Fischer on Halloween

I've always been a fan of author John Fischer, from the time when he wrote the back page article of CCM magazine and later in his insightful and encouraging books. One of my early favourites was Real Christians Don't Dance, although the second in that series, True Believers Don't Ask Why is absolutely brilliant in its treatment of "Ask, Seek, Knock" being part of the entire Christian journey, not just up until we become followers of Jesus in the first place.

One of John's more recent books is Fearless Faith: Living Beyond the Walls of Safe Christianity, and he tackles a favourite theme of his: getting beyond Christian subculture and being a redemptive part of the culture around us. In one of the chapters, John writes about Halloween, and so for a Halloween post, here's a quote from John Fischer:

"The more acceptable Christian thing to do now on Halloween is to close up the house and have an alternative party for our kids at church. The party usually has a harvest or biblical character theme -- no ghosts or goblins allowed. Though I understand how this safer alternative came to be, I wonder whether a blanket boycott is the only way to handle this controversial holiday. Is this just one more time when we as Christians isolate ourselves from the rest of our culture for religious reasons apparent only to us? Have we really thought through what our dark houses are saying to the rest of the block while we're off having our alternative party? I can hear the neighbourhood kids shuffling by our house, saying, "Don't go there, they don't give anything." Is this what we want to be known for in the community -- a dark house on the one night you can be guaranteed neighbors will visit?

"If Satan comes out on Halloween, he doesn't go back into hiding the next morning. Regardless of the origins of Halloween (and there appears to be little agreement about this, even among historians), what we have today is a culture-wide event that is more concerned with pretending than it is with the underworld... If Satan wins anything on this day, he may win more through the darkened homes of Christians than through anything else."

Of course, if for conscience's sake, some of you do not feel the freedom to participate, feel free to send me your candy.

X-Box meets iPod

Sounds sorta like a classic "Frankenstein Versus The Mummy" kind of Hallowe'en B-movie, don't it?

It all started innocently enough.

My eldest daughter Jo got to wondering recently, "What would happen if Microsoft tried to copy the iPod (since Microsoft is always trying to copy Macintosh)?"

A few creative ideas, a little bit o' Photoshop savvy (Jo is becoming quite the digital artist), and voila! The X-Pod:


Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Stormin' Norm

I know I've mentioned this before, but finding good worship songwriters is hard at times, and so when I'm aware of some who are writing good songs, I like to point them out.

I've mentioned Chris Tomlin before, as his skills as a word-smith are really good. He's written quite a few of the newer worship songs that have thoughtful, biblically-based lyrics. There's a lot of sappy or lyrically-weak worship songs around, although I think that's always been true in any generation -- some of the old hymns work for people, but some of the songs in the old hymnal hardly ever got the time of day. My parents' church had a song in their hymnbook called "God of Concrete, God of Steel", which mostly seemed to be a recitation of all the modern elements of construction and electronics. It wasn't doctrinally wrong, or anything, just silly. It just didn't seem to fit with "How Great Thou Art", "How Marvelous", or "My Jesus, I Love Thee".

Stuart Townsend's "In Christ Alone" has to be one of the best songs I've heard in awhile -- lyrically deep and well-written, and musically very much a modern "hymn" (with rock instrumentation, but c'mon -- listen to the structure of the song: it's a hymn).

Norm Strauss has been a good friend for many years. We've played together numerous times in different cities, including a great worship time at the YWAM base in Los Angeles a few years ago.

Norm has always impressed me not only with his lyrical and musical gifts, but also his humility and genuine warmth and friendliness. Norm's first instrument was actually the drums, but he's also an amazing guitar player, and a fine singer/songwriter as well.One of the songs from Norm's most recent album (Restore Us) that I've really been struck by is "You and Me Alone". Norm's notes in the CD cover about this song are succinct: "This song was written during a time when I was in a serious wrestling match with God. He won."

You and Me Alone

Take all I am, and all I have gained
Lay me bare to the bone
Shake the foundations and see what remains
It's just You and me, alone
'Til it's just You and me alone

So tear down the borders that I have built
Crush the walls, stone by stone
Destroy my resistance, that I hold so strong
'Til it's just You and me, alone
You and me alone

(Lay me down)
Let this place be an altar
(Lay me down)
Let this death be complete
(Lay me down)
Let this song be a marker-stone
That others can easily see

(Lay me down)
Like a drink that is poured out
(Lay me down)
Like a seed that must die
(Lay me down)
So I can rise in the morning
While the graveclothes fall down at my feet
It's just You and me
- words & music by Norm Strauss (2001)

St. Paul & Rick Whats-his-face

I finally found something that all the emerging and anti-emerging blogs have in common: they all dislike Rick the Warren because of his Purpose Driven Everything. The anti-emergents foam at the mouth about Ricky being a false prophet with a false gospel; the emergents slap their foreheads and moan about the selling out of the mega-church, lack of true community, etc.

By now most people are aware that Starbucks has decided to include a quotation from Rick in their series of "As I See It" messages on the sides of grande- and venti-sized cups. Anti-emergents (who can't seem to tell the difference between PDL and the emerging church) are upset because the gospel message isn't "clear enough", which to them just proves that Rick is a False Teacher.

The message is as follows:

You are not an accident.
Your parents may not have planned you, but God did.
He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose.
Focusing on yourself will never reveal your real purpose.
You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense.
Only in God do we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our
purpose, our significance and our destiny.

For all those, emerging and not, who aren't all that impressed with Rick or PDL or Saddleback, can I still point out a similar situation that confronted St. Paul?

"While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols." (Acts 17:16)

I wouldn't want to compare Rick & PDL to idols, but Paul was distressed about idols, and many people today seem distressed about PDL.

"Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: 'Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you." (Acts 17:22-23)

St. Paul was distressed about the idols, but he still used their existence as a starting point of commonality in order to have a platform to talk about Jesus.

"When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, 'We want to hear you again on this subject.' At that, Paul left the Council. A few men became followers of Paul and believed." (Acts 17:32-34)

Why doesn't everyone, who is currently criticizing Rick or doesn't know what to make of Starbucks including a quote from him, take the opportunity to hang out at Starbucks with some of your not-yet-followers-of-Jesus friends, relatives, or co-workers and see if you can strike up a conversation with The Quote On The Cup as a starting point? Nobody ever really expected that Starbucks would print the whole Gospel on their cups (and would it fit, even on a Venti cup?), but it's a great opportunity for those who have ears to hear and are willing to step out and take some risks.

It's not unlike Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"; too many of us sat around pontificating on whether we thought Mel made the Gospel clear enough, or what we thought of the church-marketing hoopla that grew up around the movie, and not enough of us went to see it with friends and then had conversations in a pub or a Starbucks afterwards (maybe days afterwards) about the movie, and had opportunities to share our story and perhaps expand on the story of Jesus that was presented in the movie.

Let's not make that mistake again.

Emerging Generations: V

In Postmodern Pilgrims, author & professor Leonard Sweet described a four-part model that he felt would be a good starting point in ministering in a postmodern context: EPIC, an acronym that stood for Experiential, Participatory, Image-driven, Connected.
For this last entry in the brief look at the Emerging Generational ministry in a church context (for those who are "in the system but not of the system", and who have thus far eluded being Fired for the Glory of God), I just wanted to comment a bit on the "P" of Sweet's acronym, "participatory".

In short, the more participatory you can make your group, the better your group will be. Youth and young adults have always learned well in community settings, and as the shift through postmodernism continues (and on through whatever postmodernism will lead to), this will only increase, not decrease in importance.

In our pursuit of making worship more participatory, we gradually adapted to a "worship jam" approach to worship over the years, where everyone brings whatever musical instrument they play (no matter how good they are at it), and participates in a whang-dang-do of worship which is quite a stretch from the organized worship-band-and-congregation style of most churches. A learned-by-history tidbit here: worship jams start to get unwieldy around 40+ participants -- meaning singers, instrumentalists (all acoustic, since there's no sound system), dancers, painters, readers of Scripture, pray-ers, and so on. In order to keep the level of participation high, it eventually becomes necessary for more than one jam to being going on, although it will feel initially as if the community is getting too spread out (but the only alternative is to make it an invitation-only clique, which is obviously counter to the idea of the advancing Kingdom).

When you adopt a highly participatory approach to teaching, don't be surprised if you're soon inundated with more teenagers than you anticipated. Once word gets out that there's a safe place to talk openly about faith and life issues, people start showing up. Over the years, we have found that many not-yet-followers of Jesus would come to our weekly youth gatherings. The puzzling thing was that we weren't doing anything remotely "seeker" oriented; we were doing creative, but intense, God-in-your-face worship and Bible study. But all these pre-Christians kept showing up, week after week, anyway.

In order to cope with a youth group of around 70, with almost half of them not being followers of Jesus, we had to develop an understanding of how to keep the meetings extremely participatory -- a favourite method was the "agree/disagree", where the group would have to go to one of the two ends of the room when a controversial statement was read (by me, usually). Originally designed to help churched youth get shaken out of their Christian subculture, the goal was to get them talking about the tough questions and being honest about their faith, their doubts, their commitment, and their struggles.

When you suddenly add about 40% pre-Christians to the mix, they assume that they can be as open as the church youth are, which can lead to some interesting tangents and rabbit trails! Eventually, in order to give some framework for how we would choose to act in the midst of an incredibly wide range of Christian denominational backgrounds and completely unchurched teenagers, I came up with "Robby's Rules":
There's a whole story behind the "squirrels" thing, but it turned into a fun inside joke for the group as to why we weren't into "sunday school" answers that had not been thought through.

Bottom line: if we want youth and young adults to "own" their faith, we have to give them a safe place to wrestle through their honest questions and doubts. By nature of this wrestling, a highly participatory approach is absolutely crucial. A community of peers and leaders who have dedicated themselves to be spiritual mothers and fathers (1 Corinthians 4:15) is the best setting for this "safe place to take risks" to happen.

Emerging Generations: IV

Just a few thoughts on youth retreats, youth conferences, their differences and opportunities, and how to approach them.

In a perfect world, it would be great to have one retreat and one youth conference per school year. In this perfect world, the retreat would be in the early fall, just after that school year began, and the conference would be in the spring -- April or May, perhaps.

A youth retreat is (should) be a gathering for just your group. A retreat is a time away from the regular grind, to focus on God. As a youth group, this is the time of year you want to be focussing on building community. If your church follows a typical model, you'll have just inherited a new group of Grade Nine's who need to be integrated, and the new about-to-grad seniors will get an opportunity to die to last year's cliques and include the new students as well. A retreat is a great venue for community building, early in the new school year.

So, keep the retreat as "organic" as possible; don't bring in guest speakers. Make it an in-house time, of sharing together as a group. Focus everything you do on this retreat on building relationships and having a growing expectation of seeing what God will do in and through the group. Remind each other of God's previous workings with the group.
A youth conference, on the other hand, is made up of many churches, and of course will have guest speakers and worship leaders (bands). The setting is vibrant due to the sheer numbers of attenders. The conference, again due to the larger numbers, will be less personal and more programmed, but that's neither good nor bad. To quote Brother Maynard, "it is what it is".

This venue is an excellent opportunity for your now-in-community group to spend a weekend away where all the hard work is being done by other people, and all of you -- youth and leaders alike -- are in exactly the same place: receiving, interacting, and being touched by God. It's a great opportunity for the leaders to again model by their example of openness and responding, and to share in the new things that God is doing via the teaching and worship.

These conferences can act as "stones of remembrance", such as when the Israelites of old would build stone altars to remind themselves of "God did this". Youth conferences can be present-day stones of remembrance, times that the group can talk about (perhaps at the next fall retreat?) where they were significantly impacted or challenged.

And, as another community-building experience, there's nothing quite as good for building relationships as the time-honoured "ROAD TRIP". Discourage the use of iPods; play a rotating selections of CD's during the trip (or hook somebody's iPod into the vehicle's system), but keep interaction a priority. iPods are best reserved for the trip home, when everyone is tired and the driver just wants to concentrate on driving.
If we view retreats and conferences this way, I would submit that we'll be more proactively in tune with the opportunities provided by both venues to model and join in ministry to, with, and from youth.

Emerging Generations: III

Dann Spader, who wrote the original material for Sonlife Youth Strategies, had this interesting observation to make about the average youth group and approach to youth ministry:

"Jesus spent the first year of His ministry teaching His followers who He was. They had a wrong concept of the coming Messiah. They thought He'd come as a conquering King - instead Jesus came as a suffering servant. Jesus knew that only as people understood who He was and why He came, only then would they begin to have the right motivation for following Him. Christ's disciples slowly began to see that He was different than their perception of the coming Messiah.

"Those we minister to are no different. People have wrong concepts of who Christ is, what He has done for us, and what He asks of us. It is very difficult to yield your life to someone you do not know properly. Proper motivation to serve and minister stems from a proper understanding of Jesus Christ."

Knowing Whom you serve, and what He wants of us, is absolutely crucial. However, the number of times that people get the WRONG idea about Jesus is appalling. Somehow, far too many Christians live in a legalistic manner, trying to earn God's approval or at least avoid His disapproval, thinking that Jesus is generally disappointed in them, if not outright angry.

"Performance orientation" in our walk with Jesus is only going to bring condemnation and death to us - and that's what we'll reap in the youth if we teach or model anything but that God has unconditionally accepted us in Jesus.

We love because He first loved us. We serve because He served us. We give our lives for Him because He gave His life for us. Any motivation for serving that is not rooted in our being acceptable to God in Christ will result in striving, legalism, and condemnation.

Three things we need to repeatedly emphasize:

1. Who Jesus is.
   
2. What Jesus has done for us.
   
3. Who we are in Jesus.

The goal is youth and leaders alike who love Jesus. Everything that we do or say should be done out of this love for Jesus. Law, legalism, "putting the screws" to people (often in the guise of "challenging") is anti-grace, and only results in a spirit of manipulation and control in leaders, and condemnation and defeat in the lives of the youth.

Checklist
Observe our own actions

• What is the tone of our life & actions?
  
• Is it a tone of law, performance or "doing" for God, or is it a tone of love, grace & acceptance?

Observe the people around you

• Why are people doing what they're doing - because they want to, or because they think they have to?
  
• Do they talk about God and His goodness, or about their performance (or lack of it) before God?

Teach the Character of God

• Does our teaching worship God through emphasizing who He is, or do we emphasize man and only what we are to do?
  
• Are we teaching the character of God, or only data about Him?

Emphasize grace and acceptance

In our conversations, do we emphasize God and His character, or man and his efforts? In our actions and lifestyle do we emphasize performance for God, or grace and acceptance, out of which flows good works? In our own spiritual formation, do we only see what we are to do for God, or can we see God in all His glory and what He has done for us?

Emerging Generations: II

Today we celebrated the day, twelve years ago in 1993, when the Small Bear we call "Caleb" was born. Even as a young child, Caleb was fascinated with musical instruments, and started playing guitar in our worship jams when he was 7. Recently, we passed that magical moment when he was playing something really cool on the guitar, and I had to ask him "hey, show me how you did that".

I was hoping that moment wouldn't come until he was at least in high school, but it was inevitable that it would come...

"This make be the place you hang your hat. This may be a stop along the way -- to other things, grand ambitions, true callings. Either way, we hope you have fun, make friends and create uplifting experiences that enrich people's daily lives."
(from "The Green Apron Book" at Starbucks)

As a pre-thought to the second post on emerging generational ministry, the above quote from Starbucks reminded me of a truism of ministry (youth and otherwise) -- we're only co-travellors on the journey for a season. Yes, there are some people who we walk alongside for many years, but more often than not in our very transient society, we are co-mingling our story with the stories of others for only seasons of varying length. Especially with high school and college students.

How this applies to youth and young adult ministry is simple: (A) relax, you're only one part of the total journey of their lives; you don't have to pressure yourself (or them) to be completely, definitively discipled during the time your paths coverge, but at the same time, (B) don't miss opportunities to be a part of the lives of youth, because you don't know how long you'll be together with them.

For example, look at the two leather-clad guys in the picture here. One of them, of course, is me. The guy giving me the hug committed suicide about three years after this photo was taken. You don't know how long your journey will coincide with others -- invest wisely.

---

The second building block, as developed by Sonlife Youth Strategies and pomo-morphed for this blog, is "Healthy Group Self-Image".

You're thinking to yourself, "Wow, how 80's is that? 'Group self-image'? C'mon, give me a break..."

Well, let's morph the concept a bit:

Instead of "healthy group self-image", let's focus on our "tribal identity" -- it's not exclusive, elitist, or 'cutting edge'; it's just our understanding of the unique chemistry of the group of youth & youth adults that God has given us the privilege of knowing, in the context of our community and our church relationships (where applicable).

If our group is a "safe place to take risks", where people are accepted just as they are, and we've set an ethos that says that no questions are out-of-bounds, and no-one will be treated judgmentally if they say something or hold an opinion that is something less than Christian perfection, people will feel that it's a safe place to bring their friends -- who should be treated as honoured guests, not evangelism projects (see George Hunter's excellent ideas on honouring guests in The Celtic Way of Evangelism).

Groups have self-image just as much as the individuals who are in the group do. If we find ourselves "challenging" the group to bring their friends, that should be our first clue that we're probably putting the cart before the horse. A group where people feel loved & accepted, and where God is at work, is a group that people will bring their friends to. If the group isn't attractive even to our own youth, why would they want to bring their friends?

Definition: a healthy sense of our tribal identity is the mental picture (impression) that the group members (AND leaders) have of the group - do they look forward to coming, and do they come with an expectation of meeting God in their community of faith, or do they come because it's what they do on Wednesdays, or their parents made them, or they feel some sense of church loyalty to the leaders even though the group "does nothing for them"?

Checklist:

• Ask yourself: how do I feel about the group? Ask the group. Treat their answers with respect.
  
• Focus on the group's strengths, not on their weaknesses (I.e. if not too many show up one night, focus on the people there, don't look discouraged and moan about who's not there)
  
• Do you have an expectation that God is present and working in the group?
  
• Is it really okay for people to "belong before they believe"? Do the people presently in your group understand that?
  
• Remember (and tell each other) how God has already worked and is working in the lives of those in your group. Celebrate the good times.

Emerging Generations: I

During my six years of ministry alongside George Mercado, all of the youth leaders who worked with George were introduced to Sonlife Youth Strategies (as it was called then); Sonlife is a ministry that flourished big time in the 1980's, with its focus on developing a discipleship-based approach to youth ministry that was aimed at training youth leaders to train youth to be people of impact in their high schools.

A lot of churches adopted Sonlife's approach, with varying results. It's success (or failure) seemed to largely depend (surprise, surprise) on the hearts of the leaders who were involved. (Not forgetting that if God doesn't move, then any of our efforts, no matter how well-intentioned and strategized, won't count for squat.)

Some of you may be ready to -- as my dad likes to say -- "run screaming into the woods" because I've mentioned an 80's ministry model. "Lord have mercy! Is he going to suggest something so modern as a ministry model???"

Try to relax. With some creative reconstructing, it can still provide a framework (NOT a program) that may be helpful.

First off, Sonlife challenged us as youth leaders to think long and hard on what was called a "Description of a Discipled Student" (DDS). Simply put, they were asking us, "If you 'successfully' disciple a high school student, what will he/she look like after being discipled by you? What are the marks of discipleship? How will you know if you're being effective in disicpling or not?"

The old saying -- "aim at nothing and that's what you'll hit" -- is still true in a postmodern context. What does discipleship (spiritual transformation) look like for teenagers, and what is your role?

When I was taking the training, oh so many years ago, it was terrifying to see some of the incredibly long lists that some youth leaders (not any of George's crew, thankfully) were coming up with: verses to memorize, activities to do, testimonies to give, Sunday School classes to teach, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

I had only two things on my list:

1. That each young person learn how to dig into the Scriptures for themselves, and learn to let the Holy Spirit guide them into truth, and
   
2. That each young person be able to thoughtfully critique whatever they hear, from Christians or non-Christians, and evaluate what they're hearing.

I still stand by those two statements; if we can accomplish this, we've equipped them for life, not just rammed them through some church-ified program that may make them look good but hasn't really equipped them for life in the real world.

So, I would encourage postmodern youth leaders to start there: what does a discipled teenager look like, and what is your role (as you work hard to NOT usurp the Holy Spirit's role in their lives) in the journey of spiritual transformation in a youth community?

Sonlife had what they called the "Six Building Blocks" of effective youth ministry. No matter how many ways you try to re-package or re-invent ministry paradigms, most people end up with the same six. So, rather than re-inventing the wheel all over again, I'm going to attempt to put the Six Blocks into pomergent-speak in the next few posts.

---

The first area that Sonlife always stressed was the "Atmosphere of Love & Acceptance"; we've often used the term "a safe place to take risks" in more recent ministry settings with teenagers and 20-somethings.

To summarize:

What makes our home group a "safe place"? How will people who attend the groups be able to tell?

It starts with us. What we model, becomes "normal" for the group. Youth leadership means risk-taking in the areas of being transparent and vulnerable with the group. If we act like "having the right answers at all times" is the greatest importance in a group setting, that is what our group will learn from us - act like you're all together even if you're not (you don't want to look unspiritual, do you?). We are always communicating, even non-verbally; the question is what are we communicating in our words, actions, and the ethos that we set for our group(s)?
Ongoing checklist:

• Evaluate our own lives - do we honestly love those God has called us to? Or are we just "chaperones"?
  
  
• Are we "above" the youth, or do we share the same spiritual journey? Do the youth believe that we don't see ourselves as "above" them by the way we talk to and treat them?
  
  
• Evaluate your own ability to communicate love. Key question: do THEY know we love them? How can they tell?
  
  
• Create situations in which love can be expressed. Is love flowing in the group, or not just from leaders or just from group members?

The last item in that list could raise the issue of authenticity in youth ministry -- ie. "create situations" could come across as fake and manipulative. Without going into a long diatribe about it, allow me to suggest that there's a difference between 'manipulation' and 'influence'.

Manipulation is orchestrating events (and attempting to force people) towards a pre-determined destination. Influence, on the other hand, means that we can clearly set what our personal direction is (based on the words of Jesus), but it's an invitation to the youth to respond to; no coercion involved. It's still their decision as to how they will respond.

More to follow...

(Youth) Pastors That Make a Difference

Somewhere around the early 90's, I started to notice that the younger generations were changing -- again. As someone who started out in youth ministry 21 years ago, I believe that "change" is the only constant in ministry to and among youth. The way I originally discovered myself becoming more "emerging" in my outlook was completely due to the fact that I worked with youth and young adults. We didn't call it "postmodernism" at the time, we just realized that things were changing, and we needed to change as well.

Being in youth ministry -- coupled with a healthy respect for a missiological understanding of the advancing Kingdom -- was the 'back door' that ushered me into the present emerging conversation.

The late Mike Yaconelli wrote a provocative article a few years back that has become -- in my observations of youth pastors today -- not only an accurate assessment of our church culture, but also an increasingly pervasive experience for many of the young pastors that I meet, here in Kelowna as well as other parts of Canada and the United States.

Yaconelli's Getting Fired for the Glory of God is an eerily accurate assessment. If you don't believe me, befriend some youth pastors, earn their trust, and listen to their stories. Mike's comments in the article are grievously accurate.

I have met or heard the stories of youth pastors -- just this year -- who have been fired for not "bringing in the numbers", for choosing a discipling ministry model over a big-event-driven attractional model, and for daring to question the corporate approach that too many churches are falling prey to.

My interest in breaking down inter-generational division is still strongly held, but for the sake of some of the youth pastors who are currently trying to find their way "in the system", I will be posting some thoughts on youth ministry in a postmodern culture in the coming days.

Tripod

This is our newest family member, Tripod the three-legged cat. This is the little furry gem that Brother Maynard's young daughter described as "the kitty that walks in the front and hops in the back". Tripod has declared war on the enemies of our household, and is engaged in a fierce and determined battle to protect us from toilet paper, leaves that Wendy was trying to dry, newspapers, homework that is left out, and unattended computer keyboards.

I think Tripod has a promising career as either a paper-shredder or a ghost writer for a blog (although somebody will need to do some translation).

The Emerging Grace Chronicles

This was originally started as a response to Emerging Grace's comment on the Brethren Hang Loose post, but as has happened once already with conversations between Grace and myself, it morphed into a post, and then became a series of posts.

I've divided this into sections for two reasons:

1. Posts that get too long don't get read, and
   
   
2. I wanted to make the comment sections specific to each part, in order to keep the flow of thought on each question/answer separate, because I'd really like to hear peoples' reactions.

Grace's original comment to the Brethren, Hang Loose post is as follows:

"That is incredible. It is amazing that it was written 35 years ago. I wonder what has happened in his life during that time. I sure hope I'm not still asking all these questions 25 years from now.

"Do you see church happening apart from the organization? Or is that not realistic considering our culture and the natural tendency to organize and institutionalize. Or do we each just go live our ministry apart from the institution?

"Still looking for answers oh wise one."

Grace, Bob Girard is the "wise one", as he's walked the whole detoxing road many years before us, worked hard at de-institutionalizing the church, seen the thrills, the fruit, the struggles and disasters along the way, and still has a vision for the church being the Body and not what he called "the glorious evangelical status quo".

When I spoke to Bob on the phone, while I was working on the Detoxing from Church article, we were discussing some of the destructured house churches that I was aware of that had not survived, and his comment was "I love house churches; I'm still committed to them, but they die so very easily."

"If they died," I asked, "does that suggest to you that they were a waste of time, or perhaps planted for the wrong reasons?"

"Not necessarily," he replied, "although sometimes God allows unhealthy house churches to die off before they poison others."

"But if they've done their job right -- equipping, releasing, building each other up -- then if they only last for a season, why is that a problem?" (Which got my mind turning in the whole area of asking Is Permanence a Value?)

Having read all four of Bob's books, which chronicle the whole journey including the dissolution of his church and the months it took him to recover from everything, I felt compelled to ask him if, knowing what he knows now, would he do it again?

"In a second," was his immedate response.

(Thus endeth Part 1 of my response to Emerging Grace)

Emerging Grace Chronicles: II

In answer to your specific questions (all my responses are, of course, only scratching the surface, and still in flux for me as well):

1. Emerging Grace asked "Do you see church happening apart from the organization?"

Absolutely. It always has, since the days of Pentecost when the believers met in the Temple, were devoted to the Apostles' teaching, and also met in homes (Acts 2:42-47). The Bible does not seem to indicate that either location (Temple or house) was superior or "more right".

Even in churches where there are healthy home groups, most pastors will tell you that the "real Body life" happens in the home groups. It's only our consumer-driven mindset that expects a Sunday morning service to meet all our spiritual needs for a week.

Part of the idolatry of church that Cindy Bryan has been writing on recently could also have included our idolatry of church services, or at very least, our excessive and unreasonable expectations of a church service. We can't experience "community" just once a week, but those who have been in house churches can tell you that they do experience real community together -- but they didn't have to stop being a part of the larger church in order to experience this together.

(I also wonder if those who "get the most out of" church services are people whose cup is filled outside the services, and their participation in the church service is but one of many touch-points for the expression of their relationship with Jesus and the Body.)

Brian McLaren wrote, once upon a time, of the metaphor of a spider web for theology; the idea was that there were numerous "anchor points" in the developed theology of different denominations that we could tether ourselves to (see Tethered to What? for some thoughts on the need for being "tethered" to something), for a fuller understanding of theology (the study and understanding of God).

If I could highjack (re-engineer) Brian's spiderweb analogy, I'd apply it to our different relational tethering points in the Body: our house group/church, the books that we're reading, the last conference we learned something from, the Christian friends we have from other churches, our involvement with any para-church ministries, the blogs that we regularly interact with, and -- yes, let's say it -- the "institutional church" whose services we may or may not attend with any regularity.

As long as none of these things becomes our ONLY source of fellowship and input, our expectations and resulting experience of it will probably be far more healthy. So, yes, I definitely see "church" happening apart from the organization, but I'm also hoping to see "church" happening within the organization as well, although never exclusively.

Emerging Grace Chronicles: III

2. Emerging Grace asked: "Or is that not realistic considering our culture and the natural tendency to organize and institutionalize?"

This can happen in house churches just as easily. I've seen it happen, and it's been sad but funny to hear them rail against the "institutional church" while acting just like it in a living room.

As much as everyone is really sick and tired of Prayer of Jabez, the author (Bruce Wilkinson) had an insightful teaching back in the late 80's where he talked about "three chairs" -- meaning generations: the first generation knew God first-hand, the second heard the stories and accepted them as true, but the third generation didn't even believe the stories and tended to walk away unless there was some miraculous intervention.

Bruce's point was that we inevitably all become "third chair" persons, even within our own generation; we get too familiar, jaded, and develop a "been there, done that" attitude towards even the things of God, let alone the church.

I would agree with Bruce that we can choose which chair we sit in; it's not unlike the parable of the four soils in Luke 8:4-15, which is usually understood as an explanation of why not everyone responds to the Gospel, but which can also represent the possibility that we can also choose our soil condition (because it can change during our lifetime, for good or ill).

If we see being "organized" as evil, then we will live in the tyranny of fear of being organized; God-given gifts of leadership will be stifled, and even the prophetic edge that some house churches have will be throttled by the new "glorious post-evangelical status quo" (to paraphrase Bob Girard).

So, any organized or unorganized gathering of Christians can either be healthy and vibrant, embittered and toxic, or -- the real danger is here -- a stagnant post-modern status quo that could result in us hearing from Jesus, "You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead." (Revelation 3:1)

It will depend a great deal on the heart attitude -- soil condition, or chair -- of the people involved. We will have to learn how to function on the edge of chaos, probably more than we'll be comfortable with, but we'll also likely resemble the followers of Jesus that He referred to in the Gospel of John: "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8)

Emerging Grace Chronicles: IV

3. Emerging Grace asked "Or do we each just go live our ministry apart from the institution?"

The short answer is "yes"; however, I've seen a number of instances where people have quite happily lived their ministry apart from the institution (meaning: apart from the blessing of the institution, the knowledge of the institution, the accolades of the institution, and the bulletin notice that details what we're up to), while still being a part of the institution.

A few years back, I was having a coversation with the leader of the band "The Levelheads" (note: this was the 80's Levelheads, not to be confused with a new band that took the same name recently) about what was essentially the same question. At the time, Jim was telling me that they were getting a lot of flak from the local churches for the style of music that they played, and that they played often in "wordly" places like bars and festivals -- hasn't anybody read the Gospels and noticed that this is exactly what Jesus was accused of: being a "friend of sinners"?

As my conversation with Jim continued, he at one point mentioned that he was bracing himself for more harrassment because their about-to-be-released next CD would probably be unacceptable to these people, as well. Jim was dreading the response, but also feeling quite determined to follow what he and his bandmates felt God was calling them to.

Now, I also knew a number of people, mostly teenagers and early 20-somethings, who had told me many stories of how Jim et al. had ministered to them when no-one else would, how they had taken these young people into their homes and clothed, fed, and loved them just as they were. These young people couldn't say enough good things about Jim and the band's involvement in their lives -- when the same church(es) that were criticizing The Levelheads had also made these "street" kids feel unwelcome in their churches.

It basically boiled down to this:

• Why was it so important for Jim and The Levelheads to have the approval (endorsement, recognition) of their church, when they already knew what God had called them to, and were seeing fruit in the lives of those they were ministering to?
  
  
• Why is it so danged important to us that we be approved, endorsed, recognized, and applauded by our Christian organizations and/or peers?
  
  
• What is it in all of us that wants -- even craves -- the approval of people?
  
  
• Have we -- inadvertantly, to be sure -- put the approval of the organization (leaders, elders, Sanhedrin) in the place of seeking the approval of Jesus (Galatians 1:10, John 12:42-43).

If we are getting our sense of approval, endorsement, and recognition from God, then we will be free to live our ministry outside the organization. And if we can live in this way, AND still be "in the system but not of the system", then we will also be examples to others of what freedom in Jesus really looks like.

(Thus endeth the Emerging Grace Chronicles)