Archive of "Faith" Category

For my friends Jen, Rachelle, Eliacin and you

PatJune 30, 2008

Funny how sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, and those who are forerunners, at the edge, pushing the envelope - sometimes it’s hard to know what their contribution really is (besides pissing people off and raising a ruckus, which is only sometimes as fun as it looks :-)).

From “The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time” (Tom Sine) , here’s encouragement to many of you:

To counter the imperial colonization of our imaginations, we need poets, prophet(esses, Pat adds) and artists to help us create subversive imagery that challenges the reigning reality. Walter Bruggeman reminds us (in “Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile” (Walter Brueggemann), Pat footnotes) that the people of Israel challenged the powerful myths of the Babylonian Empire by the subversive power of poetic imagination and began to conjecture a very different vision of the future. (Bruggemann writes) “The outcome of such poetry is hope. It is hope that makes community possible on the way out of the empire.” (196-97)

So, those of you prophetesses and prophets on the edge of the empire, continue to create subversive imagery that creates hope - hope that community is possible on the way out of the empire.

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Critiquing Culture (quoting Tom Sine)

Pat

I’m taking a break from reading for my Doctor of Ministry - following what I believe is the inspiration of the Trinity - and reading “The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time” (Tom Sine).

I’ve read several good summaries or reviews of the book, for example this one from Johnny Baker, or this one that Tom wrote to the Anabaptists - I started reading mine a couple of nights ago, and it’s definitely Tom’s best one yet.

When I’m done I’ll summarize the book too, but for now I wanted to throw up a quote or two.

In a chapter Tom wrote entitled “Coming Home to the Good LIfe of the Global Mall” about the church’s entanglement in global consumerism as its great hope, he says this:

Why don’t we discuss the influences of the dominant culture at church? Why don’t we discuss the stories so many of us buy into and their influence on us and our kids? Why don’t we explore the major role these stories play in defining our notions of the good life to which we aspire to come home?

I think part of the answer is that the Western church has historically taken a limited view of conversion. In most churches we are taught that following Christ involves transforming our spiritual lives and our moral values and helping us with our relationships. We rarely hear that God might want to transform our cultural values too.

(p.77)

Here’s Tom’s point: Christians are too easily embracing of the dominant culture’s belief system, as much as we say that we’re countercultural. But we still want comfort, safety, a nice home, good education for our kids, cars that don’t break down, a fulfilling job. We wrap these hopes in the banner of ‘relevance’ if we’re analytical, or worse, ‘God wants us to have the good life’ if we’re just buying in uncritically.

But, what if we took seriously a challenge to rediscover what ‘the good life’ and ‘God’s preferred future’ really meant?

How then would we live?

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With, not For

PatJune 28, 2008

I’ve been taking my time going through the missional synchroblog posts, and summaries of those. One of the best summaries is here. There I found the link to Kingdom Grace’s post which had a nice little hammer in there. One of Grace’s points is:

With not For

As we walk together with others in their faith journey, we walk in mutual relationships, both giving of ourselves and receiving from them. When we share the love of God with others, we encounter Christ himself in their midst. The idea of mutuality is expressed by doing things With rather than For others. This necessitates that we take the time to know them. We develop relationships of commitment, to be with them in their journey rather than to simply show up for charity work.

Of all the synchroblog stories this week, this theme - with, not for - is the one I’ve been chewing on the most. Like a mantra, really. Pair that with Philippians 2; pair that with incarnation; pair that with Jesus’ “I will be with you, even to the end of the age”.

For implies separateness; with implies togetherness.

With identifies with others.

With hears the stories of others; for sees others as a target to aim for.

I see the professional clergy as a for structure. Is servant leadership the antidote, the with structure?

I’ve been thinking this week that the most dangerous thing on the planet for Christians to do - and we do this all the time - is to do something for God. But the most liberating (and at the same time uncomfortable) thing is to do something with God.

Bonus points: Here’s with, not for in a story from Sports Illustrated about a young Muslim woman who gives up her family’s wealth to serve refugee children in Georgia. It’s a deeply powerful story.

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Missionary Model: St. Aidan of Lindisfarne (Late on the Missional Synchroblog bandwagon)

PatJune 23, 2008

St. Aidan and Pat on Lindisfarne
Originally uploaded by patl

Today, Monday June 23 is a “What Is Missional?” Syncroblog event. I didn’t get signed up in time to be on the official roll call list, but that doesn’t stop me from tagging along at the end anyway

I’ve written a lot here about what the missional church (or mission-shaped church) is, and rather than summarize all those things, or try to push in a new direction, I decided just to tell a story. This story is actually a pair of smaller stories about one of my favorite Celtic saints, Aidan of Lindisfarne. I’ll leave analysis of the story, application and implications up to you, the reader.

The story of Aidan fits well into our topic today, I think. On the northeastern coast of England is Northumbria, tribal warfare reigned in the AD600’s, and kings were killed in battle. Oswald, heir to the Northumbrian throne fled to Iona, on the west coast of Scotland, where he met the monks there and converted to Christianity. When word came to Oswald that it was safe for him to return home, he did, and then sent back to Iona for missionary monks to bring the Gospel to the Northumbrians.

Iona first sent a delegation under the leadership of Corman, who met with miserable failure and retreated to Iona with his tail between his legs. At the team meeting discussing the failed mission, the historian Bede writes that Corman said that the Angles of Northumbria “‘were ungovernable and of an obstinate and barbarous temperament”. A young monk, Aidan, spoke up, saying that Corman should perhaps have begun more simply, giving them spiritual milk instead of meat as Paul might say, and that Corman had been too aggressive in his mission and his expectations.

Whether the Iona monks received this word from Aidan as spiritual wisdom or as the brashness of a young punk monk is unknown, but they immediately commissioned Aidan a bishop to Northumbria, and sent him with twelve other monks to Oswald’s people.

Aidan set up base on the island of Lindisfarne, which was within eyesight of Oswald’s castle. Aidan’s Irish style monastery was simple in architecture and design, and he taught the local laypeople to fast from food and to study the Scriptures. Aidan himself fasted from food twice a week and rarely ate at the royal table, even though his relationship with Oswald was excellent.

AIdan worked tirelessly in the surrounding countryside, building relationships with the local people and individually nurturing their faith. He nearly always walked from place to place.

When he encountered people, he engaged them in conversation, asking them to tell him what they believed. Only when invited to share his own beliefs would he respond.

His simplicity of lifestyle was recognized by his peers and by historians as well. When served a feast, he would give food to the poor. When his monastery was given money for support, he would use it to buy freedom for slaves in the local slaving village and then offer to teach the redeemed slaves how to read. Many of these freed slaves continued to live in Aidan’s monastery or entered the priesthood.

One of the best known stories of Aidan’s focus came when King Oswald’s successor, Oswin, gave Aidan a fine mare from the royal stables as a gift. The mare was intended to ease Aidan’s travels and make him more efficient in his evangelization of Northumbria. Aidan received the horse, and promptly gave it to the first poor family that he met on the road. Oswin heard this story and enraged, confronted Aidan.

The historian Bede tells us of the encounter:

“The King asked the bishop as they were going in to dine, ‘My Lord Bishop, why did you give away the royal horse which was necessary for your own use? Have we not many less valuable horses or other belongings which would have been good enough for beggars, without giving away a horse that I had specifically selected for your personal use?’ The bishop at once answered, ‘What are you saying, Your Majesty? Is this child of a mare more valuable to you than this child of God?’”

King Oswin in humility agreed with Aidan and said that he would never again challenge how Aidan spent his resources in service to the poor.

You can read more about Aidan of Lindisfarne at IrelandsEye, St. Aidan’s Church in Malibu, CA, or Wikipedia.

A few brief thoughts stir in me when I think about St. Aidan of Lindisfarne. One is that Aidan knew intuitively that individuals understood the Gospel at different levels, and faith should be nurtured carefully in order to grow. Another is that Aidan, with access to kings and their networks, carefully remained unentangled by political power. He let the power of the Gospel developed in personal relationships over decades transform the kingdom, not kingly decrees. And Aidan spent his time and his resources wisely, aggressively and subversively. Aidan did not care about efficiency, but modeled incarnational mission and all the inefficiencies that this implies.

In an age of mega churches in which pastors don’t know the large majority of attendees’ names - or may not even step foot into a video venue, the personal discipleship of Aidan’s approach through deep relationship is a powerful model.

How effective was Aidan? The monks of Lindisfarne were directly responsible for the conversion of the Angles and the Saxons to Christianity. It wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that Aidan converted England with this approach to mission.

Ah well, enough ancient history. Please go read the others participating in today’s missional synchroblog.

Alan Hirsch Alan Knox Andrew Jones Barb Peters Bill Kinnon Brad Brisco Brad Grinnen Brad Sargent Brother Maynard Bryan Riley Chad Brooks Chris Wignall Cobus Van Wyngaard Dave DeVries David Best David Fitch David Wierzbicki DoSi Doug Jones Duncan McFadzean Erika Haub Grace Jamie Arpin-Ricci Jeff McQuilkin John Smulo Jonathan Brink JR Rozko Kathy Escobar Len Hjalmarson Makeesha Fisher Malcolm Lanham Mark Berry Mark Petersen Mark Priddy Michael Crane Michael Stewart Nick Loyd Patrick Oden Peggy Brown Phil Wyman Richard Pool Rick Meigs Rob Robinson Ron Cole Scott Marshall Sonja Andrews Stephen Shields Steve Hayes Tim Thompson Thom Turner

Missional Synchroblog What Is Missional? Missional Community

In the Coracle

Pat Loughery’s thoughts on life, faith, sports, motorcycles, photography, music and other details

Archive of "Faith" Category

For my friends Jen, Rachelle, Eliacin and you

Critiquing Culture (quoting Tom Sine)

With, not For

Missionary Model: St. Aidan of Lindisfarne (Late on the Missional Synchroblog bandwagon)