See, I quit reading the emerging/missional blogs. Be honest, who hasn’t at some point or other? I mean, who hasn’t quit that doesn’t have a book deal and some titles to flog or some persona to promote at the head of their megachurch? Am I cynical? You betcha, baby. And all of it is earned cynicism. Now, I haven’t completely lost touch. Every now and then someone asks me a question about some issue that I should have an answer for, and so I check out some referenced article or conversation. And I have this wonderful virtual group of friends, bloggers, cynics, church leavers, writers, thinkers, and keepers-in-line of each other. There are only seven people in this group, so some of this is a tall order… but when one of us finds something that makes us want to spew, we have a caring environment in which to release said spewage. And these journeymates will tell one another when correction or restraint should be used, or will ceremoniously roll our eyes in unison. (Sometimes disgust loves company too.) Oh, don’t get me wrong, sometimes we point out encouraging things as well, and pray for one another. This group is actually a faith community, albeit a virtual one in which some of us have never met “in real life” (an increasingly weak phrase to refer to offline interaction) but remain as connected and accountable nonetheless. It’s real community, and I don’t care what anyone says about the impossibility of such a thing… how does that saying go? “Don’t label impossible what you yourself cannot do”? Or is it something about people doing the impossible interrupting those who believed it so? Doesn’t matter. I know what is. Sorry for the pent-up back-rant there, I know that’s not really a current topic at the moment. But, you know, yesterday was the 100^th anniversary of Marshall McLuhan’s birth. You know, Marshall “The-medium-is-the-message” McLuhan, who basically predicted so much of the media milieu that we’re surrounded by today. McLuhan, who said that it wasn’t so much the message that gets transmitted by telephone and television so much as the sender that is transmitted. It was perhaps is greatest insight that our technology is an extension of ourselves. Put that in your virtual-relationships-aren’t-real-relationships pipe and smoke it.

No, my real targets of disgust today include the whole Mark Driscoll thing. I mean the latest one, not all the ones before that. Well okay, some of those as well, but they’re old news. And for most people, the current one is old news too now. And that’s part of the problem… when someone screws up the reputation of Christianity so badly by responding as Driscoll tends to, is that something you want to just let go and hope it will blow over? I hate to break it to you, but there are still people who are upset about the Crusades, among hundreds if not thousands of far lesser issues. It’s the little things that get swept under the rug unresolved that leave people thinking that these issues, since they went unchallenged, must accurately represent Christianity. And that makes me want to spew. Or as Becky Garrison likes to say, it makes the Baby Jesus cry.

I can’t be the only one who finds the whole thing utterly preposterous, can I? Whatever would possess a well-known “successful” big-church pastor and author to go around suggesting that effeminate worship leaders should be publicly ridiculed and that David was much more masculine than the average worship leader because he started killing people as a kid? Um, yeah, are you serious? That’s your apologetic for a trucker who doesn’t like effeminate worship leaders? Hey, Mark, you ever think of suggesting the dude just try a different church? I’ve been told that not all worship leaders are the same… Might it be that the guy just didn’t like the worship leader? Mightn’t it be remotely possible that this fellow didn’t actually think that all Christians were effeminate and was rejecting God on that basis? Or is it really a better apologetic to reinforce the stereotype this guy already had, and characterize “proper” masculine behaviour as killing people in one’s youth.

And it’s so nice that your elders sat you down and told you to say things that were meaningful, but it seems to me they should have been saying, “DUDE! Tone it down or hit the streets! Oh, and we need you to issue a public apology.” But of course, these elders simply told you that you should say meaningful things. Important things. So thanks for not apologizing and promising instead to launch a website promoting your new book. I guess that was meaningful and important. So glad to learn that you’re accountable to someone who can get you to change your behaviour and your public statements when warranted.

Of course, I’m risking a sprained tongue by planting it so firmly in my cheek. Seriously? I think there’s something wrong with the system of creating a circle of people you treat as subordinates and then claiming they hold you accountable. You know the ones, where everyone on the committee seems to think the chair can do no wrong and will back almost whatever he says, though sometimes requesting an explanation first in order to demonstrate that they are actually valuable functioning committee members who can think up questions on their own. Questions like, “Could you please explain for us why this comment was necessary?” followed by a pleasantly quiet atmosphere of listening attentively. Never mind that the question should probably have been “What the hell were you thinking?” followed by many statements in the imperative voice. See, that would be holding someone accountable, instead of just listening to someone’s rationale as they attempt to hold themselves accountable and have a group of people standing by to put a guise of respectability on it.

Problem is that this isn’t the first time we’ve been through this whole rigamarole with Mark Driscoll. And for some reason it always seems to have something to do with gender roles, about which ol’ Marky has some distinct opinions that he doesn’t mind voicing. In fact, the way he tells it, these aren’t just opinions, they’re Biblical doctrine. Mark, it seems, has a problem with women being allowed to do everything he is. The role of the pastor’s wife, apparently, is to keep herself looking hot in order to prevent her husband from having to resort to infidelity. She wouldn’t be able to be a pastor herself, of course. That’s man-stuff.

Mark’s also one of those types who doesn’t like “the gays.” When you boil down that message, it seems not a whole lot different from Fred Phelps, though considerably less vitriolic. At least there’s lip service to loving the sinner, but oddly enough, it’s hard to understand how loving it is to refuse to listen to the viewpoint of another person, particularly around something that strikes so close to the core of human identity. Would it really be so unthinkable to just say, “If homosexuality turns out to be a sin, I pray that you will meet with God’s love and mercy. I think that there’s more evidence in the Bible against it, but there are other Christians who disagree with me. I pray that they’re right.”? Can we not hope and pray for those we purport to love, and to ask God’s mercy? Unless I’m much mistaken, wasn’t that essentially Abraham’s response to the news that God was about to seriously smite Sodom and Gomorrah? (Never mind that the major sin there actually had to do with a lack of concern for the poor.)

As I say, I’ve not been following along with the emerging/missional or other Christian blogs, so I just catch some of the things that shout loud enough to catch my attention. Isn’t it just sad that it’s always just the items that cast Christians in a negative light that really catch any attention. Of course, if anything, this bias is only enhanced in those outside of the Church. But what I said to my friends by email when this thing first came to my attention was this:

I’m so genuinely happy that I had no idea what you were talking about. But then I read the two posts, and found out I might be less of a real manly-man for never having strangled a puppy. Or worn Old Spice. Or something like that. That said, Jesus is still not my boyfriend and I might have issues with worship leaders who insist that he should be. But maybe that’s just me. Or perhaps MD needs to be told that Jesus is *his* boyfriend according to the Bible, just for the value of the horrified look on his face for a split-second. I don’t know, really. I wonder if Jesus strangled any puppies when he drove out the moneychangers? Or if he came today, would he drive a truck and wear a tool belt? Or maybe just a big Texas-shaped belt buckle with a genuine Buck Knife strapped to his side? These theological questions are too big for me anymore, it makes me want to forget the whole thing and just sit down and put my feet up with an alcoholic beverage. One with an umbrella in it. Is that bad?

The other day Jian Ghomeshi interviewed some guy who said that Bill Shakespeare was the most influential man who ever lived. And Jian, of course, said, “Even Jesus?” And the dude said that he saw lots of the bard’s influence today (cue the clip from Gnomeo and Juliet: “What’s in a gnome?”), but no influence from Jesus, what with the minimal-to-nil amount of cheek-turning one can find these days. Dude backed off from “no” influence, but still maintained that Billy-Bard had considerably more. And I’m starting to think he could be right, based on certain valid measures that could be taken. On the other hand, William Shakespeare hung around the theatre and wrote roles for women into his plays just so that other men of his era could put on dresses and parade around in public. Just sayin’. And still, I’m thinking about the word that jumped out at me from MD’s post, something about the whether the man should be the head of his house. It was the word “his” that got me. Oh, beware the presupposition, Mark. You can’t fool me.

As the conversation went on, I applied the manliness-requires-killing test, and started to wonder about the uber-manliness of Davey Crockett, who “Kilt him a bar when he was only three!” I compared him to King David and considered the impact of weaponry selection on manhood.

I think he carried a Bowie Knife. Davey, not David. David carried a slingshot, like Dennis the Menace, who, apparently, would qualify as a manly-man despite his penchant for red overalls. Or maybe because of it? I always lose track. Then again, Dennis clearly didn’t like girls, and that’s hard to reconcile with the slingshot. Unless he really did have a thing for Gina. Can’t blame him for spurning Margaret though, she was downright annoying. Anyway, that’s one for Davey Crockett. And Jesus, who must have been confused when as a child, he resurrected that bird from the dead. Of course, that whole story was apocryphal, and Jesus being manly, the real story must have been that he *killed* the bird as a child. Probably with a slingshot!

…at least we know Crockett was a manly-man. Davey Crockett, not the Crockett that wore white shoes and pink sweaters while chasing drug dealers… really, I shouldn’t have to explain that for you, should I?

And somewhere in there, I posted a Facebook status that said “I keep thinking of examples of effeminate worship leaders, but then I realize, no, those people are feminine because they’re women.” A few people seemed to like it, but I don’t know if they’ll like all of these ideas.

Anyway, it seems I might have missed it with the white shoes comment… don’t know if Crockett wore white shoes, but Boone did. That’d be Pat Boone, not Daniel Boone. Anyway, I think the whole thing demonstrates a clear confusion over the whole question of gender. And maybe something about the love of controversy. You’d think that Driscoll’s publishers would want to rein him in a little, except that the whole thing somehow ends up in the realm of book promotion. Really? How’d we get there? Perhaps the only Christian thing about “Christian Publishing” is… er… well, I may have to get back to you on that one. I can tell you that it seems that it’s really all about the money, as if there were ever any doubt. Controversy sells books, and in the last few years, if it’s not a controversy about gender then it’s about hell. I think those were the two things Jesus really wanted us to work on, right? Love God and love your neighbour. So first, love God so you can go to Heaven and tell everyone else about their Hellboundness, and second, love your neighbour if he’s correctly gender-aligned, otherwise see point #1.

I’m hacking on Driscoll a lot here, but I need to say that Driscoll is really just an animated version of one of the presenting symptoms. He’s not a complete representative picture of the real ill, and he’s not the only symptom. It’s no secret I think we’ve got systemic problems going on, and I’m left wondering about bad fruits and good roots, or good roots and bad fruits.

Who Broke Christianity? is the title of my forthcoming book. I don’t have a book deal, a publisher, or an agent, but I’m (seriously) willing to consider offers that may motivate me to write the book. I do have a thesis, and I can tell you, most of us won’t like my answer to this question… but it does have that annoying ring of truth to it. In the meantime, it seems like nothing is going to resolve itself, at least not before a lot more personality-cult book sales have taken place. And if I should I get an offer for the book I want to write, I promise that rather than apologize for this post, I’ll launch a website to promote the book. That should make everyone happy.

Oh yeah… and happy Eighth Day of Christmas, too. (Hint: Got Milk?)

By early in the new year, we were pretty much done with church, and not without some trepidation, we sort of gave up church for Lent, and it’s been more or less that way ever since. And here we are six years later, observing the first Sunday of Advent a couple of days ago, doing the Daily Office as a family. We’ve hung out at St. Benedict’s Table from time to time since then, just enough to be considered part of the crowd there, but not enough to be regular every-Sunday types. And we like it that way. We’ve journeyed through the dawning and sunset of a simple church / house church gathering and are poised at the dawn of another one. We got out of the school run by the church we left, into another one, and are now homeschooling for a year. We’ve seen friends come and go, seen old friends reappear and disappear, and traveled through an interesting season of detox.

And now I’m wishing some of our other friends could do the same. It’s been a rich season, and one that despite some of its difficulties, I wouldn’t trade away. Not ever. Now when I hear about how busy some friends’ lives are, I want to tell them to cut back on church, or just cut it out. We all know people who are apt to say it’s not about religion, it’s about relationship… but if you take a good hard look, you’d have to conclude there’s no real time for relationship because it’s all about roles and structures and schedules and responsibilities. Not that those things are always bad, but when they’re displacing the things we say are important, it begs the question. I think I’ve found more holistic health — including spiritual — outside the church than I did inside it.

And yes, I know not all churches are “bad” like this. Still, I love the life of a “churchless” faith… though ours is not entirely churchless. We’re still connected to many friends who are part of the body of Christ (the important one, the spiritual one, not the membership-listing one) that we’re never truly churchless. And we stay somewhat connected to St. Ben’s, happy with a transition from Charismania to Anglicanism. And we stay connected to simple church friends with whom we share life, relationship, and church.

I could not have predicted the past six years, and there’s no telling what the next six years will look like. But I’m signed up. Heck, I might even blog some more.

Oh, and happy Blogiversary to me!

No, really.

It was. And when you stop laughing, I’ll have to tell you that I was… well, speechless. Doesn’t happen a lot, but there it was, me with nothing to say. Totally dumbfounded. Had it been intended as a gag gift, I’d have known better how to react. Alas…

Anyway, there was a url printed on the cube: www.e3resources.org, and I had to look. (You would have too, believe me.) And I discovered, right there in the website banner across the top: “Your Missional Church Resources” . What was I worried about? It’s missional, after all. And not only that, it says this is “where every purchase advances missions around the world.” Makes me want to line up and spend away!

Not.

But now if I ever need a greeting card with an encoded “Gospel message,” I’ll know where to go. These people are “The Supply Line to the Front Line”. Though somehow I’ve just never been really into that conk-them-over-the-head kind of missional. Because I always figured it simply wasn’t. But it kinda brings back to mind the whole crusade about trying to get people to use the word properly. Maybe that’s what wore me out, because it evidently isn’t working too well.

The fact of the matter is that some days I wonder if this blog has simply run its course, if I’ve just moved on to other things. I ran the daily Penguinista! News from 1999 through 2003, posting an average of three items per day before I simply became too busy with the business I was building at the time. It was wearying to keep up the pace on all fronts, and something had to go. I still have that site and keep it live in the (probably) vain hope that I’ll get it going again, maybe as a community site that has multiple contributors – something I had always hoped for it. I’ve run this blog from late 2004 until last year with daily posts, the frequency of which has noticeably fallen off over the past year (master of understatement at times, me). In the past year or two I’ve been posting at Coup d’Oeil, my non-pseudonymous blog which focuses mainly on business, marketing, and the Internet. The posting regimen there has been intentionally less stringent, not only so I don’t burn out, but because I hoped I’d have the time, energy, and inspiration to post here as well. Alas, the best-laid plans of mice and men…

So has this blog run its course? I don’t think so, at least not entirely. Perhaps it was largely for the purpose of documenting a season of detox, reinvention, and rediscovery. But how do you declare an end to such a season? You certainly can’t say you’ve discovered it all, that you’ve gotten the final perspective on theology of every subset fully figured out. That would indeed be folly, and is possibly by definition the demarcation point for the beginning of a season of rediscovery. At least poetically speaking. Each time I think I should just acknowledge that the major themes of this season have come to an end and it’s now gone into ‘maintenance mode’, something will occur to me that I really want to explore on this blog – like the way in which concern over widespread financial mismanagement behind theological guise in the church is a precursor to sweeping reformative change. (Think about that for a minute.) Or the danger that reimagined responses to sin can lead to lax moral requirements among emergent leaders. Or a hundred other things, including responses to other people’s musings, writings, and efforts within this little emerging-missional stream of things.

Of course, for that last one, I’d need to be reading more of what other people are saying. The corollary to not blogging much in this vein is not reading many blogs in this vein. Oh, I follow a few select ones more closely – people I know, my cronies, or those who I particularly enjoy reading. But I’ve not had a lot of time for reading emerging-missional blogs… or I’ve not given it a lot of time. I think many in this corner of the conversation are noticing that it’s slowed down. Part of that will be seasonal, but I think a larger part is simply the way the conversation has evolved over time. It’s matured, the thinking behind much of the practice has matured, and some of the topics have moved into other areas – as has the conversation. I have hopes that people who aren’t talking are busy doing, and though I think many are, I’m not naieve enough to chalk it all up to that. Sometimes when the wind of the Spirit is changing, we’re all busy watching the signs and making busy with everything required to tack successfully and bring the boat about so we can catch the wind of the Spirit again, having reorientated ourselves in a manner that brings us closer to our end destination, even if we’re not on a direct route. (Stop and think about that metaphor for a minute or two if you like.)

Now recently, I’ve read Brian McLaren’s latest, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith. Of course you know that this book has been quite controversial even within the emergent conversation. A number of folks feel that Brian has clearly gone off the reservation with this one, while others (mainly) in the the Emergent fold continue to be fully supportive of the positions Brian takes in each new book, including this one. For my part, I think the criticism is (a) overblown, and (b) not unfounded. In other words, I see what the fuss is about, but then again, I don’t. At the risk of being even less clear, I might say that certain of Brian’s theological points should cause signficant concern (and thereby yield appropriate discussion). At the same time, I don’t think he should be villified quite as much as he sometimes is. We can be upset at his denial of hell as eternal conscious torment, or as anything at all… but if that’s the case, once we have committed to reimagining our theology, we owe this doctrine a visit as well. As much as we may not like it, we’re duty-bound to discuss it and outline what our new understanding is becoming, whether it’s most like Brian’s or John Stott’s or Scofield’s or Tim LaHaye’s, or something else. And now that the guy to raise the subject has taken all the heat, the rest of us need to pick up the conversation and chase it down to some sort of resolution. Maybe it’s a better time to do this now… back when John Stott became an annihilationist, people in the evangelical world just tsk-tsk’d and said he’d gone liberal. Hopefully the time is ripe for a better discussion than that, and that we’ve learned enough not to do the same with Brian. Even if one believes he has gone liberal or gone off the reservation, or whatever… there’s no reason that dialogue can’t ensue. I do plan to write some further blog entries looking at this book in more detail. Yes, my first response was rather more snarky, but I’ve received and read my review copy now, so it’s time to talk about it. Either I’ll stir up the controversy again or I’ll help start some careful discussion of the topics. Hey, one can always hope.

Speaking of the man formerly known as the Godfather of the Emergent Movement, he is evidently in hospital right now, though I don’t have any details.

I also missed out blogging about Frank Viola and Len Sweet’s new book, Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ. Now there’s another conversation I’ve wanted to delve into more deeply – I’ve got a prerelease copy of the book that needs my attention, and like Andrew said, if it’s establishing the centrality of Christ, it’s gotta get a raised thumb (at least on some level). I’m sure it’ll be less controversial for Frank than anything with the word “Pagan” or “Reimagined” in the title. ;^)

The other thing I really dropped the ball on was the series we were doing around the MissionShift Conference (for some reason the link is dead right now, account suspended). We were hitting a lot of topics that need discussion in order to come up with any form of missional manifesto. Ed Stetzer was leading that charge, and I was to be summing up the contributions, but once I fell behind and got busy with other things, it seems it was game-over for me on that one. (Sorry, Ed!) I will still want to look at the statement they write and make some kind of response to it.

Then too, I think about some of my favorite posts here that I’d like to revisit, and I keep hearing things from or about churches who do things that make the baby Jesus cry. The last few bits I heard from my CLB makes me want to start naming names and calling them out… they make me angry at what they do to the innocent members through their abusive structures and attitudes with their “damn the torpedos” approach as they continue making “church life” into an oxymoron. Boy, do I want to blog about that some days, and I’m not sure if my restraint is better for me or better for them. Or maybe it just is, but I’m starting to think somebody needs to start calling this crap out for the antichristian way that it is.

I should also fill the silence with some bit of personal update as well, since there’s been a lot of “busy” going on to keep me occupied. Our little house fellowship is awash with comings-and-goings, most of which are “goings” as three of the couples in an already-small group are moving out of province: one for a year and two permanently. Of the latter, one of those couples moved away last summer “just for a year” with the plan to return this summer. We all knew they wouldn’t be back except to pick up the rest of their furniture from storage, it just took them a while to figure that out. It all makes me want to move away someplace else as well. More mayhem has been inflicted on the kids’ gatherings than on the adults, so we’ll be needing to reimagine that again. As it is, we had quite a challenge to get together for the last two or three meetings to finish up the biblical timeline and scroll we’ve been working on since September. I had to abbreviate somewhat near the end, but we got it done. We have yet to find a space large enough to roll out the entire scroll to have a look at, so we’ve had to enjoy it in 25-foot sections at most.

Meanwhile as the summer sets in, we’re busy planning a trip to Vancouver this August (Hello Vancouverites, let me know you’re out there and maybe we’ll get together for hot or cold beverages!). I’ve rigged up a solar heater (redneck-style) for the above-ground pool we got for the kids last summer, and that’s working out nicely. I built a deck around one side of the pool and have begun fixing the fence, but there’s more to do, as well as finish off one more room in the basement so the kids will have a study area come fall. I need to do some more landscaping, and… some variety of other things from a list that just never seems to end. A lot of this needs to be completed by one deadline or another. We’re hoping to get away for a bit in July as well, and hoping that before then I will be properly diagnosed with whatever sleep disorder (apnea) I’ve got that leaves me unrested, needing to nap, and generally not as sharp as I should be. (Resolution there will be a relief to us all.)

Upon our return from Vancouver at the end of August, we’ll be homeschooling our kids for grades 4 and 7. To begin with, it was largely a financial decision, but it turned out that was only the catalyst for the conversation, and we’re looking forward to an interesting and flexible year of family time. It’s not a permanent change, as the kids will be going back into the school system (in their case, back to the private Christian school they’ve been in), but for now there’s a lot of excitement and planning going on for the year ahead, and the vague hope that we’ll be able to creatively make use of some newfound flexibility in all of our lives.

Professionally, I’ve been putting a good deal of effort into WebRiggers, a website development firm that I’ve been starting to build, mainly doing websites for small businesses based on WordPress, which helps me deliver more functionality and flexibility for less money. (I’m not a price-leader, I’m a value-leader.) This has been going well, but of course it takes a lot of time and energy to get something going, and I’m always on the lookout for new clients or strategic partnerships.

And in the midst of all of this, I still wonder if this blog has run its course. Somehow, I don’t think it has, not entirely. Regardless, I don’t plan to yank it all down at any time… what I have written, I have written, and I’ll leave it here. Google seems to think there are around 80,000 links to the site, and I don’t want to break the Internet that badly by killing them all. At the same time, I do hope to add further content from time to time, but it will clearly be on a decidedly sporadic basis as life continues to intervene.

Brazil is out of the World Cup, so there’s some real disappointment to deal with as I try to realign my brain to the idea of not eating carbs, which I must say is actually my favorite food group. But summer is here and my wife and I had an omelet and coffee on the patio this morning. Must make sure I leave time to enjoy the weather.

He describes the conference of the Commission for World Mission and Evangelism of the WCC in Bangkok in 1973, where an attempt to ascertain what salvation was. “In the end, the WCC defined salvation primarily (some would say exclusively) in ‘this-worldly’ terms.” Their report included four dimensions to salvation: economic justice against exploitation, human dignity against oppression, solidarity against alienation, and hope against despair in one’s personal life. These four dimensions, they said, must be related one to another.

Were I to look at the list and shorten it to something like “hope in place of exploitation, oppression, and alienation,” we might come out with something sounding much like a partial definition of basic human rights. But let’s come back to that… for now, we’ll just note that the question of what constitutes salvation will need to be answered in order to properly come back at this one. So far, we can see something of what has been called the “social gospel” when used in establishing a dichotomy between that an the “real” or “spiritual” gospel which includes the proclamation and acceptance of Christ. Perhaps we can also see a conception of salvation which is broad enough to include both. Ed continues,

Yet, it is important to note that salvation was then defined as more than individuals being redeemed. As such, it does not always require the church’s involvement. God is saving in many ways– not just from sin, death and hell– but also economic, etc. And, soon that theological view led some to believe that God was at work outside of the church– something most would agree. But, others took the message further, teaching that God is working in saving ways outside of the proclamation of the gospel and belief in Christ.

This last phrase is the crux of the question. I suspect that up until then, we get hung up on the semantics involved, a sport in which I am usually an eager participant (even in this post). For example, if asked whether God is at work savingly outside the church, I might argue that once salvation (in the spiritual sense) occurs, the subject is by definition inside the church — defined in a global spiritual sense… but not before then. To define the church otherwise is to leave the question of who’s in and who’s out in the hands of men and not in the determination of God. By this definition, outside the church is the only place where God needs to act savingly. I may then be sorely tempted to leave another question hanging in the air: “Is God at work savingly within the church?” (Answer that with semantics or cynicism, whichever you prefer.)

In his explanation that the church is still needed even if God works outside of it, David Fitch rephrases the question: “In other words, are believers (or “the church”) the only instrument for proclaiming the Gospel and bringing individuals, through the finished work of Jesus on the cross and the power of the Holy Spirit, into the Kingdom of God or are there other means? Or perhaps more broadly, how, then, is God at work outside the church?” He distances himself from a yes/no answer to suggest that “the church is the epistemological foundation from which we can see together the Kingdom coming into being ahead of time.” He then tosses in names like Yoder and Hauerwas.

David then seeks to avoid any separation between God’s work and his grace “because all things are in the process of being reconciled to this one end. Personal and social salvation cannot be separated. …God is at work in the world in multitudinous ways that we must always discern so as to truly particpate [sic] in the remaking of all things.” I appreciate the portrait he then paints of God’s people seeking to discern where God is at work and participate in what God is already doing.

Jeff whose-last-name-I-didn’t-catch chimes in nicely here, explaining that God “was already on mission and invited Abram to join Him.” He also restates and then answers the question, making his negative response an affirmative to Ed’s question.

“Are believers (or “the church”) the only instrument for proclaiming the Gospel and bringing individuals, through the finished work of Jesus on the cross and the power of the Holy Spirit, into the Kingdom of God or are there other means?”

No. God’s mission is not dependent on believers participation. If it was it would have ended long ago. God will do what God wants to do. Illogically He has asked us to join Him on the journey.

I like this version, as it serves to not limit God’s work to the obedience of the church… which it must be admitted has had a rather tenuous grip on success for countless centuries now. In this vein, Jared Wilson says that

God is at work outside the church because he is God and his power and reach cannot be contained or limited. That he chooses to use the Church as the witness to his love and as the new humanity of his Son is an enduring testament to his incomprehensible grace, but to say the Church is the locus of God’s saving activity in the world is not to say the Church is the limit of his saving activity.

The discussion around these posts was of course varied, from the first response of a flat “no” to indicate that God did not work outside the church at all, to a theological reference to common grace and general revelation and an experiential reference to support the opposite response. The latter cites a report of Isa (Jesus) appearing to a Muslim man in a dream to prompt his search for Christ.

It seems to me a dubious suggestion to envision a place within our grasp in which God is not at work in some fashion or other… but is such work sufficient for salvation? Perhaps not in any of the examples provided thus far in the discussion, but it seems such a small leap for God to have given a complete explanation in a dream and the Holy Spirit to have drawn an awakened response in the report just cited that we ought not issue a categorical no. We might perhaps say that the type of salvation envisioned in the work of God outside the church has to do with the re-ordering of creation and spread of social justice, which although a part of the broadly-defined salvation in which we hope, it nevertheless represents an incomplete version — temporal salvation, if you will — and appears to lack the necessary individual trust in Christ for eternal salvation. On this basis, it seems that our participation in the work God is already doing outside the church is designed to gently introduce this missing element in order to meet the spiritual hunger which God’s work is intended to spark. Only the work of the Holy Spirit enables us to connect the two in situ.

The contributions from this discussion are important to the missional question overall, but unfortunately it seems we may need larger or more specific definitions of “the church” and of salvation itself, upon which we have already touched. Anticipating another looming difficulty, we may have to decide what it is people are being saved from — in other words, we will yet need to come to grips with the definition of sin, and to what extent a common understanding is necessary in the context of the missional question.

To this end, our synchro-series turns its attention first to the intersection of missiology and soteriology. One might expect this relationship to be “a given,” but perhaps for just this reason it bears a slightly closer inspection. In his intro-post on Monday, Ed notes that “some consider the transmission of salvation as a physical process” (sacramentalist) while “[o]thers think that salvation is transferred by moral action[, where] salvation is not so much something to be acquired by some individual or organization and conveyed to others, as it is something created by shifting the state of affairs.” Thirdly, he writes, “Evangelical theologies have generally represented a third idea: salvation is a work of grace, accomplished by Christ, and received by faith alone. In the meritorious sense, the recipient is passive.”

Jonathan Dodson talks about how in some circles, mission emphasizes social activism to the apparent neglect of evangelism, while in others, evangelism is more important than social activism. Mission reduces people to evangelistic projects. He notes that “How we understand the person and work of Christ should affect our understanding and practice of mission.” I might paraphrase his question in other words to ask, how much more is Jesus than a good example?

I was going to be surprised if nobody brought up the concept of salvation extended to creation rather than just human individuals. Is God saving individuals, or is he saving a singular bride comprising many individuals? Jared Wilson didn’t disappoint:

The answer to the question is this: The missional church’s scope of salvation will determine the scope of its mission. Is Jesus saving souls but damning creation? Or is he saving souls not just for their escape from hell but to be the princes under his kingship over a coming new heavens and earth, the restoration of the brokenness of all things?

I further loved it when Jared said, “The two great failures of the evangelical church today are failures of the highest magnitude: neglected proclamation of the gospel and refused embodiment of the gospel.” He states that a both/and approach is necessary if we are to avoid being legalists or self-idolators. Jared’s post was, in fact, a highlight of the discussion for me this week: The Two-Fisted Gospel: A Manifesto for Kingdom Militancy.

David Fitch responds to Ed’s contention that salvation took a turn during the Enlightenment, saying

I don’t think either Luther or Calvin imagined what modernity would eventually do in isolating and reducing the atonement to a forensic transaction between each individual and God. This view of salvation became fully flowered in American revivalistic evangelicalism. This view of salvation, I would argue, has done as much damage to the furtherance of Mission in the world as the protestant mainline development.

This plus the ecumenical error to which Ed refers, says David, is a two-pronged assault that leaves us with an “over hyped, individualized salvation that takes the shape of either people individually promoting a Kingdom enlightenment agenda for justice… or people promoting a version of a ticket out of hell for individuals.”

In the discussion that ensued in response to the various posts, Scott Boren chimes in:

If we want to talk about salvation then we need to speak to the nature of the problem. What’s wrong with the world? When we talk about this, it’s clear that we have to go back to creation and to what God intended for the world. Adam was charged to steward creation, not just to have a individual relation with God. We have a creation problem, which of course includes people, but the issues that need salvation are larger than getting people to individually receive grace through faith.

Simply put: instead of responding to Ed’s question in the way it has been framed, I think that having a missional imagination calls us to reframe the question around God’s intent of creation, how we messed it up and what God seeks to bring to restore creation.

I like what David, Jared, and Scott contribute in the rejection of certain phrasings of the question as a means of rejecting a false dichotomy (which I don’t think Ed intended other than for discussion purposes) between two poles that have been at odds for some time. It speaks to me of pendulum-swings where everyone argues the evils of one extreme without realizing that its removal means the pendulum won’t swing at all. By which I mean not that we’ll be left with balance but that we’ll be left without the necessary expressions from each side: each is impotent without the other.

Responding to the question of the week, David refers to a paraphrase of N.T. Wright to say that salvation is “the working of God in the world to make all things right” to say that we transition “from asking people ‘have you made a decision to accept Christ as your personal Lord and savior?’ to inviting others to join us in entering the salvation begun in Jesus Christ that God is working for the sake of the whole world.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Tim Heerebout also advocates “a theology of ‘both/and’,” saying that he cannot “understand why people insist on polarizing the gospel so much.” He reminds us of the command to love both God and people, saying there is “no reconciliation to God without reconciliation to humanity. If we over-emphasize the personal conversion/reconciliation to God through Jesus then we miss the second half of what Jesus was asking of us — that is to follow His example of love to humanity.” Others responded with similar sentiment; John L said that “if we limit salvation to one specific view… we risk making Jesus into a reflection of our own incomplete nature.” In a slightly different vein, Michael DeFazio wrote,

If we assume that salvation is liberation from the powers of sin and death, then salvation cannot be separated from our actual lives — what we do in and with them, etc. And it is here that Jesus’ “example” saves us, by showing us how to walk the way of salvation. Here it also becomes clear that “example” is really not the right word for what we’re trying to say (and maybe using it is part of what continues to obstruct the larger re-definition of what salvation and being saved are all about). Really we’re talking about Jesus as our path-clearer or trailblazer.

Overall, the clearest message was along the lines that salvation is not a social or propositional matter, but somehow involves both faith and action, particularly to the extent that the action involved will somehow extend the Kingdom of God or aid in bringing salvation to all of creation in some way. The precise manner of this last transaction is somewhat vague, and perhaps it is so of necessity.

A question was raised about missiology or ecclesiology needs to come first, and this is an excellent point. For my part I have to say missiology first, because God has a church in the world because he has a mission in the world. In other words, defining the mission allows us to define the church. If we define the church first, we run the danger of a missiology geared toward the church rather than toward Christ. Concern was also voiced about some denominational circles being more concerned about survival than growth, meaning that there seems to be greater concern about the fact that the numbers are dwindling than the fact that people are “lost.”

The subject of the nature of salvation in a missional context requires more exploration than it’s been given thus far, but already a direction for the topic seems to be emerging. Whatever view of missional salvation eventually finds acceptance, it will be a broad one that looks beyond the needs of an individual to avoid an undesirable afterlife.

Jump in with further thoughts below.

Firstly, I’m revisiting this subject because it’s that important, and secondly, because there are still people muddying the waters with their unhelpful notions of what it is to be missional. (Sadly, some of these are the same people from three years ago.) In this vein is an attack from Jonathan Leeman, Director of Communications for 9Marks, where he (mis)characterizes the missional conversation as a first step toward a new liberalism. (See Rick Meigs’ post, “9Marks on Missional“; I was mildly critical of their definition back in 2007 when they were using it favorably.) More recently, someone used the term “the missional right” in a blog comment. The commenter has since clarified what he meant and rescinded some of what was misunderstood by it but the minor uproar that came from it is, I think, fairly telling in itself. Also within the past number of weeks, Ed Stetzer announced the MissionSHIFT conference to be held later this year, and is coordinating efforts to draft a document titled “The Missional Manifesto” in the lead-up to the conference. To do this, Ed has recruited some good missional voices to help in framing the document, which I understand will be more about what it means for us to be missional than to actually define the term. A few of us have been talking with Ed a little further about this document and how to gather ideas from a wider group of people, and together we’ve come up with a way of gathering some input for the document framers to review as part of their exercise. No guarantee that all or any of this part of the conversation will land in the document as presented, but it’s an important step in gaugeing the wider view of what missional is and what some of its ramifications are. In this way, the prologue conversations help frame the discussion for the document framers.

You may have read this elsewhere as well so I won’t be hurt if you skip down below the quote, but here’s the initial post announcing this part of the discussion:

David Fitch once said that most missional thought leaders “emphasize incarnational forms of church over attractional; the church as Missio Dei over mission as program; organic forms of missionary living in neighborhoods over ministry set in a building.” Yet many others “purveyors of missional emptiness” continue to add the term to the current program they are attempting to promote or make cool sounding. As Ed Stetzer noted, “The word missional is used to bludgeon legalism and antinomianism alike. To some it is a sign of freedom from all established forms of the church and to others it is a degeneration into syncretism with the world.”

So, do we abandon the term and move on? Not yet, because the concept behind missional is really big and words help us when we can agree on their definitions— or at least we can agree what we mean when we use a word.

Over the next few weeks, a group of bloggers want to thrash out the meaning of word “missional” and the activity which accompanies a missional church and lifestyle. It will be discussed here as well as at other places including the blogs listed below. As the conversation moves forward, I hope you will move from blog to blog and offer insights from the scriptures and from how you see missional happening in your local community.

By doing this, we can all be a part of a specific missional conversation. As many of you know, there are several working toward a “Missional Manifesto” that will be rolled out as a part of the missionSHIFT conference on July 12-15, 2010. The intent with the manifesto is to say, “This is what we mean when we talk about being missional.” It is not the manifesto’s intent (or within its ability) to say this is what everyone should think or say about the term, but reflects a hope that it will help us all be clearer and more mission-shaped in our own thinking and practice.

Conversation on the grassroots level is important, so be sure to join in here and at the other blogs and let’s see where God take us. The initial group that will be running with this conversation from the outset is:

• Tiffany Smith: Missional Mayhem
• Bill Kinnon: kinnon.tv
• Brother Maynard: Subversive Influence
• David Fitch: Reclaiming the Mission
• Jared Wilson: The Gospel-Driven Church
• Jonathan Dodson: Creation Project
• Rick Meigs: The Blind Beggar and Friend of Missional

(Links above are to the respective kickoff posts; you can click the images below to head to the front pages of the blogs. In addition to the above, there’s also Ed Stetzer’s kickoff post.)

Hopefully that helps outline what we’re doing here. Ed will be posting his usual Monday Missional topics, but during this part of the conversation, he will be presenting some of the questions that we feel need to be addressed as we tackle what it means to be missional. Several other bloggers will pick up the discussion during the week, inviting comments on their blogs and elsewhere around these questions as we wrestle with them. I’ll be posting late in the week (planning for Fridays) in an attempt to gather up some of what’s being said and offer a bit of my own analysis.

Following the “kickoff post” that some of the bloggers linked above, most have prompted discussion around a one-sentence definition of “missional.” Obviously I’ve already defined missional, so I’ll restate the two things that I said were essential to the meaning of missional. Missional means that the church is organized around its mission, and its ministry is incarnational. The upshot of my longer series was that if you remove either of these two central tenets, you’re left with something that’s no longer missional. I explained the first part as being organized by mission rather than for mission, which was nicely underscored by one of the commenters when he said, “Mission as the church’s organizing principle is more nuanced than simply mission being the church’s priority. In the missional church, mission organizes all the other functions of the church.”