So my time at Fuller, like college, has been one in which you read, read, read and without question most of the texts are very excellent. One problem. When I start reading the books that I am required to and ones for research on a particular topic, I get side tracked by other books those books reference! Sometimes I just get sidetracked by the mound of books (many of which are those referenced by textbooks) I call "to read after graduations pile," and begin to dabble. With graduation around the corner, I picked up a couple more titles the other day, one of which was written by Shane Claiborne. The other month I had teh pleasure of sitting down with Shane and about ten others in Philadelphia to discuss everything from God's call for justice, living in community, the subversive and alternative nature of the gospel and the like. Shane is a very unassuming, thoughtful and loving person. He really wanted to have a serious round table conversation with our insights and experiences and questions at the center, not just his!
I've known about his book which came out over a year ago, called The Irresistable Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical and I have avoided reading it. Mostly because of my already demanding reading schedule, but also because a roommate read it when it first came out and said this is changing everything. He didn't mean Shane, he just meant the delightful and passionate way in which Shane helps us to recover the nature of Jesus call to follow. So I purchased at a "sale" price this past week in the Fuller bookstore (great deals by the way, potentially one of my vices) and swore to myself that I would not pick it up until after my research and writing for papers was complete.
Like always I began thumbing through it and could not put it down. Buy this book and read it and pass it on to a friend or better yet read it with a community of people. Read it especially before coming to Fuller. If I did not want to teach in a university setting, this book alone would have given me the hermeneutical framework to recapture the imagination of the way of Jesus. So read it and wrestle with it. Let it help you reengage the narrative of Scripture and the Gospels.
Well, week 9 of our 10 week spring quarter is about to begin. This is academic crunch time. Of course there is always way too much reading because every discipline and each course has countless scholars who have countless nuances on things. So after reading volumes of work it is now time to put pen to paper, or more accurately, finger to keyboard!
The past few days I have been studying for a paper I am writing on the theology of discipleship, in light of Immanuel (God with us) in the Gospel of Matthew. I've been reading some excellent scholarship on this subject (Ulrich Luz, Dale Brunner, Stanley Hauerwas, and Graham Stanton as well as others). But for as much as each of these scholars really frames Matthew in very helpful ways, it is the Gospel of Matthew itself which has gripped me.
The Gospel of Matthew is considered to be called the "First gospel" though Mark was likely the first to be written, Matthew is first in the Christian NT canon. Matthew seems to provide the best bridge between Torah-Writings-Prophets since it has a distinctly Jewish tone with a Gentile melody. Matthew seems to place Jesus as "The New Moses," places the "Ethical Teachings for the New People of God" (e.g. Sermon on the Mount) as like a (re)newed ten commandments, or a deeper nuance on the commandments, he also organizes his Gospel into five fairly distinct discourses (though some debate this as they do everything) with resemblance in mind of a "New Torah" (e.g. the first 5 books of the First Testament).
Most of all, Matthew is a gospel that places COMMUNITY at the center of what God is doing in the world. For Matthew Church = Community and Community = Disciples. Discipleship is not an individual pursuit. Perhaps that is why it is so (de)emphasized in our Western Churches who perhaps in a skewed way read Paul as divorcing "knowing and doing." For Matthew, and deep within the Consciousness of 1st century Judaisms (of course to varying degrees), is the reality that one cannot separate "knowing and doing." As Rabbi Lawrence Kushner put it in reference to a Jewish sage, "to know is to do and to do is to know."
That means if we have churches which function as collections of individuals with a loose association, but are not deeply enmeshed in each others lives, we are left with a performance, an event, a separation that creates an unbiblical consciousness that somehow church is something one shows up to, not something one is. Of course the sheer size of our popular Churches would be a visible polemic against Matthews’s insistence on community equaling discipleship. And perhaps the sheer size and isolation of our communities and our culture is precisely the problem. Perhaps in this way the ekklesia tou theou (Assembly of God) to borrow a Pauline phrase is more outlandish than it was in first century Antioch.
It's my understanding that the Gospel (re)narrates our lives. That is it tells us a true story that invites us into its narrative, and in so doing, it exposes the pseudo-narratives of the world around us.
In a Western Church that too often mistakes Paul for the way of Jesus, the Gospel of Matthew provides precisely the (re)orienting we need to "re-imagine" what it looks like and thus means to be the people of God, the Church.
I leave you with a quote from Ulrich Luz in his The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew:
the defining property for the Church is neither confessions of faith nor its institutional fabric, but rather its conformity to Christ. To be a Church means to assume the commission and the authority of Jesus, to live as he did, to suffer as he did. To be a Church means discipleship. To be a Church means itinerancy, movement, commitment and suffering…Matthew 10 implies that no Church meets the defining qualities of being a Church. But every Church is called upon to do so. Far from providing a doctrine of the Church, Matthew says there is no essence of the Church apart from its practice and its identity, and hence no possibility of being a Church apart from worldly action and suffering in conformity with its sole exemplar, Jesus.
What Would Jesus Deconstruct? Taking Derrida to Church
Wow...it's been a busy few weeks. This is a doozy of a quarter. I just spent five days in Philadelphia at the emergent philosophical conversation. This network is part of the intellectual think tank of theorists and practitioners who identify with the emergence of new forms of church community. We had lovely conversation with two of the foremost current postmodern continental philosophers; Jack Caputo (Villanova and Syracuse) and Richard Kearney (from Ireland and teaching at Boston College). Check out my reflections on my personal blog: into the subversion
SEX and GOD are connected and so according to Fuller alumni Rob Bell, when we understand that sex and god are not opposites, but actually in relation to the very core of what it means to be human, we then begin to understand how "this" is really about "that". Rob's newest book "SEXGOD" is flying of the shelves (or amazon pages) and once again recovering a big gospel that places our humanity and its intimate expression in deep connection to our understanding and relationship with God.
Last Thursday evening a few Fuller friends and I cruised down to Sunset Boulevard to join in on a conversation Rob was hosting to promote his new book. UCLA was the fifth university campus stop on the six stop tour. It was an amazingly refreshing night.
Rob has such an unassuming candor and genuinely wants to engage. Nothing is off limits! So he promptly jumped out on stage and sat on a stool while fielding questions which led to more of a conversation for well over an hour. Then he stayed around and chatted for hours.
Here are some shots from the night. I am in the process of posting a multi-part review of his book on my personal blog into the subversion. I highly recommend the book and the newest NOOMA entitled "YOU".
Well friends it's been a while since I've posted. The past few weeks have been filled with Hebrew. I definitely think the intensive is the way to go. At least there are no papers to write for other classes while cramming vocabulary (by the hundreds) and verbal paradigms down the throat!
This tends to be the time, the week before finals, when Fuller students are submerged in an ocean. I am looking forward to coming up for air next Thursday. I'm even more excited for the beginning of baseball season. Everyone knows baseball is the most theological sport.
It's quite an interesting feeling to be approaching another threshold. Spring will be my last quarter at Fuller. I'll be finished with my M.A.T. B.S.T. and that is both exciting and scary.
In April I will be participating in emergent village's annual theological-philosophical conversation. Jack Caputo who is well know for his interpretation of the late French postmodern philosopher and founder of deconstruction Jaques Derrida, will be our conversation partner. Last year we gathered at Yale Divinity School to interact with Fuller's own (now YDS) Miroslav Volf on Exclusion and Embrace. It was a fruitful and engaging time. I am looking forward to heading back to Philly with a fellow Fullerite to participate in this conversation with Jack Caputo on "What Would Jesus Deconstruct?" This is the title of his forthcoming book. Emergent Village emphasizes participation, so its not like a typical "conference or seminar". We really engage in conversation and dialogue and then go continue that dialogue in a nearby watering hole. If you're interested in the emerging conversation and the movement...consider joining us...registration is still available on their webpage, I believe.
It seems that throughout history God will move beyond the institutional church to blow his prophetic winds by other means. Apparently God saw fit to use the biggest rock star in the world. Again this does not represent Fuller's view in any official way...but watch this clip because it does represent God's view!
Reflections on the President’s Theological Seminar
As my previous post noted, I’d like to briefly reflect on the presentation and conversation that took place last Tuesday through Thursday during the President’s Theological Seminar. The seminar was comprised of Dr. Mouw (President of Fuller) and three other faculties from across the disciplinary spectrum (old testament, new testament, church history). They came together to present and reflect on Church and Kingdom, new theological challenges. I happened to be the only current student participant along with about 30 others who were in full-time ministry at some capacity and many of whom are alumni of Fuller.
The first evening Dr. Mouw presented a brief overview of the forces that have brought us into the ecclesial shift from modernist assumptions to post-modernist assumptions. Essentially the former can be seen in final form in the seeker-purpose-driven paradigm churches which have given us the birth what Mega-religious gatherings. The former being the rise of the emerging church conversation, the terminological descriptor of missional church, and the theological forces giving rise to the “re-configuration” of the church. Two of the three assigned texts for the seminar (Resident Aliens and Jesus and Community) are part of the theological zeitgeist of these new ecclesiologies.
Dr. Mouw’s presentation was insightful and well crafted. Yet towards the end, in my opinion, he caricatured the emerging church movement as some sort of repackaging of small groups. To which I quickly interjected. It’s not that emerging churches are happening ex nihilo; of course they are drawing upon and rediscovering historical practices of the church. However, they are resurrecting them in new and unimaginable ways, most notably in their tendency to rightly borrow freely across church lines. Thus they represent a post-denominational ecclesiology.
Whereas the mega-boomer churches draw on free market capitalistic practices and secular organizational plausibility structures almost indiscriminately, emerging-missional churches function on a completely different epistemology. They put into (or work towards) practice what Hauerwas and Lohfink and perhaps Jesus and the early apostles had in mind. That is, church as a contrast-community, a people who narrate in thought, word and deed a story which is contrast to that of any empirical myth narrative, whether it be Rome, Europe or the United States.
It is shocking to me that so many people bit the Niebuhrian liberal notion that somehow we work the Kingdom of God into the power, principality and authority structures. This has resulted in the church being a sort of chaplain to the world, one which nobody takes too seriously, but finds comforting or good for morality. Only when the church is visibly particular in its ontology and epistemology is it the body of Christ on earth. Only then can it point to the coming new creation in a way that doesn’t let anyone be fooled into thinking the Kingdom of God is built buy the world or buy the church for that matter. Only when the church truly hears the iconoclastic rhythms and subversive language of the Scriptures can it move into the world with Good News given from God in Christ, not Caesar.
As a wise sage once said; “The church needs to be the church (e.g. narrate in its life a different story than the world’s), precisely so the world (with its story) can know it’s the world.” In pursuing relevance on terms defined by the world we end up with an irrelevant message and church.
This Tuesday through Thursday, I will be participating in The President's Theological Seminar, hosted by President Mouw on Fuller's main campus here in Pasadena. The topic of discussion is "Church and Kingdom: New Theological Challenges". I made a special effort to be part of this since two of the three faculty presenting, have been professors of mine.
As well, two of the three assigned readings have been particularly forceful and fruitful in my theological reflection and imagination for what the church is called to be. First, is Resdient Aliens, written by Duke theological ethicist and TIME magazine's 'America's best theologian' Dr. Stanley Hauerwas and former Duke chaplain Will Willimon. I first read Hauerwas and Willimon's provacative clarion call to the church, while studying business and theology in my undergraduate program at Azusa Pacific University. The second, assigned title for this seminar is entitled Jesus and Community, by German New Testament scholar Gehard Lohfink (Tubingen). This text is becoming widely assinged in courses at Fuller, and offers a Hauweras like proposal from the standpoint of thoroughly wrestling with the meaning of Jesus' teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and the types of communities which were formed in the early church.
For now I will leave you with what I consider to be one of Hauerwas' most powerful statements in the book. I hope to do a follow up post with pictures and comments on the seminar.
"From a Christian point of view, the world needs the church, not to help the world run more smoothly or to make the world a better and safer place for Christians to live. Rather, the world needs the church because, without the church, the world does not know who it is. The only way for the world to know that it is being redeemed is for the church to point to the Redeemer by being a redeemed people. The way for the world to know that it needs redeeming, that it is broken and fallen, is for the church to enable the world to strike hard against something which is an alternative to what the world offers. Unfortunately, an accomodationist church, so intent on running errands for the world, is giving the world less and less in which to disbelieve. Atheism slips into the church where God really does not matter, as we go about building bigger and better congregations (church administration), confirming people's self-esteem (worship), enabling people to adjust their anxieties brought on by their materialism (pastoral care), and making Christ a worthy subject for poetic relflection (preaching). At every turn the church must ask itself. Does it really make any difference, in our life together, in what we do, that in Jesus Christ God is reconciling the world to himself?"(p.94-95)
Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life Inside the Christian Colony. Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN. 1989.
Recently I've heard many preachers exclaim that "the local church is the hope of the world." I'd like to rephrase it to: the local and global church as the body of the resurrected Christ on earth, is the hope of the world, when it moves towards God's mission in God's world. Most notably, Bill Hybles in his book Courageous Leadership makes a grand and passionate claim to this 'hope of the world statement.'
But what makes a church local?
Are churches really local when, in a 500+ gathering (particularly in urban metropolises) a majority of the congregation is living several miles from the worship site? Often in Southern California, people attend church services which are well over 30 minutes from their local communities, the neighborhoods in which they live during the week. Through my study of American church history last fall I have clues as to the sociological and theological forces that have brought us to this point But it seems to me that in an increasingly fragmented society, we need to truly re-imagine what it means to be local. This, I believe can only be done in committed, covenantal community. It will often require people to restructure their lives by changing employment, moving, or at least committing to intentionally placing themsleves in proximity spaces where they can have shared experiences with each other and the community in which their church gathers.
It seems a fragmented church, in a fragmented society, that often does little more than add more "services" and "programs" deeming itself successful does not lacks the ability to challenge, shape and transform the culture and society around it. No matter how many life groups, cell groups, small groups, or whatever, the reality is people cannot be in community if they only see each other 1-2 time a week at an "event".
Often, many think of Church growth in numerical increase of attendance and tithe. But in reality could this just be an overweight Church locked into preserving self and institution?
Why not see growth as Church multiplication. That is, churches existing to plant churches. At some point you can't just keep saying we have more and more small groups. Some of these need to become fully functional ecclesial communities that localize themselves. That is if we still believe that God is blessing the body with giftings of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher.
Perhaps churches need to go on weight loss and start having babies.
I am considering PhD work in Christian theology and ethics and this class did not disappoint. This course taught by Professor Erin Dufault-Hunter included some of the most provocative and thought provoking reading of my whole time at Fuller. This is not a class for the faint of heart. Great dialog. Challenging question asking. Subversive answers.
Leaving Fuller, I can now say that my favorite theologian and Christian writer is the late Bishop Lesslie Newbigin. Dr. Shenk presented and discussed his missiology as they were personal friends and Dr. Karkkainen communicated Newbigin's epistemological paradigm shift based on the thinking of Michael Polanyi, and in light of the pluralistic and secularized society we now have in the West. It's a shame this course is rarely offered. I was moved to tears in a few of the classes.
Excellent reading, thorough, engaging and insightful. Some of the thoughts I left with..."Salvation has according to the Gospels has nothing to do with us escaping this place, it has everything to do with God's Kingdom breaking into this place!" Thompson's assertion is "just re-read the Lord's prayer". She also assigned two excellent readings not on this ECD link. Gehard Lohfink's Jesus and Community and Oskar Skarsaune's In The Shadow of the Temple.
This class was a time of going deeper in reflection on the meaning of Christ, atonement, the meaning of Jesus from "above" and "below" and the nature of salvation (soteriology) and the function of the Spirit (pneumatology). Very excellent reading and very global in perspective.
An essential course for understanding how and why the church in America has arrived where it is today. Dr. Feldmeth is incisive and engaging in his narrative approach to the telling of how the church unfolds in the United States and Canada.
Honorable Mentions: Donald Hagner (Exegetical Method and Practice), John Thompson (Patristic Theology), John Goldingay (Pentateuch)
Seminary is a transformative time and causes everyone to wrestle with many pressing and difficult issues. Sadly these issues are often ignored by many churches into which we as students and graduates will be sent. In my run at Fuller this has resulted in somewhat of an isolated and fragmented experience. I made the decision to work while taking classes in order to minimize debt and not have to scrounge for a cup of coffee after paying rent and living costs. The down fall is that my life has been far too full.
As graduation is on the horizon this June, I've begun reflecting upon the processes God has been guiding me through over the past couple of years. I was reading an article on biblical leadership which spoke of God moving emerging leaders into places of isolation and even depression at which point one of two responses takes place. First, we might be inclined to flee and leave God, the church and following Jesus. Sadly this has recently happened with one of my closest friends. The other option is to choose to go deeper with God. To go deeper into the place of uncertainty and questioning with the confidence that God is taking us through a refining process which will emerge into a new move of the Spirit.
For all of the incredible things Fuller offers, community and genuine connectedness is difficult to come by. Now this is not Fuller's fault altogether, because it is hyper-individualism is the major poverty and fatal situation of our culture in America. My encouragement to any prospective fellow Fullerites is to dive headlong into your classes here, but from the get go, find people, fellow travelers who will commit to friendship through the seminary life. I know of friends who with their busy lives in the midst of seminary have had to step back and not do the whole "Sunday service" deal opting to create a church community among those whom they live in proximity with. It's almost like small group is more church than Sunday morning "service". If your small group lives in your living complex, then your church never leaves you and you never leave your church. There is nothing more important than a fellowship of believers that are committed to each other beyond a Sunday morning, especially while studying in Seminary. This is not to say that you should find or form a church comprised of only Seminarians.
This also makes it more possible to engage together the community in which you live. Southern California is a fun place full of opportunities, but as a native, I can say it's a fast paced environment and the endless opportunities of church community, work, classes, study, play, etc. have the potential of leaving us asking God if we're back in Egypt?
So I consider myself an intellectual but not a linguist. The reality in theological studies at a theological seminary is that biblical Hebrew and Greek are a requirement. Fuller is no exception. Although I have heard some faculty scoff that in some ways its telling that we only are required to take 8 units of Hebrew, the more complex and Old Testament language, while taking 12 units of Koine Greek (can anyone say Marcionite?j/k). If you have not done any theological studies you'll get that joke after taking John Thompson's Patristic Theology course (an excellent course might I add).
Last quarter I started with a plan to take my 8 units of Hebrew over two quarters--fall and winter. Unfortunately after sitting in the class the first night I felt like that professor was giving me an encyclopedia article after every new letter we learned in the alphabet. When it comes to language I need to "keep it simple". With graduation on the horizon in June, I had not choice but to take the "Hebrew Intensive" this winter. That means 8 units in one quarter (10 weeks) which are typically done over two quarters (20 weeks)!
So far, my experience in the intensive is going well. I think it's important to know of your professors and their teaching styles before you take them, if you want to maximize your learning and grade. That is not to say there are any bad professors at Fuller, in fact they are top-notch, but it is important to investigate the course requirements and pedagogy of each. I'm finding that though Hebrew is difficult, like Greek, the intensive fits my learning style because I don't have multiple other classes distracting me from memorizing hundreds of vocabulary words and linguistic paradigms!
Then I have also been asking myself why the heck I am taking biblical languages when in most churches they seem to be frowned upon and our most popular teachers (except Rob Bell) seem to neglect utilizing them in bringing the Scriptures to life. Language matters, because the word blessing in Hebrew most likely does not carry the same cultural ramifications that it does in 21st century United States. So as I continue to work through this class I keep my eye on the prize that one day, perhaps soon, I'll be engaged in teaching and coaching a community of Jesus followers through the Scriptures and I best do all I can to hear them in their context and hopefully better discern how the Spirit is illuminating them today.
Shabbat Shalom!
Book Recommendation: The Shaping of Things to Come: Mission and Innovation for the 21st Century Church
This book is by Mike Frost and Alan Hirsch, two Australian missional church planters/missiologists. It's a tour de force and a plea for the church to critically re-imagine what it means to be the people of God in the context of an increasingly commodified world...
Starting points, we all have starting points. This is one of the many realizations I've had while studying at Fuller. Perhaps this is my simplistic view of postmodernism. Our contexts, experiences, emotions, travels, reading and relationships all shape how we interpret the world, the Scriptures and live as people between "the world" and "the book."
I've started to realize the world and its structures narrate a certain "truth" and yet the Scriptures give us a different and new story. It's a story that invites us to submit and be held by the One who is Truth. Therefore as we follow Jesus, our speech and actions and convictions reflect that the God who holds the world together is also holding us too. We don't hold God. God holds us.
Perhaps our church communities are given the invitation to follow this God and participate in repairing the world. This is a call to centered Jesus' call to follow, not into church buildings, but into existing communities. Our churches can only do this when we ask different and more incisive questions than the world around us.
We can ask: What is God doing in our community? Who is our community? What do we need to rethink to become more and more like the community that reflects the triune God? How do we need to restructure? Do we need to deconstruct anything for restructuring to happen?
We can do this because we believe in the God of which the biblical narratives speak! We believe the Spirit dwells in us and the Scriptures to be living and active. We believe, so that we may know and this knowing is a process, a journey, of recovering the call of Jesus in order to discover what God is doing in the world today. God's actions do not just mimic popular culture, they penetrate in a creative way that goes beyond commodification of a message and instead form a people, communities.
Too often my church experience has been one of accommodation to fads and cultural fixes rather than deep reflection and action that moves whole communities towards a new way of being in the world, together. If we just implement the new"---- driven" program then we'll be successful. I'm convinced God wants local communities to create their own distinctive ways of being church. As the late Bishop Lesslie Newbigin spoke of our congregations needing to be a hermeneutic of the Gospel in a pluralistic society that is full of folk Christianity, asking new questions and creating on a local level invites our communities to both critique and embrace the culture we find ourselves in locally. The question which moves us in this direction is: How, as church, do we offer an alternative vision of life rooted in the story of Israel and brought into fullness in the way of Jesus?
My calling is to participate in forming new church communities. I guess it is commonly called "church planting". Fuller has not given answers on how this is done. It has been a place where I get to think and reflect with fellow travelers, followers of Jesus, who are also looking at and responding to how the church can be made new. Theological study at Fuller has allowed me to muse in a direction of asking better questions and in the process discovering a few answers.
Perhaps these answers (and questions) are the ferment for the prophetic future of the church?
