Missional Progressives

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Missional New Monastic Emergent Church Workshop in January

Quick Links

Dear Ronald E. Robinson,

We've heard much for decades now about climate change in North American Christianity. Mainline decline. The rise of evangelicalism. Mushrooming megachurches and disappearing mid-sized congregations. Persons who claim to be spiritual but not religious. Post-Christian and post-Christendom North America. A remarkable increase in the de-churched and of persons who check "none" regarding religion.

But we also see significant renewal movements. Missional church. Emerging/emergent church. The new monasticism.

Woven through the climate change and movements of renewal are serious and provocative questions about the relationship between Christianity and "church."

We invite you to attend the Inaugural Re-Mind & Re-New Conference at Phillips Theological Seminary. The conference, formerly known as Ministers' Week, is an educational event designed to foster the renewal of participant's minds and spirits. Featured speakers include: Dianna Butler Bass, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Chris Haw, and Craig Van Gelder.

A registration fee of $90 inlcudes the program, coffee breaks and dinner on Tuesday evening. Registration deadline is January 9, 2012. Register for the conference here.

Free Webinar

The conference is preceded by a free webinar on November 30, 2011 at 10:00 a.m. CST. Led by Dr. Gary Peluso-Verdend, the webinar will briefly address conference topics and introduce participants to selected writings from featured speakers.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

10:00 a.m. CST

To register, view the full schedule, learn more about presenters and find additional information, visit the Re-Mind & Re-New Conference web pages, at www/ptstulsa.edu/remindrenew.

For questions contact Melanie Tipton at melanie.tipton@ptstulsa.edu or 918-270-6405.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Resources On Connecting with Your Missional Field

Here are a few samples of resource handouts I will be using during the engaging your missional field workshop this weekend at the Fall Leadership Conference, Evangelizing The South, held at Glen Rose, Texas, by www.swuuc.org.

Engaging Your Missional Field with The 3R’s of Missional Ministry: Relocation, Redistribution, Reconciliation

1. Location: Go As Local As Possible. Pick your Parish. Who you gonna serve? Narrow Your Scope to Make the Most Difference with your Resources. A block? A neighborhood? A Demographic Group? Begin with concerns about changing the community around you, not with concerns about changing the church.

2. Relate With Remainers, Returners, Relocators. Connect these groups. Embed Yourself. Find the “peaceful presences” to partner with. Various ways to relocate: physically with your residence, moving your church, or regrouping your church, or just with classes, your board meets outside its own building; your social events, even your worship; think of all the ways you can take what happens inside your building and do it with others in your community.

3. Choose the Abandoned Places of Empire for your mission field: the first of the 12 Steps of New Monasticism. See handout for all 12.

4. People lead to partnerships and to the particular projects you choose as long as they fit within your overarching Mission Vision Values. (For us, the mission is a given: Luke 4, Matthew 25, and the values from 8 Points TCPC, 7 Principles UUA). Is your own truncated sense of mission and mission statements holding you back from engaging in mission? Looking and Living Outwards will help you to grow within your community as well; what are the connection and the gifts of all the people including especially those on the fringes who can connect you with others?

5. Listen, Learn, Follow. Know the data, know the history, know the leaders, but also pay attention to the margins and the fringe folk, those new in the community you are serving, just as you should within your own; do windshield tours and walking, talking, community forums.

6. Experiment and Fail your way to Success. Don’t wait to serve. Be wary of planning; instead prepare. Be wary of Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Be wary of your dream of community interfering in growing community. Don’t fall in love with your vision statement.

7. Balance the needs of the partners from outside your area providing service and the needs of the neighbors receiving it; err on the side of neighbors; create your own non profit and work with non profits and governments. See handout.

8. Moving from Come to Us to Go Be With Them. Know Yourself and Your Context and the Disconnect between them. Figure out where you fall on the Missional Field Scale. See handout.

9. Growing Smaller to Make Bigger Changes in the World; also grow in multiplicity moreso than with addition; develop growing overlapping missional communities; turn all small groups and circles within the church into missional communities with a service component.

10. Permission Giving culture; turn over to others. Simplify how things get done.

11. Going Missional is more than another outreach program added on; it is core; affects budget, building, board, programs. 3 Sets of missional practices (Alan Roxburgh and Scott Duren, Introducing the Missional Church): 1. Cultivating Sacred Presence, ie worship, prayer, spiritual disciplines; 2. Demonstrating Love, through life together (cannot be done by a conglomeration of individualists who see each other only at formal meetings); 3. Engaging the neighborhood.

12. Meeting needs is not the starting point for incarnational mission. “When missionaries start with the need, hoping they will one day get to know poor people personally, they are likely to be found 10 years later, still addressing the need,” John Hayes, of InnerChange, which brings us back to relocating physically, getting to know people as friends, as givers not just as receivers,

Cultural Distance and Missional Engagement

Adapted from Right Here, Right Now: Everyday Mission for Everyday People by Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford

How we perceive the relationship of our church in our contexts. Demonstrating the difficulties in remaining and growing as an attractional only church.

How far is a person or group from a meaningful engagement with your church’s core message and practices?

m0---------------m1-----------------m2-----------------m3-----------------m4

Each numeral with the prefix m indicates one significant cultural barrier to the meaningful communication of your core message and practices. What makes it difficult for “them” to “come to us”:

Examples of cultural barriers: language, race, nationality, religion, worldview, economical class, educational attainment, age, occupations, family size, political leanings, etc.

m0-1: Those with some concept of Unitarian Universalism who speak the same language, have similar interests, probably the same nationality and are from a similar class grouping as you or your church. Most of your friends would probably fit into this bracket.

M1-2: Here we go to the average non-UU in our context: a person who has little real awareness or interest in UUism but is suspicious about the church (they have heard bad things). They may be open to spirituality, socially aware, but have been offended previously by church, some call them “bad fruit” and are hard to reach.

m2-3: People in this group probably have no idea about UUism. Or they might be part of some ethnic group with different religious impulses. This category also likely describes people actively antagonistic toward UUism as they understand it, e.g. Christian fundamentalists.

m3-4: This group might be inhabited by ethnic and religious groups with a bad history with historical Western religious communities, such as have Muslims and possibly Jews. The fact that they are in the West in greater numbers now ameliorates some of this distance but they are highly resistant to the culture of “church” by whatever name; some immigrant and refugee communities fit in here too.

………..

Our church has a distinct culture and so do the people we are trying to reach. All mission in Western contexts now must be considered cross-cultural enterprises.

The attractional model of church requires the other to do all the work in crossing the cultural divide. They have to be the missionaries.

Compounding this is the dynamic of how people who join churches, often within three to five years, have no meaningful relationships with anyone outside the church. So if we do bring them in and socialize them to our group we cut them off from their host community where they could help us continue to connect.

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If you are looking for measures of missional engagement, see how your community is doing according to the 12 Marks of New Monastic Communities, adapted: 1. Relocate to the abandoned places of Empire. 2. Share economic resources with one another and with others. 3. Hospitality to the stranger. 4. Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities, combined with an active pursuit of a just reconciliation. 5. Connection with other churches. 6. Intentional formation of spiritual life borrowing from the lines of the old monastic formation rules. 7. Nurturing common life among members in an intentional community. 8. Support for singles, celibacy, alongside families and couples. 9. Geographic proximity to community members who share a common rule for life. 10. Care for the plot of God’s Earth Given to us along with support of our local economies. 11. Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution. 12. Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.

Rules For Radicals in Mission

From Alan Roxburgh’s Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood, with acknowledgment to Saul Alinsky

1. Go Local. Truly Live in your neighborhood. Also instead of creating church programs to invite people to, lets make the neighborhood the focus of our creativity and commitment and turn the local church into the center of formation for the equipping, sending, and resourcing of people in the local.

2. Leave Your Baggage At Home. Relate with people as people not as objects for your purposes. The local church learns to become like strangers who receive the hospitality of the people in the community.

3. Don’t Move From House to House. Bloom where you are planted. Follow the call to stability and place in the 21^st century. A truly counter cultural move.

4. Eat what is set before you. Be ready to meet the other person in the ways that are comfortable for them.

5. Become Poets of the Ordinary. Listen and tell the stories of the people.

6. Move the Static into the Unpredictable. How are the local church’s arteries becoming hardened. Creating non-anxious presences so anxiety can be surfaced and change faced. Appreciative inquiry with others.

7. Listen people into speech. Creating space in the community, and in the local church, for this to happen.

8. Experiment Around the Edges. Don’t rush to fix an identified problem with a program; open up and try small things like asking and talking with others, doing something small. Help people do their own work of discovery.

9. Cultivate experiments, not BEHAGS, big hairy audacious goals; what to resist to allow number eight to happen. BEHAGS tend to perpetuate feelings of being in control, instead of entering into vulnerability, and trust.

10. Repeat Rules one through nine over and over again. Change comes through practice.

Map The Neighborhood: Assets Resources Hazards, Listen to stories, where do peoples gather, including virtually, from bus stops to coffee shops, workplaces, et al.

What issues are important to various groups? Who speaks for the community? What are they saying? Who doesn’t have a voice?Why? Who are the historians and poets of the community? What are they saying? Who has power, and who doesn’t and why? What topics concerning the neighborhood keep coming up?

….when did you first move in? what brought you here? What are your best memories of the neighborhood? What do you like best about the area? Tell me about your family. Does your extended family live here too? What would you love to see happen in this community?

Missional Communities Resources: A Sample List

Books: The Almost Church Revitalized by Michael Durall;

Missional Renaissance and also Missional Communities by Reggie McNeal;

The Shaping of Things To Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch;

Introducing the Missional Church, and also Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood, by Alan Roxburgh

Right Here, Right Now by Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford

The Abundant Community by John McNight and Peter Block, see also McKnights Turning Communities Inside Out

The Faith of Leap, by Hirsch and Michael Frost

Exiles by Michael Frost;

The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch,

Christianity Rediscovered by Vincent Donovan (most of the books on this list are very contemporary; Donovan’s pivotal book is from the 70s);

Welcoming Justice by John Perkins,

Let Justice Roll Down by John Perkins,

Follow Me To Freedom by John Perkins and Shane Claiborne,

The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne,

Houses That Change The World, Wolfgang Simson,

Change The World by Michael Slaughter

Emerging Church by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs,

The Organic Church and Search and Rescue, both by Neil Cole,

Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen,

The New Conspirators by Tom Sine,

The New Friars, and also Living Mission by Scott Bessenecker,

The Tangible Kingdom and Gathered and Sent by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay;

The New Monasticism and School(s) for Conversion, both by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove,

Economy of Love, by Claiborne and others

Church Morph by Eddie Gibbs,

Reimagine The World by Bernard Brandon Scott,

Revolution by George Barna,

Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola,

UnChristian by David Kinnamon;

The Secret Message of Jesus, especially appendix, by Brian McLaren,

Under The Radar by Bill Easum,

An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor,

Planting Missional Churches by Ed Stetzer,

Inside The Organic Church by Bob Whitesel.

Lyle Schaller’s books especially The New Contexts For Ministry, and What We Have Learned, and From Geography to Affinity,

Postmodern Pilgrims by Leonard Sweet and his other books, and the other books by Bill Easum and Tom Bandy, and The House Church Manual by William Tenny-Brittain

The Small Church At Large by Robin Trebilcock.

A few Films: Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day story; Romero; The Least of These; Briars in the Cotton Patch: Koinonia; Places in the Heart, The Spitfire Grill, Chocolat, Babette’s Feast, Man on Wire, The Blind Side, The Mission, The Shawshank Redemption, October Sky, The Blues Brothers, Of Gods and Men. See also videos Economy of Love by Shane Claiborne, and Justice For The Poor from Sojourners, with Jim Wallis.

Websites: www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com,

www.msainfo.org, http://www.shenango.org/PDF//Missional%20Church%20bibliography%20_2_.pdf, Http://www.nationalministries.org/missional_church/docs/MCT_Six_Characteristics_Missional_Church.pdf

For a list of diverse missional communities: http://missionalprogressives.blogspot.com/2011/09/links-to-diverse-missional-communities.html

Thursday, October 27, 2011

The Workshop Where It Began Five Years Ago: Notes from Reggie McNeal

Five years ago this month, I was in a workshop with missional church leader Reggie McNeal, when the vision that had been trying to rise to the surface, a vision of turning our church inside out, of moving from trying to attract to trying to incarnate, of creating a space to give away to others in which we would be guests, when this vision became clear. I recently found the notes of that workshop and thought I would share them. At the top of the page I have written and circled his words: Church never votes to go missional; church that votes will always vote to go back to Egypt. (see Exodus). 1. But he started with a discussion of John 4:34-35, part of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman after the disciples have left him to go into town to get food. From Eugene Peterson's translation of these lines: Jesus said, "The food that keeps me going is that I do the will of the One who sent me, finishing the work he started. As you look around right now, wouldn't you say that in about four months it will be time to harvest? Well, I'm telling you to open your eyes and take a good look at what's right in front of you. These Samaritan fields are ripe. It's harvest time! So, we are again getting at the difference here between the actions of the disciples and Jesus, or you might say the difference between church and Jesus. The disciples leave the area, the well, leave Jesus to go into town to get food. Church is trying to feed itself instead of others. It misses the action, it misses the party. And while the disciples can't see what is right around them (like not being able to see how God is present and working in the neighborhood outside their own doors), Jesus sees that there was no reason for the disciples to have left to seek food elsewhere; it was right around them all along; they just had to get outside of themselves and their agenda and see what the world offered to them. The fields are ripe, but the church can't see it. 2. Part of that mission field is knowing how it is shaped by generational cultures. And so much of my notes is about the different generations, how a marker of our time is that we see such change and disruption from one generation to the next, whereas in the past there was more continuity between generations; and we have several generational cultures cohabitating at the same time which was not the case before. He divided up the generations as those born before 1925 who created the 20th century; then those born between 1925 and 1945 who are the builders and who favored mass standardization. Then between 1946 and 1964, the boomers, who created the experience economy and church as experience. Then those born from 1965 to 1983,the Gen X who stress relational, and family even if it is fictive family or their tribe of friends, who see themselves as survivors, wanting mentoring and lifeskills. And then those born between 1984 and 2000, the Millenials, who are exibiiting a turn toward community service and volunteering and renewed idealism after much of the cynicism of the Gen Xers. And then those born after 2000 who are simply the forming Next Generation. 3. He then talked about shifting from a focus on church growth to a focus on kingdom growth. That the world is the destination, not the church. Is church like an airport hub, or is church like a livewell with kept fish. We need to quit evangelizing . and start blessing. We need to move from being members or from all being minister to all being mission-aries. Start with community building agenda not church growth agenda. 4. The rise of Simple Church. There is a return to spiritual formation. Don;t think multiple site, but poly site; one vision in different places. The questions to ask yourself and those on your team: What do you enjoy doing? Where do you see God most at work in your life now? What would you like to see God do in your life in the next six to twelve months from now? Then how is it coming? How would you like to help other people? How can we pray for yiou? Our church scorecard needs to be their individual scorecard. Check into www.wiredparish.com Be counter culture to consumer culture. Offer spiritual direction; ancient practices are connecting now. Be apostolic in your leadership, which means people invest in people who will make a difference in people. Move from planning to preparation. Our DNA needs to be based on Vision, Values, Results, Strengths, and Learnings. We are shifting the scorecard oif success. We need to develop missionaries of relationship. Hand off ministry. Church is undergoing a Template Change.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Being Missional and Progressive: Various Welcome Statements About How We Try To Do It

A Variety of Portals and Welcome Statements About The Welcome Table Church. Free Universalist Christian Missional Community. www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com

I.
Following the radical Jesus in deeds not creeds; though we may gain much wisdom from the historic creeds, we are not bound by them. Join us in service to our community throughout the week. That is the primary way we become church. Our Welcome Table of Worship is open to all who welcome all, regardless of belief or denomination, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical abilities, economic status, or political affiliations. We don’t think Jesus would have it any other way.

Free because God works in freedom so we are non-creedal. We don’t give theological tests for admission, but encourage you to test us and try us to see if this way is for you. Universalist because we believe God is Love and All who abide in Love abide in God, and God’s love is for all for all time. Christian because the generous compassionate way and story of Jesus, is our primary pathway opening up to God. Missional because we are sent to serve others more than ourselves, building up God’s beloved community more than our own, putting our time talent and treasure more into the world than into our own organization. Community because we are made not to be autonomous individuals but to be a people of God.

We are a simple church, but it can be a deep struggle to live toward true freedom, to practice God’s love for all, to follow the liberating Jesus who was crucified for his radical ways of hospitality and justice, to live for and serve others more than self, and to put community first. We invite those who wish to struggle with us, to fail with us, and to continue struggling with us. Worship gatherings and common meal are our times to refresh our spirits for the service of God.

II.
Here is a rewrite of the principles from The Center for Progressive Christianity, signalling our approach to religion.

1. The radically loving and liberating Jesus is central to our community's experience of God.
2. Jesus isn't the only way to experience God. It is good to let other experiences of God into our lives.
3. Communion is the way we worship, and is about God's welcome table for all, and our committment to a life of hospitality and justice throughout the week.
4. We will worship and work with anyone toward creating a just and more loving world; we don't give theological tests for being with us.
5. How we live in love deepens and reveals our faith more than our particular beliefs do. We honor the uncertainty, and change, of beliefs, but also the risk of committment.
6. Freedom is rooted in community, not in individual likes and dislikes, and must be nurtured in community.
7. We are called to resist evil done against Creation and against all of the most vulnerable, and must look to our own blessings and privileges of life that are contributing to injustice.

III.
The Covenanted Community, adapted and extended from Tich Nhat Hanh:
1. We show up.
2. We pay atttention
3. We speak truth in love
4. We stay focused on mission, and flexible on how to accomplish it
5. When we fail at 1 through 4, We show up.

IV.
The five smooth stones, adapted and altered from James Luther Adams and several sources:
1. Truth and meaning is ever being revealed anew, but this can mean also finding truth and meaning in forgotten or neglected or discarded ways.
2. Our relationships rest on mutuality and free consent and persuasion, not coercion.
3. Our committments are aimed at a just community.
4. Goodness must be incarnated in life if it is to be real.
5. We acknowledge the power of evil but believe hope and love and an abundant Universe are ultimate.

V.
The Three R's of Christian Community Development:
1. Relocate to the abandoned places of Empire (or remain, or return)
2. Redistribute goods and The Good
3. Reconcile peoples who are divided, broken, separate.

VI.
The Four Paths of Missional Church: World, We, I, God
1. First, Scatter out into the world beyond ourselves and Serve others. We are Sent People because God is a Sending God.
2. As we do the first, next Grow loving community, in order to do the first path more fully, and to reflect that God is always a Relational God.
3. Then focus on Growing Your Soul, in one's heart, mind, body, and spirit. The more we grow personally the more we have to give along the second path of community.
4. Finally, Respond with Worship: Gather together in Gratitude for being able to walk the first three paths and for the Renewal of self needed to sustain our walk with God found in all of these paths.

VII.
The Six Spiritual Practices of our Missional Community
1. Pray daily
2. Worship at least weekly.
3. Check in spiritually with another at least monthly
4. Go on Retreat at least annually.
5. Commit to going on a once in a lifetime pilgrimmage.
6. Practice random acts of kindness and beauty daily.

VIII.
The 3 Characteristics of an Emerging Church
1. Focus on the life of Jesus.
2. Blur the artificial boundaries and places of the secular and the spiritual
3. Live in Community.