Emergent Brethren

The Pacific Southwest District held their annual Spring Event recently. This year’s speaker was Dan Kimball. .

Dan was asked to speak on the topic, They Like Jesus But Not the Church. His presentation was one of the most engaging ones we’ve had in the history of this event. He began by talking about how most Christians live within a “Christian bubble”. They shop at Christian stores, listen to Christian music, fill their calendars with Christian activities (inside and outside their local church) and hang-out with their Christian friends. While some may think this is a great life-style, Dan points out how this isolates us from those whom Christ is calling us to reach. The more we are isolated from them, the less we understand how they think and what we might do to actually reach them. In his book by the same title he writes, “Christians are now the foreigners in a post Christian Culture and we have got to wake up to this reality. . .”

He continued his presentation by sharing how we need to think of ourselves as missionaries in our neighborhoods. He also writes in his book, “When missionaries enter another culture, they listen, learn, study the spiritual beliefs of the culture, and get a sense of what the cultures’ values are. They may try to discover what experiences this culture has had with Christians and what the people of the culture think of Christianity. Missionaries in a foreign culture don’t practice the faiths or embrace the spiritual beliefs of that culture, but they do respect them, since the missionaries are on the other cultures’ turf. . .”

For the rest of the presentation, he touched on the following points in his book of why people don’t like the church. Though we may not agree with the following points, Dan shares that these are the perceptions of what others have on the church.
1) The church is an organized religion with a political agenda.
2) The church is judgmental and negative.
3) The church is dominated by males and oppresses females.
4) The church is homophobic.
5) The church arrogantly claims all other religions are wrong.
6) The church is full of fundamentalists who take the whole Bible literally.

I met with Dan in February and the night before the event to help him understand who the Brethren are and what might best work in his presentation (I had seen it twice before.). Of this list, the idea that we oppress females isn’t true in this district. In fact the two largest churches have women as pastors. Since the PSWD has had difficulty in dealing with the homosexual conversation in years past, I encouraged him to touch on the topic, show the video interview he has, stress how we need to be hospitable to all people, and move on.

At this point of the day, his coffee really started kicking-in. After he shared his material on how others think of the church as homophobic, he asked, “How does this issue play-out in the Church of the Brethren? How do you deal with the issue?”. For a moment, fear kicked-in. We had people from open and affirming congregations and people from the other side of the issue both present. What happened over the next 45 minutes was totally a gift from God! Dan led a discussion where people lovingly and respectfully discussed the issue of gay and lesbian involvement in the church and how we should reach out and care for them. It was a totally amazing time!

If you or others struggle with evangelism or being missional, I would highly recommend his book. This material can be helpful in changing our attitudes towards those outside the church and give us understanding on how they might be thinking. Zondervan has also created a DVD curriculum to teach the materials in the book in 6 small group sessions. It also has sermon outlines and shorter video clips to play in a worship service.

It was great to be surprised and blessed by God at the PSWD Spring Event!

So I was googling “Brethren Ordinances” recently and this popped up as choice #5. It’s a picture on Flickr of a horse and buggy underneath a Wells Fargo bank sign in Shipshewana, IN (a very Amish town). The guy captioned the picture by saying something about there being a lot of Church of the Brethren congregations around and so when he looked them up online he was really impressed with what it shared on wikipedia—he linked the whole article! =)

One of the comments to the picture said: “Ironic-I was just reading about the Church of the Brethren a few weeks ago. Considering how many times I have been to Shipsee I thought it was high time I learn a little about the people. It is all very interesting.”

See the image linked here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/p2wy/2373955480/

As our church youth group prepares to lead worship on Sunday with the theme of “By the manner of their living–” an Alexander Mack quote– I wonder just how the CoB is recognized in 2008. Is it our non-conformity, the manner of our living and loving, the building of authentic community, peacemaking? What niche are you finding in your various communities– not just for the sake of outreach and evangelism, but because of truly living God’s call to mission?

In the absence of a permanent Director of Congregational Life Ministries, I’ve been representing the Church of the Brethren at Evangelism Connections. This is a ecumenical group of eight denominations which discuss evangelism. The main project that they’ve accomplished and maintained is the website: www.evangelismconnections.org. At this site, members of the different denominations have contributed resources, writings, etc.

What do you think of the site? Do you think it ought to be linked to this website?

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Jeff Glass

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.