In the Coracle

Spirituality in the Suburbs (riffing on Al Hsu’s book)

PatAugust 7, 2008

This entry is cut n pasted from a section of a paper that I’m writing on spiritual formation for my BGU Overture I class.

Spirituality in the Suburbs

Albert Hsu’s book The Suburban Christian contains the best-developed thinking that I have yet seen on suburbia as a mission field.

Contemporary culture tends to look down upon the suburban life. From my experience, this is particularly true among Christian leaders pursuing whole-life spirituality with concern for justice and the poor. It becomes difficult to believe that true mission can happen in the affluence and comfort of the suburbs.

The suburban world, far from an Edenic garden or American dream, often seems to be more of a fallen world… Living in such a material environment, we begin to suspect that suburbia may be detrimental to our spiritual lives. We feel spiritually impoverished in the midst of this land of plenty. Can we truly experience God in the suburbs? Is it possible to live authentic Christian lives as suburban Christians?[1]

Hsu answers this challenge clearly.

While it is certainly true that different settings will lead to differences in how the Christian life is lives, we should not assume that faithful Christian living in the suburbs is by definition impossible. Rather, the challenge for suburban Christians is to discern how they might avoid the pitfalls of suburban life and be authentic Christians in this very setting[2].

The suburban setting is a significant place in our culture. By 2000, over half of America’s population lived in suburbs[3], and suburbs continue to grow. Further, contrary to popular opinion, the suburbs are not only home to the middle class. “We think of the suburbs as middle-class, but 46 percent of all people living under the poverty line reside in the suburbs.[4]”

My own experience confirms this. Although my home is in an upper middle class neighborhood in North Bend, our community lived in trailer homes, older single-family homes, and in at least one person’s case, a variety of short term housing as a result of chemical addiction. Our cities include the poor, but they are not as easily seen as those panhandling in the urban center. Herein lies one of the challenges of suburban ministry: finding, befriending and being with the poor in an environment where minimal social services exist for the church to partner with existing agencies already doing the work of God among the poor and outcast.

Suburban life, because it has become central to American life, is an important location.

Suburbia has become the context and center of millions of people’s lives, and decisions and innovations made in suburbia influence the rest of society. If Christians want to change the world, they may well do so by having a transformative Christian impact on suburbia and the people therein[5].

Exactly how Christians can have that transformative impact is a serious question. Finding answers to it require that we understand suburbia itself.

My neighborhood is a community of 2000-3000 square foot sized single-family homes on small lots, fairly close together. New construction in Snoqualmie Valley continues this trend, with newer homes being smaller, lots much smaller and much closer to each other. Community spaces are outdoors in the form of parks and exercise trails, but few indoor gathering spaces are created – my neighborhood of several hundred homes does not have one.

Our homes are identifiable by small or nonexistent front porches, large garages and parking spots for our commuter cars, and homogeneity in home colors which is strictly enforced by neighborhood covenant and by architectural review committee who has final approval on a homeowner’s color choices when repainting.

In the summer months, our neighbors are easy to find – those with children, especially – in front yards on our cul-de-sac, and on the bicycle paths around the neighborhood. Friendships are grown, people are invited to others’ homes for dinner, and the details of life are shared.

In the fall, winter and spring months, which tend to be wet and cool in the Seattle area, kids play inside their own homes or the home of a friend, and adults much less seldom interact.

Until the past year, our neighborhood had a fairly fluid population. Most people on our street had lived there less than five years; often a family would move in for two or three years and move elsewhere with a change in work. In the past year, the downturn in the housing market has fixed our neighborhood’s residents for the first time in the ten years my family has lived there.

In this city it is easy to find consumerism hard at work. Name brand goods, comfortable to luxury cars, and ongoing home improvements are frequently spotted and the pursuit of them requires much time.

To counteract suburban consumerism, I offer three main alternatives. We need to reclaim the Christian spiritual practices of creativity, simplicity and generosity.[6]

Hsu correctly argues that the opposite of consumption is production. Creative production, whether of art or homemade birthday cards or of gardens, can be a spiritual activity which subverts the tendency to consumerism. Generosity provides a path for us to release material possessions for others’ good instead of collecting more for ourselves. Simplicity gives us the opportunity to be released from the hold that our possessions have on us. Together, these spiritual practices remind us that we are not to be influenced by consumerism.

Hospitality and community are welcome practices among those who seek the good of others, and so they should be in suburbia also. Hospitality is the basic act of caring for others who are unlike us, so that they feel welcome. It can be practiced between neighbors intentionally in order to build relationship and community.

God needs suburban Christians who are willing to take a sharp look at their environment, recognize the challenges of the suburban setting, and then stay here to do something about it[7].

Christians in the suburbs can have amazing impact not only on the suburbs but upon the world that the suburbs touch, simply by intentionally living as faithful disciples in their culture.

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Tags for Where We’re Going

PatJuly 24, 2008

Today I had a really helpful and powerful chat with one of my heroes, and though I want to digest that a bit before talking about it here, it also spurred me to find a page in my journal and open it up.

Here are some tags that I wrote in my moleskine notebook a while back when thinking about the topics I’m pursuing these days, and potentially in relationship with my dissertation thesis, and more so in relationship to how I’d like to see a community of faith grow - in particular, as we keep feeling a sense that at some point we’ll lead a community again.

I’ve been thinking about this topic kind of in terms of a tag cloud, though I’m not sure what sizes each ta would be. I’m jotting them here not to give you information so much as to snapshot this step in the journey.

The main ones that I find myself repeating over and over again are these, in no particular order:

• Celtic
• Missional
• Incarnational
• Organic
• Intentional
• Rhythm
• Community
• Simplicity

And extending on those, several more:

• Transformational leadership
• Bounded set within a centered set
• Transforming the city
• New monastic (neo-monastic..)
• Brokenness made whole
• Relational
• Multi-enthic/cultural/racial/class
• Multiplying networks
• Suburban // urban // rural
• Embedded in context, but portable to other contexts
• Finances directed outward (all, if possible)
• Un-busy
• Intentional community, if not a common roof
• Service
• Justice oriented
• Hope
• Aiming up (worship), in (spiritual formation), out (mission)
• Exile, theology of exile
• Theology of place
• Edges of the empire
• Living Matthew 5-7, living the Sermon on the Mount
• A network of networks
• Network multiplication
• Leadership from within the community, not outside it
• Stewarding power, money, relationships, …

Models and networks that I find helpful and that I relate to

• Mustard Seed Associates
• Community of Aidan and Hilda
• CRM
• Church of the Savior
• Vineyard Central
• Vineyard Community Church, Shoreline
• Sustainable Faith
• Third orders
• Ohana Project

I don’t think I’ll take the time to detail each of these out in bulk, but I suspect they’ll all come into play over the coming months.

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Intro to the Missional Church class notes

PatJuly 14, 2008

For those of you who are interested in missional church, and especially those of you who lead such things and want to speak your church about them, go over to Todd Hiestand’s blog today and download the PDF file of the class he did with his church, The Well.

It’s really, really, really good!

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Creating the Future, One Mustard Seed at a Time (The New Conspirators)

PatJuly 13, 2008

“The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time” (Tom Sine)

I’ve just finished reading Tom Sine’s newest book, “The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time” (Tom Sine). It’s one that I’ve meant to read for a few months. However, having now finished it, I highly recommend it and want to do a relatively thorough summary of the book here. It’s fantastic.

You may or may not know Tom’s name. Tom and Christine Sine are Seattle area folks who direct the Mustard Seed Associates, an organization devoted to engaging the church in emerging culture. What I love about the Sines - not having met them, but growing a friendship with their associate and housemate, Eliacin Rosario Cruz, is that they’re speaking from decades of experience about a spirituality that I think is important and can truly be lived, not just discussed. Their way has whiffs of emerging church, new monasticism, creation care and Celtic spirituality, but it’s got larger aromas of God’s Kingdom among the poor and at the future edge of social change.

The book is organized broadly into five “conversations” (which functionally are chapter clusters). Broadly speaking, Tom begins and ends with discussion of the forms of churches which are emerging in contemporary culture, and in the middle of those markers he discusses emerging culture with a global perspective.

The first conversation labels four new streams of church that are arriving in recent days: emerging, missional, mosaic and monastic. Emerging churches are those intentionally seeking to serve the postmodern context and are described similarly to those in “Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures” (Eddie Gibbs, Ryan K. Bolger). Missional churches are birthed out of missional theology in the vein of Lesslie Newbigin and their leaders are more often seminary trained and focused on multiculturalism than those in the emerging churches. Mosaic churches are intentionally focused on multiculturalism, are often urban, and often are not focused on the postmodern context. Monastic communities are often not focused on church planting and typically are comprised of people older than those in the other streams. Monastic communities are more focused on living among the poor and living a community based spirituality 24×7.

The second conversation is about taking the culture seriously. It examines the post-9/11 world, the development of a global youth culture and economy. It continues by challenging the reader to look at consumerism and the messages we get of what ‘the good life’ is, and how that differs from the reality of God’s Kingdom.

The third conversation is about taking the future of God seriously. It looks at Biblical and cultural imagery of homecoming and the in breaking Kingdom of God into today’s world, which we can live into now.

The fourth conversation is taking turbulent times seriously. Contemporary churches must plan for a changing future, not the continuation of the present. We have to anticipate change, even if we’re incorrect about were we think that change will end up. We have to live a different future with respect to care of creation and bridging the gap between global rich and global poor. We must give those in the middle ways to deal with soaring housing, healthcare costs and encourage them to aim for serviced, not for wealth. Globally, including in the West, the poor are getting poorer, squeezed by housing and healthcare costs, and wages which are no longer livable. We can equip individuals and communities to lift the poor out of poverty. And the community of nations can and must help the global poor out of their poverty. The Christian church can re-imagine its role in culture and make deep impact in these turbulent times.

The fifth conversation is taking our imaginations seriously. We can imagine a different church making a different impact on a different culture. Beginning by examining the Scriptures for God’s description of ‘the good life’, we create ways to shape God’s good life in our lives and world. We purposely, prayerfully live abundant lives. We re-imagine economic stewardship as not serving institutions, but serving the needy. We re-imagine Christian community as a whole-life, holistic family system which intentionally spends time and energy together and in whole-hearted mission. We shape our lives and our church communities for mission. And we ask God to ignite our creativity and imagination.

I read this book at the right time in my life. For several months, I’m feeling a deep call to live simply and authentically. I am more globally aware and related than I ever have been, and it is this connection that gives me perspective on my own life and mission. I am deeply impacted by the way that Tom describes our challenges and the hope that God brings as we break out of old patterns and allow Him to blow through us for the sake of His creation - nature and humanity. I highlighted the daylights out of pages for the fifth conversation, and in the stories that Tom tells of Christians and churches who are creatively doing the work of the Kingdom I find deep joy, life and hope.

My quibbles with the book are few. While I like Tom’s taxonomy of the four streams of churches, I’m not sure that ‘missional’ is really distinct from the other three - in fact, I think emerging churches are really just missional to postmodern peoples; mosaic churches are missional in a multiethnic way, and monastic are missional in community and especially among the poor. I suppose that there are simply missional-missional churches (if you get what I mean by that), but mission shapes the other three forms deeply.

I also found myself going into statistical overload in the well-detailed middle section of the book. The future arriving before our eyes is deeply different than our present, and the difference between global rich and global poor is astounding - but my eyes began to glaze over at the reality of what we’re facing in coming days.

But those minor details aside, I highly recommend this book for anybody who’s feeling unsettled with the way things are today, and looking for a different future in partnership with God. Beware, though - it’s impossible to read this book and not totally re-examine your own place in the world and in the family of God.