Emergent Brethren

In honor of Saint Patrick’s Day, which we celebrate tomorrow, I thought I would share some thoughts from the book “The Celtic Way of Evangelism” by George G. Hunter. (We had an amazing Saint Patrick’s Day Party this past Saturday by the way which I’ll write about tomorrow).

I read the book a few years ago and as I look back on it I realized just how influential this book has been in my life, my theological journey and the ministry and mission of Veritas. Here are some random quotes from the book.

“Indeed, the fact that Patrick understood the people and their language, their issues, and their ways, serves as the most strategically significant single insight that was to drive the wider expansion of Celtic Christianity, and stands as perhaps our greatest single learning from this movement. There is no shortcut to understanding the people. When you understand the people, you will often know waht to say and do, and how. When the people know that the Christian understands tehm, infer that maybe the High God understands them too.”

“The apostolic band would probably welcome responsive people into their group fellowship to worship with them, pray with them, minister to them, converse with them, and break bread together. One band member or another would probably join with each responsive person to reach out to relatives and friends. The mission team typically spent weeks or even months, as a ministering community of faith within the tribe. The church that emerged within that tribe would have been astonishingly indigenous.”

“So the British leaders were offended and angered that Patrick was spending priority time with ‘pagans’, ‘sinners’, and ‘barbarians'”

The Celtic model of reaching people: 1. You first establish community with people, or bring them into fellowship of your community of faith. 2. Within fellowship, you engage in conversation, ministry, prayer, and worship. 3. In time, as the discover that they now believe, you invite them to commit.” (Sometimes what we call belonging before believing)

“Evangelism is now about ‘helping people to belong so that they can believe.”

“The Irish and other Celtic peoples were predominately right-brained and, in reaching them, Christianity adapted remarkably from it’s earlier Roman reliance upon words, propositions, concepts and theological abstractions.”

Those are just a few of the thoughts from this great book. As I flipped through it, I realized that I need to read this book again very soon.

I close with this prayer from Saint Patrick:

…Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length, Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

I’m so excited about what God is and has been doing in and through Veritas the last few weeks. He has done exceedingly more than we can even dream or hope. I feel so blessed to be able to be involved in this new adventure in faith, mission, service, and worship. Here are some of the things that have me excited…

1. This past Sunday we had an amazing turn-out. Now we aren’t all about numbers…but it is awesome to see people coming and having interest. We had 41 people there and when you subtract a friend who brought her small church (I think there were 7 there), and 2 “friends” of Veritas….you get 32 people (including kids). Some of the 32 have been there all 3 weeks, some for 2 weeks, and about 8-10 visited for the first time this past Sunday. Two of the ones who have been there all 3 weeks are F&M college students and they are amazing. I met the one for lunch on Thursday and had a great conversation and I am meeting the other one tonight for coffee (and probably dinner for her). Another who has been there every week is an amazing artist, poet, and overall great person who gets what we are all about and probably travels 30 minutes or so to be with us each week.

2. The visitors who came on Sunday is another reason that I am excited. A couple came with their two children. The father is a friend from years back and is a drummer. He spied the Djembe sitting up front and asked if anyone was playing it… I said I normally did but he would be more than welcome. So he got up and played Djembe during the 1st musical worship set. They have been looking for a missional church to be involved with, and will be returning this Sunday. Another couple came because of our presence at Purple Door. This couple blew me away (the wife’s name is Trinity…instant connection). He is ex-Amish (which is a story I would love to hear) and she is an amazing artist. We have connected via Facebook and it looks like they will join us this coming Sunday.

3. Last evening we had our second worship planning session with 4 of us there. The ideas were flowing last night around our next series entitled “We have questions, do did they”. The thoughts, ideas, and comments that flew around the table last night was amazing. The synergy was evident and electric. I’m excited about the next sermon series.

4. This Sunday is Service Sunday where we go out into the community to seek to be a blessing. At this point we plan to walk through Marietta and pick up trash in various places (streets, parks, etc..) I will be calling the borough office tomorrow to see if there is anything we could do for them.

Anyway I am so excited about what is going on and the future of Veritas. And that’s why I had to write this because I am excited and I just can’t hide it….

Sorry to be so late in reporting how our gathering was at Annual Conference. The week following conference, I was busy preparing for and attending my D. Min. classes at Bethel Seminary.

I was surprised and amazed by how many attended our gathering this year! Knowing that some who attended in previous years were not coming to San Diego made me wonder if anyone would show-up. Twenty-three people showed-up for all or part of the gathering! This is the highest attendance since the group started with Brian McLaren’s participation (2005).

No only was this year’s gathering different by having the highest attendance, but the topic of conversation was very different. In the past, this has been more of a time of support and sharing what’s happening in our ministry. This year, about 2/3’s of the group was older than 50. Some came because they feel like their traditional-styled ministry is not working, they don’t know much about emergent-style ministy, and so they came to find out. One literally asked, “What is emergent?”.

Some attempted to answer this question in different ways such as:
* the local community works best at defining it.
* it is measured both subjectively and objectively.
* it is a combination of both artistry and technology.

In addition to those who didn’t know much about the topic, there were some from a Sustaining Pastoral Excellence group who had studied the topic and gone to Europe to explore different churches. There were also a couple pastors present who are trying to move their congregation in this direction. So, much of the conversation was going back and forth between those who are new and curious about the topic and those who have seriously explored this style of ministry.

My wife commented afterwards that she felt like she had been in one of my seminary classes at Bethany. This was a good description of the level of conversation.

If I mis-interpreted what happened, please leave a comment below to correct my reflections! Those who didn’t make it West this year — we missed you!

Jeff Glass

I have been doing a lot of thinking over the last year regarding Suburbia. Mostly in relation to what does it mean to be missional in the suburbs. My wife and I wrestled with this question and whether we needed to move to a more “urban” area in order to be missional…but I think that is, in one way, a cop out. Being missional is about where you are planted. Yes you can be missional in the urban area…the needs are easier to see. But you can also be missional in suburbia. I got to see a great example of that at a church in Bucks County called the Well. Todd Hiestand is the Pastor and he has written a great deal about being missional in suburbia, which has been tremendously helpful to my journey.

So the other day while in my favorite bookstore, Ollies…(good stuff cheap) I found the above book “Death by Suburb” by David Goetz. So I picked up and began reading. Goetz lays out 8 toxins of Suburbia and 8 Spiritual practices to counteract the toxin.

The 8 toxins are: I am in control of my life, I am what I do and what I own, I want my neighbors life, My life should be easier than this, I need to make a difference with my life, My Church is the problem, What will this relationship do for me, and I need to get more done in less time.

The 8 Spiritual practices that he lays out are: The Prayer of Silence, The journey through the self, Friendship with those who have no immortality symbols, Accepting my cross with grace and patience, Pursuing action, not results, Staying put in your church, Building deep and meaningful relationships, and Falling in love with a day.

Here are some quotes from the book that resonated with me:

“I think my suburb, as safe and religiously coated as it is, keeps me from Jesus. Or at least, my suburb (and the religion of the suburbs) obscures the real Jesus. The living patterns of the good life affect me more than I know. Yet the same environmental factors that numb me to the things of God also hold out great promise. I don’t need to escape the suburbs. I need to find Jesus here.”

“The kingdom of God often appears plain, ordinary, small, in the moment.”

“Even in suburbia all moments are infused with the Sacred. God is really present where I live…”

“The practice of solitude may be the most important spiritual discipline for the suburbs. And it is probably one of the most difficult to practice here.”

“A friend with a special needs child (and five other kids as well) recently said to me that he thought one spiritual issue of our community (which has a median household income of 75,000) is how hard we work at appearing not to have any issues. ‘The sad thing’ he says, ‘is that you wind up with a bunch of folks who appear to have it all, but are miserable. They’re trapped in the attractive veneer of being ‘perfect people.’ That, by its very nature, negates the transparency to form a deeper bond with a human being.”

“The perfect suburban life is bogus.”

“Coveting may be the most toxic indulgence of the suburbs, and the life practice to overcome it requires the discipline to face another kind of person. This person is not like me. This person in not like my neighbor, whose house I covet. This person is invisible to me, because I am facing in the wrong direction- toward those I perceive to have more than I.”

There are a lot more quotes that I could share but I close with this one…

“forget trying to live a safe, gated life.”

So the last few days I have been reading “Enough” by Will Samson that I received from being part of the Ooze Viral Bloggers. It’s been a good read and there are a lot of things that I resonated with strongly. I have again realized, as I have many times before, that I am caught up in this cycle as well. That I consume more than I should when it comes to resources (food, energy, etc..) and that I don’t often look at ways of consuming less (doing more for the environment, eating less, spending less, etc..) This book opened my eyes to some other ways of interacting with issue of contentment in the age of excess. Here are some quotes from the book that I resonated with.

“G.K. Chesterton once famously quipped, ‘Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”

“Jerry Falwell suggested that ‘God is pro-war’. Several leading evangelicals suggested that the invasion of Iraq would open up ‘exciting new doors’ for proselytizing Muslims.”- As a pacifist, I couldn’t disagree more strongly to these sentiments.

“But we are most like Christ when we are incarnated in the life of the other.”

“As Robert Farrar Capon notes, every miracle of Jesus except one, the cursing of the fig tree, was a miracle of the restoration of creation.”

“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”- Jeremiah 29:7…hmm Jeremiah 29…I think I shared the other day about a Scripture in Jeremiah 29.

“Our Communities should tell a story of Christ in the Eucharist, a story that there is no longer Jew nor Greek, homeless nor homeowner, addicted nor clean, broken nor whole. Rather, we are all to be broken, blessed, and offered to a world in need.”

“What would it be like to be formed by communities consumed by God and God’s vision for the world, and to present our community itself as an alternative vision to individuals consumed by the mindless consumption of stuff?”

“The radical nature of the early church was due to many aspects, but one of the greatest was the notion that each person was responsible for living out the gospel himself or herself; each person was responsible for the creation of what two writers recently called ‘the tangible kingdom.”

“I mentioned the missionary writer Lesslie Newbigin before. He had a big phrase for what we are talking about here. He said that our congregations serve as ‘hermeneutics of the gospel.’ (Hermeneutics is just a fancy word for interpretation.) In other words, the way we act tells a story; it interprets for the broader culture the story of Jesus. Our lives, and the lives of our congregations, become a kind of new gospel account, written in public and for all to see. If the American church in the age of consumer excess were to tell a story, what would that story be?”

I’ll share later about some concrete action steps that the author gives in order to deal with this issue of consumption in our personal and corporate lives.