Blue Devils

Today AKMA posted the good news that he will be joining the faculty of Duke Divinity School for a year as Visiting Professor of New Testament.  Congratulations!

Technorati Tags: AKMA,Duke Divinity School

Good news from Seabury

For those of you who follow AKMA's blog, we have been reading some bad news about Seabury and it's future.  Today's post makes the future look a little brighter and hopefully Seabury's students and the Episcopal church will see the fruits of Seabury's reimagined future. 

Technorati tags: Seabury, AKMA, Evanston, seminary

Feedback

Lately I have been noticing the increase in negative mail to the worldwide headquarters of Super Dave Osbourne/jordoncooper.com (we sublet the place when Super Dave isn't working). Some of the recent mail is on the low quality links and bias that this blog has. Several are complaining about the sports links, my liberal world view, and how this blog has little to do with the emerging church anymore.

I have replied to many of them individually but I realized, all of them are related as well so here is my bigger explanation.

As many of you know, I work in a homeless shelter/half-way house that is also the emergency after hours for social services. That is all on the website and after that, most of what I do is protected by non-disclosure statements. Some people who work in similar places, blog anonymously or using SixApart's VOX blogging system but for me, I don't talk that much about it and prefer to leave it at work. Even stuff that I see outside of work on the street has been tough to process this week and for that reason, I have been going to a spiritual advisor to talk through some of the frustration of not being able to do more. (at work, part of my evaluation is asking me if I think another job would be a better fit for me -- after thinking though it, I am not sure if even being the Minister of Social Services could tackle the job properly -- so I said, I am fine where I am at)

The evening shift is often a zoo. A booming Saskatoon economy has made work a lot busier and housing harder to find. The other night I watched a guy wander down the street with a knife in his side and didn't even find it that weird (ambulance was following him as well), I am often drained emotionally and to unwind, I enjoy some tea and sit down and watch the news and Sportsnet Connected. I have the web and a paper at work and if I am lucky I can read through some of the New York Times and Google News but when I get home, I am tired and ready to give up the good fight. Watching some highlights takes a lot of the stress of the day away. The other reason I watch and blog about sports is that I love sports. While not a great athlete, I played hockey for years, baseball, rugby, soccer, basketball, high school football and skied a lot growing up. I know that sports have been derided by many in the church in favor of the arts but I appreciate both. My family was a sporting family. I have a catcher's mask that is four generations old. Like a lot of families, sports was a bonding thing growing up and it is the same for Mark. I think it was Pete Ward who wrote this in Liquid Church, sports may be one of the ways the Holy Spirit brings life back into tired people. Unless it is the Edmonton Oilers or the San Diego Chargers, then it is devil's way of destroying people.

So why so little on the emerging church? I linked to this post by Kester Brewin a couple of weeks ago in which he describes why he is so bored with the emerging church conversation.

For me the 'emerging conversation' has become too much like a whole bunch of people mouthing off... Pretending to listen, by occasionally quoting others, but, for the most part, just yabbering on about their little world regardless of what others are saying. In the book I mention some of the conditions under which a system might become 'emergent', or 'self-organizing', or 'a learning system', to use different syntax. One of the key conditions is an ability to sense and respond to its environment. And this requires careful listening. I think we've lost the art.

I agree with Kester although I am not sure why that is although I am sure I am part of that problem that he is speaking about. I used to find the conversation a lot more interesting although I find it really narrow and in some ways I find it has gotten narrower. Part of my problem is that I have been strongly influenced by Canadian political scientist, Thomas Homer-Dixon who wrote The Ingenuity Gap which makes the powerful case that we wrongly take a very narrow view of the problems of the world and the problems (and the solutions) are often shared and more widely connected.  This idea has influenced me more than people realize and explains why blog moseys from idea to idea at times.

I have always hated the term Godblog, (excused me as I go and wash after typing it) and this site has always been a blog about the liberal arts in which as a part of that because of vocation or passion have blogged about the church but now after several years of it, there isn't a lot of new stuff being said, especially online. Even Mark Driscoll's hate filled rants against Emergent are getting repetitive.

Despite the boredom with posting about this stuff online, there is a bunch of different stuff happening offline that is exciting. Several conversations with friends have reminded me we often get judged by our writing on these things called blogs but they are only a small window of our lives. Church of the Exiles is working with others to create a local alternative seminary in Saskatoon. Resonate is setting up a micro publishing house to help the emerging church in Canada and has two books in development and all of this is happening outside of the 40 hours (although this week it was 60 hours) that is spent at work. On top of that is Soularize and Soularize Feedlive that I am helping with. Don't say I am not engaged with the church. I think I am more engaged now than I was when I was being paid (although I have a lot less meetings).

 

So keep up the feedback coming.  I may or may not take it to heart.  I have some hockey to watch.

 

Technorati tags: emerging church, Emergent, sports, Calgary Flames, Saskatoon, Soularize, Church of the Exiles, Resonate

Wisdom Wants To Be Free

I remember reading with great interest about the idea of the Disseminary when AKMA and Trevor started posting about it a couple of years ago. As the idea evolved, I started to think more and more about new ways of theological education in my local context and in many ways, it influenced the formation of Resonate as well as some articles I have written over the years. Those thoughts also came up in conversations with the Church of the Exiles as a way of thinking about theological education. This spring I had some conversations with a couple of other churches about starting an alternative seminary to make quality theological and Biblical teaching available to those who want to explore that in Saskatoon for free. As summer came, those conversations got lost in the excitement of a hot Roughriders start, a couple heatwaves, and escapes to the nearest lake but as the weather has cooled and summer comes to an end around here, we are looking at seeing it happen. Of course we are not the only ones to have done this. The Alternative Seminary in Philadelphia, the Invisible College in Kingston, Underground Seminary in Ohio and even City Seminary of New York have all explored how to bring contextualized theology to their cities.

It will look quite different in Saskatoon and my partners in crime and thinking of a January 2008 launch. If you are interested in learning more and would like to offer some feedback, drop me a line at coop AT exileschurch.org and I'll keep you informed.

Contextless Links

• Andrew Sullivan makes an unflattering comparison between Bush and the Gestapo :: Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.
• Sen Sam Brownback on evolution
• Fonts used by different firms for their corporate logos
• Welcoming Poverty into Our Stories
• Concordia Seminary is an iTunes Seminary now.  Very, very cool.

Talking about living life

Over the last 10 months people have commented over the decreasing amount of fresh content on the site and the reliance on links around here. Someone one criticised me as being a link blogger like kottke.org which I took as quite a compliment as I am a big fan of his blog but they are right in that the amount of original content around here is becoming as rare as a fair and balanced news report on Fox News.

So where did all the content go? Looking back 10 months or so, we started the process of planting Church of the Exiles and I started working full time at the Salvation Army. While I do have internet access at work, I don't have a lot of time to surf the web although if our office. My bookmarks are Flickr (for wallpapers), Saskatoon weather (helps me make decisions on housing for people), Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! and Google News (self explanatory), and some links to frequently asked questions (what time buses run, library hours, job search stuff), that sort of thing. The reason I don't surf that much is that for most of my shifts, there is a steady stream of people that need something or the other and that is what I am paid to take care of. Like most jobs, there is also some paperwork to be done, databases to input stuff into, and some chatting with co-workers. That is 40 hours of my week spent at work.

Other than that, the Church of the Exiles is a labour of love and there is stuff that needs to be done by myself and as a group. That takes up time. Many of the things that I have blogged and written about will hopefully come to life in Exiles but it takes time and a lot of small steps. A friend of mine keeps saying, "I always overestimate how much stuff I can accomplish in the short run but am amazed by how much stuff I get done over the longhaul." Despite that, a lot of steps need to be taken in the short run for Exiles and more hours taken up.

As I write this post, I am reminded of the underground seminary some of us are trying to start and the work that it needs to keep it moving.

When I have time at home, there are the joys of home maintenance on a 80 year old home, a dog with a compulsive fetching disorder and slobbery tennis balls, frisbees, and sticks to toss.

A couple of weeks ago when I started shopping for Mark's birthday presents, I felt sick to my stomach. When I turned seven my relationship with my father got a lot worse and he was gone by the time I was eight. By Christmas his last year around, I remember thinking he hated me and when he left, I blamed myself. While those feelings are from the past, I want Mark's next trip around the earth to be better than mine was so I find myself spending more time with him. By the time he is eight, he will probably be sick and tired of having me around but for now I am reminded of my past and the desire to make sure his future is different. Plus, we have a slingshot to master and some knives to carve things with.

So what does that mean for the blog? It means that I am spending a lot more time living life then doing it. I enjoy being a pundit but I much rather enjoy starting things and living life.

Richard Dawkins as an "enthusiast"

On Becky's blog she is quoting Richard Dawkins who makes the claim that he may be passionate but is not a fundementalist.

No, please, do not mistake passion, which can change its mind, for fundamentalism, which never will. Passion for passion, an evangelical Christian and I may be evenly matched. But we are not equally fundamentalist. The true scientist, however passionately he may “believe”, in evolution for example, knows exactly what would change his mind: evidence! The fundamentalist knows that nothing will.

First of all, I might as well just say this. I am an evangelical but I am not an fundamentalist.

The confusion of these terms is irritating and until George W. Bush became President, they did mean separate things. Jimmy Carter is an evangelical. Tony Campolo is an evangelical. Jim Wallis is an evangelical. At the same time James Dobson, John Hagee, Ralph Reed, and Jerry Falwell all claim to be evangelicals as well. It is an awfully large camp but not all evangelicals are fundamentalists and to be honest, we don't all believe the same things like evolution, only male leadership, or Biblical literalism. I grew up in an evangelical household and I don't even remember discussing these things growing up. I think my mom may have been a closet literalist but the lack of moat and parapit around our house meant that she was too ashamed to being it up much :-)

Secondly, I disagree Dawkins insistence that science is somehow pure in its pursuit of knowledge. One of the better books I read last year, 1491 (Amazon.com) is a tale of scientists refusing to give up on their theories and attacking other theories of the origin of civilization in North America. It is a story of people not changing their minds in face of evidence. I am not saying all scientists are fundamentalist, just that fundamentalism can be found in all fields. If you have ever listened to Joe Morgan call a Oakland A's game, even baseball has people who can't see something that is outside of how they see the world and this is a game which is supposedly all statistics (and yes I am killing the metaphor by calling Joe Morgan a fundementalist but his closed mind approach to sabremetrics shows an awfully closed mind).

Also, in one of my favorite blog posts of all time, AKMA, writes to incoming seminary students about the pursuit of truth in theology and the Christian life.

I start from the premise that everything about discipleship (and ordained ministry is in many respects simply an intensified mode of discipleship) grows out of the practice of truth. All the different theological disciplines, all the techniques and skills and habits you learn, derive their importance from the Truth you live; whatever facts you memorize, whatever devices for handling parish (diocesan, academic) organization, if they do not contribute to articulating a Truth that goes deeper than your personal preferences, your family’s habits, your community’s prejudices, those learnings amount to nothing more than gilding on a goose-egg. sooner or later, the egg will rot, and a pretty exterior won’t take away the stink.

The Truth will sustain your discipleship, even the intensified kind, with a nourishment, a light, a harmony, and a sense that do not depend for their validity on buzzwords, platitudes, fads, simple answers or correct answers (whether of the popular or academic sort). It’s not for nothing that Acts shows us the earliest followers of Jesus calling their fellowship as “the Way.” Ours is a Way entrusted to us from saints who knew it much better than any of us is likely to know it. That Way grows in us by the work of the Spirit, but we ought to make room for the Spirit to form us in the Way and cooperate with the Spirit in bodying forth the Way in our lives.

Are there fundamentalists out there that fear a truth outside of their worldview? Absolutely. Some of them are listed above and proclaim their fundamentalism proudly. Even among the GOP presidential candidates, some believe in a young earth seven day creation of the earth in face of overwhelming scientific evidence (This undermines my argument but last summer at Arlington Beach during the Free Methodist camp, there was a display up that linked people like me who don't accept a seven day creation/young earth to secular humanists and homosexuals who are destroying the faith - I thought I should let you know what a heretic I am). While there are Christian fundamentalists out there that can not or will not accept new information outside of a specific framework, there are many of us whose pursuit of truth lead us to faith. For others it was witnessing the supernatural (in my case seeing a miraculous healing in response to prayer growing up) while for others it was a personal encounter with God or as Plantinga has written over the years, some of us just have "faith in God" and it is logical to do so. I don't see that as a contradiction to evidence. In the end, I have to disagree with Dawkins, he is as much of a fundamentalist that he claims to be against.

Related:

• Alister McGrath on Richard Dawkins :: McGrath contends that the aggressive rhetoric of Richard Dawkins' books masks a deep insecurity about the public credibility of atheism.
• Philosopher Alvin Plantinga's review of Dawkin's book in Books and Culture

The Present Church

Below is a rather wordy article for my denomination's magazine to help get people thinking outside the box in how we see the local church. Not sure if it worked but people have been saying nice things about it to my face at least :-)



For Lent this year, I decided to give up politics. In the past I had given up caffeine, chocolate, television, and even NHL hockey playoffs but this year I decided to step back from following politics which is something I spend too much time thinking and reading about. Of course this meant trying to ignore the Quebec election of which I had some success in doing. On Monday, March 27th, I was agonizing over the final edits of this article, which was supposed to be about the future of the church. I decided to take a brief television break and was confronted with some really boring choices. While surfing channels, I found myself watching CTV Newsnet and seeing what the talking heads were saying about the Quebec election. Before I caught myself, I heard the panel chortling to themselves over the comment, "Who could have predicted that this result was going to happen to Jean Charest?" I remember the exact same comment being said during former Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow's final election when he was handed a minority. A couple of hours before that I remember a well known political commentator leading off his networks coverage with, “Is there anything that will stand between the NDP and another strong majority? No there isn’t”. Well the prognosticators were wrong that evening as well.

The phrase made me think about a book I had read a couple of years ago by Canadian political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon called The Ingenuity Gap. One of the books recurring themes is that we live in a world with a tremendous amount of variables which are overwhelming and make it very difficult to predict the outcome of our decisions. The book goes to show how complex our inter-connected world is and how poorly we understand how it works despite our proclamations to the opposite. From the food chain in the English Channel, to water planning in Las Vegas, to international markets during the Asian currency crisis; time and time again experts missed something that invalidated all of calculations for the future. Not only is it hard to know all of the variables that will influence our future, we are constantly hit by fads that while seem important, really aren't (like election news stories over which tie color resonates best with voters)

As I returned to edit my article for Mosaic, I realized that I was probably making the exact same mistake. There are too many variables, too many things that can change. If the all knowing pollsters and Mike Duffy can't forecast a 40 day election, how do we talk about the future of the church farther than that? All of the variables of culture plus the complexities of denomination and local church dynamics make it hard to predict any future.

So what can we talk about? Instead of talking about the future, it may be helpful to discuss the the factors that are happening now that will impact the future. To often organizations live in the past as it is easier to understand and don't have the needed conversations on what is happening the present that will shape their future.

Post-Christian Canada and the West

In a couple of books I have read in the last year, they have referenced some recent studies that point out by 2040, under 5% of people in England may be Christian (only 9.4% are attending church now) According to church statistics, the four main UK denominations, the Church of England, the Roman Catholic, the Methodist, and United Reformed Churches, are all suffering from a long-term decline in attendance figures. The good thing is that they realize this and are trying new ideas to reverse the decline. The Anglican and Methodist Churches have started their Fresh Expressions initiative which encourages new expressions of church like alternative worship, and even the Archbishop of Canterbury plans to be broadcasting his sermons on YouTube in an acknowledgment that more and more Anglicans just aren't in church on Sundays. While some of the initiatives talked about as other Fresh Initiatives seemed a little off the mark, it is encouraging that the Church of England the Methodist Church in England are acknowledging that something has to change.

In Australia, things aren't that much more encouraging but in a recent book called The Forgotten Ways, missiologist Alan Hirsch sees it this way

A combination of recent research in Australia indicates that about 10-15 percent of that population is attracted to what we call the contemporary church growth model. In other words, this model has significant "market appeal" to about 12 percent of our population. The more successful forms of this model tend to be large, highly professionalized, and overwhelmingly middle class, and express themselves culturally using contemporary, "seeker friendly" language and middle-of-the-road music forms. They structure themselves around "family ministry" and therefore offer multi-generational services. Demographically speaking, they tend to cater largely to what might be called the "family-values-segment"--good, solid, well-educated citizens who don't abuse their kids, who pay their taxes, and who live largely, what can be called a suburban lifestyle.

Not only is this type of church largely made up of Christian people who fit this profile, the research indicates that these churches can also be very effective in reaching non-Christian people fitting the same demographic description--the people within their cultural reach. That is, the church does not have to cross any significant cultural barriers in order to communicate the gospel to that cultural context. (pg 35)

In the United States, the number attracted to the idea of church may be as high as 35%. Canadian polls suggest that about 20 - 30% of Canadians may share values that would be open to going to church (approximately 20% of people say they attending church regularly but that number is often inflated by people exaggerating how often they attend church). That number is a both a blessing and a curse. It shows that at least about six to seven million Canadians are open to the values articulated by the church which do provide a large pool of Canadians for the church to draw from but even that is difficult as pollster George Barna sees the family values segment of the population to fall by half in approximately fifteen years.

While nothing is wrong with those within that segment, most of us as Free Methodists would be there and by in large, they are not that offensive of a people group. Six million Canadians is nothing to sneeze at and does provide a significant opportunity for the church but that is only part of the story.

Of course what is to make of the people outside of that family values segment? Depending on how one looks at the numbers, anywhere from 65% to 85% of Canadians are removed by various degrees from that category and from those values. They make up the vast bulk of Canadians that have to overcome some obstacles to come to our churches as the church is not even on their radar. According to what Alan Hirsch writes in The Forgotten Ways, in addition to not being on the radar for most people, a large percentage are at some level alienated by the church. From bad experiences, to strong preconceived ideas about Christianity or from a cultural context that is hostile to Christianity, it would be as hard for them to be a part of a church as it would be many Free Methodists to join a non-Christian religion. Doing “church” better; PowerPoint, better music, wittier or more theologically astute sermons probably won’t make any impact on those that are outside the church because they are unlikely to bother entering the doors in the first place.

The other factor in society is that there has been a breakdown in the mass markets. Where at one point a church used to pick a neighborhood and then put down it's roots and if church was "done right", it had a good chance to reach their area for Christ. Depending on the church, property values actually rose if you were closer to a church. A middle class neighborhood would have middle class people in it with middle class values. Today that is changing where traditional people groups have segmented and segmented again. The mass market is shrinking and those neighborhoods are made up of a variety of sub-groups.

What does that mean for the future of the church?

While it is popular to lament the loss of the Christian fabric in Canadian culture and condemn those that don't share our values, that probably won't do anything to reverse the change. Complaining that people don't go to church anymore won't change anything.

When Anglican Bishop nd missionary, Leslie Newbiggin came back to England at the age of 65 after spending most of his career in India, this is what he found.

Ministry in England, he discovered, "is much harder than anything I met in India. There is a cold contempt for the Gospel which is harder to face than opposition. . . . England is a pagan society and the development of a truly missionary encounter with this very tough form of paganism is the greatest intellectual and practical task facing the Church" (Unfinished Agenda).

It is hard, Newbigin knew, for a Hindu or a Muslim to come to worship Christ. For an Englishman, it would seem, it had become even harder.

Whats life for the church going to be like in a post-Christian Canada. A world in which we are seen more and more irrelevant? There isn't a definite roadmap or program to follow and I think the mass segmentation will force the church for the first time in a long time to chart their own paths as we enter into new territory. That being said, there are some that have been at this for a little longer and have adjusted to their own contexts.

The Freeway in downtown Hamilton is both a church community and coffee shop serving both those looking for coffee and a place to connect online as well as the urban poor.

Three Nails in Pittsburgh is an Episcopal church plant that has embedded itself into the community by meeting a need that I never would have thought of and that is making really good New York City style hot dogs. They helped open a restaurant that used to be called Hot Dogma but was sued over the name so now they are called Franktuary. Their motto in case you are wondering is And the meat shall inherit the earth.

Harambee in Pasadena, California Back in 1982, Navarro Avenue in Pasadena, California had the highest daytime crime rate in Southern California. Believing that the only way they could make a difference was to move into the neighborhood, Dr. John Perkins started a ministry on "blood corner" (named because of the drive by shootings). Twenty five years later it had largely changed the neighborhood and curbed the violence. Not only that but it has prepared two generations of church leaders as well on a campus that is essentially several small houses with a common backyard. It doesn't take much to change the world.

The same can be said about emerging congregations and church plants in the Free Methodist Church. Ecclesiax and ThirdSpace reach artists and creative types in different ways because their local contexts are different.

Some Anglican churches in London, England empowered and nurtured new faith communities who met in their own buildings. Most often with no staff or clergy, these communities formed what is now called alternative worship and is engaging a portion of England's population that would never enter into a traditional worship context. At the same time they give new life to traditional congregations.

Some churches in urban areas saw what a place called Paragraph NY did, which is create a place that is essentially a gym but instead is a place for writers and creative types to work. They looked at a lot of unused space, got a good coffee maker, and wireless Internet and opened up the doors... and people came in.

At the end of the day, the church is going to have to learn to reconnect with their community as opposed to rely on the community to come to them. Whether or not churches can do that will largely determine how long of a future they have.

The Future of Theological Education

I remember being a conference years ago when the comparison was made between the average income of baby boomers measured against things like education, mortgage, and transportation. Then they compared my generation. Everything was more expensive but especially education and at that moment I realized that the Freedom 55 commercials were not targeted at me. The presenter put it into what it meant for the church. To go to seminaries like Wheaton or Fuller, it meant that you either had to be older and saved up some money, come from a wealthy family, or willing to take on a large amount of student loan debt. This has affected even smaller Bible Colleges who are faced with an aging donor base and less contributions which has meant higher tuitions.

The costs associated with education keep many interested learners at arms length. A building costs money; faculty need to be paid and they expect certain privileges associated with their position. Beyond that, the physical space of education limits the number of students who can participate (those who can get to the location, those who can fit into the facilities). After a while the school's priorities shift toward the necessities of taking care of the building and faculty, and these begin to displace the original educational goals.

This starts to impact the wider church in a couple of ways as it also influences students. As I heard one seminary faculty member say it, whether the student or his family is footing the expensive cost of seminary education, it makes students less inclined or less able to enter the mission field or enter into a ministry context that does not pay a certain amount of money or safety.

The long term consequences of that happening to more church leaders is easy to see. Only wealthy churches have access to quality theological thinkers and the church may have to withdraw from areas that can not afford a certain level of compensation.

There has been others who have seen this happening and are working to create an alternative future. City Seminary of New York is a collaborative project of churches across New York City who brings in theologians and speakers to help church leaders in their local contexts. Fees are as low as $10 (to cover meals). The Alternative Seminary in Philadelphia is developing training materials and offering classes for those that can not afford it. Closer to home, in Kingston there is the Invisible College which tackles big issues from a Christian worldview. Topics like globalization and how technology impacts our lives have been past topics. Resonate has hosted several local discussions with theologians and thinkers over the last three years in Toronto and Hamilton all for free.

While seminaries and many local churches have been slower to adopt this model in favor of selling content, more and more universities are giving away their lectures, course work, and even tests for free over the Internet. M.I.T.'s OpenCourseWare allows you to tap into M.I.T.'s vast teaching resources as a teacher or self-learner for free. It doesn't grant you a degree or credits but it does share the wisdom. TED, a world leading conference of big thinkers has recently used Google Video to make their entire conference available for free online. While I questioned the Archbishop of Canterbury's use of YouTube when the idea was floated, almost 8000 people have watched his latest video in three weeks, far more than what would have heard him speaking in a church and that number will keep climbing.

While the Free Methodist Church in Canada's Foundational Courses and the Archbishop of Canterbury's efforts come from a denomination, many of the other alternative forms of theological education are coming from the grassroots of the church. Motivated local church leaders striving to make a difference in their communities. Whether that will be online or offline in churches and third spaces, in partnership with existing educational institutions or creating new ones, how it shapes up and we decide to view new forms of education will go a long way in shaping how we see church.

Discipleship

This is related to the discussion on theological education but we can't ignore the issue of discipleship or lack of it in local churches.

In his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, Ron Sider points out that evangelicals do a rather poor job of living out what we preach. In fact in some areas that evangelicals profess to care about, we tend to live worse then those we profess to want to "save". Robert Webber writes on this topic in his book, Ancient Future Evangelism where he suggests that discipleship is a forgotten practice in many churches, a theme which is echoed in Dallas Willard's book which is aptly named, The Great Omission. Duke University's, Stanley Hauerwas suggests that we have confused North American values with Christianity and reduced being a Christian to being a good neighbor and good American [or Canadian]. Eugene Peterson simply asks that how can we know so much and live so badly. Both Eugene Peterson and Dallas Willard talk about the church services.

Eugene Peterson says this,

The operating biblical metaphor regarding worship is sacrifice. We bring ourselves to the altar and let God do to us what God will. We bring ourselves to the eucharistic table, entering into that grand fourfold shape of the liturgy that shapes us: taking, blessing, breaking, giving—the life of Jesus taken and blessed, broken and distributed; and that eucharistic life now shapes our lives as we give ourselves, Christ in us, to be taken, blessed, broken and distributed in lives of witness and service, justice and healing.

But this is not the American way. The major American innovation in the congregation is to turn it into a consumer enterprise. Americans have developed a culture of acquisition, an economy that is dependent on wanting and requiring more. We have a huge advertising industry designed to stir up appetites we didn't even know we had. We are insatiable. It didn't take long for some of our colleagues to develop consumer congregations. If we have a nation of consumers, obviously the quickest and most effective way to get them into our churches is to identify what they want and offer it to them. Satisfy their fantasies, promise them the moon, recast the gospel into consumer terms—entertainment, satisfaction, excitement and adventure, problem-solving, whatever. We are the world's champion consumers, so why shouldn't we have state-of-the-art consumer churches?

Dallas Willard says something similar but in just three sentences,

We must flatly say that one of the greatest contemporary barriers to meaningful spiritual formation in Christlikeness is overconfidence in the spiritual efficacy of 'regular church services,' of whatever kind they may be. Though they are vital, they are not enough. It is that simple.

Even if we get every other aspect of church right and people do engage with us again. What do they get when they get here. An entire "discipleship industry" has formed within the church trying to sell me an answer to that question and there are a lot of different opinions.

As technology and culture change, it changes the world in which we learn in. What would have been considered deviant behaviour a generation ago isn't questioned today as being abnormal. I remember reading a book on how young Christians needed to act and it concentrated on issues like how long should your hair be and if sideburns are okay. It was as funny to read then as it is today but it does go a long ways in determining what we saw were important things back then. Today, things have changed. A friend showed me his high school son's instant messenger buddy list. Every single one of them was a sexual reference. While we were talking about that, a song came over by an underage artist talking about sex acts with her boyfriend. What does the church look like in a culture that is changing, materialistic, confused, and intolerant of how it sees the church being intolerant? While the much of the discussion centers on the forms we use for discipling, statements from many theologians suggest that we may have to rethink what a Christian is in today's world.

If there is good news in all of this, it is that many Free Methodists are having these kinds of discussions all over the place, both formally (like at last years Ecclesiology Study Commission) and informally. Many of those voices will go into papers and ideas to presented at the next General Conference and of course are being discussed in local churches. As I told a colleague not that long ago, some of us are too young to have experienced the "good old days" of the church but this is the time that God wanted us to be here for and there is something exciting about that.

This and that

• The Freehouse lives again tonight but you probably already knew that.
• Was with a group of church leaders this week and the phrase "less desirable people" was used a couple of times in relation to the poor. I could write a book on the implications of that phrase for the church. It was disheartening to hear.
• During coffee at the same meeting, some of us decided to start an alternative seminary, drawing inspiration from the Invisible College and the Disseminary. I can't imagine what we would have done if we had longer to chat.
• Spring has finally hit Saskatoon. My backyard finally lost the last of the snow and I am not wearing a jacket to work today.
• Nothing on the car front. I had my eye on a couple of cars at a dealer auction that a friend was going to bid on. Lee used to work there before getting transfered to the auto glass shop. With it being spring and nice out, the prices were higher. According to Lee and others, the prices fall as the summer goes on. Wendy is still lobbying for a Geo Tracker. When I pointed out how small it was, she replied with that she has an iPod Shuffle so she doesn't need that much storage. Nice reply but no.

Church of the Exiles

It was a day off today and I spent it working on some stuff for the Church of the Exiles that needed to be done.

 

The challenge of finding space for the Exiles has been harder than one would think.  We had hoped to use a chapel on the University of Saskatchewan campus but that plan was derailed when the seminary had to sell out to the University to keep going for a couple years longer and the chapel was deconsecrated.  With the University now renting it out, the last thing they wanted in a former chapel is anything religious and that option closed on us.

 

Our other options either wanted us to agree to odd conditions or if it was a pub, had liquor lisences that wouldn't allow anyone under the age of 19 or was just too expensive.  Some of the spaces we had used in the past for the worship.freehouse have been rented out or purchased because of the economic boom that Saskatoon is having which makes it hard to find spaces that have a neighborhood around them.

 

Wendy did some groundwork on Albert Community Centre (follow the link for some photos) in Saskatoon which was affordable and provided us with some decent space to use for the Freehouse.  The cool thing is that despite being in a 95 year old school and on the second floor, it is wheelchair accessible and has space for kids.

 

Oh right, speaking of the Freehouse, we thought long and hard about it but we decided to keep the Freehouse name for our monthly alternative worship gatherings.  The site has more information.

 

More information will be posted soon about our first service as an community in the next week or so.

 

Technorati Tags : Church+of+the+Exiles, church+planting, emerging+church

Contextless Links

• The full dossier on how Rudy Giuliani plans to run for President is now online
• The making of an American Al-Queda leader from the New Yorker.
• Showtime 2.0
• Andrew Jones blogging about Alan Hirsch's excellent book, The Forgotten Way
• Stock tips for the YouTube generation :: Italian politicians also discover YouTube.  Despite and entire generation using it daily, most churches still have never heard of it.
• How not to be a cultural knucklehead in a globalized world
• Some interesting thoughts on the sacred cow of the church growth movement, the vision statement
• Mennonites to lose Canadian citizenship?  Since the mistake happened in the 1920s, I think not.
• Another reason I am not a Southern Baptist :: Professor of Hebrew at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary fired because she is a women.
• When the church trades in its language
• Is the Reform (that's Refooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorm) Party dead?  When in doubt, ask a Liberal in Calgary.
• Barak Obama meets his first "swift boating" of the election year.
• Microsoft got caught with it's hand in the Wikipedia jar
• You may kiss the chef's ring

The Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future Conference

The conference is now online

Join church and ministry leaders, theologians and laity for the inaugural conference on The Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future—a challenge issued for evangelicals to rediscover their common mission and be energized by the Holy Spirit for ministry!

It has a pretty good list of speakers to learn from.  David Fitch has a good blog post on the conference here.

 

The Speakers include, Brian McLaren, Frederica Mathews-Green, Aaron Flores, Martin Marty, The Call and the Future of Evangelicalism, Lauren Winner.

 

December 7-9, at Northern Seminary.  Now you know.

Tim Keller on Emergent

Darryl Dash lead me to this conversation with Tim Keller.

TK: If you define evangelicalism in a John Stott kind of way, the seeker movement is inside evangelicalism. The emergent church is moving away from orthodoxy. In places like Yale, there is a post-liberal emphasis on the text that shows a distinction from old liberalism. This emergent group is really much like this group. Emergent will never really grow as they will not plant churches or build colleges. They may produce some writers… but that is probably about all.

JT: Is emergent growing?

TK: It is producing pundits, but not community and institutions.

If Rev. Tim Keller is talking about Emergent Village as an organization is pretty correct.  Emergent Village seeks to bring people together, including those in seminaries and churches to dialogue and learn about each other.  If he is talking about the emerging church, he seems to be missing something and that would be hundreds of church plants across North America and Europe in a variety of expressions.  What are those if not church plants?  Emergent and groups like Resonate are not church planting organizations but work with church planters.  They may not form seminaries (although how many movements form seminaries that are under a decade old) but they work with those in seminaries.  As far as producing pundits, most of the authors that have written about this are pastors and church leaders, you know, the kind of people who are a part of and have formed communities of faith.

I should offer up this disclaimer and mention that I am a part of the Emergent Co-ordinating Group.

Technorati Tags : Tim+Keller, emergent

Contextless Links

• A bunch of theologians who disagree with the emerging church gather together to critique the emerging church.  More of the same and it misses the mark.
• Brian McLaren in the Washington Post
• The Economist on the risks ahead for the global economy :: Five major risks threaten the world economy. Three centre on the United States: renewed sharp increases in the current-account deficit leading to a crash of the dollar; a budget profile that is out of control; and an outbreak of trade protectionism. A fourth relates to China, which faces a possible hard landing from its recent overheating. The fifth is that oil prices could rise to $60-70 per barrel even without a major political or terrorist disruption, and much higher with one.
• How to stay secure when working from public hotspot locations :: The other alternative is the patented Jordon Cooper approach and that is to have no interesting data on your laptop at all.
• Worst hockey logos of all time :: My hometown Saskatoon Blades are on the list and I agree, the angry bulldozer was horrible.
• Fire hits Saskatoon Mendel Art Gallery ::  The fire department says smoke may have damaged some artworks and paintings in the front half of the building.  Updated information on the gallery's blog.
• Wendy's weblog gets about 100 readers a day but a lot of spam.  According to her site, Akismet has blocked 1260 pieces of comment spam.  That is almost enough for me to switch to Wordpress.  Speaking of Wendy, she has started a series every Monday on the hardest working dog on the internet.  "That was easy".
• Why 9/11 conspiracy theories won't go away
• CEO Bloggers are becoming more common
• The Gospel and Culture Network has just redesigned their website.  It looks good.
• The Church at the End of Modernity :: Darryl Dash's latest article in Christian Week.
• Providence Seminary and Winnipeg's YWAM is holding a Discipleship Training School ::  Our Discipleship Training School (DTS) is a five month intensive in spiritual and missional formation. The first three months concentrates on engaging students in a holitistic discipleship experience that challenges the mind, heart and body in a praxis oriented program. Offered in the heart of Winnipeg's West End, students will integrate in one of the city's most culturally diverse, inner city neighbourhoods. Our emphasis on urban missions means that as part of the community, students will engage the realities of poverty, injustice, racism and much more, all the while have the opportunity to respond in exciting new ways. The next two months are spent on an international, cross-cultural missions service outreach, where students will begin to explore the implication of what they have learned beyond simple application. Again with an urban emphasis, students will participate in "preaching" the Gospel with their whole selves- in word and deed. Our last school served in restoring the tsunami devastated community of the famous Phi Phi Island in southern Thailand, while this school is planning on working with IDP camps and other opportunities of northern Uganda.
• Reggie Bush broke the rules and will get away with it.  I would love to see a NFL rule that suspends players if it is found out they knowingly broke NCAA rules.  I agree with Dan Wetzel, USC deserves to lose its National Championship.

More on Clint Brown

Richard Cleaver has also posted some thoughts on Clint Brown here, here, and here and like me has generated some comments from people that didn't appreciate his view that a pastor should live like a king and quotes this article.

Some wonder why an entertainer such as Brown shouldn’t be able to live like a rock star just because his other job is pastor.

“Christian music stars live very, very well,” said Charisma’s Grady. “If they become a pastor, does that mean that they need to live in a duplex?”

The Browns’ 4,455-square-foot home in Alaqua Lakes in Seminole County is furnished with a $50,000 home entertainment center and a $5,000 pool table. Among their assets: $300,000 in jewelry, according to the divorce file.

“In his world, it may not be out of line,” said Martin Glickstein, a Maitland CPA who prepares clergy tax returns. “This guy is obviously very public, a performer. In his lifestyle this is probably normal.”

Regardless of the source of income, Brown’s lifestyle is unseemly, said Steve Harper; vice president and professor of spiritual formation at Asbury Theological Seminary in Orlando.

“The Bible teaches that spiritual leaders are held to a higher standard, by the very public nature of our ministry,” Harper said. “We have to be careful about our image. . . . We simply cannot live without accountability as spiritual leaders.”

Of course Richard and I both could be wrong and all pastors need $300,000.00 in bling.  I have a feeling that Eugene Peterson might have something to say about this.

“American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.

A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been deserted…. It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills.

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns–how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.

Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.

The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.”

Technorati Tags : Clint+Brown

Another view of Lebanon

The academic dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary is angry at evangelical Christians, Israel, Hezbollah, the U.S., and the international community.  He has a column in Christianity Today that challenges the evangelical right on Lebanon.

 

Dr. David Gushee offers a response to his column and Martin Arcand offers up a reply.

David Gushee's gracious response also, in his "Open Letter to Dr. Martin Accad" that Christianity Today published, gives me the desire to be picked up from the roadside despite my wounds. At the end of this weekend I have more hope, because I have discovered life in a part of the church's heart that I had thought dead. Thanks, David, and thank you to the new friends I have made.

The entire exchange is worth reading and again it lays out the complexity of the region.via

 

Technorati Tags : Lebanon, Israel

Blogger Robert Scoble to leave Microsoft

I know that many of you don't care about this but how often do wire services write stories when a mid-level manager leaves Microsoft? Reuters has a great article on him and how influential a weblog and freedom to write honestly on it can be to an organization, even one the size of Microsoft. I think how AKMA changed the way I think of Seabury or how Ryan Bolger made me rethink Fuller Seminary.

While earning Microsoft a newfound reputation for openness that counteracted its reputation as arrogant business partner, Scoble also came to define the paradox of the corporate blogger as both personal commentator and informal corporate spokesman.

Scoble played multiple roles in and outside Microsoft. Inside, he was a kind of roving reporter, exposing the thinking of more than 700 employees through interviews available to the public on a Microsoft corporate blog called Channel 9.

Outside, he became known for his commentary on Internet industry trends through his blog, Scobilizer, and via a book he co-wrote with Shel Israel titled: "Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers."

Using his blog as a soapbox, Scoble came to personify a new style of corporate honesty in which he publicly spoke his mind on controversial topics. He was often willing to judiciously criticize Microsoft or praise its most fierce competitors.

By resisting the role of corporate propagandist, he has won a following among millions of blog watchers as an insightful commentator on blogging, the software industry and the insular world of high-tech culture.

News of his departure broke in classic blog fashion when Andy Plesser, a New York technology publicist, posted a note on his video blog at http://www.beet.tv that said Scoble had let slip that he was joining PodTech. "It got out before I was completely ready to talk about it," Scoble acknowledged.

Like many bloggers, Scoble mixed in frequent musing about his personal life with his observations about developments within Microsoft and around the Internet. Frequent readers knew he earned a salary of "less than $100,000" and that, last month, his mother had suffered a sudden stroke, which resulted in her death, according to other bloggers, on May 25.

In his new job, Scoble said his salary was over $100,000 and accompanied by "a quite aggressive stock option" offer that could make him wealthy if his new company succeeds. "If we make this thing fly, I make more money than I would at Microsoft. If it fails, I don't," he told Reuters.

Scoble, a software marketer who picked up on the just emerging blogging trend in 2000, said he had told Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Balmer that he wanted to "put a human face on Microsoft and he took me up on that."

Microsoft's willingness to give Scoble freedom to publish his often outspoken views in turn fostered an appreciation of the changes going on inside Microsoft that softened up its reputation for being a monopolistic destroyer of start-ups.

Best of luck to Robert and Podtech.net.

Is Emergent the new Christian Left?

Leadership Journal asks...

In December, Brian McLaren was arrested along with 115 other activists while peacefully protesting the federal budget that he believes unfairly treats the poor. As one of the most visible participants in Emergent Village, McLaren’s increasingly outspoken political views has some wondering—is Emergent a new camp for Christian liberalism?

Tony Jones responds

Honestly, I care little about these critiques. They come from those who either have no idea what Emergent is all about and/or could not possibly be persuaded from their position anyway.

On the other hand, I'm currently hearing and reading that Emergent is part of the "New Christian Left." Mark Driscoll, for instance, has recently drawn a line in the sand between "emerging evangelicals" and "emergent liberals." He places himself in the former camp, and I assume he'd assign me to the latter. Others, like Ed Stetzer, have similarly attempted to divvy up the emerging church. Stetzer gives three labels: relevants, reconstructionists, and revisionists. Again, I can assume that I'm among the lattermost, whose "prescriptions fail to take into account the full teaching of the Word of God," according to Stetzer. Yet another Christian leader has recently accused us of becoming one with Jim Wallis, Sojourners, and the Christian Left.

The problem with all of these critiques is that they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of Emergent Village. We are a group of friends—about 20 in 1997, and now in the thousands—who are committed to doing God's Kingdom work together, regardless of our theological, ideological, and political differences. Are we friends with Jim Wallis? Yes! And are there Bush-loving neocons among us? Yes! Emergent is a loose collection of folks who feel that true, robust conversation about issues that matter has been chilled out of modern Christian institutions (seminaries, mega-churches, denominations, and para-church groups, to name a few). We're trying to make a place to bring conversation back.

Thus, we have friends among us who think that small government, free market economies are the solution to poverty, and others who favor federal programs and higher taxes—honestly, this is an ongoing conversation within the Emergent friendship. But we all agree that something must be done about extreme poverty, especially in Africa.

Within Emergent are Texas Baptists who don't allow women to preach and New England lesbian Episcopal priests. We have Southern California YWAMers and Midwest Lutherans. We have those who hold to biblical inerrancy, and others trying to demythologize the scripture. We have environmental, peacenik lefties, "crunchy cons," and right wing hawks.

I suppose it's easy for those who stand outside of Emergent Village looking in to credit the politics or theology of a few to the whole group, but that's inaccurate. And I can understand the frustration of those who want to criticize us and box us in when we say that we don't play by the old rules, that we can't be categorized as "left" or "right," "evangelical" or "mainline."

But, I think those same critics will only be more frustrated as the tide of those rebelling against a commodified and domesticated Jesus gain momentum. If the mainstream media is a harbinger, then I'd say that recent columns by Gary Wills and Andrew Sullivan show that a tipping point is just around the corner. Jesus really wasn't a Democrat or a Republican, and he won't be domesticated by political agendas. I do, however, believe that he will inhabit the robust and respectful dialogue about ideas that matter.

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 “