a boundary marker for who is in the family? (clearly Hirsch wouldn’t think so – but he’s anti-sacramental on the grounds they de-sacralize all of life. I disagree here).

And as much as Hirsch likes to cite early church example, wasn’t the catechical process for training and admitting new believers a long period of time? Three months? As long as a year sometimes? Weren’t they not allowed to enter the church proper until the process was complete? Talk about “in and out.”

So I’m torn.

I’m sitting at the edge of Washington, DC, listening to Alan Hirsch, Australian missiologist and church planter. He’s got a great accent, and has some sweet quotes.

Like these:

“Jesus says ‘die.’ You put that in your seeker-sensitive pipe and smoke it.”
~ Alan Hirsch on the recovery of discipleship as the church’s core task.

“You can do with 12 disciples what you cannot do with 12,000 consumers.”

“Two things I hold against Luther. One – his anti-semitism. But two – he discovers the priesthood of believers, but then he quickly covers it back up again. He retreats from it in order to maintain the status quo.”
~ Alan Hirsch on removing the clergy-laity split.

There’s Middle Class Jesus, Bearded Lady Jesus, Sunday School Jesus, Jesus is My Boyfriend, Buddy Jesus. And then Spooky Jesus. You know, he only seems human. If you scratched him, he wouldn’t bleed blood, he’d bleed light. Spooky. If you see him walking down the street, I suggest you take a quick photo and then run away like mad (sell the photo on eBay).”
~Alan Hirsch on ways we’ve remade Jesus.

I’m at a gathering with Ecclesia. More later.

I’m about to dive into a new semester at North Park, and it leaves me suddenly with a lot to write about. I’ll try to report new textbooks as they arrive via Amazon love (though there are a few sitting in boxes that I refuse to open because I haven’t yet made shelf space). I haven’t finished writing thoughts on Christianity and culture. And I’ve committed to attending a gathering through the new Ecclesia network to see my friend JR Woodward and hear thoughts from that crazy Australian pastor Alan Hirsch.

Hirsch’s most recent book is The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. But I haven’t yet read his previous book in conjunction with Michael Frost: The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church. So knowing that he’ll probably talk about his newer thoughts, I’m going to get his foundational ones first. My interest was peaked by my friend Ty, who has read both and probably had told me half of the concepts in conversation anyway.

That said, I plan on noting quotes from the book along the way. Like this, three key parts of their definition of missional church thinking (p12).

1. The missional church is incarnational, not attractional, in its ecclesiology. By incarnational we mean it does not create sanctified spaces into which unbelievers must come to encounter the gospel. Rather, the missional church disassembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society in order to be Christ to those who don’t yet know him.

2. The missional church is messianic, not dualistic, in its spirituality. That is, it adopts the worldview of Jesus the Messiah, rather than that of the Greco-Roman empire. Instead of seeing the world as divided between the sacred (religious) and profane (nonreligious), like Christ it sees the world and God’s placein it as more holistic and integrated.

3. The missional church adopts an apostolic, rather than a hierarchical, mode of leadership. By apostolic we mean a mode of leadership that recognized the fivefold model details by Paul in Ephesians 4 a. It abandons the triangular hierarchies of the traditional church and embraces a biblical, flat-leadership community that unleashes the gifts of evangelism, apostleship, and prophecy, as well as the currently popular pastoral and teaching gifts.

a. footnote on Ephesians 4. It actually reads Ephesians *6* in the book. Not sure why, I can only assume I missed something or it’s a genuine misprint.

New Community is Willow Creek’s mid-week teaching service for Christians, and Donald Miller – who will do a separate Arts Conference session Friday morning – was there.

He talked some about his most recent book To Own a Dragon: Reflections On Growing Up Without A Father (one that remains on my read-soon list). Recently, he said, a movie studio called him to pitch an idea for turn the book into a full motion picture. On the phone he said, “No, God’s not really leading me that direction.”
Then they told him how much money they’d offer him.
“God has spoken.” Donald said.

So he let the team come up for a week and he joined them brainstorming about how to convert his book to a screenplay. The problem was “about 95% of what they were coming up with never actually happened.” (“guys, that building never actually exploded…” “the FBI wasn’t really involved”).

Finally a executive took him aside in frustration and explained, “Donald, we have to do this to make it more interesting.” Truth is, Donald explained, our lives are really too boring to make a movie. And that was his point.

“We don’t have good movie-like goals. For instance, imagine a movie about your plan to save up for five years to buy a Volvo. Movie ends as you drive the car off the lot. Sweet.”

Quoting several times from USC film professor-emeritus Robert McKee, Donald defined basic elements of good story, like “negative turn,” “conflict,” and “resolution.” But his point wasn’t about the writing of stories, but living them.

“Let’s live stories that would make good movies,” he said. With an emphasis on big goals, tough journeys, courage… he laid out a narrative idea that can help define a Christian’s life more than a Christian creed ever could – by defining what’s right instead of the boundaries of what’s wrong.

Dan Kimball spoke yesterday session 3, mostly summarizing his new book, They Like Jesus but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations. I appreciated his thoughts, but they weren’t new to my “young evangelical” ears. Comments about people being interested in Jesus, but thinking Christian tradition has distorted him; that the church is hypocritical. I guess this is already the way I think. (perhaps it’s a good message though. one big surprise of mine: the average age here seems like 45 years old…)

Right before he started, there was a sketch by the Willow team on a conversation between two old friends from bible college meeting up after 15 years of not talking. One had come out as gay. His best friend had simply stopped calling. I sorta sat tense in my seat waiting for bad stereo-typing, preaching, or oversimplification… but remarkably the dialog was both complex and genuine. It wasn’t a theological statement: more emotional. I liked it.

Dan only spoke for 25 minutes, in order to make time for a panel discussion including Brian McLaren, Sally Moregenthaler, Efram Smith, David Loveless, and Shauna Niequist. It was a great panel in theory, but I felt they were somewhat undirected, and aside from a few pull quotes, the conversation didn’t move anywhere worth writing home about. A little disappointing.

At the bottom of lots of our problems is a “gospel” problem. Students of mine that grow up in Christians homes often admit to me that the gospel they grew up was this: Jesus came to die for my sins so I could go to heaven. This parody of the biblical gospel, I contend, is at the heart of many of our problems.
…
Now a definition: The gospel is the work of the Trinitarian God (a community of persons) to create the community of faith in order to restore humans (made in God’s image) through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as well as through the empowering gift of the Holy Spirit to union with God and communion with others for the good of the self and the world. And all of this to the glory of God.

This is a good summary of the way my views on the gospel have transformed (widened, perhaps) in the last six years. It has affected my personal maturity, my role in ministry, and definitely my storytelling and teaching.

Read the rest of the post at the Out of Ur blog. Scot’s blog is Jesus Creed.

I’ve been writing these for a little while, but now I’ll start posting some here. Short reviews of music, literature, and media that I force into 75 words or less. They’re a fun exercise, and you get more of what I think about, for instance, the things that graduate from my “Currently Reading” box on the right.

D.A. Carson
Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church:
Understanding a Movement and Its Implications (2005)
(genre: Church and Culture; Theology; Critique)

The New Testament research professor’s appraisal of authors Brian McLaren and Dan Kimball opens with olive-branch humility and qualified praise of emergent church emphasis on experiential and ecumenical spirituality. Carson’s historical and academic breadth (well-footnoted) brings must-read cautions to the dialogue, but turns in later chapters, carrying an increasingly shrill tone that eventually misses the point, ironically calling theological fouls too fastidious for the works he critiques.

Vertical Horizon
Go (2005)
(genre: Pop Rock)

Five years after Everything You Want, Vertical Horizon reminds us that they still exist with the John Shanks (Michelle Branch) produced Go. Stereo-surround harmonies still trump the ’69 Marshall guitar amp, tipping the scales to pop hooks over any real thrash. I’m a sucker for catchy, but until mid-30’s Matt Scannell rises above his pre-teen lyrical constructions (I need you ~ I want you), Vertical will rarely find my playlist.