King of the Hill- Church!

thanks to sarcastic lutheran we now have some audio-visual for truly understanding what the emerging church is NOT!

size matters?

From my new blog friend over at Sarcastic Lutheran I got connected to one of these innovative signs...ooo, la, la. With the mega church craze and such celebrity greats as Joel Osteen representin' it can be hard for some not to get googly-eyes over potential greatness. A critique I heard recently with regard to the emerging church is that the numbers just don't justify 'going down that route.' While numbers can be telling they are not the only means of measurement. The difficulty the emerging church faces is that those within the modern church are using their own standards and imposing them on these ever evolving communities. I think that the emerging church can be helpful in many ways by providing a new lens through which we look at measurement, all of us, by offering up some new ideas that will help create stronger and healthier churches all 'round, modern and postmodern alike. I ran across this great article from Margaret Wheatley entitled "What Do We Measure and Why? Questions About the Uses of Measurement."

I'd love to hear any and all comments on this one!

journey around the cross

We continue our wondering about sustainability this first Sunday in Lent. The community where I worship listened for God's word around the cross from these three responses of Jesus to the devil.

"One does not live by bread alone"

• What does this mean to you?
• In what ways will you begin living this?

"Worship the Lord your God and serve him only"

• How is your worship life, inside and out?
• How are you serving God?

"Do not put the Lord your God to the test"

• How do you put God to the test?
• What is God challenging in you?

I also wonder, how do these words from Jesus speak about sustainability? The first thing I notice is that Jesus warns us, right here in the temptation narrative (Year C, Luke 4:1-13), to be careful that our attention is not drawn merely to the physical, i.e. property or finances. If we begin talking about sustainability and taking it seriously let's begin the conversation wondering what it means to live by more than bread alone and trust that the things we need from day to day as individuals and communities in and of God will be provided by God.

Our attention is also called to our life of worship and service...the habits of our faith. I wonder how these point to the importance of sustenance and sustainability? Could it be that life ordered around worship and service is the way God's Spirit is sustained in our world?

And finally, aspiring for greatness is not the way of God. No duh? And yet all too quickly our conversation around being church, i.e. sustainability, reflects the achievement of greatness, even the 'cool' factor of greatness. We seek to define and thus reduce greatness by imposing measurements which distract us from what's of ultimate importance by asking, 'how many members do you have?', 'how many are you worshiping now?' and 'did you like our worship today?' What tests do we consistently fail because we are more concerned about how our marketing campaign is working rather than the time spent as community listening, loving and learning that the image of God is right in front of our faces, in the other,emerging?

Lord Jesus, expose within me the hidden aspects of you that need to die and that need to rise again. Amen.

an oozeletter: 'lighting matches in a light bulb world'

This is an article from the February 2007 issue of the Oozeletter by Spencer Burke. I think it definitely raises some curious questions as to context and how to approach others 'in light' of where we find ourselves today in our thinking and way of living, i.e. culture. The intro really captured me as I'm beginning the process of developing such a community here in Flagstaff, AZ and still have those within the modern church (not that there's anything wrong with that.) wondering 'now, why would you go and do that? hang out at coffee shops and bars? you've got to be kidding me?' Of course the answer, as Spencer describes it, is because that's where, at least some, of the social networks exist. I, for one, am interested in being the light of God in those places too.

The first portion of Burke's article reads as follows:
"When Jesus invited his followers to be 'the light of the world," what do you think went through the minds of the disciples? It only would have been natural for them to think in terms of the resources available in their day - spark, wood, oil, flame, and fire. But how much has changed since the first century? Even more radically, how much has changed in the last 150 years?

If Jesus were to pose the same invitation today, would we think of matches or altnernating current? Wood or filament? Oxygen or vacuum? Therein lies the tension.

We - the Church - have the job of being truth in an ever changing world. Yet the reality is often that the church has over romanticized matches, wood, and oxygen.

The invitation of Jesus is not to remain captive to things that held true in the past, but to transcend, to evolve, to discover new ways of embodying the things that held true in the past. I find it fascinating that when we mapped the human genome, it was called genius. When we explored the mechanics of quantum physics, it was a step forward. When we democratized communication through the internet, we called it revolutionary. Yet when we dream of a socially networked church, without walls or the one-hour event, it is perceived as the destructive of the Church." You can find the rest of this February article at Oozeletter.

A couple things come to mind as I read this article by Spencer. While he raises some fun and curious questions at least two things come to mind:

The first is a comment I posted after this article where I mentioned the following:

I wonder if the light isn't associated so much with matches that need to be struck, but rather the light that comes from a completely other source...the sun. And I wonder if that same light refracted/reflected many and various ways as thorugh a prism is the life of God. I may be red or green or blue. Can I choose what color I reflect to the world? Can I really even help what color I happen to be or is that already determined by the make-up of who I am in relationship to others within the prism? I wonder whether we are even initiators of the light but rather those who merely reflect it, albeit 'in a mirror dimly' and probably quite imperfectly, to a world that needs to know its own efforts aren't what sustain it.

The second comment that goes through my mind is in relationship to the ways our world changes and how then our particular human constructs will 'change' the way we talk of God. I find it a bit dangerous however when we begin using mechanical descriptions of God and God's work in our world that removes a sense of the natural order for things because we no longer are speaking about living, breathing human beings in relationships with the vast array of compexities that come along with that and instead substitute simplistic notions like 'matches' or 'wood'. I am one who believes the Spirit of God Jesus describes and was heard, or not as is the case quite often with his disciples, is the same one that we have access to in powerful ways through the ways we engage one another in real relationship that drives us ever deeper into what it really means to be human.

ASH WEDNESDAY The Blog Community's Lenten Discipline: 'Sustainability' Wondering

I participated in two Ash Wednesday events this day...one at 12:30, an ecumenical affair with Roman Catholics, Methodists, UCC, Disciples, Lutherans and Episcopalians and the second one this evening. This evening our little community of campus ministry gathered for a meal followed by a short ash wednesday worship around prayers, confession, and the imposition of ashes...pretty short frankly but good.

A few posts back my new online blog friend 'Lutheran Zephyr' asked an important question around the idea of sustainability. I was curious if we could spend time over the next forty days together wondering about that same question as it relates to what God's word has to say through the pericope texts assigned for each week.

Today, Ash Wednesday, we hear texts calling for repentance, a turning inward to look at our own spirit lives asking God to reveal areas for conversion. We also mark each other with the sign of the cross, remembering whose we are and today even more emphatically that 'you are dust and to dust you shall return.'

I'm wondering what the relationship is between the claim that we are mortal and the idea of sustainability. Ironically, we ask questions of sustainability even as we boldly claim that we exist in vessels of temporarlity. What is God calling us to sustain this Lent in light of the fact that we are fading? In the text from Matthew are we not called to sustain life through attention to the poor and disenfrancised? Are we not called to sustain life through prayer and fasting? Is this the infrastructure for followers of Jesus? What about our financial well-being that will sustain us? Where is that?

So, maybe you could join me...actually I invite you to join me in wondering with me what sustainability actually is. Russ makes a good point commenting in the 'teaser' below that maybe sustainability is a stewardship issue. What do you think?

emerging senses

What does leadership look like within the emerging church? More than anything else the emerging leader is akin to a spiritual director. This of course does not mean that the spiritual director is the expert, rather what it speaks about is ability to wonder with others regarding the awareness of what the Spirit is up to and what the Spirit is calling us to do. The expert is actually the Spirit of God who is waiting to be called forth through each individual's awareness and action.

As a result the emerging leader will need to increase in gifted areas that include among other things and amazingly enough, listening, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching. An emerging leader will be able to engage and invite others into this similar way so that the community becomes a discerning community.

One of the best books I've read recently, that in my opinion gets at the leadership quality for the emergents is Leadership and The New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World by Margaret Wheatley. From the vantage point of the modern church the emerging church will appear to be in complete disarray and utter chaos. Discovering order in a chaotic world is also to discover order in the church that happens to find itself a part of that same chaotic world. This is in no way an explicitly 'religious' book on leadership. Rather Wheatley is an expert on complexity theory, the new science, and quantum physics. Her explanations for how systems emerge organically and how leaders can partner with existing patterns within the natural order are wonderfully refreshing and encouraging.

"Let anyone who has ears to hear listen!"..."To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that 'they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand, so that they may not turn and be forgiven...Do you understand?" Mark 4:9-13

sustainability teaser

1. what exactly are we really be called to sustain?
2. is Jesus' 'ultimate concern' for sustainability the same as ours?

let us wonder together...