Friend of Missional
 | You may or may not have noticed the sudden appearance of this image in the sidebar on the right, but it's been there for a little over a week. Friend of Missional is the brainchild of The Blind Beggar, and is a very concise but helpful window into the missional church paradigm. |
Leonard Sweet has often commented on discerning the difference between the content of the gospel and the container of the gospel. A quote from Sweet which I used last month included:
"The mystery of the Gospel is this: It is always the same (content) and it is always changing (containers). In fact, one of the ways you know the old, old truths are true is their ability to assume amazing and unfamiliar shapes while remaining themselves and without compromising their integrity."(Aqua Church, page 30)Why am I mentioning these resources again, and repeating the Leonard Sweet quote once more? Well, if I may be permitted a moment or two of bluntness...
I like the synopsis given by The Blind Beggar about what being "missional" in a church, para-church, or simple/house church can look like. Being missional is about adapting our methodology, language, and approach to a "foreign" culture: postmodernism. But it's NOT about changing the content of the gospel in the process.
I consider myself a part of the "emerging church conversation", and have been helped along the way by earlier books like A New Kind of Christian (which I'd still recommend), but more recent titles, like Spencer Burke's A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, make my skin crawl. HT's for great responses and critiques on Burke's writings to Bob Hyatt (Oh, Spencer) and Scot McKnight (Heretic's Guide Book Review).
But when I read the opening page of the Friend of Missional website, I feel like I'm being reminded of why I'm in the emerging conversation in the first place: to be proactively, strategically, intentionally missional in our 21st century postmodern culture, for the sake of the King and His advancing Kingdom. Or, as Andrew (TSK) Jones puts it,
"The term, 'emerging-missional church', favored by Aussies and Kiwis, seems to tie together the two strands of missio dei and missio ecclesiae in one phrase. Without the missional, emergent is just style. Without the emergent, missional pours the new wine backwards into old containers, and often without regard to context."
So, call me a Friend of Missional.
Update: September 23
Jamie Arpin-Ricci brought to my attention a recent post by Stephen Shields of "Faithmaps" -- Is the Distinction between Emerging Church and Emergent Obscurantist?, which overlaps with what I've written here. HT Jamie!
posted by Robbymac at
7:09 PM
16 Comments:
I am leaning more toward the "missional" language too. I mention it in a comment at this interesting post:
http://faithmaps.blogspot.com/2006/09/is-distinction-between-emerging-church.html
I'd love to hear your take on it (the post, not the comment)
Peace,
Jamie
Friend of Missional is a great site.
Robby,
Good points!
I followed your link to Friend of Missional earlier this week and discovered what appeared to be a treasure of interesting reading that I didn't have time for at the moment.
After reading and learning for over a year now, I realize that I don't exactly fit in with many parts of the emerging conversation, but fortunately I have discovered voices that I can relate to.
I appreciate the missional aspect because it puts hands and feet to what could otherwise end up being just a conversation. This is what inspires and challenges me and the area where I would like to see growth and change personally.
Thanks for the links!
Grace,
You should post on your feeling less of a fit with the emerging conversation.
Peace,
Jamie
Thanks for the on-ramp into the "missional church." I echo what you're saying here. This thing we are all trying to accomplish is constantly morphing...
...and it needs to in order to hold to the integrity of the gospel.
Friend of missional seems to have described missional very well. Is it as simple an issue that emerging is theoretical and missional is pragmatic? Is that why one appeals to some people and the other to the rest? I speak as a pragmatist, not as a critic of emerging.
Is there really a distinction between the emerging church and the missional church? It seems the question is surfacing because of some emerging church thinkers have the postmodern tendency to deconstruct and at that, to deconstruct and revise Evangelical theology. For others, the tendency is still apparent but only in matters that pertain to church life and mission in the 21st Century. More.
Good one, Rob. One question though.. I'm not sure contextualization is the goal. I mean, if we contextualize or enculturate the gospel, then we are going to have to change everything again in ten years. How about instead of contextualization we reinvigorate a biblical ecclesiology? That way, what we build has a chance to endure, or can be adapted and changed for sound biblical reasons rather than allowing the culture to set the agenda.
Len,
I think that contextulization has a big part to play AND that it will require us to evaluate and change things regularly. I am become more convinced of our need for intentional systematic planned abandonment in models and methods (not all, but much). What we want to endure is not the "physicality" on the church, but the DNA- thus, we do not seek to clone the church, but give birth into the continuity of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacab, etc.
Peace,
Jamie
Jamie, that sounds much more like renewed ecclesiology than contextualization..
Grace,
I'm with Jamie: please write about your thoughts on your part of the emerging conversation -- you're a thoughtful and insightful writer, and I'd enjoy hearing your take on it.
Bob,
Thanks for the link to your own site. I appreciated your thoughts.
o2thoughtful,
I don't think I'd want to reduce it to one being practical while the other is "only" theoretical; while Emergent Village may come across as mostly theoreticians, it would not be accurate to assume that they also don't represent many practitioners as well.
What "missional" has, right now, is less baggage and confusion between "emerging" and "emergent (village)"; plus, it's much easier to tell at a glance what they're about.
Aaron,
Thanks for the link to your post. Perhaps I am too "evangelical" because I think that the Kingdom is invading this world (some would label me "too Vineyard" for such a statement, but whatever cf. my earlier post Patron Saints & Centred Sets). I think we may just have to agree to disagree on that one.
Len,
Good questions. My attempt(s) at some answers: (A) yes, we'll probably have to re-enculturate the gospel again in a few years, but in some ways, isn't that the whole point of the emerging conversation anyway?
(B) I'm not all that enamoured with the idea of building something to "endure" (see here and here), but we may be saying the same thing but with different words.
Does that make sense?
I think the challenge in our current situation is that we need to recover both a renewed ecclesiology and a robust approach to contextualization. Speaking from within the evangelical ghetto, my experience has been that, on the one hand, evangelicalism has lost touch with the full expression of the gospel as good news for the renewal of creation and the breaking-in of the Kingdom into the present age. On the other hand, we've also taken a hostile, defensive stance towards culture and either in ignorance or defiance refused to revisit the forms and language in which that gospel is conveyed. So, from my perspective, we've needed renewal in both directions.
More to the point of your original post, though, I've also found myself increasingly disinterested in the approach that emergent™ has taken. Spencer's book is a good case in point - I had a chance to review it as well, and was profoundly disturbed. Spencer did interact with me a bit on my posts, but after a few days I think he gave up (unfortunately). I think what makes me most concerned is not so much the conclusions that some of the folks in the emergent mix are drawing - although I certainly have my differences there. It's more the cavalier approach towards the scriptures that I find troubling. It's the willingness to pick and choose from the text instead of submitting to all of it as authoritative, difficult as that may be at times.
Anyway - those are my thoughts in brief. Thanks for a stimulating post.
Can't we all just be friends?
(Sorry... someone had to say the cheesy after-school special line)
Rob, I also left this comment over at Jamie's space...
Jamie, just thought I'd pass this on, Pete Rollins of Ikon in Belfast said this recently about the " emerging conversation ", I think he somes up what most of us feel...
While the term ' emerging church ' is increasingly being employed to describe a well defined and well- equiped religious movement, in actual fact it is currently little more than a fragile, embryonic and diverse conversation being held between individuals over the Internet and at various small gatherings. Not only does the elusive and tentative nature of this conversation initially make it difficult to describe what, if anything, unifies those involved; the sheer breadth of perspectives held by those within the dialogue makes terms such as ' movement ', ' denomination ', and ' church ' seem somewhat inappropriate.
Our first attempt to understand this network will often leave us with a certain frustration, as its kinetic and dynamic nature seems to defy easy reduction to a single set of theological doctrines or ritualistic practices. what we are presented with instead is a diverse matrix of relationships that bridge a number of different communities. Even a cursory glance over this network will show that the participants are unified neither by a shared theological tradition, nor by an aspiration to one day develop one. The word ' emerging ' cannot, then, be understood as describing a type of becoming that is set to one day burst onto the religious scene as a single, unified, and distinct denominational perspective ( analogous to a caterpillar that is soon to break its cacon and arise as a butterfly ), or a becoming that can be carefully charted ( like the trajectory of a bullet ).
Pete, is absolutely right...We delude ourselves if we think it is anything more than that. I don't know what it is about North American church culture, maybe it's our consumeristic culture of brandnames...labels of being more value than the actual substance.
I believe every church that has made a conscious decision to move outside of its walls to engage the culture that surrounds it. And remember we can't paint every church with a broad brush stroke...each church finds itself in a different cultural context. In that context, whether the church is conscious or not...they are becoming emergent and missional. If you are really engaging, hands on, speaking, in conversation in the culture that surrounds you...you can't avoid it.
I think when labels are applied, you've automatically opened yourself up to a competion between brands. I would hope here in Canada we could keep the conversation going, learning from one another, sharing journeys...focusing on the real substance of our faith...rather than developing a brand.
I really struggle, when homegrown communities on this side of the 49th, are beginning to work things out in the context they find themselves...that we have emergent village/ friends of emergent and friends of missional setting the standard.
Hmmmm, makes me wonder...if Jesus dropped in, what brand would he most closely identify with. Hmmm, yah...something to think about.
I find it very interesting that you quote Len Sweet with his content & container idea. Indeed in Aqua church, Sweet makes such an assertion; however, elsewhere in Sweet's writings Len seems to indicate another point of view-- something more like Marshall McLuhan's classic idea. It is impossible for the content to not be affected by the container. Every method impacts and even changes the message in some way. As McLuhan said, the medium is the message. I think this is the point of Emergent (revisionist as you call them-- not sure why you call them that since they are just picking up on less than dominant themes from Christian history). Many at Emergent Village realize that the container does change the content in some way. The Missional concept also acknowledges such a viewpoint as well. Indeed, the grandfather of the missional movement-- Leslie Newbigin-- definately realized that there is no universal content and that every context changes the gospel in some way (whether positive or negative).
Justin (Fresh Dirt),
Yes, Sweet does acknowledge this, but more as a caution than a statement of certainty. Here's the fuller quote surrounding what I quoted here:
"I am a virtual fundamentalist about content. I am a virtual libertarian about containers... The mystery of the Gospel is this: It is always the same (content) and it is always changing (containers). In fact, one of the ways you know the old, old truths are true is their ability to assume amazing and unfamiliar shapes while remaining themselves and without compromising their integrity. Yes, people's experience of God and of the gospel changes. But no, God and the gospel don't change. Part of leadership is making sure that containers don't alter the content as they are wont to do." (Aqua Church, page 30)
Two other quick observations:
McLuhan's statement is important to keep in mind (and as a Radio, Television & Journalism major in college, I've been saturated in good old Marshall!), but I can't help but notice that some people treat his "medium is the message" as being authoritative in the same way that others view John Calvin's Institutes as authoritative. I appreciate McLuhan's contributions, but would hesitate to make that an authoritative grid/lens that I view everything through.
The other observation is that there's a big different between acknowledging that the container can influence the content (as Sweet also states), and deliberately seeking to change the content, regardless of the container. That's what I find disturbing about the revisionist approach that some -- not all -- are taking.
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