endirect

A page for the CWC conference 2008

I've just created a page that is a ressource point for some workshops that I'm leading at a missionary conference this summer. I'm sure it will evolve with time...

Here's the link.

Spiritual practices in the community

One of my colleagues here in Grenoble, Howard Diehl, returned from the States recently and started talking about the changes going on at Willow Creek. He has a copy of the book the REVEAL group has put out. Very interesting stuff.

Heidi, over at Redemption Junkie, does a nice job of summing up what's going on here.

All this makes a lot of sense to me. We had a very nice melt down at our local church here in France. It started in June of 2006 and burned on through March of 2007. Many are still hurting.

As I thought long and hard about what led to all of this, I came to the conclusion that one of the elements that contributed to the crisis was the lack of spiritual transformation in the lives of the members of our community.

Spiritual transformation does not happen because I attend the right meetings or am involved in the right programs. It happens when I take the time to allow God's Spirit to accomplish his work in my life.

Learn another language

I got an email from Stephen Shields that got me thinking about the emerging church in the States...

I use to try and act like a someone who could say something about all that but I realized quickly that I was just a little fish in the big ocean of the blogosphere and that there were others much more capable than I.

Still I think about it all because in my journey I've got to meet and befriend some of the well known voices.

When I hear about the stuff that is said about the emerging church I cringe. Sitting here in Grenoble I'm realizing more and more that the way the whole thing has developed in the US and A is so linked to that culture.

So here's one idea that would change the tone. The two sides should learn another language, Hungarian for example, and talk about their differences in that language. Here are the benefits.

1. Learning another language and hard one at that is a humbling experience. Humility is a good thing.
2. Working in a second language means simplifying what you say.
3. You loose your rhetorical tricks in a second language.

Obviously this won't happen and if it did I'd be sorry for the Hungarians. They really don't need all that foolishness in their language.

Yesterday I was helping out with an exposition on the evangelical church in France that the local pastors fellowship organized. The exposition is housed in an information center run by the Catholic Church. It was great sitting and chatting with sisters in Christ focusing on Him and not on our differences.

May God have mercy on us.

Taming lions, no thank you...

So we rolling into our big week-end for the CEP. A year ago all hell was breaking loose... Crisis and criticism were rampant. Peace came with the Spring of this year. And now we are reaching for something new. Unity in purpose, getting behind a project, getting folks to really believe that they have something to say about what's going on in our church, that's what we are trying to do.

It isn't easy.

My experience of this kind of stuff is limited and I'm guessing nothing new is happening here. Just I'm trying to figure it our for us...

I'm wondering if comparing what I'm trying to do with the job of a lion tamer. At first blush, it sure feels that way. Wild beasts who need to be tamed and brought into line. Ready to pounce and devour when my back is turned. Get the whip out, make sure they know who's boss...

OK, it is a really bad comparison. But if I'm not going to be an authoritative jerk then how in the world do we come together and get behind what God is doing in our world?

God's Spirit has got to show up in a big way and not in a supernatural hocus-pocus way. No, we need to see him at work through the means of grace that are at our disposal. This week-end we want to come together and hear God speak to us as a body, everyone has their place.

It's just a times I feel like they see themselves as lions who need to be tamed. Which means we as leaders have probably acted like that in the past.

God have mercy on us...

Committed communities

Last week I was in Switzerland at the Eurochurch/DAWN European Network conference. Beautiful surroundings, great people and good discussions were on hand. Too bad I was dealing with allergies...

When I think about what was said one thing stands above all the rest, the necessity of committed communities. It all starts there. When a group of people come together and decide to live as committed disciples of Christ the world can be changed.

Related to the idea of committed communities is the place of spiritual friendship. The chapters in Pilgrim Heart on this topic and on confession had already got me thinking about all of this.

Add to this mix a criticism that I've heard a number of times about our French church concerning our lack of fellowship. My reaction to the criticism in the past has been to answer by saying that the opportunities for fellowship are present and that the problem lies with those who don't take advantage of those opportunities.

And so I had one of the those eureka moments. The criticism wasn't concerned with our structure. It was concerned with friendship and connection. The critic was saying, "No one is caring for my soul".

There it is, a fundamental flaw, a truth that will always handicap all that we do. Healing for our souls. What can be better? What a tragedy when a committed member of the assembly decides to leave because he never felt connected.

We've been working our way through Peter's first letter. He reminds us again and again of the necessity of deeply loving each other.

I will be taking two Sundays (May 6 and 13) to explore these ideas. I believe this could be one of those subjects that could alter the course of our life as a community  of disciples...

Going to Switzerland...

Tomorrow morning I'll be getting on a train and headed up to Geneva. From there I'll get pick up by Todd Dallanegra and head off to Interlaken. We'll be attending the Eurochurch conference. I last attended this event in February of 2003. I'm looking forward to catching up with some folks I haven't seen in awhile; Andrew Jones and Reinhold Sharnowski to name two...

Reading Pete Rollins

Last year I was at a meeting in Geneva and I got to meet Pete Rollins. (here's a short bio and photo I found on the Greenbelt site)

Last night and this morning I was reading through his blog. What I really enjoy is seeing how he's taking the philosophical discipline of phenomenology and applying it to theology. The post is here and this is how it ends...

Thus phenomenological theology does not sit around and ask ‘what is God (as object) like’, but rather is interested in how our relationship with God transforms us into more loving and Christ-like individuals. Far from being really dodgy, these insights can be described as broadly Lutheran, with a twist of the mystics thrown in (I have always found Luther on the rocks a little too much).

One of the other things I like about Pete is that when he steps on your toes he does it in a nice way. You have been warned...

What separates us...

Our differences and our misunderstandings (between Christians) are due to us not being true to the Gospel.

I'm still having a hard time wrapping my brain both the depth of the phrase and the humility of the person who said it. The sentence was a part of a short speech given by the new Bishop of Grenoble, Father de Kermiel who was named the successor of Father Dufaux two years ago. The transition was completed last Sunday. Father de Kermiel was speaking to a group of leaders from the different Christian confessions in Grenoble who had been invited to an informal reception given to mark the occasion.

I am really far from having that attitude. I don't have much more to say other than to write it again.

Our differences and our misunderstandings (between Christians) are due to us not being true to the Gospel.

Anti-intellectual, trop intellectual, you tell me...

So last week I was in Geneva more or less attending Divergent (PDF) an Emergent conversation hosted by the Shema Community. I say more or less because I was really feeling too good and I just sort of slumped around from one event to another. It was great meeting the folks that were there and you can pick out some of their names in my bizarro post. Reports have been popping up in the blogosphere and I'm finding it interesting.

I got to carry Andrew Jones' bags while I was there though he doesn't mention this valuable service in his post, Divergent, maybe its because I did a poor job of guiding him around Geneva though we did spend a few happy moments trying to get into the United Nations... for another time. So he writes,

I moderated the panel on the ethics discussion and also found myself on the missional-language panel, as well as the wrap-up panel - where i shared that the conversation we had was necessary but a little too intellectual. Maybe I am partly to blame for that. As I said in that final panel, if we demand that everyone know all these philosophers, history and must go through Seminary to participate in this conversation, then we are in need of Reformation ourselves.

Then over on Generous Orthodoxy Think Tank Jamie Smith wrote a post called Emergent Reflections Post-Divergent. Here's a slice,

5. There are surprising elements of anti-intellectualism in the conversation. One of the things that attracted me to the emergent conversation was what I saw as a surprising degree of interest in taking ideas seriously, particularly philosophical issues (as in McLaren's New Kind of Christian). And I think this is confirmed in the planned Emergent Academic series with Abingdon. So I must asmit I was surprised by a still significant anti-intellectualism in the conversation, all in the name of "practice" - as if theory wasn't always already a practice, and as if practice wasn't theory-laden. There still seems to be quite a bit of hangover of "just-give-us-mor-of-Jesus" evangelicalism here (though it might manifest as "just-give-us-more-community," etc.).

So sitting here in my little corner of the world I'm wondering what to do with all of this. Take a look at the comments on the two posts and you'll get a good idea of their main audiences. I made a feeble attempt at a comment on the Generous Orthodoxy Think Tank (for sake of brevity I'll call them GOTT) site and realize that I was way out of my depth...

Since this is my site and I can say what I want. So here's what I think.

The folks at GOTT are doing some really serious and really important stuff. And Jamie is right saying you can't separate theory from practice... Maybe it is simply about language. Read the comments over there and you soon realize there is a sub-culture thing going on that has its own rules and codes. If you head over to TSK you hear some folks lauding the need for simplicity. And there too you'll find a sub-culture with its own rules and codes.

Deep ecclesiology is one of the ideas that Brian McLaren throws around. He says he got it from Andrew. By it he's looking for an openness in the emerging church to appreciate all forms of church from the most hierarchical to the most organic. So over on GOTT I made a weak attempt at introducing an idea I call deep-intellectualism. By this we would embrace the whole spectrum of Christian thought. From the academics who wrestle intensely with ideas looking to be true and consistent in their ideas to the folk who simple say, I love Jesus and his word and that's all I need to know. One can't be better than the other. Each needs to give space for the other. Having met both Andrew and Jamie I'm pretty certain that this is something they both want. The hard part comes in creating spaces where both crowds can share the same space and hear what the other is saying.

I know of a church in Paris, L'Eglise du Tabernacle, that attempted to create this kind of space by having one church service a month being pretty much the equivalent of a seminary class. Henri Blocher, probably the best know French evangelical theologian outside of France, was a leader in the church and you really needed to put on your thinking cap when he taught...

Anyway the only way we're getting beyond these types of distinctions is in talking them out, in taking the time to understand the other culture...

Technorati Tags: emerging church

A day in Geneva...

My last post was a bit cryptic. It was a lame attempt to get Andrew Jones' attention. I learned while I was with him in Geneva that he only reads stuff that pops on his aggregator thingy.

Jason Clark has a much nicer post about what happen in Geneva that lists out the folks that were there check it out at old and new friends. He is also very good at making resources available.

Jason talks about the tour around Europe that he's doing with Brian McLaren. Brian was here in France last January and things on the extreme evangelical right have gotten interesting. I've even gotten branded as a bad guy! Their source material are the nice folks at Lighthouse Trails Research. Who as far as I can tell have excluded about 90% of the evangelical world. I may post more about this but for the moment its not worth it.

Technorati Tags: emerging church