Emergent Brethren

The church I attend has a blog set-up with different people writing daily devotions for Lent. I was asked to write the devotions for this week. For your enjoyment, I’ll post them here as well.
Palm Sunday Devotion
Monday Lent Devotion
Tuesday Lent Devotions
Wednesday Lent Devotions
Thursday Lent Devotions
Good Friday Lent Devotions
Saturday Lent Devotions

In the year that I’ve ministered with the Pomona Fellowship, I have gone through quite a bit of evolution in my beliefs, although mostly with regard to ecclesiology. As a result, I have recaptured a passion for ministry that I haven’t had since my first years in seminary. But that passion has also transformed me into a bit of a throwback to the earliest Brethren. That first group of believers was economically communal, intentionally peaceful, and socially, egalitarian. They had no paid ministers, no cathedrals, no choirs or complicated liturgy. By these distinctions, they created ‘another way’ of Christian community, modeled not on the institutional church of their day, but instead on the church of New Testament.

What I have written below is part of what I have come to believe. It is not intended as a slight against my friends and colleagues in full-time ministry. Rather, please read what follows as a primer on what I think the future holds for the generations emerging in the larger church of Jesus Christ. Of course, as always, this is only one man’s opinion. Search your hearts, search the scriptures, and decide for yourselves if the ideas below comport with the teachings of New Testament.

A trend has been sweeping through The Church of the Brethren for over 100 years. It’s as if someone abducted nearly every church leader and reprogrammed their minds with the logic that argues, “If you have a deep serious relationship to Jesus Christ, you should become a full time pastor or missionary.” It’s so automatic that it’s scary. Against the backdrop of our declining churches and the fewer and fewer folk who file in every Sunday, anyone whose spiritual health rises above the level of comatose is instantly encouraged to pursue vocational ministry.

It doesn’t seem to matter that God may have strategically placed them within their own unique culture and community, with a career (potential or progressing) that could amply provide for their family, and put them in touch with people who don’t know Christ. No one tells them about Paul’s clear instruction that the new birth should not affect a person’s current vocation.

He says it three times, so how do we miss this?

Each of you should continue to live in whatever situation the Lord has placed you, and remain as you were when God first called you. This is my rule for all the churches. For instance, a man who was circumcised before he became a believer should not try to reverse it. And the man who was uncircumcised when he became a believer should not be circumcised now. For it makes no difference whether or not a man has been circumcised. The important thing is to keep God’s commandments. Yes, each of you should remain as you were when God called you. Are you a slave? Don’t let that worry you—but if you get a chance to be free, take it. And remember, if you were a slave when the Lord called you, you are now free in the Lord. And if you were free when the Lord called you, you are now a slave of Christ. God paid a high price for you, so don’t be enslaved by the world. Each of you, dear brothers and sisters, should remain as you were when God first called you. (1 Corinthians 7:17-24, NLT)

But we know our recent traditions better than the ancient Scripture; so the world is drained of our brightest most energetic leaders, and the secular workplace ends up missing those truly gifted to be examples of The Faith.

I’m convinced that we have such an artificial system of “church” that most of us can’t even process Paul’s logic. We have created a mythical category of Christian service known as “full-time ministry” supported by an un-biblical clergy/laity division within the body of Christ.

In 1 Corinthians Paul catalogs the leadership roles of the church. There he lists apostle, prophet, evangelist, and teacher as essential for a healthy Christian community. But because they’re paid a full-time salary, most parishioners expect a full-time pastor to have all these gifts. Unfortunately, none of them do, and so our churches are robbed of the spiritual leadership they need and deserve.

I’m not suggesting that we ‘muzzle the ox’, people don’t value what they don’t pay for, and theological education is expensive. But a prophet is not a prophet if he is beholden to those that pay him. Courageous honesty is just too easily corrupted when you’re worried about your mortgage or whether or not you can afford to retire. Leaders like that neither make waves nor disciples.

Freedom to tell the truth is the key to leader-like, leadership. Absent that, everything that matters will be absent; no apostles, no prophets, no evangelists, no teachers; just sad, scared, scrambling ministers all too aware of their own limitations. What we need is a revolution of thought. A new paradigm that opens the pulpit to a multiplicity of voices, and frees our ministers to live as a citizen missionaries.

Today I celebrated my 43rd birthday. Nine years ago, when those numbers were reversed into a 34, I remember finally beginning to think of myself as a full grown adult. This year I celebrate the birthday that’s finally got me thinking that I’m gettin old. For the most part that doesn’t bother me much. Those that know me know that I’m still quite young at heart. And aging has its benefits. Now more than ever my faith is quite authentic. Doubts no longer shake me but rather add mystery to the things that I believe. My priorities are almost always Christocentric. And I’ve learned to love work as much as I love leisure. All that came at the hands of father time…

And God my Father

Still sometimes, some things hurt. For example; every morning (and whenever the weather changes abruptly), my wrists and knuckles burn and ache. The same is true of my shoulders. Of course that’s arthritis. Arthritis is an autoimmune disorder that inflames the tissue that surrounds overused joints. In my case, 25 years of disciplined practice on the guitar has deteriorated the connective cushion between the bones in my wrists and hands. My shoulders were damaged by years of heavy lifting. The deterioration caused by those activities now often results in inflammation; and inflammation causes pain.

I think most of us are at risk of the same sort of thing with regard to emotional maturation. As we age and apply spiritual disciplines to the human experience, over time, overuse of those disciplines can result in inflamed, painful emotions. For example, all of us endure petty cruelties throughout the course of our lives. But the discipline of forgiveness requires that we turn the other cheek and make peace with those that hurt us. But as we get older, a lifetime of disciplined ‘cheek turning’ can result in so much scar tissue, that even the slightest offence can inflame our emotions. Which begs a difficult question; what are we to do when practicing a spiritual discipline causes us emotional pain? To be frank, because it’s not a simple problem, there is no easy answer. But it’s a problem worth solving, and I think this is how that works.

When I play guitar my hands hurt… sometimes a great deal. If they don’t ache while I am playing, they are bound to burn and pinch the next day. Yet, never in my life has there been a single day when the fear of that pain has caused me to put down my guitar. In fact, when I first learned to play, I would practice two chords, over and over, until each finger was dented with a blood stained, string shaped callus. And when my fingers hurt I was happy, because the pain I experienced was caused by something I love, In fact, the pain wasn’t a problem, it was evidence that I was improving.

I can’t say the same about my feelings for heavy lifting. Be it furniture, or weights or anything in between, I do not love picking things up. As a result, when I am forced to carry something that’s painful to lift, I either put the thing down, or resent the whole experience. But it’s not the pain that causes me umbrage; it’s the lack of love for the thing to begin with. This means that the only cure for the pain that practicing forgiveness can cause, is love. If we practice forgiveness as a spiritual discipline, merely because Jesus told us to, we will eventually be awash with deep-seated bitterness. Christians are not called to be disciplined; we are called to be disciples. And disciples of Jesus do not love the discipline of forgiveness; they love the people they are forgiving.

Discipleship to Jesus is not something that you can be born into; it is something that you claim by repenting and pledging allegiance. When Jesus called this community together he gave its members a new way to live. He gave us a new way to deal with offenders – by forgiving them, a new way to deal with violence – by suffering, a new way to deal with money – by sharing it. He gave us new patterns of relationships between man and woman, parent and child, employer and employee, and made concrete a radical new vision of what it means to be a healthy, godly person. But we are only capable of living this way if we love (agape) our enemies as well as our friends. We cannot merely love the religious discipline of forgiveness, or church attendance, or service, or honesty, or anything other than the people that Jesus was born to love, and died to save. It is love that transforms our suffering into joy.

I have been seeing adds for LTQ and LTQ2 for a while now and I was wondering if anyone has actually worked with it. It is a small group program that is $$$cy and you can’t get it in small parcels. Thanks for any insight you might have.

In Brian McLaren’s book, Everything Must Change, he writes about “framing stories” and the effects they have on groups and societies (Chapter 9, pp. 65-73). A framing story is that which we tell ourselves and follow in life. He writes on page 67, “If our framing story is wise, strong, realistic, and constructive, it can send us on a hopeful trajectory. But if our framing story is dysfunctional, weak, false, unrealistic, or destructive, it can send us on a downward arc, a dangerous, high-speed joyride through un-peace, un-health, un-prosperity, and even un-life.“.

I think another way to think about the definition of a framing story is, what is the vision that created the group and guides it today.

The idea of a “framing story” is challenging to consider. Our founding fathers, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, certainly began framing our story as a nation. This framed story guides our justice system, I think, more than the other two branches of our government today.

As I read more about the concept of a “framing story”, it made me wonder about congregations, and their framing story. How does their story get started? How does the original framed story impact their lives today? How many are aware of their congregation’s framing story? How can understanding their story impact their future in positive ways? How do they work at re-framing their story, so that it remains relevant to their participants and inviting to new people?

I think so often we follow the script of our framing story almost unconsciously. Thus, it guides us without our consciously reflecting upon, “Is this where we want/need to go?”.

One of the things that excites me about the Emergent Church is their passion for following Christ pushes them to reframe their congregation’s story. Or, in the case of church planting, frame a new story for people to be guided by.

If you’re in an established church, do you know your congregation’s “framing story” is? What are some of the ways that you think your congregation’s “framing story” guides it today? Are you satisfied with it, or desire a new story to follow?

What story does your congregation live by?

Jeff