McChurch

Bill Kinnon has a great post on consumeristic church, something that Eugene Peterson compares to the anti-Christ in The Jesus Way.  Bill is about as blunt as Peterson is.

Consumerism in the church has been a weird topic for me the last little while.  On one hand a lot of church leaders admit to me that they know their church is based on very consumeristic ideas and that is wrong but on the other hand, most don't know what to do about it or fall back on the "good things are still happening" which may be true but it kind of stops the conversation about if another way could produce even more good things or what if the bad things about it are worse than the good things.

Technorati tags: consumerism, Eugene Peterson, anti-Christ

So how does one make a difference?

I was reading some comments, IM, and e-mail in response to my last post.  Instead of editing my post, I am going to offer up some further thoughts.

I grew up in the church and therefore Christmas productions.  It was a lot of rehearsals and time that I could have been playing road hockey and in the end I was glad when it was over but I also admit it was kind of fun.  It taught me some great truths, mostly about how important it was to learn my lines and sing in a choir (yes, I sang in a choir off and on into my teen years).  It also taught me that it was okay for people to yell at one another and cry if they were musical.  The community came, drank apple cider, and engaged for that season with our community.  For the most part it was people connected to the performers (either kids or adults) or people looking for a nostalgic Christmas experience or other Christians looking to soak up as much Christmas as possible over the holidays (Christmas-holics?)  I am sure there is some value in it and I am sure many people love it but come January, whatever changes in church attendance went back down to previous levels.  Even if you are part of a church where a bunch of people come twice a year (Christmas and Easter), whatever is being done at Christmas isn't bringing them back very soon.

Now what could be done with a couple thousand volunteer hours in the community?  Servant Evangelism has a plethora of ideas to do over the holidays locally.  Every day at work we have people asking for warm winter gear (thanks to all those who have donated).  Globally there is the Advent Conspiracy where churches have come together to raise money for fresh drinking water in Africa or as they put it, "Advent Conspiracy is an international movement restoring the scandal of Christmas by worshipping Jesus through compassion, not consumption".   Other churches like Ginghamsburg have committed to confront with the crisis in Sudan.  As a worship event, instead of the big event, how about stealing an idea from Grace and give people a "time out" during Advent.

I am trashing Christmas traditions and maybe there is some value in dusting off the Maranatha Christmas books but if the aim is to be a missional community, I think there may be some better options.

I had a couple of IM conversations with friends who commented on the past as saying that part of the problem is that in the suburbs, you don't see that much need... especially in communities where the homeless problem is invisible and as one friend said, "People in my church don't have very many friends who are not Christians."  I wonder if this the result of the church doing what Dallas Willard talks about when we take people out of the regular communities and keep them in church communities.  Not only does the church deprive a community of ones redemptive potential but at the same time we lose touch of the community we live in. 

It got me thinking of the Christmas ads the Salvation Army runs.  Click on the ad for a full sized version.  Partly because I can see a crack house while typing this blog entry out and where I work, the need is pretty obvious for me.  Guys need warm winter clothes, many single parents who were on a losing strike at the University have very little for Christmas, there are even those who are trying to sleep outside in this weather (which makes the graphic there a little haunting to me).  Today in a meeting arose the need for more programs for people with full blown AIDS and of course low income housing is a big issue with occupancy rates as low as 1% in the city.

There are a lot of materialistic choices to be made this winter (I have even linked to some for you) but as I said before, there are a lot of things we can do that can make a big difference for others this winter.  Maybe my definition of "making a difference" is different than yours but I still think the church can do better than a Christmas cantata.

Technorati tags: Advent Conspiracy, Sudan, Advent, Christmas

Big Box Pawn Shop

To make a long story short, we lost the battery charger for the camcorder which I want to take to Soularize so I can videotape people swimming with man-eating sharks (Spencer tells me this is safe). After thinking about getting a cheap Aiptek camera (won't ship to Canada or even accept a Canadian billing address) I decided for the first time in my life to check out some of the many pawn shops that are by the shelter where I work. Mark and I go to the biggest one and look around and I was stunned by how high the prices were. In many cases 15% - 20% over new and yet people were buying and I could not understand why unless for a certain percentage of people that don't have cars and don't use public transport, just shopping for basic items at inflated prices makes them poorer, like those that use 7-11 for basic groceries. For that reason I started shopping once in a while at Giant Tiger who moved into 22nd Street and provide new stuff at really cheap prices. I hate shopping at big discount places but they provide a great service to the neighborhood and they have cheap hockey sticks. It also got me thinking about Wal-Mart this summer when they had a selection of $1000+ patio tables for sale. Everyday low prices but for an entirely different more upscale market.

The good news is that there is a food cooperative going into the neighborhood but as several people I used to work with at Safeway have wondered, how are they going to sell enough volume to keep costs down in a small store. I hope they have a solution.

Back to the charger. I found one online for $20 and a day after it shipped, we realized my brother's camcorder uses the same batteries (and charger) as mine so there will be footage of me being eaten by a shark.

Advent and Consumption

Speaking of consumption, Darryl Dash has a good post about an alternative (and more Scriptural way) of looking at Advent this year in Christian Week.

Alternatives

to living in the McMansion. The micro-compact home or the Tiny Tumbleweed Housing Company which are not much smaller than my house :-) Of course another option to sprawling burbs is living in a shipping container. I link to these because a couple of years ago Wendy brought home a magazine and it hard a feature on a family of four who decided to purchase and live on a house boat all year long in Toronto. Two teen boy and two parents and not a lot of space. The mother talked about the discipline it brought to them in regards to materialism because for everything that made it's way on board, something had to be tossed. Everything they bought cost them twice. First for the purchase and then the loss of something else. Wendy and I are working on that right now and I think it is a good idea.

Living in an over inflated housing market like Saskatoon does change the way we live. If we were to sell, we would get between twice and three times what we paid for our home but to purchase again, we would have to leave the city for a rural outlying area and commute in (thanks but no thanks). The alternative is to change the way we live being changed as opposed to the container we live in.

Maxed Out

Great video on consumer debt on Google Video

Principles of a Wesleyan Ecclesiology

Dr. Howard Snyder presented this paper to us at the Ecclesiology Study Commission. Some of you have asked to read it and while Jared posted it over on the Life Cycle Project, it is in Word 2000 format. Here it is in html for all to see. Feel free to leave any comments but realize that Dr. Snyder probably won't be interacting on it here.

Study Commission on Ecclesiology
Free Methodist Church in Canada
Mississauga, Ontario
May 15–16, 2006

Principles of a Wesleyan Ecclesiology

For John Wesley, a “Wesleyan ecclesiology” would have to be a biblical ecclesiology because for Wesley, the whole point of Methodism was to help people experience and live out the grace of God the way the first Christians did. “Show me where the Christians live” was a phrase both John and Charles Wesley were fond of. Richard Heitzenrater is right: early Methodism “itself became a means of grace, a religious community in which people could experience the power and presence of God’s love, the part of the Church that was experiencing what the Church was intended to be.”¹ Heitzenrater notes that “the most basic element in [Wesley’s] ecclesiology” was “a focus on God’s grace”—which is why, I think, Wesley “always managed to stretch, emphasize, heighten those elements” of received Anglican ecclesiology “that he felt needed special implementation to meet specific needs of the time,” as Heitzenrater also notes.²

Wesley’s ecclesiology, though on the one hand traditional, was also flexible, functional, and pragmatic, as has been often noted. The point was that the church itself was to be a means of grace. If this wasn’t actually happening (as it often is not in many churches today) then the form (the “means”) needed to be adapted so that it does happen. One senses this clearly in Wesley’s classic “Plan Account of the People Called Methodists.”³ The starting point, then, for a Wesleyan ecclesiology is that the purpose of the church is to be an instrument of God’s grace—that it must in actual fact serve God’s mission in the world by being a Spirit-filled community of God’s grace, visibly embodying Jesus Christ.

I begin, then, with several biblical and theological affirmations. I will not argue these at length but they may be useful to explore in our discussions.

I. BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL AFFIRMATIONS

1. The church is the Body of Christ, the community of the Spirit, with Jesus Christ alone as source and head. This is basic biblical (particularly Pauline) ecclesiology, as seen especially in Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 1–4, Philippians 2, and Colossians 1–2, but also in Acts 1­–2, 11, 13, and many other passages.

2. The church exists on earth in a variety of social-structural forms which are largely the product of tradition, history, culture, and human invention. This is already evident to some degree in the New Testament⁴ and is clearly demonstrated throughout two millennia of Christian history and now in diverse cultures around the world.

3. The church is to live functionally as the Body of Christ within whatever forms it finds itself, and as much as possible adapt those forms so that they are functional for the church’s fidelity and mission in the world. This seems to me to be self-evident and is an extension of New Testament teaching about living as “lights in the world” (Phil. 2:15 KJV) within whatever cultural context the church finds itself in. Certainly we see this in early Methodism—the creation of vital communities of faith within the structures of the Church of England and of British (including Welsh and Irish) and early North American society.

4. The Spirit and the Word provide all the essential resources for the church’s fidelity to Jesus Christ and its effective, transformative mission in the world. This is proved in the experience of the early church and throughout history when the church has been most dynamic as a movement of evangelism, church planting, and social transformation. Certainly God can use other resources—skills, education, cultural forms and patterns, money and other material assets—but those are all secondary. As “the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world” but of the kingdom of God and “have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4 NIV), so the essential resources for church planting are spiritual (including the charisms of the Spirit). Thus they are available to all including (and maybe especially) the poor.

5. The primary mission of the church is to love Jesus Christ and to be his Body in the world, continuing the work of the kingdom of God which he began. New Testament scholar Mark Powell says, “The mission of the church is to love Jesus Christ. Everything else is just strategy.”⁵ That may be a bit overstated, but it is not far from the truth. Consider Jesus’ words about the vine and the branches in John 15, and similar passages. Jesus said, “All who have faith in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12 TNIV).⁶

The point, of course, is to be the Body of Jesus Christ, the agency through which Jesus the Head acts in the world by the Spirit. This is a central focus of most of the New Testament letters.

6. As a community reflecting the life of the Holy Trinity, the church is called to be a community of love, mutual self-giving, and outreaching mission, worshipping God and constantly seeking to draw others to Jesus and his Body. Central here are John 13–17, Romans 8 and 14, 1 Corinthians 12–14, Philippians 2, Ephesians 4­–5, 1 John, and 1 Peter. Also important here is the rich stratum of New Testament teachings embodied in the “one another” passages.

7. Since the primary visible expression of Jesus Christ in each place is the local Body of Christ, the church is called to continually reproduce itself through giving birth to new local churches (church planting). These communities then should be networked together for effective mission and to sustain the sense of the Body of Christ worldwide. This is the pattern we see in Paul’s missionary work, as many have noted (e.g., Roland Allen, Melvin Hodges, Donald McGavran). This functional linking among local churches is what in the revised edition of Community of the King I have termed “translocal networking.”

The primary advancement of the kingdom of God in the world is through the reproduction, multiplication, and organic networking of Christian communities that genuinely live and witness to the life of the kingdom; that are empowered by the Holy Spirit and look like Jesus Christ—transforming the world as a genuine Christian counterculture, rebuilding society’s microstructures and witnessing prophetically and redemptively to and within its macrostructures.⁷

II. A WESLEYAN AND FREE METHODIST PERSPECTIVE

Wesleyans generally, and Free Methodists specifically, can affirm this perspective. The Free Methodist Church has never given any sustained attention to ecclesiology, but it inherited early Methodist ecclesiology which, due to Methodism’s unique role within the Church of England, was a rather dynamic blend of medieval Roman Catholic, Protestant Reformation (Lutheran and Reformed), and Anabaptist (believers’ church) perspectives. American Methodist and Free Methodist ecclesiology was strongly influenced, further, by the revivalism of Finney and others in the 1820s and 1830s, with elements of American democracy and entrepreneurship mixed in.⁸ Free Methodist ecclesiology historically has thus been a dynamic but unstable (some would say contradictory) blend. We have several symptoms of this, but perhaps the most obvious are our sacramental views: our doublemindedness about infant baptism and our practices of the Eucharist.

Wesley, of course, put considerable emphasis on the Eucharist, more than did later Methodism, B. T. Roberts, or Free Methodism. We can learn from Wesley here, but we should note also that Wesley’s strong emphasis on other means of grace—especially through the class and band structure and the love feast—made the Eucharist less central to Christian worship practice than it was (and is) in Anglicanism. A Eucharistic emphasis is Wesleyan and certainly appropriate within Free Methodism, but is to be understood in the organic, relational, community-building sense that it has in Scripture and in basic Wesleyan ecclesiology.⁹

I don’t view this ecclesiastical history negatively, but it is useful to understand it. Free Methodist ecclesiology has always been a blend of High Church and free church elements operating within a (largely) democratic and entrepreneurial cultural context. B. T. Roberts’ ecclesiology was much like that of John Wesley (from which he inherited it), but also was different in three ways: (1) it was strongly influenced by Finneyite revivalism; (2) it did not fully appreciate the theological and functional importance of the early Methodist class and band structure, since by 1850 those structures had largely lost their original functionality; and (3) it assumed a more democratic and populist context with no state church umbrella. Perhaps the major points of continuity of Roberts’ ecclesiology with that of Wesley were (1) an emphasis on relational Christian experience (conversion and sanctification, particularly), (2) an emphasis on Christian behavior that was countercultural to the prevailing sins (social and ecclesiastical) of the day, and (3) a radical commitment to the authority and normativity of Scripture.¹⁰

So far as effective Christian witness today is concerned, I view all this as prologue. The Free Methodist Church need not be wedded to this ecclesiological tradition merely for tradition’s sake. The tradition contains elements both to affirm and to critique. However the way forward, in my view, is to note the contemporary relevance of the two main accents here: Biblical authority and an embodied community in mission within the cultural context. This is really what B. T. Roberts meant in his central affirmation: the Free Methodist “mission is twofold—to maintain the Bible standard of Christianity, and to preach the Gospel to the poor.”¹¹ The implied ecclesiology: The church’s fundamental self-understanding and practice must be based in Scripture, and the church is called to the mission Jesus Christ announced in Luke 4. (For Free Methodists, Luke 4:18–21 and 7:22–23 constitute the Great Commission.) Our task today is “simply” to figure out what this means in our contexts: How to build, nurture, and multiply Christian communities according to the “Bible standard” and be effectively engaged in reaching people, especially the poor, as Jesus did.

My conclusion, then, is that it is entirely Wesleyan (and Free Methodist) to seek to implement the affirmations stated above in the first section of this paper. The historical theological debates are of little relevance except as they assist us in kingdom mission today.

III. THE SIX DIMENSIONS OF CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

Clearly Christian community is key to any biblically faithful understanding of the church. All the New Testament images of the church, the example of Jesus with his disciples, the key terms soma, sussoma (Eph. 3:6), koinonia and ekklesia, and the rich “one another” passages all underscore this. Community is central to ecclesiology.

But what kind of community? What does community really mean, particularly today and particularly in terms of a missional ecclesiology? What is, really, the nature of the community, the “shared life,” that Christians talk so much about? I believe we can discern six actual dimensions of Christian community which clarify both the church’s essential nature and its mission. I am in the process of elaborating these more fully elsewhere, but here is a summary.

1. Community with God through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.

This is the communion we have with God, the Trinity, resulting from repentance and faith in Christ; the new birth. When by faith we give ourselves to God and receive justification and regeneration we experience a new and living communion with God. This is God’s gift to us, and through it we enter into this first dimension of Christian community— community with God through Jesus Christ. We receive new life; the beginning of life in abundance (John 10:10).

The New Testament makes it clear that at the same time that we enter into community with God by the Spirit, we enter into community with the church, the people and family of God. In this sense, this first dimension is not to be seen as separate from the second dimension (below).

This and the other five dimensions of community can be illustrated metaphorically by two biblical images: the rising sun with its rays and colors, and the rainbow (as pictured especially in Genesis 9:13–16). As the rising sun is the source of energy and light, and as the rainbow is born of the light of the sun interacting with moisture in the atmosphere, so this first dimension is the central source of all the other dimensions. (See illustration below.)

2. Community with one another in the local Body of Christ.

This is the community we have together in the church primarily as we experience it in a local congregation—and also in the Christian family. It is Christian fellowship or koinonia in local space and time in a community that visibly transcends and reconciles differences of gender, socioeconomic status, education, and ethnicity. Here is a community, as we see in the New Testament, that unites rich and poor, master and slave (employers and employees), the educated and the uneducated. Even though particular churches may embody this only imperfectly, this dimension of community is essential to the gospel. Through the power of the Spirit this dimension does exist and can exist more perfectly, more visibly.

Scripture is clear that this kind of community is inseparable from and in fact implicated in the first. This is a major focus of the New Testament. The New Testament, and particularly the epistles, arguably devote more space to this dimension of community than to any other. Key Scriptures would be 1 Corinthians 12–14, Romans 12, and Ephesians 2–5, but there are few New Testament passages which do not either teach or assume this kind of community.¹² “If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7 NRSV).

When we are converted or make a genuine profession of faith in Jesus Christ we begin to participate in and to enjoy a new community, a new social reality—the church, Body of Christ. We enter into a new kind of human community. We experience Christian koinonia, “shared life” or “life in common” (Acts 2:42 and related passages). This is the essential horizontal dimension of the vertical reconciliation we experience with God through Jesus Christ by the Spirit.

Such community exists and expresses itself in local space and time, within particular history and culture. When believers are part of a Christian biological family, church and family overlap, or practically coincide, as Christian community—for the church is the family of God and the family is the church of God.

This dimension is inseparable from the first. Community with God through Jesus Christ already implies community with other brothers and sisters in local Christian assemblies. Biblically and theologically speaking, it is impossible to separate or divorce the vertical and the horizontal dimensions.

3. Community with the broader church within one’s region or nation.

This obviously is a wider, more extensive dimension of Christian community, but it also is clearly present in the New Testament. The first-century church throughout the Roman Empire was built up and networked by Paul and the other apostles and by a host of informal connections and relationships.

In the first century this existed and was developed primarily throughout the Roman Empire as it was networked by Paul and the other apostles and by a host of informal connections. The way Peter, Paul, John, and others of the apostles and prophets maintained contact with the growing network of local Christian communities is impressive and is significant both theologically and sociologically. (Note, e.g., Acts 15:30–33.)

The book of Acts (and the New Testament generally) assumes that the many local congregations composed in a larger sense one church which in practical ways was connected through a lively variety of contacts. This appears to be a normal and normative aspect of a biblical ecclesiology (the “translocal networking” mentioned above).

Christians need both these second and third forms of Christian community. The third dimension is different mainly because of the limitations of time and space. We naturally enjoy more intimate and constant community with our sisters and brothers in the local church that with the church regionally or nationally. But both are necessary and normative. Denominational and associational networks of various kinds can be helpful in maintaining this sense of the more-than-local Body of Christ.

4. Community with the global church—all Christian sisters and brothers throughout the earth.

Obviously we can never sit down together with all our Christian brothers and sisters worldwide and have face-to-face community. Such koinonia normally can exist only in the local church. Still, it does make sense to speak of koinonia also in the global sense. Our Christian brothers and sisters throughout the earth really are our family in Christ. We are all related and responsible for one another. “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19)— both locally and globally.

Even though global Christian community cannot be face-to-face, it can be genuine community understood in terms of mutual affection and concern, of “disinterested love” and “beneficence” (Wesley) toward all Christians worldwide. Its practical expressions include personal contacts, prayer, economic sharing (mutual dependence), various forms of communication (today including email) and information sharing in other ways.

Global Christian community (the church worldwide) should be defined as genuine community; a form of koinonia. But appeal should not be made to this dimension in such a way as to provide any basis for depreciating, devaluing, or failing to embody the second (local) dimension, because the church’s life flows from dimensions one and two. Sometimes Christians emphasize these larger, global dimensions of the church but neglect the local church. This is a serious error. Every believer needs to experience the church in the first two dimensions—that is, community with God and in and through the local church. Here is the source of the life than animates the entire church.

Note that both dimensions two and four (local and global Christian community) are not only spiritual but also physical (material), economic, and social-relational. The main difference between these two dimensions is the absence of face-to-face contact in dimension four (as generally also in dimension three). Deep, personal transformation requires the ongoing face-to-face relationships which we experience in the local church (dimension two, in combination with dimension one). But global Christian community can also be transforming as it expands our vision of what the church is worldwide. This can give us a broader vision of the kingdom of God and can help undercut nationalism and false patriotism, materialism, and ethnocentricity.

5. Community with all the people of God in all times and places, in heaven and on earth, by the Spirit and in the Trinity.

Christians who affirm the Apostles’ Creed say they believe in “the communion of saints.” What kind of community is this? Do Christians today really experience community with the whole people of God, beyond the limitations of space and time, including the “noble company of saints and martyrs” who have gone before us? Is there really “communion of saints” in this sense?

There does seem to be a reality here that many Christians experience and witness to. Since this dimension transcends space-time limitations it is much less “tangible” in daily experience. Yet it does seem to be real, and it has significant implications for church life and mission.

Several biblical passages speak of, or at least hint at, this dimension. Hebrews 11:1–12:2 may be particularly relevant. We read, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith . . .” (Heb. 12:1–2).

In church history and experience this dimension of Christian community seems to come to consciousness especially in worship and in the experience of some of the great saints of church history.¹³ For some Christians this dimension becomes real especially during times of prayer and meditation.

Christian hymns are full of affirmations of this form of community. For example:

There is a scene where spirits blend,

Where friend holds fellowship with friend;

Though sundered far, by faith they meet,

Around one common mercy seat.¹⁴

We are dealing here, of course, with spiritual mysteries that have not fully been revealed. Are Christian believers of past epochs really with us today, round about us? Do we in fact have a kind of community with those Christians who have now gone to heaven? Though we can’t be dogmatic here, nevertheless throughout history the church has affirmed this “communion of saints,” though with varying meanings. Biblically speaking, we can affirm at leas this much: Those Christians who have preceded us in death, who have already crossed the line between this earthly life and eternal life in heaven, still live. The Bible affirms this in many places, including in the Book of Revelation. We can reflect here also on the experience of Jesus and his disciples on the mount of transfiguration.

6. Solidarity with the entire human family on earth and with the whole creation.

How far does Christian community reach, understood biblically? If it includes “the communion of saints,” does it reach also “to the ends of the earth,” literally and physically?

Certainly the Bible teaches the interdependence and connectedness of the whole human family and the entire created order. Christians trust in and worship God “the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name” (Eph. 3:14–15). Whether acknowledged or not, humans exist in a relationship of mutual interdependence based in creation, prevenient grace, Christ’s incarnation and atonement, and the work of the Holy Spirit—a relationship based most fundamentally in the truth and love of the Holy Trinity.

Since we are speaking here of relationship with the whole human family, including non-Christians and many who are antagonistic to the Christian faith, “Christian community” does not seem to fit here. But we can legitimately speak of solidarity with all peoples and with the whole created order. Recognized or not, all humans share a common interest in the well-being of the planet, the physical environment. Together with our Jewish friends we remember the covenant recorded in Genesis 9 that God made with “the earth,” “the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations” (Gen. 9:12). As part of those “future generations” we today seek to be faithful to the covenant.

But is this really community, and is it truly Christian?

In an important sense, this solidarity with all peoples and the whole creation cannot be called Christian community. But it is not unrelated to Christian community and should be understood in connection with it.

Solidarity with all creation is not Christian community because it does not directly participate in dimensions one through five. Most of humanity is not reconciled to God through Jesus Christ and does not experience the koinonia in the Holy Spirit that comes through faith in Jesus.

However, Christians know that through communion with Jesus Christ in the Spirit and with the Body of Christ we enter into a relationship of mutual interdependence and responsibility with the creation that God has made. The source and power of this is the love of God.

This means that we can legitimately extend the concept of Christian community to this dimension in two senses: first, in terms of mission and responsible interdependence, and second in terms of eschatology. Although solidarity with all humanity and the physical creation is not Christian community, it is a concern of Christian community and of gospel mission. Christians are responsible for, in a missional sense, the whole earth, and the Christian community is also dependent upon the whole earth for its life and sustenance. Christians are concerned to reach the whole earth for Christ and they share a concern for the well-being of the physical environment upon which all peoples, as we ourselves, depend for physical life.

Beyond (but related to) this reality is the perspective of eschatology. Christians firmly believe that, viewed eschatologically, “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever ” (Rev. 11:15). Both the Old and New Testaments prophesy a renewed earth community, “new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home” (2 Pt. 3:13; cf. Isa. 65:17, 66:22; Rev. 21:1)—universal shalom with all peoples and the whole earth: “they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid” (Mic. 4:4; cf. 2 Kings 18:31, Isa. 36:16). Eschatologically speaking, Christian community is restored earth community, refined and purified by God’s judgment and renewal.

Christians in mission seek to live in this future now. That is, faithful followers of Jesus Christ say a decisive “No!” to the alienations, divisions, and exploitations of the present order of things and a decisive “Yes!” to all the promises of God. As much as possible they even now live within the Yes and deny the No. Thus living in two worlds they realize that solidarity with the whole earth is not yet Christian community, but that it will be. And if God’s future is in some sense more certain and real than our present, Christians can even now, in audacious hope and faith, claim earth-human solidarity as Christian community. “The whole wide world for Jesus!”

Clearly this dimension provides a practical and theological basis for a Christian environmental ethic—creation care as faithful human stewardship and as Christian mission. As Christians we can and should cooperate with other people and organizations that struggle for the welfare of the physical environment. Christians enter this area of cooperation from their own special viewpoint and insight: They recognize the sovereignty of God, the salvation that has come into the world through Jesus Christ, and the final goal of God’s plan: New creation; the reconciliation of all things through Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:10)—in other words, the kingdom of God in its fullness.

This dimension also provides the basis for human (not explicitly Christian) community with all people of good will and sincere hearts everywhere, regardless of religion, culture, worldview, ethnicity, or social status. Here is a solid biblical basis for international cooperation to meet human and environmental need. Though this is not yet Christian community, Christian community (life together in the church) provides the common ground upon which Christians can play a redemptive role in the larger human community.

There is, then, a sense in which solidarity with all creation may be understood within the rubric of Christian community. For it is Christians who understand through the gospel the true nature of the relationship that exists between God, the whole human family, and the physical-social-spiritual environment. Through Jesus Christ we know the secret, the “mystery” of the plan of God (Rom. 16:25; Eph. 1:9, 3:3–9, 6:19; Col. 2:2–3, 4:3) for his whole creation. This sixth dimension is thus a legitimate missiological focus for the Christian church.

These dimensions of Christian community have practical value for the life and mission of the church in at least six ways:

1. The experience of Christian community is deeper and richer the more of these dimensions it embodies.

2. While community with God and with others in the Body of Christ are essential and foundational, different people (and perhaps people in different cultures) may tend to be drawn towards, or more easily experience, different dimensions—either initially, or on an ongoing basis.

3. Ongoing growth is possible at all dimensions as we walk with God in Christian community, open to the Spirit.

Relatedly, these dimensions provide guidance for the discerning of gifts, callings, and ministries within a congregation. While every Christian should experience all these dimensions, some persons will probably sense God’s call to focus mainly on just one or two. Considering these varying dimensions of Christian community can be an important factor in helping a church discern the ministry and calling of each believer. Each of these expressions of Christian community may be thought of in terms of covenant, a relationship involving commitment and faith in God and his promises. Because God is the Lord who initiates covenant, all these dimensions are real and important to the economy of salvation. All can lead to genuine experiences of Christian community because they are all essentially relational in character since they are based in God himself.

An exclusive or exaggerated emphasis on any one of these dimensions leads to a distorted gospel and to unbalanced mission. A biblically comprehensive gospel and truly holistic mission require a vision for and genuine experience of all these dimensions in combination.

Six Dimensions of Christian Community

IV. SOME PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Finally, several practical considerations for church planting may be offered. In the light of the ecclesiology set forth above, these conclusions seem especially important:

1. The multiplication of relatively small but spiritually and missionally viable local churches should be a top priority of denominational strategy.

2. Therefore a theological and missional vision for church multiplication should be nurtured throughout the denomination.

3. New local churches (as all churches) should function according to the basic biblical principles regarding the church. Their life should be organic and charismatic, with a strong emphasis on community, worship, and mission.¹⁵

4. For theological as well as pragmatic reasons, new churches should be planted by communities or teams, not by sole individuals.

5. Persons (and small communities of persons) with the necessary gifts, callings, and vision for church planting should be identified, encouraged, equipped, and deployed in church-planting ministries. Church planters should continue to be raised up (multiplied) over time as an ongoing process.

6. New churches should be free (and encouraged) to develop their own life and ministry consistent with biblical principles and with adaptability to the cultural context, but within well understood denominational guidelines.

7. Newly planted churches (as all churches) should be assisted in developing, from the beginning, a vision for the kingdom of God, not just for church planting. They should understand that the mission of the church is broader than church planting or church growth.¹⁶

8. The expanding network of new churches should function within a functional, relational, organic networks (a community of communities), denominational or otherwise, not merely or primarily through denominational administrative structures.

CONCLUSION

God’s way of redeeming the world is through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ongoing reign of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit. Jesus’ primary strategy to bring the kingdom of God is the church: “As the father has sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21). The church is to be faithful to this calling until the time comes when “every knee shall bow, . . . and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10–11).

Ecclesiology is our reflection on how to be the authentic Body of Christ for the sake of God’s mission in today’s world. These reflections are offered to that end. # # #

1 Richard P. Heitzenrater, “Wesleyan Ecclesiology: Methodism as a Means of Grace.” Lecture manuscript, May 24, 2005, p. 10.

2 Heitzenrater, “Wesleyan Ecclesiology,” pp. 6, 3.

3 John Wesley, “A Plain Account of the People Called Methodists” (1749). The Works of John Wesley (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1975– ), 9:252–80.

4 See Robert Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994); Ralph Winter, “The Two Structures of God’s Redemptive Mission,” Missiology, 2:1 (January 1974), pp. 121–39 (also found in the Perspectives volume).

5 Mark Powell, “Biblical Images for the Relationship of Christ to Christians,” Lecture, Asbury Theological Seminary, March 9, 2006.

6 The church could benefit from a close study of the ecclesiological and missional implications of the theme of Jesus’ “work” and “works” in the Gospel of John.

7 Significant O.T. analogues to this “macrostructural witness” are the lives of Daniel, Esther, and of Joseph in Egypt.

8 For perspective see Howard A. Snyder, “The Marks of Evangelical Ecclesiology” (especially the section on “Sources of Evangelical Ecclesiology”), chapter 3 in John G. Stackhouse, Jr., ed., Evangelical Ecclesiology: Reality or Illusion? (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 77–103, and the other essays in that volume.

9 See Howard A. Snyder, “The Lord’s Supper in the Free Methodist Tradition,” in Dale R. Stoffer, ed., The Lord’s Supper: Believers Church Perspectives (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1997), 212–18.

10 These themes are elaborated, though not in this way, in the forthcoming Populist Saints: B. T. and Ellen Roberts and the First Free Methodists (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). The issues are also illuminated in the autobiography of John Wesley Redfield, now available in a critical edition—“Live While You Preach”: The Autobiography of Methodist Revivalist and Abolitionist John Wesley Redfield (1810–1863), edited by Howard A. Snyder (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2006).

11 The Doctrines and Discipline of the Free Methodist Church (Rochester, NY: Published by the General Conference, 1870), p. ix.

12 This has been a major theme of all of my own writing, particularly The Problem of Wineskins, The Community of the King, Liberating the Church, and Decoding the Church.

13 See the discussion in Snyder, Models of the Kingdom, 56–66. In terms of the kingdom of God, I associate this sense of Christian community with the model of the kingdom as “mystical communion.”

14 Hugh Stowell, From Every Stormy Wind That Blows (1828), stanza 2.

15 See especially chapter 10 in Radical Renewal: The Problem of Wineskins Today (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005 (rev. ed. Of The Problem of Wineskins).

16 See Howard A. Snyder, “Church Growth: A Renewal View,” in Gary L. McIntosh, ed., Evaluating the Church Growth Movement: Five Views (Zondervan, 2004), 209–31.

Christianity as a "Sunday Religion"

I'd also like to argue that the mainstream of Christianity throughout the last 1,500 years, and particularly evident in the last 200 years, has been for the majority of practitioners, not a practice-oriented religion, but a Sunday religion, a religion of "do what you want as long as you subscribe to the right things and you show up on Sunday to keep the institution going." It has fostered an extraordinarily limited view of human capacity. It has, in a sense, been co-opted by its own attitude and approach, by materialism. I know this is not necessarily a nice thing to say, and as I said in the beginning, I'm not asking you to agree with it. I'm just asking you to consider it."

Peter Senge, author of the Fifth Discipline

Technorati Tags : Peter+Senge, Christianity

Reflections on General Conference

I am back from the Free Methodist Church in Canada's General Conference. We hold it once every three years in Toronto so if I am still a Free Methodist, I will be back in 2008. Here are my thoughts.

• First of all, a lot of you who are reading this are Free Methodists. I never knew as many of you read this. Thanks for coming up to me and telling me. If I ever plan to overthrough the Bishop, I will have to post those plans to another blog ;-)
  
• Speaking of the Bishop, I thought his talks were excellent. They were both passionate and prophetic and impacted all of us. Our visiting Bishop, Bishop Ildo from Brazil was amazing. While his first languae is Portugese, his passion came through in some excellent talks. He hit upon materialism in the church which was a great message that we all needed to hear.
• The hotel was gorgeous but I did have several customer service issues. The staff resolved them quickly which made me think it was more bad luck than incompetance. Problems do happen and the staff was quite understanding in fixing them. My only caveat that every Coke machine in the hotel was out of order. How does that happen? I assume it was the bottlers fault (for the record I did check every floor)
• The King's Arm Pub in Markham has excellent steak sandwiches (and as Darren pointed out in the comments, a really drunk waitress when him and I were there)
  
• I can function well on three hours sleep for two nights. Three nights is not so good.
• On Sunday night I pilgrimed to Dundas to see Pernell Goodyear and the Freeway (or is that the FRWY) with Darryl and Charlene Dash. Darryl posted about part of the evening here. I understand that Darrly is a man of God and a wonderful pastor but he is lying! Those wings were hot. Really hot. Really, really hot. Either he is lying or just more of a man than I am. Yes I did spit Pepsi over the entire table (I was taking a drink of Pepsi and Pernell mentioned that he would like to give a prominent theologian with perfect hair a noogie and I couldn't help myself). Also I may mentioned that my phone was set to vibrator and not just vibrate. Seeing the Freeway was cool. A lot of people have told me how cool Pernell and the Freeway are and they were one of the friendliest communities I have ever dropped in on. A side note. Charlene did advise me and Darryl not to have the foolish wings. Unfortunately I didn't listen. Note to self. Listen to Charlene's advise next time.
  
• There are a lot of resolutions at a General Conference. Many of them take a long time to pass.
• I wish the hotel had wifi.
• One of the things that Wendy and I have been learning that there are three parts of all of our lives. The past, present, and future. One of the things that have happened to a lot of us is that we lost a lot of our past through our excommunication and exile from family. Being at General Conference was good for me in that it is a tie to my past that seems very tenuous at times. That is good. I heard stories of my past this weekend that I had forgotten or never knew. That was good.
• Air Canada is either getting better or I am becoming more tolerant of how bad they are. Customer service on this flight was indifferent rather than the usual surly. It's going in the right direction.
• The church almost passed a resolution that would have made it almost impossible for John Wesley to be a Free Methodist pastor.
• Darren and I survived another trip together.
  
• Will post pictures tonight.
  

Mainstream Christianity

I'd also like to argue that the mainstream of Christianity throughout the last 1,500 years, and particularly evident in the last 200 years, has been for the majority of practitioners, not a practice-oriented religion, but a Sunday religion, a religion of "do what you want as long as you subscribe to the right things and you show up on Sunday to keep the institution going." It has fostered an extraordinarily limited view of human capacity. It has, in a sense, been co-opted by its own attitude and approach, by materialism. I know this is not necessarily a nice thing to say, and as I said in the beginning, I'm not asking you to agree with it. I'm just asking you to consider it." --Peter Senge, noted management guru and author of the Fifth Discipline

Corporate sponsorship a boon to church budgets

From Lark News

In the wake of declining tithes and offerings, churches from coast to coast are partnering with corporate sponsors to supplement their budgets, in exchange for high profile if controversial ad placement.
"This [offer] couldn't have come at a better time," says Jacob Helsinki, pastor of Mach 4 Baptist Church in Lemon Grove, Wash. His church has sold much of the "visual space" in their facility to advertisers, including the bathroom stalls to Burger King, the rim of the collection plates to Hewlett-Packard and the backs of pews to JollyTime popcorn. "We were facing real cutbacks for our youth programs, and these companies were more than happy to step in and bridge the gap, financially speaking."
His church isn't alone. Other churches have sought corporate cash to buy Bibles, fix cooling systems and fund vacation Bible schools — all at the relatively small cost of ad space. In one case, a church in Arizona offered new converts a free Bible whose cover reads, "The Holy Word of God, brought to you by Liu's China Express." Liu's is a local restaurant.
"I think it's ingenious," says William Teash, professor of religion and business at Claremont College in California. "It's an expanded form of tent-making, but the tent-makers in this case are bigger and incorporated."
At the end of the Sunday morning service at Doritos Cool Ranch Assembly of God church in Tustin, Calif., the worship leader segues from an uplifting praise song into the latest McDonald's jingle, "I'm loving it." The congregation joins in tentatively, some laughing at the irony. By the end of the jingle, they're singing heartily.
"We do our duty," says one parishioner after the service. "It helps buy Sunday school materials."
But other pastors are engaging in subtler forms of persuasion that strike some as ethically questionable. A pastor in Austin who wished to not be identified, says he is paid $500 a week to wear Tommy Hilfiger clothing, and to somehow incorporate references to his new clothes into the sermon.
"It's not a complete departure from who I am, so I'm very comfortable doing it," he says. "And I tithe on the money, and give some to missions."
Other pastors participate in a controversial "pay-for-play" program offered by a company called On Message. The company's web site lists dozens of "advertising opportunities" from local and national vendors. For example, Colgate-Palmolive offers $150 for a single reference to any of their products. All that's needed to collect the money, in most cases, is a videotape showing the remarks being made to a group of 100 or more people.
"We call it spontaneous advertising," says a publicist with Colgate-Palmolive, which is one of the largest companies to jump into the untested area. "Our philosophy is this: If you are telling a story about the kind of morning you had, and you see an opportunity to mention our brand of toothpaste, we'll reward that choice."
At Mach 4 Baptist Church, some congregants complain that their trust in their pastor has eroded somewhat. They ask themselves why he chose a particular brand of clothing to wear, or if corporate influence is behind the sermon illustrations he gives. Some say he tends to rub his face more now, "like he got a really good shave," says one older congregant. "You start to wonder if he made a closed-door deal with the razor company to goose their sales. It breeds a little distrust, but if it allows us to bring one more person into the Kingdom, I guess it's worth it."

via grrl meets world :: I would have no problem selling out like this. The Worship Blackduck Freehouse. The Ram Tough Offeratory brought to you by Dodge. Today's sermon on materialism is brought to you by Wal-Mart. Our classes on global ethics brought to you by Nike.

On a not so funny level, the New York Times had an article last year about how megachurches are adding in McDonald's, climbing walls, spas, and even mini malls to the mix (selling Christian stuff) so maybe it's not much of a parody after all.

Review of Liquid Church

Liquid Church by Pete Ward

Liquid Church by Pete Ward is a book that I have been meaning to review for many months. At first glance you look at its hundred and eight pages and you think, "no problem". The book is not a book of practices of a parish called Liquid Church but rather a collection of theories and ideas and each one of them must be thought about and mulled over in the context of you local church. On top of that, the book is visionary and gives a picture of a church that is not here or is only in its infancies.

What is Liquid Church? Liquid Church is a response to our rapidly changing society. Where the local parish at one time was built by farmers and manufacturers who were geographically stable. As we move to a geographically and culturally fluid culture where change comes in many shapes, ways and sizes, the church needs to be more flexible to move through, around, and in amongst today's culture.

From friends of mine who read it, the response is "I really enjoyed it but I am still thinking through some parts of the book". The more times I read the book, the more I learn and more fertile my mind is for its ideas to grow. This book is not for everyone. Those that Robert Webber defines as pragmatic evangelicals will find the lack of clear steps intolerable but for those who are engaged in the postmodern conversation will find the book challenging, visionary, and have a lot of ideas that are outside our box (churches need to pander to spiritual consumerism) that will generate much discussion.

Selected Insights

…liquid church does not exist yet. Moreover, please do not think that I have set up and run a successful, thriving liquid church. This means that what I say is an attempt to imagine rather than describe a different way of being church. - 1

…we need to shift from seeing church as a gathering of people meeting in one place at one time-that is a congregation-to a notion of church as a series of relationships and communications. This image implies something like a network or a web rather than an assembly of people. - 2

Stuart Murray described this to me as the shift from church as a noun to church as a verb. So we can say, "I church, you church, we church." For too long we have seen church as something that we attend. We might sign a few hymn or even play a more active role, but there is something passive and even a little alienating about the externalized and rather monolithic idea of church. If, however, church is something that comes about when we make it, then walls come tumbling down. Suddenly being church and doing church becoming an exciting adventure. - 3

How we organize and think of church today is the result of years of historical and social developments. The New Testament descriptions have been a theological starting point for the church, but a various times the sociological pattern of church life has had to be created and re-created. The historical expression of what it means to be the assembly of God as therefore gone through a series of changes and developments. What this means is that the way we organize church may be inherited, but it not preordained. - 8

If the Modern Era was a rage for order, regulation, stability, singularity, and fixity, the Postmodern Era is a rage for chaos, uncertainty, otherness, openness, multiplicity, and change. Postmodern surfaces are not landscapes but wavescapes, with the waters always changing and the surfaces never the same. The sea knows no boundaries. - Leonard Sweet. - 15
Solid modernity is based on our victory of the settled over the nomad; it is a culture of production rather then consumption and above all is linked to ways of organizing production that were first developed by the car maker Henry Ford. Modernity was shaped by the Fordist principles of expansion, size, plant, boundaries, norms, rules, and class orientated affinities and identities. - 16

The local church may support many good and important activities, including mission trips, evangelism, youth ministry, social projects, and so on, but they are all assessed in terms of their effect or otherwise on regular Sunday attendance. People may turn to Christ through the youth mission or Alpha course, and this is good, but they are not banked, they really don't count, until they start to attend Sunday services. - 17

I have sometimes felt that the real purpose of the church services is to enable clergy to count the congregation. This is probably a little cynical, but solid church finds its main sense of success in the number of people who attend on a Sunday. Regular church attendance is seen as being a significant test of spiritual health, and church growth is measured in size of congregations. The importance of Sunday attendance and congregational size can never be underestimated for solid church. - 18

The emphasis upon attendance at one central service enables ministers to see easily if people are starting to flag in their spiritual lives. We might attend to hear the preacher, but clergy often attend because they want to see us there. The system of counting sheep and making sure they attend can lead us into unhealthy relationships pf surveillance and control. Ministers sometimes express frustration with the way that a central service restricts their ability to experiment and be creative, and the weight of being responsible for the regular attendance of members can be intolerable. As a youth minister in a church I felt something of this pressure. When the numbers of young people sitting in the back pew increased, I was doing well, but if they started to decrease, questions were asked. The implication was that it was my job to look after their spiritual health, and this was assessed in terms of their regular attendance on Sunday mornings. - 19

In solid modernity the size of the factory building was a major sign of success. Extending the production facility was the aim of the business. Similarly sold church focus on buildings to hold more people and process more activities - 19

Solid church is built on the assumption that it is good for large numbers of very different people to meet in the same room and do the same sort of thing together. Worship therefore becomes a one-size-fits-all environment. The result is that we provide a rather bland and inoffensive diet of middle of the road music and safe spirituality. Variety in what we have to offer is severely limited by the tastes and prejudices of those who attend. Extremes are tempered because one of the key values is that we do not offend anyone who comes to church regularly. - 19

One size fits all is made into a virtue by those who run solid church. Everything about regular Sunday worship is designed to make us feel that even if we don't like it, we should still attend because it is good for us. As with cough medicine, we endure the bad taste because we are told that it is doing us good. - 20

Solid church does not disappear in liquid modernity; rather, it experiences a subtle mutation. Just as in modernity the premodern aspects of church continued, so in liquid modernity the premodern, parish-based church and the modern congregation or gathered church also continue. But while they may exist, they do not remain unchanged by the fluidity of people's lives and the surrounding culture. Liquid modernity brings out the mutation in the parish and in the congregation. These changes have emerged almost imperceptibly, so much so that many church leaders may not have noticed what has happened. Those running parishes and congregations think that they are doing what the church has always done. Unfortunately neither the congregation nor the people in the wider parish have stood still. Liquid modernity has seeped under the church door and into the sanctuary. - 25

This change in community at a local and a collective level has made churches mutate. Whereas once they reflected a social reality beyond themselves, now this is less likely to be the case. This means that since church does not reflect a wider community it must in some way compensate for this lack. At the same time those attend church do so with a different set of social needs. Now church is seen as a personal lifestyle choice among many others. - 26

Solid church generally mutates in three ways: as heritage site, as refuge, and as nostalgic community. 26

…the mutation of solid church into heritage, refuge, and nostalgic communities has seriously decreased its ability to engage in genuine mission in liquid modernity. These mutations degrade the gospel genetic code of the churc