Wonderings & Wanderings

Reimagine - Spiritual Formation

This was originially posted on Tue Jun 22, 2004 4:51 pm on the EmergentCHBC forum

I just had lunch with Steve Nicholson. Steve and I have become friends this winter/spring. He and his wife Amy (you may occasionally catch them slipping into CHBC on Sunday mornings) have been working to develop a church plant in Durham around 9th St. over the past two years (Reimagine).

Their experience in Durham offers a valuable insight about community formation and spiritual formation in a post-Christian world. This experience also challenges/informs the conversation about evangelism.

So often our discussion of evangelism is decision-centered and event- centered. We hope those who are seeking Christ will come to events where they can make a decision for Christ. Much energy is placed in creating such events as well as inviting friends to "conversion events." The typical "target" for such events are folks who are ready to make that decision. Is there anything wrong with this time honored model of evangelism? Absolutely not — except when this is sole basis of evangelism and spiritual formation in Christian communities. When this is the sole emphasis of evangelism and the primary goal of spiritual formation, we run the risk of describing the gospel as an "event" and developing worshippers who move from one event to another (this is one of the roots of consumeristic Christianity). Retreats, conferences, and Sunday worship gatherings can be reduced to the "next event where the gospel happens."

If we have learned anything about evangelism and spiritual formation over the past few years, we have learned that many in a post-Christian world choose to participate in a Christian community long before they make commitments to the values and beliefs of this community. We have also learned that the process of spiritual formation begins long before one "makes a decision" or commitment of faith and continues long after this decision. These two assertions are unoriginal and dated. But they have radical ramifications on the Christian communites that we create. Ponder some the following potential changes —

•In at least conservative Christianity, we often work hard to limit the participation of "non-believers" before they make a commitment of faith. I would suggest that this participation before commitment is part of critical process of embracing faith.
•In all types of churches, we are tempted to offer a "lowest common denominator Christianity" (devoid of too many Christian symbols and practices) for those who are pursuing faith. In reality, many of those who have begun the process of spiritual formation want to experience the realities and rituals of Christianity in order to continue a journey toward commitment.
•Often our energy in evangelism is for programs that focus on the "point of decision." Typically our efforts of spiritual formation are reserved to helping folks immediately after making decision. Perhaps, we need to expend considerable creative energy in developing communities who create environments and opportunities for spiritual formation all along the spectrum of the Christian journey. Our corporate worship should include practices and languages that embraces this full spectrum.

Steve and Amy Nicholson have developed a community in "Reimagine" that offers a safe and creative space for people in our community who are in the earliest portions of consideration of the Christian journey of faith. They have been creative, honest, warm, and sensitive to those in culture who no longer begin their quest for spiritual meaning with Christian assumptions, language, or expectations. I truly wish there were more ministries like this in our community.

For those of you who are reading about and praying about the emerging church initiative here at CHBC — one possibility that our vision community is considering for this fall is a partnership with Reimagine. Steve has invited us to consider this option. In many ways, this "so" fits the DNA of CHBC, where we have have been quick and enthusiastic through the years to support the Christian community outside our programs and institutions that we lead/control. When I share about our fellowship, I am quick to brag about how we have shared our space and belongings so radically through the years and how we have been committed to building the broader Christian community in Chapel Hill/Durham rather than our own "kingdom." This is rare, unfortunately. Steve and I have committed to spend a day together in July to imagine what this partnership could look like. I'll keep you posted if this develops.

Our vision community continues to pray over and consider many other trajectories of action (we will likely recommend more than one). We look forward to broadening this discussion by sharing our ideas very soon. We also look forward to building our conversation on this site and the discussion boards.

Tim

In Search of Belonging (&Jack's Stack)

This was originally posted on Sat Jun 19, 2004 8:30 pm on the EmergentCHBC forum

I'm just back from Kansas City. One additional bonus of my meeting was that I got to spend some time with Joe Myers who wrote "In Search of Belonging." The young adults leadership team is currently reading this book — and I would encourage all who are interested in community to read this book!

Joe applies to communication theory to community formation with some truly outstanding applications for every aspect of social living. His primary point is that our need to belong is expressed in four different spaces/spheres:
1. Public — large and somewhat anonymous gatherings (like being
in a church service or the crowd at a game)
2. Social — events where you have the opportunity to share short vignettes of who you are and that of others — meeting places
3. Personal — close and small gatherings where some more detailed personal sharing can occur.
4. Intimate — those few very close relationships where you reveal every aspect of your life

There some very important applications that he makes about community formation in church settings:
- Our tendency to make every public sphere a social sphere, every social sphere a personal sphere, and every personal sphere an intimate sphere actually thwarts community. Many a class, group, or small group are destroyed by this imperative to "intimatize" every event. We need all four spheres to be connected.
- Though plenary services and small groups are good — we need more and varied community spaces to belong. Too often, churches impose the public and personal spheres (with a guilt trip that the personal should be intimate) as the only community options.
- Forced community structures are very limited in their success. Our best efforts are to create atmospheres were community and connections occur.

I definitely encourage reading this book (even though Joe is a huge Indiana basketball fan!).

A confession — my friends in emergent have had a long standing BBQ war. I've done my best to hold up the NC (Eastern of course) side of the argument. But after two trip to Jack's Stack in the depot area of Kansas City (the Crown beef ribs are the ticket!) and some intense sampling of Jack's in downtown Nashville (Memphis style) — I must say KC ribs are really, really good. I won't say that I've had a conversion experience, because conversion is so often a long process right — but I must admit that I "lost sight" of Wilson, NC for a few moments in KC.

Tim

Off to Kansas City "Local Conversations"

This was originally posted on June 10, 2004 on the EmergentCHBC forum.

I'm off to Kansas City for an Emergent meeting. One of my responsibilities for Emergent is to help develop local conversations about the emerging church. We certainly believe that the soul of the emerging church exists in the local community — in the local church, the coffeehouse, the pub, in neighborhoods, and in communities of friends — rather than in organizations, however helpful, like emergent.

If you would like to see an excellent example of a local meeting group (we call them "cohorts," definitely for lack of a better term!), check out a group called "Uprooted" in Chicago led by Geoff Holsclaw
.

Our challenge this week will be to help develop and foster local conversations (primarily in major cities) in a manner where we can establish relationships with these groups without creating needless beaurocracy or controlling these groups to the point that they lose the authenticity of their unique context. Any great ideas?

I have been invited (actually we, CHBC) to join a budding local conversation — a group of pastors and ministries in Raleigh called Ekklesia. The leaders of these church plants and young adults ministries have begun to meet for the purpose of forming friendships and collaborating in emerging church ministry (all of the ministries perceive themselves as a part of this movement). Participants of these ministries have begun to worship together every couple months on Friday evenings. I'm hoping to take a group to the next gathering on Friday evening, July 30.

One of the soul concerns of the emerging church is a collaboration not only with the various strands of the historical church, but shared community and mission with other local expressions of the church. This type of cooperation is what our post-Christian world needs to see and in many ways is what we need in our own spiritual journey. I look forward to where the paths of cooperation will take us.

Jim Thomas, the leader of our mission initiative, is blazing wonderful trails of partnership and community. Tomorrow, he will be worshipping at Antioch Baptist (?), a church pastored by Rev. Michael Page (Dean at NC Central and former chair of the Durham school board with several CHBC'ers. This largely African-American church has extended a hand of friendship and several offers of shared mission (including a summer camp for inner city youth this summer!) to us. Jim is also building partnerships on several levels with Duke Divinity School (another inner city possibility and a shared venture in Brazil).

The possibilities are endless. I so enjoy living in this era of where the various, and so long divided, strands of the Christian church are joining hands again.

Peace — TC

Small Groups vs. Communities

This was originally posted on June 11, 2004 on the EmergentCHBC forum.

I've just finished a week of long meetings (pastors for two days and initiative leaders for a morning). An observation springs to mind that may relate to our initiative here —

In these meetings, we have continued to dialogue about the great hunger in our culture for community. Though sociologists have pointed out that most Americans choose "false communities" or "lifestyle enclaves" (yes, I'm still quoting "Habits of the Heart" after all these years) rather than true "communities."

The typical church response to communities is to demand small group participation. Brian McLaren says that feeding our hunger for community with small groups alone is like trying to feed an elephant by tossing it individual cheerios! I think Brian makes a great point.

Over the years, other pastors around the country and I have noticed that some "small groups" grow in numbers well beyond the normal expectations of a typical small group and actually become communities. These groups can operate as self-defined entities and generally separate from the ministry/church that birthed them in the first place. In this manner, they can become non-missional (not accessible to others in the sending body and non-supportive of the key needs of the sending body) and also unshepherded (their needs and issues are unknown to the sending body). Sometimes they resist (I'm speaking very generally here not only from experience but the experience of other pastors in other fellowships) entreaties for training and guidance from church leadership. Why?

One reason — I believe we treat these communities like small groups. Regardless of the original intention, these groups have become communities. With small groups, one talks about "leaders," "teachers," "regular division," and "organizational plans". But this language seems highly inappropriate for communities. For example, you don't ask communities to divide or split (or at least one does so with measurable thought and circumstance).

What are the real challenges? I believe one real challenge is to help communities remain missional to the larger community. By missional, I don't mean finding ways to serve. What it means is to help these groups become sources of input, guidance, and servanthood for the kingdom goals of the larger community. After all, it is the kingdom goals of the larger community that are intended to help communities "stay on track" and reciprocally larger communities often need their subcommunities to help them stay on track.

A second challenge is to help subcommunities remain accessible to others being in contact with other such groups and to work to support inclusion and incorporation in the larger community. So often, when we find our tribe, we go off the map. Others seeking community see evidence of people in communities but find no way to access these communities. Often subcommunities can prevent other communities from forming by taking a seat at the table without occupying that seat. As a result, much community formation in churches is left to entrepreneurs and others who are willing to make it happen against some implicit resistance. This type of community formation often yields a selective process of getting folks into communities (and many are never selected for a variety of reasons).

Why am I writing on helping subcommunities become missional and the potential inadequacy of small groups as the "magic bullet" to a church's community needs??

I believe that if the church in our culture is going to be voice and metaphor of justice, love, mercy, and hope in our post-Christian, postmodern, post-everythingelse culture — we are going to need to develop the art of forming missional communities that build the sending community and the whole of community of God's people. We have so much to learn and experience in this area. I don't fault subcommunities (aka "small groups") for becoming non-missional. So often we force them to become so! I am eager though for the church (and our church!) to experiment with the developing art of missional community formation. We have many possibilities (Northeast Central Durham — the emerging culture communities in Durham, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro — the throngs of homogenous suburbs that dominate our community).

What would it look like? There are many movements afoot (like the emerging church, the new monasticism, racial reconiliation ministries like our friends at Harambee in Pasadena, and more) that are the living experiments for this need. I'm excited to see our efforts in this direction!

Getting Started

This post was originally on June 10, 2004 on the EmergentCHBC forum

I'm so eager to begin writing regularly about my experiences, observations, concerns, and hopes related to the church in our culture and around the world. Note that I didn't say "emerging church!" Over the last fifteen years (significantly due to the amazing experience I've had in these years at the Chapel Hill Bible Church), my passion has become the church — the whole church, not just portions of the church.

It wasn't always so — my early experiences in church life were routinely less than positive. As a kid of parents who were lay leaders and deeply committed to the local church — I was privy to some of the disputes, the petty jealousies, and hypocracy found in every church. Born in the 60's living in the rural South, I grew up in a church that was adamantly on the wrong side of the civil rights movement. We routinely encountered a fear for new ideas and practices, prejudice, and defensiveness as staples of church life. (Despite these faults, there was also a great spirit of community and joined lives in my childhood experiences in the church).

I went to seminary after college with the strong desire to serve God but not the church. So much of the last twenty years have been a journey home. Even the negative experiences have been redemptive for me. I dream of a church that follows the path of Jesus in embracing cultural diversity, not fearing change, being passionate about shared lives, and thinking missionally about the future while also being deeply respectful of its heritage and past journey of faith. These passions have have been forged in both the positive and negative experiences of church life for me. I find these passions deeply represented in the so called, "emerging church movement."

My love for the emerging church movement has grown over the past ten years as i have recognized a variety of factors in this movement —
•Its love the for the history of the church and its Scriptures
•Its creative thought about culture, gospel, and the future
•Its movement from critique and deconstruction of the traditional chruch to a positive desire to build the church for the present and future
•It's strong call to return to spiritual wholism (seeing the whole person as recipient of God's Spirit) and the call to serve Christ and Christ's kingdom with all of our person
•Its sharp critique of individualism and consumerism and its positive call to form communities that are formed around the gospel and the building of God's kingdom
•Its love for all of God's created world and its attentiveness hearing the voice of God in culture and community.

There's more — but, most of all — I have so often sensed God's Spirit in this movement and see it as one of the ways that God is rebuilding, reforming, and reshaping the church.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts (and hearing yours!) and my paths (and sharing your paths) with you for the purpose of laboring together to build Christ's kingdom, the greater church, and our fellowship. I'm amazed and feel truly privileged to be leading an emerging church initiative in our fellowship. It's remarkable that our church with its 30 years of effective ministry in our community is open to dialogue about future possibilities.

My Prayer for this initiative —
May our paths together be filled with many surprise "intrusions" of God's Spirit and lead us to unexpected places — places that transcend our expectations, hopes, and dreams. May our selfish desires and ambitions be quashed by the presence of God's Spirit in our lives, the example of Christ, and the growing presence of God's kingdom in our world. May we see our community and culture with the vision of God. May we build what God desires.

Peace - Tim

God's Peace —TC