The Suitcase

I've often heard people say that the process of learning in seminary is a whole lot like arriving with everything neatly packed in your suitcase, having it bust open and spill its contents all over the floor, and then rearranging everything back in the suitcase. 

A friend of mine recently asked me to spend a little bit of time writing about the Missional Wisdom program so that he might understand a little more about it. 

I find it's still hard for me to state specifically what it is I am doing in the program, but the suitcase analogy seems like an apt metaphor for what's happening with me. 

The only difference is that this time around I arrived with my suitcase stuffed to the gills and its contents already in a jumble. What I'm doing now is sorting through all the contents. I'm finding out that I simply don't need some of the things in that suitcase and the rest of them need to go back in an altogether different order. 

For example, here is a bit of what I've been tussling with recently regarding the place of worship and mission in the life of the church:  

Readings for one week from our text, The Faith of Leap, suggested that mission needs to be restored as the organizing principle of the church. However, in seminary we had it drilled into us that Worship is the organizing - or at least central - principle of the church. 

For me that's the way I've always seen things to be. Everything we do is supposed to flow out of our worship of God, or so I have always thought. However, as I've reflected upon my practical experience in the church, I've come to realize this never, ever has seemed to be the case. 

As I've dealt with the institutional for the past 20+ years as a church member, elder, and as a minister, I've always been left scratching my head asking, "Why doesn't worship lead us into further engagement in the world?" "Why do people come to worship but seldom seem affected by it enough to go out and to love and serve their neighbor?" 

Still, in the midst of all that struggle, doubt, and questions, I've had serious reservations about shifting my thinking in a different direction on this issue. I think those reservations have primarily come from an objection that a shift from Worship to Mission as the organizing principle might somehow tend to shift the focus from God to us, to the work we do in the world. 

What's helped me change my thinking on this is the helpful suggestion of the authors that we should always see the proclamation of "Jesus as Lord" as the actual core or center of the church.  The four columns of worship, community, discipleship, and mission all revolve around that core proclamation. 

The place of mission in all this however is primary. It is to be the catalyst that sparks and gets things going.  I now see that this is something that Worship, as wonderful, as necessary, and as foundational as it is, was never designed nor intended to do. 

I wonder in what other ways, the contents of my suitcase will be sorted and reorganized in coming months. It's hard work, but I think the pay off will make it much easier for me to travel lightly on this missional journey. 

Not a spirit of fear but a spirit of power and love

For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. 

Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.  - 2 Timothy 1:6-9

For the past several weeks, as part of my Missional Imagination class, I've been reading the book "The Faith of Leap" by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch.  There is lots and lots to chew on in this book; it is meaty and challenging but well worth the effort it takes to engage the material.

Essentially, the book is a call to give up a mundane form of faith and to begin to walk in the wild ways of Jesus.  Personally, one of the main challenges of the book which I've been grappling with the most is the place of fear and how much fear drives our expression of western Christianity.

The authors contend that the predominate form of Christianity we find in practice today is one co-opted by the middle class values of security and safety (read the book if you want to learn more.) Even worse churches and denominational structures are gripped with fear as our numbers dwindle, and we seize control in order to shore up our losses.

A number of weeks ago, I attended a forum with Brian McLaren and Phyllis Tickle about the future of the church.  This one tidbit from Tickle stuck with me; she said, "As I travel around the country I have noticed an increase in the level of despair. It's killing the church. Pastors especially have given themselves over to such despair as they look at the church and wonder about their salaries and worry about their pensions."

I'm not sure how to solve that enormous level of fear that grips our churches or denominational structures, and truth be told that's not really my concern, at least for now.

What I do need to attend to, however, is my own fear - maybe even, admittedly, despair - that keeps me stuck within a safe and secure form of faith, that keeps me from venturing out, pioneering, and trying something different and new for the sake of God's Kingdom.

There is an old proverb that says "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." It's a notion I've pretty much discarded mostly because the phrase, "the fear of the Lord," always seems to carry such a negative connotation (i.e. fear of God's wrath or fear of God's judgement)

The authors, however, argue that we might think differently about this:

Because "wisdom" is the ordering of life in accord with God's will, appropriate fear of God is the only thing that gives us the right perspective of, and puts us into right relationship with, the objects of our perception.  Holy reverence is therefore the right basis for coping with life's meaning and problems.

In other words, the fear of God - the God who extends mercy and grace to us in Jesus Christ and invites us into life giving relationship with God - puts all those other fears we might have into their rightful place.  It is the one corrective that has the power to move us beyond all those other fears that grip us.

I love how the authors frame things in a more helpful way:

What we can do is allow the fears themselves to be overwhelmed by bigger and better things - by a sense of adventure and the fullness of life that comes from relocating our fears and vulnerabilities within the larger story that is ultimately hopeful and not tragic. 

Easier said than done, at least in my experience. But with God's help and with a trust that God has indeed given a spirit of power and love and not of fear, I hope I am on the path to a more adventurous and life-giving form of faith in Christ.

Nothing New, Yet Everything New

So for the last four weeks, I've been engaged in an online course called "The Missional Imagination." It is the first course in the two-year Missional Wisdom Program which I began in October.

In many ways the sorts of ideas and thoughts I am studying and engaging with are not all that new to me.

I have long been aware that the way we do "church" today is broken. I have grappled with the notion that our structures are not highly supportive of Christ's mission. I have struggled with the realization that many of our churches are ineffective at forming disciples. I have also dabbled with some of the ideas and notions of the missional church, as I've grappled with those and other concerns.

What is new, for me, however is that I am finally able to dedicate the time and energy which I think are necessary for me to begin to think systematically and practically in ways that will retool and re-imagine how I think about the church and more importantly, how I may be called to participate more fully in the "missio dei" or "mission of God."

It's hard work and it's challenging me in many different ways. In some ways it's nothing new, and in others it's everything new.