Flat Earth: Many Bumps Part 4 of 4

This is the end of this small series of thoughts.

Post Colonialism

There is a growing number of people who are desperately seeking to share the gospel and the kingdom in a post-colonial world and way. They are digging through the remnants of people scarred and burned by the colonial way and are trying to re-imagine together a new way of embracing where God is already at work, sharing the story that unites us and to tell it in ways that not only fit the culture, but come out of the culture. For people in different global areas this looks differently and the language is different, but perhaps the hearts of the questions are not so different.

For those of us who find ourselves on the colonial side, we too are feeling the effects of our people’s heritage. We see the carnage left behind and some of us at least are truly sorry, saddened and sickened. We also feel the effects of colonialism in our own culture and world. As we see and experience this post-modern world changing us and the cultures in which we live and move and find our being, we want to re-approach the ways and whys of church. The problem you see is that the method and model have worked before and if it isn’t working now, then it can’t be the model that’s broken it must be the culture that its in. Therefore, the obvious solution is that the culture must change and be formed back into the mold and model that the colonial church has deemed best. Enter the west into the post-colonial new day!

Lots of Bumps

The west and the non-west have not exactly conformed to this colonial model. Whether you find yourself in the East, South or West, you see that everywhere are peoples who are NOT fitting into this dropped in model. Not only are they not fitting into this model, they are not understanding it and increasingly reacting against it. This is not just a reaction to church done the colonial way, it is a reaction to almost every colonial system from government to economics to society.

The reactions however are not uniform, as could be expected from different people shaped by different histories informed by different philosophies and relationships. The reactions and the many sub-cultures that have arisen out of these reactions have created many bumps on this flat world. While we may truly be as connected as ever, able to share more than ever, we are also able to affirm our individualism and connect with others around our specific interests, dreams and passions.

This has created a world in which many of us belong to many different sub-cultures. These groups of people that we identify with only with certain parts of our lives have created a decrease in the value of money and possessions and an increase in the value of true relationships and community. We have become spread so thin among our own many identities and our many sub-groups that anyone who we can trust with the “whole me” is a true friend. The new gold rush may indeed be the running of people, not toward the west, but toward authentic relationships and the places where these just might be found.

The church finds itself in an interesting place in this new bumpy world. There is a desire among some to represent the church as truly the one-stop shopping place for the many sub-cultures to gather and find identity under one umbrella. This would be a move to reclaim the model of broadcasting one message to the masses.

There is also a desire among others to find more and more ways to narrowcast the message of the gospel to each sub-culture, each group in the language and ways of that sub-culture helping it identify the places where God is already at work in their midst and inviting them to live this out in its completion in Christ.

A Convergence?

There’s an interesting convergence developing here. There is a growing number of people who are trying to re-imagine church and faith in this new post-colonial world. These groups often find themselves centered around their attempts to communally live an authentic life of faith. Insert these evolving communities into this flat world full of small bumps of sub-cultures and you have a unique synergy.

The challenge for the emerging church in this new world is many fold. First, they are about finding their own identity apart from just deconstructing and NOT being what was before. Second, they are challenged to continually ask the important missionary questions that would not bring their favorite model of ministry to the place where they find themselves, but would rather identify the work of God in the place where they find themselves and begin to embrace that. Finally, as they develop and grow they must not fall into a neo-colonial mindset, where they begin to teach others that the only right way is their way.

An invitation

I’m writing this a bit as a reporter, a bit as a truth teller and bit as someone trying to re-imagine this new life in this new world. It seems to me that we in the Christian community, attempting to incarnate the gospel wherever it is we find ourselves, should be sharing our stories with one another, challenging each other to discover the missionary questions that we are asking as we find friendship in the little bumps that our millions of sub-cultures provide, and working hard to be authentic people involved in authentic relationships for the sake of authentic relationships.

This is an open invitation to whomever might want to join in this conversation centered around the gospel in a new and developing world. Whether you find yourself on the front, slippery edge of this world, trying to get your footing and yet somehow moving forward at a break-neck pace, or find yourself perhaps identifying more with the colonial or anywhere in between, we want to come together.

We must come together and commit to one another so that we can somehow find out past and our future in redemptive, Jesus-like ways. We must come together and commit to one another so that we can actually be the gospel.

Flat Earth Part 3

This is part 3 of 4. If you're following along at all, your contributions in the way of comments are incredibly helpful to me.

Globally Speaking

In matters of church and religion, those of us who have grown up in the west have not truly experienced the massive oppression that colonialism brings. Perhaps we’ve felt the remnants (more on this in a bit), but mostly we’ve just enjoyed being a part of the WE and perhaps from time to time thanked God for bringing us into life as a WE and not a THEM. If we were extra strong in our faith and love of others we might even pray for THEM from time to time as well, hoping that THEY would be able to experience our model, adapt to it, see the error and foolishness of their ways and come around to the good kind of living. Rare was the person who realized that the model of WE might not actually be the best model for THEM and that the model of WE might actually harm THEM if forced upon them and might actually even harm THEM if WE continued to live it ourselves, after all it had worked for us, right?!?!

A great example of the struggle in this is the story of St. Patrick. George Hunter has a great book on St. Patrick, “The Celtic Way of Evangelism”, relating it to today that I highly recommend as background reading to this. The bottom line here is that Patrick went to Ireland and instead of bringing with him a specific model of how to “do church” he instead came as a missionary looking and listening for the places God was already at work in the people that he and his band went to share life with. Out of this kind of looking and listening approach Patrick taught first one tribe and eventually hundreds of others how to see God in what they were already involved in, to share the story that unites them all and to tell it in the ways that not only fit their culture and life but came out of their culture and life. Instead of assuming that he brought God with him to this place (as in colonialism), he started with the assumption that God was already at work there. As the church grew exponentially in Ireland the Roman Catholic Church from which Patrick drew his education, tradition, ordination and beginning resources, took great notice. What it noticed was that their model was not being taught, replicated or explained. This was a problem and eventually became a very large one for the Celtic church and for Patrick. In a way colonialism “won” that round, but perhaps has lost the war.

Globally this kind of “gospel share,” by inserting our better people, traditions, methods and models on others, has been wide spread. In matters of the church it has been the dominate model of “missionary” work. Again, this model is hard but potentially satisfying for the US and not so great for THEM. This kind of Jesus imposed has not been well accepted, nor has this church which claims to want to share Him.

Questions
I wonder in what ways has colonialism shown itself in the world you live in?

In what ways have you seen it do "good"? Are there any?

In what ways have we seen its harm? Please expand your comments above just "spiritual" things.

Does re-imaging any of this lead us only to a "new and improved colonialism"? In other words are we only going to re-do this pattern with a different model OR can we truly set a new course?

My hair

Today brought to you by... Tim Evans!

I'm at Southern Nazarene University for their regional youth event. It's a great event, tons of high school and middle school kids everywhere. I'm doing some NYI meetings, including meeting with all coordinators and presidents about NYC.

They have very graciously put me up in an Alumni house. Because it's a whole house, I don't get it all to myself, I share it with two other guys, JD Sailors and Tim Evans. We each have our own bedroom and Tim and I have to share a bathroom.

Now for the fun/awkward part... because I usually have to stay in hotels and because of the airlines saying you can only bring a pinch of any liquid (which by the way is a load, because for the fourth straight time flying I've accidentally forgotten to take a bottle of contact solution out of my bag and they've said nothing) I don't bring my own shampoo. The house where I'm staying doesn't provide any either. Thankfully, Tim Evans had taken a shower before me and left his shampoo in there. So while I probably won't say a word to his face, I will publicly thank him here on my blog for making my clean hair a possibility today!

Update 11:00pm - I'm back to the room and Tim has left! I have to get up early tomorrow and go to airport and long meetings all day... what shall my hair do?

Update 4:30am - For those of you who have been up and worried about my serious situation... I discovered a small bottle of shampoo from a hotel I had visited a while back that has been in my suitcase for at least 2 months. So worry no more for my hair, but worry a lot for our airport security.

Flat Earth Pt. 2

As many of us have read, seen, experienced and realized, the world truly is getting flatter. In fact it may already be almost flat again. Of course I’m not talking about geography, but rather sociologically and economically. We can truly know more about one another than ever before in the history of our planet. We can be friends with people who we have never or rarely ever see. We can pick up a mobile phone and be in touch with someone on the other side of the world. We can share information about life, business, and of course ourselves. With this growing interaction and knowledge share comes a growing standardization of sorts. This is not a standardization in the way everyone must be the same, but rather in the way that everyone knows about everyone else and we’re all okay. This knowledge share has created a lack of surprise and mystery in our world. We know about other cultures and how they speak, what they wear, what they think, how they worship, and how they dress.

As communication and information have flattened the world, the converse is true of what this effect has created among people. Instead of becoming more and more like each other, or swarming to a specific people group and conforming ourselves to that mold or pattern, we have instead connected to many people groups based solely on our personal interests. It has created not fewer groups of people that are more homogenous, but more people groups that are diversified. In other words the flat world has many bumps.

It seems to me that the flat world has encouraged, nay, embraced, nay, necessitated the constant creation and destruction of people groups as they gather together (dare I say glob) around particular interests, passions and dreams. This is also seen clearly in religion and church. People glob to an area or ministry that they enjoy, relate to, or feel will meet their need. They will then glob to another area or ministry that “scratches a different itch” so to speak, but rarely with the same people or community. This has created not a multiplication of people groups, but an exponential explosion of people groups who experience, effect, and evaluate the world in more ways that we could possibly try to measure.

Colonialism

To cut to the heart of this particular thought, and to make a rash generalization, when it comes to sharing the gospel with the world, the church has adopted the model that it will find something successful and teach its “stars” to replicate this model and then drop the model, the methodology and the “stars” into wherever they want to create the same results. It’s simple, find the model, find a need, drop the model on the need and surprise, surprise you get a winner every time. It is however not the gospel we are sharing but our thoughts and beliefs on the gospel. It is colonialism.

Of course as with all models, behind them lies some kind of ideology. There is this sense, whether spoken or not, in colonialism that WE have a better way of doing things and WE want you to learn them and be like us and WE will show you how. It is quite simply put arrogant.

This kind of “gospel sharing” tends to be a bit more popular if you belong to the WE, that is those who are bringing the model, those who have the answers. It’s not so great if you are one of THEM to whom the model and methodology are coming. When you belong to THEM it simply doesn’t matter what you think, what you do well, or what you may be dreaming, because the answer to it all lies with those who belong to the WE. WE are certain that what you have really been longing for, hoping for, dreaming for, is to become like WE.

Flat Earth: Many Bumps Pt. 1

This is Part 1 of what will probably end up 4 parts.

I have been thinking a lot about the global nature of some of the emerging church conversation. Dave and I have been going back and forth on whether this is truly a global conversation, or whether it’s an anomaly to the white suburban church. This is particularly important to me because of the global nature of our Nazarene church, the global nature of my growing worldview, and the global nature, I believe, of the gospel.

The Disconnect

The disconnect lies in the many, many conversations that I’ve found myself involved with here in the U.S. They all seem to be full of educated, white males who are trying in some way to both deconstruct the church of their past or even their now and are trying to live into a church that they dream of. In and of itself this is not a bad thing. I truly do believe that it’s worth following the Scriptural mandate to “Test everything. Hold onto the good.” It’s simply Christian to test everything and keep testing everything.

In the process of thinking and testing many have come to the conclusion that the world is continuing to change, especially in this postmodern era, and that the church is failing at its missional core of asking missionary questions of the culture and the church and so there grows a disconnect between the culture and the church. Instead of embracing the models and methodology of the past (and perhaps ideology and theology as well), they are choosing instead to dream again of what God might want for the church to do and be in the context in which they find themselves. All of this is good stuff, generally speaking, because it is indeed testing everything and seeking to hold onto the good. It is an attempt to strip the methodology and models away and get back to the missionary questions that engage both the church and the culture in the gospel and the kingdom!

But if this truly is a conversation about re-imagining the present and the future asking these kinds of missionary questions, how come all of us in these conversations are educated, white, middle class guys?

1. I would theorize that there are a couple of options to this answer:1) This is truly only a conversation for those who can afford to have it. Meaning because we have financial resources to survive without the old we don’t mind kicking it around a bit, much the way a teenager kicks around the safest person they know (usually their parents) because they know somewhere deep inside that they may be the only people who would take it and keep on caring.
2. There are more people interested in the conversation, but they haven’t really been invited.
3. There are other people having the same kinds of conversation, but using different language and different avenues.
4. There are other people having the same kinds of conversation and we just haven’t really bumped into each other yet.
5. This is a conversation that has turned back into an issue of methodology and models which is the issue that always seems to push different people groups apart and never brings them together.
   

May we never forget...

On the road again...

I've been and will be on the road again...
- Just returned from St. Louis, lots of successful and good meetings. That's good!
- Also on that trip met up with some new friends from Lutheran Church Missouri synod. Terry and Mark are youth ministry guys over there. Good times freezing our keisters off at the Cardinals game.
- This week we have our big "speaker summit". We're brining all of our speakers for NYC in and spending two days going over everything, refining, fitting pieces together, etc. Please pray for this exciting time. Pray for God's unity in Spirit and purpose in the room as we try to make this a great event for the "kid in the seat"!
- Then its on to Oklahoma City to visit my friends at SNU.
- Then back to St. Louis.
- Then home to KC, but will be at MNU for a day
- Then to Nampa, Idaho and friends at NNU.

If anyone is reading from any of these spots and would like to meet up, give me a holla...

Traveling in my mind to...
- My friends at Adsideo in Portland. They are just up to some good things and my heart and prayers are with them lately.
- Emergent Theological Conversation in Philly - going to be great. Trying to find a way there.

In my heart God is...
- kicking my butt on this slavery issue.
- Heard some great sermons (especially last Sundays!) on slavery at the Well then saw Amazing Grace. God is up to something in me.

Working on...
- A paper and seminar on Missionary Ministry in the Model of Patrick: Raising up leaders amongst the bumps on our flat earth... or something like that.