Glocal Christianity

Mark Driscoll trying to copyright the name Mars Hill?!

Early today my mate Simeon drew my attention to an article on "The Gates are Open" where the author reveals the plight of a friend of his, who's church has received a "cease and disist" order from Mark Driscoll's church over their church sharing the name "Mars Hill".

I can understand his consternation. Could you imagine the flap if an Anglican church tried to copyright the name "St Paul's". There'd be an uproar! Here's the most pertinent bits:

"Several weeks ago, Scott and his Sacramento congregation received a “Cease and Desist” letter which came from attorneys representing the Seattle Mars Hill Church. They were told that the Seattle Mars Hill had copyrighted the name “Mars Hill” and they demanded that the California Mars Hill churches stop using the name and any logos with similar lettering."

"I was flabbergasted. First, I could not believe that a church would try and copyright the name of their church. I suppose if you wanted to make some money on the side, you could lease the name out to others. (My friend Ken thought it would be smart to copyright the name “First Baptist” and stick franchise stickers on the name and concept…I applaud his entrepreneurial spirit). But to outright disallow others from using a name that is found in the Bible because you want a monicker and label that only recognizes YOU seems the very epitome of pride and arrogance."

"Second, that a church would take legal action to require other churches to comply violates both the letter and the spirit of the Word of God. The Bible is explicit when we are told not to take other believers to court when the issues regard spiritual matters. The naming of a church is certainly a spiritual matter and it is hard to see how someone could theologically skirt around this."

What's your view? Is this corporatization gone mad?

Crying out for Unconventional Conversation

Something Andrew said has got me asking, how do we get the virally-minded Missionals, the macho-charismatic Calvinists, the anarcho-hippie Anabaptists and the pomo-philosophising Emergents talking to one another about mission again? I miss the interplay.

Yeah, sure, we disagree on some things. But we all agree the ancient distinction between overseas mission and local church has collapsed / is collapsing, we all agree we should be focussing on Jesus in the midst of this, isn't there a whole lot of stuff we could still work through together?

Even where we disagree on things, can't we see that iron sharpens iron and if we debate with respect there is much to be learned from the experience and the engagement? Jesus was a guy who walked all over boundaries. Why shouldn't we?

Mutual accountability in Christian community

Am I alone in thinking commitment and accountability is seriously lacking in many contemporary Christian communities?

I've been thinking, in many ways the Reformation was an attempt to make the clergy accountable to the Christian community. And, given the rampant corruption of the time, I reckon the protest that gave rise to Protestantism was well and truly justified. Clergy should be accountable to the communities they're appointed to represent.

But have we thrown the baby out with the bath water? What about the accountability of the laity to the Christian community? In these days of rampant consumerism, people swap churches like worn out socks. What we seem to have produced with our church growth strategies is an unaccountable laity. There's little discipline. There's little discipleship.

Now, lest I be misunderstood, I want to be clear about the difference between discipline and abuse. Discipline is about training, about constructive correction, and ultimately, about empowering people. There is no place for abuse in authentic discipline.

And I also want to be clear about the difference between accountability to a community, including the clergy, and accountability to clergy acting alone. I'm advocating the former, not the latter.

No, what I am suggesting is the more ancient and authentic model is mutual accountability, where everyone in the community, including the leadership, is committed to one another, and has made a commitment to be accountable to one another. What's missing? I think TRUST.

Sydney AAANZ Gathering

Folks, want to get to know more Anabaptists in your area? Why not join us for a family friendly Barbie lunch next month.

Saturday, 4 December 2010 we'll be hosting a gathering of the Anabaptist Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ) at our home in western Sydney. Bring something to grill, another dish of food to share and your table setting (plates, cup, etc)

RSVP: AAANZ@iprimus.com.au 

Feel free to ask me questions here too.

The history of Thin Places

Okay, so to return to the story of Thin Places. First I have to locate it historically. Thin Places began back around 2002 as an offshoot of Community of Hope, a ministry to New Age seekers at Mind Body Spirit Festivals that I’d been part of since 1997 or thereabouts. I could write a whole bunch of posts about this too, but for today I’m simply going to refer you to the book, Jesus and the Gods of the New Age, which covers this in a whole lot more detail.

Thin Places began as a conviction that we needed to take things further than just parachurch outreach, that we had to more deeply integrate worship and witness within contextualized community. So I gathered together a bunch of people, some of them converts from the New Age movement like myself, some of them just Christians with an interest, and started experimenting with alternative worship.

By this stage Neo-Paganism had began to edge out New Age as the cutting edge of alternative spirituality so we began to ask ourselves, what would a more ecologically sensitive and symbolically aware Christianity look like? We started experimenting with alternative liturgies in homes and nature. We aligned our gatherings with the seasons, eight each year, and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Some of us became more integrated with the Neo-Pagan community and became involved in alternative gatherings such as the Winter Magic Festival.

There were however weaknesses to this approach too, which became more apparent as time went on. First of all, the nomadic element. Not everyone was as willing to travel, which led to irregularity in the group numbers. Second of all, reflective liturgy didn’t work as well for us once kids came on the scene. Thirdly, it was still weak on the discipleship side. Fourthly, and most importantly, I realised that in some ways we’d over contextualized, though in others not enough. Eventually these factors led us to move on, and Thin Places is no more, but I’ll have to continue this later.

Related articles on Thin Places

The wheel of the year and the tree of life
Encountering New Religious Movements: Thin Places

Encountering New Religious Movements: Thin Places

Folks, I have been asked to provide some background on the Thin Places missional worship experiment I led some years ago for some US seminary students studying the book, "Encountering New Religious Movements: A Holistic Evangelical Approach". Thinking my responses may be interesting for some of you as well, I've decided to blog some of what I have to say.

For those of you unfamiliar with the book, it was co-edited by my friend John Morehead, along with Irving Hexam and Stephen Rost, and featured articles from a number of top scholars and innovative missiologists, a number of whom were also friends I'd met in the course of moving and ministering amongst people from New Religious Movements, locally and globally. This ground breaking book, published in 2004, ended up winning the 2005 Christianity Today award for Missions/Global Affairs.

In the course of its writing, Encountering New Religious Movements made reference to some of my activities in an article entitled, "Reaching Wiccan and Mother Goddess Devotees". For your reference, here are the pertinent bits, authored by Philip Johnson and John Smulo:

Thin Places

Our apologia is not just a cerebral exercise, but also translates into a missional approach to worship where Wiccans can experientially find the fulfillment of their quest in Christ. Bill Stewart and Steven Hallam have collaborated with us in designing an artistic reinterpretation of the sabbats that visually portrays Christ's mission. This artwork has been used as an evangelistic tool in the context of booth ministry.

Another practical outcome of this apologia is that it has recently (2002) inspired a lay missionary experimen known as Thin Places. The creative impetus came from our collegue Matthew Stone, who has for several years been involved in evangelism with New Age and NeoPagan devotees. The expression is borrowed from remarks made by George Macleod, founder of the modern Christian community in Iona. Macleod indicated that a "thin place" is one where the physical and spiritual realms are so close together that we sense that Gid us not far from us. It is a place of pilgrimage. In geographical terms, a "thin place" can be a transition point, such as where the earth and sky touch on a mountaintop, where urban dwellings touch the boundaries of a forest, or the coastline where land and water converge, and can become a sacre place for worship. Another nuance is that of transition zones or rites of passage in our lives - such a sborth, puberty, moving from school to employment, marriage, menopause, and death - where God's presence should also be felt and acknowledged.

Thin Places is a nomadic network of lay evangelical Christians in Sydney (some are theologically educated), who are committed to a missional theology of worship that gathers on each sabbat. By "nomadic network" we mean that the group is geographically scattered and that the local changes each time they convene for worship. This reflects the sociological realities of contemporary urban life where people network with each other across the eight points of the city's compass and do not necessarily associate identity and primary meaning in life with the suburbs in which they live. The motif of the nomad is grounded in the scriptural example of the Patriarchs, who were often mobile, and the wilderness sojourn of the post-Exodus people. In like manner, Thin Places invokes a "portable faith" that goes from locale to locale according to the six weekly cycle of the sabbats. The locales oscillate between private dwellings and open public spaces (e.g, beaches and parks).

Another motif in Thin Places is that of Christians in exile, which draws inspiration from the Israelite experience of exile in Babylon. the exiled Israelites were compelled to face up to what their spiritual priorities ought to be as they found themselves inhabiting a strange place that was multicultural and religiously diverse. Today's Australian evangelical cannot help but feel a spiritual exile because the Church is in a multicultural social context where other religions flourish and Christianity is no longer regarded as the definitive expression of faith. 

A multilayered missional theology informs the activities of Thin Places. There is recognition that, biblically, worship and misisons go hand-in-glove. The immanence of God's Spirit within the creation (Acts 17:27) grounds the basis for the notion of there being "thin places", precisely because God is near. This then links into a theology of the creation that acknowledges it belongs to the transcendant Lord (Psalm 24:1; Colossians 1:16-17) and that we are stewards of the earth. It encompasses the awareness that the creation praises God (Psalm 148), and animals are included in the new heaven and new earth (Isaiah 11:6-9; 65:17-25). A Christocentric focus takes centre stage, because the incarnation of Christ occurred in the sphere of the creaion. By the Cross and Resurrection, we see how th redemption of humanity and the renovation of the creation takes place.

Participants form a circle around an alter dedicated to God in Christ that is erected at each locale as a focal point for a contextula form of worship. Each one contributes with music, art, prayer devotional and meditative exercises, mutual encouragement through personal storytelling of what God is doing in their life, Scripture and communion. At these gatherings, the participants also tithe their time and resources to support prophetic practical action on issues such as the degredation of the creation, cruelty to animals, and social injustices.

Matthew Stone has encouraged the participants in Thin Places to cultivate friendships with Wiccans and Neo-Pagans. the aim is to invite them to the sabbat gatherings. As discipleship occurs, it is envisaged that a church for pagan converts will develop. Our Melbourne collegues, Bill Stewart and Peter Jolly, participate in "Pagans in the Pub," where opportunities for personal witness are unfolding. Mark and Mary Muss have recently settled in the alternate spiritual community at Mullumbimby, where they are establishing themselves as tent-maker missionaries through booth ministires in local markets and permaculture. Our collegues, Warrick and Diane Saxby, are tent-maker missionanies with Neo-Pagans in Tasmania.

There's more to the article of course, and the book, but that's the guts of my involvement. Next I'll share some of the artwork by Steven Hallam, some more about what we did, why we did it, and how my teaching and practice has shifted in the past 8 years through this and other experiences.

 

How to practice fellowship more faithfully

Here's some preliminary thoughts of mine about fellowship ministry and how we may practice it more faithfully.

Drop the narcisism

To practice fellowship more faithfully, we need to fix our eyes firmly God, the object of our faith. A fellowship ministry that focusses on others (the horizontal dimension of ministry) to the exclusion of God (the vertical dimension of ministry) has ceased to be fully cross-shaped. If we're merely seeking connection with one another, we'd be better off joining a social club. But if we're practicing Christianity (rather than churchianity) then the Christlike God will be present at the centre of every act of fellowship. κοινωνία (koinonia), the New Testament word which we translate as fellowship, means communion by intimate participation. Authentic fellowship begins with communion in Christ. It's not me focussed at all.

Drop the pragmatism

To practice fellowship more faithfully, we also need to recognize the practice of fellowship as a spiritual discipline in and of itself, and far more than the means to an end it is sometimes treated like. If we treat fellowship ministries in a utilitarian fashion, as a mere means to keeping bums on seats, we're at serious risk of corrupting fellowship as a practice. If we focus on helping people to feel safe, secure and entertained, we could actually be misleading them about the life of Christ and the way of discipleship. Fellowship, practiced authentically, can often mean commiting yourself to people whom you have absolutely nothing in common with, other than your common dwelling in Christ. It can mean touching the untouchables and socializing with the unsociable in your midst. Practiced authentically, it may make you feel very uncomfortable at times. It requires the deepest commitment. This is not pragmatic at all.

In essence, I think it's important to develop a theology of fellowship, a koinoniology if you will, so that we know what authentic practice should look like.

Two approaches to Christian mysticism

In correspondance to a collegue, I recently suggested that "...there are some very distinct differences between Christians exploring mysticism for the first time and mystics exploring Christianity for the first time. One of my criticisms of Emergent was that they largely failed to recognize this, believing themselves to be catering for both when in truth it was largely the former, not the latter."

Furthermore, in relation to the first type I said, "In my experience, many people new to mysticism are usually deconstructing, not reconstructing, and unstable theologically. Fowler and others are behind my thinking here. Emergent instincts towards egalitarianism are not always sound in such contexts. As such I tend to side with neo-monastics and neo-anabaptists who argue for the reintroduction of the catechumenate, that is, for extended periods of initiation."

I realize this goes against the grain of what some have been teaching. But I am wondering what you think.

What is a fresh expression of church?

New video from freshexpressions.org.uk.

New Birth Missionary Baptist Church?

Okay, who is New Birth Missionary Baptist Church? I was scanning Google Hot Trends this evening and saw they'd gone volcanic. Never a good sign. Sure enough the news seems to be about sexual misconduct allegations and his vows to fight them. God I get frustrated with this stuff. Who knows the full story? Are there any non-hesterical voices out there who have dug deeper?