It’s been a light summer of blogging, and there are some good reasons for that. Primarily, I’ve been busy with other things, but that’s never a good excuse. We were in Florida visiting the in-laws during the first week in August, and ever since then, we’ve been playing catch up with life it seems. Also, I’m in major job hunting mode right now. I’ve been in grad school the last year, and since graduation, I’ve been looking for work. It hasn’t found me yet. So if anyone out there reading this has a gig for me, you know how to contact me. In the meantime, I’ll try to do more blogging, as time permits.

Put very simply …

The day of the professional minister is gone.
The day of the missionary pastor is here!
The day of the churched culture is over.
The day of the mission field has come!
The day of the local church is over.
the day of the mission outpost has come!

Kennon Callahan

From Joe Myers on community and commitment:

Commitment is a motivational resource (at least the way it is being discussed in this conversation). It is a resource people use to motivate themselves and/or others. Unfortunately, this resource has been so over used that it suffers in effectiveness. Commitment can motivate others toward community. However, commitment does not make certain the path toward community.

Every month I am reminded of my commitments via monthly billing statements yet, I experience no sense of community. I’m committed to my wife yet, this is the last motivational resource I want to use to experience oneness with her (passion and compassion seem to be more fun).

On the other hand, I have experienced community in public arenas (e.g. IU basketball games) where there was no expectation of commitment.

Community is an experience that one grasps when the sum of all their belongs are collected in healthy ways. For example, when a person has a harmonious and healthy relationship between their Public, Social, Personal, and Intimate belongings. Then community (real, authentic, whatever) emerges.

I often find myself trying to explain to Baby Boomers what the importance of narrative is for the emerging church. There are so many pragmatic pastors who certainly understand the rhetorical value of narrative when they sit down to write a sermon but fail to grasp its signifcance for understanding community and relationships. Perhaps its because boomers so easily ceded the task of storytelling to television and allowed the church to forget how to tell a story. Whatever the reason, younger generations are re-capturing narrative for the church. This site helps to highlight the cultural role of narrative:

The stories we are willing to share with one another give our culture its values, beliefs, goals, and traditions, binding us together into a cohesive society, allowing us to work together with a common purpose. Storytelling lives at the heart of human experience—a compelling form of personal communication as ancient as language itself. Since the beginnings of humankind, we have shared through stories the events, beliefs, and values held dear by our families, communities, and cultures.

I had a discussion with my dad about how my parents’ church has begun to take some encouraging steps towards addressing the shifts in culture that all churches will eventually be forced to address. The senior pastor has rightly recognized that with a church as large as theirs (close to 1000 on Sunday mornings), emphasis must be placed on community.
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I’ve had several conversations recently about the nature of worship and the ongoing struggle between modern / pragmatic styles of worship and the emerging church’s view of worship. I ran across this article by Justin Baeder over at TheOoze and found it helpful:

Perhaps the most destructive effect of the worship service is to convince us that it’s all there is to church – there are no other legitimate gatherings. Home gatherings and small groups are great, but they don’t count as church, even in many emerging churches. The worship service is the only real church gathering. Among older churches, the attitude is “Attend church, and your life will be great.” Robert Webber, in his recent book The Younger Evangelicals, points out how many aspects of boomer-generation church life were engineered to provide therapy for life’s problems. Look at the sermon topics in a seeker-sensitive church, and you will find things such as “Prayer = tools for solving problems” and “How to have a great marriage.” Through sermons like these and uplifting worship music, the worship service promises everything we need to be successful Christians. If you want to go deeper, you can join a home Bible study or class, but that’s optional. Real church happens on the stage every Sunday.

Jordon Cooper has posted excerpts from Spencer Burke’s book Making Sense of Church: Eavesdropping on Emerging Conversations About God, Community, and Culture. The book is due out in October, but there’s also a website. Here are some of the exceprts:

As I think about the emerging church; I see a similar shift occuring. In most traditional churches, the pastor’s role is to teach. As the fount of all knowledge, the pastor’s job is to overflow with spiritual truth each week while the congregation sits and absorbs this wisdom. Sure, there are other elements in a service–like music and prayer but for the most part, the sermon is the focal point.

With so much riding on the weekly message, churches are susceptible to “charismatic” leaders–for better or for worse. Each Sunday, the pastor must deliver something new and inspirational to the congregation, lest he or she become the topic of conversation at lunch. As the name on the marquee outside, the pastor is inextricably linked to the success and failure of the church.

In many ways, the modern worship service is a thinly disguised university lecture. Congregants file in, face the front and frantically take notes while and established scholar–a spiritual giant in their midst–passes on formula for a more fulfilling life.

And more …

Churches today have been expressly designed for passing on knowledge. Objects that appeal to the senses have been removed, Ironically, this switch to a “user-friendly” enviroment is problematic for many postmodern people–the very people churches say they want to reach. While there is something to be said for comfortable chairs and trouble free parking, slick worship services seem exactly that–slick. It’s Amway with a thin spiritual veneer.

Thom S. Rainer, dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism, and Church Growth at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, told The Washington Times that the main reason people leave church is it’s too similar to their everyday lives. Could it be the seeker-sensitive movement has actually backfired?

In his July newsletter, Bob Webber asks whether we should consider worship an experience. Here are some of his conclusions:

Worship that arises from the self is exhausting. The worshiper feels that he or she must produce worship. Essentially this kind of worship is a “work-worship.” I must do it. I must act excited. I must close my eyes. Lift my hands. Tilt my head or bow my knee as an offering of my worship.

Compare this worship with a worship that actually derives from God who is at work in the assembly of gathered people in Word, sign, and gesture:

One kind of worship demands of us; the other fills us.
One worship is a legalistic effort; the other is a grace-filled gift.
One worship will tire your spirit; the other will bring you to rest.
One worship will make you think, “I did it,” and the other will make you aware that God’s presence has filled your heart, energized your spirit, and filled you with the sense that, in spite of all your life issues, all is well.

The first worship seeks a relationship with God through the effort of self. The second worship is union with God through prayer.

I ran across this interview with Leonard Sweet in Relevant Magazine, and this quote struck a chord with me:

We’re fighting over the five points of Calvinism or something. But the big Achilles heel of the church is the practice of attractional Christianity, which is how you get people to come to church. It’s all “come and see,” it’s not “go and be.” The whole Great Commission is not about “come and see,” it’s “go and be.” We’re all trying to figure out how to bring more people into the church and it shouldn’t be about coming to church. It should be about coming to Christ. And then when those people come to Christ, the church’s job is to send them out.

It’s worth reading the whole thing.