Sacred Relationships, not Sacred Space

I’ve noticed an inconsistency among many new approaches to doing and being church. Emergent folk both lowly and elite will make it known that the emergent movement focuses MORE on community than their modernist predecessors. Nevertheless, there is a tendency in the emergent movement to reintroduce sacred space into the evangelical strain of protestantism. I recognize the appeal of this, however I think it can detract from a community-emphasis.

Emphasizing a place reinforces the caustic idea of church-as-place at worst, or church-as-event at best. I know it isn’t necessarily an either/or. However, I think it is worth some troubled reflection by all who would like to run to the latest neo-catholic fad within evangelicalism. Emphasizing a space often leads to church-as-place. Focusing most of a churches energy on a particular meeting and the way the environment feels and looks leads to church-as-event. caveat emptor

Being the good quasi-neo-anabaptist that I am, I’d like to make a plug for sacred-relationship instead of sacred-place. The sacred thing about meeting in a large gathering for teaching and singing is that Christians are gathered. The sacred thing about communion is that Jesus’ family is gathering to remember Jesus, and Jesus is present with them by his Spirit. Anytime believers meet together in Jesus’ name is a sacred thing. No amount of candles or art can change that. Once we own this idea, we can justify spending more of our resources on relationships and less on prettying up our meeting space.

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying there is no place for aesthetics. Aesthetics can be a powerful expression of beauty. We can know one another, and even God, better because of aesthetics. But aesthetics must yield to relationship. If aesthetics can be sacred, it is second-hand sacredness, when it is used to communicate relationship and personhood.

2nd Temple Judaism and Christianity

I started classes at Bethel Seminary today. This morning, I had 2nd Temple Judaism. We are priviledged to have Dr. Michael Wise teaching us from his area of particular expertise. I’ve very interested in learning about the context in which Jesus and the early church ministered. So much of the popular understanding of the Bible is flawed because we read back our culture into the text; understanding the 2nd Temple period of Jewish history is intensely important for understanding the New Testament.

Today, for example, Dr. Wise emphasized that Christianity is essential A form of Judaism…or at least it was early on. There were many Judaisms, but only two survived the destruction of the Temple in AD70–rabbinic Judaism, which perseveres to this day, and Christianity. Writers such as NT Wright have done a service to the Church by pointing out how inherently Jewish early Christianity was–this is not to say they were Messianic Jews in the way we think today, but that they considered themselves True Israel. For the early Christians, Christianity was a purer form of Judaism. They hardly saw themselves as a departure from Judaism; instead they felt that they were being faithful to YHWH and His Messiah.

I hope to post anything of particular interest as the course continues, especially regarding implications for the Church.

Re: TechnoEthics

Leave it to the Vatican. Here’s a document from them called Ethics in Internet. If you’ve got the time, skim through it.

Ouch

I found the following Hauerwas quote on another blog site. Ouch:

What we call “church” is too often a gathering of strangers who see the church as yet another “helping institution” to gratify further their individual desires. One of the reasons some church members are so mean-spirited with their pastor, particularly when the pastor urges them to look at God, is that they feel deceived by such pastoral invitations to look beyond themselves. They have come to church for “strokes,” to have their personal needs met. What we call church is often a conspiracy of cordiality. Pastors learn to pacify rather than preach to their Ananiases and Sapphiras. We say we do it out of “love.” Usually, we do it as a means of keeping everyone as distant from everyone else as possible. You don’t get into my life and I will not get into yours.

Stanley Hauerwas

Is it any wonder I love Stanley Hauerwas? He just hurts so goooood.

Politics in the City

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I am abstaining from the national election. Someone replied, telling me that it would be dumb to apply my non-involvement logic to local politics. I agree whole heartedly with that assessment. I think the more local the issue, the more one ought to be involved; while I cannot in good conscience vote in this presidential election, I feel that it is imperative for myself, and others, to be engaged in our communities. Churches shouldn’t be mere oases in culture. We are missional outposts.

Towards that end, I recommend the following two books, both by Myron Orfield. Orfield is a social demographer who is from Minneapolis. His first book looked specifically at the Twin Cities, while his second deals with the changing urban landscape nationwide.

Orfield contends that money isn’t the answer–urban areas will not improve if all we do is increase spending in urban schools and programs. Urban schools are often better funded than their suburban counterparts. The problem is the totalizing effects of poverty on a neighborhood. Orfield recommends creating affordable houseing in suburbs to hold ghetto-ization at bay.

Anyone interested in urban ministry should definitly check Orfield out. But so should those who are in the suburbs. It is often assumed that issues surrounding poverty and diversity are urban concerns that do not directly touch the suburbs. However, the Twin Cities has growing diversity in its suburbs. We need to start doing church in a different way. As Orfield’s work suggests, if one area of the city has problems, it effects the entire metropolitan area. Churches must become more like the metropolitan council in the Twin Cities–working together for systemic change.

Money Money Money

It is amazing how much of what I’m doing during this phase of the church plant revolves around money. We need money for rent. Money for my pay. Money for posters. Money. Money. Money.

The funny thing is, decentralizing into a house church network approach should free up money. If we are primarily a house church network, then we don’t NEED to rent a space for central gathering. And we can keep going without much central oversight. That’s the theory anyways. Alot of the house churches out there aren’t missional enough. That’s why I decided to have some centralizing elements–for sake of mission. However, I can’t let myself get too attached to those centralizing elements–like facilities and a FT church planter.

One of the biggest sources of frustration I’ve seen in the lives of pastors and church planters is the lack of money. When too little money comes in, it not only upsets the church planter, since now s/he cannot do the stuff that s/he’d like to do, but it also causes other frustrations. Frustration that the paycheck won’t be coming this month. Frustration with the people in the church who aren’t giving. Frustration that things are out of the church planter’s control.

In retrospect, I would have tried to start out bi-vocationally. I would have also tried to go longer without renting an office space (I got it thinking we’d start doing an ESL outreach out of it right away, but that hasn’t happened yet). I would have also spent more time fund-raising. The more you can do to be less dependant upon internal giving, the better.

Jesus the Apostle [CB]

As a way of tempering my last entry, and as a response to Mark’s question, POOF! my latest blog.
Hebrews 3.1-2 says this: “Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house.” What struck me as unique about this passage is the reference to Jesus as an apostle. But if we believe in the axioms of a missional church, that as the Father sent the Son, so he has sent us, and we remember the true etymology of the word ‘apostle’ as one who is sent, it makes sense to refer to Jesus as an apostle. And as a high priest was in many ways the center of political life for Israel, so an apostle was the ambassador of those politics to other nations. Our role as churchmen and churchwomen is to be priests of our city, that is, politicians of the civic life of heaven. But we must also remember to be apostles, ambassadors of the politics of the Way, continuing the mission of Jesus, our apostle and high priest. In this way, I think we ought to redefine church politics.

Modelling Early Christianity

Last week I picked up Modelling Early Christianity: Social-Scientific Studies of the New Testament in Its Contextat my local Barnes and Noble used book annex. I enjoy inter-disciplinary examinations of the early Church. I know that it can be dangerous at times to try to put our paradigms onto the early Church, but we all do it unconciously anyways. As long as social scientists are honest in their approach, I am happy.

This book is facinating. There are several chapters dedicated to group formation/dynamics in the early church. My favorite chapter looks at the house church as a fictive kinship group and larger church expressions as political action groups. Understanding the church in this way can be helpful, for the emphasis is no longer on “discipleship focus” and “evangelism focus”–a distinction that many churches feel forced to adopt. Instead, the house church is an expression of church as family, and understood as the basic expression of the church. However, I believe there must be more–Christianity is not only a family, but a movement. A political movement (a la Yoder and Hauerwas). This is the apostolic function of the church. The previous post (by Chris Brenna) raises the issue of true politics. Here is the question I pose, and it is something we need to take seriously:

How should the church properly understand its function as a political movement?

Please understand, I am using the word “political” in a very precise way. For further study, start here.

from guest writer Chris Brenna: the yeast of the Pharisees

For a while now I’ve been authorized to post something on this blog, but wasn’t able to decide what my first blog should be. In keeping with my identity as a New Testament studies super-geek, I decided to talk about something Jesus said in light of a new breed of Christian I’ve recently become aware of. LIBERAL ANABAPTISTS. This is not a very good term, because some of the people I’ve met that fall into this category aren’t anabaptist and don’t identity themselves as such. The common characteristic to the species is a combination of moderately liberal political beliefs combined with a belief in personal status as a completely dispassionate observer of national and world events. Such a person says she is equally critical of Republicans and Democrats, but if someone prods her to explain her political opinions, she will betray herself as a moderate liberal. She may even admit to being ‘liberal,’ but not so vehemently as to necessarily revoke her status as dispassionate. You may also be encouraged by such a person to vote, though since she opposes both Republicans and Democrats (ostensibly), your powers of meta-communication recognition need to kick in to determine where your vote should go (jk).
Jesus’ vitriolic response to the Pharisees is often explained by portraying the Pharisees as legalistic and unyielding. But we know that the Saducees and the Essenes, two other Jewish sects prominent to the period, were more conservative in many ways than the Pharisees. In fact, the Pharisees seem to have been more involved in political life than any other major group, and comparatively more liberal in some respects. If this is the case, we have to throw out the “legalistic” theory as an explanation for Jesus’ opposition to them and consider that perhaps it was their simultaneous claim to be righteous teachers while failing to remain truly faithful to the Law that Jesus reacted against. In other words, they presented their own skewed political beliefs as truly Jewish. It is in this sense that I see no difference between politically inclined Christians pretending to possess no political bent, and Pharisees.

Late Night

Last night, I thought it would be cool to stay out all night with my friends Sam and Jared. Sam works nights at Minnesota Public Radio, but last night was his night off. Or should I say “day” off? For Sam, the evening is as day. And for some reason I thought it would be a swell idea for me to subvert my regular sleep pattern. Early in the morning, Jared had to bail…I guess he had to “work” or something the next day. We tried to coax him into staying out all night with us…to hold on until breakfast, but he just didn’t have the grit and determination required
I was out until 8:30am. I just woke up (it is now 1:30pm). I feel like a used up piece of gum–tough, flavorless, and pasty.

However, it was cool to walk around all night chatting. We need to take advantage of the times when conversation is rich and the company is encouraging. Sometimes we need to re-arrange life in order to enjoy those things that make life important. That’s what I did last night. So while my body feels like shite, my soul is refreshed.

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