theo|digital

Scot McKnight has posted up two more of my reviews on Don Evert’s short book series. If you’re familiar with them, feel free to agree or disagree there.

• Jesus Creed: Don Everts 3
• Jesus Creed: Don Everts 4

Thanks again to Scot for the opportunities and challenges he’s providing me.

Scot McKnight asked me recently if I’d look through a four part series of books InterVarsity staffer Don Everts wrote recently. I reviewed each, and Scot today posted the first of my takes on his blog Jesus Creed.

ps – have you noticed that Starbucks is closing all 7,100 stores tonight? And I’m already reading the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report… hopefully some thoughts when I get done.

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.

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.

Every theological system has an associated sociology, such that we can fully understand the claims of a theological perspective only if we attempt to see what it would look like if those claims were fleshed out in the life of the community. Thus an examination of such a link can be used to test cautiously the adequacy of the theological position in question.

What kind of sermons would be preached? What would be the patterns of spiritual formation? How would ecclesial [church] decisions be made? How would spouses treat each other, and how would they raise their children? What would be the character of the community’s evangelism, counseling, and catechizing [training new believers]? How would the members of the community deal with the pressing problems of humankind in general?

~ Richard Mouw, in He Shines in All That’s Fair

Geesh. Finally a post. And only because I don’t want to study more right now.

A couple thoughts on the beatitudes. You know, “blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek” etc. (Matthew 5.1-11 or shorter at Luke 6.20-23). Growing up, I always implicitly read this as essentially Jesus’ virtue ethics. Put another way: this is a list of things you should aspire to be like. Be meek. Be merciful. Be pure in heart. This is what good Christians should aspire to be like.

Then Dallas Willard came along in The Divine Conspiracy, and upturned that idea. He asserts that Jesus is not making a list of things to “become” – but a list of the kind of people who are in the Kingdom. Meaning – the kingdom has poor people. The kingdom has sad people. The kingdom has persecuted people. This is what the Kingdom is LIKE – a collection of marginalized people!

This fits very well with the picture of the kingdom in the gospels. It was the tax collectors and poor, not the rich or those with political power, that were heartily welcomed.

This helps me, cause if this list is what I’m supposed to BE like, then am I supposed to cry more than I do? Seek persecution?

But read Willard’s way, there are problems too. In order to show that this is a list of welcoming grace, Willard interprets some things weird. For instance, “pure in heart” becomes, “blessed are the perfectionists.”

I’m flying through this topic only to quote my New Testament professor this last week:

I used his text (Divine Conspiracy) a while ago, and love how he starts it with that woman who is tired of simply studying the scriptures and wants to know how to DO it… but I think he goes belly-up on the beatitudes” – Professor Klyne Snodgrass on Dallas Willard via Southern metaphor.

.

I love it when he says “belly-up.”

ps – not sure who I agree with. Scot McKnight (ooh, just found this post on the same topic) seems to lean toward Dallas Willard.

Rob Bell released another Nooma short film this weekend. It’s called, “Today,” and it’s only available to watch online full-length until Wednesday.

I’ve only watched it once, but my initial reactions are:

• Rob Bell is characteristically more enthusiastic the more he talks, leaning toward the camera, etc. Because it seems like he follows the same pattern each time, I started suspecting it as “just an act,” but then ditched the cynicism and realized that Rob understands how gripping it is to listen to someone who looks like they really are all-about what they are saying.
• The metaphor/story of the video does what many of the others do: hold you in suspense until the end (“what’s going on?”) and then reveals at the end. They’re never a “big” surprise – usually just simple and effective. This new one follows suit.
• Rob’s distilled message seems to be “seize the day.” I like it. It’s a value of the Kingdom to live simultaneously in the “now” and the “hope to come” – the places the Kingdom exists – and not elsewhere. Living in the past or the simple future (1 year, 5 years, 10 years from now) has produced much worry and spiritual sludge in my life.

You can buy Nooma DVD shorts at www.nooma.com.

When I go to New York City, I do not have to think about not going to London or Atlanta. People do not meet me at the airport or station and exclaim over what a great thing I did in not going somewhere else. I took the steps to go to NYC, and that took care of everything.
…
On the other hand, not going to London or Atlanta is a poor plan for going to New York. And not being wrongly angry and so on is a poor plan for treating people with love.
…
“He that loves has fulfilled the law,” Paul said. “Really.”

Dallas Willard, in The Divine Conspiracy, on how Jesus’ ‘Discourse on the Hillside’ is a sermon on how people in the kingdom Live, not rules on how they shouldn’t.

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.

A minister tells of trying to lead home Bible studies among the poor of Northern Mexico. In such studies participation is, of course, always encouraged. He related that, at the beginning, he would read a passage from scripture and ask, “What do you think?”

No response. Just silence.

Over and over this happened. Finally he realized that no one ever asks the poor what they think. That also is part of what it means to be poor “in spirit.” No one imagines you could have any thoughts worth sharing.

~ Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy